March 2021 News

Editor's Choice: Scroll below for our monthly blend of mainstream and alternative March 2021 news and views

March 31

Top Headlines

New York Times, What’s in Biden’s Infrastructure Plan?
Washington Post, White House unveils jobs plan, setting up fight over role of government
New York Times, Clerk Who Questioned $20 Bill Watched Floyd Arrest With Guilt
Washington Post, Derek Chauvin defends restraint of George Floyd in newly disclosed body-cam video, saying he was ‘probably on something,’

Trump Team: Profiteering On Pandemic?

Washington Post, Navarro warned Trump of virus supply shortage, then pursued his own deals
Washington Post, Trump gave drugmakers a late win on prescription drug prices. Democrats want Biden to roll it back

Virus Victims, Responses

Washington Post, 97.6 million vaccinated in U.S.
Worldometer, World & U.S. Coronavirus Case Totals, U.S. Deaths: 564,199
New York Times, Live Updates: Pfizer-BioNTech Vaccine Said to Be Powerfully Protective in Adolescents

Trump Ally Gaetz Probed

Wayne Madsen Report (WMR), Investigation: Gaetz subject of federal grand jury investigation in Orlando for underage sex trafficking, Wayne Madsen
Washington Post, Gaetz investigation complicated by overture to his father about ex-FBI agent who went missing,
New York Times, Investigation: Matt Gaetz Is Said to Be Investigated Over Possible Sexual Relationship With a Girl, 17, Michael S. Schmidt and Katie BennerPalmer Report, Opinion: This is just so ugly, Bill Palmer
Washington Post, Tucker Carlson denies Gaetz claim that he met witness in FBI probes: ‘One of the weirdest interviews I’ve ever conducted’
Washington Post, Ex-GOP official Joel Greenberg flaunted ties to Matt Gaetz. Then he was charged with child sex trafficking
Yahoo News, Analysis: It’s Hard To Choose The Weirdest Part Of The Matt Gaetz Scandal — But We’ll Try, Lydia Wang
Mediaite, Fox News Responds to Report on Matt Gaetz’s Future: ‘We Have No Interest in Hiring Him,’

U.S. Courts, Crime, Regulation

New York Times, Man Arrested in Anti-Asian Attack Was on Parole for Killing Mother
New York Times, G. Gordon Liddy, Mastermind Behind Watergate Burglary, Dies at 90
New York Times, Judge Tosses Trump Campaign Aide’s Confidentiality Agreement
New York Times, N.Y. Seeks Trump Insider’s Records, in Apparent Bid to Gain Cooperation
New York Times, New York Legalizes Recreational Marijuana
Washington Post, Live Updates: After emotional day, Chauvin trial to resume with firefighter who was ‘desperate’ to help Floyd

U.S. Governance, Politics

Washington Post, Iowa Democrat drops attempt to contest House race, citing ‘toxic campaign of political disinformation’
538.com, Analysis: Why Democrats Weren’t Going To Reverse The Result In Iowa, Geoffrey Skelley

Jan. 6 Capitol Riot, Insurrection

NPR, 2 Capitol Police Officers Sue Trump For Injuries Sustained During Jan. 6 Riot

World News

Washington Post, Three female polio workers gunned down in Afghanistan

Media / Politics

New York Times, Hunter Biden’s Memoir: 7 Takeaways From ‘Beautiful Things,’ Elisabeth Egan
Washington Post, Behind a Real Housewife’s vague answers about her fortune: A telemarketing scam, federal officials allege

Top Stories

joe biden

Washington Post, White House unveils jobs plan, setting up fight over role of government, Jeff Stein, Juliet Eilperin and Michael Laris, March 31, 2021. The White House on Wednesday unveiled an approximately $2 trillion jobs plan focused on infrastructure and the climate, a blueprint that represents President Biden’s vision for how to reshape the U.S. economy.

Under what the administration calls the American Jobs Plan, Biden aims to tackle some of the nation’s most pressing problems — from climate change to decaying water systems to the nation’s crumbling infrastructure.

The administration’s promises are vast and may prove difficult to enact, even if the effort can get through Democrats’ extremely narrow majority in Congress. The plan, set to be introduced by Biden in Pittsburgh on Wednesday, says it will enable drivers across the country to find electric charging stations for their vehicles on the road. Every lead pipe in the country would be replaced. All Americans would have access to high-speed Internet broadband by the end of the decade. As many as 2 million homes and housing units would be built, retrofitted or renovated.

george floyd derek chauvin Custom

George Floyd, above left, and former police officer Derek Chauvin, whose trial began Monday.

New York Times, Clerk Who Questioned $20 Bill Watched Floyd Arrest With Guilt, John Eligon, Shaila Dewan, Tim Arango and Nicholas Bogel-Burroughs
March 31, 2021. During the third day of Derek Chauvin’s trial, witness after witness agonized over whether they could have done anything to stop what would eventually happen to George Floyd.

He chatted with a store clerk about playing football. He grabbed a banana off a shelf, flipped through a wad of cash, and hugged and exchanged pleasantries with a woman, laughing with his hand on her back.

In surveillance footage played for the first time in a Minneapolis courtroom on Wednesday, the world got to see George Floyd as it never had before: He was just another customer in a corner store that he liked to frequent.

Within half an hour, Mr. Floyd would be handcuffed and face down on the pavement outside of Cup Foods, calling out for his mother as a police officer pressed his knee into Mr. Floyd’s neck. Roughly two hours after he walked into the store he was dead.

On the third day of testimony in the trial of Derek Chauvin, the former police officer charged with murdering Mr. Floyd, a clearer picture emerged of the events preceding Mr. Floyd’s death, with witness after witness agonizing over whether they could have done anything to stop what would soon unfold.

The 19-year-old clerk who served Mr. Floyd at the corner store that day wondered whether the death was his fault because he had reported that Mr. Floyd used a fake $20 bill. A 61-year-old man who saw the police pinning Mr. Floyd to the ground shook his head and held back tears as a video of the brutal arrest played. He collapsed on the witness stand, sobbing. “I can’t help but feel helpless,” said the man, Charles McMillian. “I don’t have a mama either, but I understand him.”

Mr. Floyd’s death last May left a trail of agony for the people who were part of the unfolding tragedy — the weight of what they had witnessed plain to see in the form of tears, long pauses and deep breaths during their testimony.

It all began casually at the corner store. In the surveillance footage, Mr. Floyd is seen pacing the aisles, speaking with other customers and workers. He goes from one end to the next, accidentally knocks over a banana and puts it back, and then makes his way to the tobacco section at the front of the store.

At the counter, Mr. Floyd can be seen offering the teenage clerk, Christopher Martin, a $20 bill in exchange for a pack of cigarettes. Mr. Martin said he quickly realized the bill was counterfeit; the blue pigmentation gave it away, he testified. For one brief moment, Mr. Martin thought to let it go and put it on his own tab — the store’s policy was that fake money would be deducted from the paycheck of the employee who accepted it, he said. But then he changed his mind.

During the third day of Derek Chauvin’s trial, witnesses agonized over whether they could have stopped what eventually happened to George Floyd.
Here are takeaways from Day 3 of the trial.

Trump Ally Gaetz Probed

Wayne Madsen Report (WMR), Investigation: Gaetz subject of federal grand jury investigation in Orlando for underage sex trafficking, Wayne Madsen, March 31, 2021. For the past few years, WMR has been investigating Representative Matt Gaetz (R-FL) for a number of sexual misdeeds. Gaetz is a current Department of Justice target in an underage sex trafficking probe being conducted by the U.S. Attorney for the Middle District of Florida in Orlando.

WMR readers can peruse the Opposition Research dossier collected on Gaetz by clicking here. This dossier, compiled by a Republican primary opponent of Gaetz, has been in the hands of key Republican members of the House of Representatives, including the leadership.

New York Times, Investigation: Matt Gaetz Is Said to Be Investigated Over Possible Sexual Relationship With a Girl, 17, Michael S. Schmidt and Katie Benner, March 31, 2021 (print ed.). An inquiry into the Florida congressman was opened in the final months of the Trump administration, people briefed on it said.

matt gaetz o Custom Representative Matt Gaetz, right, Republican of Florida and a close ally of former President Donald J. Trump, is being investigated by the Justice Department over whether he had a sexual relationship with a 17-year-old and paid for her to travel with him, according to three people briefed on the matter.

Investigators are examining whether Mr. Gaetz violated federal sex trafficking laws, the people said. A variety of federal statutes make it illegal to induce someone under 18 to travel over state lines to engage in sex in exchange for money or something of value. The Justice Department regularly prosecutes such cases, and offenders often receive severe sentences.

It was not clear how Mr. Gaetz met the girl, believed to be 17 at the time of encounters about two years ago that investigators are scrutinizing, according to two of the people.

The investigation was opened in the final months of the Trump administration under Attorney General William P. Barr, below right,l the two people said. Given Mr. Gaetz’s national profile, senior Justice Department officials in Washington — including some appointed by Mr. Trump — william barr new o were notified of the investigation, the people said.

The three people said that the examination of Mr. Gaetz, 38, is part of a broader investigation into a political ally of his, a local official in Florida named Joel Greenberg, who was indicted last summer on an array of charges, including sex trafficking of a child and financially supporting people in exchange for sex, at least one of whom was an underage girl.

Mr. Greenberg, who has since resigned his post as tax collector in Seminole County, north of Orlando, visited the White House with Mr. Gaetz in 2019, according to a photograph that Mr. Greenberg posted on Twitter.

No charges have been brought against Mr. Gaetz, and the extent of his criminal exposure is unclear.

Mr. Gaetz said in an interview that his lawyers had been in touch with the Justice Department and that they were told he was the subject, not the target, of an investigation. “I only know that it has to do with women,” Mr. Gaetz said. “I have a suspicion that someone is trying to recategorize my generosity to ex-girlfriends as something more untoward.”

A Justice Department spokesman declined to comment, as did a spokeswoman for the U.S. attorney’s office in Central Florida.

Mr. Greenberg pleaded not guilty last year and was sent to jail this month for violating the terms of his bail. He is scheduled to go on trial in June in Orlando.

A frequent presence on Fox News and other conservative media, Mr. Gaetz has recently mused with confidants about quitting elected politics and taking a full-time job with the conservative television channel Newsmax or another network, according to a person familiar with the conversations. Axios first reported on Tuesday that Mr. Gaetz was considering leaving Congress.

Mr. Greenberg maintained ties to controversial figures who have supported Mr. Trump, an examination of court records, social media posts and far-right websites showed. A website run by a member of the far-right group the Proud Boys and a network of fake social media accounts linked to Mr. Trump’s longtime political adviser Roger J. Stone Jr. have promoted false accusations about Mr. Greenberg’s rivals similar to rumors that prosecutors accused Mr. Greenberg of secretly trying to spread.

It was not clear how Mr. Greenberg (shown at right in the photo adjoining) knew either Mr. Gaetz (shown at center) or Mr. Stone (shown at left). He posted a selfie with both in 2017 (shown at left), tweeting, “Great catching up.” The following year, Mr. Gaetz expressed support for Mr. Greenberg’s successful bid for local office, predicting he would someday make a great member of Congress.

On Capitol Hill, Mr. Gaetz has embraced the role of villain to the left as much as he has served as one of Mr. Trump’s staunchest defenders and enablers, often with theatrical flair. He wore a gas mask on the House floor last year in the early days of the pandemic, insisting he was demonstrating concern for public safety amid accusations he was mocking the seriousness of the spread of the coronavirus.

Mr. Gaetz was first elected to Congress in 2016. As a member of the Florida State Legislature and the scion of a Republican political family, he had initially backed former Gov. Jeb Bush of Florida in the Republican presidential primary that year before hitching his political fortunes to Mr. Trump.

It paid off. He won a seat in Congress representing part of the Florida Panhandle, and as one of Mr. Trump’s most flamboyant supporters on Capitol Hill and on cable television, his profile skyrocketed.

Mr. Gaetz invited a right-wing Holocaust skeptic to the State of the Union address in 2018, and attended an event last year where he said the Proud Boys had provided security, though he has distanced himself from the group on his podcast. When Democrats moved in 2019 to impeach Mr. Trump for the first time, Mr. Gaetz and a phalanx of Republicans following him barged past Capitol Police into the secure rooms of the House Intelligence Committee to briefly break up the investigation into the president.

After Mr. Trump’s defeat last year, Mr. Gaetz once again rallied to his side, defending the president’s baseless claims of widespread election fraud. Mr. Gaetz helped organize efforts among lawmakers to challenge President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s victory during Congress’s certification of it on Jan. 6 that was disrupted for hours by a pro-Trump mob that stormed the Capitol. Mr. Gaetz later traveled to Wyoming to hold a rally against Representative Liz Cheney, a Republican leader who had voted to impeach Mr. Trump for inciting the riot.

In 2017, Mr. Gaetz was the only member of Congress to vote against a law that gave the federal government more power and money to fight human trafficking.

“Voters in Northwest Florida did not send me to Washington to go and create more federal government,” Mr. Gaetz said in a local television interview at the time. “If anything, we should be abolishing a lot of the agencies at the federal level.”

Mr. Gaetz’s personal life has gained attention before. Last summer, he announced that he had a son, Nestor Galban, 19, though Mr. Gaetz said he was not Mr. Galban’s biological father, nor had he adopted him. Mr. Galban had been 12 when they met and had come to the United States from Cuba; Mr. Gaetz was at the time dating Mr. Galban’s sister.

“He is a part of my family story,” Mr. Gaetz told People magazine in June. “My work with Nestor, our family, no element of my public service could compare to the joy that our family has brought me.”

Mr. Gaetz proposed to his girlfriend, Ginger Luckey, at Mr. Trump’s Mar-a-Lago club on Dec. 30.

It was unclear how investigators in the Greenberg case began examining Mr. Gaetz’s conduct. Last June, federal prosecutors secured an indictment against Mr. Greenberg, accusing him of stalking a political rival.

Around that time, federal authorities seized Mr. Greenberg’s phone and laptop, according to court records. They discovered evidence that Mr. Greenberg, whose job responsibilities included issuing licenses, was creating fake identification cards for himself and a teenage girl, and was experimenting with holograms used on permits for concealed firearms, according to court documents.

Two months later, he was indicted on the sex trafficking charge. From May to November 2017, prosecutors said, Mr. Greenberg targeted the girl, who was between 14 and 17, saying he “recruited” and “solicited” her for sex acts in exchange for unspecified perks or favors.

Mr. Greenberg worked in advertising before running successfully at the age of 31 in 2016 for tax collector in Seminole County.

Within days of taking office, he fired three employees who had supported his predecessor and began spending more than $1.5 million in taxpayer money on personal expenses, including guns, ammunition, body armor and a drone, as well as on computers for his own cryptocurrency venture, a county audit later revealed.

The following year, according to The Orlando Sentinel, Mr. Greenberg posted a photograph of himself on social media with Milo Yiannopoulos, a right-wing personality who has a history of making racist remarks. The newspaper also detailed Mr. Greenberg’s own misogynist and anti-Muslim comments on Facebook.

In his bid for re-election, Mr. Greenberg turned in late 2019 to clandestine tactics to undermine a possible rival, according to court papers. Prosecutors said he sent an anonymous letter to the school where one potential candidate worked that made unfounded accusations of sexual misconduct with a student and making similar claims on a fake Facebook account.

As the primary race intensified last summer, similar messaging began appearing on fake social media accounts that have been tied to Mr. Stone.

“Watch out Seminole county,” said someone named April Goad on Facebook, warning Floridians “don’t open your door” to the rival candidate, according to Graphika, a company that specializes in analyzing social media.

The post linked to an article about the rival published on Central Florida Post, a website controlled by Mr. Stone’s associates that had written favorable articles about Mr. Greenberg. The website was founded by a member of the Proud Boys who has been linked to security providers for Mr. Stone on Jan. 6 in Washington in the lead-up to the insurrection at the Capitol.

Mr. Greenberg’s re-election efforts quickly evaporated when he was first indicted last June, and he resigned a day later.

Michael S. Schmidt is a Washington correspondent covering national security and federal investigations. He was part of two teams that won Pulitzer Prizes in 2018 — one for reporting on workplace sexual harassment and the other for coverage of President Trump and his campaign’s ties to Russia. @NYTMike

Katie Benner covers the Justice Department. She was part of a team that won a Pulitzer Prize in 2018 for public service for reporting on workplace sexual harassment issues. @ktbenner

Palmer Report, Opinion: This is just so ugly, Bill Palmer, right, March 31, 2021. Last night everything hit the fan when it was reported that the Department of Justice is investigating Matt Gaetz for alleged underage sex trafficking, which he denied and claimed he’s being extorted over it.

As we were all frantically trying to piece together last night what was going on with Gaetz and the DOJ, it evoked memories of the Trump era, where we seemingly couldn’t go three days without some kind of new revelation about some hideously ugly criminal scandal involving Trump and/or his allies. Since he’s been pushed out of power, the news cycle has shifted elsewhere. We still have far too many disturbing news cycles and ugly scandals, but it’s no longer about just one monster and his pals.

But last night was a distinct reminder of just how ugly and corrupt the Trump era was. Is Matt Gaetz guilty? We don’t have any way of knowing yet. But of course Gaetz is a Trump ally, because these kinds of stories in American politics somehow have a way of nearly always finding their way back to Trump.

It’s a reminder of just how normalized this kind of deranged scandalousness became during the previous years. Of course the criminal investigations into Donald Trump and his allies are just now properly getting underway, after four years of a compromised DOJ and FBI, so we’re expecting even more ugly criminal allegations to surface against Trump and his pals. Let’s just be glad that they’re no longer in charge of the country.

Washington Post, Tucker Carlson denies Gaetz claim that he met witness in FBI probes: ‘One of the weirdest interviews I’ve ever conducted,’ Teo Armus, March 31, 2021. Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) was on Fox News on Tuesday night, defending himself against newly public allegations that he had a sexual relationship with a 17-year-old girl, when he seemed to pull his interviewer into the matter.

“You and I went to dinner about two years ago, your wife was there, and I brought a friend of mine, you’ll remember her,” Gaetz told Tucker Carlson, connecting that friend to an ongoing Justice Department investigation of the lawmaker.

He alleged that the woman had been “threatened” by the FBI and told “she could face trouble” if she didn’t confess to authorities that Gaetz was involved in a “pay-for-play scheme.”

“I don’t remember the woman you are speaking of or the context at all, honestly,” Carlson cut in to say, visibly stunned.

Later on in the show, Carlson — still looking surprised — appeared to distance himself further from Gaetz, saying: “That was one of the weirdest interviews I’ve ever conducted.”

On Tuesday evening, the lawmaker appeared on “Tucker Carlson Tonight,” slamming the Times report as an attempt to thwart a separate investigation into his extortion claims. Gaetz insisted there was no 17-year-old and denied any allegations of sex trafficking.

“Providing for flights and hotel rooms for people that you’re dating who are of legal age is not a crime,” he told Carlson.

Gaetz specifically blamed the extortion attempt on David McGee, a former Justice Department official. McGee denied those claims to The Post, saying he had no connection to the agency’s probe into possible sex trafficking by Gaetz.

At one point, in what appeared to be an effort to get Carlson to relate to his circumstances, the lawmaker mentioned that the Fox News host was falsely accused of rape years ago.

“I’m not the only person on screen right now who’s been falsely accused of a terrible sex act,” the lawmaker told Tucker Carlson. “You were accused of something you did not do, so you know what this feels like.”

With a puzzled look on his face, Carlson responded: “You just referred to a mentally ill viewer who accused me of a sex crime 20 years ago. And of course, it was not true. I never met the person.”

Washington Post, Ex-GOP official Joel Greenberg flaunted ties to Matt Gaetz. Then he was charged with child sex trafficking, Katie Shepherd, March 31, 2021. joel greenberg seminole county tax collector Until last year, Joel Greenberg was an ascendant political player in Seminole County, Fla., where he unseated a longtime incumbent in the race for county tax collector, won a political battle to allow his deputies to carry guns on the job and flaunted his connections to prominent Republicans with close ties to president Donald Trump, including Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) and Roger Stone.

But last June his reputation fell apart in spectacular fashion when federal investigators arrested him on stalking and child sex trafficking charges, prompting his resignation.

On Tuesday, the case against Greenberg, 36, shown in a file photo as tax collector, gained national prominence after the New York Times reported that it had also sparked a separate criminal investigation into allegations that Gaetz had a sexual relationship with a teenage girl.

Yahoo News, Analysis: It’s Hard To Choose The Weirdest Part Of The Matt Gaetz Scandal — But We’ll Try, Lydia Wang, March 31, 2021. Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz is under investigation for reportedly violating sex trafficking laws by engaging in a sexual relationship with a minor and paying for her to travel with him. According to The New York Times, the probe is just one part of a bigger investigation into Joel Greenberg, a former Florida GOP official tied to Gaetz who currently awaits trial for 14 charges including and related to sex trafficking. In an attempt to clear things up, Gaetz appeared on Fox News to discuss the investigation with Tucker Carlson, but now we have even more questions. Specifically: What is going on?

In an odd segment that Carlson then described as “one of the weirdest interviews I’ve ever conducted,” Gaetz denied the allegations, claimed the probe is a part of an ongoing extortion attempt, and attempted to throw Carlson under the bus twice. He told Carlson that any claims that he was involved with or traveled with a 17-year-old girl are “verifiably false” and “merely intended to bleed my family out of money.” Gaetz went on to clarify, “What is happening is an extortion of me and my family involving a former Department of Justice official.”

Gaetz says he and his father, Florida politician Don Gaetz, received a message several weeks ago from a person demanding $25 million “in exchange for making sex trafficking allegations go away.” According to Gaetz, his father wore a wire in a meeting with a former official from the Department of Justice, and Gaetz is convinced that audio footage from this meeting would clear his name.

The former DOJ official, whom Gaetz identified as lawyer David McGee, has denied Gaetz’s accusation. “This is a blatant attempt to distract from the fact that Matt Gaetz is apparently about to be indicted for sex-trafficking underage girls,” McGee told The Daily Beast, adding that allegations of his involvement in any kind of extortion are “completely, totally false.”

As if that weren’t enough, Gaetz also tried to implicate Carlson in the ongoing investigation. “I can say that actually, you and I went to dinner about two years ago, your wife was there, and I brought a friend of mine, you’ll remember her,” Gaetz said. “She was actually threatened by the FBI, told that if she wouldn’t cop to the fact that somehow, I was involved in some pay-for-play scheme, that she could face trouble.” Carlson said that he did not remember this specific dinner or friend.

At another point in the interview, Gaetz turned on Carlson again. “I’m not the only person on-screen right now who has been falsely accused of a terrible sex act,” he said. “You were accused of something you did not do, so you know what this feels like.” It is unclear what Gaetz was talking about here; it’s possible he was referring to a claim that Carlson, along with two other Fox personalities, sexually harassed a guest last year. Carlson quickly clarified that a person he had apparently never met accused him of a sex crime “20 years ago” before moving on with another question.

Before his Fox News appearance, Gaetz told the Times that he was involved in an investigation but did not know any specifics about the probe. “I only know that it has to do with women,” he said. “I have a suspicion that someone is trying to recategorize my generosity to ex-girlfriends as something more untoward.” He reiterated this same sentiment to Carlson, emphasizing that it is not a crime to purchase plane tickets and hotel rooms for girlfriends of legal age.

Gaetz made a name for himself as one of former President Donald Trump’s staunchest allies. He’s made headlines for bizarre reasons several times: In November, people speculated that he was dating Tiffany Trump after he appeared to flirt with her on Twitter. Many have also struggled to make sense of his relationship with Nestor, a 19-year-old college student who Gaetz says is his son. (Nestor is not biologically or legally related to Gaetz.) And he’s had several other controversies and viral moments that, in retrospect, are even more concerning, including that time he was the only “no” vote on a bipartisan anti-human trafficking bill and this unfortunate tweet that, for some reason, has not yet been deleted.

Mediaite, Fox News Responds to Report on Matt Gaetz’s Future: ‘We Have No Interest in Hiring Him,’ Josh Feldman, March 31, 2021. Before the news of a DOJ investigation into whether he had a relationship with a 17-year-old broke on Tuesday, Congressman Matt Gaetz was getting attention for an Axios report saying he has plans to move from the House of Representatives to a media job.

As Axios reported, Gaetz has told people he’s “seriously considering not seeking re-election and possibly leaving Congress early for a job at Newsmax.”

On Wednesday, amid the stunning news about the DOJ probe and his allegations of an extortion scheme and smear campaign, Gaetz told The Daily Beast he’s had “many conversations with many people about life after Congress,” saying he’s “talked to either executives, producers or hosts at Newsmax, OAN, Fox, Fox Business, Real America’s Voice and probably others I’m forgetting in this moment as I focus intently on refuting false accusations against me.”

In a statement to Mediaite on the report, a Fox News spokesperson said, “No one with any level of authority has had conversations with Matt Gaetz for any of our platforms and we have no interest in hiring him.”

OAN founder/CEO Robert Herring spoke to Daily Beast for its report and said, “Somebody did call me and say that Congressman Gaetz might be looking for a job, possibly at Newsmax… I think he is a great congressman, and I told [that ‘somebody’] to tell him to stay there. That’s what I want Congressman Gaetz to do.”

Virus Victims, Responses

Washington Post, 97.6 million vaccinated, as of March 31, 2021, is the number of people who have received at least one dose of the vaccine, covering 36.5 of the eligible population,16 and older and 29.4 % of the total population. See about your state.

Worldometer, World & U.S. Coronavirus Case Totals (updated: March 31, 2021), with some governments reporting slightly lower numbers than the totals here):

World Cases: 128,978,966, Deaths: 2,819,210
U.S. Cases: 31,099,466, Deaths: 564,199
Brazil Cases: 12,664,058, Deaths: 317,936

New York Times, Live Updates: Pfizer-BioNTech Vaccine Said to Be Powerfully Protective in Adolescents, Staff Report, March 31, 2021. A clinical trial found no infections among vaccinated children ages 12 to 15, the companies said, and there were no serious side effects. President Emmanuel Macron of France will address the country on Wednesday and is expected to announce new restrictions. Here’s the latest on Covid-19.

A third national lockdown seems likely in France as hospitals are overwhelmed.
Vaccines bring hope to New Yorkers, but virus cases are still alarmingly high.
Turkey forbids gatherings as virus cases surge and Ramadan nears.
After W.H.O. report on the pandemic’s origins, China tries to shift attention elsewhere.
The E.U. vows to speed up its vaccine rollout as more countries tighten rules.
Scientists wonder if a mix-and-match approach to vaccines could be the way to go.
Russia claims to be the first country to develop coronavirus shots for animals.
In San Francisco, turmoil over reopening schools turns a city against itself.
In Ukraine, the price for a vaccine can be a selfie.

U.S. Courts, Crime

New York Times, Man Arrested in Anti-Asian Attack Was on Parole for Killing Mother, Michael Gold, March 31, 2021. Brandon Elliot, who killed his mother two decades ago, was arrested and charged with the brutal assault on a Filipino woman near Times Square.

A homeless man who was out on parole for killing his mother was arrested and charged with a hate crime early Wednesday morning in connection with a violent attack on a Filipino immigrant near Times Square, the police said.

The man, Brandon Elliot, 38, was living at a hotel in Midtown Manhattan that has been serving as a homeless shelter, the police said. He was charged with felony assault as a hate crime, attempted assault as a hate crime and separate assault and attempted assault charges.

The police said that Mr. Elliot was the man seen on security footage brutally assaulting Vilma Kari, 65, who was walking down a city street on Monday morning.

The video shows a man police believe to be Mr. Elliot kicking Ms. Kari in the chest outside a luxury apartment building. After she staggers back and collapses onto the sidewalk, he then kicks her repeatedly in the head. A police official said that he then shouted an obscenity at her and said “You don’t belong here.”

Several workers in the building’s lobby were shown in the video appearing to do nothing to intervene, with one man, a security guard, closing the front door to the building after the attack.

The horrifying footage spread widely across social media and in news reports, intensifying the outrage and fear caused by an increasing number of reports of anti-Asian hate crimes across the nation in recent weeks.

Mr. Elliot was convicted of second-degree murder after fatally stabbing his mother, Bridget Johnson, three times in the heart in the Bronx in 2002, when he was 19, according to state records and news reports.

He was sentenced to a minimum of 15 years to life in prison and was released on parole in November 2019, after he had served 16 years, according to state corrections records.

gordon liddy

New York Times, G. Gordon Liddy, Mastermind Behind Watergate Burglary, Dies at 90, Robert D. McFadden, Updated March 31, 2021. Unlike other defendants in the scandal that brought down Richard Nixon, Mr. Liddy refused to testify and drew the longest prison term.

G. Gordon Liddy, a cloak-and-dagger lawyer who masterminded dirty tricks for the White House and concocted the bungled burglary that led to the Watergate scandal and the resignation of President Richard M. Nixon in 1974, died on Tuesday in Mount Vernon, Va. He was 90.

His death, at the home of his daughter Alexandra Liddy Bourne, was confirmed by his son Thomas P. Liddy, who said that his father had Parkinson’s disease and had been in declining health.

Decades after Watergate entered the lexicon, Mr. Liddy was still an enigma in the cast of characters who fell from grace with the 37th president — to some a patriot who went silently to prison refusing to betray his comrades, to others a zealot who cashed in on bogus celebrity to become an author and syndicated talk show host.

As a leader of a White House “plumbers” unit set up to plug information leaks, and then as a strategist for the president’s re-election campaign, Mr. Liddy helped devise plots to discredit Nixon “enemies” and to disrupt the 1972 Democratic National Convention. Most were far-fetched — bizarre kidnappings, acts of sabotage, traps using prostitutes, even an assassination — and were never carried out.

But Mr. Liddy, a former F.B.I. agent, and E. Howard Hunt, a former C.I.A. agent, engineered two break-ins at the Democratic National Committee offices in the Watergate complex in Washington. On May 28, 1972, as Mr. Liddy and Mr. Hunt stood by, six Cuban expatriates and James W. McCord Jr., a Nixon campaign security official, went in, planted bugs, photographed documents and got away cleanly.

A few weeks later, on June 17, four Cubans and Mr. McCord, wearing surgical gloves and carrying walkie-talkies, returned to the scene and were caught by the police. Mr. Liddy and Mr. Hunt, running the operation from a Watergate hotel room, fled but were soon arrested and indicted on charges of burglary, wiretapping and conspiracy.

In the context of 1972, with Mr. Nixon’s triumphal visit to China and a steam-rolling presidential campaign that soon crushed the Democrat, Senator George S. McGovern, the Watergate case looked inconsequential at first. Mr. Nixon’s press secretary, Ron Ziegler, dismissed it as a “third-rate burglary.”

But it deepened a White House cover-up that had begun in 1971, when Mr. Liddy and Mr. Hunt broke into the office of the psychiatrist of Daniel Ellsberg, who leaked the Pentagon Papers to The New York Times, looking for damaging information on him. Over the next two years, the cover-up unraveled under pressure of investigations, trials, hearings and headlines into the worst political scandal — and the first resignation by a sitting president — in the nation’s history.

“I have lived as I believed I ought to have lived,” Mr. Liddy, a small dapper man with a baldish pate and a brushy mustache, told reporters after his release. He said he had no regrets and would do it again. “When the prince approaches his lieutenant, the proper response of the lieutenant to the prince is, ‘Fiat voluntas tua,’” he said, using the Latin of the Lord’s Prayer for “Thy will be done.”

Disbarred from law practice and in debt for $300,000, mostly for legal fees, Mr. Liddy began a new career as a writer. His first book, “Out of Control,” (1979) was a spy thriller. He later wrote another novel, “The Monkey Handlers” (1990), and a nonfiction book, “When I Was a Kid, This Was a Free Country” (2002). He also co-wrote a guide to fighting terrorism, “Fight Back! Tackling Terrorism, Liddy Style” (2006), and produced many articles on politics, taxes, health and other matters.

In 1980, he broke his silence on Watergate with his autobiography, Will. The reviews were mixed, but it became a best seller. After years of revelations by other Watergate conspirators, there was little new in it about the scandal, but critics said his account of prison life was graphic. A television movie based on the book was aired in 1982 by NBC.

JIP Editor's Note: This obituary, like most mainstream accounts of Watergate, fails to mention research since the 1970s challenging basic conventional wisdow about the break-in. Key questions answered by the new research are who ordered the break-in and what specifically was the desired goal.

New York Times, Judge Tosses Trump Campaign Aide’s Confidentiality Agreement, Eric Lipton, March 31, 2021 (print ed.). An effort by former President Donald J. Trump’s campaign to silence a former campaign worker who claimed she was the target of abusive treatment and sexual harassment by another member of Mr. Trump’s campaign was effectively voided on Tuesday by a federal court judge in New York.

Judge Paul G. Gardephe nullified a confidentiality agreement signed in 2016 by Jessica Denson, who had worked on Mr. Trump’s campaign that year as a phone bank supervisor and Hispanic outreach coordinator. Judge Gardephe concluded the agreement was “invalid and unenforceable.”

Mr. Trump’s campaign had won a $50,000 award against Ms. Denson after asserting that she had violated the confidential agreement when she first raised the mistreatment claims. That award was overturned by a New York State court last year.

Ms. Denson then sued on behalf of herself and other Trump campaign aides who had been forced to sign confidentiality agreements, asking that they all be invalidated as too broad and illegal in New York because they lasted indefinitely.

Judge Gardephe declined on Tuesday to invalidate all of the confidentiality agreements. But he did rule that the one Ms. Denson had signed was invalid.

“It is difficult if not impossible for Denson or another campaign employee to know whether any speech might be covered by one of the broad categories of restricted information,” the ruling says.

Ms. Denson’s lawyers — David K. Bowles of Bowles & Johnson, Joe Slaughter of Ballard Spahr, and John Langford from the nonprofit group Protect Democracy — worked on the case pro bono and now intend to ask the court to consider broadly invalidating all of the confidentiality agreements that Trump campaign workers signed.

Ms. Denson claimed she was “subject to a hostile work environment and experienced sex discrimination, and that after she complained, high-ranking persons in the campaign retaliated against her.”

Mr. Trump’s post-presidential office did not respond to a request for comment.

Her case was one of several in which Mr. Trump — using lawyers paid for by his campaign or at times even the Justice Department — went after former aides that criticized him or his campaign, including Sam Nunberg, a former political adviser to Mr. Trump, and Omarosa Manigault Newman, a former White House aide.

New York Times, New York Legalizes Recreational Marijuana, Luis Ferré-Sadurní, March 31, 2021. New Yorkers will immediately be allowed to possess up to three ounces of cannabis for recreational purposes. Other changes will be phased in over several months.

After years of stalled attempts, New York State has legalized the use of recreational marijuana, enacting a robust program to reinvest millions of dollars in minority communities ravaged by the decades-long war on drugs.

Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo signed the cannabis legislation on Wednesday, a day after the State Legislature passed the bill following hours of debate among lawmakers in Albany.

With his signature, New York became the 15th state to legalize the recreational use of cannabis, positioning itself to quickly become one of the largest markets of legal cannabis in the nation.

Previous attempts to legalize marijuana were stymied over disagreements on how the tax revenue from marijuana sales would be distributed. Democratic lawmakers, especially those who are nonwhite, insisted that a large portion of the money be earmarked for communities where Black and Latino people have been disproportionately arrested on marijuana charges; the governor wanted to retain more control over how the money was spent.

The lawmakers prevailed. Forty percent of the tax revenue from pot sales will be steered to those communities, and people with marijuana-related convictions that are no longer criminalized will have their records automatically expunged. The law also seeks to allow people with past convictions and those involved in the illicit cannabis market to participate in the new legal market.

Washington Post, Live Updates: After emotional day, Chauvin trial to resume with firefighter who was ‘desperate’ to help Floyd, Holly Bailey, Timothy Bella and Lateshia Beachum, March 31, 2021. Rep. Marilyn Strickland says Derek Chauvin’s trial will be a ‘proof-point;’ Chauvin’s lawyer asked a Black witness about anger, conjuring centuries-old tropes, scholars say

U.S. Governance, Politics

Washington Post, Iowa Democrat drops attempt to contest House race, citing ‘toxic campaign of political disinformation,’ Marianna Sotomayor, March 31, 2021. In recent weeks, Republicans have accused Democrats of trying to overturn a fairly won election after the House Administration Committee began investigating the result.

Democrat Rita Hart has dropped her challenge in the Iowa 2nd Congressional District race, asking the House to no longer consider an investigation into the outcome of her race against Republican Mariannette Miller-Meeks following intense Republican pushback.

In a statement released Wednesday, Hart said she decided to inform the House Administration Committee to no longer investigate her case after having numerous conversations with people about the future of the investigation. She also blamed Republican criticism in announcing her decision to drop the appeal.

“Despite our best efforts to have every vote counted, the reality is that the toxic campaign of political disinformation to attack this constitutional review of the closest congressional contest in 100 years has effectively silenced the voices of Iowans,” Hart said.

Resistance grows in both parties to Democratic probe of narrow Iowa race

Miller-Meeks was declared the winner over Hart following a recount in November with a difference of just six votes out of 400,000 cast. Miller-Meeks is now serving as the district’s representative, but Hart had asked the House to overturn the result. Hart alleges that 22 legally cast ballots were not considered during the initial November canvass and subsequent recount, resulting in the tightest congressional electoral outcome in modern history.

In a video responding to Hart’s decision, Miller-Meeks announced that she received “a very gracious call” from her former Democratic opponent officially conceding the race.

“I’m deeply appreciative that we’re ending this now and I wish only the best for she and her family because I know how stressful this has been,” she said.

A person familiar with Hart’s decision, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe private discussions, said she no longer wanted to put her family through mounting negative and what they described as misleading attacks on her request to have the House overturn the election results.

538.com, Analysis: Why Democrats Weren’t Going To Reverse The Result In Iowa, Geoffrey Skelley, March 31, 2021. Congress Disputed Seat: Democrat Rita Hart lost to Republican Mariannette Miller-Meeks by just six votes last November.

That whoosh you just heard? That was House Democrats breathing a sigh of relief now that Democrat Rita Hart has withdrawn her challenge to contest the result in Iowa’s 2nd Congressional District, which she lost to Republican Mariannette Miller-Meeks by just six votes last November — one of the closest federal elections in U.S. history.

Democrats were reportedly worried at the prospect of having to vote on whether to unseat Miller-Meeks, especially considering how loudly they protested former President Trump and Republicans’ attempts to overturn the 2020 election earlier this year. Additionally, there were concerns it would undermine Democrats’ efforts to pass a massive voting rights and election reform bill. That, along with the Democrats’ narrow majority, suggested it was going to be very challenging for Democrats to reverse the outcome — even if they felt Hart had a valid case.

Moreover, Republican messaging had put Democrats on the defensive. For instance, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy claimed they were trying to “steal” the election, while Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell pointedly asked major businesses and organizations that were critical of GOP objections to the Electoral College on Jan. 6 to hold Democrats to “the same standard” for contesting the Iowa result.

The Iowa situation was pretty unusual, as contested elections are fairly uncommon nowadays — and reversing election outcomes is even rarer. As the table below shows, contested House elections were once a regular occurrence, especially in the years following the Civil War, when many disputes centered on congressional races in the South, according to data compiled by Jeffery Jenkins at the University of Southern California. But now the number has tailed off considerably, averaging barely one case every five congresses.

Contested elections used to be far more common.

A contested election indicates a result that was formally disputed in the House. Not all contested races resulted in a different winner.

The House reached its current size of 435 seats after the 1910 census, except for the 86th and 87th congresses (1959-1962), when it expanded to include at-large seats from Alaska and Hawaii. The House then returned to 435 seats after the 1960 census and the subsequent reapportionment before the 1962 election.

In the past 50 years, the House has voted to reverse an election outcome only once: In 1985, the Democratic-controlled House investigated and recounted the votes in the 1984 election for Indiana’s 8th Congressional District and determined that Democratic Rep. Frank McCloskey had won by four votes after the Republican candidate had led by 418 votes following a state-run recount. The House then voted 236 to 190 to seat McCloskey, prompting House Republicans to stage a walk-out.

But Democrats had a much larger majority in 1985 than they do today, so they could have afforded 30 or more defections when they voted to seat McCloskey. By comparison, fewer than five Democratic “nays” could have sunk an attempt to seat Hart because Democrats currently hold only a 219-to-211 seat majority. And some Democrats had privately — and even publicly — let it be known they didn’t want to vote to unseat Miller-Meeks.

Jan. 6 Capitol Riot, Insurrection

National Public Radio (NPR), 2 Capitol Police Officers Sue Trump For Injuries Sustained During Jan. 6 Riot, Jaclyn Diaz, March 31, 2021. Two U.S. Capitol police officers are suing former President Donald Trump, for allegedly inciting the riots that took over the Capitol building Jan. 6.

Officers James Blassingame and Sidney Hemby argue in court documents reviewed by NPR that Trump is responsible for the physical and emotional injuries the officers received following the violent riots at the Capitol. The insurrection resulted in the death of five people.

The lawsuit details the violence Blassingame and Hemby faced during the Jan. 6 attack, as well as the physical and emotional toll they continue to deal with.

Lawyers for the officers argue Trump's repeated false claims over several months that the 2020 presidential election could be stolen or was eventually "rigged" motivated the eventual insurrectionists.

Trump "inflamed, encouraged, incited, directed, and aided and abetted" the "insurrectionist mob" to force its way into the Capitol building to stop the certification of the election on Jan. 6. The mob "forced its way over and past the plaintiffs and their fellow officers, pursuing and attacking them inside and outside the United States Capitol, and causing the injuries."

The lawsuit says Trump is liable for the injuries the plaintiffs and other Capitol Police and Metropolitan Police Department officers sustained that day.

Court documents include pictures of Trump's Twitter posts and statements the former president made during the 2020 campaign questioning the integrity of the U.S. election system.

The officers are seeking unspecified monetary damages with the lawsuit. Documents say the "amount in controversy exceeds $75,000, not counting interest and costs."

Emotional, physical damage remain

According to the lawsuit, Blassingame was thrown against a stone column as a mob of people rushed into the Crypt of the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6. He hit his spine and the back of his head and was unable to move for a period of time. He was called racial slurs by the attackers and was hit repeatedly, according to court documents.

Blassingame was one of eight or nine officers who attempted to protect the Crypt as the mob filled the area, according to the lawsuit.

Once he was able to flee to safety, Blassingame remained locked in the House Ways and Means Committee room with members, some of whom were unmasked for hours.

The lawsuit states, "Officer Blassingame was acutely aware that many in the Ways and Means room were neither masked nor socially distanced from Covid-19 transmission. He had no option but to remain in place."

As Hemby sought to protect the Capitol, he was sprayed in the face and body with chemical irritants that burned his skin.

The lawsuit said Hemby was "crushed against the doors on the east side trying to hold the insurrectionists back. Over and over, he tried to tell the insurrectionists that the doors opened outward and that pressing him into the door would do no good."

Both Blassingame and Hemby continue to deal with the emotional fallout of the attack. The lawsuit, filed in Washington, D.C., says Blassingame is haunted by the memory of being attacked and remains triggered by the sights, sounds, smells of the events that day.

"The weight on Officer Blassingame has been heavy and pervasive. He was not able to sleep and he could not talk about what happened, even with his wife and friends," the lawsuit states.

Hemby still has damage to his left hand and knee as well as his neck and back that requires regular physical therapy.

The lawsuit states, "He continues to sleep poorly and feels hyper-aware and on high alert during his waking hours."

World News

Washington Post, Three female polio workers gunned down in Afghanistan, Sharif Hassan, March 31, 2021 (print ed.). The attacks are the latest in a string of targeted killings sowing unease in government-held towns and cities despite ongoing peace talks.

Washington Post, Jailed Russian opposition leader Navalny declares hunger strike, Robyn Dixon, March 31, 2021. Jailed Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny declared a hunger strike Wednesday after unsuccessful attempts to get medical care for severe back pain, according to an Instagram post in his name.

Navalny survived an August assassination attempt with a chemical weapon that the U.S. State Department blames on Russian security agencies, but he was jailed when he flew back to Russia in January after treatment in Germany.

He was sentenced to 2½ years in prison for breaching parole conditions in a 2014 fraud case, partly because he failed to report to authorities while under treatment in Germany.

Navalny last week requested painkilling injections for back pain and a right leg so numb that he says it barely supports his weight.

“I have the right to call a doctor and get medicine. Neither of which I am given, stupidly,” the Wednesday post said. It said the numbness was moving to his left leg.

The Kremlin has declined to comment on Navalny’s complaints, calling it a matter for prison authorities.

The post said he was lying in his cell on his bed on a hunger strike, in what he called a major violation of prison rules. He was reading the Bible, the only book made available to him in prison.

The post said was also being “tortured by sleep deprivation,” roused eight times every night by a guard shining a torch in his face to supposedly ensure he has not absconded.

Media / Politics

New York Times, Hunter Biden’s Memoir: 7 Takeaways From ‘Beautiful Things,’ Elisabeth Egan, March 30, 2021. Hunter Biden doesn’t beat around the bush in his new memoir, “Beautiful Things,” which comes out on April 6.

hunter biden cover “I’m a 51-year-old father who helped raise three beautiful daughters,” writes President Biden’s younger son, who now has a year-old son of his own, in the prologue. “I’ve bought crack cocaine on the streets of Washington, D.C., and cooked up my own inside a hotel bungalow in Los Angeles. I’ve been so desperate for a drink that I couldn’t make the one-block walk between a liquor store and my apartment without uncapping the bottle to take a swig. In the last five years alone, my two-decades-long marriage has dissolved, guns have been put in my face, and at one point I dropped clean off the grid, living in $59-a-night Super 8 motels off I-95 while scaring my family even more than myself.”

The book is equal parts family saga, grief narrative and addict’s howl. Here is what readers will learn.

The title of Hunter Biden’s book was inspired by Beau Biden’s mantra while he was undergoing cancer treatment. “He insisted that when he got well, we would dedicate our lives to appreciating and cultivating the world’s boundless beauty.” Biden writes. “‘Beautiful Things’ became a catchall for relationships and places and moments — for everything.”

hunter biden melissa biden cohen resized wedding abc He credits his wife, Melissa Cohen (shown with him at left in a wedding photo), for his sobriety. In March 2019, Hunter Biden was “done with the world of politics, of figuring out how to go out on the campaign trail with Dad, if it came to that, as I would have in any other election year.” He writes, “I was a crack addict and that was that.”

He had been asked to vacate a hotel in Los Angeles where he was living, but before he left, he befriended some people at the pool who gave him the number of a South African filmmaker named Melissa Cohen.

An hour into their first dinner, they declared their love to one another. An hour after that, Biden told Melissa he was a crack addict. She said, “Not anymore. You’re finished with that.”

March 30

Top Headlines

Washington Post, Trump officials say coronavirus response was worse than known
New York Times, Biden Calls for States to Reimpose Mask Mandates to Curb Virus Spread
Washington Post, The Biden do-over: Democrats get a chance to try again on Obama defeats
Washington Post, First day of Derek Chauvin murder trial includes blunt testimony, new video footage

Trump Team Scandals?

Wayne Madsen Report (WMR), Investigation: Gaetz subject of federal grand jury investigation in Orlando for underage sex trafficking, Wayne Madsen
New York Times, Investigation: Matt Gaetz Is Said to Be Investigated Over Possible Sexual Relationship With a Girl, 17, Michael S. Schmidt and Katie Benner
Daily Beast, Rep. Matt Gaetz Says Teen-Sex Allegation Is Part of Extortion Plot
Daily Beast, Matt Gaetz Tries to Rope Tucker Into His FBI Teen Sex Case Defense
Axios, Investigation: Rep. Matt Gaetz eyes early retirement from Congress to take job at Newsmax, Alayna Treene
Reuters via Yahoo News, Trump must face 'Apprentice' contestant's defamation lawsuit -NY court
Washington Post, Opinion, Dominion lawsuit outs Fox News’ disinformation campaign, Erik Wemple

Virus Victims, Responses

Washington Post, CDC director issues emotional warning about rising cases: ‘Right now, I’m scared’
Washington Post, 96 million vaccinated
Worldometer, World & U.S. Coronavirus Case Totals, U.S. Deaths: 562,526
Washington Post, Live Updates: New U.S. coronavirus cases rise by 12 percent as nation braces for a fourth pandemic wave
Washington Post, How long will the coronavirus vaccines protect you? Experts weigh in
Washington Post, Millions might miss out on looming economic boom

U.S. Courts, Regulation

Washington Post, Biden’s first slate of judicial nominees aims to quickly boost diversity in federal courts
New York Times, Opinion: Republicans Have an Ambitious Agenda for the Supreme Court, Ian Millhiser
New York Times, Ghislaine Maxwell Charged With Sex Trafficking of 14-Year-Old Girl
Wayne Madsen Report, Opinion; Trump and GOP leaders guilty of "social murder?" Wayne Madsen
New York Times, Banks Face Billions in Losses as a Bet on Stocks Goes Awry

U.S. Culture, Race, Religion

New York Times, Maryland’s State Song, a Nod to the Confederacy, Nears Repeal
New York Times, Opinion: The G.O.P. Has Some Voters It Likes and Some It Doesn’t
Washington Post, Church membership in the U.S. has fallen below the majority for the first time in nearly a century
Washington Post, A teacher forgot to exit a Zoom call with a student. That’s when her racist rant started, his family says

U.S. Politics, Governance, Religion

Washington Post, Opinion: The GOP is facing a sickness deeper than the coronavirus, Michael Gerson
Washington Post, White House dramatically increased tax proposal as it sought to address tensions over next big plan
Washington Post, The richest 1 percent dodge taxes on more than one-fifth of their income, study shows
Palmer Report, Opinion: Yes, HR1 is going to happen, Bill Palmer
Washington Post, Biden administration launches major push to expand offshore wind power
Washington Post, Delta faces boycott threats for stance on new Georgia voting law
New York Times, Opinion: Why Can’t Republicans Be Populists? Paul Krugman

Pro-Trump Capitol Riot, Insurrection

World News

Washington Post, Three female polio workers gunned down in Afghanistan

Top Stories

djt virus news conference nyt photo Custom

This photo from last year shows President Trump at center, with Vice President Pence and Dr. Deborah Birx directly behind, leading a news conference about the virus and touting the administration's efforts to curtail it and keep workplaces, schools and other venues open.

Washington Post, Trump officials say coronavirus response was worse than known, Dan Diamond, March 30, 2021 (print ed.). 'That’s what bothers me every day’: Birx and others admit failures that hampered the White House response.

Several top doctors in the Trump administration offered their most pointed and direct criticism of the government response to coronavirus last year, with one of them arguing that hundreds of thousands of covid-19 deaths could have been prevented.

They also admitted their own missteps as part of a CNN special that aired Sunday night, saying that some Trump administration statements the White House fiercely defended last year were misleading or outright falsehoods.

“When we said there were millions of tests available, there weren’t, right?” said Brett Giroir, who served as the nation’s coronavirus testing czar, referencing the administration’s repeated claims in March 2020 that anyone who sought a coronavirus test could get one. “There were components of the test available, but not the full meal deal.”

“People really believed in the White House that testing was driving cases, rather than testing was a way for us to stop cases,” said Deborah Birx, who served as White House coronavirus coordinator. Birx also said that most of the virus-related deaths in the United States after the first 100,000 in the spring surge could have been prevented with a more robust response. “That’s what bothers me every day,” she said.

deborah birx djt white house photo cropped CNN’s special with Giroir, Birx (shown at right speaking last year at a White House news conference flanked by Trump and fellow advisor Anthony Fauci) and four other senior physicians was pitched as a tell-all with former Trump officials, who are increasingly speaking out about what went wrong after more than 400,000 people in the United States died with the virus during the Trump administration. An additional 130,000-plus have died of covid-19 since President Biden’s inauguration, according to data compiled by The Washington Post

scott atlas resized But the finger-pointing and portrayals of some episodes prompted critics to say that former Trump administration officials who managed the pandemic response have turned to a new project: managing their legacies. Shown above left, Trump advisor Scott Atlas, who minimized dangers from the virus and advocated the economic and political advantages of keeping businesses and schools open.

New York Times, Biden Calls for States to Reimpose Mask Mandates to Curb Virus Spread, Sharon LaFraniere and Eileen Sullivan, March 30, 2021 (print ed.). President Biden’s comments came hours after the C.D.C. director said she felt an “impending doom” about a possible fourth surge. Here’s the latest.

The president’s call comes hours after the C.D.C. director warned of an “impending doom” of possible virus spread. The Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech vaccines are very effective against infections, the C.D.C. said. A W.H.O. report suggests that bats were the source of the coronavirus.

President Biden on Monday called on governors and mayors to maintain or reinstate mask-wearing orders, saying that because of “reckless behavior,” the coronavirus was again spreading fast, threatening the progress the nation has made so far against the pandemic.

“People are letting up on precautions, which is a very bad thing,” he said. “We are giving up hard-fought, hard-won gains.”

Mr. Biden asked the nation to persevere, saying that he had directed his coronavirus team to ensure that there was a vaccination site within five miles of 90 percent of Americans within three weeks.

He said doses are now plentiful enough that nine of ten adults in the nation — or more — will be eligible for a shot by April 19. Previously, he had only called on states to broaden eligibility to all adults by May 1.

While it will take time for everyone to get an appointment, Mr. Biden said, “you won’t have to wait till May to be eligible for your shot.”

Buoyed by promises of bigger shipments of doses in coming weeks, many states have already moved quickly to allow more people to sign up for shots. On Monday, New York said all adults would be eligible starting April 6, joining at least 37 other states that will make all adult residents eligible for vaccinations by mid-April.

eligible starting April 6, joining at least 37 other states that will make all adult residents eligible for vaccinations by mid-April.

Asked if states should pause their reopening efforts, the president replied simply, “Yes.” He said that governors, mayors, local officials and businesses should demand mask-wearing, calling it a “patriotic duty” that is crucial to the nation’s fight against the virus.

“Please, this is politics,” he said. “Reinstate the mandate if you let it down.”

george floyd derek chauvin Custom

George Floyd, above left, and former police officer Derek Chauvin, whose trial begins Monday.

Washington Post, First day of Derek Chauvin murder trial includes blunt testimony, new video footage, Holly Bailey and Kim Bellware, March 30, 2021 (print ed.). Derek Chauvin violated his oath as a police officer when he knelt on George Floyd’s neck for over nine minutes and ignored Floyd’s cries for help “until the very life was squeezed out of him,” a prosecutor said Monday as testimony began in the landmark trial set to be a defining moment in the nation’s reckoning over race and policing.

In opening statements, the prosecution and defense presented vastly different pictures of the May 25 scene that ended with the 46-year-old Black man unresponsive beneath the White police officer’s knee on a South Minneapolis street.

Floyd’s death, captured on video, was followed by worldwide protests and weeks of civil unrest in cities across the country. Many will be closely watching to see whether the long days spent in the streets, in what many called the new civil rights movement, will result in justice not just for Floyd, but for the countless Black Americans who have been abused and killed by police.

Special prosecutor Jerry Blackwell told the jury that Chauvin “didn’t let up” and “didn’t get up” even after Floyd repeatedly complained of struggling to breathe, cried out for his mother and ultimately went limp.

“Derek Chauvin betrayed his badge when he used excessive and unreasonable force upon the body of Mr. George Floyd when he put his knees upon his neck and his back, grinding and crushing him until the very breath — no, ladies and gentlemen — until the very life was squeezed out of him,” Blackwell said.

The prosecutor then played for the jury several minutes of the viral bystander video that showed Chauvin and three other police officers holding Floyd down as he begged for his life, a video that several jurors told the court they had never seen beyond 30-second clips on the news.

Chauvin’s attorney, Eric Nelson, pushed back against the prosecution, urging jurors to consider the “totality of the circumstances” and to put aside public opinion as they begin to consider the case against his client. “There is no political or social cause in this courtroom,” Nelson said during his roughly 20-minute opening statement. “The evidence is far greater than 9 minutes and 29 seconds.”

Nelson said that Chauvin arrived at the scene at 38th Street and Chicago Avenue to find other officers struggling to place Floyd inside a squad car and that he was following his training as he and the other officers held the man on the ground. He pointed out that Floyd was several inches taller and outweighed his client. He said the incident occurred in an area known to be hostile to police, shaping his client’s response.

He disputed the prosecution claim that Chauvin was to blame for Floyd’s death, saying the autopsy presented “no telltale signs” of asphyxiation from the officer’s knee. He said he will present evidence that Floyd died from a combination of drug intoxication, heart disease and high blood pressure and that adrenaline rushing through his body from this struggle with police “acted to further compromise an already compromised heart.”

In his autopsy, Hennepin County Medical Examiner Andrew Baker, who is expected to be a key witness in the case, noted the drugs in Floyd’s system, including fentanyl and methamphetamine. But Baker, who ruled Floyd’s death a homicide, listed the cause of death as “cardiopulmonary arrest, complicating law enforcement subdual, restraint, and neck compression.”

Trump Team Scandals?

New York Times, Investigation: Matt Gaetz Is Said to Be Investigated Over Possible Sexual Relationship With a Girl, 17, Michael S. Schmidt and Katie Benner, March 30, 2021. An inquiry into the Florida congressman was opened in the final months of the Trump administration, people briefed on it said.