March 2023 News

Editor's Choice: Scroll below for our monthly blend of mainstream and alternative March 2023 news and views

Note: Excerpts are from the authors' words except for subheads and occasional "Editor's notes" such as this. 

March 31

Top Trump Headlines

• New York Times, As Trump Awaits Charges, U.S. Legal System Enters Uncharted Territory
• New York Times, The Manhattan district attorney’s office criticized top Republicans for trying to interfere in the investigation
• Washington Post, Trump lashes out against judge who will hear his criminal case
• New York Times, Editorial: Even Donald Trump Should Be Held Accountable
• New York Times, Opinion: Trump’s Indictment Is About the Crimes That Helped Elect Him, Michelle Goldberg
• HuffPost, Trump Denies Wrongdoing In Statement On Grand Jury Indictment
• New York Post, 'Shocked' Trump to face 34 counts after NYC indictment, lawyer says
• Washington Post, Tucker Carlson, other conservative pundits call for protests of Trump charges
• Washington Post, Trump can still run for president in 2024 after being charged with a crime
• Emptywheel, Analysis: Douglass Mackey’s Criminal Twitter Trolling, Emptywheel (Marcy Wheeler)

New York Times, GRAND JURY VOTES TO INDICT TRUMP, Ben Protess, Jonah E. Bromwich and William K. Rashbaum, March 31, 2023 (print ed.). Unprecedented Case Will Have Wide-Ranging Implications. A Manhattan grand jury voted to indict Donald Trump for his role in paying hush money to a porn star, according to five people with knowledge of the matter; The development will shake up the 2024 presidential race and forever mark Mr. Trump as the nation’s first former president to face criminal charges.

New York Times, Live Updates: As Trump Awaits Charges, U.S. Legal System Enters Uncharted Territory, Jonah E. Bromwich, Ben Protess, William K. Rashbaum and Maggie Haberman, March 31, 2023. Donald J. Trump was weighing his next steps on Friday after becoming the first president to face criminal charges, an unprecedented moment in American politics that has drawn sharply partisan responses from Democrats and Republicans and heralds a tumultuous stretch for a deeply divided nation.

A day after a grand jury voted to indict Mr. Trump, Republicans continued to unleash furious criticism at the Manhattan district attorney, Alvin L. Bragg, whose office rebuked House Republicans for attempting to interfere in the case. Mr. Trump is likely to be arraigned on Tuesday, when the charges against him will be unsealed. A lawyer for the former president said that he would not take a plea deal and was prepared to go to trial, as some of his supporters derided the legal proceedings as a witch hunt.

Here’s where the Trump election investigation in Georgia stands: Richard Fausset and Danny Hakim:

Prosecutors in Georgia are expected to make a decision soon on whether to seek indictments in their investigation of Donald J. Trump and some of his allies over their efforts to interfere with the results of the 2020 presidential election in the state.

Mr. Trump and his associates had numerous interactions with Georgia officials after the election, including a call in which he urged the secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, to “find 11,780 votes,” the number he would have needed to overcome President Biden’s lead in the state.

New York Times, The Manhattan district attorney’s office criticized top Republicans for trying to interfere in the investigation, Jonah E. Bromwich and Luke Broadwater, March 31, 2023. The letter described as unfounded the three members’ allegations that the investigation was politically motivated.

A day after filing charges against Donald J. Trump, the Manhattan district attorney’s office wrote a letter criticizing three influential congressional Republicans for their efforts to interfere in the investigation into the former president.

The letter was addressed to three committee chairmen who had demanded that the district attorney, Alvin L. Bragg, left, provide them with communications, documents and testimony related to the inquiry into Mr. Trump.

The office’s letter noted that before being indicted, Mr. Trump had used his social media platform to denigrate Mr. Bragg, and had threatened “death and destruction” if he were to be charged.

“You could use the stature of your office to denounce these attacks and urge respect for the fairness of our justice system and for the work of the impartial grand jury,” Leslie Dubeck, the general counsel for the district attorney’s office, wrote.

“Instead, you and many of your colleagues have chosen to collaborate with Mr. Trump’s efforts to vilify and denigrate the integrity of elected state prosecutors and trial judges,” Ms. Dubeck wrote, describing as unfounded the three members’ allegations that the investigation was politically motivated.

The letter, addressed to Representatives Jim Jordan of Ohio, chairman of the Judiciary Committee; James R. Comer of Kentucky, chairman of the Oversight and Accountability Committee; and Bryan Steil of Wisconsin, chairman of the Administration Committee, repeated portions of an earlier one Ms. Dubeck had sent them, calling the Republican request for confidential information about the investigation unprecedented.

Washington Post, Trump lashes out against judge who will hear his criminal case, Perry Stein and Shayna Jacobs, March 31, 2023. New York Supreme Court Justice Juan Merchan, above, left, also presided over prosecutions of the Trump Organization and CFO Allen Weisselberg.

Former president Donald Trump is quite familiar with New York Supreme Court Justice Juan Merchan, the judge who oversaw the grand jury that indicted Trump this week and will preside over the criminal proceedings that follow.

Merchan, 60, who has sat on the New York bench since 2009, also presided over the jury trial last year of Trump’s namesake real estate company, which resulted in a conviction in December, and the prosecution of the company’s longtime chief financial officer, Allen Weisselberg.

On Friday, the first former president ever charged with a crime lashed out at Merchan on social media, declaring that the judge “HATES ME.”

Merchan “is the same person who ‘railroaded’ my 75 year old former CFO, Allen Weisselberg, to take a ‘plea’ deal,” Trump wrote.

The former president continued: “He strong armed Allen, which a judge is not allowed to do, & treated my companies, which didn’t ‘plead,’ VICIOUSLY. APPEALING.”

Weisselberg pleaded guilty in August to 15 counts including tax fraud, conspiracy and grand larceny and is serving a five-month jail sentence. Trump was not personally implicated in that case.

But on Tuesday, Trump is expected to appear before Merchan for an arraignment hearing in a different criminal matter. His indictment remains under seal, which means the specific charges are not known. Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg is believed to have been investigating a payment made before the 2016 presidential election to Stormy Daniels, an adult-film actress, to keep her from publicly discussing a sexual encounter she said she had with Trump years earlier.

The judge, who was born in Colombia and grew up in the Jackson Heights neighborhood of Queens, has held various posts as a lawyer and jurist in New York government since the 1990s, including working as a family court judge in the Bronx and as an assistant district attorney in the New York County district attorney’s office. He now works at the New York Supreme Court, a felony-level trial court with branches in each New York City borough and each county around the state.

As part of his portfolio, Merchan oversees a specialized court that gives treatment options and merit-based plea agreements to eligible defendants who are in the throes of mental illness when they commit crimes. The program prioritizes treatment and recovery. Graduates can see their charges reduced or dismissed.

New York Times, Opinion: Trump’s Indictment Is About the Crimes That Helped Elect Him, Michelle Goldberg, right, March 31, 2023. Even some people eager to see Donald Trump held accountable for his depthless corruption have been uneasy about his indictment in New York.

As I write this, we don’t know exactly what those charges are or the degree to which, as many have speculated, they rely on an untested legal theory. But it is a mistake to treat this indictment — which, according to The New York Times, includes more than two dozen counts — as tangential to Trump’s other misdeeds. Contrary to what Jones said, the conduct at issue in this case is directly tied to the 2016 election and the question of whether Trump cheated to win it.

Most of the legal trouble that Trump has faced since entering politics has stemmed from his willingness to skirt the law and, at times, betray the country in his drive to get and keep power. Robert Mueller’s special counsel investigation didn’t prove that he engaged in a criminal conspiracy, but it did show that his campaign both “welcomed” and received Russian help in his first bid for president. Trump’s first impeachment, in 2019, was about his attempt to extort President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine into manufacturing dirt on Joe Biden, the rival he most feared.

Trump is under criminal investigation in Georgia and Washington, D.C., for his attempts to subvert the outcome in the 2020 race. Each time he failed to face consequences for breaching rules meant to safeguard America’s electoral system, he escalated his behavior, to the point of attempting a coup. Escaping conviction in his second impeachment, for trying to overthrow the democratic system he was sworn to protect, he now treats Jan. 6 as something heroic, honoring rioters at his most recent campaign rally.

Compared with these offenses, the hush money payments to Trump’s paramours might seem like a minor issue, but it’s part of a pattern of anti-democratic behavior. As The Wall Street Journal reported, in addition to hearing about the payoff to the porn film star Stormy Daniels, shown at left, the grand jury in New York heard extensive questioning about the payoff to a Playboy model, Karen McDougal. Both women were going to tell their stories before the 2016 election. Unlawful means were used to silence them, which is why Michael Cohen, Trump’s former fixer, went to prison.

As Cohen told a judge while pleading guilty to campaign finance crimes, tax evasion and bank fraud in 2018, his payments to Daniels and McDougal were made “for the principal purpose of influencing the election.” David Pecker, the former C.E.O. of American Media, onetime parent company of the National Enquirer, said in a non-prosecution agreement with the Southern District of New York that he’d paid $150,000 to McDougal to “suppress the model’s story so as to prevent it from influencing the election.”

New York Times, Editorial: Even Donald Trump Should Be Held Accountable, Editorial Board, March 31, 2023. A pattern of disregard for the law often leads to a criminal indictment, and that is the outcome Mr. Trump now faces. Federal and state prosecutors were right to set aside concerns about political fallout, or reverence for the presidency, and initiate thorough criminal investigations of Mr. Trump’s conduct in at least four instances. The investigation by the Manhattan district attorney is the first known to result in an indictment.

Mr. Trump completely transformed the relationship between the presidency and the rule of law, often asserting that a president was above the law. So it is appropriate that his actions as president and as a candidate should now be formally weighed by judges and juries, with the possibility of criminal penalties on the line. Mr. Trump badly damaged America’s political and legal institutions and threatened them again with calls for widespread protests once he is indicted. But those institutions have proved to be strong enough to hold him accountable for that harm.

A healthy respect for the legal system also requires Americans to set aside their politics when forming judgments on these cases. While Mr. Trump routinely called for his enemies to be investigated by the F.B.I., to be indicted or to face the death penalty, his indifference to due process for others shouldn’t deny him the system’s benefits, including a fair trial and the presumption of innocence. At the same time, no jury should extend to him any special privileges as a former president. He should have to follow the same procedures as any other citizen.

Former President Trump faces varied legal and political threats, including an escalating New York criminal investigation into purported campaign finance crimes involving payments in 2016 to hide his alleged affair with porn star Stormy Daniels, shown above left on the cover of her memoir "Full Disclosure."

HuffPost, Trump Denies Wrongdoing In Statement On Grand Jury Indictment, Sara Boboltz, March 30-31, 2023. The former president called himself a "completely innocent person" after news broke that he was being criminally charged — or, in his words, "INDICATED."

Former President Donald Trump reacted angrily on Thursday to news that he had been indicted by a Manhattan grand jury on unknown charges linked to a hush money payment made to an adult film actor. The 2024 candidate is now the first U.S. president in history to be criminally charged.

“These Thugs and Radical Left Monsters have just INDICATED the 45th President of the United States of America,” Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform, seemingly misspelling “indicted.”

He went on: “THIS IS AN ATTACK ON OUR COUNTRY THE LIKES OF WHICH HAS NEVER BEEN SEEN BEFORE. IT IS LIKEWISE A CONTINUING ATTACK ON OUR ONCE FREE AND FAIR ELECTIONS. THE USA IS NOW A THIRD WORLD NATION, A NATION IN SERIOUS DECLINE. SO SAD!”

Trump also released a more even-keeled statement minutes prior, calling the development “Political Persecution and Election Interference at the highest level in history.”

“The Democrats have lied, cheated and stolen in their obsession with trying to ‘Get Trump,’ but now they’ve done the unthinkable — indicting a completely innocent person in an act of blatant Election Interference,” his statement read.

It concluded: “I believe this Witch-Hunt will backfire massively on [President] Joe Biden. The American people realize exactly what the Radical Left Democrats are doing here. Everyone can see it. So our Movement, and our Party - united and strong - will first defeat [Manhattan District Attorney] Alvin Bragg, and then we will defeat Joe Biden, and we are going to throw every last one of these Crooked Democrats out of office so we can MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!”

Trump attorney Joe Tacopina told Fox News host Sean Hannity that he and Trump learned the news through the media.

New York Post, 'Shocked' Trump to face 34 counts after NYC indictment, lawyer says, Victor Nava, March 31, 2023 (print ed.). “He’s ready to fight. You know, he’s the toughest guy I know. He was shocked, you know, because we really weren’t – I was shocked,” Joe Tacopina said of Trump’s reaction to the indictment.

“We now heard 34 counts, and I guarantee you it’s going to be 34 counts when we find out next week,” he said.

Washington Post, Tucker Carlson, other conservative pundits call for protests of Trump charges, Jeremy Barr, March 31, 2023 (print ed.). Conservative commentators, presenting the indictment as political oppression, predicted ‘unrest.’

Fox News hosts and other conservative commentators fulminated Thursday night against the indictment of Donald Trump, portraying it as an act of political repression, calling for protests and predicting “unrest.”

“It almost feels they’re pushing the population to react,” said Fox prime-time host Tucker Carlson, referring vaguely to Democrats. “‘We think they’re demoralized and passive, let’s see if they really are.’ At what point do we conclude they’re doing this in order to produce a reaction?”

Carlson’s guest, former ESPN personality Jason Whitlock, struck a similar tone: “They are agitating for unrest. That is the only way to interpret this,” he said, before seeming to call for some kind of response: “I’m ready for whatever’s next. And I hope every other man out there watching this show, I hope you’re ready for whatever’s next. If that’s what they want, let’s get to it.”

Carlson’s 8 p.m. show offered some of the most fiery talk on a heated night of conservative reaction to a New York grand jury’s decision to indict Trump after hearing evidence about hush money paid to an adult-film star during his 2016 race for president. Former Fox host Glenn Beck visited the show to predict the country would be “at war” by 2025; the indictment’s intent, he warned was “to inflame this country” so that an unnamed entity “could close the cage” on those who react.

While Fox’s early-evening news show delivered a fairly straight discussion of the “historic” nature of the indictment, the opinion hosts who dominate the cable network’s prime-time schedule uniformly presented it as a political plot against the former president.

“It’s an effort to take him out of the political race. That’s not allowed,” said Carlson, describing the charges as “much greater” than the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection at the U.S. Capitol. “If you believe in our system and you want it to continue, you have to raise your hand and say ‘Stop,’ because this is too great on assault on our system.”

Trump is indicted in N.Y. Here’s what it means and what happens next.

“This day will go down as a dark day for America,” Fox News host Jesse Watters told viewers. “This is a calculated move. Do you think Donald Trump would be indicted if he wasn’t running?”

Jeanine Pirro, co-host of “The Five,” described Thursday as “a sad day for America, a sad day for the office of the presidency of the United States, and it is a sad day for a former president. … This is hate like I have never seen in my lifetime. This is as political as it gets.”

The strongly pro-Trump Fox host Dan Bongino said the indictment proves the United States is now a “police state” but predicted it would end up handing Trump the 2024 Republican presidential nomination.

Washington Post, Trump can still run for president in 2024 after being charged with a crime, Perry Stein, March 31, 2023 (print ed.). Though a former president has never been convicted of a crime, even that wouldn’t bar Trump from running again. And some advisers think the indictment could be a good thing for his campaign.

Associated Press via Politico, Far-right influencer convicted in voter suppression scheme, Staff Report, March 31, 2023. Douglass Mackey, 33, of West Palm Beach, Florida, was convicted in Brooklyn federal court before Judge Ann M. Donnelly after a one-week trial. One tweet Douglass Mackey showed a photo of a Black woman with a Clinton campaign sign, encouraging people to “avoid the line” and “vote from home,” court papers said. | Seth Wenig/AP Photos

A self-styled far-right propagandist from Florida was convicted Friday of charges alleging that he conspired to deprive individuals of their right to vote in the 2016 presidential election.

Douglass Mackey, 33, of West Palm Beach, Florida, was convicted in Brooklyn federal court before Judge Ann M. Donnelly after a one-week trial. On the internet, he was known as “Ricky Vaughn.”

In 2016, Mackey had about 58,000 Twitter followers and was ranked by the MIT Media Lab as the 107th-most important influencer of the then-upcoming presidential election, prosecutors said. He had described himself as an “American nationalist” who regularly retweeted Trump and promoted conspiracy theories about voter fraud by Democrats.

Mackey, who was arrested in January 2021, could face up to 10 years in prison. His sentencing is set for Aug. 16.

His lawyer, Andrew Frisch, said in an email that the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Manhattan will have multiple reasons to choose from to vacate the conviction.

“We are optimistic about our chances on appeal,” Frisch said.

U.S. Attorney Breon Peace said in a release that the jury rejected Mackey’s cynical attempt to use the First Amendment free speech protections to shield himself from criminal liability for a voter suppression scheme.

“Today’s verdict proves that the defendant’s fraudulent actions crossed a line into criminality,” he said.

The government alleged that from September 2016 to November 2016, Mackey conspired with several other internet influencers to spread fraudulent messages to Clinton supporters.

Prosecutors told jurors during the trial that Mackey urged supporters of then-Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton to “vote” via text message or social media, knowing that those endorsements were not legally valid votes.

At about the same time, prosecutors said, he was sending tweets suggesting that it was important to limit “black turnout” at voting booths. One tweet he sent showed a photo of a Black woman with a Clinton campaign sign, encouraging people to “avoid the line” and “vote from home,” court papers said.

Using social media pitches, one image encouraging phony votes utilized a font similar to one used by the Clinton campaign in authentic ads, prosecutors said. Others tried to mimic Clinton’s ads in other ways, they added.

By Election Day in 2016, at least 4,900 unique telephone numbers texted “Hillary” or something similar to a text number that was spread by multiple deceptive campaign images tweeted by Mackey and co-conspirators, prosecutors said.

Emptywheel, Analysis: Douglass Mackey’s Criminal Twitter Trolling, Emptywheel (Marcy Wheeler), March 31, 2023. For the entire time since MattyDickPics started complaining about the fact he couldn’t see nonconsensual pictures of Hunter Biden’s dick, he and other apologists for disinformation have claimed there was nothing to the effort to suppress the vote using Twitter.

A jury in Brooklyn just decided otherwise. Douglass Mackey — who was indicted for attempting to suppress the Black and Latino vote in 2016 — was found guilty of conspiring to violate his targets’ right to vote.

As proven at trial, between September 2016 and November 2016, Mackey, left, conspired with other influential Twitter users and with members of private online groups to use social media platforms, including Twitter, to disseminate fraudulent messages that encouraged supporters of presidential candidate Hillary Clinton (shown with Trump at their third debate in 2016) to “vote” via text message or social media which, in reality, was legally invalid.

For example, on November 1, 2016, in or around the same time that Mackey was sending tweets suggesting the importance of limiting “black turnout,” the defendant tweeted an image depicting an African American woman standing in front of an “African Americans for Hillary” sign. The ad stated: “Avoid the Line. Vote from Home,” “Text ‘Hillary’ to 59925,” and “Vote for Hillary and be a part of history.” The fine print at the bottom of the deceptive image stated: “Must be 18 or older to vote. One vote per person. Must be a legal citizen of the United States. Voting by text not available in Guam, Puerto Rico, Alaska or Hawaii. Paid for by Hillary For President 2016.”

The tweet included the typed hashtag “#ImWithHer,” a slogan frequently used by Hillary Clinton. On or about and before Election Day 2016, at least 4,900 unique telephone numbers texted “Hillary” or some derivative to the 59925 text number, which had been used in multiple deceptive campaign images tweeted by Mackey and his co-conspirators.

Several hours after tweeting the first image, Mackey tweeted an image depicting a woman seated at a conference room typing a message on her cell phone. This deceptive image was written in Spanish and mimicked a font used by the Clinton campaign in authentic ads. The image also included a copy of the Clinton campaign’s logo and the “ImWithHer” hashtag.

The people with whom Mackey conspired are a collection of leading figures in the (Russian-backed) alt-Right.

I plan to return to this trial in weeks ahead.

But for the moment, this verdict says that all the disinformation that Matt Taibbi and Elon Musk are working to replatform on Twitter has been found to be potentially criminal.

Other Top, Non-Trump Headlines

• Washington Post, He came to D.C. as a Brazilian student. The U.S. says he was a Russian spy
• New York Times, Russia detained a Wall Street Journal reporter, accusing him of espionage
• National Press Club, Club Calls For Russia To Release Evan Gershkovich
• Washington Post, The Vulkan Files: Secret documents trove offers rare look at Russian cyberwar ambitions, Craig Timberg, Ellen Nakashima, Hannes Munzinger and Hakan Tanriverdi 

U.S. Mass Shootings, Gun Control

• New York Times, Protesters Against Gun Violence Confront Tennessee Lawmakers
• New York Times, Opinion: The Republican Party Says It Wants to ‘Protect Children,’ but Not All Children, Jamelle Bouie
• Washington Post, Deadly weapon, divided nation: How a change in law could provide crucial seconds to survive a mass shooting
• New York Times, Nashville Shooting Prompts Shrug in Washington, as G.O.P. Refuses to Act, Annie Karni

U.S. Courts, Crime, Immigration

• Washington Post, Judge rules that Dominion, Fox News lawsuit will go to trial
• Washington Post, DOJ sues Norfolk Southern over toxic train derailment in Ohio
• Washington Post, Perspective: Marshals Service uses go-between to dodge Biden’s private prison order, Joe Davidso
• Washington Post, Park Police pulled over a Black Secret Service officer — twice
• New York Times, Opinion: How the Most Important Election of 2023 Turned Extraordinarily Ugly, Michelle Goldberg and Madeleine Hordinski
• New York Times, The Undoing of Guo Wengui, Billionaire Accused of Fraud on 2 Continents
• New York Times, Immigration Tripled in Top U.S. Counties Even as Many of Them Lost Population

More On Trump Probes, Prospects, Allies

• New York Times, Kushner Firm Got Hundreds of Millions From 2 Persian Gulf Nations
• Washington Post, Opinion: The GOP response to Trump is one hell of an indictment, Dana Milbank
• Washington Post, Opinion: Trump is indicted, and justice is served, Jennifer Rubin
• Washington Post, The status of key investigations involving Donald Trump
• Washington Post, Opinion: By indicting Trump, Alvin Bragg restores our faith in the rule of law, Dennis Aftergut
• Washington Post, Editorial: The Trump indictment is a poor test case for prosecuting a former president

U.S. Political Culture Wars

• Washington Post, Disney quietly dodged DeSantis’s oversight board, appointees realize
• New York Times, Opinion: A Florida School Banned a Disney Movie About Ruby Bridges. Here’s What That Really Means, Charles Blow
• Washington Post, Ala. GOP lawmaker to House committee: D.C. schools are ‘crappy,’ ‘inmate factories’
• Washington Post, Nashville shooting exploited by right to escalate anti-trans rhetoric
• Washington Post, Congressmen get in shouting match over gun control after Nashville shooting

U.S. Budget, Banks, Economy, Jobs, CryptoCurrency

• New York Times, Debt Talks Are Frozen as House Republicans Splinter Over a Fiscal Plan
• New York Times, The Fed’s Preferred Inflation Gauge Cooled Notably in February

Global News, Migration, Human Rights

• New York Times, Italy imposed a temporary ban on ChatGPT over privacy concerns
• New York Times, As Israel’s Crises Pile Up, a Far-Right Minister Is a Common Thread
• New York Times, U.S.-Israel Tensions Over Judicial Overhaul Burst Into Open, In response to sharp criticism by President Biden
• Washington Post, Editorial: How Russia turned America’s helping hand to Ukraine into a vast lie
• New York Times, Fire in Mexico Kills at Least 39 in Migration Center Near U.S. Border
• New York Times, U.S. Border Policies Have Created a Volatile Logjam in Mexico

U.S. Politics, Elections, Governance

• Associated Press via Politico, Far-right influencer convicted in voter suppression scheme
• New York Times, Decades Later, Senate Votes to Repeal Iraq Military Authorizations
• Washington Post, Democrats’ anger boils over after GOP witnesses testify without taking questions
• Washington Post, Gisele Fetterman says ‘vicious attacks’ poured in after husband’s hospitalization
• New York Times, Mexico Investigates Migrant Deaths in Border City Fire as Homicide
• New York Times, Michigan Democrats Rise, and Try to Turn a Battleground Blue
• New York Times, Republicans Face Setbacks in Push to Make Voting Harder for College Students
• Axios, Scoop: Christie pledges never to support Trump again, Josh Kraushaar
• Washington Post, 9 soldiers killed as two U.S. Army helicopters crash in Ky. during training mission
• Washington Post, Arizona Democrats to sue No Labels to block third-party challenge
• Washington Post, Manchin, facing reelection, ratchets up criticism of Biden on energy, fiscal policy
• Washington Post, After #FreeBritney, Senate bill seeks changes to guardianships
• Washington Post, Ariz. governor’s press secretary resigns amid backlash over gun-toting post

Ukraine War

• New York Times, For Ukrainian Convicts, a Strange Odyssey Through Russian Prisons
• New York Times, Russia and Ukraine Step Up Recruiting Efforts
• Washington Post, Editorial: How Russia turned America’s helping hand to Ukraine into a vast lie, Editorial Board
• New York Times, Ukrainians Directing Soldiers From a Hidden Hub See Bakhmut Going Their Way

 Disasters, Climate, Environment, U.S. Transportation, Energy

• New York Times, In a Tornado’s Wake, a Mississippi Town Wrestles With Grief and Gratitude
• ew York Times, President Biden surveyed the damage from a tornado that killed 26 in a small town in Mississippi last week
• New York Times, Tornados Kill at Least 3 in Arkansas as Storms Hit Midwest and South
• New York Times, California to Require Half of All Heavy Trucks Sold by 2035 to Be Electric
• Washington Post, Minnesota train carrying ethanol derails, catches fire; evacuations ordered
• New York Times, Can Nations Be Sued for Weak Climate Action? We’ll Soon Get an Answer

U.S. Abortion, #MeToo, Stalking, Rape Laws, Politics

• Washington Post, Pentagon raises alarm over Sen. Tuberville’s gambit on abortion policy
• Washington Post, Analysis: Some abortion clinics are opening new locations near states with bans
• Washington Post, Idaho bill would restrict minors from leaving state for abortions without parents’ consent
• Washington Post, This Texas teen wanted an abortion. She now has twins

Pandemics, Public Health, Privacy

• Washington Post, Millions poised to lose Medicaid as pandemic coverage protections end, starting tomorrow
• Washington Post, Opinion: Will we repeat the same mistake we made on boosters? Leana S. Wen
• Washington Post, TikTok is addictive for many girls, especially those with depression

U.S. Media, Education, Arts, Sports

• New York Times, Tech Fix: Twitter’s Blue Check Apocalypse Is Upon Us. Here’s What to Know
• Washington Post, Analysis: Elon Musk’s Twitter pushes hate speech, extremist content into ‘For You’ pages
• Washington Post, Rand Paul blocks Josh Hawley’s bid to ban TikTok in GOP split
• Washington Post, Gwyneth Paltrow not liable for Utah ski collision and awarded $1, jury rules
• New York Times, Publishers Worry A.I. Chatbots Will Cut Readership
• Wall Street Journal, Musk’s Change to Twitter’s Blue Check Mark Angers Celebrities
• Washington Post, Analysis: How Fox News is trying to guide its viewers away from Trump, Philip Bump
• Washington Post, Mark Russell, political satirist with a star-spangled piano, dies at 90
• Washington Post, TikTok is addictive for many girls, especially those with depression
• Washington Post, AI company behind fake depictions of Trump and pope lets users generate images of world leaders, but not Xi
• New York Times, Opinion: A Florida School Banned a Disney Movie About Ruby Bridges. Here’s What That Really Means, Charles M. Blow
• New York Times, Anti-Israel Protests Cost Indonesia a FIFA Soccer Championship
• New York Times, Tokyo Olympics Scandal Fouls Hopes for a Sapporo Winter Games
• New York Times, Tech Leaders, Including Elon Musk, Call for a Pause on A.I.
• New York Times, Tinkering With ChatGPT, Workers Wonder: Will This Take My Job?
• Overseas Press Club (OPC), OPC Condemns Russia’s Arrest of Wall Street Journal Reporter Evan Gershkovich

Top Stories

New York Times, Decades Later, Senate Votes to Repeal Iraq Military Authorizations, Karoun Demirjian, March 30, 2023 (print ed.). The bipartisan action to roll back resolutions from 1991 and 2002 was a major advancement in a bid by Congress to curtail the executive branch’s powers.

The Senate voted on Wednesday to repeal authorizations from 1991 and 2002 for combat operations against Iraq, moving with broad bipartisan support to advance a yearslong effort to claw back congressional war powers.

The bill goes next to the Republican-led House, which has passed similar legislation several times in recent years but where G.O.P. leaders are undecided about whether to put it on the floor. Still, the 66-to-30 vote in the Senate was a potentially pivotal step in the long-running push by Republicans and Democrats to reassert the national security prerogatives of Congress, with 18 G.O.P. senators joining in support.

It reflected a belief among a growing number of lawmakers in both parties that it is long past time for the legislative branch to play its constitutional role as a check on an executive branch that has embroiled the country in endless wars.

“Congress has abdicated its powers to the executive for too long,” said Senator Tim Kaine, left, Democrat of Virginia and the chief author of the Senate’s efforts to repeal the Iraq war authorizations for the past several years. “Presidents can do mischief if there are outdated authorizations on the books.”

Should the measure clear Congress and be signed by President Biden, who has indicated his support, it would be the first repeal of a war authorization in more than a half century. It would also be a crucial first step toward building momentum to tackle more significant and far more complicated endeavors. Those include replacing the authorization Congress passed in 2001 to start military operations against terrorist groups in Afghanistan after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. That authorization stretched across four administrations to permit open-ended combat against Islamist militant groups around the world and ultimately rewrote the law defining the president’s war powers.

Nashville mass murderer Audrey Hale is shown at left in a file photo and at right via a security camera showing the killing spree claiming six victims, three of them nine-year-olds

Washington Post, Deadly weapon, divided nation: How a change in law could provide crucial seconds to survive a mass shooting, Mark Berman and Todd C. Frankel, March 30, 2023 (print ed.). Many modern gunmakers ship their AR-style rifles with larger magazines. These magazines have been popular with a particular subgroup: America’s mass shooters.

Ammunition magazines can enable gunmen to fire a hail of bullets without needing to stop and reload.

Those magazines are increasingly seen as an area where policy changes could lessen the carnage that has become emblematic of attacks waged with AR-15s and other guns, according to a growing body of research and interviews with experts and law enforcement veterans. An emerging consensus among these experts — and one that has taken hold in some state legislatures — is that mandating smaller magazines would force mass shooters to pause to reload, allowing people to flee or fight back.

New York Times, After Mass Shootings, Republicans Expand Access to Guns, Mike Baker, Serge F. Kovaleski and Glenn Thrush, March 31, 2023 (print ed.). In states around the country, Republican lawmakers are pushing laws to expand the ability to own and carry firearms.

After a mass shooting at an elementary school in Texas last year prompted calls for new gun restrictions, Republican-led states around the country moved in the other direction. One of them was Tennessee, where the governor insisted that tighter firearms laws would never deter wrongdoers.

“We can’t control what they do,” Gov. Bill Lee said.

Tennessee lawmakers have instead moved to make firearms even more accessible, proposing bills this year to arm more teachers and allow college students to carry weapons on campus, among other measures.

Then came the attack on Monday at the Covenant School in Nashville, where a shooter carrying multiple weapons killed six people, including three children. The same day, a federal judge signed off on a state settlement allowing people as young as 18 to carry a handgun without a permit.

Amid the ghastly cadence of multiple mass shootings that have prompted calls for more comprehensive controls on guns, Republicans in statehouses have been steadily expanding access to gun

New York Times, Nashville Shooting Prompts Shrug in Washington, as G.O.P. Refuses to Act, Annie Karni, March 29, 2023. President Biden said he had reached the limit of his powers to act alone on gun violence, and needed Congress to respond. Republicans said they weren’t willing to do more. U.S. Rep. Marjorie Greene (R-GA), shown above in a file photo, reiterated her support for widespread ownership of assault weapons.

The mass shooting at a Christian elementary school in Nashville this week has generated a broad shrugging of the shoulders in Washington, from President Biden to Republicans in Congress, who seemed to agree on little other than that there was nothing left for them to do to counter the continuing toll of gun violence across the country.

But while President Biden’s stark admission on Tuesday that he could do no more on his own to tackle the issue was a statement of fact that aimed to put the burden on Congress to send him legislation, like the ban on assault weapons he has repeatedly championed, Republicans’ expressions of helplessness reflected an unwillingness, rather than an inability, to act.

Their answer to Mr. Biden’s plea was as blunt as it was swift, as lawmaker after Republican lawmaker made it clear that they had no intention of considering any additional gun safety measures.

“We’re not going to fix it,” Representative Tim Burchett, Republican of Tennessee, told reporters on the steps of the Capitol just hours after the shooting that killed three children and three adults in his home state. “Criminals are going to be criminals.”
Mr. Burchett said he saw no “real role” for Congress to play in reducing gun violence, and volunteered that his solution to the issue of protecting his family was to home-school his children.

Likewise, Senator Mike Rounds, Republican of South Dakota, said Congress had done enough.

“When we start talking about bans or challenging the Second Amendment, the things that have already been done have gone about as far as we’re going with gun control,” Mr. Rounds told CNN.

Last year, Congress passed a narrow, bipartisan compromise that enhanced background checks to give authorities time to examine the juvenile and mental health records of any prospective gun buyer under the age of 21, and a provision that for the first time extended a prohibition on domestic abusers having guns to dating partners.

Washington Post, Police response in Nashville was ‘exact opposite’ to Uvalde, experts say, Robert Klemko, March 29, 2023 (print ed.). Body-camera footage shows heavily armed officers methodically sweeping classrooms and hallways until they find and kill the suspect — a police response experts described as “textbook.”

For the second time in 10 months, police officers were called to confront a mass killer at an American elementary school. But this time, unlike last spring in Uvalde, Tex., the officers at the Covenant School in Nashville rushed right in.

Body-camera footage released Tuesday shows heavily armed officers methodically sweeping colorful classrooms and backpack-lined hallways until they find and kill the suspect — a police response experts described as “textbook.”

“They did an awesome job in a very high-stress situation,” said AJ Yokley, an instructor in firearms and building clearing at the Tennessee Law Enforcement Training Academy in Nashville. “You’re going into a situation where you can hear the shots fired. It’s a difficult thing to run towards the sound of gunfire, but that’s what they did. Every single one of them displayed tremendous courage.”

Washington Post, Shooter warned friend of ‘something bad’ in Instagram messages, Joanna Slater, March 30, 2023 (print ed.). The messages popped up in Averianna Patton’s Instagram account at 9:57 a.m. on Monday morning.

“I’m planning to die today.”

“You’ll probably hear about me on the news after I die.”

“This is my last goodbye. I love you. See you again in another life.”

The messages were from Audrey Hale, above, the 28-year-old identified by police as the shooter in Monday’s rampage at a private Christian elementary school in Nashville. Three children, all 9, and three adults were killed.

Hale sent the messages to Patton less than 20 minutes before police received the first 911 call about gunshots at The Covenant School. Copies were shared with The Washington Post.

For Patton, the messages were alarming and perplexing. She had known Hale since middle school, when they played basketball together. The two later attended the same high school, the Nashville School of the Arts, but didn’t really talk apart from exchanging hellos in the hallways.

As adults, they were connected on social media but weren’t close. Patton didn’t have Hale’s phone number or address. Last month, when Patton, a radio personality, was taping a live show, Hale showed up. A few weeks ago, they saw each other at a gathering to commemorate a former basketball teammate who died last year, Patton said.

 New York Times, Mexico Investigates Migrant Deaths in Border City Fire as Homicide, Simon Romero, Natalie Kitroeff and Eileen Sullivan, March 30, 2023 (print ed.). The authorities said government workers and private security employees had not allowed detainees to escape the blaze that killed 39 people in Ciudad Juárez. Mexican officials identified eight suspects, including federal and state agents, and said they would issue four arrest warrants on Wednesday.

Mexican officials announced on Wednesday that they were investigating a fire at a migrant detention center in Ciudad Juárez as a homicide case, saying that government workers and private security employees had not allowed detainees to escape from the blaze that killed at least 39 people.

The authorities, in a news conference, said they had identified eight suspects, including federal and state agents, and would issue four arrest warrants on Wednesday.

“None of the public servants, nor the private security guards, took any action to open the door for the migrants who were inside where the fire was,” said Sara Irene Herrerías Guerra, a top federal human rights prosecutor.

The announcement came after a video emerged appearing to show that the migrants had been trapped when the fire broke out on Monday. Uniformed figures at the center can be seen walking away from the blaze while people remain behind bars as the area fills with smoke.

The authorities said they might also investigate one migrant suspected of starting the fire.

“Our country’s immigration policy is one of respect for human rights,” said Rosa Icela Rodríguez, the government’s secretary of security. “This unfortunate event, which is the responsibility of public servants and guards who have been identified, is not the policy of our country.”

It was a striking development in a case that has drawn intense scrutiny to the Mexican government’s handling of the surge of migrants flowing into the country over the past year, seeking to enter the United States.

Ciudad Juárez, just across the border from El Paso, Texas, has long prided itself on absorbing waves of newcomers, many from Mexico who come to work in factories and others from across Latin America who stop on their way to the United States.

But what used to be a transit point for U.S.-bound migrants has turned into a hub for those who believe they have no choice but to stay — either after being sent back by the U.S. authorities or while waiting to apply to enter legally.

At intersections across the city, groups of migrants can be seen asking for money. Some hold up cardboard signs pleading for help. Others sell food out of coolers.

Washington Post, Democrats’ anger boils over after GOP witnesses testify without taking questions, Azi Paybarah, March 31, 2023 (print ed.). Democratic lawmakers didn’t hold back their anger Thursday at a House hearing about social media and censorship when a pair of Republican witnesses delivered testimony and left without being questioned.

The shouting began after Sen. Eric Schmitt (R), the former attorney general of Missouri, and Louisiana Attorney General Jeff Landry (R) testified before the House Judiciary select subcommittee on the weaponization of the federal government about what they claimed was the Biden administration’s effort to censor conservative voices online. After the two spoke, Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), the subcommittee chairman, dismissed them.

“We’ll let you move on to your other responsibilities and we’ll get to our next witnesses,” Jordan said. Democrats immediately interrupted, asking why he wouldn’t allow them to ask questions as Schmitt and Landry stood up and left the room. Democrats then tried to have the two witnesses’ testimony struck from the record.

“We aren’t able to probe the veracity of their statements, the truthfulness of their statements,” Rep. Stephen F. Lynch (D-Mass.) said. When Jordan told him, “You will be given your five minutes here,” Lynch replied, “They’re not here,” referring to the witnesses. “They’re absent,” he said, and they “scurried away, with your complicity.”

Jordan, speaking over Lynch, said: “They have not scurried away. They were dismissed like all witnesses.” As the two men traded remarks, Lynch fumed: “You can’t find two people to defend their statements. That’s pretty disgraceful.”

At times, the shouts and crosstalk was so fast that the C-SPAN camera recording the hearing could not show each person who was talking. At one point, a woman’s voice could be heard saying, “If allowing them to leave is not weaponization, I don’t know what is, Mr. Chairman.” A male’s voice responded, “Yeah, right.”

House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) agreed to the creation of the select subcommittee as a concession to the hard-right faction of his conference in the deal he struck to secure the votes to become speaker. The panel has faced criticism, even from some on the right, that its work has been lackluster and unfocused.

Jordan said at the hearing that it was common practice to have current or former members of Congress testify without staying for questions.

Russell Dye, his spokesman, said in a statement, “It has been a long practice of the Committee to allow current and former Members of Congress to present an opening statement without taking questions,” noting that Democrats recently had Rep. Jamie B. Raskin (D-Md.) speak to the committee without taking questions.

Democrats said the comparison was inappropriate. Lynch said that the witnesses on Thursday may have presented “false” information and that “I would like the opportunity to cross-examine those witnesses.” Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.) said Landry is not a member of Congress and, therefore, “is not entitled” to the kind of courtesy Jordan described.

Even by today’s low standards for congressional decorum, the hearing stood out for its rancor and animus. Kyle Herrig, executive director of the Congressional Integrity Project, a Democratic-leaning watchdog group, said in a statement that the hearing was “an embarrassing farce. Two of the Republicans’ witnesses didn’t even stick around to defend their lies, aided and abetted by Jim Jordan.” Jordan and the Republicans on the subcommittee, Herrig said, “are afraid of the truth.”

Dye said Democrats had put “on a partisan charade” in response to a routine congressional practice.

Washington Post, Gisele Fetterman says ‘vicious attacks’ poured in after husband’s hospitalization, Amy B Wang, March 31, 2023 (print ed.). Gisele Fetterman said a barrage of hateful right-wing attacks against her “exploded” after her husband, Sen. John Fetterman (D-Pa.), checked himself into Walter Reed National Military Medical Center for clinical depression last month, where he has remained for inpatient treatment.

“From the moment John shared his news, vicious attacks started pouring in,” Gisele Fetterman wrote in an op-ed for Elle magazine Thursday. “But I’ll admit, I was surprised to find that this time the vast majority of the harassment wasn’t directed toward John — but at me.”

Gisele Fetterman wrote that she had already been familiar with “how cruel people could be” about judging and weaponizing someone’s health after John Fetterman, 53, suffered a stroke last May, days before he overwhelmingly won the Democratic primary in Pennsylvania’s Senate race.

But this time, she said, people began casting her as an “ambitious, power hungry wife” who was plotting to take over her husband’s Senate seat, and accused her of kidnapping her children when she took them to Niagara Falls after John Fetterman was hospitalized.

The road trip to Canada had been an effort to remove her family from the intensified media scrutiny that came after her husband’s hospitalization, Gisele Fetterman wrote in Elle. And while she was happy to have had that time, she said, it only fueled the right-wing maelstrom and attacks — including harmful threats — against her.

“To hear my critics tell it, it’s my fault that John ran for Senate,” Gisele Fetterman wrote. “It’s my fault that he won. It’s my fault that he had a stroke, and it’s my fault that he’s depressed. And somehow, at the same time, I’m just a wife who should stay at home and out of the public eye.”

Photos taken from video show Sergey Cherkasov in conversation with a woman thought to be his mother at a Moscow airport restaurant around 2017. The video was recovered by the FBI in its investigation of Cherkasov. (U.S. Justice Department)

Washington Post, He came to D.C. as a Brazilian student. The U.S. says he was a Russian spy, Greg Miller, March 30, 2023 (print ed.). A former graduate student in Washington, who claimed to be Brazilian but was unmasked as a Russian spy, has been charged by the U.S. with acting as a foreign agent.

Like anyone who gets into his dream college, Victor Muller Ferreira was ecstatic when he was admitted to Johns Hopkins University’s graduate school in Washington in 2018.

“Today we made the future — we managed to get in one of the top schools in the world,” he wrote in an email to those who had helped him gain entry to the elite master’s program in international relations. “This is the victory that belongs to all of us man — to the entire team. Today we f---ing drink!!!”

The achievement was even sweeter for Ferreira because he was not the striving student from Brazil he had portrayed on his Johns Hopkins application, but a Russian intelligence operative originally from Kaliningrad, according to a series of international investigations as well as an indictment the Justice Department filed in federal court Friday.

His real name is Sergey Cherkasov and he had spent nearly a decade building the fictitious Ferreira persona, according to officials and court records. His “team” was a tight circle of Russian handlers suddenly poised to have a deep-cover spy in the U.S. capital, positioned to forge connections in every corner of the American security establishment, from the State Department to the CIA.

Using the access he gained during his two years in Washington, Cherkasov filed reports to his bosses in Russia’s military intelligence service, the GRU, on how senior officials in the Biden administration were responding to the Russian military buildup before the war in Ukraine, according to an FBI affidavit.

After he graduated, he came close to achieving a more consequential penetration when he was offered a position at the International Criminal Court in The Hague. He was due to start a six-month internship there last year — just as the court began investigating Russian war crimes in Ukraine — only to be turned away by Dutch authorities acting on information relayed by the FBI, according to Western security officials. Officials in the Netherlands put him on a plane back to Brazil, where he was arrested upon landing and is now serving a 15-year prison sentence for document fraud related to his fake identity.

The details that have since emerged provide extraordinary visibility into highly cloaked aspects of Russian intelligence, including the Kremlin’s almost obsessive effort to infiltrate Western targets with “illegals” — spies who operate as lone agents with no discernible link to their home service — rather than diplomats with the legal protections that come with working out of an embassy.

The case has revealed lingering vulnerabilities in Western defenses more than a decade after the FBI arrested 10 Russian illegals in a sweep that made global headlines and spawned a popular television series, “The Americans.” U.S. officials acknowledge that the bureau discovered Cherkasov’s identity and GRU affiliation only after his arrival in Washington. The FBI declined to comment on the case.

The revelations have also exposed serious lapses in Russian tradecraft. Authorities have mined Cherkasov’s computer and other devices and found a trove of evidence, according to court records and security officials, including emails to his Russian handlers, details about “dead drops” where messages could be left, records of illicit money transfers, and an error-strewn personal history that he appears to have composed while trying to memorize details of his fictitious life.

New York Times, Russia detained a Wall Street Journal reporter, accusing him of espionage, Daniel Victor and Michael M. Grynbaum, March 31, 2023 (print ed.). The newspaper said it “vehemently denies the allegations” against Evan Gershkovich, an American shown above, and called for his immediate release.

The Russian authorities said on Thursday that they had detained an American journalist for The Wall Street Journal and accused him of espionage, marking a new escalation in Moscow’s tensions with the United States and with foreign media organizations since the start of its invasion of Ukraine.

The journalist, Evan Gershkovich, a correspondent based in Moscow, is believed to be the first American reporter to be held as an accused spy in Russia since the collapse of the Soviet Union. His detention comes as relations between Russia and the United States continue to deteriorate, with Washington leading a coalition of nations supporting Ukraine’s military defense and pushing for Moscow’s further diplomatic and economic isolation.

The Russian Federal Security Service, or F.S.B., said in a statement that Mr. Gershkovich “is suspected of spying in the interests of the American government” and had been detained in Yekaterinburg, a city about 900 miles east of Moscow in the Ural Mountains. The F.S.B. is a successor agency to the Soviet-era K.G.B.

“It was established that E. Gershkovich, acting on the instructions of the American side, collected information constituting a state secret about the activities of one of the enterprises of the Russian military-industrial complex,” the F.S.B. said. Hours after the F.S.B.’s announcement, the Kremlin endorsed Mr. Gershkovich’s arrest.

Washington Post, The Vulkan Files: Secret documents trove offers rare look at Russian cyberwar ambitions, Craig Timberg, Ellen Nakashima, Hannes Munzinger and Hakan Tanriverdi, March 31, 2023 (print ed.). More than 5,000 pages from a Moscow-based contractor offer a glimpse into planning and training that would allow Russia’s intelligence agencies and hacking groups to find vulnerabilities, coordinate attacks and control online activity.

Russian intelligence agencies worked with a Moscow-based defense contractor to strengthen their ability to launch cyberattacks, sow disinformation and surveil sections of the internet, according to thousands of pages of confidential corporate documents.

The documents detail a suite of computer programs and databases that would allow Russia’s intelligence agencies and hacking groups to better find vulnerabilities, coordinate attacks and control online activity. The documents suggest the firm was supporting operations including both social media disinformation and training to remotely disrupt real-world targets, such as sea, air and rail control systems.

An anonymous person provided the documents from the contractor, NTC Vulkan, to a German reporter after expressing outrage about Russia’s attack on Ukraine. The leak, an unusual occurrence for Russia’s secretive military industrial complex, demonstrates another unintended consequence of President Vladimir Putin’s decision to take his country to war.

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U.S. Mass Shootings, Gun Control 

New York Times, Protesters Against Gun Violence Confront Tennessee Lawmakers, Shawn Paik, March 31, 2023. Hundreds of people, including students, gathered at the Tennessee State Capitol to demand that lawmakers pass stronger gun laws.

 New York Times, Opinion: The Republican Party Says It Wants to ‘Protect Children,’ but Not All Children, Jamelle Bouie, right, March 31, 2023. Here are a few of the things the Republican Party is prepared to do to protect children.

The Republican Party — in states like Tennessee, Oklahoma and Kentucky — is prepared to ban or strictly limit the public performance of drag and other gender-nonconforming behavior.

“This bill gives confidence to parents that they can take their kids to a public or private show and will not be blindsided by a sexualized performance,” Jack Johnson, the Senate majority leader in Tennessee and one of the sponsors of the state’s ban, wrote on Twitter.

“I can’t think of anything good that can come from taking children and putting them in front of a bunch of grown men who are dressed like women,” said Gary Stubblefield, an Arkansas state senator who wants to enact a similar ban there.

There is a lot, in other words, that the Republican Party is prepared to do to protect children from the world at large. But there are limits. There are lines the Republican Party won’t cross.

The Republican Party will not, for example, support universal school lunch to protect children from hunger.

And in the wake of yet another school massacre — in Nashville, where a shooter killed three adults and three children at a private Christian school — Republicans refuse to do anything that might reduce the odds of another shooting or make it less likely that a child dies of gun violence.

“There isn’t anybody here that, if they could find the right approach, wouldn’t try to do something because they feel that pain,” said Senator Mike Rounds of South Dakota in an interview with CNN’s Kaitlan Collins on Wednesday. “And yet, when we start talking about bans or challenging on the Second Amendment, I think the things that have already been done have gone about as far as we’re going to with gun control.”

“It’s a horrible, horrible situation,” said Representative Tim Burchett of Tennessee, who represents the district in question. “And we’re not gonna fix it. Criminals are gonna be criminals.”

In 2021, according to the Centers for Disease Control, firearms were the leading cause of death for children and adolescents in the United States.

The five most radical right Republican justices on the Supreme Court are shown above, with the sixth Republican, Chief Justice John Roberts, omitted in this photo array.

New York Times, Opinion: We’re About to Find Out How Far the Supreme Court Will Go to Arm America, Linda Greenhouse (shown at right on the cover of her memoir, "Just a Journalist"), March 29, 2023. How much further will the Supreme Court go to assist in the arming of America? That has been the question since last June, when the court ruled that New York’s century-old gun licensing law violated the Second Amendment. Sooner than expected, we are likely to find out the answer.

On March 17, the Biden administration asked the justices to overturn an appeals court decision that can charitably be described as nuts, and accurately as pernicious. The decision by a three-judge panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit invalidated a federal law that for almost 30 years has prohibited gun ownership by people who are subject to restraining orders for domestic violence.

The Fifth Circuit upheld the identical law less than three years ago. But that was before President Donald Trump put a Mississippi state court judge named Cory Wilson on the appeals court. (As a candidate for political office in 2015, Wilson said in a National Rifle Association questionnaire that he opposed both background checks on private gun sales and state licensing requirements for potential gun owners.)

Judge Wilson wrote in a decision handed down in March that the appeals court was forced to repudiate its own precedent by the logic of the Supreme Court’s decision in the New York licensing case. He was joined by another Trump judge, James Ho, and by Edith Jones, an appointee of President Ronald Reagan; Judge Jones has long been one of the most aggressive conservatives on the country’s most conservative appeals court.

Now it is up to the justices to say whether that analysis is correct.

Fifteen years after the Supreme Court’s Heller decision interpreted the Second Amendment to convey an individual right to own a gun, there is no overstating the significance of the choice the court has been asked to make. Heller was limited in scope: It gave Americans a constitutional right to keep handguns at home for self-defense. The court’s decision last June in New York State Rifle and Pistol Association v. Bruen was on the surface also quite limited, striking down a law that required a showing of special need in order to obtain an unrestricted license to carry a concealed gun outside the home. New York was one of only a half-dozen states with such a requirement, as the court put it in the Bruen decision.

What was not limited about the New York decision — indeed, what was radical — was the analysis that Justice Clarence Thomas employed in his opinion for the 6-3 majority. Following Heller, courts had evaluated gun restrictions by weighing the personal Second Amendment claim against the government’s interest in the particular regulation, a type of balancing test that has long been common in constitutional adjudication. The Bruen decision rejected that approach, instead placing history above all else.

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U.S. Courts, Crime, Immigration

Washington Post, Judge rules that Dominion, Fox News lawsuit will go to trial, Jeremy Barr and Sarah Ellison, March 31, 2023. A judge ruled on Friday that Dominion Voting Systems’ $1.6 billion defamation lawsuit against Fox News will go to trial next month, notwithstanding motions from both parties requesting that he decide the case in their favor before a jury weighs in.

Delaware Superior Court’s Judge Eric M. Davis denied motions for summary judgment from Fox News and parent company Fox Corporation. He granted some of Dominion’s competing motions while denying other aspects.

“We are gratified by the Court’s thorough ruling soundly rejecting all of Fox’s arguments and defenses, and finding as a matter of law that their statements about Dominion are false,” Dominion said in a statement. 'We look forward to going to trial."

“This case is and always has been about the First Amendment protections of the media’s absolute right to cover the news," Fox said in its own statement. "FOX will continue to fiercely advocate for the rights of free speech and a free press as we move into the next phase of these proceedings.”

Washington Post, DOJ sues Norfolk Southern over toxic train derailment in Ohio, Steven Mufson, March 31, 2023. The lawsuit could be costly to the railroad, seeking damages for a fiery disaster that prompted evacuations in East Palestine, killed fish and prompted a huge cleanup.

The Justice Department filed a major civil suit Friday against Norfolk Southern Railway after one of its trains carrying toxic chemicals derailed near the Ohio town of East Palestine on Feb. 3 and burst into flames.

The federal lawsuit, which could impose heavy costs on the railroad, comes less than two months after the train operated by Norfolk Southern derailed in the eastern Ohio border town, forcing East Palestinians from their homes, prompting reports of nausea and rashes and killing thousands of fish.

“No community should have to go through what East Palestine residents have faced,” said EPA Administrator Michael Regan in a statement Friday. He added that the legal action would ensure the railroad “cleans up the mess they made and pays for the damage they have inflicted as we work to ensure this community can feel safe at home again.”

Washington Post, Perspective: Marshals Service uses go-between to dodge Biden’s private prison order, Joe Davidson, March 31, 2023. When the U.S. Marshals Service (USMS) faced difficulties implementing President Biden’s executive order to phase out the use of private prisons, the agency found a way to dodge his directive — with White House approval.

The January 2021 order is explicit, declaring that the government “shall not renew Department of Justice contracts with privately operated criminal detention facilities.”

Jettisoning the privately owned Northeast Ohio Correctional Center (NEOCC) in Youngstown, however, presented serious logistical problems for the service. So, to keep using the facility, the agency employed a middleman to get around Biden’s prohibition, according to the Justice Department’s internal watchdog.

Biden’s directive put the Marshals Service in a jam. It was issued just 30 days before the expiry of the contract with the Northeast Ohio Correctional Center, which held 541 Marshals Service inmates. The White House Counsel’s Office approved a 90-day contract extension, but not the additional two years the Marshals Service wanted.

After exploring other possibilities, Justice Department officials “determined that there were no viable options for relocating the NEOCC prisoners that met the needs of the judiciary, the affected pretrial prisoners, and the Department,” the inspector general’s report said.

Washington Post, Park Police pulled over a Black Secret Service officer — twice, Rachel Weiner, March 31, 2023. A federal appeals court this week affirmed that the officers who pulled over Nathaniel Hicks owe him $730,000 in damages

Nathaniel Hicks recalled crying three times in his adult life: when his grandmother died, when his father died, and when he was stopped by the U.S. Park Police.

It began with a gun in his face and lasted an hour, during which Hicks had been detained twice and missed the motorcade he was supposed to lead as a U.S. Secret Service officer on July 11, 2015. Hicks sued the two Park Police officers involved, Gerald Ferreyra and Brian Phillips, and a jury in 2021 awarded him $730,000 in compensatory and punitive damages.

On Wednesday, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit affirmed Hicks’s jury award after the officers, who were sued personally, appealed. The officers argued that the law protects government employees from such suits as long as the constitutional violation wasn’t clear from prior cases. The U.S. Supreme Court has also decreed that such lawsuits can only be brought against federal officers in an extremely narrow set of circumstances.

Hicks cleared both bars. The Fourth Circuit agreed with a Maryland district judge that the officers should have known they were violating Hicks’s Fourth Amendment rights and that they did so in a way similar to the search that first led the Supreme Court to allow civil rights lawsuits against federal workers in 1971.

The facts of the case were largely undisputed. Ferreyra saw Hicks’s unmarked car on the shoulder of the road and approached from the passenger side for a “welfare check.” When he saw the gun in its holster on the passenger seat, Ferreyra pointed his service weapon at Hicks and repeatedly yelled, with expletives, “Don’t touch the gun.” Hicks followed orders to roll down the window and immediately identified himself as a U.S. Secret Service officer, showing his credentials. Ferreyra took the gun and credentials while continuing to yell commands at Hicks not to move.

Though there was no evidence of a crime, Ferreyra insisted that Hicks wait for a Park Police officer to arrive from Anacostia, 25 minutes away. In the meantime Phillips arrived at the scene and interrogated Hicks about whether he was sleeping and why he left his gun on the seat. Hicks did not answer — he was on the phone with his own supervisor, explaining the situation.

The motorcade, which was protecting the Secretary of Homeland Security, came and went without Hicks; Phillips waved as it passed. When the Park Police sergeant arrived, he talked to Hicks’s supervisor by phone and finally ended the stop.

Hicks began driving away and called his superior again to figure out where to go. But within minutes he was pulled over — by Phillips, who demanded Hicks’s license and registration. Hicks was let go a second time without a ticket.

New York Times, Opinion: How the Most Important Election of 2023 Turned Extraordinarily Ugly, Michelle Goldberg, right, and Madeleine Hordinski, March 31, 2023 (print ed.). Just two years after Barack Obama won Wisconsin by 14 points, Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker had been swept into office by the Tea Party wave. He saw an anti-union law, Act 10, as his chance to follow in the footsteps of his idol, Ronald Reagan, who’d fired over 11,000 striking air traffic controllers in 1981, a devastating blow to the labor movement.

In addition to eviscerating unions, Act 10 was designed to undermine the Democratic Party that depended on them. If similar bills were “enacted in a dozen more states,” wrote the right-wing activist Grover Norquist, “the modern Democratic Party will cease to be a competitive power in American politics.”

Walker and his party would go on to lock in G.O.P. rule, enacting shockingly lopsided electoral maps and assuring continuing Republican control of the state legislature, as well as dominance of Wisconsin’s national congressional delegation. Nothing since, not even the election of a Democratic governor, has been able to loosen Republicans’ gerrymandered grip on the state. That grip has been used to restrict voting rights, pass an anti-union right-to-work law, cut funding to education, dismantle environmental protections and make Wisconsin one of the hardest states in the country in which to cast a ballot.

Democrats, on the other hand, are powerless to pass laws of their own. In 2022, the Wisconsin Supreme Court ruled, 4-3, that the state must adopt new, even more gerrymandered maps passed by the legislature.

Impervious to voter sentiment, the Republican edifice of power has appeared unbreakable. But a contentious state Supreme Court election on April 4 could finally put a crack in it.

A judicial election in a state you probably don’t live in — it might be hard to get excited about. But the Wisconsin Supreme Court election, pitting the mild-mannered, liberal-leaning family court judge Janet Protasiewicz, left, against the Trumpist former state Supreme Court justice Daniel Kelly, is by far the most important political contest of the year.

The race, which has gotten quite vicious, is ostensibly nonpartisan; candidates are not affiliated with a party on the ballot. But its political stakes are clear. Wisconsin’s Supreme Court currently has a 4-3 conservative majority, and one of the conservatives is retiring. If elected, Protasiewicz hopes to take a fresh look at the maps. She wants to revisit Act 10, which the state Supreme Court upheld in 2014. “Since 2011,” she told me in Madison last week, “it’s just been a spiral downward to a place where our democracy is really at peril.” This election is a singular chance to reverse that spiral.

It could also determine whether the next presidential election is free and fair, shaking up a swing state court that came frighteningly close to overturning the 2020 vote. And if that isn’t enough, this election will also be a referendum on abortion rights, which is turning out to be the key issue in the race. When the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade last year, an 1849 Wisconsin law banning almost all abortions went into effect. The state’s Democratic attorney general has filed a lawsuit challenging the ban, and the case will almost certainly make its way to Wisconsin’s Supreme Court.

New York Times, The Undoing of Guo Wengui, Billionaire Accused of Fraud on 2 Continents, Michael Forsythe and Benjamin Weiser, March 31, 2023 (print ed.). Shown above with ally Steve Bannon, he cultivated powerful allies and built an empire in China. Then, fleeing charges, he turned his charms on America. Now the law has caught up with him.

Luc Despins, a New York bankruptcy lawyer, typically took on difficult jobs: After the energy company Enron collapsed years ago, he helped thousands of victims recover some of their money.

But when Mr. Despins was appointed by a bankruptcy court last year to locate the assets of Guo Wengui, a Chinese property mogul and political provocateur who had failed to repay tens of millions of dollars to a hedge fund, the assignment presented very different challenges.

In November, protesters appeared outside his home and that of his ex-wife. Photographs of his daughters, along with their names and employers, were posted on Gettr, a social platform catering to the American right. A video online accused Mr. Despins of helping to build concentration camps on behalf of the Chinese Communist Party. Protesters even entered his office lobby, Mr. Despins testified in court.

“Partners of the firm have been chased up the escalator, with people running — screaming, you know, ‘C.C.P. dog,’” he said.

It would be among the last of many harassment campaigns carried out in Mr. Guo’s name by his global legion of followers. Mr. Guo may now be at the end of a remarkable trajectory, from billionaire Beijing insider to fugitive critic of the Chinese Communist Party and ally of Trump Republicans. That path, fueled by bravado, ruthlessness, a keen political antenna and alleged theft, has left lingering suspicion about his allegiances. And it has now taken him from his Manhattan penthouse to his new place of residence: the Brooklyn federal detention center.

This month, Mr. Guo was arrested in that 9,000-square-foot apartment, charged with defrauding thousands of investors in the United States and overseas of more than $1 billion. If convicted, he could face decades in prison. Mr. Guo pleaded not guilty in Manhattan federal court and was ordered detained at the request of prosecutors, who described him as a flight risk and a danger to the community.

“Guo Wengui is such a grifter, he just understands that whatever system you are in you have to learn how to play it,” said Orville Schell, director of the Center on U.S.-China Relations at the Asia Society in New York, who met Mr. Guo in Beijing over a decade ago. “He had yachts, he had the whole panoply — he knew how to arrange things around him that created a sense of awe, success and invincibility.”

Mr. Guo’s lawyer, Stephen Cook, declined to comment.

Mr. Guo rose from poverty to control a nationwide property empire centered on a $1 billion office, retail, hotel and residential complex next to the site of the 2008 Beijing Olympics. He lived in a sprawling lakeside courtyard compound in central Beijing valued at up to $230 million, with a separate barracks for his uniformed guards and a vast closet — as big as some homes — for his Brioni suits. By 2014 he ranked 74th among China’s richest people, with $2.6 billion.

Property empires in China rely on government connections and the free flow of cash, gifts and favors, and Mr. Guo’s links reached into the upper ranks of the country’s power structure, including Ma Jian, a senior intelligence official.

With Mr. Ma’s help, Mr. Guo, in the fashion of a Russian oligarch, obtained majority control of a securities business by buying out the share of a state-owned company, according to an investigation by Caixin, a Chinese newsmagazine, which also found numerous instances of Mr. Guo failing to repay large debts. Business associates who fell out with him landed in police custody. Mr. Ma subsequently said in a videotaped confession that he had accepted more than $8 million in gifts from Mr. Guo in exchange for interventions with other officials to eliminate roadblocks for his property projects, deter rivals and other strong-arming.

New York Times, Immigration Tripled in Top U.S. Counties Even as Many of Them Lost Population, Robert Gebeloff, Dana Goldstein and Stefanos Chen, March 31, 2023 (print ed.). New census data reveals where people are moving to — and from. And it reveals one exception to current trends: Manhattan.

The number of immigrants nearly tripled in the nation’s 20 most populous counties from 2021 to 2022, as immigration returned to prepandemic levels nationally, the Census Bureau reported on Thursday.

But many of these counties are still losing residents to suburbs, exurbs and other regions of the country, and, like the rest of the nation, they are feeling the brunt of the nation’s low birthrate.

Those trends emerged from the latest figures in counties nationwide, revealing that the country is growing slowly, but that many communities are struggling to maintain population levels.

Los Angeles County in California, Cook County, which includes Chicago, in Illinois, and the boroughs of Brooklyn and Queens in New York all lost population, but the loss was smaller than in 2021.

New York Times, Behind a Surge in Teenage Killings: Grief, Anger and Online Grudges, Hurubie Meko, March 31, 2023 (print ed.). Teenagers in New York City were arrested and charged with murder last year at a rate that grew twice as fast as the rate for adults between 2018 and 2022.

When the New York City police in January announced arrests in the killing of a 17-year-old in Coney Island, not one of the three people charged was old enough to drive: A 13-year-old had stabbed Nyheem Wright, the police said. His friends, ages 14 and 15, were charged with aiding him.

The fight started over a girl after school, prosecutors said. Now, the boys, who turned themselves in, face maximum sentences that range from nine years in prison to life behind bars.

“The kids involved are kids,” said April Leong, the principal of Liberation Diploma Plus High School, where Nyheem was a student. “They’re kids.”

From 2018 through 2022, teenagers were arrested and charged with murder in the city at a rate that grew twice as fast as that of adults. Forty-five children ranging from 13 to 17 were arrested and charged with murder last year, nearly double the number in 2018, according to the state’s Division of Criminal Justice Services.

Violence breaks out more quickly and more often now than it did before the pandemic, law enforcement and education officials say. Conflicts that were born online, and that festered as threats were exchanged behind screens, have increasingly spilled into the real world. Children’s tempers explode as they pile on to the subway, when words are exchanged on a Brooklyn park bench and outside schools as they let out for the day.

Young people “came out of quarantine with scores to settle,” said Patrice O’Shaughnessy, communications director for the Bronx district attorney, whose office charged 26 adolescents with murder last year.

The proliferation of guns and the fallout of the pandemic’s disruption to schools — including higher numbers of students missing school and falling behind academically — added to a constellation of factors that have unmoored children. Students were absent from schools, and their stabilizing influence, more often in poor communities, where gun violence was already higher and where social services, housing and access to amenities are often lacking.

During the 18 months that New York City schools were closed because of the pandemic, more people in Black and Latino communities died, and Black children were more likely to lose a caregiver. All the teenagers charged with murder in New York City last year were Black or Hispanic, according to state data.

New York Times, DeSantis Burnishes Tough-on-Crime Image to Take On Trump, Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan, March 31, 2023 (print ed.). Gov. Ron DeSantis, preparing for an all-but-declared campaign in 2024, is said to see an opening to take on former President Trump from the right.

Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida has spent months shoring up a tough-on-crime image as he weighs a run for the White House, calling for stronger penalties against drug traffickers and using $5,000 bonuses to bolster law-enforcement recruitment to his state.

Now, Mr. DeSantis and his allies plan to use that image to draw a contrast with the Republican front-runner in the 2024 race, former President Donald J. Trump.

Mr. DeSantis and his backers see the signature criminal-justice law enacted by Mr. Trump in 2018 as an area of weakness with his base, and Mr. DeSantis has indicated that he would highlight it when the two men tussle for the Republican nomination, according to three people with knowledge of Mr. DeSantis’s thinking. That law, known as the First Step Act, reduced the sentences for thousands of prisoners.

Mr. DeSantis has yet to officially announce his candidacy, but he has been quietly staffing a presidential campaign, and his allies have been building up a super PAC. Since at least his re-election in November, Mr. DeSantis has privately suggested that Mr. Trump’s record on crime is one of several policy issues on which Mr. Trump is vulnerable to attacks from the right.

Relevant Recent Headlines

• New York Times, Behind a Surge in Teenage Killings: Grief, Anger and Online Grudges
• New York Times, DeSantis Burnishes Tough-on-Crime Image to Take On Trump
• New York Times, Several Face Charges in Killings of Gay Men Who Were Drugged and Robbed
• Washington Post, Activist group led by Ginni Thomas received nearly $600,000 in anonymous donations
• Washington Post, Supreme Court justices under new ethics disclosures on trips, other gifts
• Washington Post, D.C. U.S. attorney declined to prosecute 67 percent of those arrested. Here’s why

U.S. Political Culture Wars

Washington Post, Disney quietly dodged DeSantis’s oversight board, appointees realize, Bryan Pietsch and Aaron Gregg, Updated March 30, 2023. An 11th-hour agreement forbids the governor-appointed board from using Disney’s “fanciful characters” such as Mickey Mouse.

The Disney World oversight board installed by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R), right, accused its predecessor of using an 11th-hour agreement to sharply curtail the new board’s powers and bolster the entertainment giant’s control over the Florida-based amusement park.

The agreement forbids the new board from using Disney’s brand name or any of its trademarks, specifically citing “fanciful characters such as Mickey Mouse.” It also gives the company the right to prior review and comment when making changes to building exteriors.

Through a spokesperson, DeSantis said the governor-appointed board had contracted law firms to challenge the agreement, and suggested certain “legal infirmities” could render it void.

DeSantis, an ascendant voice in the Republican Party and widely seen as a likely contender for the party’s 2024 presidential nomination, appointed a new oversight board after Disney criticized education legislation he had promoted that prohibited teachers from discussing gender and sexual orientation in early grades. Critics derided the policy as a homophobic and discriminatory “don’t say gay” bill. DeSantis signed it into law last year.

Florida legislature passes bill to restrict LGBTQ topics in elementary schools

In apparent retaliation for the critique, DeSantis replaced the previous Disney-friendly oversight board known as the Reedy Creek Improvement District with a new board, the Central Florida Tourism Oversight District, made up entirely of his own appointees, including religious and conservative activists. The board is responsible for approving infrastructure projects, as well as maintaining more mundane aspects of the park, such as trash collection and management of sewer systems. Disney would have been to some degree beholden to DeSantis’s board for its sign-off on major projects, in theory allowing it to hold sway over the company.

An 11th-hour agreement forbids the governor-appointed board from using Disney’s “fanciful characters” such as Mickey Mouse.

U.S. Rep. Thomas Massie, a Republican from Kentucky shown at bottom left, exemplifies the gun-cult majority in Congress, as illustrated by his recent Christmas photo showing his family armed with automatic weapons during a holiday season.

Washington Post, Congressmen get in shouting match over gun control after Nashville shooting, Andrew Jeong, March 31, 2023 (print ed.). Days after three children and three adults were fatally shot at a small Christian school in Nashville, a heated discussion over gun control between Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D-N.Y.) and Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) turned into a shouting match in a hallway outside the House chamber.

Bowman, right, a former middle school principal, was telling reporters that Republicans were “gutless” for not backing gun control laws after this week’s shooting.

Standing in the hallway, Bowman accused Republicans of being “cowards” and said voters should force them “to respond to the question” of how to “save America’s children” from shootings. “And let them explain that all the way up to Election Day in 2024,” he said.

Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.), who was walking by, then stopped to ask: “What are you talking about?”

“I’m talking about gun violence,” Bowman said.

Massie, who once tweeted a holiday photo of his family holding guns, then told Bowman, “You know, there’s never been a school shooting in a school that allows teachers to carry.”

“Carry guns? More guns lead to more death,” Bowman replied, raising his volume. “Look at the data; you’re not looking at any data.” Bowman then repeatedly told Massie that states that have open-carry laws have more deaths. When Massie told Bowman to calm down, the second-term congressman yelled, “Calm down? Children are dying!”

Washington Post, Ala. GOP lawmaker to House committee: D.C. schools are ‘crappy,’ ‘inmate factories,’ Lauren Lumpkin, March 31, 2023 (print ed.). Rep. Gary Palmer (R-Ala.) blasted public schools in D.C. on Wednesday during a congressional hearing that focused largely on crime in the city, calling the schools “crappy” and accusing them of producing criminals.

“Your schools are not only dropout factories, they’re inmate factories,” Palmer told a panel of D.C. officials that included D.C. Council Chairman Phil Mendelson (D), council member Charles Allen (D-Ward 6), the city’s chief financial officer and the police union chairman. The statement came as Palmer questioned leaders about juvenile crimes involving guns and drugs.

Mendelson, who chairs the D.C. Council committee that oversees education issues, pushed back. “I don’t agree that the D.C. public schools are inmate factories.”

Mendelson appeared in front of the House Committee on Oversight and Accountability to answer questions that revolved around crime and policing. The hearing came as the Republican-majority committee prepared to decide whether to advance a measure blocking D.C.'s major police accountability legislation.

But, at some points, congressional lawmakers directed questions toward the District’s schools. GOP members criticized city leaders for low test scores and the rate of chronic absenteeism, which skyrocketed to 48 percent after schools reopened last year. The share of chronically absent students fell to 41 percent — still above pre-pandemic levels — in December.

Washington Post, Nashville shooting exploited by right to escalate anti-trans rhetoric, Fenit Nirappil, March 31, 2023 (print ed.). Transgender people are rarely the perpetrators of mass shootings, which are overwhelmingly carried out by cisgender men, say criminal justice experts.

Conservative commentators and Republican politicians unleashed a new wave of anti-trans rhetoric following Monday’s shooting at a Nashville Christian school that killed six people, escalating a broader backlash to the rising visibility of transgender people in public life.

The attempts on the right to connect violence to transgender people come even though transgender people are rarely the perpetrators of mass shootings, which are overwhelmingly carried out by cisgender men, according to criminal justice experts. And trans people are more likely to be victims of violence than cisgender people, multiple studies have shown.

In Nashville, the shooter’s gender identity and motive remain unclear: police initially said the shooter Audrey Hale, right, was a 28-year-old woman, and then later said Hale was transgender, citing a social media profile in which Hale used masculine pronouns. The Post has not yet confirmed how Hale identified.

The data is clear: There is no ‘clear epidemic’ of transgender mass shooters

Nevertheless, Fox News host Tucker Carlson featured a photo of the shooter superimposed with the words “Trans Killer” on his Tuesday show. The chyron read: “We are witnessing the rise of trans violence.”

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) speculated on Twitter, as well as during a congressional hearing Wednesday, that hormone treatment may have played a role in the shooting, even though there is no evidence the shooter was on hormone therapy.

And former president Donald Trump on Wednesday, without evidence, also connected the Nashville shooting to hormone therapy and “the anger that was caused” during an interview with conservative talk radio host John Fredericks. Trump said he banned transgender people from serving in the military because “the amount of drugs they have to take is so incredible,” even though research and surveys show most transgender people do not undergo hormone therapy.

Studies examining the effects of testosterone therapy on aggression in transgender men have produced mixed results, with one review of scientific literature finding impacts on aggression would be short-term and concluding that more research is needed because available studies lack randomization and rely on self-reporting.

Relevant Recent Headlines

• New York Times, Opinion: A Florida School Banned a Disney Movie About Ruby Bridges. Here’s What That Really Means, Charles M. Blow

More On Probes of Trump, Allies

Palmer Report, Opinion: Michael Cohen reacts to the news that Donald Trump has been criminally indicted in Manhattan, Bill Palmer, right, March 30-31, 2023 (6:07 p.m.). Moments ago the news broke that a Manhattan grand jury has voted to criminally indict Donald Trump on at least one felony charge. Even as we all attempt to put this into perspective, key witness Michael Cohen, above left, called in to MSNBC and shared some thoughts.

Cohen can be very direct when he thinks it’s needed. But on this occasion Cohen was mostly reserved, declining to state whether or not he knows what the specific charges are, and saying that “It’s better for the indictment to speak for itself.”

Cohen did add that “Accountability matters” and that he stands by his grand jury testimony. Given that the Manhattan DA went ahead and asked the grand jury to indict, it gives vindication to the credulity of Cohen’s testimony.

Cohen added that “I always believed that this day was going to come.” He also added this: “I wish that people would have taken a few moments and not jumped the gun the way that we’ve been watching the media, many of the talking heads worrying about what’s happening a month from now.”

In any case, the contrast is now fascinating. Donald Trump has been criminally indicted and is now going to be placed under arrest, arraigned in front of a judge, and tried in front of a jury. Meanwhile Michael Cohen is now a respected public figure and a two-time bestselling author.

Washington Post, Trump indicted, Shayna Jacobs, Josh Dawsey, Devlin Barrett and Jacqueline Alemany, March 31, 2023 (print ed.). First ex-president to be charged with crime expected to appear in court Tuesday.

Trump, who is campaigning to return to the White House in 2024 and leading in most polls of Republican voters, is also the focus of criminal probes in Georgia and Washington, D.C., related to his efforts to overturn Joe Biden’s 2020 election victory and his handling of classified material at Mar-a-Lago, his Florida home and private club.

Those cases have raised serious questions about national security and the basic functions of democracy. The New York case, in contrast, stems from a hush-money plan and Trump’s alleged conduct before he became president. The indictment follows weeks of speculation about whether and when Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg might take such a momentous step toward a courthouse showdown with one of the most combative politicians in modern American history.

Washington Post, Trump and advisers caught off guard by indictment, Ashley Parker and Josh Dawsey, March 31, 2023 (print ed.). Advisers had privately counseled Trump that an indictment by a Manhattan grand jury involving hush-money payments to an adult-film star would not come for some time.

Washington Post, Opinion: The GOP response to Trump is one hell of an indictment, Dana Milbank, right, March 31, 2023. “If they can come for him, they can come for anyone,” tweeted Rep. Andy Biggs (Ariz.).

Of course, we hardly need reminders that Trump still dominates the GOP. Earlier this week, the House Administration Committee held a hearing where lawmakers and witnesses not only echoed Trump’s “big lie” from 2020 but alleged, without evidence, that there was “government voter suppression” followed by a “coverup” in a 2022 House race in Pennsylvania that Democrats won.

Still, the Republicans’ mimicry (conscious or unconscious) of Trump should put one thing into sharper focus. The debate about whether this helps or hurts Trump’s fight for the GOP nomination is beside the point. When it comes to any would-be Republican standard-bearer, the mantra is clear: We are all Trumpians now.

Washington Post, Opinion: By indicting Trump, Alvin Bragg restores our faith in the rule of law, Dennis Aftergut, March 31, 2023 (print ed.). Dennis Aftergut, a former federal prosecutor, is of counsel to Lawyers Defending American Democracy.

Donald Trump’s indictment in New York on Thursday is a somber watershed in U.S. history. Not only has no former president ever been charged with a crime before, but we are also witnessing the long-overdue reinforcement of a foundational principle of our republic: No one, however powerful, is above the law.

The decision by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, right, to indict the former president also illustrates the beauty of the federalism underlying our republic’s design. It is, Supreme Court Justice Louis D. Brandeis wrote, an elegant feature of our federal system that “a single courageous State may, if its citizens choose, serve as a laboratory.”

In this case, it is New York serving as the proving ground to establish the accountability of a man who succeeded in becoming president, in considerable measure, by covering up his past. Some understandably worry that his later attempts to overturn the Constitution were far worthier subjects for indictment. While we wait to see whether charges will be filed on those counts, we should keep in mind that, but for Trump’s alleged misconduct just before the 2016 election, the attempted coup of late 2020 and Jan. 6, 2021, might never have occurred.

Moreover, a prosecutor pursues crimes as he finds them. The precise charges are not yet known, but the case has focused on Trump’s alleged $130,000 payoff to adult-film actress Stormy Daniels to keep her quiet on the eve of the 2016 election — so symbolic of his brand: utter defiance of morality and law in pursuit of power and wealth. If those allegations indeed are the basis of Bragg’s charges, and are proved true, the larger victim will have been the public, from whom crucial information was hidden. Having gotten himself elected, Trump spent four years in office — and all the time since — swinging a wrecking ball against the edifice of our constitutional republic.

Henry Olsen: It should be outrageous that Trump’s indictment is not a federal case

Protecting the principle that no person is above the law requires constant vigilance, as we have already come perilously close to losing it once. It was damaged nearly 50 years ago, when another modern president committed provable crimes in office.

Washington Post, Opinion: Trump is indicted, and justice is served, Jennifer Rubin, right, March 30, 2023. Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg made history on Thursday, indicting a former U.S. president for the first time. The indictment is under seal. From all indications, however, former president Donald Trump was indicted for falsification of business records (a crime regularly prosecuted under New York law), beginning before the 2016 election. (The hush-money payments continued during his presidency.) If news reports are correct that Trump was indicted for a felony, Bragg will have cited another crime that Trump allegedly furthered through bookkeeping shenanigans.

Former prosecutor Andrew Weissmann, part of special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s investigation of Trump, told me, “This is the first step in true legal accountability. But it will be important to remember that the rule of law requires us to presume him innocent now that he is a criminal defendant.”

No felony is inconsequential, nor is the likely charge incidental to Trump’s sustained attack on our democracy. The scheme Trump allegedly set up to keep adult-film star Stormy Daniels quiet about an affair was intended to pull the wool over voters’ eyes, the first of other attempts to defraud them, and the coverup scheme extended into his presidency when he lied in denying the affair. Trump’s former attorney Michael Cohen pleaded guilty and served jail time for attempting to conceal these very payments. (Rather than ponder why Bragg prosecuted Trump for the same facts, it’s fair to wonder why the Justice Department did not prosecute Trump immediately after he left office.)

Norman Eisen, co-counsel for the House impeachment managers and author of numerous analyses on the case, told me that facts publicly known suggest this “is a clear violation of the New York books and records statute.” He further argues that if “it was done to benefit the Trump campaign — an alleged illegal contribution — it is also a felony, and because it could have affected the extremely close 2016 election, it is also a serious alleged offense against our democracy.”

Contrary to some commentators’ argument that New York law might be preempted by federal law, a Just Security report makes clear that plenty of state laws are not preempted, including “a limitation on corporate contributions to federal campaigns; a violation of consumer protection laws … and fraudulent transfers of donations from PACs ostensibly founded to support presidential campaigns.” Bragg has a strong case that Trump’s attempt to conceal hush money is precisely the sort of skulduggery that states can pursue.

Fred Wertheimer, head of Democracy 21, told me, “Trump now faces the possibility of criminal accountability for his actions in New York. And this just the beginning.” He predicted: “Before this is over, Trump may be facing four possible prosecutions and accountability in New York, Georgia and at the Justice Department.”

Washington Post, The status of key investigations involving Donald Trump, Matt Zapotosky, Matthew Brown, Shayna Jacobs, Devlin Barrett and Jacqueline Alemany, Updated March 30, 2023. In New York, Fulton County, Ga., and D.C., the former president is the focus of criminal investigations.

Donald Trump is facing historic legal and legislative scrutiny for a former president, even as he pursues a 2024 bid to return to the White House.

A Manhattan grand jury has voted to indict Trump, the district attorney and Trump’s lawyers said on March 30. The specific charges may not be revealed until Trump surrenders and appears in court, which is expected on April 4. But District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s probe has focused on alleged “hush-money” payments from 2016. Trump, who denies wrongdoing, is the only current or former U.S. president ever charged with a crime.

The Justice Department is separately investigating the handling of classified documents found at Mar-a-Lago and efforts by Trump and his allies to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election. The Fulton County district attorney is leading a parallel criminal probe related to the 2020 election, and the New York attorney general has sued Trump, three of his children and his family business for a medley of alleged violations.

Washington Post, Editorial: The Trump indictment is a poor test case for prosecuting a former president, Editorial Board, March 31, 2023 (print ed.). Donald Trump deserves the legal scrutiny he’s getting — which has come from many corners on many counts. Yet of the long list of alleged violations, the likely charges on which a grand jury in New York state voted to indict him are perhaps the least compelling. There’s cause for concern, and caution, ahead.

Breaches of campaign finance law undermine democracy and deserve to be taken seriously. Yet the potential downsides of indicting Mr. Trump ought to be taken seriously, too. This prosecution is now bound to be the test case for any future former president, as well as, of course, proceedings against this former president in particular — of which there are plenty.

Other investigations underway include Justice Department examinations of the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection and classified documents discovered at Mar-a-Lago, where the possibility of obstruction of justice is particularly grave. These are straightforward cases compared with the one proceeding in Manhattan. A failed prosecution over the hush-money payment could put them all in jeopardy, as well as provide Mr. Trump ammunition for his accusations of “witch hunt” — in light of which House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) was right to urge supporters to refrain from protesting.

Politico, Manhattan Trump grand jury set to break for a month, Erica Orden, March 30, 2023 (print ed.). A previously planned hiatus would push back a potential indictment of the former president.

The Manhattan grand jury examining Donald Trump’s alleged role in a hush money payment to a porn star isn’t expected to hear evidence in the case for the next month largely due to a previously scheduled hiatus, according to a person familiar with the proceedings.

The break would push any indictment of the former president to late April at the earliest, although it is possible that the grand jury’s schedule could change. In recent weeks, the Manhattan district attorney’s office hasn’t convened the panel on certain days. But it is District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s prerogative to ask the grand jury to reconvene if prosecutors want the panel to meet during previously planned breaks.

The grand jury, which heard testimony in the Trump case on Monday, isn’t meeting Wednesday and is expected to examine evidence in a separate matter Thursday, the person said. The grand jury, which typically meets Mondays, Wednesdays and Thursdays, is scheduled to consider another case next week on Monday and Wednesday, the person said, and isn’t expected to meet Thursday due to the Passover holiday.

The following two weeks are set to be a hiatus that was scheduled when the grand jury was first convened in January, the person said.

A spokesperson for the Manhattan district attorney’s office declined to comment.

There is no official deadline for bringing an indictment against Trump, although there were indications in recent weeks that the grand jury’s activity was nearing a vote, particularly when prosecutors offered Trump the chance to testify before the panel. That is typically one of the final steps of a criminal investigation. Trump declined the invitation.

Prosecutors are examining Trump’s alleged role in a $130,000 payment that was made to adult entertainer Stormy Daniels, who said she had an affair with the former president. He has denied the affair and any wrongdoing associated with the payment.

The grand jury largely didn’t hear evidence in the Trump case last week. On Monday, former National Enquirer publisher David Pecker testified for a second time before the panel.

 Relevant Recent HeadlinesWashington Post, Analysis: Trump is indicted in N.Y. Here’s what it means and what happens next, Perry Stein

• Wall Street Journal, Indictment Could Boost GOP Primary Bid but Hurt a Rematch With Bide
• Washington Post, Analysis: Trump indictment follows 50 years of investigation on many fronts, Marc Fisher
• Palmer Report, Opinion: Someone’s been misleading Donald Trump about his criminal indictment, Bill Palmer
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U.S. Politics, Elections, Economy, Governance

New York Times, Kushner Firm Got Hundreds of Millions From 2 Persian Gulf Nations, Jonathan Swan, Kate Kelly, Maggie Haberman and Mark Mazzetti, March 31, 2023 (print ed.). The infusion of money from interests in the two Persian Gulf monarchies reflects the close ties to Middle Eastern countries established by Jared Kushner, former President Donald Trump’s son-in-law.

Wealth funds in the United Arab Emirates and Qatar have invested hundreds of millions of dollars with Jared Kushner’s private equity firm, according to people with knowledge of the transactions, joining Saudi Arabia in backing the venture launched by former President Donald J. Trump’s son-in-law as he left the White House.

The infusion of money from interests in the two rival Persian Gulf monarchies reflects the continued efforts by Mr. Trump and his aides and allies to profit from the close ties they built to the Arab world during his presidency and the desire of leaders in the region to remain on good terms with Mr. Kushner as his father-in-law seeks the presidency again.

The Emiratis invested more than $200 million with Mr. Kushner’s firm, Affinity Partners, two people told about the transactions said. The U.A.E.’s embassy in Washington declined to comment. A Qatari entity invested a similar sum, according to two people with knowledge of that deal. A spokesman for the Qatari embassy in Washington declined to comment.

The investment from the U.A.E. came through a sovereign wealth fund, but the identity of the Qatari investor is unclear. An Affinity Partners official did not respond to an email seeking comment.

Top Emirati officials have a close relationship with Mr. Kushner, forged during the Trump administration. And the Kushner family has previously benefited from Qatari funds. A Qatar-linked company helped bail out the Kushners’ debt-ridden tower in midtown Manhattan, 666 Fifth Avenue, during the Trump presidency.

But despite these relationships, Emirati and Qatari officials were at first reluctant to invest in Mr. Kushner’s private equity fund, at least in part because of the political risks involved, according to people familiar with both governments’ internal deliberations. The Times previously reported that Qatari officials feared they would face unfavorable treatment if they turned down Mr. Kushner’s invitation to invest and Mr. Trump returned to power.

It is not unusual for insiders from both parties to benefit financially from deals abroad after leaving government service, particularly in the Middle East. There is a long history of firms populated by former officials from Democratic administrations signing lucrative contracts with Gulf nations, and there are few laws or ethics guidelines prohibiting it.

But the scale of the investments Mr. Kushner’s venture has received from the Gulf countries — in the range of $2.5 billion — and the timing, coming relatively soon after his leaving the White House, are striking and have drawn criticism from Democrats and ethics experts.

Washington Post, 9 soldiers killed as two U.S. Army helicopters crash in Ky. during training mission, Adela Suliman, Kelsey Ables and Dan Lamothe, March 31, 2023 (print ed.). Nine U.S. soldiers were killed late Wednesday when two Army helicopters crashed in southwestern Kentucky, triggering an investigation and a sprawling effort to notify the families of those involved, Army officials said Thursday.

The soldiers, with the 101st Airborne Division, were aboard HH-60 Black Hawk helicopters and flying during a training exercise in southwestern Kentucky’s Trigg County, west of where they took off from their home base of Fort Campbell, Army officials said. The crash occurred at about 10 p.m. local time.

Five were aboard one aircraft and four were aboard the other, with pilots using night-vision equipment during a training exercise at the time, said Brig. Gen. John Lubas, the division’s deputy commander, during a news conference Thursday. Each helicopter typically flies with a pilot, a co-pilot and a crew chief, and can carry as many as 12 people.

The crash highlights the inherent dangers in military aviation, even in training exercises. Between 2013 and 2020, 224 U.S. troops were killed in aviation accidents, according to a report commissioned by Congress.

Washington Post, Arizona Democrats to sue No Labels to block third-party challenge, Michael Scherer, March 31, 2023 (print ed.). The moderate group has been preparing a possible national presidential ticket for the 2024 elections.

The Arizona Democratic Party will file a lawsuit Thursday against the state’s top election administrator and No Labels, seeking to reverse the moderate group’s recognition as a political party for the 2024 elections, according to Democratic officials.

The lawsuit, in state court in Phoenix, reflects growing concern in Democratic circles that a No Labels third-party ticket in 2024 will jeopardize the reelection hopes of President Biden and make it harder for Democrats to maintain control of the Senate.

The lawsuit claims that Secretary of State Adrian Fontes, who is a Democrat, made an error in accepting signature petitions for the No Labels Party, because accompanying affidavits from proposed electors were signed before all the petitions were gathered, in violation of state statute. As a result, the Arizona Democratic Party claims the affidavits purporting to verify the petitions should be considered false and the petitions invalid.

The lawsuit also argues that No Labels, which is organized as a social welfare nonprofit that is not required to disclose its donors, has failed to comply with the federal requirements of a political party, including donation limits and donor disclosure.

“No Labels is not following the rules for political party recognition, while attempting to be placed on the ballot alongside actual, functioning political parties who do,” said Morgan Dick, spokeswoman for the Arizona Democratic Party. “Arizonans deserve better and voters deserve to know who is behind this shadowy organization and what potentially nefarious agenda they are pushing.”

The civil suit comes as No Labels is seeking state ballot access across the country to prepare for a potential “black swan” moment, when enough Americans are dissatisfied with the major-party nominees to open a lane for a third-party candidate to win the White House. A video from the group published Tuesday by the New Republic described the presidential campaign effort as “an insurance policy for America’s future.” The group has already qualified for the ballots in Oregon, Arizona, Alaska and Colorado.

Founded in 2010 as a political organization focused on finding bipartisan and centrist solutions to the nation’s problems, the group has worked on both policy and elections, raising money for both Republican and Democratic candidates. The group helped to found the bipartisan Problem Solvers Caucus in the U.S. House.

Washington Post, Manchin, facing reelection, ratchets up criticism of Biden on energy, fiscal policy, John Wagner, March 31, 2023 (print ed.). Sen. Joe Manchin III (D-W.Va.) is ratcheting up criticism of President Biden, castigating him for refusing to sit down with “fiscally minded” Republicans to negotiate over the nation’s debt limit and accusing him of allowing “unelected ideologues” in his administration to thwart the will of Congress on energy policy.

Manchin, who has not yet said whether he will run for reelection next year in a state that Biden lost to President Donald Trump by nearly 39 percentage points, laid out several of his grievances with Biden in a Wall Street Journal op-ed published Wednesday night.

“Mr. Biden was elected to lead us all to solve problems,” Manchin wrote. “We can’t allow them to be made worse by ignoring them. The president has the power, today, to direct his administration to follow the law, as well as to sit down with congressional leaders and negotiate meaningful, serious reforms to the federal budget.”

Washington Post, After #FreeBritney, Senate bill seeks changes to guardianships, Amanda Morris, March 31, 2023 (print ed.). It took Britney Spears years to fight a “protective” legal arrangement. A proposed new law calls for giving more rights to people in similar situations.

Britney Spears’ successful fight to end the conservatorship that controlled her life has spurred a new effort in Congress to retool these types of legal arrangements.

Proposed legislation to be introduced in the Senate today by Sen. Robert P. Casey Jr. (D-Pa.) would help reduce the number of people under these legal arrangements while also giving them more protection.

Guardianships, which are known in some states as conservatorships, can strip someone of control over their finances, their personal decisions, or both. Under some arrangements, people can lose their right to marry, vote, have children or get a job. An estimated 1.3 million people live under guardianships, according to a 2018 estimate from the National Council on Disability.

The arrangements are intended to protect people who are incapable of making their own decisions from exploitation and abuse. But advocates for people with disabilities say that guardianships are used too frequently and often are difficult to rescind, as highlighted by Spears’ long fight in 2021 to end her conservatorship, which she called “demoralizing” and “abusive.”

Washington Post, Ariz. governor’s press secretary resigns amid backlash over gun-toting post, Maham Javaid, March 31, 2023 (print ed.). Arizona Gov. Katie Hobbs (D) asked her press secretary to resign Tuesday night amid backlash over a meme she tweeted that prominent conservatives in the state said was a threat against “transphobes.” The meme was shared hours after a mass killing in Nashville took six lives and left questions about the shooter’s gender identity.

Murphy Hebert, Hobbs’ director of communications, told The Washington Post that Josselyn Berry delivered her resignation after the governor asked for it.

The meme shared on Twitter by Berry depicts a woman wielding a gun in each hand, a still from the 1980 crime thriller “Gloria.” Berry’s caption alongside the image read, “Us when we see transphobes.”

Nashville shooting exploited by right to escalate anti-trans rhetoric

In a statement Wednesday, Hobbs said she accepted Berry’s resignation, and that Berry’s tweet “is not reflective of the values of the administration.” The tweet was shared the same day as the mass shooting that left three children and three adults dead at Covenant School in Nashville. The shooter, Audrey Hale, was killed by police.

Nashville police initially said the shooter was a 28-year-old woman, and then later said Hale was transgender, citing a social media profile in which Hale used masculine pronouns. The Post has not yet confirmed how Hale identified.

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• Washington Post, 9 soldiers killed as two U.S. Army helicopters crash in Ky. during training mission
• Washington Post, Arizona Democrats to sue No Labels to block third-party challenge
• Washington Post, Manchin, facing reelection, ratchets up criticism of Biden on energy, fiscal policy
• Washington Post, After #FreeBritney, Senate bill seeks changes to guardianships
• Washington Post, Ariz. governor’s press secretary resigns amid backlash over gun-toting post

U.S. Budget, Banks, Economy, Jobs, CryptoCurrencies

New York Times, The Fed’s Preferred Inflation Gauge Cooled Notably in February, Jeanna Smialek, March 31, 2023. A closely watched measure of price increases has provided encouraging news as the Fed considers when to stop raising rates. The measure of inflation most closely watched by the Federal Reserve slowed substantially in February, an encouraging sign for policymakers as they consider whether to raise interest rates further to slow the economy and bring price increases under control.

The Personal Consumption Expenditures Index cooled to 5 percent on an annual basis in February, down from 5.3 percent in January and slightly lower than economists in a Bloomberg survey had forecast. It was the lowest reading for the measure since September 2021.

After removing food and fuel prices, which are volatile month to month, a “core” measure that tries to gauge underlying inflation trends also cooled by more than expected on both an annual and monthly basis.

The fresh data provides the latest evidence that inflation has turned a corner and is decelerating, though the process is gradual and bumpy at times. And the report is one of many that Fed officials will take into account as they approach their next interest rate decision, on May 3. Central bankers are watching how inflation, the labor market and consumer spending shape up. They also will be closely monitoring financial markets and credit measures to get a sense of how significantly recent bank failures are likely to weigh on lending, which could slow down the economy.

New York Times, Debt Talks Are Frozen as House Republicans Splinter Over a Fiscal Plan, Catie Edmondson, March 31, 2023 (print ed.). House Republicans who have said they will not vote to raise the national debt limit without deep spending cuts are backing away from their promise to balance the budget and struggling to unite their fractious majority behind a fiscal plan, paralyzing progress on talks to avert a catastrophic default as soon as this summer.

Determined to use the coming confrontation over the national debt to extract sweeping spending concessions from Democrats, House G.O.P. leaders announced a series of lofty goals earlier this year — driven in large part by the demands of the hard-right faction of their party. They include balancing the federal budget in 10 years and freezing spending at prepandemic levels, all without touching Social Security, Medicare or military funding.

But even as they continue to deride President Biden’s $6.8 trillion budget proposal, released this month, House Republicans have begun to inch away from their own stated objectives, plagued by divisions that have prevented them from agreeing on a plan of their own that can draw enough support to pass with their slim majority.

The pledge to balance the nation’s budget has gone by the wayside, initially softened to a commitment to put the nation “on a path toward” a balanced budget and now seemingly scrapped altogether. The timetable for when Republicans say they will put out a budget blueprint has continued to slip. And after the Budget Committee chairman told reporters that the party was finalizing a list of specific cuts to bring to negotiations with Mr. Biden, Speaker Kevin McCarthy threw cold water on the idea, saying, “I don’t know what he’s talking about.”

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Global News, Migration, Human Rights

New York Times, As Israel’s Crises Pile Up, a Far-Right Minister Is a Common Thread, Patrick Kingsley, March 31, 2023. Bezalel Smotrich, the finance minister, is an advocate of contentious plans to overhaul the judiciary. He has also exacerbated tensions with Palestinians.

As protests and unrest swept across Israel this week, many Israelis issued impassioned calls for moderation and dialogue to resolve one of the most serious domestic crises in the country’s history.

But one government leader seemed determined to raise the stakes even higher: Bezalel Smotrich, the settler activist who serves as finance minister in Benjamin Netanyahu’s right-wing government. Mr. Smotrich is a leading proponent of the government plan to assert greater control over the Supreme Court, the issue that has fueled weeks of mass protests.

“We must not stop the reform in any way,” Mr. Smotrich said in a video message to his supporters on Monday before Mr. Netanyahu announced a delay of the plan. Mr. Smotrich instructed his followers to counter the antigovernment protests with demonstrations of their own, a call that prompted widespread fears of violent confrontations on Israel’s streets. “We will not let them steal our voice and our country,” he added.

Then Mr. Smotrich resumed his day job, preparing for a new national budget. That afternoon, he gave a detailed speech to lawmakers about fiscal responsibility and market uncertainty. “The greatest service that we can do for Israel’s citizens,” he said in Parliament, “is to combat inflation.”

New York Times, Italy imposed a temporary ban on ChatGPT over privacy concerns, Adam Satariano, March 31, 2023. The artificial intelligence tool ChatGPT was temporarily banned in Italy on Friday, the first known instance of the chatbot being blocked by a Western government as a result of privacy concerns.

Italy’s data protection authority said OpenAI, the California company that makes ChatGPT, unlawfully collected personal data from users and did not have an age-verification system in place to prevent minors from being exposed to illicit material.

The order is a sign of the policy challenges emerging for the developers of cutting-edge A.I. after the release of ChatGPT. The program has dazzled users with its ability to draft essays, engage in humanlike conversations and perform more complex tasks like writing computer code, but it has raised alarms about the spread of misinformation, the effects on employment and broader risks to society.

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• New York Times, U.S.-Israel Tensions Over Judicial Overhaul Burst Into Open, In response to sharp criticism by President Biden
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More On Ukraine War

New York Times, For Ukrainian Convicts, a Strange Odyssey Through Russian Prisons, Anatoly Kurmanaev, Ekaterina Bodyagina and Ivan Nechepurenko, March 31, 2023. When Russian troops left Kherson, they took with them 2,500 Ukrainian convicts from local prisons, the start of a journey highlighting the war’s absurdity.

Oleksandr Fedorenko’s odyssey began with a triumph for his native Ukraine.

It was last October, and Ukrainian troops were pressing an offensive that would ultimately liberate the southern city of Kherson. As Russian occupation forces prepared to withdraw, they took with them 2,500 Ukrainian criminals from the city’s jails, including Mr. Fedorenko.

What followed over the next several months was a bizarre journey that took some of the convicts more than 4,000 miles through five prisons and five countries.

“We were received with shouts, beatings, humiliations,” said Mr. Fedorenko, 47, who had been serving time in Kherson for theft, describing his introduction to a Russian-controlled prison. “Face to the ground, don’t look, don’t speak, and blows, blows, blows.”

The Russians’ behavior befuddled the convicts from the start, with no one, including apparently their new jailers, having much of an idea what to do with them.

First, the prisoners were left largely to their own devices in their Ukrainian jails. Then they were unexpectedly, and with no explanation, shipped to Russian-controlled territory. But nothing underscored their haphazard treatment better than what happened when some of them reached the end of their original sentences.

The convicts were pleasantly surprised when Russian guards came to escort them out of jail when their sentences expired. But at the prison’s entrance, a bigger shock awaited: Some were immediately detained again by the Russian police and accused of violating immigration laws; they were fined and charged with illegally entering the country.

“They asked me, ‘How did you enter Russia?,’” said Ruslan Osadchyi, another Kherson prisoner. “‘You brought me here, under the muzzles of automatic guns!’”

“Like everything in Russia, it was completely absurd,” Mr. Osadchyi added.

No Russian official has publicly acknowledged the transfer of Kherson prisoners into Russia, a possible violation of international law, which prohibits the forced removal of people from an occupied zone. Officials in the Russian penal system and national police did not respond to requests for comment.

New York Times, Russia and Ukraine Step Up Recruiting Efforts, Staff Reports, March 31, 2023. Russia and Ukraine are stepping up recruitment efforts to bolster their badly depleted militaries, another sign that both sides are steeling themselves for a long war.

President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia signed a decree on Thursday authorizing a larger than normal spring draft. And although the new recruits are unlikely to be sent to the battlefield immediately, the draft will create a bigger pool of potential troops for Russia’s army, which has suffered immense casualties, if the war continues for years.

Here is what we’re covering:

• Russia and Ukraine make recruitment pushes as they prepare for a long war.
• Russia assumes the presidency of the U.N. Security Council on Saturday.
• Belarus, echoing Russia, raises the prospect of nuclear conflict.
• In Finland, leaders celebrate NATO membership progress: ‘These are historic days.’
• The American reporter accused of spying in Russia will likely spend months in a high-security prison.
• Russian propaganda channels use the arrest of a Wall Street Journal reporter to parrot a familiar line.
• In a secret command center, Ukrainians say they have exhausted Russia’s relentless assaults on Bakhmut. 

New York Times, Ukrainians Directing Soldiers From a Hidden Hub See Bakhmut Going Their Way, Carlotta Gall, March 31, 2023 (print ed.). Commanders told a Times reporter that they had exhausted Russia’s assaults on the eastern city, though soldiers said the cost in lives was steep.

Hidden in the bowels of an unmarked building, set well back from the fighting, a command center directing operations in the city of Bakhmut was high-tech and humming. Soldiers monitored video screens with live feeds of destroyed buildings and a cratered battlefield.

Six weeks after coming to help defend Bakhmut, the men of the Adam Tactical Group, one of Ukraine’s most effective battle units, were quietly confident they had turned the tide against Russian troops trying to encircle and capture it.

“The enemy exhausted all its reserves,” the commander, Col. Yevhen Mezhevikin, 40, said on Tuesday, straddling a chair as artillery, air defense and intelligence-gathering teams worked around him.

Through wave after wave of Russian assault and tenacious Ukrainian defense, Bakhmut has, over eight months, become a central battlefield of Russia’s invasion despite limited strategic significance.

Russia has lost extraordinary numbers of troops in the battle, and Ukraine large numbers too, and as casualties have mounted, so has the political symbolism of the city. Kremlin officials have described it as a necessary prize in the campaign to seize Ukraine’s Donbas region. To Ukraine, it has become an important line to hold, both to whittle down Russia’s forces and to deprive them of a victory.

But now, Colonel Mezhevikin said, the Russian assaults have slowed and the imminent threat of encirclement has been thwarted. “The density of assaults dropped by several times,” he said. “Before, they could assault in all directions simultaneously and in groups of not less than 20, 30 or 40 people, but gradually it is dying down.”

The commander’s description aligned with those of Ukraine’s most senior military commander, Gen. Valery Zaluzhnyi, and his commander of ground forces in the east, Gen. Oleksandr Syrsky. Both have said in recent days that the situation of Bakhmut was stabilizing, even with heavy fighting for some Ukrainian units.

Colonel Mezhevikin said that he was confident that Ukrainian forces could keep holding the city and push Russian troops back farther. If the Ukrainians hold their recent gains, the battles of the last month at Bakhmut could prove a turning point in Ukraine’s defense against Russia, not only stalling the latest Russian offensive but also in setting themselves up to deliver a knockout blow, he said.

New York Times, Ukraine Goes Dark: Images From Space Drive Home the Nation’s Anguish, William J. Broad, Sarah Kerr, Marc Santora and Tim Wallace, March 31, 2023 (print ed.). A satellite that rivals the human eye in sensitivity has documented how Russia’s offense has knocked out the nation’s lights.

No power, no lights, no water, no heat. In Ukraine over the past year, waves of Russian missiles have assailed the nation’s infrastructure, leading to daily struggles for civilians and to months of frantic repairs to keep the electricity flowing.

An American satellite has revealed this darkening of the entire nation, creating a vivid companion to portraits of its people’s misery and perseverance. The satellite’s images of city lights flickering out across Ukraine drive home the magnitude of the humanitarian disaster in a way that’s otherwise difficult to imagine.

The satellite, launched in 2011, has powerful night vision that’s equal to or better than anything the human eye can see in the dark. The dimming of particular cities is thus clearly visible from 500 miles up and presents a grim contrast to Ukraine’s brightly lit neighbors, such as Poland and Russia.

“There’re huge blackouts,” said Eleanor Stokes, a lead scientist in NASA’s Black Marble project, which processes the nighttime imagery. “It gets depressing.”

New York Times, Torture and Turmoil at Ukrainian Nuclear Plant: An Insider’s Account, Marc Santora, March 29, 2023 (print ed.). The former director of the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant described abuse of Ukrainian workers and careless practices by the Russians who took control.

By the time Russian soldiers threw a potato sack over his head and forced him to record a false video statement about conditions at Europe’s largest nuclear facility, Ihor Murashov had already witnessed enough chaos at the plant to be deeply worried.

Mr. Murashov, the former director general of the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant in Ukraine, did not know how much more stress the workers there could endure as they raced from one crisis to another to avert a nuclear catastrophe.

He watched as staff members were dragged off to a place they called “the pit” at a nearby police station, returning beaten and bruised — if they returned at all. He was there when advancing Russian soldiers opened fire at the facility in the first days of the war and he fretted as the they mined the surrounding grounds. He witnessed Russians use nuclear reactor rooms to hide military equipment, risking an accident.

Mr. Murashov, 46, is gone from Zaporizhzhia now, having been expelled from Russian occupied territory in October. In the months since, the situation at the plant has only grown more precarious, according to Ukrainian officials and international observers.

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U.S. Abortion, #MeToo, LGBQT, Rape Laws 

Washington Post, Pentagon raises alarm over Sen. Tuberville’s gambit on abortion policy, Dan Lamothe, March 30, 2023 (print ed.). Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.) has put a hold on nearly 160 military promotions, some for very senior positions, citing his objections to its policy post-Roe v. Wade.

The Pentagon is raising alarm over one Republican senator’s bid to block the promotion of nearly 160 senior U.S. military officers in a dispute arising from the Defense Department’s abortion policy, joining top Democrats in labeling the political showdown a threat to national security.

Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, speaking Tuesday before the Senate Armed Services Committee, warned that by impeding these officers’ promotions, Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.), right, had caused a “ripple effect in the force that makes us far less ready than we need to be.”

The remarks were Austin’s most direct in a dispute that has grown increasingly acrimonious since Tuberville, earlier this month, promised he would require the promotions to be approved one-by-one, rather than in batches — what Congress calls unanimous consent. The nominations can still move ahead, but would require time-consuming steps by Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D.-N.Y.), who complained Tuesday that Tuberville’s gambit was tantamount to “hostage taking.”

“The women of our military,” Schumer said in remarks on the Senate floor, “are more than capable of making their own decisions when it comes to their health. They do not need the senior senator from Alabama making decisions on their behalf. And they certainly do not need any senator throwing a wrench in the function, the vital functioning of our military when they work every day to keep us safe.”

Tuberville fired back at his critics, saying during Tuesday’s hearing that the Pentagon’s policy, which allows military personnel to recoup associated travel expenses if they are stationed in states that ban or restrict the procedure, approves the use of taxpayer dollars to terminate pregnancies despite a congressional block on such spending via a decades-old law known as the Hyde Amendment.

Washington Post, Idaho bill would restrict minors from leaving state for abortions without parents’ consent, Timothy Bella, March 30, 2023 (print ed.). A Republican-led Idaho House bill would limit minors’ ability to travel for an abortion without parental consent, even in states where the procedure is legal.

Less than a year after Idaho banned nearly all abortions, lawmakers are set to vote on a bill that would prohibit minors from interstate travel for the procedure, inching closer to becoming the first state to ban what Republicans are dubbing “abortion trafficking.”

During an Idaho Senate State Affairs Committee on Monday, lawmakers agreed to hold a full vote in the chamber on a Republican-led House bill that would establish the new crime of “abortion trafficking,” which would limit minors’ ability to travel for an abortion without parental consent, even in states where the procedure is legal. House Bill 242 would also mean that adults could face felony charges if they have “the intent to conceal an abortion from the parents or guardian of a pregnant, unemancipated minor, either procures an abortion … or obtains an abortion-inducing drug” for a minor.

“Recruiting, harboring, or transporting the pregnant minor within this state commits the crime of abortion trafficking,” the legislation reads.

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Climate, Environment, Weather, Energy, Disasters, U.S. Transportation

New York Times, President Biden surveyed the damage from a tornado that killed 26 in a small town in Mississippi last week, Michael D. Shear, March 31, 2023. Surrounded by piles of lumber and twisted metal, the president promised that the federal government was “not just here for today.”

President Biden vowed on Friday that the federal government would help Mississippi recover and rebuild from devastation caused by a deadly tornado that ripped through rural parts of the state last week.

The storm left at least 26 people dead and injured dozens in Rolling Fork, a town of about 2,000, and across a wide swath of the Mississippi Delta, leaving the struggling region grasping for help to respond on behalf of those affected.

“This is tough stuff,” Mr. Biden said after arriving in his motorcade, which drove past home after home that had been reduced to piles of lumber and twisted metal.

“The thing that really always amazes me, in all the tornadoes I’ve been to of late, is that you have one house standing and one house, from here to the wall, totally destroyed,” he said. “It’s but for the grace of God.”

Mr. Biden and the first lady, Jill Biden, met privately with families affected by the storms at South Delta Elementary School, which had parts of its roof ripped off and trees toppled.

Afterward, the couple walked through streets damaged by the tornado, stopping briefly to speak with residents whose homes were torn to shreds by the high winds.

As he toured the wreckage, Mr. Biden saw a devastated town with many homes half standing and roofs torn away. Power lines remained on the ground. Blue plastic tarpaulins covered the roofs of houses that still had walls to attach to. A couch cushion hung on the branches of a tree.

On one overturned truck, one member of the town strung an American flag.

“I’ve been to too many sites like this over the last two years around the country,” Mr. Biden told a small group of people who had gathered for his short speech. “And I always see the same thing in America. When the neighborhood’s in trouble, the whole neighborhood comes to help.”

Throughout the day, Mr. Biden was accompanied by Tate Reeves, the state’s Republican governor, who had repeatedly clashed with the president over Covid-19 restrictions.

Mr. Biden had called out the governor for failing to implement what he called common-sense health restrictions, while Mr. Reeves labeled the president’s coronavirus policies “tyrannical” in a war of words that went back and forth for days.

That ill will was nowhere to be found on Friday, as Mr. Reeves warmly welcomed Mr. Biden — and the help of the federal government — to his beleaguered state.

New York Times, Tornados Kill at Least 3 in Arkansas as Storms Hit Midwest and South, Gwen Moritz, McKenna Oxenden, Livia Albeck-Ripka and Amanda Holpuch, March 31, 2023.  The storms also injured at least two dozen people and destroyed homes. Tornado watches were in effect from Illinois to Mississippi.

Two tornadoes that struck in Arkansas on Friday killed three people and injured at least two dozen, tearing down trees and destroying homes as a dangerous storm system swept through the Upper Midwest and South, officials said.

The first tornado, which struck at about 3 p.m. near Little Rock and prompted the governor to declare a state of emergency, killed one person in North Little Rock, the coroner of Pulaski County, Gerone Q. Hobb, confirmed.

Frank Scott Jr., the mayor of Little Rock, said on Twitter that at least 24 people had been hospitalized and described the damage as “extensive.”

A second tornado, in Wynne, Ark., about 100 miles east of Little Rock, struck at about 6 p.m. and killed two people, the Arkansas emergency manager, Rebekah Magnus, said. No other information was immediately available.

The International Court of Justice (ICJ), shown above, is the principal judicial organ of the United Nations. As described by its website, the ICJ is a civil tribunal that hears disputes between countries. It has no prosecutor or jurisdiction to try individuals, including those accused of war crimes or crimes against humanity. Its current president, Joan Donoghue, right, is a United States citizen who became a justice on the court in 2010 following election by United Nations members. She then won election from other justices in 2021 to become the ICJ president for a three-year term. The court's vice president is Kiill Gevorgian of the Russian Federation. Other current members are shown here.

New York Times, Can Nations Be Sued for Weak Climate Action? We’ll Soon Get an Answer, Somini Sengupta, March 30, 2023 (print ed.). Vanuatu, a disaster-prone Pacific country, has secured United Nations approval to take that question to the International Court of Justice.

A tiny Pacific island nation has pulled off the kind diplomatic win that can elude global superpowers.

On Wednesday, Vanuatu, population 300,000, rallied a majority of countries to ask the world’s highest court to weigh in on a high-stakes question: Can countries be sued under international law for failing to slow down climate change?

The measure passed by consensus, meaning none of the 193 member states requested a vote. The General Assembly Hall erupted in applause.

That it was adopted by consensus reflects widespread frustration over the fact that the greenhouse gas emissions warming the planet and wreaking havoc on the poorest nations are not being reduced quickly enough.

New York Times, California to Require Half of All Heavy Trucks Sold by 2035 to Be Electric, March 31, 2023. The state is setting limits to try to eliminate emissions from transportation, the sector of the U.S. economy that generates the most greenhouse gases.

Washington Post, Minnesota train carrying ethanol derails, catches fire; evacuations ordered, Luz Lazo and Ellen Francis, March 31, 2023 (print ed.). BNSF said about 22 cars carrying mixed freight derailed, and four cars caught fire

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• Washington Post, Norfolk Southern CEO says he’s ‘deeply sorry’ for train derailment’s impact on Ohio

Pandemics, Public Health, Privacy

Washington Post, Millions poised to lose Medicaid as pandemic coverage protections end, starting tomorrow, Amy Goldstein, March 31, 2023 (print ed.). At the end of this week, states will begin to sever an anticipated 15 million low-income Americans from Medicaid rolls that ballooned to record heights because of a pandemic-era promise that people with the health insurance could keep it — a federal promise that is going away.

The end to the temporary guarantee that preserved the safety-net health coverage for the past three years saddles every state with an immense undertaking: sorting out which Medicaid beneficiaries actually belong. Around the country, officials have been preparing for months, but the result is a bumpy landscape consisting of states that vary in how ready they are for this daunting work.

Five states will start April 1 — the first date allowed under a recent federal law — to cut off beneficiaries who no longer qualify for Medicaid or have not provided proof they still deserve the coverage. Nearly all other states will begin to remove people between May and July. Already, almost half the states have set in motion the preliminary work of checking eligibility.

This Medicaid “unwinding,” as it is called, is a reprise of a pre-pandemic practice of requiring low-income people to demonstrate each year that they qualified for the coverage. But federal and state health officials and grass-roots advocates are bracing for what they say looms as the nation’s biggest health-insurance disruption since the Affordable Care Act came into existence more than a decade ago. That disruption is among the most profound ways the government is gravitating away from a pandemic footing, retreating from generous policies it adopted to help Americans in an emergency.

The scale of the undertaking has no precedent. The number of Americans relying on Medicaid has soared by about one-third — to 85 million as of late last year — since just before the coronavirus pandemic took hold in early 2020. Those who joined during that time did not need to pay attention to renewal notices from their states — which now could cost them their insurance.

And within state governments, many Medicaid agencies are strained by shortages of eligibility workers and call-center staffers to advise beneficiaries, while employees hired in the past three years have not until now needed to learn how to conduct renewals.

Washington Post, Opinion: Will we repeat the same mistake we made on boosters? Leana S. Wen, right, March 31, 2023 (print ed.). Federal health officials need to allow vulnerable individuals desperate to receive their second bivalent booster to do so. This would be in line with what Canadian and British officials have already decided, as I wrote in my column this week. With so many vaccine doses in our supply, why not let Americans who want an extra one get it?

The delay by the Food and Drug Administration and CDC is reminiscent of what happened a year and a half ago, when the United States lagged Israel, Germany, Britain and other countries in recommending initial boosters to high-risk groups. At that point, the booster guidance inexplicably did not include recipients of the one-dose Johnson & Johnson vaccine. J&J recipients were left in the dark for so long that the city of San Francisco overrode federal health authorities to give boosters to this group.

Washington Post, How to know whether you have allergies or a virus, Lindsey Bever and Allyson Chiu, March 30, 2023. The symptoms of allergies and respiratory illnesses, including colds, flu and covid-19, are often similar. Here’s how to tell them apart.

Washington Post, TikTok is addictive for many girls, especially those with depression, Donna St. George, March 31, 2023 (print ed.). Study of social media platforms deepens our picture of the struggles faced by teen girls.

Many girls liked what they found online, but at the same time they said social media exposed them to addiction and bigotry. (iStock)

Nearly half of adolescent girls on TikTok feel addicted to it or use the platform for longer than they intend, according to a report that looks at social media as a central facet of American girlhood.

TikTok leads the way in total time on its platform, with girls who use it logging more than 2.5 hours a day, according to researchers from Brown University and the nonprofit Common Sense Media. But YouTube is only a bit behind, at nearly 2.5 hours, with Snapchat and messaging apps at about two hours, and Instagram at 92 minutes. Many of the girls surveyed, ages 11 to 15, use multiple platforms each day.
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While most girls described the effects of social media on people their age as positive, about 1 in 4 who use TikTok, Instagram and Snapchat experience negative social comparisons and feel pressure daily to show the best versions of themselves.

Among those most vulnerable to the downsides of social media were girls with moderate to severe symptoms of depression, who were more likely to say their lives would be better without social media. More of them used social media “almost constantly.” With TikTok, 68 percent said they felt addicted or used it more than intended, compared to 33 percent of girls with no depressive symptoms.

Jacqueline Nesi, co-author and an assistant professor of psychiatry at Brown, also pointed out that three-quarters of girls with moderate to severe depression symptoms who use Instagram report encountering suicide-related content at least monthly. Similarly, 69 percent reported the same issue on TikTok and 64 percent on Snapchat and YouTube.

“That’s a really significant number of girls who are already struggling and then are coming across this type of harmful content online,” she said.

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Media, Education, Arts, High Tech

New York Times, Tech Fix: Twitter’s Blue Check Apocalypse Is Upon Us. Here’s What to Know, Brian X. Chen and Ryan Mac, March 31, 2023. Elon Musk, Twitter’s owner, is changing the platform’s longstanding practice of verifying accounts. That has implications for a range of users.

The blue check mark on Twitter has long conferred a special status. Only certain accounts — typically those of public figures whose identities were confirmed — have been bestowed the symbol.

Now that is changing.

Starting on Saturday, many Twitter accounts will lose the check mark under modifications being made by Elon Musk, the social media company’s owner. Individual users must buy a subscription to Twitter’s Blue service, which costs $8 a month, to obtain the badge. Businesses that are currently unverified will have to pay $1,000 a month if they want a gold check mark verifying their account.

The move, which will help Twitter generate revenue by making certain features exclusive to subscribers, has implications for a range of users on the platform. Here’s what to know.

For those of you who primarily use Twitter to follow celebrities and news sites, this policy change will affect what you see and read on the service.

What does the change mean for Twitter users?

For those of you who primarily use Twitter to follow celebrities and news sites, this policy change will affect what you see and read on the service.

You may see fewer tweets from accounts you care about in your timeline, for instance, because individuals who choose not to pay for Twitter Blue will become less visible on the site.

 It may become harder for most users to discern real people from phony accounts. If check marks are removed from the accounts of celebrities who are unwilling to pay for Blue, for example, it could become difficult to distinguish their accounts from impersonators.

Mr. Musk has said only posts from paid accounts with blue checks will be visible in Twitter’s “For You” tab, the default timeline of tweets that the platform shows you based on your interests. The only exception, he later said, will be posts from nonverified accounts that you already follow, which will continue showing up in your timeline.

All of this means it is likely to become tougher to discover posts from accounts without the blue check marks. For example, if you follow lots of news about sports and a nonverified account tweets some sports-related news, you won’t see it in your timeline unless you already follow that account. In the past, you may have found that content purely because it went viral.

One caveat to these likely changes is that Mr. Musk is not known for always following through on his public intentions. So parts of the check-mark policy could change as Twitter rolls it out.

Will people start paying for the check marks?

That all depends on whether the account holder derives enough value from having a blue check mark to justify paying for it.

Celebrities and institutions might choose not to pay because they already have large numbers of followers who will continue to see their posts.

The New York Times, which has nearly 55 million followers on Twitter, said on Thursday that it would not pay for the verified badge for its institutional accounts, including @nytimes. The Times also told its journalists that it would not reimburse them for a Twitter Blue subscription, except in rare cases when it was necessary for reporting.

But other types of Twitter users may choose to pay for the check marks. Those include some small businesses that use Twitter to market their services and want their content to reach broader audiences. In this scenario, paying for verification will essentially be an advertising expense.

Among social media companies such as Meta and Snap, Twitter is the smallest social network, and the company continues to shrink in size and relevance.

Mr. Musk has shed much of Twitter’s staff, leaving the company with fewer than 2,000 employees, down from 7,500 when he took over in October. The site still has problems with bots posting spam and impostor accounts impersonating public figures. Security issues, glitches and bugs are piling up. And some influencers and journalists are migrating to other platforms, including Mastodon, LinkedIn and Instagram.

Washington Post, Analysis: Elon Musk’s Twitter pushes hate speech, extremist content into ‘For You’ pages, Faiz Siddiqui and Jeremy B. Merrill, March 31, 2023. A Washington Post analysis found that accounts following dozens of Twitter handles pushing hate speech were subjected to an algorithmic echo chamber, in which Twitter fed additional hateful and racist content to users.

Twitter is amplifying hate speech in its “For You” timeline, an unintended side effect of an algorithm that is supposed to show users more of what they want.

According to a Washington Post analysis of Twitter’s recommendation algorithm, accounts that followed “extremists” — hate-promoting accounts identified in a list provided by the Southern Poverty Law Center — were subjected to a mix of other racist and incendiary speech. That included tweets from a self-proclaimed Nazi, for example, a user the account did not follow.

Washington Post, Rand Paul blocks Josh Hawley’s bid to ban TikTok in GOP split, Mariana Alfaro and Kelsey Ables, March 31, 2023 (print ed.). Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) blocked an effort by Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) to fast-track legislation he introduced that would ban the popular Chinese-owned social media app TikTok nationwide.

On Wednesday evening, Hawley took to the Senate floor to ask for unanimous consent to begin work on his “No TikTok on United States Devices Act.” Although Republicans have long said TikTok should be limited, Paul said he objected, arguing Hawley’s ban amounts to an attack on the First Amendment.

“To those who are worried that the Chinese government might somehow now have access to millions of American teenagers’ information — realize that all social media sucks up personal data that people voluntarily provide,” Paul said. “If you’re going to ban TikTok, what’s next?”

While introducing his request, Hawley said TikTok presents a threat and called for protecting “the security of every single American whose personal lives, whose personal data, whose personal security is in danger from the Chinese Communist Party in Beijing.”

Wall Street Journal, Musk’s Change to Twitter’s Blue Check Mark Angers Celebrities, Alexa Corse, March 31, 2023 (print ed.). William Shatner, Jason Alexander and Monica Lewinsky have criticized the move to tie a social-media status symbol to platform subscriptions.

Twitter Inc.’s plan to remove legacy blue check marks for verified accounts heralds an end to a longtime social-media status symbol and is prompting complaints from some of the platform’s celebrity contributors concerned about potential impersonation.

The departing system, in which Twitter verified notable accounts to confirm their authenticity by adding a blue check mark next to the user’s name, will give way starting April 1 to one in which users must purchase a subscription to be verified, the company has said.

Twitter, which previously didn’t charge for verification, is only providing it now to those who pay $8 to $11 for a monthly subscription, depending on whether it is paid via mobile or web browser.

Overseas Press Club (OPC), OPC Condemns Russia’s Arrest of Wall Street Journal Reporter Evan Gershkovich, Staff Report, March 31, 2023. The Overseas Press Club of America strongly condemns and expresses its deep concern over the press freedom implications of the detention of Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich in Russia for alleged espionage.

Gershkovich, a 31-year-old U.S. journalist, was arrested by Russia’s Federal Security Service and detained in the city of Yekaterinburg on suspicion “of espionage in the interests of the American government.” The security service, known as FSB, alleges the journalist collected information “constituting a state secret.” White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre in a statement condemned the detention “in the strongest terms.”

The Wall Street Journal denies the allegations and is calling for Gershkovich’s immediate release. His detainment marks the first time Russia has charged a U.S. journalist with spying since the Cold War. His recent stories include a look at how international sanctions are affecting Russia’s economy and on tensions between the Kremlin elite and the Wagner paramilitary force.

The OPC joins calls for Gershkovich’s immediate release and expresses deep concern over journalists being used as pawns amid geopolitical tensions between countries. By all accounts, Gershkovich was simply doing his job as a journalist. He is accredited to the Wall Street Journal’s bureau in Moscow with the Russian Foreign Ministry, and previously worked as a reporter for Agence France-Presse and the Moscow Times.

The OPC, the largest association in the United States of journalists engaged in international news, steadfastly supports the rights of journalists around the world to freely report without harassment or detention by any government body or agency. Journalism is not a crime.

Washington Post, Gwyneth Paltrow not liable for Utah ski collision and awarded $1, jury rules, Sonia Rao and Maham Javaid, March 31, 2023 (print ed.). A jury ruled Thursday that Gwyneth Paltrow was not liable for a 2016 ski collision with a man who claims the Oscar-winning actress careened into him on a slope in Utah and left him with life-altering brain trauma.

The actor was not at fault in the accident while Sanderson was “one hundred percent at fault,” the jury said in the verdict. The retired optometrist was also held liable for causing Paltrow harm and owes her $1 for compensation of economic damages.

Terry Sanderson, a 76-year-old retired optometrist, had sought upward of $300,000 in damages from the actress — down from the $3 million for which he originally sued after he and Paltrow collided on a beginner’s slope in February 2016 at Deer Valley Resort in Park City, one of the top Alpine ranges in the country. A jury took three hours to deliberate before deciding that the 2016 accident was Sanderson’s fault and that it caused harm to Paltrow.

The amount of money at stake in the lawsuit paled in comparison to the spectacle around it, with observers analyzing Paltrow’s fashion choices as she sat silently through long days of testimony, and her legal team complaining that journalists in the courtroom kept taking close-ups shots of the actress when she wasn’t speaking. Her attorney Stephen Owens said in closing arguments that it took “a lot of courage” for Paltrow to sit through proceedings.

The two-week trial veered toward absurdity when Paltrow, 50, took the stand on March 24 to argue that Sanderson’s account of the crash was largely fabricated. Sanderson attorney Kristin VanOrman’s interrogation resembled a tabloid magazine interview at points.

New York Times, Publishers Worry A.I. Chatbots Will Cut Readership, Katie Robertson, March 31, 2023 (print ed.). Many sites get at least half their traffic from search engines. Fuller results generated by new chatbots could mean far fewer visitors.

The publishing industry has spent the past two decades struggling to adjust to the internet, as print circulation has plummeted and tech companies have gobbled up rivers of advertising revenue.

Now come the chatbots.

New artificial intelligence tools from Google and Microsoft give answers to search queries in full paragraphs rather than a list of links. Many publishers worry that far fewer people will click through to news sites as a result, shrinking traffic — and, by extension, revenue.

The new A.I. search tools remain in limited release, so publishers such as Condé Nast and Vice have not yet seen an effect on their business. But in an effort to prevent the industry from being upended without their input, many are pulling together task forces to weigh options, making the topic a priority at industry conferences and, through a trade organization, planning a push to be paid for the use of their content by chatbots.

“You could essentially call this the Wikipedia-ization of a lot of information,” said Bryan Goldberg, the chief executive of BDG, which publishes lifestyle and culture websites like Bustle, Nylon and Romper. “You’re bringing together Wikipedia-style answers to an infinite number of questions, and that’s just going to nuke many corners of the open web.”

Washington Post, Gwyneth Paltrow not liable for Utah ski collision and awarded $1, jury rules, Sonia Rao and Maham Javaid, March 31, 2023 (print ed.). A jury ruled Thursday that Gwyneth Paltrow was not liable for a 2016 ski collision with a man who claims the Oscar-winning actress careened into him on a slope in Utah and left him with life-altering brain trauma.

The actor was not at fault in the accident while Sanderson was “one hundred percent at fault,” the jury said in the verdict. The retired optometrist was also held liable for causing Paltrow harm and owes her $1 for compensation of economic damages.

Terry Sanderson, a 76-year-old retired optometrist, had sought upward of $300,000 in damages from the actress — down from the $3 million for which he originally sued after he and Paltrow collided on a beginner’s slope in February 2016 at Deer Valley Resort in Park City, one of the top Alpine ranges in the country. A jury took three hours to deliberate before deciding that the 2016 accident was Sanderson’s fault and that it caused harm to Paltrow.

The amount of money at stake in the lawsuit paled in comparison to the spectacle around it, with observers analyzing Paltrow’s fashion choices as she sat silently through long days of testimony, and her legal team complaining that journalists in the courtroom kept taking close-ups shots of the actress when she wasn’t speaking. Her attorney Stephen Owens said in closing arguments that it took “a lot of courage” for Paltrow to sit through proceedings.

The two-week trial veered toward absurdity when Paltrow, 50, took the stand on March 24 to argue that Sanderson’s account of the crash was largely fabricated. Sanderson attorney Kristin VanOrman’s interrogation resembled a tabloid magazine interview at points.

Washington Post, Analysis: Elon Musk’s Twitter pushes hate speech, extremist content into ‘For You’ pages, Faiz Siddiqui and Jeremy B. Merrill, March 31, 2023. A Washington Post analysis found that accounts following dozens of Twitter handles pushing hate speech were subjected to an algorithmic echo chamber, in which Twitter fed additional hateful and racist content to users.

Twitter is amplifying hate speech in its “For You” timeline, an unintended side effect of an algorithm that is supposed to show users more of what they want.

According to a Washington Post analysis of Twitter’s recommendation algorithm, accounts that followed “extremists” — hate-promoting accounts identified in a list provided by the Southern Poverty Law Center — were subjected to a mix of other racist and incendiary speech. That included tweets from a self-proclaimed Nazi, for example, a user the account did not follow.

Washington Post, Rand Paul blocks Josh Hawley’s bid to ban TikTok in GOP split, Mariana Alfaro and Kelsey Ables, March 31, 2023 (print ed.). Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) blocked an effort by Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) to fast-track legislation he introduced that would ban the popular Chinese-owned social media app TikTok nationwide.

On Wednesday evening, Hawley took to the Senate floor to ask for unanimous consent to begin work on his “No TikTok on United States Devices Act.” Although Republicans have long said TikTok should be limited, Paul said he objected, arguing Hawley’s ban amounts to an attack on the First Amendment.

“To those who are worried that the Chinese government might somehow now have access to millions of American teenagers’ information — realize that all social media sucks up personal data that people voluntarily provide,” Paul said. “If you’re going to ban TikTok, what’s next?”

While introducing his request, Hawley said TikTok presents a threat and called for protecting “the security of every single American whose personal lives, whose personal data, whose personal security is in danger from the Chinese Communist Party in Beijing.”

Washington Post, Mark Russell, political satirist with a star-spangled piano, dies at 90, Bart Barnes, March 31, 2023 (print ed.). With his instrument of choice, he called himself a “political cartoonist for the blind.”

Mark Russell, Washington’s social-political satirist and stand-up comic who spoofed, teased and laughed at celebrities, politicians, politics and popular culture for more than 50 years from behind his star-spangled piano, died March 30 at his home in D.C. He was 90.

The cause was complications from prostate cancer, said his wife, Alison Russell.

From the waning years of Dwight Eisenhower’s administration through the presidencies of 10 succeeding chief executives, Mr. Russell poked fun at the foibles and flaws of the well-known, the pompous and the powerful in monologues replete with pithy one-liners and musical ditties. He called himself “a political cartoonist for the blind.”

Long an institution on Washington’s stages and in hotel bars, Mr. Russell gained a national following on public television, where for 30 years he made regular broadcasts. In the 1980s and 1990s, he took his show on the road, appearing live in public and corporate venues in cities and towns across the United States.

Washington Post, AI company behind fake depictions of Trump and pope lets users generate images of world leaders, but not Xi, Isaac Stanley-Becker and Drew Harwell, March 31, 2023 (print ed.). Midjourney, the year-old firm behind recent fake visuals of Donald Trump and the pope, illustrates the lack of oversight accompanying spectacular strides in AI.

New York Times, Anti-Israel Protests Cost Indonesia a FIFA Soccer Championship, Sui-Lee Wee and Victor Mather, March 31, 2023 (print ed.). Preparations for the tournament were thrown into disarray when a governor asked Indonesia’s sports ministry to bar Israel’s team from participating.

When a stampede at a soccer stadium in Indonesia killed 135 people last year, it became one of the worst disasters in the sport’s history, leaving fans and players traumatized.

Indonesian officials saw the FIFA Under-20 World Cup, scheduled to be held in Indonesia from May 20 to June 11, as an opportunity to undo some of the damage caused by the disaster and to repair the country’s reputation among soccer fans.

Instead, Indonesia was stripped of its championship hosting duties by FIFA on Wednesday amid protests over Israel’s participation, a blow to the world’s largest Muslim-majority nation as it seeks to burnish its influence on the global stage.

Israel’s team qualified for the tournament for the first time this year, a result that proved to be fraught in Indonesia, which has longstanding sympathies for Palestinians.

The dispute comes at a time when Indonesia’s conservative Muslims have become more outspoken and many officials are worried about making a wrong move ahead of next year’s presidential election. Supporting Palestinians remains hugely popular in the country.

In a viral video, veteran Indonesian journalist Najwa Shihab denounced fellow Indonesians who “talk loudly about the sufferings of the Palestinians,” but have chosen to close their eyes to the injustice suffered by the victims of last year’s soccer stadium tragedy.

Preparations for the tournament were thrown into disarray when Wayan Koster, the governor of Bali, wrote to Indonesia’s sports ministry earlier this month asking the agency to bar Israel from playing in his province.

The tournament’s draw had been scheduled to be held on the island this week. When FIFA postponed it after learning of Mr. Koster’s request, it sparked a crisis for the Indonesian government.

Conservative Muslim protesters marched on Monday in Jakarta, Indonesia’s capital, carrying signs and chanting slogans objecting to Israel’s participation. On Tuesday, President Joko Widodo addressed the nation, telling Indonesians that the government had always been “consistent and firm in fighting for and supporting the independence of a Palestinian nation and supporting the achievement of a two-state solution.”

Indonesia could face further penalties in the weeks ahead, including a possible ban from qualifying for the 2026 World Cup. Mr. Erick said that he had “tried his best” to resolve the situation and that the country had to accept FIFA’s decision. “I ask all soccer lovers to keep their heads held high over this tough decision by FIFA,” he said in a statement.

Indonesia has spent close to $12 million renovating five stadiums and 20 practice fields in preparation for the championship. DJs and musicians have teamed up on an official soundtrack. By Thursday morning, Nova Rianto, a visibly emotional assistant coach with Indonesia’s under-20 team, posted a video on Instagram showing players sniffling as he tried to console them.

New York Times, Tokyo Olympics Scandal Fouls Hopes for a Sapporo Winter Games, Ben Dooley and Hisako Ueno, March 31, 2023 (print ed.). The International Olympic Committee was already struggling to find hosts for the Winter Games. Sapporo’s flailing 2030 bid has added another headache.

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March 30

New York Times, Live Updates: GRAND JURY VOTES TO INDICT TRUMP

New York Times, Live Updates: GRAND JURY VOTES TO INDICT TRUMP, Ben Protess, Jonah E. Bromwich and William K. Rashbaum, March 30, 2023.  Unprecedented Case Will Have Wide-Ranging Implications. A Manhattan grand jury voted to indict Donald Trump for his role in paying hush money to a porn star, according to five people with knowledge of the matter; The development will shake up the 2024 presidential race and forever mark Mr. Trump as the nation’s first former president to face criminal charges.

Former President Trump faces varied legal and political threats, including an escalating New York criminal investigation into purported campaign finance crimes involving payments in 2016 to hide his alleged affair with porn star Stormy Daniels, shown above left on the cover of her memoir "Full Disclosure."

A Manhattan grand jury voted to indict Donald J. Trump on Thursday for his role in paying hush money to a porn star, according to five people with knowledge of the matter, a historic development that will shake up the 2024 presidential race and forever mark him as the nation’s first former president to face criminal charges.

An indictment will likely be announced in the coming days. By then, prosecutors working for the district attorney, Alvin L. Bragg, left, will have asked Mr. Trump to surrender and to face arraignment on charges that remain unknown for now.

Mr. Trump has for decades avoided criminal charges despite persistent scrutiny and repeated investigations, creating an aura of legal invincibility that the vote to indict now threatens to puncture.

His actions surrounding his 2020 electoral defeat are now the focus of a separate federal investigation, and a Georgia prosecutor is in the final stages of an investigation into Mr. Trump’s attempts to reverse the election results in that state.

But unlike the investigations that arose from his time in the White House, this case is built around a tawdry episode that predates Mr. Trump’s presidency. The reality star turned presidential candidate who shocked the political establishment by winning the White House now faces a reckoning for a hush money payment that buried a sex scandal in the final days of the 2016 campaign.

On Thursday, the three lead prosecutors on the Trump investigation walked into the building where the grand jury was sitting in the minutes before the panel was scheduled to meet at 2 p.m. One of them carried a copy of the penal law — with Post-it notes visible — which was likely used to read the criminal statutes to the grand jurors before they voted. About three hours later, the prosecutors walked into the court clerk’s office through a back door to begin the process of filing the indictment.

Mr. Trump has consistently denied all wrongdoing and attacked Mr. Bragg, a Democrat, accusing him of leading a politically motivated prosecution. He has also denied any affair with the porn star, Stormy Daniels, who had been looking to sell her story of a tryst with Mr. Trump during the campaign.

Here’s what else you need to know:

Mr. Bragg and his lawyers will likely attempt to negotiate Mr. Trump’s surrender. If he agrees, it will raise the prospect of a former president, with the Secret Service in tow, being photographed and fingerprinted in the bowels of a New York State courthouse.

The prosecution’s star witness is Michael D. Cohen, Mr. Trump’s former fixer who paid the $130,000 to keep Ms. Daniels quiet. Mr. Cohen has said that Mr. Trump directed him to buy Ms. Daniels’s silence, and that Mr. Trump and his family business, the Trump Organization, helped cover the whole thing up. The company’s internal records falsely identified the reimbursements as legal expenses, which helped conceal the purpose of the payments.

Although the specific charges remain unknown, Mr. Bragg’s prosecutors have zeroed in on that hush money payment and the false records created by Mr. Trump’s company. A conviction is not a sure thing: An attempt to combine a charge relating to the false records with an election violation relating to the payment to Ms. Daniels would be based on a legal theory that has yet to be evaluated by judges, raising the possibility that a court could throw out or limit the charges.

The vote to indict, the product of a nearly five-year investigation, kicks off a new and volatile phase in Mr. Trump’s post-presidential life as he makes a third run for the White House. And it could throw the race for the Republican nomination — which he leads in most polls — into uncharted territory.

Mr. Bragg is the first prosecutor to lead an indictment of Mr. Trump. He is now likely to become a national figure enduring a harsh political spotlight.

HuffPost, Trump Denies Wrongdoing In Statement On Grand Jury Indictment, Sara Boboltz, March 30, 2023. The former president called himself a "completely innocent person" after news broke that he was being criminally charged — or, in his words, "INDICATED."

Former President Donald Trump reacted angrily on Thursday to news that he had been indicted by a Manhattan grand jury on unknown charges linked to a hush money payment made to an adult film actor. The 2024 candidate is now the first U.S. president in history to be criminally charged.

“These Thugs and Radical Left Monsters have just INDICATED the 45th President of the United States of America,” Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform, seemingly misspelling “indicted.”
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He went on: “THIS IS AN ATTACK ON OUR COUNTRY THE LIKES OF WHICH HAS NEVER BEEN SEEN BEFORE. IT IS LIKEWISE A CONTINUING ATTACK ON OUR ONCE FREE AND FAIR ELECTIONS. THE USA IS NOW A THIRD WORLD NATION, A NATION IN SERIOUS DECLINE. SO SAD!”

Trump also released a more even-keeled statement minutes prior, calling the development “Political Persecution and Election Interference at the highest level in history.”

“The Democrats have lied, cheated and stolen in their obsession with trying to ‘Get Trump,’ but now they’ve done the unthinkable — indicting a completely innocent person in an act of blatant Election Interference,” his statement read.

It concluded: “I believe this Witch-Hunt will backfire massively on [President] Joe Biden. The American people realize exactly what the Radical Left Democrats are doing here. Everyone can see it. So our Movement, and our Party - united and strong - will first defeat [Manhattan District Attorney] Alvin Bragg, and then we will defeat Joe Biden, and we are going to throw every last one of these Crooked Democrats out of office so we can MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!”

Palmer Report, Opinion: Michael Cohen reacts to the news that Donald Trump has been criminally indicted in Manhattan, Bill Palmer, right, March 30, 2023 (6:07 p.m.). Moments ago the news broke that a Manhattan grand jury has voted to criminally indict Donald Trump on at least one felony charge. Even as we all attempt to put this into perspective, key witness Michael Cohen, above left, called in to MSNBC and shared some thoughts.

Cohen can be very direct when he thinks it’s needed. But on this occasion Cohen was mostly reserved, declining to state whether or not he knows what the specific charges are, and saying that “It’s better for the indictment to speak for itself.”

Cohen did add that “Accountability matters” and that he stands by his grand jury testimony. Given that the Manhattan DA went ahead and asked the grand jury to indict, it gives vindication to the credulity of Cohen’s testimony.

Cohen added that “I always believed that this day was going to come.” He also added this: “I wish that people would have taken a few moments and not jumped the gun the way that we’ve been watching the media, many of the talking heads worrying about what’s happening a month from now.”

In any case, the contrast is now fascinating. Donald Trump has been criminally indicted and is now going to be placed under arrest, arraigned in front of a judge, and tried in front of a jury. Meanwhile Michael Cohen is now a respected public figure and a two-time bestselling author.

• Washington Post, Analysis: Trump is indicted in N.Y. Here’s what it means and what happens next, Perry Stein
• Wall Street Journal, Indictment Could Boost GOP Primary Bid but Hurt a Rematch With Bide
• Washington Post, Analysis: Trump indictment follows 50 years of investigation on many fronts, Marc Fisher
• Palmer Report, Opinion: Someone’s been misleading Donald Trump about his criminal indictment, Bill Palmer

Other Top Headlines

• New York Times, Decades Later, Senate Votes to Repeal Iraq Military Authorizations
• Washington Post, Deadly weapon, divided nation: How a change in law could provide crucial seconds to survive a mass shooting
• New York Times, Nashville Shooting Prompts Shrug in Washington, as G.O.P. Refuses to Act, Annie Karni
• New York Times, After Mass Shootings, Republicans Expand Access to Guns
• Washington Post, Police response in Nashville was ‘exact opposite’ to Uvalde, experts say
• Washington Post, Shooter warned friend of ‘something bad’ in Instagram messages
• Washington Post, Democrats’ anger boils over after GOP witnesses testify without taking questions
• Washington Post, Gisele Fetterman says ‘vicious attacks’ poured in after husband’s hospitalization
• New York Times, Mexico Investigates Migrant Deaths in Border City Fire as Homicide
• Washington Post, He came to D.C. as a Brazilian student. The U.S. says he was a Russian spy
• New York Times, Russia detained a Wall Street Journal reporter, accusing him of espionage
• National Press Club, Club Calls For Russia To Release Evan Gershkovich
• Washington Post, The Vulkan Files: Secret documents trove offers rare look at Russian cyberwar ambitions, Craig Timberg, Ellen Nakashima, Hannes Munzinger and Hakan Tanriverdi 

More On Trump Probes, Prospects, Allies

• Politico, Manhattan Trump grand jury set to break for a month
• \Washington Post, New York grand jury hearing Trump case adjourns without vote
• Politico, Judge says Pence must testify to Jan. 6 grand jury
• Politico, Juror in Oath Keepers trial reveals secrets from the deliberation room, Kyle Cheney

U.S. Mass Shootings, Gun Control

• New York Times, What We Know About the Nashville School Shooting
• Washington Post, What damage can an AR-15 do to a human body? A rare look
• Washington Post, Editorial: No one needs an AR-15 — or any gun tailor-made for mass shootings
• Washington Post, From outcast to political symbol: How the AR-15 emerged as an icon
• New York Times, Opinion: We’re About to Find Out How Far the Supreme Court Will Go to Arm America, Linda Greenhouse
• Washington Post, Congressmen get in shouting match over gun control after Nashville shooting

U.S. Courts, Crime, Immigration

• New York Times, Opinion: How the Most Important Election of 2023 Turned Extraordinarily Ugly, Michelle Goldberg and Madeleine Hordinski
• New York Times, The Undoing of Guo Wengui, Billionaire Accused of Fraud on 2 Continents
• New York Times, Immigration Tripled in Top U.S. Counties Even as Many of Them Lost Population
• New York Times, Behind a Surge in Teenage Killings: Grief, Anger and Online Grudges
• New York Times, DeSantis Burnishes Tough-on-Crime Image to Take On Trump
• New York Times, Several Face Charges in Killings of Gay Men Who Were Drugged and Robbed
• Washington Post, Activist group led by Ginni Thomas received nearly $600,000 in anonymous donations
• Washington Post, Supreme Court justices under new ethics disclosures on trips, other gifts
• Washington Post, D.C. U.S. attorney declined to prosecute 67 percent of those arrested. Here’s why
• New York Times, Appeals Court Reinstates Adnan Syed’s Murder Conviction in ‘Serial’ Case

U.S. Political Culture Wars

• Washington Post, Disney quietly dodged DeSantis’s oversight board, appointees realize
• New York Times, Opinion: A Florida School Banned a Disney Movie About Ruby Bridges. Here’s What That Really Means, Charles Blow
• Washington Post, Ala. GOP lawmaker to House committee: D.C. schools are ‘crappy,’ ‘inmate factories’
• Washington Post, Nashville shooting exploited by right to escalate anti-trans rhetoric
• Washington Post, Congressmen get in shouting match over gun control after Nashville shooting

U.S. Budget, Banks, Economy, Jobs, CryptoCurrency

• New York Times, Debt Talks Are Frozen as House Republicans Splinter Over a Fiscal Plan
• Washington Post, U.S. targets world’s biggest crypto market with charges against Binance
• Politico, Credit Suisse hid $700M from IRS, Senate investigators say
• New York Times, Regulators Blame Banks’ Mismanagement for Failures
• New York Times, Sam Bankman-Fried Is Charged With Foreign Bribery

Global News, Migration, Human Rights

• New York Times, U.S.-Israel Tensions Over Judicial Overhaul Burst Into Open, In response to sharp criticism by President Biden
• Washington Post, Editorial: How Russia turned America’s helping hand to Ukraine into a vast lie
• New York Times, Fire in Mexico Kills at Least 39 in Migration Center Near U.S. Border
• New York Times, U.S. Border Policies Have Created a Volatile Logjam in Mexico

U.S. Politics, Elections, Governance

• New York Times, Michigan Democrats Rise, and Try to Turn a Battleground Blue
• New York Times, Republicans Face Setbacks in Push to Make Voting Harder for College Students
• Axios, Scoop: Christie pledges never to support Trump again, Josh Kraushaar
• Washington Post, 9 soldiers killed as two U.S. Army helicopters crash in Ky. during training mission
• Washington Post, Arizona Democrats to sue No Labels to block third-party challenge
• Washington Post, Manchin, facing reelection, ratchets up criticism of Biden on energy, fiscal policy
• Washington Post, After #FreeBritney, Senate bill seeks changes to guardianships
• Washington Post, Ariz. governor’s press secretary resigns amid backlash over gun-toting post

Ukraine War

• Washington Post, Editorial: How Russia turned America’s helping hand to Ukraine into a vast lie, Editorial Board
• New York Times, Ukrainians Directing Soldiers From a Hidden Hub See Bakhmut Going Their Way
• New York Times, Turkey Is Likely to Clear the Way for Finland to Join NATO
• New York Times, Ukraine Goes Dark: Images From Space Drive Home the Nation’s Anguish

 Disasters, Climate, Environment, U.S. Transportation, Energy

• New York Times, In a Tornado’s Wake, a Mississippi Town Wrestles With Grief and Gratitude
• Washington Post, Minnesota train carrying ethanol derails, catches fire; evacuations ordered
• New York Times, Can Nations Be Sued for Weak Climate Action? We’ll Soon Get an Answer

U.S. Abortion, #MeToo, Stalking, Rape Laws, Politics

• Washington Post, Pentagon raises alarm over Sen. Tuberville’s gambit on abortion policy
• Washington Post, Analysis: Some abortion clinics are opening new locations near states with bans
• Washington Post, Idaho bill would restrict minors from leaving state for abortions without parents’ consent
• Washington Post, This Texas teen wanted an abortion. She now has twins

Pandemics, Public Health, Privacy

• Washington Post, TikTok is addictive for many girls, especially those with depression
• Washington Post, How to know whether you have allergies or a virus,
• New York Times, ‘We’re Going Away’: A State’s Choice to Forgo Medicaid Funds Is Killing Hospitals
• New York Times, To Cut Overdose Deaths, F.D.A. Approves Over-the-Counter Narcan
• New York Times, You May Need That Procedure. But Do You Really Need an Escort?
• Washington Post, Analysis: The White House covid response team is winding down, Rachel Roubein and McKenzie Beard

U.S. Media, Education, Arts, Sports

• New York Times, Publishers Worry A.I. Chatbots Will Cut Readership
• Wall Street Journal, Musk’s Change to Twitter’s Blue Check Mark Angers Celebrities
• Washington Post, Analysis: How Fox News is trying to guide its viewers away from Trump, Philip Bump
• Washington Post, Mark Russell, political satirist with a star-spangled piano, dies at 90
• Washington Post, TikTok is addictive for many girls, especially those with depression
• Washington Post, AI company behind fake depictions of Trump and pope lets users generate images of world leaders, but not Xi
• New York Times, Opinion: A Florida School Banned a Disney Movie About Ruby Bridges. Here’s What That Really Means, Charles M. Blow
• New York Times, Anti-Israel Protests Cost Indonesia a FIFA Soccer Championship
• New York Times, Tokyo Olympics Scandal Fouls Hopes for a Sapporo Winter Games
• New York Times, Tech Leaders, Including Elon Musk, Call for a Pause on A.I.
• New York Times, Tinkering With ChatGPT, Workers Wonder: Will This Take My Job?

Top Stories

New York Times, Decades Later, Senate Votes to Repeal Iraq Military Authorizations, Karoun Demirjian, March 30, 2023 (print ed.). The bipartisan action to roll back resolutions from 1991 and 2002 was a major advancement in a bid by Congress to curtail the executive branch’s powers.

The Senate voted on Wednesday to repeal authorizations from 1991 and 2002 for combat operations against Iraq, moving with broad bipartisan support to advance a yearslong effort to claw back congressional war powers.

The bill goes next to the Republican-led House, which has passed similar legislation several times in recent years but where G.O.P. leaders are undecided about whether to put it on the floor. Still, the 66-to-30 vote in the Senate was a potentially pivotal step in the long-running push by Republicans and Democrats to reassert the national security prerogatives of Congress, with 18 G.O.P. senators joining in support.

It reflected a belief among a growing number of lawmakers in both parties that it is long past time for the legislative branch to play its constitutional role as a check on an executive branch that has embroiled the country in endless wars.

“Congress has abdicated its powers to the executive for too long,” said Senator Tim Kaine, left, Democrat of Virginia and the chief author of the Senate’s efforts to repeal the Iraq war authorizations for the past several years. “Presidents can do mischief if there are outdated authorizations on the books.”

Should the measure clear Congress and be signed by President Biden, who has indicated his support, it would be the first repeal of a war authorization in more than a half century. It would also be a crucial first step toward building momentum to tackle more significant and far more complicated endeavors. Those include replacing the authorization Congress passed in 2001 to start military operations against terrorist groups in Afghanistan after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. That authorization stretched across four administrations to permit open-ended combat against Islamist militant groups around the world and ultimately rewrote the law defining the president’s war powers.

Nashville mass murderer Audrey Hale is shown at left in a file photo and at right via a security camera showing the killing spree claiming six victims, three of them nine-year-olds

Washington Post, Deadly weapon, divided nation: How a change in law could provide crucial seconds to survive a mass shooting, Mark Berman and Todd C. Frankel, March 30, 2023 (print ed.). Many modern gunmakers ship their AR-style rifles with larger magazines. These magazines have been popular with a particular subgroup: America’s mass shooters.

Ammunition magazines can enable gunmen to fire a hail of bullets without needing to stop and reload.

Those magazines are increasingly seen as an area where policy changes could lessen the carnage that has become emblematic of attacks waged with AR-15s and other guns, according to a growing body of research and interviews with experts and law enforcement veterans. An emerging consensus among these experts — and one that has taken hold in some state legislatures — is that mandating smaller magazines would force mass shooters to pause to reload, allowing people to flee or fight back.

New York Times, After Mass Shootings, Republicans Expand Access to Guns, Mike Baker, Serge F. Kovaleski and Glenn Thrush, Updated March 30, 2023. In states around the country, Republican lawmakers are pushing laws to expand the ability to own and carry firearms.

After a mass shooting at an elementary school in Texas last year prompted calls for new gun restrictions, Republican-led states around the country moved in the other direction. One of them was Tennessee, where the governor insisted that tighter firearms laws would never deter wrongdoers.

“We can’t control what they do,” Gov. Bill Lee said.

Tennessee lawmakers have instead moved to make firearms even more accessible, proposing bills this year to arm more teachers and allow college students to carry weapons on campus, among other measures.

Then came the attack on Monday at the Covenant School in Nashville, where a shooter carrying multiple weapons killed six people, including three children. The same day, a federal judge signed off on a state settlement allowing people as young as 18 to carry a handgun without a permit.

Amid the ghastly cadence of multiple mass shootings that have prompted calls for more comprehensive controls on guns, Republicans in statehouses have been steadily expanding access to gun

New York Times, Nashville Shooting Prompts Shrug in Washington, as G.O.P. Refuses to Act, Annie Karni, March 29, 2023. President Biden said he had reached the limit of his powers to act alone on gun violence, and needed Congress to respond. Republicans said they weren’t willing to do more. U.S. Rep. Marjorie Greene (R-GA), shown above in a file photo, reiterated her support for widespread ownership of assault weapons.

The mass shooting at a Christian elementary school in Nashville this week has generated a broad shrugging of the shoulders in Washington, from President Biden to Republicans in Congress, who seemed to agree on little other than that there was nothing left for them to do to counter the continuing toll of gun violence across the country.

But while President Biden’s stark admission on Tuesday that he could do no more on his own to tackle the issue was a statement of fact that aimed to put the burden on Congress to send him legislation, like the ban on assault weapons he has repeatedly championed, Republicans’ expressions of helplessness reflected an unwillingness, rather than an inability, to act.

Their answer to Mr. Biden’s plea was as blunt as it was swift, as lawmaker after Republican lawmaker made it clear that they had no intention of considering any additional gun safety measures.

“We’re not going to fix it,” Representative Tim Burchett, Republican of Tennessee, told reporters on the steps of the Capitol just hours after the shooting that killed three children and three adults in his home state. “Criminals are going to be criminals.”
Mr. Burchett said he saw no “real role” for Congress to play in reducing gun violence, and volunteered that his solution to the issue of protecting his family was to home-school his children.

Likewise, Senator Mike Rounds, Republican of South Dakota, said Congress had done enough.

“When we start talking about bans or challenging the Second Amendment, the things that have already been done have gone about as far as we’re going with gun control,” Mr. Rounds told CNN.

Last year, Congress passed a narrow, bipartisan compromise that enhanced background checks to give authorities time to examine the juvenile and mental health records of any prospective gun buyer under the age of 21, and a provision that for the first time extended a prohibition on domestic abusers having guns to dating partners.

Washington Post, Police response in Nashville was ‘exact opposite’ to Uvalde, experts say, Robert Klemko, March 29, 2023 (print ed.). Body-camera footage shows heavily armed officers methodically sweeping classrooms and hallways until they find and kill the suspect — a police response experts described as “textbook.”

For the second time in 10 months, police officers were called to confront a mass killer at an American elementary school. But this time, unlike last spring in Uvalde, Tex., the officers at the Covenant School in Nashville rushed right in.

Body-camera footage released Tuesday shows heavily armed officers methodically sweeping colorful classrooms and backpack-lined hallways until they find and kill the suspect — a police response experts described as “textbook.”

“They did an awesome job in a very high-stress situation,” said AJ Yokley, an instructor in firearms and building clearing at the Tennessee Law Enforcement Training Academy in Nashville. “You’re going into a situation where you can hear the shots fired. It’s a difficult thing to run towards the sound of gunfire, but that’s what they did. Every single one of them displayed tremendous courage.”

Washington Post, Shooter warned friend of ‘something bad’ in Instagram messages, Joanna Slater, March 30, 2023 (print ed.). The messages popped up in Averianna Patton’s Instagram account at 9:57 a.m. on Monday morning.

“I’m planning to die today.”

“You’ll probably hear about me on the news after I die.”

“This is my last goodbye. I love you. See you again in another life.”

The messages were from Audrey Hale, above, the 28-year-old identified by police as the shooter in Monday’s rampage at a private Christian elementary school in Nashville. Three children, all 9, and three adults were killed.

Hale sent the messages to Patton less than 20 minutes before police received the first 911 call about gunshots at The Covenant School. Copies were shared with The Washington Post.

For Patton, the messages were alarming and perplexing. She had known Hale since middle school, when they played basketball together. The two later attended the same high school, the Nashville School of the Arts, but didn’t really talk apart from exchanging hellos in the hallways.

As adults, they were connected on social media but weren’t close. Patton didn’t have Hale’s phone number or address. Last month, when Patton, a radio personality, was taping a live show, Hale showed up. A few weeks ago, they saw each other at a gathering to commemorate a former basketball teammate who died last year, Patton said.

 New York Times, Mexico Investigates Migrant Deaths in Border City Fire as Homicide, Simon Romero, Natalie Kitroeff and Eileen Sullivan, March 30, 2023 (print ed.). The authorities said government workers and private security employees had not allowed detainees to escape the blaze that killed 39 people in Ciudad Juárez. Mexican officials identified eight suspects, including federal and state agents, and said they would issue four arrest warrants on Wednesday.

Mexican officials announced on Wednesday that they were investigating a fire at a migrant detention center in Ciudad Juárez as a homicide case, saying that government workers and private security employees had not allowed detainees to escape from the blaze that killed at least 39 people.

The authorities, in a news conference, said they had identified eight suspects, including federal and state agents, and would issue four arrest warrants on Wednesday.

“None of the public servants, nor the private security guards, took any action to open the door for the migrants who were inside where the fire was,” said Sara Irene Herrerías Guerra, a top federal human rights prosecutor.

The announcement came after a video emerged appearing to show that the migrants had been trapped when the fire broke out on Monday. Uniformed figures at the center can be seen walking away from the blaze while people remain behind bars as the area fills with smoke.

The authorities said they might also investigate one migrant suspected of starting the fire.

“Our country’s immigration policy is one of respect for human rights,” said Rosa Icela Rodríguez, the government’s secretary of security. “This unfortunate event, which is the responsibility of public servants and guards who have been identified, is not the policy of our country.”

It was a striking development in a case that has drawn intense scrutiny to the Mexican government’s handling of the surge of migrants flowing into the country over the past year, seeking to enter the United States.

Ciudad Juárez, just across the border from El Paso, Texas, has long prided itself on absorbing waves of newcomers, many from Mexico who come to work in factories and others from across Latin America who stop on their way to the United States.

But what used to be a transit point for U.S.-bound migrants has turned into a hub for those who believe they have no choice but to stay — either after being sent back by the U.S. authorities or while waiting to apply to enter legally.

At intersections across the city, groups of migrants can be seen asking for money. Some hold up cardboard signs pleading for help. Others sell food out of coolers.

New York Times, Fire in Mexico Kills at Least 39 in Migration Center Near U.S. Border, Mike Ives, Euan Ward and Emiliano Rodríguez Mega, March 29, 2023 (print ed.). President Andrés Manuel López Obrador said the blaze at a National Migration Institute facility in Ciudad Juárez, a border city near Texas, was the result of a protest by migrants who were set to be deported.

At least 39 people were killed on Monday night and 29 others seriously injured when a fire broke out at a government-run migration facility in northern Mexico, near the border with the United States, the authorities said.

The fire broke out in the accommodation area of a National Migration Institute facility in Ciudad Juárez, a border city across from El Paso, Texas, shortly before 10 p.m., according to a statement by the facility. Sixty-eight men from Central and South America were being housed there, it said.

The Mexican authorities did not immediately respond to a request for comment, but according to the statement from the institute, the 29 injured men were in serious condition and had been transported to local hospitals for urgent care.

President Andrés Manuel López Obrador said the men housed at the facility had been angry at authorities.

“As protest, at the door of the shelter, they put mattresses and set them on fire, and they did not imagine that this was going to cause this terrible tragedy,” said Mr. López Obrador at his regular daily news conference on Tuesday morning.

“We assume it was because they found out they were going to be deported,” he added.

The migrants were mainly from Central America and Venezuela, Mr. López Obrador said.

Television footage showed a swarm of police cars, ambulances and other emergency vehicles in the area. What appeared to be a number of bodies wrapped in large foil blankets could be seen in the facility’s parking lot, and people outside clung to the perimeter fence as emergency responders tended to the victims.

The institute said that it had begun communicating “with consular authorities from different countries” in order to identify the dead. A formal complaint had been lodged with what the statement identified as the “corresponding authorities,” clearing the way for an investigation, the statement said.

Washington Post, Democrats’ anger boils over after GOP witnesses testify without taking questions, Azi Paybarah, March 30, 2023. Democratic lawmakers didn’t hold back their anger Thursday at a House hearing about social media and censorship when a pair of Republican witnesses delivered testimony and left without being questioned.

The shouting began after Sen. Eric Schmitt (R), the former attorney general of Missouri, and Louisiana Attorney General Jeff Landry (R) testified before the House Judiciary select subcommittee on the weaponization of the federal government about what they claimed was the Biden administration’s effort to censor conservative voices online. After the two spoke, Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), the subcommittee chairman, dismissed them.

“We’ll let you move on to your other responsibilities and we’ll get to our next witnesses,” Jordan said. Democrats immediately interrupted, asking why he wouldn’t allow them to ask questions as Schmitt and Landry stood up and left the room. Democrats then tried to have the two witnesses’ testimony struck from the record.

“We aren’t able to probe the veracity of their statements, the truthfulness of their statements,” Rep. Stephen F. Lynch (D-Mass.) said. When Jordan told him, “You will be given your five minutes here,” Lynch replied, “They’re not here,” referring to the witnesses. “They’re absent,” he said, and they “scurried away, with your complicity.”

Jordan, speaking over Lynch, said: “They have not scurried away. They were dismissed like all witnesses.” As the two men traded remarks, Lynch fumed: “You can’t find two people to defend their statements. That’s pretty disgraceful.”

At times, the shouts and crosstalk was so fast that the C-SPAN camera recording the hearing could not show each person who was talking. At one point, a woman’s voice could be heard saying, “If allowing them to leave is not weaponization, I don’t know what is, Mr. Chairman.” A male’s voice responded, “Yeah, right.”

House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) agreed to the creation of the select subcommittee as a concession to the hard-right faction of his conference in the deal he struck to secure the votes to become speaker. The panel has faced criticism, even from some on the right, that its work has been lackluster and unfocused.

Jordan said at the hearing that it was common practice to have current or former members of Congress testify without staying for questions.

Russell Dye, his spokesman, said in a statement, “It has been a long practice of the Committee to allow current and former Members of Congress to present an opening statement without taking questions,” noting that Democrats recently had Rep. Jamie B. Raskin (D-Md.) speak to the committee without taking questions.

Democrats said the comparison was inappropriate. Lynch said that the witnesses on Thursday may have presented “false” information and that “I would like the opportunity to cross-examine those witnesses.” Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.) said Landry is not a member of Congress and, therefore, “is not entitled” to the kind of courtesy Jordan described.

Even by today’s low standards for congressional decorum, the hearing stood out for its rancor and animus. Kyle Herrig, executive director of the Congressional Integrity Project, a Democratic-leaning watchdog group, said in a statement that the hearing was “an embarrassing farce. Two of the Republicans’ witnesses didn’t even stick around to defend their lies, aided and abetted by Jim Jordan.” Jordan and the Republicans on the subcommittee, Herrig said, “are afraid of the truth.”

Dye said Democrats had put “on a partisan charade” in response to a routine congressional practice.

Washington Post, Gisele Fetterman says ‘vicious attacks’ poured in after husband’s hospitalization, Amy B Wang, March 30, 2023. Gisele Fetterman said a barrage of hateful right-wing attacks against her “exploded” after her husband, Sen. John Fetterman (D-Pa.), checked himself into Walter Reed National Military Medical Center for clinical depression last month, where he has remained for inpatient treatment.

“From the moment John shared his news, vicious attacks started pouring in,” Gisele Fetterman wrote in an op-ed for Elle magazine Thursday. “But I’ll admit, I was surprised to find that this time the vast majority of the harassment wasn’t directed toward John — but at me.”

Gisele Fetterman wrote that she had already been familiar with “how cruel people could be” about judging and weaponizing someone’s health after John Fetterman, 53, suffered a stroke last May, days before he overwhelmingly won the Democratic primary in Pennsylvania’s Senate race.

But this time, she said, people began casting her as an “ambitious, power hungry wife” who was plotting to take over her husband’s Senate seat, and accused her of kidnapping her children when she took them to Niagara Falls after John Fetterman was hospitalized.

The road trip to Canada had been an effort to remove her family from the intensified media scrutiny that came after her husband’s hospitalization, Gisele Fetterman wrote in Elle. And while she was happy to have had that time, she said, it only fueled the right-wing maelstrom and attacks — including harmful threats — against her.

“To hear my critics tell it, it’s my fault that John ran for Senate,” Gisele Fetterman wrote. “It’s my fault that he won. It’s my fault that he had a stroke, and it’s my fault that he’s depressed. And somehow, at the same time, I’m just a wife who should stay at home and out of the public eye.”

Palmer Report, Opinion: Donald Trump’s attorneys are turning on each other as it all falls apart for him, Bill Palmer, right, March 30, 2023. Donald Trump is on the verge of being criminally indicted in three jurisdictions, on too many different felony counts to list, with a slew of inside witnesses lined up to testify against him, and – in spite of the doomsday hysteria you’re hearing on TV – plenty of time to hold trials before getting to the heart of the 2024 election cycle.

Trump is in such an overwhelmingly difficult situation, even the world’s savviest criminal defense attorneys would have a hard time trying to get him off the hook. Unfortunately for Trump, he’s now represented by the world’s worst attorneys. They’re blowing it for him in every way possible – and now they’re turning on each other.

Worse for Trump, his own behavior is undermining his attorneys even further. He’s begun asking his political advisers if his attorneys are any good, and he’s begun asking outside attorneys if they want to replace his existing attorneys, according to the Wall Street Journal. Think about just how bad of a predicament this is to be in.

You’re about to be criminally indicted on everything from election fraud, to campaign finance fraud, to obstruction of justice, to the Espionage Act, to racketeering, and instead of gearing up with your attorneys to try to get yourself acquitted in three upcoming trials, you’re trying to figure out which of your attorneys to fire.

This is something that Donald Trump would have needed to sort out a very long time ago, so that he could have brought competent attorneys on board with enough time to hash out his defense strategies in these various cases. Instead he’s hired a bunch of TV lawyers, and he’s shocked to find out that they can’t protect him from anything, or even delay things like he was hoping.

We shouldn’t expect anything different, of course. In the old days, Trump used to hire people who were bad at doing their official jobs but were skilled at doing his dirty work for him. Now he can’t even seem to find those kinds of people. He appears to be so far gone, he thinks criminal justice system battles are fought and won on cable news, and he’s been hiring people accordingly. Now he’s panicking because that’s going exactly as poorly as everyone but him knew it would.

Photos taken from video show Sergey Cherkasov in conversation with a woman thought to be his mother at a Moscow airport restaurant around 2017. The video was recovered by the FBI in its investigation of Cherkasov. (U.S. Justice Department)

Washington Post, He came to D.C. as a Brazilian student. The U.S. says he was a Russian spy, Greg Miller, March 30, 2023 (print ed.). A former graduate student in Washington, who claimed to be Brazilian but was unmasked as a Russian spy, has been charged by the U.S. with acting as a foreign agent.

Like anyone who gets into his dream college, Victor Muller Ferreira was ecstatic when he was admitted to Johns Hopkins University’s graduate school in Washington in 2018.

“Today we made the future — we managed to get in one of the top schools in the world,” he wrote in an email to those who had helped him gain entry to the elite master’s program in international relations. “This is the victory that belongs to all of us man — to the entire team. Today we f---ing drink!!!”

The achievement was even sweeter for Ferreira because he was not the striving student from Brazil he had portrayed on his Johns Hopkins application, but a Russian intelligence operative originally from Kaliningrad, according to a series of international investigations as well as an indictment the Justice Department filed in federal court Friday.

His real name is Sergey Cherkasov and he had spent nearly a decade building the fictitious Ferreira persona, according to officials and court records. His “team” was a tight circle of Russian handlers suddenly poised to have a deep-cover spy in the U.S. capital, positioned to forge connections in every corner of the American security establishment, from the State Department to the CIA.

Using the access he gained during his two years in Washington, Cherkasov filed reports to his bosses in Russia’s military intelligence service, the GRU, on how senior officials in the Biden administration were responding to the Russian military buildup before the war in Ukraine, according to an FBI affidavit.

After he graduated, he came close to achieving a more consequential penetration when he was offered a position at the International Criminal Court in The Hague. He was due to start a six-month internship there last year — just as the court began investigating Russian war crimes in Ukraine — only to be turned away by Dutch authorities acting on information relayed by the FBI, according to Western security officials. Officials in the Netherlands put him on a plane back to Brazil, where he was arrested upon landing and is now serving a 15-year prison sentence for document fraud related to his fake identity.

The details that have since emerged provide extraordinary visibility into highly cloaked aspects of Russian intelligence, including the Kremlin’s almost obsessive effort to infiltrate Western targets with “illegals” — spies who operate as lone agents with no discernible link to their home service — rather than diplomats with the legal protections that come with working out of an embassy.

The case has revealed lingering vulnerabilities in Western defenses more than a decade after the FBI arrested 10 Russian illegals in a sweep that made global headlines and spawned a popular television series, “The Americans.” U.S. officials acknowledge that the bureau discovered Cherkasov’s identity and GRU affiliation only after his arrival in Washington. The FBI declined to comment on the case.

The revelations have also exposed serious lapses in Russian tradecraft. Authorities have mined Cherkasov’s computer and other devices and found a trove of evidence, according to court records and security officials, including emails to his Russian handlers, details about “dead drops” where messages could be left, records of illicit money transfers, and an error-strewn personal history that he appears to have composed while trying to memorize details of his fictitious life.

New York Times, Russia detained a Wall Street Journal reporter, accusing him of espionage, Daniel Victor and Michael M. Grynbaum, March 30, 2023. The newspaper said it “vehemently denies the allegations” against Evan Gershkovich, an American shown above, and called for his immediate release.

The Russian authorities said on Thursday that they had detained an American journalist for The Wall Street Journal and accused him of espionage, marking a new escalation in Moscow’s tensions with the United States and with foreign media organizations since the start of its invasion of Ukraine.

The journalist, Evan Gershkovich, a correspondent based in Moscow, is believed to be the first American reporter to be held as an accused spy in Russia since the collapse of the Soviet Union. His detention comes as relations between Russia and the United States continue to deteriorate, with Washington leading a coalition of nations supporting Ukraine’s military defense and pushing for Moscow’s further diplomatic and economic isolation.

The Russian Federal Security Service, or F.S.B., said in a statement that Mr. Gershkovich “is suspected of spying in the interests of the American government” and had been detained in Yekaterinburg, a city about 900 miles east of Moscow in the Ural Mountains. The F.S.B. is a successor agency to the Soviet-era K.G.B.

“It was established that E. Gershkovich, acting on the instructions of the American side, collected information constituting a state secret about the activities of one of the enterprises of the Russian military-industrial complex,” the F.S.B. said. Hours after the F.S.B.’s announcement, the Kremlin endorsed Mr. Gershkovich’s arrest.

National Press Club, Club Calls For Russia To Release Evan Gershkovich, Bill McCarren, March 30, 2023. Following is a statement from Eileen OReilly, President of the National Press Club and Gil Klein, President of the National Press Club Journalism Institute urging the immediate release of Evan Gershkovich, a Wall Street Journal reporter and U.S. citizen detained by Russia’s Federal Security Service while working near Yekaterinburg in west central Russia 880 miles from Moscow.

“Evan Gershkovich is a journalist. He should be released immediately and unharmed and allowed to return to his important work. Evan has a significant and distinguished career working for the New York Times and AFP prior to the Wall Street Journal. We consider this an unjust detention and call on the State Department to designate his detention in that manner at once.”

Washington Post, The Vulkan Files: Secret documents trove offers rare look at Russian cyberwar ambitions, Craig Timberg, Ellen Nakashima, Hannes Munzinger and Hakan Tanriverdi, March 30, 2023. More than 5,000 pages from a Moscow-based contractor offer a glimpse into planning and training that would allow Russia’s intelligence agencies and hacking groups to find vulnerabilities, coordinate attacks and control online activity.

Russian intelligence agencies worked with a Moscow-based defense contractor to strengthen their ability to launch cyberattacks, sow disinformation and surveil sections of the internet, according to thousands of pages of confidential corporate documents.

The documents detail a suite of computer programs and databases that would allow Russia’s intelligence agencies and hacking groups to better find vulnerabilities, coordinate attacks and control online activity. The documents suggest the firm was supporting operations including both social media disinformation and training to remotely disrupt real-world targets, such as sea, air and rail control systems.

An anonymous person provided the documents from the contractor, NTC Vulkan, to a German reporter after expressing outrage about Russia’s attack on Ukraine. The leak, an unusual occurrence for Russia’s secretive military industrial complex, demonstrates another unintended consequence of President Vladimir Putin’s decision to take his country to war.

U.S. Mass Shootings, Gun Control 

New York Times, What We Know About the Nashville School Shooting, Adeel Hassan, March 29, 2023 (print ed.). An assailant fatally shot six people, including three children, at a private elementary school. The motive for the shooting is under investigation.

Federal and local investigators in Nashville were working on Tuesday to piece together clues about the actions and motives of the shooter who killed three students and three adults at a private school before being shot dead by the police.

The assailant who opened fire at the Christian elementary school in Nashville on Monday was identified by officials as Audrey E. Hale, a 28-year-old former student who lived in the area.

The Nashville police chief, John Drake, said on Monday that the attack was targeted, rather than random, but that it was too early to discuss a possible motive. Local and federal investigators working on the case were reviewing writings and had made contact with the shooter’s father, Chief Drake said.

The school, called the Covenant School, is in the wealthy Green Hills neighborhood of Nashville, a few miles south of downtown, and enrolls about 200 students in preschool through sixth grade. The attack on Monday was the 13th school shooting in the United States this year that resulted in injury or death, according to Education Week.

Washington Post, What damage can an AR-15 do to a human body? A rare look, N. Kirkpatrick, Atthar Mirza and Manuel Canales, March 29, 2023 (print ed.). The Washington Post examined autopsy and postmortem reports from nearly a hundred victims of previous mass shootings that involved AR-15-style rifles (with a sample shown above).

Washington Post, Editorial: No one needs an AR-15 — or any gun tailor-made for mass shootings, Editorial Board, March 29, 2023 (print ed.). The Post’s investigative series on the AR-15’s dominant place in the United States’ marketplace and psyche sat atop the Post website on Monday, the day of its release — until, hours later, breaking news replaced it. Three adults and three children had been killed in a Nashville school shooting by a 28-year-old assailant with three guns, including at least one AR-15-style rifle.

“I don’t know why anyone needs an AR-15,” President Donald Trump reportedly told aides in August 2019 after back-to-back mass shootings in Dayton, Ohio, and El Paso. There’s no good answer. The AR-15 was designed for soldiers, yet its associations with warfare eventually became a selling point for everyday buyers. “Use what they use,” exhorted one ad displaying professionals wielding tactical rifles. Now, about 1 in 20 U.S. adults own at least one AR-15. That’s roughly 16 million people, storing roughly 20 million guns designed to mow down enemies on the battlefield with brutal efficiency. Two-thirds of these were crafted in the past decade — and when more people die, popularity doesn’t fall. Instead, it rises.

The AR-15, The Post explains, is materially different from traditional handguns. The rifle fires very small bullets at very fast speeds. The projectiles don’t move straight and smooth through human targets like those from a traditional handgun. Their velocity turns them unstable upon penetration, so that they tumble through flesh and vital organs. This so-called blast effect literally tears people apart. A trauma surgeon notes, “you don’t see the muscle … just bone and skin and missing parts.” Another mentions tissue that “crumbled into your hands.”

Even thinking about these injuries is horrifying, so much so that crime scene photos are often kept confidential. But the gruesome reality of what an AR-15 can wreak poses an argument in itself: There is no excuse for the widespread availability of these weapons of war.

No single action will stop mass shootings, much less gun violence more generally. The Post’s reporting is only more evidence of the need for a ban on assault rifles. It’s evidence, too, of the need for a ban on high-capacity magazines. Rules restricting how many rounds a gun can fire before a shooter has to reload are more difficult to skirt than flat-out assault rifle bans, which sometimes prompt manufacturers to make cosmetic changes that will reclassify their products. A number is a number. These prohibitions might face legal challenges, but lawmakers in four states have recently added caps. More should follow.

Washington Post, From outcast to political symbol: How the AR-15 emerged as an icon, Todd C. Frankel, Shawn Boburg, Josh Dawsey, Ashley Parker and Alex Horton, March 28, 2023 (print ed.). The AR-15 thrives in times of tension and tragedy. This is how it came to dominate the marketplace – and loom so large in the American psyche.

The AR-15 wasn’t supposed to be a best-seller. It's the result of a dramatic shift in American gun culture fueled by the firearms industry and its allies.

The five most radical right Republican justices on the Supreme Court are shown above, with the sixth Republican, Chief Justice John Roberts, omitted in this photo array.

New York Times, Opinion: We’re About to Find Out How Far the Supreme Court Will Go to Arm America, Linda Greenhouse (shown at right on the cover of her memoir, "Just a Journalist"), March 29, 2023. How much further will the Supreme Court go to assist in the arming of America? That has been the question since last June, when the court ruled that New York’s century-old gun licensing law violated the Second Amendment. Sooner than expected, we are likely to find out the answer.

On March 17, the Biden administration asked the justices to overturn an appeals court decision that can charitably be described as nuts, and accurately as pernicious. The decision by a three-judge panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit invalidated a federal law that for almost 30 years has prohibited gun ownership by people who are subject to restraining orders for domestic violence.

The Fifth Circuit upheld the identical law less than three years ago. But that was before President Donald Trump put a Mississippi state court judge named Cory Wilson on the appeals court. (As a candidate for political office in 2015, Wilson said in a National Rifle Association questionnaire that he opposed both background checks on private gun sales and state licensing requirements for potential gun owners.)

Judge Wilson wrote in a decision handed down in March that the appeals court was forced to repudiate its own precedent by the logic of the Supreme Court’s decision in the New York licensing case. He was joined by another Trump judge, James Ho, and by Edith Jones, an appointee of President Ronald Reagan; Judge Jones has long been one of the most aggressive conservatives on the country’s most conservative appeals court.

Now it is up to the justices to say whether that analysis is correct.

Fifteen years after the Supreme Court’s Heller decision interpreted the Second Amendment to convey an individual right to own a gun, there is no overstating the significance of the choice the court has been asked to make. Heller was limited in scope: It gave Americans a constitutional right to keep handguns at home for self-defense. The court’s decision last June in New York State Rifle and Pistol Association v. Bruen was on the surface also quite limited, striking down a law that required a showing of special need in order to obtain an unrestricted license to carry a concealed gun outside the home. New York was one of only a half-dozen states with such a requirement, as the court put it in the Bruen decision.

What was not limited about the New York decision — indeed, what was radical — was the analysis that Justice Clarence Thomas employed in his opinion for the 6-3 majority. Following Heller, courts had evaluated gun restrictions by weighing the personal Second Amendment claim against the government’s interest in the particular regulation, a type of balancing test that has long been common in constitutional adjudication. The Bruen decision rejected that approach, instead placing history above all else.

Relevant Recent Headlines

• New York Times, The head of the school and the daughter of the church’s pastor were among those who died in the shooting
• New York Times, The Largest Source of Stolen Guns? Parked Cars
• Associated Press, Nashville school shooter had drawn maps, done surveillance
• Politico, Biden renews push to ban assault weapons in wake of Nashville shooting
• Washington Post, ‘Enough is enough,’ White House says, demands GOP act on assault weapons ban

U.S. Courts, Crime, Immigration

New York Times, Opinion: How the Most Important Election of 2023 Turned Extraordinarily Ugly, Michelle Goldberg, right, and Madeleine Hordinski, March 30, 2023. Just two years after Barack Obama won Wisconsin by 14 points, Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker had been swept into office by the Tea Party wave. He saw an anti-union law, Act 10, as his chance to follow in the footsteps of his idol, Ronald Reagan, who’d fired over 11,000 striking air traffic controllers in 1981, a devastating blow to the labor movement.

In addition to eviscerating unions, Act 10 was designed to undermine the Democratic Party that depended on them. If similar bills were “enacted in a dozen more states,” wrote the right-wing activist Grover Norquist, “the modern Democratic Party will cease to be a competitive power in American politics.”

Walker and his party would go on to lock in G.O.P. rule, enacting shockingly lopsided electoral maps and assuring continuing Republican control of the state legislature, as well as dominance of Wisconsin’s national congressional delegation. Nothing since, not even the election of a Democratic governor, has been able to loosen Republicans’ gerrymandered grip on the state. That grip has been used to restrict voting rights, pass an anti-union right-to-work law, cut funding to education, dismantle environmental protections and make Wisconsin one of the hardest states in the country in which to cast a ballot.

Democrats, on the other hand, are powerless to pass laws of their own. In 2022, the Wisconsin Supreme Court ruled, 4-3, that the state must adopt new, even more gerrymandered maps passed by the legislature.

Impervious to voter sentiment, the Republican edifice of power has appeared unbreakable. But a contentious state Supreme Court election on April 4 could finally put a crack in it.

A judicial election in a state you probably don’t live in — it might be hard to get excited about. But the Wisconsin Supreme Court election, pitting the mild-mannered, liberal-leaning family court judge Janet Protasiewicz, left, against the Trumpist former state Supreme Court justice Daniel Kelly, is by far the most important political contest of the year.

The race, which has gotten quite vicious, is ostensibly nonpartisan; candidates are not affiliated with a party on the ballot. But its political stakes are clear. Wisconsin’s Supreme Court currently has a 4-3 conservative majority, and one of the conservatives is retiring. If elected, Protasiewicz hopes to take a fresh look at the maps. She wants to revisit Act 10, which the state Supreme Court upheld in 2014. “Since 2011,” she told me in Madison last week, “it’s just been a spiral downward to a place where our democracy is really at peril.” This election is a singular chance to reverse that spiral.

It could also determine whether the next presidential election is free and fair, shaking up a swing state court that came frighteningly close to overturning the 2020 vote. And if that isn’t enough, this election will also be a referendum on abortion rights, which is turning out to be the key issue in the race. When the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade last year, an 1849 Wisconsin law banning almost all abortions went into effect. The state’s Democratic attorney general has filed a lawsuit challenging the ban, and the case will almost certainly make its way to Wisconsin’s Supreme Court.

New York Times, The Undoing of Guo Wengui, Billionaire Accused of Fraud on 2 Continents, Michael Forsythe and Benjamin Weiser, March 30, 2023. Shown above with ally Steve Bannon, he cultivated powerful allies and built an empire in China. Then, fleeing charges, he turned his charms on America. Now the law has caught up with him.

Luc Despins, a New York bankruptcy lawyer, typically took on difficult jobs: After the energy company Enron collapsed years ago, he helped thousands of victims recover some of their money.

But when Mr. Despins was appointed by a bankruptcy court last year to locate the assets of Guo Wengui, a Chinese property mogul and political provocateur who had failed to repay tens of millions of dollars to a hedge fund, the assignment presented very different challenges.

In November, protesters appeared outside his home and that of his ex-wife. Photographs of his daughters, along with their names and employers, were posted on Gettr, a social platform catering to the American right. A video online accused Mr. Despins of helping to build concentration camps on behalf of the Chinese Communist Party. Protesters even entered his office lobby, Mr. Despins testified in court.

“Partners of the firm have been chased up the escalator, with people running — screaming, you know, ‘C.C.P. dog,’” he said.

It would be among the last of many harassment campaigns carried out in Mr. Guo’s name by his global legion of followers. Mr. Guo may now be at the end of a remarkable trajectory, from billionaire Beijing insider to fugitive critic of the Chinese Communist Party and ally of Trump Republicans. That path, fueled by bravado, ruthlessness, a keen political antenna and alleged theft, has left lingering suspicion about his allegiances. And it has now taken him from his Manhattan penthouse to his new place of residence: the Brooklyn federal detention center.

This month, Mr. Guo was arrested in that 9,000-square-foot apartment, charged with defrauding thousands of investors in the United States and overseas of more than $1 billion. If convicted, he could face decades in prison. Mr. Guo pleaded not guilty in Manhattan federal court and was ordered detained at the request of prosecutors, who described him as a flight risk and a danger to the community.

“Guo Wengui is such a grifter, he just understands that whatever system you are in you have to learn how to play it,” said Orville Schell, director of the Center on U.S.-China Relations at the Asia Society in New York, who met Mr. Guo in Beijing over a decade ago. “He had yachts, he had the whole panoply — he knew how to arrange things around him that created a sense of awe, success and invincibility.”

Mr. Guo’s lawyer, Stephen Cook, declined to comment.

Mr. Guo rose from poverty to control a nationwide property empire centered on a $1 billion office, retail, hotel and residential complex next to the site of the 2008 Beijing Olympics. He lived in a sprawling lakeside courtyard compound in central Beijing valued at up to $230 million, with a separate barracks for his uniformed guards and a vast closet — as big as some homes — for his Brioni suits. By 2014 he ranked 74th among China’s richest people, with $2.6 billion.

Property empires in China rely on government connections and the free flow of cash, gifts and favors, and Mr. Guo’s links reached into the upper ranks of the country’s power structure, including Ma Jian, a senior intelligence official.

With Mr. Ma’s help, Mr. Guo, in the fashion of a Russian oligarch, obtained majority control of a securities business by buying out the share of a state-owned company, according to an investigation by Caixin, a Chinese newsmagazine, which also found numerous instances of Mr. Guo failing to repay large debts. Business associates who fell out with him landed in police custody. Mr. Ma subsequently said in a videotaped confession that he had accepted more than $8 million in gifts from Mr. Guo in exchange for interventions with other officials to eliminate roadblocks for his property projects, deter rivals and other strong-arming.

New York Times, Immigration Tripled in Top U.S. Counties Even as Many of Them Lost Population, Robert Gebeloff, Dana Goldstein and Stefanos Chen, March 30, 2023. New census data reveals where people are moving to — and from. And it reveals one exception to current trends: Manhattan.

The number of immigrants nearly tripled in the nation’s 20 most populous counties from 2021 to 2022, as immigration returned to prepandemic levels nationally, the Census Bureau reported on Thursday.

But many of these counties are still losing residents to suburbs, exurbs and other regions of the country, and, like the rest of the nation, they are feeling the brunt of the nation’s low birthrate.

Those trends emerged from the latest figures in counties nationwide, revealing that the country is growing slowly, but that many communities are struggling to maintain population levels.

Los Angeles County in California, Cook County, which includes Chicago, in Illinois, and the boroughs of Brooklyn and Queens in New York all lost population, but the loss was smaller than in 2021.

New York Times, Behind a Surge in Teenage Killings: Grief, Anger and Online Grudges, Hurubie Meko, March 30, 2023. Teenagers in New York City were arrested and charged with murder last year at a rate that grew twice as fast as the rate for adults between 2018 and 2022.

When the New York City police in January announced arrests in the killing of a 17-year-old in Coney Island, not one of the three people charged was old enough to drive: A 13-year-old had stabbed Nyheem Wright, the police said. His friends, ages 14 and 15, were charged with aiding him.

The fight started over a girl after school, prosecutors said. Now, the boys, who turned themselves in, face maximum sentences that range from nine years in prison to life behind bars.

“The kids involved are kids,” said April Leong, the principal of Liberation Diploma Plus High School, where Nyheem was a student. “They’re kids.”

From 2018 through 2022, teenagers were arrested and charged with murder in the city at a rate that grew twice as fast as that of adults. Forty-five children ranging from 13 to 17 were arrested and charged with murder last year, nearly double the number in 2018, according to the state’s Division of Criminal Justice Services.

Violence breaks out more quickly and more often now than it did before the pandemic, law enforcement and education officials say. Conflicts that were born online, and that festered as threats were exchanged behind screens, have increasingly spilled into the real world. Children’s tempers explode as they pile on to the subway, when words are exchanged on a Brooklyn park bench and outside schools as they let out for the day.

Young people “came out of quarantine with scores to settle,” said Patrice O’Shaughnessy, communications director for the Bronx district attorney, whose office charged 26 adolescents with murder last year.

The proliferation of guns and the fallout of the pandemic’s disruption to schools — including higher numbers of students missing school and falling behind academically — added to a constellation of factors that have unmoored children. Students were absent from schools, and their stabilizing influence, more often in poor communities, where gun violence was already higher and where social services, housing and access to amenities are often lacking.

During the 18 months that New York City schools were closed because of the pandemic, more people in Black and Latino communities died, and Black children were more likely to lose a caregiver. All the teenagers charged with murder in New York City last year were Black or Hispanic, according to state data.

New York Times, DeSantis Burnishes Tough-on-Crime Image to Take On Trump, Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan, March 30, 2023. Gov. Ron DeSantis, preparing for an all-but-declared campaign in 2024, is said to see an opening to take on former President Trump from the right.

Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida has spent months shoring up a tough-on-crime image as he weighs a run for the White House, calling for stronger penalties against drug traffickers and using $5,000 bonuses to bolster law-enforcement recruitment to his state.

Now, Mr. DeSantis and his allies plan to use that image to draw a contrast with the Republican front-runner in the 2024 race, former President Donald J. Trump.

Mr. DeSantis and his backers see the signature criminal-justice law enacted by Mr. Trump in 2018 as an area of weakness with his base, and Mr. DeSantis has indicated that he would highlight it when the two men tussle for the Republican nomination, according to three people with knowledge of Mr. DeSantis’s thinking. That law, known as the First Step Act, reduced the sentences for thousands of prisoners.

Mr. DeSantis has yet to officially announce his candidacy, but he has been quietly staffing a presidential campaign, and his allies have been building up a super PAC. Since at least his re-election in November, Mr. DeSantis has privately suggested that Mr. Trump’s record on crime is one of several policy issues on which Mr. Trump is vulnerable to attacks from the right.

New York Times, Several Face Charges in Killings of Gay Men Who Were Drugged and Robbed, Liam Stack and Chelsia Rose Marcius, Updated March 30, 2023. Assailants used facial recognition to unlock phones and then looted bank accounts. The crimes have spread fear in New York’s nightlife.

Several defendants face charges in connection with murders and robberies at Manhattan bars that terrorized the city’s gay community, according to three people with knowledge of the matter.

The homicides last spring drew wide attention to a danger that has long stalked New York's nightlife: the use of easily obtainable drugs to incapacitate, rob and sometimes kill.

John Umberger, 33, and Julio Ramirez, 25, were killed after they left bars in Hell’s Kitchen in what the medical examiner’s office ruled were murders committed in the course of “drug-facilitated theft.”

After they died, the families of both men discovered that large amounts of money had been stolen from their financial accounts. Their assailants had unlocked their phones using facial recognition. As public knowledge of the killings grew, more victims came forward to say they too had been drugged at gay bars in New York, and then robbed and left for dead.

The police department has said it is investigating crimes at both straight and gay bars, and that the victims have been a mix of heterosexual and L.G.B.T.Q. people. Detectives believe more than one group may be involved in the crimes, according to two of the officials with knowledge of the investigation.

Last week, the police said the July death of Kathryn Marie Gallagher, a fashion designer who worked with Lady Gaga, Laverne Cox and other high-profile clients, was also a drug-related homicide that may have been part of an attempt to rob her.

Internal Police Department documents viewed by The New York Times described two similar robbery patterns, with the earliest crimes dating to 2021. Criminals appeared to be motivated by money rather than bias, according to the documents. They hit bars that catered to straight and gay people, choosing some locations because of their attractive patrons.

But the crimes had a singular impact on the city’s gay community, which emerged from the pandemic to face a monkeypox outbreak, economic turmoil that threatened many bars that serve as de facto community centers, and an increasingly hostile national political climate.

The killings of Mr. Ramirez and Mr. Umberger were part of the same robbery pattern, according to the Police Department documents. The victims were typically male and intoxicated and robbed of their cellphones. The perpetrators then transferred large amounts of money into their own bank accounts.

The documents named 10 people involved in those robberies, of whom six had been arrested. The other four were wanted for questioning.New York Times, FIFA Pulls Soccer Tournament From Indonesia After Anti-Israel Protests, March 30, 2023.

Investigators had remained tight-lipped throughout the nearly yearlong investigation, which hinged on complex but ubiquitous technology, online banking, and so-called date rape drugs that are essentially undetectable.

United States Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas (l) with his wife of thirty-five years, Virginia (Ginni) Thomas (r).

Washington Post, Activist group led by Ginni Thomas received nearly $600,000 in anonymous donations, Shawn Boburg and Emma Brown, March 29, 2023 (print ed.). Funding for group that battled ‘cultural Marxism’ was channeled through right-wing think tank, Post investigation finds.

A little-known conservative activist group led by Virginia “Ginni” Thomas, the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, collected nearly $600,000 in anonymous donations to wage a cultural battle against the left over three years, a Washington Post investigation found.

The previously unreported donations to the fledgling group Crowdsourcers for Culture and Liberty were channeled through a right-wing think tank in Washington that agreed to serve as a funding conduit from 2019 until the start of last year, according to documents and interviews. The arrangement, known as a “fiscal sponsorship,” effectively shielded from public view details about Crowdsourcers’ activities and spending, information it would have had to disclose publicly if it operated as a separate nonprofit organization, experts said.

The Post’s investigation sheds new light on the role money from donors who are not publicly identified has played in supporting Ginni Thomas’s political advocacy, long a source of controversy. The funding is the first example of anonymous donors backing her activism since she founded a conservative charity more than a decade ago. She stepped away from that charity amid concerns that it created potential conflicts for her husband on hot-button issues before the court.

Thomas’s activism has set her apart from other spouses of Supreme Court justices. She has allied with numerous people and groups that have interests before the court, and she has dedicated herself to causes involving some of the most polarizing issues in the country.

White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows walks to board Marine One from the South Lawn of the White House in July 2020. Later that year, Ginni Thomas privately pressed Meadows to pursue efforts to overturn the presidential election. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)

In 2020, she privately pressed White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows to pursue efforts to overturn the presidential election, and she sent emails urging swing-state lawmakers to set aside Joe Biden’s popular-vote victory in awarding electoral votes. When those efforts were revealed by The Post last year, they intensified questions about whether her husband should recuse himself from cases related to the election and attempts to subvert it.

In recent months, the high court has faced increasing scrutiny over a range of ethical issues, including the lack of transparency surrounding potential conflicts of interest and a whistleblower’s claim that wealthy Christian activists sought access to justices at social gatherings to shore up their resolve on abortion and other conservative priorities.

In a brief statement to The Post, Mark Paoletta, a lawyer for Ginni Thomas, said she was “proud of the work she did with Crowdsourcers, which brought together conservative leaders to discuss amplifying conservative values with respect to the battle over culture.”

“She believes Crowdsourcers identified the Left’s dominance in most cultural lanes, while conservatives were mostly funding political organizations,” Paoletta wrote. “In her work, she has complied with all reporting and disclosure requirements.”

He wrote: “There is no plausible conflict of interest issue with respect to Justice Thomas.”

A spokeswoman for the Supreme Court did not respond to questions for Clarence Thomas.

In 2019, anonymous donors gave the think tank Capital Research Center, or CRC, $596,000 that was designated for Crowdsourcers, according to tax filings and audits the think tank submitted to state regulators. The majority of that money, $400,000, was routed through yet another nonprofit, Donors Trust, according to that organization’s tax filings. Donors Trust is a fund that receives money from wealthy donors whose identities are not disclosed and steers it toward conservative causes.

The documents do not say how or whether the money was spent. It is not clear how much compensation, if any, Ginni Thomas received.

Washington Post, Supreme Court justices under new ethics disclosures on trips, other gifts, Jonathan O'Connell and Ann E. Marimow, March 29, 2023 (print ed.). Supreme Court justices and all federal judges must provide a fuller public accounting of free trips, meals and other gifts they accept from corporations or other organizations, according to revised regulations quietly adopted this month.

The new requirements mark a technical but significant change that lawmakers and court transparency advocates hope will lead to more disclosure by judges and justices and also make it easier for parties in specific cases to request that judges remove themselves from cases when potential conflicts arise.

Gifts such as an overnight stay at a personal vacation home owned by a friend remain exempt from reporting requirements. But the revised rules require disclosure when judges are treated to stays at commercial properties, such as hotels, ski resorts or corporate hunting lodges. The changes also clarify that judges must report travel by private jet.

Washington Post, D.C. U.S. attorney declined to prosecute 67 percent of those arrested. Here’s why, Keith L. Alexander, March 30, 2023 (print ed.). ‘I can promise you, it’s not MPD holding the bag on this,’ D.C. Police Chief Robert J. Contee III said. ‘That’s B.S.’

As the District grapples with rising crime and increasing attention from federal lawmakers over public safety issues, a startling statistic emerged in recent weeks.

Last year, federal prosecutors in the District’s U.S. attorney’s office chose not to prosecute 67 percent of those arrested by police officers in cases that would have been tried in D.C. Superior Court.

That figure, first reported earlier this month on the substack DC Crime Facts, nearly doubled from 2015, when prosecutors in the U.S. Attorney’s office declined to prosecute 35 percent of such cases.

The increased number of declined cases has sparked frustration among city leaders who are already under a national microscope from members of Congress for their crime fighting efforts. The House Committee on Oversight and Accountability is scheduled to hold a hearing Wednesday where Republicans will examine management of D.C., particularly on crime and safety. Earlier this month, the Senate joined the House of Representatives in voting to reject an overhaul of the city’s criminal code, in part because it called for reducing penalties for certain crimes, including carjacking.

In an interview, Matthew M. Graves, the Biden-appointed U.S. attorney for the District, said his office was continuing to prosecute the vast majority of violent felonies. He said prosecutors were declining less serious cases for myriad reasons, including that the city’s crime lab remained unaccredited and police body-camera footage was subjecting arrests to more scrutiny.

Robert J. Contee III, left, the District’s police chief, said his officers were not to blame.

“I can promise you, it’s not MPD holding the bag on this,” Contee said. “That’s B.S.”

The U.S. attorney’s office in the District is unique among federal prosecutor shops across the country. It prosecutes both local, D.C.-based crimes in Superior Court, as any local prosecutor or district attorney’s office would, as well as federal cases in U.S. District Court.

But even compared to a local prosecutor’s office, a 67 percent declination rate is high. For example, in Wayne County, Mich., which includes Detroit, the prosecutor’s office reported declining 33 percent of its cases last year. Prosecutors in Philadelphia declined 4 percent and prosecutors in Cook County, Ill., which includes Chicago, declined 14 percent, according to data from those offices.

“Of course we are concerned,” Contee said. “We believe every person we arrest should be off the streets.”

Graves said the declinations are mostly coming after arrests in cases such as gun possession, drug possession and burglaries — not in violent crimes. He said his office last year prosecuted 87.9 percent of arrests made in homicides, armed carjackings, assaults with intent to kill and first-degree sexual assault cases. According to figures provided to The Washington Post, that percentage is higher than the 85.7 prosecuted cases in 2021, but down from 95.6 percent of prosecuted cases in 2018.

“The bottom line is that it creates the impression that this is an across the board decrease in the number of cases we are bringing. That is simply not true,” Graves said.

Because D.C.'s Department of Forensic Sciences lost its accreditation in 2021, prosecutors have to pay to have evidence for DNA, firearm and fingerprint analysis sent to outside laboratories, Graves said. Prosecutors, he said, prioritize doing so for violent offenses.

“We are now entering year three of DFS being shut down without any clear plan of coming back online,” Graves said. “We have to prioritize violent felonies and make sure we are doing the forensic testing for those cases. Our office is often bearing the cost for this analysis.”

Prosecutors in the D.C. Office of the Attorney General, which handles juvenile crime and most misdemeanors in the District, and similarly has had to use outside laboratories, declined to prosecute just 26 percent of its cases last year, according to data from that office.

Graves said footage from body-worn cameras has also increased the number of arrests prosecutors walk away from, as they review at an earlier stage whether police have gathered enough evidence to support a conviction.

“Since 2019, we have been taking more time at arrest to determine if we are going to file charges. With body-worn camera and the proliferation of surveillance cameras, we have more information at the charging stage to assess the strength of the evidence we would be presenting later to courts and juries,” he said.

Contee took aim at a part of a D.C. law that the city council passed in 2020 preventing officers from reviewing their body worn cameras before filling out charging documents.

The law, which congressional Republicans have threatened to try to block, means officers now have to rely on their memories and notes when filling out arrest warrants, and prosecutors might not move forward on a case if details in the warrant don’t match the footage, officials said.

New York Times, U.S. Border Policies Have Created a Volatile Logjam in Mexico, Miriam Jordan and Edgar Sandoval, March 29, 2023 (print ed.). As the United States has cracked down on border entries, Mexico has borne the burden of housing and feeding tens of thousands of desperate migrants.

A series of tough new border policies have sharply reduced the number of migrants crossing into the United States to their lowest levels since President Biden took office, but the measures have created a combustible bottleneck along Mexico’s northern border, with tens of thousands of frustrated migrants languishing in overcrowded shelters from Tijuana to Reynosa.

The situation exploded on Monday when a protest at a government-run migrant detention center in Ciudad Juárez led to a fire that killed at least 40 people. But scenes of overcrowding and desperation have been unfolding in recent weeks along the length of the border as the Biden administration prepares for yet another surge in migration this spring.

Migrants have been waiting in anticipation of a major policy shift, expected in May, when the United States plans to lift a pandemic-era health policy that has allowed U.S. border authorities to swiftly expel many unauthorized migrants crossing the border from Mexico.

Separate new entry restrictions that have already taken effect require most migrants hoping to win U.S. asylum to apply for an appointment at a port of entry. Problems with the new mobile app have left thousands trying in vain for an appointment while stranded in Mexican border towns, where many have already been waiting for months.

“What we have in Tijuana and other Mexican border cities is a bottleneck,” said Enrique Lucero, director of the migration services office for the city of Tijuana, across the border from San Diego. “Thousands of migrants are waiting for the opportunity to enter the U.S., and more keep arriving.”

The city’s 30 shelters can accommodate 5,600 people; as many as 15,000 migrants are currently in the city, he said.

“The number of people who are able to access the United States is a couple hundred a day,” he said, “but we have thousands here. Shelters are at full capacity.”

Even before Monday’s fire, frustration had boiled over earlier this month in Juárez, when hundreds of migrants, mostly from Venezuela, tried to storm their way across the international bridges to reach El Paso, only to clash with U.S. authorities.

“It’s desperation,” said Ricardo Samaniego, the county judge in El Paso, which lies across the border from Ciudad Juárez. “You dangle the end of Title of 42 and then you say, ‘Nevermind,’ and people get stuck.”

He said he had learned through his counterparts in Mexico that shelters and detention centers in Juárez were at near capacity and that they were bracing for yet another surge in the days and weeks to come with plans to lift Title 42 on May 11.

Immigrant advocates have been warning for months that the situation was becoming explosive.

“The 39 lives lost last night in Ciudad Juárez are a horrifying indictment. The systems of enforcement that we have erected to patrol people who migrate are steel hands in velvet gloves, and death is part of the overhead. We are all responsible,” Dylan Corbett, executive director of the Hope Border Institute, a faith-based organization, said on Twitter.

With shelters in many border cities full, new arrivals have resorted to sleeping in dingy hotels until their money runs out, and have then ended up on the streets and in abandoned buildings. Tensions have flared, resulting in confrontations with Mexican law enforcement officers, whom migrants have accused of beating, arresting and extorting them. Powerful cartels that control illegal border passage have kidnapped and tortured migrants.

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U.S. Political Culture Wars

Washington Post, Disney quietly dodged DeSantis’s oversight board, appointees realize, Bryan Pietsch and Aaron Gregg, Updated March 30, 2023. An 11th-hour agreement forbids the governor-appointed board from using Disney’s “fanciful characters” such as Mickey Mouse.

The Disney World oversight board installed by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R), right, accused its predecessor of using an 11th-hour agreement to sharply curtail the new board’s powers and bolster the entertainment giant’s control over the Florida-based amusement park.

The agreement forbids the new board from using Disney’s brand name or any of its trademarks, specifically citing “fanciful characters such as Mickey Mouse.” It also gives the company the right to prior review and comment when making changes to building exteriors.

Through a spokesperson, DeSantis said the governor-appointed board had contracted law firms to challenge the agreement, and suggested certain “legal infirmities” could render it void.

DeSantis, an ascendant voice in the Republican Party and widely seen as a likely contender for the party’s 2024 presidential nomination, appointed a new oversight board after Disney criticized education legislation he had promoted that prohibited teachers from discussing gender and sexual orientation in early grades. Critics derided the policy as a homophobic and discriminatory “don’t say gay” bill. DeSantis signed it into law last year.

Florida legislature passes bill to restrict LGBTQ topics in elementary schools

In apparent retaliation for the critique, DeSantis replaced the previous Disney-friendly oversight board known as the Reedy Creek Improvement District with a new board, the Central Florida Tourism Oversight District, made up entirely of his own appointees, including religious and conservative activists. The board is responsible for approving infrastructure projects, as well as maintaining more mundane aspects of the park, such as trash collection and management of sewer systems. Disney would have been to some degree beholden to DeSantis’s board for its sign-off on major projects, in theory allowing it to hold sway over the company.

An 11th-hour agreement forbids the governor-appointed board from using Disney’s “fanciful characters” such as Mickey Mouse.

New York Times, Opinion: A Florida School Banned a Disney Movie About Ruby Bridges. Here’s What That Really Means, Charles M. Blow, right, March 30, 2023 (print ed.). This month, an elementary school in St. Petersburg, Fla., stopped showing a 1998 Disney movie about Ruby Bridges, the 6-year-old Black girl who integrated a public elementary school in New Orleans in 1960, because of a complaint lodged by a single parent who said she feared the film might teach children that white people hate Black people.

The school banned the film until it could be reviewed. So I decided to review the film myself.

First, here’s a refresher on Ruby: When she integrated that school, she had to be escorted by federal marshals. She was met by throngs of white racists — adults! — jeering, hurling epithets, spitting at her and threatening her life. Parents withdrew their children.

Only one teacher would teach her, so every day that 6-year-old girl had to be in class by herself, save for the teacher, and eat lunch alone.

Ruby became afraid to eat because one of the protesters threatened to poison her. Her father lost his job, and the local grocery asked that her family not come back to the store.

All of this was endured by a Black first grader, but now a Florida parent worries that it’s too much for second graders to hear, see and learn about.

Furthermore, of all the ways Ruby’s story could have been portrayed, the Disney version is the most generous, including developed story lines for Ruby’s white teacher and the white psychiatrist who treated her. And in the end, another white teacher and a white student come around to some form of acceptance.

The movie is what you’d expect: a lamentable story about a deplorable chapter in our history, earnestly told, with some of the sharpest edges blunted, making it easier for children to absorb.

But in Florida, the point isn’t the protection of children but the deceiving of them. It’s to fight so-called woke indoctrination with a historical whitewash.

And the state has given individual parents extraordinary authority as foot soldiers in this campaign: In this case, a single objecting parent is apparently enough to have a lesson about our very recent history questioned or even banned. Remember: Bridges isn’t some ancient figure in a dusty textbook, she’s alive and well today. She’s 12 years younger than my own mother.

Earlier this year, in the same school district, Toni Morrison’s “The Bluest Eye” was banned from all district high schools because a parent complained about a rape scene in the book.

Also this month, a principal in Florida was pressured to resign after students were shown Michelangelo’s statue of David, a biblical figure no less, and three parents complained.

Giving so few parents so much power to take educational options away from other parents and children runs counter to the spirit of democracy and free inquiry, and enshrines a form of parental tyranny of the hypersensitive, the inexplicably aggrieved and the maliciously oppressive.

It portends an era of bedlam in Florida’s schools, all courtesy of extremist state legislators’ and Gov. Ron DeSantis’s quixotic war on wokeness.

U.S. Rep. Thomas Massie, a Republican from Kentucky shown at bottom left, exemplifies the gun-cult majority in Congress, as illustrated by his recent Christmas photo showing his family armed with automatic weapons during a holiday season.

Washington Post, Congressmen get in shouting match over gun control after Nashville shooting, Andrew Jeong, March 30, 2023. Days after three children and three adults were fatally shot at a small Christian school in Nashville, a heated discussion over gun control between Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D-N.Y.) and Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) turned into a shouting match in a hallway outside the House chamber.

Bowman, right, a former middle school principal, was telling reporters that Republicans were “gutless” for not backing gun control laws after this week’s shooting.

Standing in the hallway, Bowman accused Republicans of being “cowards” and said voters should force them “to respond to the question” of how to “save America’s children” from shootings. “And let them explain that all the way up to Election Day in 2024,” he said.

Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.), who was walking by, then stopped to ask: “What are you talking about?”

“I’m talking about gun violence,” Bowman said.

Massie, who once tweeted a holiday photo of his family holding guns, then told Bowman, “You know, there’s never been a school shooting in a school that allows teachers to carry.”

“Carry guns? More guns lead to more death,” Bowman replied, raising his volume. “Look at the data; you’re not looking at any data.” Bowman then repeatedly told Massie that states that have open-carry laws have more deaths. When Massie told Bowman to calm down, the second-term congressman yelled, “Calm down? Children are dying!”

Washington Post, Ala. GOP lawmaker to House committee: D.C. schools are ‘crappy,’ ‘inmate factories,’ Lauren Lumpkin, March 30, 2023. Rep. Gary Palmer (R-Ala.) blasted public schools in D.C. on Wednesday during a congressional hearing that focused largely on crime in the city, calling the schools “crappy” and accusing them of producing criminals.

“Your schools are not only dropout factories, they’re inmate factories,” Palmer told a panel of D.C. officials that included D.C. Council Chairman Phil Mendelson (D), council member Charles Allen (D-Ward 6), the city’s chief financial officer and the police union chairman. The statement came as Palmer questioned leaders about juvenile crimes involving guns and drugs.

Mendelson, who chairs the D.C. Council committee that oversees education issues, pushed back. “I don’t agree that the D.C. public schools are inmate factories.”

Mendelson appeared in front of the House Committee on Oversight and Accountability to answer questions that revolved around crime and policing. The hearing came as the Republican-majority committee prepared to decide whether to advance a measure blocking D.C.'s major police accountability legislation.

But, at some points, congressional lawmakers directed questions toward the District’s schools. GOP members criticized city leaders for low test scores and the rate of chronic absenteeism, which skyrocketed to 48 percent after schools reopened last year. The share of chronically absent students fell to 41 percent — still above pre-pandemic levels — in December.

Washington Post, Nashville shooting exploited by right to escalate anti-trans rhetoric, Fenit Nirappil, March 30, 2023. Transgender people are rarely the perpetrators of mass shootings, which are overwhelmingly carried out by cisgender men, say criminal justice experts.

Conservative commentators and Republican politicians unleashed a new wave of anti-trans rhetoric following Monday’s shooting at a Nashville Christian school that killed six people, escalating a broader backlash to the rising visibility of transgender people in public life.

The attempts on the right to connect violence to transgender people come even though transgender people are rarely the perpetrators of mass shootings, which are overwhelmingly carried out by cisgender men, according to criminal justice experts. And trans people are more likely to be victims of violence than cisgender people, multiple studies have shown.

In Nashville, the shooter’s gender identity and motive remain unclear: police initially said the shooter Audrey Hale, right, was a 28-year-old woman, and then later said Hale was transgender, citing a social media profile in which Hale used masculine pronouns. The Post has not yet confirmed how Hale identified.

The data is clear: There is no ‘clear epidemic’ of transgender mass shooters

Nevertheless, Fox News host Tucker Carlson featured a photo of the shooter superimposed with the words “Trans Killer” on his Tuesday show. The chyron read: “We are witnessing the rise of trans violence.”

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) speculated on Twitter, as well as during a congressional hearing Wednesday, that hormone treatment may have played a role in the shooting, even though there is no evidence the shooter was on hormone therapy.

And former president Donald Trump on Wednesday, without evidence, also connected the Nashville shooting to hormone therapy and “the anger that was caused” during an interview with conservative talk radio host John Fredericks. Trump said he banned transgender people from serving in the military because “the amount of drugs they have to take is so incredible,” even though research and surveys show most transgender people do not undergo hormone therapy.

Studies examining the effects of testosterone therapy on aggression in transgender men have produced mixed results, with one review of scientific literature finding impacts on aggression would be short-term and concluding that more research is needed because available studies lack randomization and rely on self-reporting.

More On Probes of Trump, Allies

Politico, Manhattan Trump grand jury set to break for a month, Erica Orden, March 30, 2023 (print ed.). A previously planned hiatus would push back a potential indictment of the former president.

The Manhattan grand jury examining Donald Trump’s alleged role in a hush money payment to a porn star isn’t expected to hear evidence in the case for the next month largely due to a previously scheduled hiatus, according to a person familiar with the proceedings.

The break would push any indictment of the former president to late April at the earliest, although it is possible that the grand jury’s schedule could change. In recent weeks, the Manhattan district attorney’s office hasn’t convened the panel on certain days. But it is District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s prerogative to ask the grand jury to reconvene if prosecutors want the panel to meet during previously planned breaks.

The grand jury, which heard testimony in the Trump case on Monday, isn’t meeting Wednesday and is expected to examine evidence in a separate matter Thursday, the person said. The grand jury, which typically meets Mondays, Wednesdays and Thursdays, is scheduled to consider another case next week on Monday and Wednesday, the person said, and isn’t expected to meet Thursday due to the Passover holiday.

The following two weeks are set to be a hiatus that was scheduled when the grand jury was first convened in January, the person said.

A spokesperson for the Manhattan district attorney’s office declined to comment.

There is no official deadline for bringing an indictment against Trump, although there were indications in recent weeks that the grand jury’s activity was nearing a vote, particularly when prosecutors offered Trump the chance to testify before the panel. That is typically one of the final steps of a criminal investigation. Trump declined the invitation.

Prosecutors are examining Trump’s alleged role in a $130,000 payment that was made to adult entertainer Stormy Daniels, who said she had an affair with the former president. He has denied the affair and any wrongdoing associated with the payment.

The grand jury largely didn’t hear evidence in the Trump case last week. On Monday, former National Enquirer publisher David Pecker testified for a second time before the panel.

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U.S. Politics, Elections, Economy, Governance

New York Times, Michigan Democrats Rise, and Try to Turn a Battleground Blue, Katie Glueck, March 30, 2023 (print ed.). With a strong governor, a Legislature passing a raft of liberal measures and a looming early presidential primary, Democrats are testing the promise and pitfalls of complete control of the state.

The state has transformed into a new — if fragile — focal point of Democratic power, testing the promise and pitfalls of complete Democratic governance.

The governor of Michigan, Gretchen Witmer, right, is considered one of her party’s brightest stars. Her state’s Democratic-controlled Legislature is rapidly approving a raft of ambitious priorities. The Democratic Party is planning to host one of its earliest presidential primaries in Michigan, while the state’s Republican Party is in chaos.

Seven years after Michigan helped cement Donald J. Trump’s presidential victory, the state has transformed into a new — if fragile — focal point of Democratic power, testing the promise and pitfalls of complete Democratic governance in one of the nation’s pre-eminent political battlegrounds.

Michigan’s Democratic leaders, however, recoil at the idea that their state — once a reliable stronghold for the party in presidential years — is turning blue once more.

“No! Michigan’s not a blue state,” Ms. Whitmer insisted in an interview last week in Bay City, nestled in a windy, working-class county near Saginaw Bay that Mr. Trump won twice. Ms. Whitmer captured it too, prevailing there and across the state in Democrats’ November sweep.

Washington Post, 9 soldiers killed as two U.S. Army helicopters crash in Ky. during training mission, Adela Suliman, Kelsey Ables and Dan Lamothe, March 30, 2023. Nine U.S. soldiers were killed late Wednesday when two Army helicopters crashed in southwestern Kentucky, triggering an investigation and a sprawling effort to notify the families of those involved, Army officials said Thursday.

The soldiers, with the 101st Airborne Division, were aboard HH-60 Black Hawk helicopters and flying during a training exercise in southwestern Kentucky’s Trigg County, west of where they took off from their home base of Fort Campbell, Army officials said. The crash occurred at about 10 p.m. local time.

Five were aboard one aircraft and four were aboard the other, with pilots using night-vision equipment during a training exercise at the time, said Brig. Gen. John Lubas, the division’s deputy commander, during a news conference Thursday. Each helicopter typically flies with a pilot, a co-pilot and a crew chief, and can carry as many as 12 people.

The crash highlights the inherent dangers in military aviation, even in training exercises. Between 2013 and 2020, 224 U.S. troops were killed in aviation accidents, according to a report commissioned by Congress.

Washington Post, Arizona Democrats to sue No Labels to block third-party challenge, Michael Scherer, March 30, 2023. The moderate group has been preparing a possible national presidential ticket for the 2024 elections.

The Arizona Democratic Party will file a lawsuit Thursday against the state’s top election administrator and No Labels, seeking to reverse the moderate group’s recognition as a political party for the 2024 elections, according to Democratic officials.

The lawsuit, in state court in Phoenix, reflects growing concern in Democratic circles that a No Labels third-party ticket in 2024 will jeopardize the reelection hopes of President Biden and make it harder for Democrats to maintain control of the Senate.

The lawsuit claims that Secretary of State Adrian Fontes, who is a Democrat, made an error in accepting signature petitions for the No Labels Party, because accompanying affidavits from proposed electors were signed before all the petitions were gathered, in violation of state statute. As a result, the Arizona Democratic Party claims the affidavits purporting to verify the petitions should be considered false and the petitions invalid.

The lawsuit also argues that No Labels, which is organized as a social welfare nonprofit that is not required to disclose its donors, has failed to comply with the federal requirements of a political party, including donation limits and donor disclosure.

“No Labels is not following the rules for political party recognition, while attempting to be placed on the ballot alongside actual, functioning political parties who do,” said Morgan Dick, spokeswoman for the Arizona Democratic Party. “Arizonans deserve better and voters deserve to know who is behind this shadowy organization and what potentially nefarious agenda they are pushing.”

The civil suit comes as No Labels is seeking state ballot access across the country to prepare for a potential “black swan” moment, when enough Americans are dissatisfied with the major-party nominees to open a lane for a third-party candidate to win the White House. A video from the group published Tuesday by the New Republic described the presidential campaign effort as “an insurance policy for America’s future.” The group has already qualified for the ballots in Oregon, Arizona, Alaska and Colorado.

Founded in 2010 as a political organization focused on finding bipartisan and centrist solutions to the nation’s problems, the group has worked on both policy and elections, raising money for both Republican and Democratic candidates. The group helped to found the bipartisan Problem Solvers Caucus in the U.S. House.

Washington Post, Manchin, facing reelection, ratchets up criticism of Biden on energy, fiscal policy, John Wagner, March 30, 2023. Sen. Joe Manchin III (D-W.Va.) is ratcheting up criticism of President Biden, castigating him for refusing to sit down with “fiscally minded” Republicans to negotiate over the nation’s debt limit and accusing him of allowing “unelected ideologues” in his administration to thwart the will of Congress on energy policy.

Manchin, who has not yet said whether he will run for reelection next year in a state that Biden lost to President Donald Trump by nearly 39 percentage points, laid out several of his grievances with Biden in a Wall Street Journal op-ed published Wednesday night.

“Mr. Biden was elected to lead us all to solve problems,” Manchin wrote. “We can’t allow them to be made worse by ignoring them. The president has the power, today, to direct his administration to follow the law, as well as to sit down with congressional leaders and negotiate meaningful, serious reforms to the federal budget.”

Washington Post, After #FreeBritney, Senate bill seeks changes to guardianships, Amanda Morris, March 30, 2023. It took Britney Spears years to fight a “protective” legal arrangement. A proposed new law calls for giving more rights to people in similar situations.

Britney Spears’ successful fight to end the conservatorship that controlled her life has spurred a new effort in Congress to retool these types of legal arrangements.

Proposed legislation to be introduced in the Senate today by Sen. Robert P. Casey Jr. (D-Pa.) would help reduce the number of people under these legal arrangements while also giving them more protection.

Guardianships, which are known in some states as conservatorships, can strip someone of control over their finances, their personal decisions, or both. Under some arrangements, people can lose their right to marry, vote, have children or get a job. An estimated 1.3 million people live under guardianships, according to a 2018 estimate from the National Council on Disability.

The arrangements are intended to protect people who are incapable of making their own decisions from exploitation and abuse. But advocates for people with disabilities say that guardianships are used too frequently and often are difficult to rescind, as highlighted by Spears’ long fight in 2021 to end her conservatorship, which she called “demoralizing” and “abusive.”

Washington Post, FBI informant testifies at Proud Boys sedition trial — for the defense, Rachel Weiner, Spencer S. Hsu and Hannah Allam, March 30, 2023. An associate of the group, who defendants in the Jan. 6 trial say asked for details about their trial strategy and gave them advice, was also reporting to the FBI.

The man, going only by “Aaron,” joined a Kansas City chapter of the far-right Proud Boys organization in 2019. He had another relationship that went back a decade, with federal law enforcement.

As Donald Trump’s supporters swarmed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, Aaron sent a quick series of messages to an FBI agent.

“Barriers down at capitol building,” he said, according to evidence shown in court. “Crowd surged forward. About to [reach] the building now.” He told his FBI handler, “PB did not do it, nor inspire.”

But in one of the most high-profile Jan. 6 prosecutions, it isn’t the government calling its own informants as witnesses. Instead, at least four FBI sources were approached by the defense. Two others are on trial. And it was federal prosecutors who undermined the credibility of a federal informant, suggesting that Aaron had deleted evidence and eliciting testimony that he repeatedly understated his own participation in the riot.

The role reversal underscores the intelligence failures in advance of Jan. 6, as the FBI was unprepared for the riot despite having inroads into the groups now accused by the Justice Department of plotting the violence. The five Proud Boys leaders on trial are accused of seditious conspiracy, a rarely used political charge, in a trial that has lasted nearly three months.

Washington Post, Ariz. governor’s press secretary resigns amid backlash over gun-toting post, Maham Javaid, March 30, 2023. Arizona Gov. Katie Hobbs (D) asked her press secretary to resign Tuesday night amid backlash over a meme she tweeted that prominent conservatives in the state said was a threat against “transphobes.” The meme was shared hours after a mass killing in Nashville took six lives and left questions about the shooter’s gender identity.

Murphy Hebert, Hobbs’ director of communications, told The Washington Post that Josselyn Berry delivered her resignation after the governor asked for it.

The meme shared on Twitter by Berry depicts a woman wielding a gun in each hand, a still from the 1980 crime thriller “Gloria.” Berry’s caption alongside the image read, “Us when we see transphobes.”

Nashville shooting exploited by right to escalate anti-trans rhetoric

In a statement Wednesday, Hobbs said she accepted Berry’s resignation, and that Berry’s tweet “is not reflective of the values of the administration.” The tweet was shared the same day as the mass shooting that left three children and three adults dead at Covenant School in Nashville. The shooter, Audrey Hale, was killed by police.

Nashville police initially said the shooter was a 28-year-old woman, and then later said Hale was transgender, citing a social media profile in which Hale used masculine pronouns. The Post has not yet confirmed how Hale identified.

New York Times, Republicans Face Setbacks in Push to Make Voting Harder for College Students, Neil Vigdor, March 30, 2023 (print ed.). Party officials have tried to enact new obstacles for young voters, who tilt heavily Democratic, after several cycles in which their turnout surged.

Alarmed over young people increasingly proving to be a force for Democrats at the ballot box, Republican lawmakers in a number of states have been trying to enact new obstacles to voting for college students.

In Idaho, Republicans used their power monopoly this month to ban student ID cards as a form of voter identification.

But so far this year, the new Idaho law is one of few successes for Republicans targeting young voters.

Attempts to cordon off out-of-state students from voting in their campus towns or to roll back preregistration for teenagers have failed in New Hampshire and Virginia. Even in Texas, where 2019 legislation shuttered early voting sites on many college campuses, a new proposal that would eliminate all college polling places seems to have an uncertain future.

Axios, Scoop: Christie pledges never to support Trump again, Josh Kraushaar, March 29-30, 2023. Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, who is seriously considering a 2024 presidential campaign, told Axios that he will never support Donald Trump for president again — even if he wins the Republican nomination.

Why it matters: No potential GOP candidate has made such an explicit pledge, underscoring the degree to which Christie is betting on the viability of an anti-Trump lane in the primary.

The big picture: Christie was one of the first top Republicans to back Trump in 2016 after the reality TV star emerged as the front-runner in the presidential race — and even helped the former president prepare to debate Joe Biden during the 2020 campaign.

If Christie gets in the race, he is prepared to play the role of anti-Trump prosecutor at a time when Trump's other Republican rivals have been reticent to go after him directly.
Christie previewed his line of attack in a speech Monday at St. Anselm College in New Hampshire, where he said Republicans need someone to take down Trump on the debate stage the way he viciously took down Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) in 2016.

What they're saying: "I'm going to go out there and tell the truth. Like the truth matters. The truth is not negotiable," Christie told Axios.

Asked whether he'd support Trump as the GOP nominee in 2024, Christie said: "I can't help him. No way."
"Look, I just can't," Christie went on. "When you have the Jan. 6 choir at a rally and you show video of it — I just don't think that person is appropriate for the presidency."

Christie said he wouldn't be voting for Biden, either. "I can't imagine myself voting for Joe Biden, either. I don't know if I can vote for either of these guys. They're both too old. They're both out of touch with what's going on in the world right now."

Between the lines: "Look, what I thought in 2016 was that [Trump] going to be the nominee, and I don't want Hillary Clinton to be the president," Christie said about his past support for Trump, which lasted until the Jan. 6 Capitol attack.

"Did I have concerns about him? Of course, but you probably have concerns about any candidate other than yourself in the end."

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U.S. Budget, Banks, Economy, Jobs, CryptoCurrencies

New York Times, Debt Talks Are Frozen as House Republicans Splinter Over a Fiscal Plan, Catie Edmondson, Updated March 30, 2023. House Republicans who have said they will not vote to raise the national debt limit without deep spending cuts are backing away from their promise to balance the budget and struggling to unite their fractious majority behind a fiscal plan, paralyzing progress on talks to avert a catastrophic default as soon as this summer.

Determined to use the coming confrontation over the national debt to extract sweeping spending concessions from Democrats, House G.O.P. leaders announced a series of lofty goals earlier this year — driven in large part by the demands of the hard-right faction of their party. They include balancing the federal budget in 10 years and freezing spending at prepandemic levels, all without touching Social Security, Medicare or military funding.

But even as they continue to deride President Biden’s $6.8 trillion budget proposal, released this month, House Republicans have begun to inch away from their own stated objectives, plagued by divisions that have prevented them from agreeing on a plan of their own that can draw enough support to pass with their slim majority.

The pledge to balance the nation’s budget has gone by the wayside, initially softened to a commitment to put the nation “on a path toward” a balanced budget and now seemingly scrapped altogether. The timetable for when Republicans say they will put out a budget blueprint has continued to slip. And after the Budget Committee chairman told reporters that the party was finalizing a list of specific cuts to bring to negotiations with Mr. Biden, Speaker Kevin McCarthy threw cold water on the idea, saying, “I don’t know what he’s talking about.”

Washington Post, U.S. targets world’s biggest crypto market with charges against Binance, Julian Mark, March 29, 2023 (print ed.). Binance, the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange, was charged on Monday by U.S. commodities regulators who allege the company violated regulations and showed American customers how to evade compliance controls.

The Commodity Futures Trading Commission filed a civil complaint in federal court in the Northern District of Illinois, charging Binance and its founder Changpeng Zhao with violating the Commodity Exchange Act and CFTC rules, which regulate the crypto derivatives such as futures. Samuel Lim, the firm’s former chief compliance officer, was also charged.

“For years, Binance knew they were violating CFTC rules, working actively to both keep the money flowing and avoid compliance,” Rostin Behnam, the commission’s chairman, said in a news release announcing the civil complaint. “This should be a warning to anyone in the digital asset world that the CFTC will not tolerate willful avoidance of U.S. law.”

New York Times, Live Updates: Regulators Blame Banks’ Mismanagement for Failures, Jeanna Smialek, March 29, 2023 (print ed.).Top officials from the Federal Reserve, the Treasury and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation defended their response on Tuesday to the collapse of two banks this month that shocked the global financial system and ramped up the risk of a recession in the United States.

The Senate Banking Committee sharply questioned the regulators during a hearing that lawmakers from both parties opened by criticizing the management of the two failed banks, Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank.

Senator Sherrod Brown of Ohio, the chairman of the committee, blamed three factors: “hubris, entitlement, greed,” while the committee’s ranking Republican, Tim Scott of South Carolina, also faulted regulators for not preventing the crisis.

Here’s what to know:

• The officials testifying are Michael S. Barr, the Fed’s vice chair for supervision; Martin Gruenberg, the chair of the F.D.I.C.; and Nellie Liang, the Treasury’s under secretary for domestic finance. Mr. Barr blamed the failure of Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank on mismanagement by its leaders. The Fed, SVB’s primary regulator, has been emphasizing executives’ culpability. “Fundamentally, the bank failed because its management failed to appropriately address clear interest rate risk and clear liquidity risk,” he said, noting that those problems were pointed out to the bank starting in November 2021. Catch up on what happened with the banks at the center of the crisis.
• Mr. Gruenberg said that both banks “were allowed to fail” — drawing a distinction between previous bailouts of financial institutions and what the federal authorities decided to do this month: backstopping all depositors.

In response to questions about their actions to stabilize deposits, Mr. Gruenberg said that there would have been “contagion” — a spreading of the crisis. Ms. Liang agreed, saying without federal action, bank runs “would have intensified and caused serious problems.”

This is the first of two days of testimony. The same officials will appear before the House Financial Services Committee on Wednesday.

Senator J.D. Vance, an Ohio Republican, begins his questioning by explaining that he comes from the venture capital world and knows that venture capital companies occasionally keep giant sums of cash in their bank accounts. “What we did was bail them out,” he said, suggesting that the government rescued the venture capital firms with millions stashed at SVB

It’s striking to hear Republicans asking why there wasn’t more regulation of this bank after years of complaining that regulation was too onerous, particularly for mid-sized banks.

New York Times, Sam Bankman-Fried Is Charged With Foreign Bribery, Matthew Goldstein, March 29, 2023 (print ed.). Federal prosecutors said the FTX founder had instructed employees to pay a $40 million bribe to one or more Chinese officials.

Federal prosecutors added a foreign bribery charge to the growing list of crimes already pending against the FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried, right, according to a new indictment filed in federal court in Manhattan on Tuesday.

Federal prosecutors said that in 2021 Mr. Bankman-Fried instructed those working for him to pay a bribe of $40 million to one or more Chinese officials to help unfreeze trading accounts maintained by Alameda Research, FTX’s sister company, that held about $1 billion in cryptocurrencies.

The bribe money was paid to the Chinese officials in cryptocurrency, the document said. The indictment said the effort to pay off the unnamed Chinese officials was successful in getting the trading accounts unfrozen.

The bribery charge was brought under the Foreign Corrupt Business Practices Act, a federal law used by the authorities to go after big corporations for paying bribes to operate in other countries.

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Global News, Migration, Human Rights

New York Times, U.S.-Israel Tensions Over Judicial Overhaul Burst Into Open, In response to sharp criticism by President Biden, Isabel Kershner, March 30, 2023 (print ed.). Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that Israel would make its own decisions.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel, right, responded defiantly on Wednesday to sharp criticism from President Biden over his government’s contentious judicial overhaul plan, declaring that Israel was “a sovereign country” that would make its own decisions.

As weeks of quiet diplomatic pressure burst into a rare open dispute between the allies, Mr. Netanyahu’s opponents in Israel accused him of endangering the longstanding and critical relationship with the United States that could harm the country’s ability to face daunting security challenges, including Iran’s nuclear ambitions.

“I have known President Biden for over 40 years, and I appreciate his longstanding commitment to Israel,” Mr. Netanyahu said in a statement posted in English on Twitter. But, he added, “Israel is a sovereign country which makes its decisions by the will of its people and not based on pressures from abroad, including from the best of friends.”

Mr. Netanyahu’s remarks, first issued by his office at the unusual time of about 1 a.m. in Israel, came after Mr. Biden told reporters that he was “very concerned” about the events in Israel. The president’s comments came after suggestions on Tuesday by the U.S. ambassador to Israel that Mr. Netanyahu would be welcome in Washington sometime soon.

Israeli security personnel, right, confront demonstrators (Photo by Noga Tarnopolsky).

Washington Post, Turmoil in Israel: Netanyahu announces he will delay judicial plan, backtracking after unprecedented protests, Miriam Berger, Leo Sands, Steve Hendrix and Shira Rubin, March 28, 2023 (print ed.). Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced Monday that he would delay his government’s plan to overhaul Israel’s judiciary, an effort that has spurred months of mass protests and led to unprecedented nationwide strikes on Monday, including a shutdown of the international airport.

“Out of national responsibility, from a desire to prevent the nation from being torn apart, I am calling to suspend the legislation,” said Netanyahu, adding that he reached the decision with the agreement of the majority of his coalition members.“When there is a possibility to prevent a civil war through negotiations, I will give a time-out for negotiations.” he said.

The plan to remake the courts — which would give Netanyahu’s government greater power to handpick judges, including those presiding over Netanyahu’s corruption trial, in which he is charged in three cases and faces potential prison time — has pitted liberal and secular Jewish Israelis against more right-wing and religiously conservative citizens, along a fault line long in emerging.

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More On Ukraine War

New York Times, Ukrainians Directing Soldiers From a Hidden Hub See Bakhmut Going Their Way, Carlotta Gall, March 30, 2023. Commanders told a Times reporter that they had exhausted Russia’s assaults on the eastern city, though soldiers said the cost in lives was steep.

Hidden in the bowels of an unmarked building, set well back from the fighting, a command center directing operations in the city of Bakhmut was high-tech and humming. Soldiers monitored video screens with live feeds of destroyed buildings and a cratered battlefield.

Six weeks after coming to help defend Bakhmut, the men of the Adam Tactical Group, one of Ukraine’s most effective battle units, were quietly confident they had turned the tide against Russian troops trying to encircle and capture it.

“The enemy exhausted all its reserves,” the commander, Col. Yevhen Mezhevikin, 40, said on Tuesday, straddling a chair as artillery, air defense and intelligence-gathering teams worked around him.

Through wave after wave of Russian assault and tenacious Ukrainian defense, Bakhmut has, over eight months, become a central battlefield of Russia’s invasion despite limited strategic significance.

Russia has lost extraordinary numbers of troops in the battle, and Ukraine large numbers too, and as casualties have mounted, so has the political symbolism of the city. Kremlin officials have described it as a necessary prize in the campaign to seize Ukraine’s Donbas region. To Ukraine, it has become an important line to hold, both to whittle down Russia’s forces and to deprive them of a victory.

But now, Colonel Mezhevikin said, the Russian assaults have slowed and the imminent threat of encirclement has been thwarted. “The density of assaults dropped by several times,” he said. “Before, they could assault in all directions simultaneously and in groups of not less than 20, 30 or 40 people, but gradually it is dying down.”

The commander’s description aligned with those of Ukraine’s most senior military commander, Gen. Valery Zaluzhnyi, and his commander of ground forces in the east, Gen. Oleksandr Syrsky. Both have said in recent days that the situation of Bakhmut was stabilizing, even with heavy fighting for some Ukrainian units.

Colonel Mezhevikin said that he was confident that Ukrainian forces could keep holding the city and push Russian troops back farther. If the Ukrainians hold their recent gains, the battles of the last month at Bakhmut could prove a turning point in Ukraine’s defense against Russia, not only stalling the latest Russian offensive but also in setting themselves up to deliver a knockout blow, he said.

New York Times, Turkey Is Likely to Clear the Way for Finland to Join NATO, Staff Reports, March 30, 2023. Turkey’s Parliament is expected to approve Finland’s bid to join NATO, its final hurdle to membership in the alliance. Here is what we’re covering:

• Finland’s accession to NATO would be a diplomatic and strategic setback for Russia.
• Adding Finland would be ‘a huge plus,’ NATO’s former top military commander says.
• Russia detains a Wall Street Journal reporter, accusing him of espionage.
• China’s stance on Russia and Ukraine will define ties with the E.U., the bloc’s top official says.
• Russia and Ukraine are ramping up forces in the region of a nuclear complex, the U.N.’s watchdog warns.
• A Russian girl wrote a letter to her father before his sentencing over an antiwar comment.

New York Times, Ukraine Goes Dark: Images From Space Drive Home the Nation’s Anguish, William J. Broad, Sarah Kerr, Marc Santora and Tim Wallace, March 30, 2023. A satellite that rivals the human eye in sensitivity has documented how Russia’s offense has knocked out the nation’s lights.

No power, no lights, no water, no heat. In Ukraine over the past year, waves of Russian missiles have assailed the nation’s infrastructure, leading to daily struggles for civilians and to months of frantic repairs to keep the electricity flowing.

An American satellite has revealed this darkening of the entire nation, creating a vivid companion to portraits of its people’s misery and perseverance. The satellite’s images of city lights flickering out across Ukraine drive home the magnitude of the humanitarian disaster in a way that’s otherwise difficult to imagine.

The satellite, launched in 2011, has powerful night vision that’s equal to or better than anything the human eye can see in the dark. The dimming of particular cities is thus clearly visible from 500 miles up and presents a grim contrast to Ukraine’s brightly lit neighbors, such as Poland and Russia.

“There’re huge blackouts,” said Eleanor Stokes, a lead scientist in NASA’s Black Marble project, which processes the nighttime imagery. “It gets depressing.”

New York Times, Torture and Turmoil at Ukrainian Nuclear Plant: An Insider’s Account, Marc Santora, March 29, 2023 (print ed.). The former director of the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant described abuse of Ukrainian workers and careless practices by the Russians who took control.

By the time Russian soldiers threw a potato sack over his head and forced him to record a false video statement about conditions at Europe’s largest nuclear facility, Ihor Murashov had already witnessed enough chaos at the plant to be deeply worried.

Mr. Murashov, the former director general of the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant in Ukraine, did not know how much more stress the workers there could endure as they raced from one crisis to another to avert a nuclear catastrophe.

He watched as staff members were dragged off to a place they called “the pit” at a nearby police station, returning beaten and bruised — if they returned at all. He was there when advancing Russian soldiers opened fire at the facility in the first days of the war and he fretted as the they mined the surrounding grounds. He witnessed Russians use nuclear reactor rooms to hide military equipment, risking an accident.

Mr. Murashov, 46, is gone from Zaporizhzhia now, having been expelled from Russian occupied territory in October. In the months since, the situation at the plant has only grown more precarious, according to Ukrainian officials and international observers.

New York Times, The Latest: War in Ukraine,A rare glimpse of Avdiivka reveals a ruined city where residents huddle in basements, Yousur Al-Hlou and Masha Froliak, March 29, 2023 (print ed.). Moscow still aims to capture Bakhmut even as fighting elsewhere escalates, Ukraine says. A father’s conviction in Russia may keep his 12-year-old daughter in an orphanage.

When the shelling starts, the people who have remained in this town in eastern Ukraine hardly flinch. In truth, the shelling barely stops.

Russian efforts to capture Avdiivka began over a year ago and in recent weeks have escalated. On Monday, as a Ukrainian police evacuation team went from basement to basement to try again to persuade people to leave, the thud of artillery could be heard every minute or two from Russian forces that have sometimes been stationed no more than a mile away.

Moscow’s intensified bombardment of Avdiivka and outlying villages is part of a broader offensive that has centered on the city of Bakhmut, about 34 miles to the northeast. Although Russia’s latest push has failed to capture any major town, its strikes have continued to lay waste to parts of eastern Ukraine.

On Monday, the town’s military administrator, Vitaliy Barabash, ordered the remaining public officials to leave and barred journalists and aid workers from entering, citing safety concerns. A team of New York Times journalists visited just before the ban was announced.

Avdiivka was once a bedroom community for Donetsk, the regional capital that in 2014 fell to Russian-backed separatists. That turned Avdiivka into a frontline town and an early target when Moscow launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, although the city has remained in Ukrainian hands.

Now, out of a prewar population of 30,000 people, residents say only hundreds still live in Avdiivka. The Ukrainian authorities said on Monday that five children remained behind.

Washington Post, Editorial: How Russia turned America’s helping hand to Ukraine into a vast lie, Editorial Board, March 30, 2023 (print ed.). Information is the world’s lifeblood. It pulsates in torrents of facts and images. We are swamped with it.

But information can be poison, a dangerous weapon. A disinformation operation now being waged by Russia shows in stark detail how this malevolence works. Taking a program by the United States that was intended to make people healthier and safer in the former Soviet Union, a program it had welcomed and participated in for 22 years, Russia twisted facts into a cloud of falsehoods. The campaign, rooted in decades-old traditions of disinformation by the Kremlin, has intensified during Russia’s ruinous war on Ukraine in the last year.

On Aug. 29, 2005, Barack Obama, then a Democratic senator from Illinois, and Sen. Richard G. Lugar, Republican of Indiana, visited a laboratory at Kyiv’s Central Sanitary and Epidemiological Station in Ukraine. This facility was not well secured and, by the nature of its public health work, held dangerous pathogens. Andy Weber, a U.S. Defense Department official, showed Mr. Obama a tray of small vials: samples of Bacillus anthracis, the bacterium that causes anthrax. “I saw test tubes filled with anthrax and the plague lying virtually unlocked and unguarded — dangers we were told could only be secured with America’s help,” Mr. Obama recalled.

There was deep concern after 9/11 that terrorists could obtain such materials. On the day of Mr. Obama’s visit, Ukraine signed an agreement with the United States to upgrade and modernize the labs.

The agreement with Ukraine grew out of the 1992 Nunn-Lugar legislation, sponsored by Mr. Lugar and Sen. Sam Nunn (D-Ga.) to clean up the Cold War legacy of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons in the former Soviet Union, an effort that became known as Cooperative Threat Reduction. In the 1990s, thousands of nuclear warheads and missiles were liquidated, followed by vast stocks of chemical weapons. Later, the Nunn-Lugar program expanded into reducing biological threats in Russian laboratories, as well as other former Soviet republics. Among other efforts, a public health reference laboratory was opened in Tbilisi, Georgia, in 2011, named the Lugar Center. Pathogens stored in a Soviet-era research institute in the center of Tbilisi were moved to a purpose-built, secure facility.

The Nunn-Lugar program was partially in the U.S. interest. But it was also an act of benevolence. The sole remaining superpower extended a hand to nations that were weak and struggling, providing about $1 billion a year to the former Soviet republics. Since 2005, the U.S. agreement with Ukraine has led to $200 million in aid for 46 biomedical and health facilities. The assistance was not forced on anyone — it was designed to make people safer and healthier. The recipients were eager for it. The aid to Russia was terminated by President Vladimir Putin in 2014 but continued elsewhere.
Turning the truth upside down

In more recent years, the Nunn-Lugar program became a frequent target of Russia’s disinformation campaigns. Because the funding came partially through the Pentagon’s Defense Threat Reduction Agency, Russia frequently claimed that military research was underway in the recipient facilities. The Lugar Center was a major focus. In December 2009, an item in the Russian newspaper Pravda claimed “biological weapons are being secretly developed on Georgia territory.” The article contained no fewer than nine discrete false allegations.

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U.S. Abortion, #MeToo, LGBQT, Rape Laws 

Washington Post, Pentagon raises alarm over Sen. Tuberville’s gambit on abortion policy, Dan Lamothe, March 30, 2023 (print ed.). Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.) has put a hold on nearly 160 military promotions, some for very senior positions, citing his objections to its policy post-Roe v. Wade.

The Pentagon is raising alarm over one Republican senator’s bid to block the promotion of nearly 160 senior U.S. military officers in a dispute arising from the Defense Department’s abortion policy, joining top Democrats in labeling the political showdown a threat to national security.

Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, speaking Tuesday before the Senate Armed Services Committee, warned that by impeding these officers’ promotions, Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.), right, had caused a “ripple effect in the force that makes us far less ready than we need to be.”

The remarks were Austin’s most direct in a dispute that has grown increasingly acrimonious since Tuberville, earlier this month, promised he would require the promotions to be approved one-by-one, rather than in batches — what Congress calls unanimous consent. The nominations can still move ahead, but would require time-consuming steps by Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D.-N.Y.), who complained Tuesday that Tuberville’s gambit was tantamount to “hostage taking.”

“The women of our military,” Schumer said in remarks on the Senate floor, “are more than capable of making their own decisions when it comes to their health. They do not need the senior senator from Alabama making decisions on their behalf. And they certainly do not need any senator throwing a wrench in the function, the vital functioning of our military when they work every day to keep us safe.”

Tuberville fired back at his critics, saying during Tuesday’s hearing that the Pentagon’s policy, which allows military personnel to recoup associated travel expenses if they are stationed in states that ban or restrict the procedure, approves the use of taxpayer dollars to terminate pregnancies despite a congressional block on such spending via a decades-old law known as the Hyde Amendment.

Washington Post, Idaho bill would restrict minors from leaving state for abortions without parents’ consent, Timothy Bella, March 30, 2023 (print ed.). A Republican-led Idaho House bill would limit minors’ ability to travel for an abortion without parental consent, even in states where the procedure is legal.

Less than a year after Idaho banned nearly all abortions, lawmakers are set to vote on a bill that would prohibit minors from interstate travel for the procedure, inching closer to becoming the first state to ban what Republicans are dubbing “abortion trafficking.”

During an Idaho Senate State Affairs Committee on Monday, lawmakers agreed to hold a full vote in the chamber on a Republican-led House bill that would establish the new crime of “abortion trafficking,” which would limit minors’ ability to travel for an abortion without parental consent, even in states where the procedure is legal. House Bill 242 would also mean that adults could face felony charges if they have “the intent to conceal an abortion from the parents or guardian of a pregnant, unemancipated minor, either procures an abortion … or obtains an abortion-inducing drug” for a minor.

“Recruiting, harboring, or transporting the pregnant minor within this state commits the crime of abortion trafficking,” the legislation reads.

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Climate, Environment, Weather, Energy, Disasters, U.S. Transportation

The International Court of Justice (ICJ), shown above, is the principal judicial organ of the United Nations. As described by its website, the ICJ is a civil tribunal that hears disputes between countries. It has no prosecutor or jurisdiction to try individuals, including those accused of war crimes or crimes against humanity. Its current president, Joan Donoghue, right, is a United States citizen who became a justice on the court in 2010 following election by United Nations members. She then won election from other justices in 2021 to become the ICJ president for a three-year term. The court's vice president is Kiill Gevorgian of the Russian Federation. Other current members are shown here.

New York Times, Can Nations Be Sued for Weak Climate Action? We’ll Soon Get an Answer, Somini Sengupta, March 30, 2023 (print ed.). Vanuatu, a disaster-prone Pacific country, has secured United Nations approval to take that question to the International Court of Justice.

A tiny Pacific island nation has pulled off the kind diplomatic win that can elude global superpowers.

On Wednesday, Vanuatu, population 300,000, rallied a majority of countries to ask the world’s highest court to weigh in on a high-stakes question: Can countries be sued under international law for failing to slow down climate change?

The measure passed by consensus, meaning none of the 193 member states requested a vote. The General Assembly Hall erupted in applause.

That it was adopted by consensus reflects widespread frustration over the fact that the greenhouse gas emissions warming the planet and wreaking havoc on the poorest nations are not being reduced quickly enough.

Washington Post, Minnesota train carrying ethanol derails, catches fire; evacuations ordered, Luz Lazo and Ellen Francis, March 30, 2023. BNSF said about 22 cars carrying mixed freight derailed, and four cars caught fire

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Pandemics, Public Health, Privacy

Washington Post, How to know whether you have allergies or a virus, Lindsey Bever and Allyson Chiu, March 30, 2023. The symptoms of allergies and respiratory illnesses, including colds, flu and covid-19, are often similar. Here’s how to tell them apart.

Washington Post, TikTok is addictive for many girls, especially those with depression, Donna St. George, March 30, 2023. Study of social media platforms deepens our picture of the struggles faced by teen girls.

Many girls liked what they found online, but at the same time they said social media exposed them to addiction and bigotry. (iStock)

Nearly half of adolescent girls on TikTok feel addicted to it or use the platform for longer than they intend, according to a report that looks at social media as a central facet of American girlhood.

TikTok leads the way in total time on its platform, with girls who use it logging more than 2.5 hours a day, according to researchers from Brown University and the nonprofit Common Sense Media. But YouTube is only a bit behind, at nearly 2.5 hours, with Snapchat and messaging apps at about two hours, and Instagram at 92 minutes. Many of the girls surveyed, ages 11 to 15, use multiple platforms each day.
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While most girls described the effects of social media on people their age as positive, about 1 in 4 who use TikTok, Instagram and Snapchat experience negative social comparisons and feel pressure daily to show the best versions of themselves.

Among those most vulnerable to the downsides of social media were girls with moderate to severe symptoms of depression, who were more likely to say their lives would be better without social media. More of them used social media “almost constantly.” With TikTok, 68 percent said they felt addicted or used it more than intended, compared to 33 percent of girls with no depressive symptoms.

Jacqueline Nesi, co-author and an assistant professor of psychiatry at Brown, also pointed out that three-quarters of girls with moderate to severe depression symptoms who use Instagram report encountering suicide-related content at least monthly. Similarly, 69 percent reported the same issue on TikTok and 64 percent on Snapchat and YouTube.

“That’s a really significant number of girls who are already struggling and then are coming across this type of harmful content online,” she said.

New York Times, To Cut Overdose Deaths, F.D.A. Approves Over-the-Counter Narcan, Jan Hoffman, March 30, 2023 (print ed.). The nasal spray reverses opioid overdoses, and public health officials hope that making it more widely available could reduce drug fatalities. Narcan, a prescription nasal spray that reverses opioid overdoses, can now be sold over the counter, the Food and Drug Administration said on Wednesday, authorizing a move long-sought by public health officials and treatment experts, who hope wider availability of the medicine will reduce the nation’s alarmingly high drug fatality rates.

By late summer, over-the-counter Narcan is expected to be for sale in big-box chains, vending machines, supermarkets, convenience stores, gas stations and online retailers.

The commissioner of the F.D.A., Dr. Robert M. Califf, said in a statement that the over-the-counter authorization was meant to address a “dire public health need.”

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Media, Education, Arts, High Tech

Wall Street Journal, Musk’s Change to Twitter’s Blue Check Mark Angers Celebrities, Alexa Corse, March 30, 2023. William Shatner, Jason Alexander and Monica Lewinsky have criticized the move to tie a social-media status symbol to platform subscriptions.

Twitter Inc.’s plan to remove legacy blue check marks for verified accounts heralds an end to a longtime social-media status symbol and is prompting complaints from some of the platform’s celebrity contributors concerned about potential impersonation.

The departing system, in which Twitter verified notable accounts to confirm their authenticity by adding a blue check mark next to the user’s name, will give way starting April 1 to one in which users must purchase a subscription to be verified, the company has said.

Twitter, which previously didn’t charge for verification, is only providing it now to those who pay $8 to $11 for a monthly subscription, depending on whether it is paid via mobile or web browser.

New York Times, Publishers Worry A.I. Chatbots Will Cut Readership, Katie Robertson, March 30, 2023. Many sites get at least half their traffic from search engines. Fuller results generated by new chatbots could mean far fewer visitors.

The publishing industry has spent the past two decades struggling to adjust to the internet, as print circulation has plummeted and tech companies have gobbled up rivers of advertising revenue.

Now come the chatbots.

New artificial intelligence tools from Google and Microsoft give answers to search queries in full paragraphs rather than a list of links. Many publishers worry that far fewer people will click through to news sites as a result, shrinking traffic — and, by extension, revenue.

The new A.I. search tools remain in limited release, so publishers such as Condé Nast and Vice have not yet seen an effect on their business. But in an effort to prevent the industry from being upended without their input, many are pulling together task forces to weigh options, making the topic a priority at industry conferences and, through a trade organization, planning a push to be paid for the use of their content by chatbots.

“You could essentially call this the Wikipedia-ization of a lot of information,” said Bryan Goldberg, the chief executive of BDG, which publishes lifestyle and culture websites like Bustle, Nylon and Romper. “You’re bringing together Wikipedia-style answers to an infinite number of questions, and that’s just going to nuke many corners of the open web.”

Washington Post, Mark Russell, political satirist with a star-spangled piano, dies at 90, Bart Barnes, March 30, 2023. With his instrument of choice, he called himself a “political cartoonist for the blind.”

Mark Russell, Washington’s social-political satirist and stand-up comic who spoofed, teased and laughed at celebrities, politicians, politics and popular culture for more than 50 years from behind his star-spangled piano, died March 30 at his home in D.C. He was 90.

The cause was complications from prostate cancer, said his wife, Alison Russell.

From the waning years of Dwight Eisenhower’s administration through the presidencies of 10 succeeding chief executives, Mr. Russell poked fun at the foibles and flaws of the well-known, the pompous and the powerful in monologues replete with pithy one-liners and musical ditties. He called himself “a political cartoonist for the blind.”

Long an institution on Washington’s stages and in hotel bars, Mr. Russell gained a national following on public television, where for 30 years he made regular broadcasts. In the 1980s and 1990s, he took his show on the road, appearing live in public and corporate venues in cities and towns across the United States.

Washington Post, AI company behind fake depictions of Trump and pope lets users generate images of world leaders, but not Xi, Isaac Stanley-Becker and Drew Harwell, March 30, 2023. Midjourney, the year-old firm behind recent fake visuals of Donald Trump and the pope, illustrates the lack of oversight accompanying spectacular strides in AI.

New York Times, Anti-Israel Protests Cost Indonesia a FIFA Soccer Championship, Sui-Lee Wee and Victor Mather, Updated March 30, 2023. Preparations for the tournament were thrown into disarray when a governor asked Indonesia’s sports ministry to bar Israel’s team from participating.

When a stampede at a soccer stadium in Indonesia killed 135 people last year, it became one of the worst disasters in the sport’s history, leaving fans and players traumatized.

Indonesian officials saw the FIFA Under-20 World Cup, scheduled to be held in Indonesia from May 20 to June 11, as an opportunity to undo some of the damage caused by the disaster and to repair the country’s reputation among soccer fans.

Instead, Indonesia was stripped of its championship hosting duties by FIFA on Wednesday amid protests over Israel’s participation, a blow to the world’s largest Muslim-majority nation as it seeks to burnish its influence on the global stage.

Israel’s team qualified for the tournament for the first time this year, a result that proved to be fraught in Indonesia, which has longstanding sympathies for Palestinians.

The dispute comes at a time when Indonesia’s conservative Muslims have become more outspoken and many officials are worried about making a wrong move ahead of next year’s presidential election. Supporting Palestinians remains hugely popular in the country.

In a viral video, veteran Indonesian journalist Najwa Shihab denounced fellow Indonesians who “talk loudly about the sufferings of the Palestinians,” but have chosen to close their eyes to the injustice suffered by the victims of last year’s soccer stadium tragedy.

Preparations for the tournament were thrown into disarray when Wayan Koster, the governor of Bali, wrote to Indonesia’s sports ministry earlier this month asking the agency to bar Israel from playing in his province.

The tournament’s draw had been scheduled to be held on the island this week. When FIFA postponed it after learning of Mr. Koster’s request, it sparked a crisis for the Indonesian government.

Conservative Muslim protesters marched on Monday in Jakarta, Indonesia’s capital, carrying signs and chanting slogans objecting to Israel’s participation. On Tuesday, President Joko Widodo addressed the nation, telling Indonesians that the government had always been “consistent and firm in fighting for and supporting the independence of a Palestinian nation and supporting the achievement of a two-state solution.”

Indonesia could face further penalties in the weeks ahead, including a possible ban from qualifying for the 2026 World Cup. Mr. Erick said that he had “tried his best” to resolve the situation and that the country had to accept FIFA’s decision. “I ask all soccer lovers to keep their heads held high over this tough decision by FIFA,” he said in a statement.

Indonesia has spent close to $12 million renovating five stadiums and 20 practice fields in preparation for the championship. DJs and musicians have teamed up on an official soundtrack. By Thursday morning, Nova Rianto, a visibly emotional assistant coach with Indonesia’s under-20 team, posted a video on Instagram showing players sniffling as he tried to console them.

New York Times, Tokyo Olympics Scandal Fouls Hopes for a Sapporo Winter Games, Ben Dooley and Hisako Ueno, March 30, 2023. The International Olympic Committee was already struggling to find hosts for the Winter Games. Sapporo’s flailing 2030 bid has added another headache.

Washington Post, Analysis: How Fox News is trying to guide its viewers away from Trump, Philip Bump, March 29, 2023 (print ed.). The network’s (and Murdoch’s) initial skepticism of Trump in the 2016 primaries gave way to four years of hagiography. There was a good reason for this, articulated by journalists Peter Baker and Susan Glasser in a book published last year. Trump, longtime Fox News honcho Roger Ailes believed, “was someone who connected with the Fox audience even more than Fox did.” So the network allied with Trump in an effort to placate his base.

Then he lost. Murdoch told allies a few weeks after the election that, in a month, Trump would “be becoming irrelevant.” He predicted Trump would concede. But Trump didn’t concede and, instead, stoked his base to demand fealty to Trump’s false claims about election fraud. Suddenly, Fox found itself at risk of falling victim to the imbalance that Ailes had feared. Its hosts grasped at conspiracy theories to bolster viewership.

After the Capitol riot, Murdoch tried again.

“We want to make Trump a non person,” Murdoch wrote to another executive. It soon became apparent that, like many other Trump-skeptical Republicans, the network saw DeSantis as the best transition away from Trump: echoing the former president’s politics but without being Trump. In July 2022, a video segment produced by Fox went viral as it focused on various former Trump voters hyping DeSantis as their new favorite.

Trump’s interview with Hannity — deep enough in the tank for Trump that it probably gets lonely — was the former president’s first interview on the network in months. Hannity gave Trump the usual kid-glove treatment, helping steer the 2024 candidate away from iffy rhetoric where he could. His question about DeSantis, though, yielded an extended riff about DeSantis’s perceived disloyalty.

New York Times, Tech Leaders, Including Elon Musk, Call for a Pause on A.I., Cade Metz and Gregory Schmidt, March 30, 2023 (print ed.). More than 1,000 tech leaders and others signed a letter that urged a moratorium on the development of some A.I. systems, citing “profound risks to society.”

More than 1,000 technology leaders and researchers, including Elon Musk, have urged artificial intelligence labs to pause development of the most advanced systems, warning in an open letter that A.I. tools present “profound risks to society and humanity.”

A.I. developers are “locked in an out-of-control race to develop and deploy ever more powerful digital minds that no one — not even their creators — can understand, predict or reliably control,” according to the letter, which was released Wednesday by the nonprofit group Future of Life Institute.

Others who signed the letter include Steve Wozniak, a co-founder of Apple; Andrew Yang, an entrepreneur and candidate in the 2020 U.S. presidential election; and Rachel Bronson, the president of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, which sets the Doomsday Clock.

“These things are shaping our world,” said Gary Marcus, an entrepreneur and academic who has long complained of flaws in A.I. systems, in an interview. “We have a perfect storm of corporate irresponsibility, widespread adoption, lack of regulation and a huge number of unknowns.”

New York Times, Tinkering With ChatGPT, Workers Wonder: Will This Take My Job?  Lydia DePillis and Steve Lohr, March 29, 2023 (print ed.). Artificial intelligence is confronting white-collar professionals more directly than ever. It could make them more productive — or obsolete.

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March 29

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• New York Times, Decades Later, Senate Votes to Repeal Iraq Military Authorizations
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• New York Times, Nashville Shooting Prompts Shrug in Washington, as G.O.P. Refuses to Act, Annie Karni
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• Washington Post, Shooter warned friend of ‘something bad’ in Instagram messages
• New York Times, Mexico Investigates Migrant Deaths in Border City Fire as Homicide
• New York Times, Fire in Mexico Kills at Least 39 in Migration Center Near U.S. Border
• New York Times, U.S. Border Policies Have Created a Volatile Logjam in Mexico
• Washington Post, Pentagon raises alarm over Sen. Tuberville’s gambit on abortion policy
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More On Trump Probes, Prospects, Allies

• Politico, Manhattan Trump grand jury set to break for a month
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U.S. Mass Shootings, Gun Control

• New York Times, What We Know About the Nashville School Shooting
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U.S. Courts, Crime, Immigration

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Top Stories

New York Times, Decades Later, Senate Votes to Repeal Iraq Military Authorizations, Karoun Demirjian, March 29, 2023. The bipartisan action to roll back resolutions from 1991 and 2002 was a major advancement in a bid by Congress to curtail the executive branch’s powers.

The Senate voted on Wednesday to repeal authorizations from 1991 and 2002 for combat operations against Iraq, moving with broad bipartisan support to advance a yearslong effort to claw back congressional war powers.

The bill goes next to the Republican-led House, which has passed similar legislation several times in recent years but where G.O.P. leaders are undecided about whether to put it on the floor. Still, the 66-to-30 vote in the Senate was a potentially pivotal step in the long-running push by Republicans and Democrats to reassert the national security prerogatives of Congress, with 18 G.O.P. senators joining in support.

It reflected a belief among a growing number of lawmakers in both parties that it is long past time for the legislative branch to play its constitutional role as a check on an executive branch that has embroiled the country in endless wars.

“Congress has abdicated its powers to the executive for too long,” said Senator Tim Kaine, left, Democrat of Virginia and the chief author of the Senate’s efforts to repeal the Iraq war authorizations for the past several years. “Presidents can do mischief if there are outdated authorizations on the books.”

Should the measure clear Congress and be signed by President Biden, who has indicated his support, it would be the first repeal of a war authorization in more than a half century. It would also be a crucial first step toward building momentum to tackle more significant and far more complicated endeavors. Those include replacing the authorization Congress passed in 2001 to start military operations against terrorist groups in Afghanistan after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. That authorization stretched across four administrations to permit open-ended combat against Islamist militant groups around the world and ultimately rewrote the law defining the president’s war powers.

Nashville mass murderer Audrey Hale is shown at left in a file photo and at right via a security camera showing the killing spree claiming six victims, three of them nine-year-olds

Washington Post, Deadly weapon, divided nation: How a change in law could provide crucial seconds to survive a mass shooting, Mark Berman and Todd C. Frankel, March 29, 2023. Many modern gunmakers ship their AR-style rifles with larger magazines. These magazines have been popular with a particular subgroup: America’s mass shooters.

Ammunition magazines can enable gunmen to fire a hail of bullets without needing to stop and reload.

Those magazines are increasingly seen as an area where policy changes could lessen the carnage that has become emblematic of attacks waged with AR-15s and other guns, according to a growing body of research and interviews with experts and law enforcement veterans. An emerging consensus among these experts — and one that has taken hold in some state legislatures — is that mandating smaller magazines would force mass shooters to pause to reload, allowing people to flee or fight back.

U.S. Rep. Thomas Massie, a Republican from Kentucky shown at bottom left, exemplifies the gun-cult majority in Congress, as illustrated by his recent Christmas photo showing his family armed with automatic weapons during a holiday season.

New York Times, Nashville Shooting Prompts Shrug in Washington, as G.O.P. Refuses to Act, Annie Karni, March 29, 2023. President Biden said he had reached the limit of his powers to act alone on gun violence, and needed Congress to respond. Republicans said they weren’t willing to do more.

The mass shooting at a Christian elementary school in Nashville this week has generated a broad shrugging of the shoulders in Washington, from President Biden to Republicans in Congress, who seemed to agree on little other than that there was nothing left for them to do to counter the continuing toll of gun violence across the country.

But while President Biden’s stark admission on Tuesday that he could do no more on his own to tackle the issue was a statement of fact that aimed to put the burden on Congress to send him legislation, like the ban on assault weapons he has repeatedly championed, Republicans’ expressions of helplessness reflected an unwillingness, rather than an inability, to act.

Their answer to Mr. Biden’s plea was as blunt as it was swift, as lawmaker after Republican lawmaker made it clear that they had no intention of considering any additional gun safety measures.

“We’re not going to fix it,” Representative Tim Burchett, Republican of Tennessee, told reporters on the steps of the Capitol just hours after the shooting that killed three children and three adults in his home state. “Criminals are going to be criminals.”
Mr. Burchett said he saw no “real role” for Congress to play in reducing gun violence, and volunteered that his solution to the issue of protecting his family was to home-school his children.

Likewise, Senator Mike Rounds, Republican of South Dakota, said Congress had done enough.

“When we start talking about bans or challenging the Second Amendment, the things that have already been done have gone about as far as we’re going with gun control,” Mr. Rounds told CNN.

Last year, Congress passed a narrow, bipartisan compromise that enhanced background checks to give authorities time to examine the juvenile and mental health records of any prospective gun buyer under the age of 21, and a provision that for the first time extended a prohibition on domestic abusers having guns to dating partners.

Washington Post, Police response in Nashville was ‘exact opposite’ to Uvalde, experts say, Robert Klemko, March 29, 2023 (print ed.). Body-camera footage shows heavily armed officers methodically sweeping classrooms and hallways until they find and kill the suspect — a police response experts described as “textbook.”

For the second time in 10 months, police officers were called to confront a mass killer at an American elementary school. But this time, unlike last spring in Uvalde, Tex., the officers at the Covenant School in Nashville rushed right in.

Body-camera footage released Tuesday shows heavily armed officers methodically sweeping colorful classrooms and backpack-lined hallways until they find and kill the suspect — a police response experts described as “textbook.”

“They did an awesome job in a very high-stress situation,” said AJ Yokley, an instructor in firearms and building clearing at the Tennessee Law Enforcement Training Academy in Nashville. “You’re going into a situation where you can hear the shots fired. It’s a difficult thing to run towards the sound of gunfire, but that’s what they did. Every single one of them displayed tremendous courage.”

Washington Post, Shooter warned friend of ‘something bad’ in Instagram messages, Joanna Slater, March 29, 2023. The messages popped up in Averianna Patton’s Instagram account at 9:57 a.m. on Monday morning.

“I’m planning to die today.”

“You’ll probably hear about me on the news after I die.”

“This is my last goodbye. I love you. See you again in another life.”

The messages were from Audrey Hale, above, the 28-year-old identified by police as the shooter in Monday’s rampage at a private Christian elementary school in Nashville. Three children, all 9, and three adults were killed.

Hale sent the messages to Patton less than 20 minutes before police received the first 911 call about gunshots at The Covenant School. Copies were shared with The Washington Post.

For Patton, the messages were alarming and perplexing. She had known Hale since middle school, when they played basketball together. The two later attended the same high school, the Nashville School of the Arts, but didn’t really talk apart from exchanging hellos in the hallways.

As adults, they were connected on social media but weren’t close. Patton didn’t have Hale’s phone number or address. Last month, when Patton, a radio personality, was taping a live show, Hale showed up. A few weeks ago, they saw each other at a gathering to commemorate a former basketball teammate who died last year, Patton said.

 New York Times, Mexico Investigates Migrant Deaths in Border City Fire as Homicide, Simon Romero, Natalie Kitroeff and Eileen Sullivan, March 29, 2023. The authorities said government workers and private security employees had not allowed detainees to escape the blaze that killed 39 people in Ciudad Juárez. Mexican officials identified eight suspects, including federal and state agents, and said they would issue four arrest warrants on Wednesday.

Mexican officials announced on Wednesday that they were investigating a fire at a migrant detention center in Ciudad Juárez as a homicide case, saying that government workers and private security employees had not allowed detainees to escape from the blaze that killed at least 39 people.

The authorities, in a news conference, said they had identified eight suspects, including federal and state agents, and would issue four arrest warrants on Wednesday.

“None of the public servants, nor the private security guards, took any action to open the door for the migrants who were inside where the fire was,” said Sara Irene Herrerías Guerra, a top federal human rights prosecutor.

The announcement came after a video emerged appearing to show that the migrants had been trapped when the fire broke out on Monday. Uniformed figures at the center can be seen walking away from the blaze while people remain behind bars as the area fills with smoke.

The authorities said they might also investigate one migrant suspected of starting the fire.

“Our country’s immigration policy is one of respect for human rights,” said Rosa Icela Rodríguez, the government’s secretary of security. “This unfortunate event, which is the responsibility of public servants and guards who have been identified, is not the policy of our country.”

It was a striking development in a case that has drawn intense scrutiny to the Mexican government’s handling of the surge of migrants flowing into the country over the past year, seeking to enter the United States.

Ciudad Juárez, just across the border from El Paso, Texas, has long prided itself on absorbing waves of newcomers, many from Mexico who come to work in factories and others from across Latin America who stop on their way to the United States.

But what used to be a transit point for U.S.-bound migrants has turned into a hub for those who believe they have no choice but to stay — either after being sent back by the U.S. authorities or while waiting to apply to enter legally.

At intersections across the city, groups of migrants can be seen asking for money. Some hold up cardboard signs pleading for help. Others sell food out of coolers.

New York Times, Fire in Mexico Kills at Least 39 in Migration Center Near U.S. Border, Mike Ives, Euan Ward and Emiliano Rodríguez Mega, March 29, 2023 (print ed.). President Andrés Manuel López Obrador said the blaze at a National Migration Institute facility in Ciudad Juárez, a border city near Texas, was the result of a protest by migrants who were set to be deported.

At least 39 people were killed on Monday night and 29 others seriously injured when a fire broke out at a government-run migration facility in northern Mexico, near the border with the United States, the authorities said.

The fire broke out in the accommodation area of a National Migration Institute facility in Ciudad Juárez, a border city across from El Paso, Texas, shortly before 10 p.m., according to a statement by the facility. Sixty-eight men from Central and South America were being housed there, it said.

The Mexican authorities did not immediately respond to a request for comment, but according to the statement from the institute, the 29 injured men were in serious condition and had been transported to local hospitals for urgent care.

President Andrés Manuel López Obrador said the men housed at the facility had been angry at authorities.

“As protest, at the door of the shelter, they put mattresses and set them on fire, and they did not imagine that this was going to cause this terrible tragedy,” said Mr. López Obrador at his regular daily news conference on Tuesday morning.

“We assume it was because they found out they were going to be deported,” he added.

The migrants were mainly from Central America and Venezuela, Mr. López Obrador said.

Television footage showed a swarm of police cars, ambulances and other emergency vehicles in the area. What appeared to be a number of bodies wrapped in large foil blankets could be seen in the facility’s parking lot, and people outside clung to the perimeter fence as emergency responders tended to the victims.

The institute said that it had begun communicating “with consular authorities from different countries” in order to identify the dead. A formal complaint had been lodged with what the statement identified as the “corresponding authorities,” clearing the way for an investigation, the statement said.

New York Times, U.S. Border Policies Have Created a Volatile Logjam in Mexico, Miriam Jordan and Edgar Sandoval, March 29, 2023 (print ed.). As the United States has cracked down on border entries, Mexico has borne the burden of housing and feeding tens of thousands of desperate migrants.

A series of tough new border policies have sharply reduced the number of migrants crossing into the United States to their lowest levels since President Biden took office, but the measures have created a combustible bottleneck along Mexico’s northern border, with tens of thousands of frustrated migrants languishing in overcrowded shelters from Tijuana to Reynosa.

The situation exploded on Monday when a protest at a government-run migrant detention center in Ciudad Juárez led to a fire that killed at least 40 people. But scenes of overcrowding and desperation have been unfolding in recent weeks along the length of the border as the Biden administration prepares for yet another surge in migration this spring.

Migrants have been waiting in anticipation of a major policy shift, expected in May, when the United States plans to lift a pandemic-era health policy that has allowed U.S. border authorities to swiftly expel many unauthorized migrants crossing the border from Mexico.

Separate new entry restrictions that have already taken effect require most migrants hoping to win U.S. asylum to apply for an appointment at a port of entry. Problems with the new mobile app have left thousands trying in vain for an appointment while stranded in Mexican border towns, where many have already been waiting for months.

“What we have in Tijuana and other Mexican border cities is a bottleneck,” said Enrique Lucero, director of the migration services office for the city of Tijuana, across the border from San Diego. “Thousands of migrants are waiting for the opportunity to enter the U.S., and more keep arriving.”

The city’s 30 shelters can accommodate 5,600 people; as many as 15,000 migrants are currently in the city, he said.

“The number of people who are able to access the United States is a couple hundred a day,” he said, “but we have thousands here. Shelters are at full capacity.”

Even before Monday’s fire, frustration had boiled over earlier this month in Juárez, when hundreds of migrants, mostly from Venezuela, tried to storm their way across the international bridges to reach El Paso, only to clash with U.S. authorities.

“It’s desperation,” said Ricardo Samaniego, the county judge in El Paso, which lies across the border from Ciudad Juárez. “You dangle the end of Title of 42 and then you say, ‘Nevermind,’ and people get stuck.”

He said he had learned through his counterparts in Mexico that shelters and detention centers in Juárez were at near capacity and that they were bracing for yet another surge in the days and weeks to come with plans to lift Title 42 on May 11.

Immigrant advocates have been warning for months that the situation was becoming explosive.

“The 39 lives lost last night in Ciudad Juárez are a horrifying indictment. The systems of enforcement that we have erected to patrol people who migrate are steel hands in velvet gloves, and death is part of the overhead. We are all responsible,” Dylan Corbett, executive director of the Hope Border Institute, a faith-based organization, said on Twitter.

With shelters in many border cities full, new arrivals have resorted to sleeping in dingy hotels until their money runs out, and have then ended up on the streets and in abandoned buildings. Tensions have flared, resulting in confrontations with Mexican law enforcement officers, whom migrants have accused of beating, arresting and extorting them. Powerful cartels that control illegal border passage have kidnapped and tortured migrants.

Photos taken from video show Sergey Cherkasov in conversation with a woman thought to be his mother at a Moscow airport restaurant around 2017. The video was recovered by the FBI in its investigation of Cherkasov. (U.S. Justice Department)

Washington Post, He came to D.C. as a Brazilian student. The U.S. says he was a Russian spy, Greg Miller, March 29, 2023. A former graduate student in Washington, who claimed to be Brazilian but was unmasked as a Russian spy, has been charged by the U.S. with acting as a foreign agent.

Like anyone who gets into his dream college, Victor Muller Ferreira was ecstatic when he was admitted to Johns Hopkins University’s graduate school in Washington in 2018.

“Today we made the future — we managed to get in one of the top schools in the world,” he wrote in an email to those who had helped him gain entry to the elite master’s program in international relations. “This is the victory that belongs to all of us man — to the entire team. Today we f---ing drink!!!”

The achievement was even sweeter for Ferreira because he was not the striving student from Brazil he had portrayed on his Johns Hopkins application, but a Russian intelligence operative originally from Kaliningrad, according to a series of international investigations as well as an indictment the Justice Department filed in federal court Friday.

His real name is Sergey Cherkasov and he had spent nearly a decade building the fictitious Ferreira persona, according to officials and court records. His “team” was a tight circle of Russian handlers suddenly poised to have a deep-cover spy in the U.S. capital, positioned to forge connections in every corner of the American security establishment, from the State Department to the CIA.

Using the access he gained during his two years in Washington, Cherkasov filed reports to his bosses in Russia’s military intelligence service, the GRU, on how senior officials in the Biden administration were responding to the Russian military buildup before the war in Ukraine, according to an FBI affidavit.

After he graduated, he came close to achieving a more consequential penetration when he was offered a position at the International Criminal Court in The Hague. He was due to start a six-month internship there last year — just as the court began investigating Russian war crimes in Ukraine — only to be turned away by Dutch authorities acting on information relayed by the FBI, according to Western security officials. Officials in the Netherlands put him on a plane back to Brazil, where he was arrested upon landing and is now serving a 15-year prison sentence for document fraud related to his fake identity.

The details that have since emerged provide extraordinary visibility into highly cloaked aspects of Russian intelligence, including the Kremlin’s almost obsessive effort to infiltrate Western targets with “illegals” — spies who operate as lone agents with no discernible link to their home service — rather than diplomats with the legal protections that come with working out of an embassy.

The case has revealed lingering vulnerabilities in Western defenses more than a decade after the FBI arrested 10 Russian illegals in a sweep that made global headlines and spawned a popular television series, “The Americans.” U.S. officials acknowledge that the bureau discovered Cherkasov’s identity and GRU affiliation only after his arrival in Washington. The FBI declined to comment on the case.

The revelations have also exposed serious lapses in Russian tradecraft. Authorities have mined Cherkasov’s computer and other devices and found a trove of evidence, according to court records and security officials, including emails to his Russian handlers, details about “dead drops” where messages could be left, records of illicit money transfers, and an error-strewn personal history that he appears to have composed while trying to memorize details of his fictitious life.

United States Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas (l) with his wife of thirty-five years, Virginia (Ginni) Thomas (r).

Washington Post, Activist group led by Ginni Thomas received nearly $600,000 in anonymous donations, Shawn Boburg and Emma Brown, March 29, 2023 (print ed.). Funding for group that battled ‘cultural Marxism’ was channeled through right-wing think tank, Post investigation finds.

A little-known conservative activist group led by Virginia “Ginni” Thomas, the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, collected nearly $600,000 in anonymous donations to wage a cultural battle against the left over three years, a Washington Post investigation found.

The previously unreported donations to the fledgling group Crowdsourcers for Culture and Liberty were channeled through a right-wing think tank in Washington that agreed to serve as a funding conduit from 2019 until the start of last year, according to documents and interviews. The arrangement, known as a “fiscal sponsorship,” effectively shielded from public view details about Crowdsourcers’ activities and spending, information it would have had to disclose publicly if it operated as a separate nonprofit organization, experts said.

The Post’s investigation sheds new light on the role money from donors who are not publicly identified has played in supporting Ginni Thomas’s political advocacy, long a source of controversy. The funding is the first example of anonymous donors backing her activism since she founded a conservative charity more than a decade ago. She stepped away from that charity amid concerns that it created potential conflicts for her husband on hot-button issues before the court.

Thomas’s activism has set her apart from other spouses of Supreme Court justices. She has allied with numerous people and groups that have interests before the court, and she has dedicated herself to causes involving some of the most polarizing issues in the country.

White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows walks to board Marine One from the South Lawn of the White House in July 2020. Later that year, Ginni Thomas privately pressed Meadows to pursue efforts to overturn the presidential election. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)

In 2020, she privately pressed White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows to pursue efforts to overturn the presidential election, and she sent emails urging swing-state lawmakers to set aside Joe Biden’s popular-vote victory in awarding electoral votes. When those efforts were revealed by The Post last year, they intensified questions about whether her husband should recuse himself from cases related to the election and attempts to subvert it.

In recent months, the high court has faced increasing scrutiny over a range of ethical issues, including the lack of transparency surrounding potential conflicts of interest and a whistleblower’s claim that wealthy Christian activists sought access to justices at social gatherings to shore up their resolve on abortion and other conservative priorities.

In a brief statement to The Post, Mark Paoletta, a lawyer for Ginni Thomas, said she was “proud of the work she did with Crowdsourcers, which brought together conservative leaders to discuss amplifying conservative values with respect to the battle over culture.”

“She believes Crowdsourcers identified the Left’s dominance in most cultural lanes, while conservatives were mostly funding political organizations,” Paoletta wrote. “In her work, she has complied with all reporting and disclosure requirements.”

He wrote: “There is no plausible conflict of interest issue with respect to Justice Thomas.”

A spokeswoman for the Supreme Court did not respond to questions for Clarence Thomas.

In 2019, anonymous donors gave the think tank Capital Research Center, or CRC, $596,000 that was designated for Crowdsourcers, according to tax filings and audits the think tank submitted to state regulators. The majority of that money, $400,000, was routed through yet another nonprofit, Donors Trust, according to that organization’s tax filings. Donors Trust is a fund that receives money from wealthy donors whose identities are not disclosed and steers it toward conservative causes.

The documents do not say how or whether the money was spent. It is not clear how much compensation, if any, Ginni Thomas received.

Washington Post, Pentagon raises alarm over Sen. Tuberville’s gambit on abortion policy, Dan Lamothe, March 29, 2023. Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.) has put a hold on nearly 160 military promotions, some for very senior positions, citing his objections to its policy post-Roe v. Wade.

The Pentagon is raising alarm over one Republican senator’s bid to block the promotion of nearly 160 senior U.S. military officers in a dispute arising from the Defense Department’s abortion policy, joining top Democrats in labeling the political showdown a threat to national security.

Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, speaking Tuesday before the Senate Armed Services Committee, warned that by impeding these officers’ promotions, Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.), right, had caused a “ripple effect in the force that makes us far less ready than we need to be.”

The remarks were Austin’s most direct in a dispute that has grown increasingly acrimonious since Tuberville, earlier this month, promised he would require the promotions to be approved one-by-one, rather than in batches — what Congress calls unanimous consent. The nominations can still move ahead, but would require time-consuming steps by Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D.-N.Y.), who complained Tuesday that Tuberville’s gambit was tantamount to “hostage taking.”

“The women of our military,” Schumer said in remarks on the Senate floor, “are more than capable of making their own decisions when it comes to their health. They do not need the senior senator from Alabama making decisions on their behalf. And they certainly do not need any senator throwing a wrench in the function, the vital functioning of our military when they work every day to keep us safe.”

Tuberville fired back at his critics, saying during Tuesday’s hearing that the Pentagon’s policy, which allows military personnel to recoup associated travel expenses if they are stationed in states that ban or restrict the procedure, approves the use of taxpayer dollars to terminate pregnancies despite a congressional block on such spending via a decades-old law known as the Hyde Amendment.

U.S. Mass Shootings, Gun Control 

New York Times, What We Know About the Nashville School Shooting, Adeel Hassan, March 29, 2023 (print ed.). An assailant fatally shot six people, including three children, at a private elementary school. The motive for the shooting is under investigation.

Federal and local investigators in Nashville were working on Tuesday to piece together clues about the actions and motives of the shooter who killed three students and three adults at a private school before being shot dead by the police.

The assailant who opened fire at the Christian elementary school in Nashville on Monday was identified by officials as Audrey E. Hale, a 28-year-old former student who lived in the area.

The Nashville police chief, John Drake, said on Monday that the attack was targeted, rather than random, but that it was too early to discuss a possible motive. Local and federal investigators working on the case were reviewing writings and had made contact with the shooter’s father, Chief Drake said.

The school, called the Covenant School, is in the wealthy Green Hills neighborhood of Nashville, a few miles south of downtown, and enrolls about 200 students in preschool through sixth grade. The attack on Monday was the 13th school shooting in the United States this year that resulted in injury or death, according to Education Week.

Washington Post, What damage can an AR-15 do to a human body? A rare look, N. Kirkpatrick, Atthar Mirza and Manuel Canales, March 29, 2023 (print ed.). The Washington Post examined autopsy and postmortem reports from nearly a hundred victims of previous mass shootings that involved AR-15-style rifles (with a sample shown above).

Washington Post, Editorial: No one needs an AR-15 — or any gun tailor-made for mass shootings, Editorial Board, March 29, 2023 (print ed.). The Post’s investigative series on the AR-15’s dominant place in the United States’ marketplace and psyche sat atop the Post website on Monday, the day of its release — until, hours later, breaking news replaced it. Three adults and three children had been killed in a Nashville school shooting by a 28-year-old assailant with three guns, including at least one AR-15-style rifle.

“I don’t know why anyone needs an AR-15,” President Donald Trump reportedly told aides in August 2019 after back-to-back mass shootings in Dayton, Ohio, and El Paso. There’s no good answer. The AR-15 was designed for soldiers, yet its associations with warfare eventually became a selling point for everyday buyers. “Use what they use,” exhorted one ad displaying professionals wielding tactical rifles. Now, about 1 in 20 U.S. adults own at least one AR-15. That’s roughly 16 million people, storing roughly 20 million guns designed to mow down enemies on the battlefield with brutal efficiency. Two-thirds of these were crafted in the past decade — and when more people die, popularity doesn’t fall. Instead, it rises.

The AR-15, The Post explains, is materially different from traditional handguns. The rifle fires very small bullets at very fast speeds. The projectiles don’t move straight and smooth through human targets like those from a traditional handgun. Their velocity turns them unstable upon penetration, so that they tumble through flesh and vital organs. This so-called blast effect literally tears people apart. A trauma surgeon notes, “you don’t see the muscle … just bone and skin and missing parts.” Another mentions tissue that “crumbled into your hands.”

Even thinking about these injuries is horrifying, so much so that crime scene photos are often kept confidential. But the gruesome reality of what an AR-15 can wreak poses an argument in itself: There is no excuse for the widespread availability of these weapons of war.

No single action will stop mass shootings, much less gun violence more generally. The Post’s reporting is only more evidence of the need for a ban on assault rifles. It’s evidence, too, of the need for a ban on high-capacity magazines. Rules restricting how many rounds a gun can fire before a shooter has to reload are more difficult to skirt than flat-out assault rifle bans, which sometimes prompt manufacturers to make cosmetic changes that will reclassify their products. A number is a number. These prohibitions might face legal challenges, but lawmakers in four states have recently added caps. More should follow.

Washington Post, From outcast to political symbol: How the AR-15 emerged as an icon, Todd C. Frankel, Shawn Boburg, Josh Dawsey, Ashley Parker and Alex Horton, March 28, 2023 (print ed.). The AR-15 thrives in times of tension and tragedy. This is how it came to dominate the marketplace – and loom so large in the American psyche.

The AR-15 wasn’t supposed to be a best-seller. It's the result of a dramatic shift in American gun culture fueled by the firearms industry and its allies.

The five most radical right Republican justices on the Supreme Court are shown above, with the sixth Republican, Chief Justice John Roberts, omitted in this photo array.

New York Times, Opinion: We’re About to Find Out How Far the Supreme Court Will Go to Arm America, Linda Greenhouse (shown at right on the cover of her memoir, "Just a Journalist"), March 29, 2023. How much further will the Supreme Court go to assist in the arming of America? That has been the question since last June, when the court ruled that New York’s century-old gun licensing law violated the Second Amendment. Sooner than expected, we are likely to find out the answer.

On March 17, the Biden administration asked the justices to overturn an appeals court decision that can charitably be described as nuts, and accurately as pernicious. The decision by a three-judge panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit invalidated a federal law that for almost 30 years has prohibited gun ownership by people who are subject to restraining orders for domestic violence.

The Fifth Circuit upheld the identical law less than three years ago. But that was before President Donald Trump put a Mississippi state court judge named Cory Wilson on the appeals court. (As a candidate for political office in 2015, Wilson said in a National Rifle Association questionnaire that he opposed both background checks on private gun sales and state licensing requirements for potential gun owners.)

Judge Wilson wrote in a decision handed down in March that the appeals court was forced to repudiate its own precedent by the logic of the Supreme Court’s decision in the New York licensing case. He was joined by another Trump judge, James Ho, and by Edith Jones, an appointee of President Ronald Reagan; Judge Jones has long been one of the most aggressive conservatives on the country’s most conservative appeals court.

Now it is up to the justices to say whether that analysis is correct.

Fifteen years after the Supreme Court’s Heller decision interpreted the Second Amendment to convey an individual right to own a gun, there is no overstating the significance of the choice the court has been asked to make. Heller was limited in scope: It gave Americans a constitutional right to keep handguns at home for self-defense. The court’s decision last June in New York State Rifle and Pistol Association v. Bruen was on the surface also quite limited, striking down a law that required a showing of special need in order to obtain an unrestricted license to carry a concealed gun outside the home. New York was one of only a half-dozen states with such a requirement, as the court put it in the Bruen decision.

What was not limited about the New York decision — indeed, what was radical — was the analysis that Justice Clarence Thomas employed in his opinion for the 6-3 majority. Following Heller, courts had evaluated gun restrictions by weighing the personal Second Amendment claim against the government’s interest in the particular regulation, a type of balancing test that has long been common in constitutional adjudication. The Bruen decision rejected that approach, instead placing history above all else.

Relevant Recent Headlines

• New York Times, The head of the school and the daughter of the church’s pastor were among those who died in the shooting
• New York Times, The Largest Source of Stolen Guns? Parked Cars
• Associated Press, Nashville school shooter had drawn maps, done surveillance
• Politico, Biden renews push to ban assault weapons in wake of Nashville shooting
• Washington Post, ‘Enough is enough,’ White House says, demands GOP act on assault weapons ban

U.S. Courts, Crime, Immigration

Washington Post, Supreme Court justices under new ethics disclosures on trips, other gifts, Jonathan O'Connell and Ann E. Marimow, March 29, 2023 (print ed.). Supreme Court justices and all federal judges must provide a fuller public accounting of free trips, meals and other gifts they accept from corporations or other organizations, according to revised regulations quietly adopted this month.

The new requirements mark a technical but significant change that lawmakers and court transparency advocates hope will lead to more disclosure by judges and justices and also make it easier for parties in specific cases to request that judges remove themselves from cases when potential conflicts arise.

Gifts such as an overnight stay at a personal vacation home owned by a friend remain exempt from reporting requirements. But the revised rules require disclosure when judges are treated to stays at commercial properties, such as hotels, ski resorts or corporate hunting lodges. The changes also clarify that judges must report travel by private jet.

Washington Post, D.C. U.S. attorney declined to prosecute 67 percent of those arrested. Here’s why, Keith L. Alexander, ‘I can promise you, it’s not MPD holding the bag on this,’ D.C. Police Chief Robert J. Contee III said. ‘That’s B.S.’

As the District grapples with rising crime and increasing attention from federal lawmakers over public safety issues, a startling statistic emerged in recent weeks.

Last year, federal prosecutors in the District’s U.S. attorney’s office chose not to prosecute 67 percent of those arrested by police officers in cases that would have been tried in D.C. Superior Court.

That figure, first reported earlier this month on the substack DC Crime Facts, nearly doubled from 2015, when prosecutors in the U.S. Attorney’s office declined to prosecute 35 percent of such cases.

The increased number of declined cases has sparked frustration among city leaders who are already under a national microscope from members of Congress for their crime fighting efforts. The House Committee on Oversight and Accountability is scheduled to hold a hearing Wednesday where Republicans will examine management of D.C., particularly on crime and safety. Earlier this month, the Senate joined the House of Representatives in voting to reject an overhaul of the city’s criminal code, in part because it called for reducing penalties for certain crimes, including carjacking.

In an interview, Matthew M. Graves, the Biden-appointed U.S. attorney for the District, said his office was continuing to prosecute the vast majority of violent felonies. He said prosecutors were declining less serious cases for myriad reasons, including that the city’s crime lab remained unaccredited and police body-camera footage was subjecting arrests to more scrutiny.

Robert J. Contee III, left, the District’s police chief, said his officers were not to blame.

“I can promise you, it’s not MPD holding the bag on this,” Contee said. “That’s B.S.”

The U.S. attorney’s office in the District is unique among federal prosecutor shops across the country. It prosecutes both local, D.C.-based crimes in Superior Court, as any local prosecutor or district attorney’s office would, as well as federal cases in U.S. District Court.

But even compared to a local prosecutor’s office, a 67 percent declination rate is high. For example, in Wayne County, Mich., which includes Detroit, the prosecutor’s office reported declining 33 percent of its cases last year. Prosecutors in Philadelphia declined 4 percent and prosecutors in Cook County, Ill., which includes Chicago, declined 14 percent, according to data from those offices.

“Of course we are concerned,” Contee said. “We believe every person we arrest should be off the streets.”

Graves said the declinations are mostly coming after arrests in cases such as gun possession, drug possession and burglaries — not in violent crimes. He said his office last year prosecuted 87.9 percent of arrests made in homicides, armed carjackings, assaults with intent to kill and first-degree sexual assault cases. According to figures provided to The Washington Post, that percentage is higher than the 85.7 prosecuted cases in 2021, but down from 95.6 percent of prosecuted cases in 2018.

“The bottom line is that it creates the impression that this is an across the board decrease in the number of cases we are bringing. That is simply not true,” Graves said.

Because D.C.'s Department of Forensic Sciences lost its accreditation in 2021, prosecutors have to pay to have evidence for DNA, firearm and fingerprint analysis sent to outside laboratories, Graves said. Prosecutors, he said, prioritize doing so for violent offenses.

“We are now entering year three of DFS being shut down without any clear plan of coming back online,” Graves said. “We have to prioritize violent felonies and make sure we are doing the forensic testing for those cases. Our office is often bearing the cost for this analysis.”

Prosecutors in the D.C. Office of the Attorney General, which handles juvenile crime and most misdemeanors in the District, and similarly has had to use outside laboratories, declined to prosecute just 26 percent of its cases last year, according to data from that office.

Graves said footage from body-worn cameras has also increased the number of arrests prosecutors walk away from, as they review at an earlier stage whether police have gathered enough evidence to support a conviction.

“Since 2019, we have been taking more time at arrest to determine if we are going to file charges. With body-worn camera and the proliferation of surveillance cameras, we have more information at the charging stage to assess the strength of the evidence we would be presenting later to courts and juries,” he said.

Contee took aim at a part of a D.C. law that the city council passed in 2020 preventing officers from reviewing their body worn cameras before filling out charging documents.

The law, which congressional Republicans have threatened to try to block, means officers now have to rely on their memories and notes when filling out arrest warrants, and prosecutors might not move forward on a case if details in the warrant don’t match the footage, officials said.

Relevant Recent Headlines

• New York Times, In Memphis, Car Seizures Are a Lucrative and Punishing Police Tactic

More On Probes of Trump, Allies

Politico, Manhattan Trump grand jury set to break for a month, Erica Orden, March 29, 2023. A previously planned hiatus would push back a potential indictment of the former president.

The Manhattan grand jury examining Donald Trump’s alleged role in a hush money payment to a porn star isn’t expected to hear evidence in the case for the next month largely due to a previously scheduled hiatus, according to a person familiar with the proceedings.

The break would push any indictment of the former president to late April at the earliest, although it is possible that the grand jury’s schedule could change. In recent weeks, the Manhattan district attorney’s office hasn’t convened the panel on certain days. But it is District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s prerogative to ask the grand jury to reconvene if prosecutors want the panel to meet during previously planned breaks.

The grand jury, which heard testimony in the Trump case on Monday, isn’t meeting Wednesday and is expected to examine evidence in a separate matter Thursday, the person said. The grand jury, which typically meets Mondays, Wednesdays and Thursdays, is scheduled to consider another case next week on Monday and Wednesday, the person said, and isn’t expected to meet Thursday due to the Passover holiday.

The following two weeks are set to be a hiatus that was scheduled when the grand jury was first convened in January, the person said.

A spokesperson for the Manhattan district attorney’s office declined to comment.

There is no official deadline for bringing an indictment against Trump, although there were indications in recent weeks that the grand jury’s activity was nearing a vote, particularly when prosecutors offered Trump the chance to testify before the panel. That is typically one of the final steps of a criminal investigation. Trump declined the invitation.

Prosecutors are examining Trump’s alleged role in a $130,000 payment that was made to adult entertainer Stormy Daniels, who said she had an affair with the former president. He has denied the affair and any wrongdoing associated with the payment.

The grand jury largely didn’t hear evidence in the Trump case last week. On Monday, former National Enquirer publisher David Pecker testified for a second time before the panel.

Porn star Stormy Daniels and former President Donald J. Trump, who allegedly hid hush payments to her via The National Enquirer newspaper during the 2016 presidential campaign to hide their affair from election finance officials and the public.

Palmer Report, Analysis: Did Allen Weisselberg just cut a deal against Donald Trump in Manhattan? Bill Palmer, right, March 29, 2023. Former Trump Organization CFO Allen Weisselberg is no longer being represented by Donald Trump’s attorneys, per NBC News. This points to the possibility that Weisselberg has cut a deal with the Manhattan DA and is cooperating against Trump. Which would explain everything we’re seeing in Manhattan right now.

Weisselberg is currently sitting behind bars. It’s a short prison sentence but he is an elderly man. And it’s possible the DA threatened to bring broader charges against him, with additional prison time, to motivate him to flip. The New York Times did report last month that the DA was looking at the possibility of additional charges against Weisselberg.

If Weisselberg has flipped on Trump, it would explain why the DA didn’t meet with the grand jury and indict Trump today. Weisselberg would need to be prepped to testify, which – even if the charges aren’t being expanded – would take a little bit of time.

In addition, Weisselberg, right, wouldn’t just be a witness in Trump’s campaign fraud case. It would open the door for the DA to charge Trump with tax fraud, insurance fraud, and so on. So the DA could now be expanding his case with Weisselberg on board.

Those are a lot of ifs. We don’t know what’s going on behind the scenes. But Trump has been paying Weisselberg’s legal bills for good reason. Weisselberg can single handedly put him in prison. Trump wouldn’t take the risk of deciding to just stop paying Weisselberg’s legal bills.

There has to be a major development behind the scenes that caused this. There are always other plausible explanations for this kind of thing. But Weisselberg flipping on Trump would seem to be the most likely. And this isn’t happening for no reason. Something happened.

Moreover, the media doesn’t learn about these kinds of things unless someone on the inside intentionally leaks them. Someone involved with this case has, for some specific reason, decided to let the media know today that Trump is no longer paying Weisselberg’s legal bills.

Weisselberg wouldn’t put this information out there. Trump seemingly wouldn’t put it out there either. That would logically leave Bragg, left. And if this came from him, it’s because he wants everyone to know that his case isn’t “dead,” it’s the opposite of dead.

This would represent a significant departure for Bragg, who up to now has mostly not given the media anything. But with all this media hysteria today over the grand jury hiatus, perhaps Bragg finally decided to take control of the narrative by leaking the Weisselberg news.

By the way, the political media – whose behavior typically ranges from immature to sociopathic – often does this kind of thing on purpose. It’ll gin up a nonsense story about how Bragg’s case is dead because of a grand jury hiatus, just to make a mess for Bragg, and force him to give them something to work with.

So bottom line, has Weisselberg flipped? We’ll have to wait for the next shoe to drop. If a major media outlet reports such a deal in the coming days, we’re all set. If Trump starts attacking Weisselberg on social media, that would be a pretty clear sign he’s flipped.

Even if Weisselberg has flipped, we still have no way of knowing if that means he’ll testify in the hush money case this Monday with an indictment at the end of the day, or if it means the Manhattan DA will be taking the time to indict Trump on much more serious charges when the grand jury returns at the end of April.

Again, we have no way of knowing for sure what just happened with Allen Weisselberg or why it happened. But we do know that something happened. This is a major development at a pivotal time. Now we just wait, perhaps days, perhaps hours, for the other shoe to drop so we can learn for certain what this really is. But it’s certainly not nothing.

Washington Post, New York grand jury hearing Trump case adjourns without vote, Shayna Jacobs and Annie Gowen, March 28, 2023 (print ed.). A Manhattan grand jury considering possible criminal charges against Donald Trump, involving $130,000 paid to an adult film actress before the 2016 election, adjourned Monday without voting on whether to indict the former president, multiple people familiar with the case said.

Also Monday, the former publisher of the National Enquirer, David Pecker, was seen leaving the building where the grand jury was meeting with his attorney Elkan Abramowitz. Pecker, who reportedly testified before the grand jury in January, was involved in arranging the payment.

The people who provided information on the case spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a confidential process.
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The secret proceedings are expected to continue Wednesday. Prosecutors for Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg have presented evidence related to payments made to Stormy Daniels, whose legal name is Stephanie Clifford. The payments were made to keep her from going public during the presidential campaign with a claim that she had a sexual relationship with Trump years earlier.

Trump’s former lawyer, Michael Cohen, paid Daniels the $130,000. Trump reimbursed him in installments that were allegedly designated as legal fees.

Politico, Judge says Pence must testify to Jan. 6 grand jury, Kyle Cheney, March 29, 2023 (print ed.). A federal judge presiding over the special counsel investigation into Donald Trump’s attempt to subvert the 2020 election has largely rejected an effort by the ex-president to assert executive privilege over the testimony of his former vice president, Mike Pence, according to a person familiar with the ruling.

However, Chief U.S. District Judge James Boasberg, right, agreed that Pence does enjoy a degree of immunity from testifying due to his role as president of the Senate on Jan. 6. It was not immediately clear whether that ruling is broad enough to satisfy Pence’s resistance to the subpoena — issued by special counsel Jack Smith — or whether he intends to appeal.

Pence has indicated he’s open to answering certain categories of questions related to Trump’s effort to overturn the 2020 election despite losing the race to Joe Biden. But he argued that the vice president’s unusual role — both a top member of the Executive Branch and President of the Senate — entitles him to immunity typically afforded to members of Congress.

Politico, Juror in Oath Keepers trial reveals secrets from the deliberation room, Kyle Cheney, March 29, 2023 (print ed.). In a newly released interview, the juror recounts being disturbed by the tactics of some defense attorneys.

Jurors in the recently concluded trial of six Oath Keeper affiliates were “horrified” by a defense attorney’s effort to provoke his autistic client into a “breakdown” on the witness stand, one of those jurors said Tuesday in a newly released interview.

A woman who helped decide the fate of the six defendants sat last week for a 90-minute interview with C-SPAN — her employer of 32 years — just two days after the jury completed its work. She provided extraordinary details about the tense closed-door deliberations that resulted in four defendants being convicted of obstructing Congress for their role in the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol.

Identified only as Ellen, the juror told C-SPAN founder Brian Lamb that several members of the jury cried in the courtroom while they watched one of those defendants, William Isaacs, take the stand under grilling from his own attorney. The jury interpreted the strategy as a “stunt” designed to accentuate Isaacs’ struggle with autism, she said.

“His defense attorney tried to get him to fall apart by yelling at him and not letting him wear his headset,” Ellen recalled. “He was torturing his client to get us to feel sympathy.”

What was worse, the juror recalled, was that the judge ultimately instructed the jury not to consider Isaacs’ autism as a defense against his potential crimes, which meant the entire spectacle had been “a waste of time.”

The result of the jury’s six-day deliberations was a conviction of four defendants — including Isaacs — on all of the charges they faced. A fifth defendant, Bennie Parker, was convicted of one felony count and a misdemeanor but acquitted of other charges, and a sixth, Michael Greene, was convicted of a single misdemeanor charge and acquitted of several others.

Jurors rarely provide public commentary about their service, especially not to the detailed degree that Ellen did in her C-SPAN interview. She revealed that she worked with Lamb for more than 30 years and agreed to sit with him after he contacted her following the trial. The result was an eye-opening look at the jury’s lengthy deliberations: the fault-lines, the close calls and the persuasion efforts that resulted in guilty verdicts on most of the counts.

Isaacs’ attorney, Charles Greene, acknowledged that most of the jury recoiled at his posture toward his autistic client. It was all by design, he said, because he viewed acquittal as possible only if the jury could see Isaacs’ profound struggle.

“The strategy was: The jury’s going to hate me, but usually when you kick a puppy, the jury hates the person who kicks the puppy but they have sympathy for the puppy,” Greene told POLITICO.

He said that he had prepped for the testimony for days, running it by Isaacs’ family to ensure it wouldn’t cause a medical episode, but said he didn’t warn Isaacs because he needed his client’s response to be genuine.

“We had to wing it … He couldn’t be prepared for it. He couldn’t know what was coming,” Greene said. “I was crying. I didn’t like doing it. The days leading up to it, just thinking about it, it was traumatic for me too. I had to do it in a way that came across as heartless.”
Protesters supporting U.S. President Donald Trump break into the U.S. Capitol on January 06, 2021.

Ellen indicated that she and another juror who happened to be a lawyer helped spearhead a lot of the deliberations. Some jurors, she said, did not seem to have followed every twist and turn of the trial. Others, she said, seemed to have preconceived notions against convicting anyone regardless of the facts — which the jury had to overcome to arrive at its verdict. And when she completed her service, after a five-week trial and lengthy deliberations, Ellen came away with a conclusion: If she were ever on trial, she would waive her right to a jury and instead let the judge decide her fate.

“I would never want my fate in the hands of people who are mostly completely ill-equipped to understand what’s going on,” she said.

Washington Post, Trump extends election-rigging myth to his potential criminal charges, Isaac Arnsdorf and Hannah Knowles, March 29, 2023 (print ed.).  Former president Donald Trump opened the first mega-rally of his 2024 campaign by playing a recording of the national anthem sung by inmates charged in the riot at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

In the 90-minute remarks that followed on Saturday, Trump repeatedly emphasized — even more than in last year’s rallies for the midterms — his false insistence that the 2020 election was stolen from him. But he added a new twist: that his political opponents were now bent on rigging the next election against him through the prospect of criminal charges.

“This is their new form of trying to beat people at the polls,” Trump elaborated to reporters on his flight home from the rally, according to a recording obtained by The Washington Post. “This is worse than stuffing the ballot boxes, which they did.”

Saturday’s speech by the early polling leader for the Republican nomination shows how Trump is seeking to adapt the stolen election myth, continually absorbing new allegations when old ones are debunked or obsolete — from supposed foreign plots to tamper with voting machines to alleged manipulation of social media and now potential prosecution. The latest version also underscores Trump’s continued determination to elevate conspiracy theories with inflammatory rhetoric that has already inspired violence by his supporters, which he continues to downplay or defend.

“President Trump has always sounded the alarm on election interference, but what is happening with these legal witch hunts is the updated version of that in 2024,” campaign spokesman Steven Cheung said. “It’s an ‘us vs. them’ moment that harks back to his core message in 2016: They’re coming after us, but Trump is the only person standing in the way.”

Trump himself leveled a similar argument from the podium on Saturday, declaring: “When they go after me, they’re going after you.”

Palmer Report, Opinion: Bad news all around for Donald Trump in the Manhattan criminal case against him, Bill Palmer, March 28, 2023. First Donald Trump claimed to know that he would be arrested last Tuesday. That turned out to have been something he’d made up. Then Trump claimed to know this past weekend that the Manhattan criminal case against him had been dropped. That also turned out to have been something he’d made up. It’s a good reminder that Trump is not a source for anything, and the media shouldn’t give him special editorial consideration just because he once stole the presidency.

What’s playing out right now in Manhattan is also a good reminder of something else. A criminal indictment is not something that just falls out of the sky whenever a prosecutor decides to snap their fingers. If an indictment hasn’t happened yet, it’s not because that prosecutor is sitting there “doing nothing” and refusing to snap their fingers. A criminal indictment is the culmination of a complex investigative process, with the sole goal of building the kind of indictment that can get a conviction at trial.

It’s why, before prosecutors even go through the process of bringing a criminal indictment, they have to take the time to work through every possible witness on every possible topic. They need these things in their arsenal, so that when for instance a defendant like Donald Trump sends someone like Robert Costello in there with a bunch of stories aimed at discrediting key witness Michael Cohen, the prosecutor just has to look back through all the testimony that’s been amassed and figure out how to discredit the defendant’s claims.

In this instance it was a matter of the Manhattan DA putting former National Enquirer boss David Pecker back in front of the grand jury this week. He already testified to the grand jury awhile ago. Back then he gave whatever testimony was considered necessary and appropriate for the indictment process.

But now the DA has brought back Pecker to give additional testimony for the specific purpose of refuting Costello’s testimony and vindicating Cohen’s testimony. This suggests that the Manhattan DA had already gotten this additional information out of Pecker awhile ago, and didn’t need it at the time, but is now able to pull it out of his arsenal and use it to fit the situation.

This is part of why prosecutors have to take so long lining up all of this beforehand. Once the process gets going, they need to be able to pull these kinds of things out of a hat in real time. And it’s not because of magic, it’s because they did their homework first.

The kicker is that because Costello told his story to the grand jury under oath, he’s now stuck with that version of events. If Pecker’s testimony has now dismantled Costello’s claims and made him useless as a defense witness at trial, Costello can’t just change his story at trial and float a new version of events aimed at helping Trump, because that would get Costello nailed for perjury.

We still don’t fully understand Donald Trump’s rationale for sending his would-be surprise trial witness Costello to the grand jury like this. Trump appears to have panicked at the prospect of indictment, and decided to take his shot now instead of trying it at trial. But by any measure the move failed. Trump only managed to delay his Manhattan indictment by about a week, and in the process he’s forfeited a friendly witness who could have tried to help him at trial.

This is why it doesn’t matter that anyone out there is “tired of waiting” or finds themselves annoyed that the Manhattan indictment is dropping on this day instead of that day. First of all, this isn’t meant for anyone’s entertainment. Nor is it a matter of everyone waiting impatiently for some prosecutor to flip some magic switch somewhere. This is a living, breathing process. It’s never, ever as simple as someone in the backseat yelling “Are we there yet?”

New York Times, Ezra Klein Show: Trump’s Legal Jeopardy and America’s Political Crossroads, Host Ezra Klein, right, with guest David French, New York Times columnist and author of recent piece, Opinion: MAGA, Not Trump, Controls the Movement Now, March 28, 2023. 

Donald Trump’s legal troubles are mounting. A Manhattan grand jury investigation into the hush-money payment to Stormy Daniels could soon make Trump the first former American president ever to be criminally indicted.

But the Manhattan case isn’t the only source of legal risk for Trump. In Georgia, the Fulton County district attorney is considering criminal charges for Trump’s efforts to influence the 2020 election, and the Department of Justice is investigating his role in the Jan. 6 riots and the removal of classified documents from the White House.

This level of legal vulnerability surrounding a former president is unprecedented. It’s also unsurprising — Trump routinely flouts protocols and norms. But even more than his disregard for convention, Trump has a knack for forcing our legal and political systems into predicaments that don’t really have good solutions. How should a political system handle criminal charges against a current political candidate? Is it appropriate for prosecutors to consider the risk of mob violence in weighing charges? And what’s the risk of damage to our institutions of holding Trump accountable — and for failing to do so?

Justice Department Special Prosecutor Jack Smith, left, and former President Donald Trump, shown in a collage via CNN.

Palmer Report, Opinion: Jack Smith is racing to the finish line against Donald Trump, Bill Palmer, March 27, 2023. Even as far too many observers have sat back and accused the DOJ and other prosecutors of “doing nothing” against Donald Trump, what the DOJ has actually been doing all this time is building the kind of extraordinarily comprehensive case required to convince the court system to order key witnesses to testify. The good news is that, after a very long effort on that front, the DOJ has finally made the breakthroughs in court it’s long been seeking.

The catch here has always been that Trump purposely relied on people like presidential advisers and his own attorneys as his co-conspirators, specifically so things like executive privilege and attorney-client privilege would keep those co-conspirators from ever testifying against him even if they wanted to. That’s why the DOJ has had to go to painstaking lengths to convince the courts to waive such privilege.

But last week the DOJ finally managed to get there, on two fronts. First the U.S. Court of Appeals ordered Trump’s attorney Evan Corcoran to testify to the grand jury in the classified documents scandal, which he did on Friday.

Then a federal judge ordered that Trump White House advisers like Mark Meadows had to testify against him to the grand jury in the January 6th case. This ruling is still subject to appeal, and we don’t know whether or not the U.S. Court of Appeals will process it as swiftly as it did the Corcoran appeal. But we do know that the DOJ will win this ruling, and that even if it doesn’t happen overnight, it’ll happen soon.

In other words, after a very long and grueling process to meet the court’s bar for waiving these various forms of privilege that’s been going on since long before Jack Smith arrived on the case, Smith and the DOJ are now in a position where they essentially get to race to the finish line. The hard part is done. The time consuming part is over. One ruling from the U.S. Court of Appeals on January 6th executive privilege, and those folks will all be in front of the grand jury.

To that end, on Sunday morning, Robert Costa reported on CBS Face The Nation that the grand jury in the Trump case is now hearing testimony about the “national security levers” that Trump was inquiring about in the hope of overthrowing the election. In other words, Jack Smith and the DOJ are criminally indicting Donald Trump for everything.

Moreover, in spite of what some folks on social media seem to think, Jack Smith and the DOJ do know how to read a calendar. They will make a point of criminally indicting Donald Trump with enough time left before the start of the 2024 election cycle such that they can get to trial and get a conviction before Trump can even get a whiff of the 2024 election. And no, Trump doesn’t have some magic wand for just delaying his trial for as long as he pleases.

This was all over for Donald Trump when he committed crimes in the name of trying to remain in office, failed, was forced to leave office, and was then stupid enough to commit even more crimes on his way out the door. He was always going to be criminally indicted for those crimes, and it was always going to happen with more than enough time left to try and convict him before Trump was ever going to be able to get serious about 2024. There wasn’t going to be a different outcome – and that’s now becoming more clear than ever.

Politico, Former National Enquirer publisher testifies before Trump grand jury, Erica Orden and Wesley Parnell, March 28, 2023 (print ed.). Former National Enquirer publisher David Pecker, shown at right in the file photo above, testified Monday before the grand jury examining Donald Trump’s alleged role in paying hush money to a porn star, according to a news report and related photograph.

Monday was the first time in a week that the grand jury heard evidence in the Trump case. The panel was called off Wednesday and then examined an unrelated matter Thursday. The delay prompted a fiery response from Trump, leading some Democrats to rally around Bragg on Monday morning.

Bragg’s investigation is centered on a $130,000 payment facilitated by Trump’s former fixer, Michael Cohen, and made to the porn star, Stormy Daniels. The adult entertainer alleged she had an affair with Trump and considered selling her story to the National Enquirer, at a time when Pecker was the tabloid’s publisher, according to federal prosecutors. Instead, Cohen paid Daniels directly, a step he told a court he took “in coordination with and at the direction of” Trump.

Trump has denied the affair and any wrongdoing with the payment.

Pecker previously testified before the Manhattan grand jury examining the Trump investigation, according to a person familiar with the matter. It wasn’t clear why he was called back to provide further testimony. Before the publisher, the grand jury heard from Robert Costello, a former legal adviser to Cohen, who is the prosecution’s central witness in the case.

Costello said at a press conference after his testimony that he sought to discredit Cohen while speaking to the grand jury.

Relevant Recent Headlines

• The Warning with Steve Schmidt, Commentary: How Donald Trump is using the January 6 playbook to incite violence, Steve Schmidt
• New York Times, Ezra Klein Show: Trump’s Legal Jeopardy and America’s Political Crossroads, Host Ezra Klein, right, with guest David French
• New York Times, Trump Puts His Legal Peril at Center of First Big Rally for 2024
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• Going Deep with Russ Baker, Investigative Commentary: The Iran Hostages, Carter, Reagan, and Bush: What the NY Times ‘Scoop’ Missed, Russ Baker

U.S. Politics, Elections, Economy, Governance

New York Times, Michigan Democrats Rise, and Try to Turn a Battleground Blue, Katie Glueck, March 29, 2023. With a strong governor, a Legislature passing a raft of liberal measures and a looming early presidential primary, Democrats are testing the promise and pitfalls of complete control of the state.

The state has transformed into a new — if fragile — focal point of Democratic power, testing the promise and pitfalls of complete Democratic governance.

The governor of Michigan, Gretchen Witmer, right, is considered one of her party’s brightest stars. Her state’s Democratic-controlled Legislature is rapidly approving a raft of ambitious priorities. The Democratic Party is planning to host one of its earliest presidential primaries in Michigan, while the state’s Republican Party is in chaos.

Seven years after Michigan helped cement Donald J. Trump’s presidential victory, the state has transformed into a new — if fragile — focal point of Democratic power, testing the promise and pitfalls of complete Democratic governance in one of the nation’s pre-eminent political battlegrounds.

Michigan’s Democratic leaders, however, recoil at the idea that their state — once a reliable stronghold for the party in presidential years — is turning blue once more.

“No! Michigan’s not a blue state,” Ms. Whitmer insisted in an interview last week in Bay City, nestled in a windy, working-class county near Saginaw Bay that Mr. Trump won twice. Ms. Whitmer captured it too, prevailing there and across the state in Democrats’ November sweep.

New York Times, Republicans Face Setbacks in Push to Make Voting Harder for College Students, Neil Vigdor, March 29, 2023. Party officials have tried to enact new obstacles for young voters, who tilt heavily Democratic, after several cycles in which their turnout surged.

Alarmed over young people increasingly proving to be a force for Democrats at the ballot box, Republican lawmakers in a number of states have been trying to enact new obstacles to voting for college students.

In Idaho, Republicans used their power monopoly this month to ban student ID cards as a form of voter identification.

But so far this year, the new Idaho law is one of few successes for Republicans targeting young voters.

Attempts to cordon off out-of-state students from voting in their campus towns or to roll back preregistration for teenagers have failed in New Hampshire and Virginia. Even in Texas, where 2019 legislation shuttered early voting sites on many college campuses, a new proposal that would eliminate all college polling places seems to have an uncertain future.

Axios, Scoop: Christie pledges never to support Trump again, Josh Kraushaar, March 29, 2023. Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, who is seriously considering a 2024 presidential campaign, told Axios that he will never support Donald Trump for president again — even if he wins the Republican nomination.

Why it matters: No potential GOP candidate has made such an explicit pledge, underscoring the degree to which Christie is betting on the viability of an anti-Trump lane in the primary.

The big picture: Christie was one of the first top Republicans to back Trump in 2016 after the reality TV star emerged as the front-runner in the presidential race — and even helped the former president prepare to debate Joe Biden during the 2020 campaign.

If Christie gets in the race, he is prepared to play the role of anti-Trump prosecutor at a time when Trump's other Republican rivals have been reticent to go after him directly.
Christie previewed his line of attack in a speech Monday at St. Anselm College in New Hampshire, where he said Republicans need someone to take down Trump on the debate stage the way he viciously took down Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) in 2016.

What they're saying: "I'm going to go out there and tell the truth. Like the truth matters. The truth is not negotiable," Christie told Axios.

Asked whether he'd support Trump as the GOP nominee in 2024, Christie said: "I can't help him. No way."
"Look, I just can't," Christie went on. "When you have the Jan. 6 choir at a rally and you show video of it — I just don't think that person is appropriate for the presidency."

Christie said he wouldn't be voting for Biden, either. "I can't imagine myself voting for Joe Biden, either. I don't know if I can vote for either of these guys. They're both too old. They're both out of touch with what's going on in the world right now."

Between the lines: "Look, what I thought in 2016 was that [Trump] going to be the nominee, and I don't want Hillary Clinton to be the president," Christie said about his past support for Trump, which lasted until the Jan. 6 Capitol attack.

"Did I have concerns about him? Of course, but you probably have concerns about any candidate other than yourself in the end."

The Warning with Steve Schmidt, Commentary: Chris Christie may be useful tool to beat Trump, but cannot be trusted, Steve Schmidt, March 29, 2023 (6:41 mins.). Steve Schmidt reacts to Chris Christie saying he will not support Donald Trump if he is the Republican nominee in 2024. Steve discusses how Christie supported Trump from the very beginning, and why this change of heart matters.

Washington Post, GOP donors open to other Trump challengers as DeSantis tries to find footing, Maeve Reston and Michael Scherer, March 29, 2023. Interviews show the desire for a backup option in 2024 has intensified amid questions about the Florida governor.

Donald Trump and Ron DeSantis were nowhere to be found at this year’s spring gathering of conservative activists and donors in Sea Island, Ga., setting the stage for a private audition before a well-heeled crowd still hankering for a third option in the 2024 presidential race.

New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu spoke about choosing the right messenger, arguing that if you can’t win in 2024, you won’t get results in 2025. Former vice president Mike Pence brought up his prayerful consideration as he contemplates a run. Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin disappointed some in attendance by steering clear of any suggestion he wanted to tease a coming campaign.

Former New Jersey governor Chris Christie captured the crowd’s attention at the American Enterprise Institute-sponsored summit by offering the bluntest pitch of all. He compared former president Trump to a member of the living dead, saying that a stake would have to be driven through his heart or he would keep coming back like a vampire, according to three people in the audience, a comment that stirred debate in the crowd about whether he was best-suited to take on Trump.

New York Times, Senator Seeks Details of Schools’ Deals With Betting Companies, Kevin Draper, March 27, 2023. Senator Richard Blumenthal, asserting that gambling causes “very real harm” to students, has asked 66 colleges to provide information about their marketing relationships with sportsbooks.

Senator Richard Blumenthal, right, Democrat of Connecticut, sent a letter to 66 colleges and universities, demanding information about their efforts to partner with sports betting companies. Here is the letter.

Washington Post, Sanders grills former Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz in Senate hearing, Lauren Kaori Gurley, March 29, 2023. The founder denied the coffee company has broken any labor laws.

Former Starbucks executive Howard Schultz unequivocally denied that the coffee giant had broken the law in its fight against unionization during a tense questioning from Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) on Wednesday.

When asked by Sanders when Schultz planned to follow a National Labor Relations Board order for Schultz to read workers a message about their labor rights, Schultz said, “Starbucks coffee company did not break the law.”

But Sanders kept the pressure on Schultz during the hearing.

“Over the past 18 months, Starbucks has waged the most aggressive and illegal union-busting campaign in the modern history of our country,” Sanders said on Wednesday. “That union-busting campaign has been led by Howard Schultz, the multibillionaire founder and director of Starbucks who is with us this morning only under the threat of subpoena.”

Sanders asked Schultz during a Senate hearing Wednesday about his involvement in a long list of findings from the NLRB that Starbucks had violated labor law.

Schultz said he was not involved in decisions to discipline or fire union activists or close unionizing stores, though he said he had had conversations that may have been interpreted as threatening to workers.

Schultz initially declined to testify at Wednesday’s hearing, but he relented after Sanders, the committee’s chairman, threatened to hold a vote earlier this month to subpoena him. Schultz stepped down from his role as Starbucks chief executive last week and passed the reins to Laxman Narasimhan.

Washington Post, Opinion: How Marjorie Taylor Greene became the queen of the GOP fringe, David Byler, March 29, 2023. Marjorie Taylor Greene is in a unique position. So long as the Georgia congresswoman remains queen of the GOP fringe, Republicans such as Speaker Kevin McCarthy will believe they need her. In fact, they’ll fall over themselves to stay in her good graces.

Greene — once removed from all House committees for promoting antisemitic conspiracy theories, and banned from Twitter for spreading covid-19 misinformation — is suddenly everywhere. She lobbied hard for McCarthy’s bid for the House speakership. She has plum committee assignments: Homeland Security and Oversight (read: the Hunter Biden investigation team). And she was given “rock star” treatment at this year’s Conservative Political Action Conference.

Her grip on the GOP fringe is apparent in her fundraising haul. Small-dollar GOP donors who see politics as blood sport and often root for the most far-right candidates love Greene.

It’s reasonable to react to these numbers with horror. This is the same Greene who spread QAnon conspiracy theories, speculated that a Jewish cabal started the 2018 California wildfires using a satellite laser, and called the Sandy Hook mass shooting a “false flag” operation. Her views aren’t just false; they’re deeply disturbing. But, in just two years, she’s positioned herself as one of the most important figures in her party.

This wasn’t Greene’s destiny. Before she took office, she wasn’t the clear choice of the ultra-MAGA donor. Other conspiratorialist GOP upstarts, such as Rep. Lauren Boebert (Colo.) and former North Carolina congressman Madison Cawthorn, out-raised her.

But Greene had better timing than Cawthorn, Boebert or any of her MAGA contemporaries. She found the spotlight after the 2020 election.

Politico, Biden’s nominees hit the Senate skids, Burgess Everett, Daniella Diaz and Daniel Lippman, March 29, 2023 (print ed.). Democrats’ 51-seat majority isn’t stopping a growing line of presidential picks — from the federal bench to the Interior Department — from screeching to a halt.

President Joe Biden’s nominees are hitting a rough patch in the Senate. And things may only get trickier from here.

It looked at the beginning of the year like Democrats would have an easier time confirming Biden picks, having gained a seat last fall after a historically lengthy run in a 50-50 Senate. But this Congress has brought a host of new challenges despite that padded margin for Biden’s party.

Two high-profile Biden administration hopefuls have withdrawn in the past month alone. The president’s Labor Department pick faces a tough road to confirmation. And the administration is in danger of a first: having to abandon a judicial nominee due to tepid Democratic support.

That’s in addition to the Pentagon promotions being stalled by a Republican senator and the judicial appointments delayed due to a senior Democratic senator’s extended absence.

Underlining the tension between the narrowly divided Senate and the administration was the Saturday evening withdrawal of Phil Washington, tapped to lead the Federal Aviation Administration. Democrats blamed a GOP campaign against him, led by Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), but the reality is that Biden’s own party could have saved Washington had they kept their own side united and put up a simple majority.

In Washington’s case, Commerce Committee member Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (I-Ariz.) had communicated her concerns to the Biden administration. And Sen. Jon Tester (D-Mont.) stayed undecided ahead of the committee vote, right up until Washington bowed out.

“That’s a better question for the president,” Tester, who faces a reelection campaign this cycle, said of the FAA imbroglio. Asked if he supported the nominee, he responded: “Never had to make that vote.

Washington Post, Christie repeatedly berates Trump in N.H., signals 2024 decision by June, Colby Itkowitz, March 29, 2023 (print ed.). Former New Jersey governor Chris Christie sharply criticized Donald Trump on Monday during his first trip this year to New Hampshire, as he kept the door open to entering the GOP presidential primary against his former ally and signaled he would decide by June.

In a nearly two-hour town hall at St. Anselm College’s New Hampshire Institute of Politics, Christie, right, said Trump’s name more than 20 times, attacking the former president over his efforts to overturn the 2020 election that he lost, mocking his policy acumen and blaming him for Republican losses in the 2022 midterms. Christie also portrayed himself as uniquely well positioned to take on Trump.

“You know, Donald Trump said a couple of weeks ago, ‘I am your retribution.’ Guess what, everybody? No thanks. No thanks,” Christie said to applause from his audience in an early-nominating state. “If I was going to pay somebody to be my retribution, I guarantee this, it wouldn’t be him.”

Christie, who has been publicly critical of Trump as he weighs a White House bid, continued, “Here’s why it wouldn’t be him, because he doesn’t want to be my retribution. That’s baloney. The only person he cares about is him. And if we haven’t learned that since Election Day of 2020 to today, then we are not paying attention.”

Asked for his response to Christie’s attacks, Trump spokesman Steven Cheung replied, “Who’s that?”

Christie threw his support to Trump after ending his own campaign for president in 2016 and backed him again in 2020. Christie referenced the possibility that he might run for president again several times, saying the latest he believes a viable candidate can announce a candidacy is June because the first scheduled debate is in August.

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U.S. Banks, Economy, Jobs, CryptoCurrencies

Washington Post, U.S. targets world’s biggest crypto market with charges against Binance, Julian Mark, March 29, 2023 (print ed.). Binance, the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange, was charged on Monday by U.S. commodities regulators who allege the company violated regulations and showed American customers how to evade compliance controls.

The Commodity Futures Trading Commission filed a civil complaint in federal court in the Northern District of Illinois, charging Binance and its founder Changpeng Zhao with violating the Commodity Exchange Act and CFTC rules, which regulate the crypto derivatives such as futures. Samuel Lim, the firm’s former chief compliance officer, was also charged.

“For years, Binance knew they were violating CFTC rules, working actively to both keep the money flowing and avoid compliance,” Rostin Behnam, the commission’s chairman, said in a news release announcing the civil complaint. “This should be a warning to anyone in the digital asset world that the CFTC will not tolerate willful avoidance of U.S. law.”

New York Times, Live Updates: Regulators Blame Banks’ Mismanagement for Failures, Jeanna Smialek, March 29, 2023 (print ed.).Top officials from the Federal Reserve, the Treasury and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation defended their response on Tuesday to the collapse of two banks this month that shocked the global financial system and ramped up the risk of a recession in the United States.

The Senate Banking Committee sharply questioned the regulators during a hearing that lawmakers from both parties opened by criticizing the management of the two failed banks, Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank.

Senator Sherrod Brown of Ohio, the chairman of the committee, blamed three factors: “hubris, entitlement, greed,” while the committee’s ranking Republican, Tim Scott of South Carolina, also faulted regulators for not preventing the crisis.

Here’s what to know:

• The officials testifying are Michael S. Barr, the Fed’s vice chair for supervision; Martin Gruenberg, the chair of the F.D.I.C.; and Nellie Liang, the Treasury’s under secretary for domestic finance. Mr. Barr blamed the failure of Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank on mismanagement by its leaders. The Fed, SVB’s primary regulator, has been emphasizing executives’ culpability. “Fundamentally, the bank failed because its management failed to appropriately address clear interest rate risk and clear liquidity risk,” he said, noting that those problems were pointed out to the bank starting in November 2021. Catch up on what happened with the banks at the center of the crisis.
• Mr. Gruenberg said that both banks “were allowed to fail” — drawing a distinction between previous bailouts of financial institutions and what the federal authorities decided to do this month: backstopping all depositors.

In response to questions about their actions to stabilize deposits, Mr. Gruenberg said that there would have been “contagion” — a spreading of the crisis. Ms. Liang agreed, saying without federal action, bank runs “would have intensified and caused serious problems.”

This is the first of two days of testimony. The same officials will appear before the House Financial Services Committee on Wednesday.

Senator J.D. Vance, an Ohio Republican, begins his questioning by explaining that he comes from the venture capital world and knows that venture capital companies occasionally keep giant sums of cash in their bank accounts. “What we did was bail them out,” he said, suggesting that the government rescued the venture capital firms with millions stashed at SVB

It’s striking to hear Republicans asking why there wasn’t more regulation of this bank after years of complaining that regulation was too onerous, particularly for mid-sized banks.

New York Times, Sam Bankman-Fried Is Charged With Foreign Bribery, Matthew Goldstein, March 29, 2023 (print ed.). Federal prosecutors said the FTX founder had instructed employees to pay a $40 million bribe to one or more Chinese officials.

Federal prosecutors added a foreign bribery charge to the growing list of crimes already pending against the FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried, right, according to a new indictment filed in federal court in Manhattan on Tuesday.

Federal prosecutors said that in 2021 Mr. Bankman-Fried instructed those working for him to pay a bribe of $40 million to one or more Chinese officials to help unfreeze trading accounts maintained by Alameda Research, FTX’s sister company, that held about $1 billion in cryptocurrencies.

The bribe money was paid to the Chinese officials in cryptocurrency, the document said. The indictment said the effort to pay off the unnamed Chinese officials was successful in getting the trading accounts unfrozen.

The bribery charge was brought under the Foreign Corrupt Business Practices Act, a federal law used by the authorities to go after big corporations for paying bribes to operate in other countries.

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Global News, Migration, Human Rights

New York Times, U.S.-Israel Tensions Over Judicial Overhaul Burst Into Open, In response to sharp criticism by President Biden, Isabel Kershner, March 29, 2023. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that Israel would make its own decisions.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel, right, responded defiantly on Wednesday to sharp criticism from President Biden over his government’s contentious judicial overhaul plan, declaring that Israel was “a sovereign country” that would make its own decisions.

As weeks of quiet diplomatic pressure burst into a rare open dispute between the allies, Mr. Netanyahu’s opponents in Israel accused him of endangering the longstanding and critical relationship with the United States that could harm the country’s ability to face daunting security challenges, including Iran’s nuclear ambitions.

“I have known President Biden for over 40 years, and I appreciate his longstanding commitment to Israel,” Mr. Netanyahu said in a statement posted in English on Twitter. But, he added, “Israel is a sovereign country which makes its decisions by the will of its people and not based on pressures from abroad, including from the best of friends.”

Mr. Netanyahu’s remarks, first issued by his office at the unusual time of about 1 a.m. in Israel, came after Mr. Biden told reporters that he was “very concerned” about the events in Israel. The president’s comments came after suggestions on Tuesday by the U.S. ambassador to Israel that Mr. Netanyahu would be welcome in Washington sometime soon.

Israeli security personnel, right, confront demonstrators (Photo by Noga Tarnopolsky).

Washington Post, Turmoil in Israel: Netanyahu announces he will delay judicial plan, backtracking after unprecedented protests, Miriam Berger, Leo Sands, Steve Hendrix and Shira Rubin, March 28, 2023 (print ed.). Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced Monday that he would delay his government’s plan to overhaul Israel’s judiciary, an effort that has spurred months of mass protests and led to unprecedented nationwide strikes on Monday, including a shutdown of the international airport.

“Out of national responsibility, from a desire to prevent the nation from being torn apart, I am calling to suspend the legislation,” said Netanyahu, adding that he reached the decision with the agreement of the majority of his coalition members.“When there is a possibility to prevent a civil war through negotiations, I will give a time-out for negotiations.” he said.

The plan to remake the courts — which would give Netanyahu’s government greater power to handpick judges, including those presiding over Netanyahu’s corruption trial, in which he is charged in three cases and faces potential prison time — has pitted liberal and secular Jewish Israelis against more right-wing and religiously conservative citizens, along a fault line long in emerging.

New York Times, Inside the U.S. Pressure Campaign Over Israel’s Judicial Overhaul, David E. Sanger, March 28, 2023 (print ed.). President Biden bombarded the Israeli government with warnings that the country’s image as the sole democracy in the Middle East was at stake.

In the 48 hours before Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu reluctantly delayed his effort to overhaul the Israeli judiciary, his government was bombarded by warnings from the Biden administration that he was imperiling Israel’s reputation as the true democracy at the heart of the Middle East.

In a statement on Sunday night, soon after Mr. Netanyahu fired his defense minister because he had broken with the government on the judicial overhaul, the White House noted that President Biden had told Mr. Netanyahu by phone a week ago that democratic values “have always been, and must remain, a hallmark of the U.S.-Israel relationship.” Major changes to the system, Mr. Biden said, must only “be pursued with the broadest possible base of popular support.”

New York Times, Opinion: Netanyahu Cannot Be Trusted, Thomas L. Friedman, right, March 29, 2023 (print ed.). Thank goodness that Israel’s civil society has forced Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to pause, for now, his attempt to impose his control over Israel’s independent judiciary and gain a free hand to rule as he wishes.

But this whole affair has exposed a new and troubling reality for the United States: For the first time, the leader of Israel is an irrational actor, a danger not only to Israelis but also to important American interests and values.

This demands an immediate reassessment by both President Biden and the pro-Israel Jewish lobby in America. Netanyahu essentially told them all: “Trust the process,” “Israel is a healthy democracy” and, in a whisper, “Don’t worry about the religious zealots and Jewish supremacists I brought into power to help block my trial for corruption. I will keep Israel within its traditional political and foreign policy boundaries. It’s me, your old pal, Bibi.”

They wanted to trust him, and it all turned out to be a lie.

From Day 1, it has been obvious to many of us that this Israeli government would go to extremes that none before it ever dared. With no real guardrails, it would take the United States and world Jewry across redlines they never imagined crossing, while possibly destabilizing Jordan and the Abraham Accords, eliminating hope of a two-state solution and bringing Israel in its 75th anniversary year to the edge of civil war.

That is because the key to implementing the government’s radical agenda was always, first, getting control over Israel’s Supreme Court — the only legitimate independent brake on the ambitions of Netanyahu and his extremist coalition partners — through a process disguised as “judicial reform.”

 New York Times, Analysis: China’s Cities Are Buried in Debt, but They Keep Shoveling It On, Li Yuan, March 29, 2023 (print ed.). China has long pursued growth through public spending, even after the payoff has faded, our columnist writes.

In 2015, when Shangqiu, a municipality in central China, laid out a plan for the next two decades, it positioned itself as a transportation hub with a sprawling network of railways, highways and river shipping routes.

By the end of 2020, Shangqiu had built 114 miles of high-speed rail, and today several national railways make stops in the city. By 2025, Shangqiu expects the coverage of its highway network to have increased by 87 percent. The city is building its first two airports, three new highways and enough parking space for 20,000 additional slots.

The infrastructure splurge is far from over. On Feb. 23, the Shangqiu Communist Party secretary reiterated the city’s vision as a logistics power when celebrating a new partnership with a state-owned investment firm, which could help Shangqiu borrow money for even more projects.

That morning, the city’s bus operator announced that it would have to suspend services because of financial difficulties. The pandemic had hit it hard, the company said, and the Shangqiu government hadn’t provided subsidies that it had promised. As a result, the company had not paid its employees for months — it couldn’t even afford to charge its electric buses. A few hours after posting its announcement, the company deleted it, after it had made national headlines and the Shangqiu government had intervened.

China is full of Shangqius these days. As part of the ruling Communist Party’s all-in push for economic growth this year, local governments already in debt from borrowing to pay for massive infrastructure are taking on additional debt. They’re building more roads, railways and industrial parks even though the economic returns on that activity are increasingly meager. In their struggle to find the money to fund their new projects, and the interest payments on their old ones, cities are cutting public services and benefits.

Shangqiu is one of more than 20 towns and cities in China where bus services were shut down or put in peril because local governments had failed to provide the necessary operating funds. Wuhan and other cities cut health insurance. Still others slashed the pay of government workers. Many local governments in Hebei Province, which borders Beijing, failed to pay heating subsidies for natural gas during the winter, leaving residents to shiver during a record-setting cold wave.

For nearly three decades, China’s local governments were the envy of the world. They seemed to have unlimited resources to binge-build airports, roads and industrial parks, many of which were funded by selling land.

Now, many of them are in fiscal disarray. In the country’s single-minded pursuit of its “zero Covid” policy, local governments exhausted their coffers to comply with strict testing, quarantine and lockdown rules. Struggling businesses are paying less in taxes. After blow upon blow of government crackdowns, property developers are reluctant to buy land.

New York Times, Kamala Harris, at Former Slave Port in Ghana, Ties Past to Present, Zolan Kanno-Youngs, March 28, 2023. The vice president leaned into her heritage during a three-nation trip to Africa to strengthen U.S. relations on the continent.

After walking down a path where enslaved people once marched in chains to waiting ships, Vice President Kamala Harris entered a dungeon in Cape Coast, Ghana, where captive women had sung songs praying for death. If nothing else, her tour guide said on Tuesday, they believed death would bring freedom.

Ms. Harris, wiping her face and visibly emotional, walked outside this former slave port and connected the past to the present.

“The descendants of the people that walked through that door were strong people, proud people, people of deep faith who loved their families, their traditions, their culture,” Ms. Harris said during her visit to the port, called Cape Coast Castle, used for the slave trade in the 17th century. Those people, she added, “went on to fight for civil rights, fight for justice in the United States of America and around the world.”

Ms. Harris, who is on a tour of three countries in Africa — Ghana, Tanzania and Zambia — has been focused on promoting investments in the continent and collaboration with the United States. She has sought to showcase young artists by posting a Spotify playlist of her favorite African music and appearing with musicians at a studio in Accra, the capital of Ghana.

But on Tuesday, Ms. Harris, the first woman of color to serve as vice president of the United States, spoke of a different way to revitalize the U.S. relationship with Africa: She encouraged Americans to honor and learn the bleak history that links many Black Americans to the continent.

For Ms. Harris, that meant leaning harder into the historical nature of her position than ever before, an aspect of her role that she has at times expressed reservations about.

“This continent, of course, has a special significance for me personally, as the first Black vice president,” said Ms. Harris, the daughter of an Indian mother and a Black Jamaican father. “And this is a history, like many of us, that I learned as a young child: stories, cultures and traditions passed down from generations.”

A former prosecutor, Ms. Harris often analyzes each word of the drafts of her speeches, aides say, in an effort to inform audiences about legal precedents and policy implications. On Tuesday at the slave port, however, she delivered rare unscripted remarks, according to officials from her office.

Washington Post, Opinion: What the U.S. should learn from unprecedented events in Israel, Jennifer Rubin, right, March 29, 2023. Nothing like this has happened in the history of the state of Israel. Ironically, in a moment that recalls the Arab Spring, the religious, the secular, the business community, leading intellectuals, labor unions and even the military rose up to thwart, at least temporarily, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s scheme to subvert an independent judiciary.

The country had been plunged into near chaos.

While he agreed to negotiate with the opposition, he also pledged to keep moving the bills through the Knesset after the Passover break next month. He has not addressed the Sunday night firing of his defense minister, Yoav Gallant, after Gallant urged him to halt the judicial overhaul. And he has said nothing publicly about the private deals made with members of his coalition to get them on board with the pause.

It’s a tribute to an unprecedented alliance that spans religious, political, social and ethnic differences in Israel.

The Israeli episode holds lessons for the United States and other democracies. First and foremost, unity is essential. Whatever differences on policy issues exist, refusal to join hands with those with whom you disagree is a fatal error when trying to save a democracy. It’s essential to persuade citizens to put loyalty to democracy above loyalty to party or institutions (even the military). Without a democratic foundation, no other political cause or institution can survive.

Persistence is also required. A week or a month of protests won’t do.

Washington Post, Opinion: The truly revealing TikTok hearing was the one that featured Uyghurs, Josh Rogin, March 29, 2023. Critics of last week’s congressional hearing with TikTok chief executive Shou Zi Chew complained that it produced no new information. The witness was evasive and the lawmakers, ill-informed. True enough. But a separate hearing on Capitol Hill that day did provide useful testimony about the dangers of the Chinese social media platform.

At a meeting of the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party on the subject of the ongoing genocide of Uyghur Muslims, Uyghurs with firsthand experience of Chinese technological repression testified about how TikTok and its parent company ByteDance pose a threat to Americans’ national security, privacy and human rights. Indeed, TikTok and ByteDance came up several times during this hearing because, as witnesses explained, the two issues are linked.

Rep. Mike Gallagher (R-Wis.), the committee chairman, pointed out that Chew, during his testimony before the House Energy and Commerce Committee, had declined four times to acknowledge that the Chinese government is persecuting Uyghurs. To some, Chew’s evasion might have seemed to be an innocent attempt to avoid wading into a controversial matter.

But Nury Turkel, a Uyghur American lawyer who chairs the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, argued to the China committee that TikTok and ByteDance don’t criticize the Chinese government’s abuse of the Uyghurs because they are complicit.

“ByteDance has a strategic partnership with the Chinese Ministry of Public Security. That is part of their business conduct,” Turkel said. “This is what they do.”

For Uyghurs, ByteDance’s danger is not hypothetical. When Chinese authorities initially built the surveillance and monitoring system in Xinjiang that preceded the re-education camps, they relied on data from Chinese tech platforms including WeChat and Daoyin, ByteDance’s local TikTok version.

Washington Post, U.S. says Taiwan president is just passing through. China’s not amused, Meaghan Tobin and Vic Chiang, March 29, 2023. When Taiwan’s then-President Lee Teng-hui traveled to New York in 1995 to visit his alma mater, Cornell University, it set off a chain of events that became known as the Third Taiwan Strait Crisis. China, angrily accusing the United States of betraying its own “one-China policy,” carried out months of military drills, including conducting missile tests in the direction of Taiwan.

The United States responded by sailing two aircraft carrier battle groups through the strait to try to bring an end to the crisis.

Now, with Taiwan’s President Tsai Ing-wen set to stop in New York on Wednesday on her way to Belize and Guatemala, there are fears of another crisis.

“Because of this low point in U.S.-China relations, both sides are aware of the risks of any misstep, miscalculation or accident that may escalate to more serious military confrontation with grave consequences,” said Jingdong Yuan, a professor focused on China’s defense policy at the University of Sydney.

New York Times, Randall Robinson, Anti-Apartheid Catalyst, Is Dead at 81, Sam Roberts, March 28, 2023. He also supported reparations for descendants of enslaved Americans and sanctuary for Haitian refugees. But he lived for two decades in self-imposed exile.

Randall Robinson, shown above, a self-described “pained victim of stolen identity” raised in segregated Virginia who grew up to galvanize Americans against apartheid in South Africa and champion reparations for the descendants of slaves, died on Friday in Basseterre, on the Caribbean island of St. Kitts, where he had lived in self-imposed exile from the United States for more than two decades. He was 81.

Born into poverty in a rat-infested home without central heating, a telephone or a television set, Mr. Robinson was raised by loving parents, both teachers. He went on to win a basketball scholarship to college and to graduate from Harvard Law School. In 1978, his older brother, Max Robinson, became the first Black person to co-anchor the news on a national network, on “ABC World News Tonight.”

Mr. Robinson’s accomplishments were considerable — through sit-ins, hunger strikes and other protests as the president of the lobbying and research organization TransAfrica, as a founder of the Free South Africa Movement and on behalf of Haitian refugees. In 1984, Representative Don Edwards, a California Democrat, called him “the most effective foreign policy catalyst in recent history.”

But the frustration and resentment he felt over what he viewed as only a grudging acquiescence of the American government and white society to Black civil rights and equal opportunity drove him to quit as head of TransAfrica and emigrate in 2001.

“What have I done with my pain?” he asked in his book Defending the Spirit: A Black Life in America, which was published in 1998, shortly before he and his wife moved to St. Kitts.

“I am not eager to know,” he wrote. “I can find no answer of which I can be proud. White-hot hatred would seem the proper reflex. But there is no survival there. In the autumn of my life, I am left regarding white people, before knowing them individually, with irreducible mistrust and dull dislike.”

Unlike his successful campaign for economic sanctions and corporate disinvestment in South Africa, or his 27-day hunger strike that pressured the Clinton administration to open the gates to some Haitian refugees, Mr. Robinson’s campaign for widespread reparations on the basis of lineage to the progeny of enslaved African Americans, and his embittered expatriation, generated a backlash.

Reviewing Mr. Robinson’s book Quitting America: The Departure of a Black Man From His Native Land in The Washington Post, the Black author Jake Lamar concluded that “above all, ‘Quitting America’ is a love story; more specifically, a wrenching tale of unrequited love.” But, Mr. Lamar added: “Surely America must offer a great many Black citizens — who have had the opportunity to leave — something that they have not found elsewhere.”

Mr. Robinson was instrumental in pressuring the white South African government to end its official policy of racial segregation. His record on some other policy initiatives, however, was mixed.

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More On Ukraine War

New York Times, Torture and Turmoil at Ukrainian Nuclear Plant: An Insider’s Account, Marc Santora, March 29, 2023 (print ed.). The former director of the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant described abuse of Ukrainian workers and careless practices by the Russians who took control.

By the time Russian soldiers threw a potato sack over his head and forced him to record a false video statement about conditions at Europe’s largest nuclear facility, Ihor Murashov had already witnessed enough chaos at the plant to be deeply worried.

Mr. Murashov, the former director general of the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant in Ukraine, did not know how much more stress the workers there could endure as they raced from one crisis to another to avert a nuclear catastrophe.

He watched as staff members were dragged off to a place they called “the pit” at a nearby police station, returning beaten and bruised — if they returned at all. He was there when advancing Russian soldiers opened fire at the facility in the first days of the war and he fretted as the they mined the surrounding grounds. He witnessed Russians use nuclear reactor rooms to hide military equipment, risking an accident.

Mr. Murashov, 46, is gone from Zaporizhzhia now, having been expelled from Russian occupied territory in October. In the months since, the situation at the plant has only grown more precarious, according to Ukrainian officials and international observers.

New York Times, The Latest: War in Ukraine,A rare glimpse of Avdiivka reveals a ruined city where residents huddle in basements, Yousur Al-Hlou and Masha Froliak, March 29, 2023 (print ed.). Moscow still aims to capture Bakhmut even as fighting elsewhere escalates, Ukraine says. A father’s conviction in Russia may keep his 12-year-old daughter in an orphanage.

When the shelling starts, the people who have remained in this town in eastern Ukraine hardly flinch. In truth, the shelling barely stops.

Russian efforts to capture Avdiivka began over a year ago and in recent weeks have escalated. On Monday, as a Ukrainian police evacuation team went from basement to basement to try again to persuade people to leave, the thud of artillery could be heard every minute or two from Russian forces that have sometimes been stationed no more than a mile away.

Moscow’s intensified bombardment of Avdiivka and outlying villages is part of a broader offensive that has centered on the city of Bakhmut, about 34 miles to the northeast. Although Russia’s latest push has failed to capture any major town, its strikes have continued to lay waste to parts of eastern Ukraine.

On Monday, the town’s military administrator, Vitaliy Barabash, ordered the remaining public officials to leave and barred journalists and aid workers from entering, citing safety concerns. A team of New York Times journalists visited just before the ban was announced.

Avdiivka was once a bedroom community for Donetsk, the regional capital that in 2014 fell to Russian-backed separatists. That turned Avdiivka into a frontline town and an early target when Moscow launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, although the city has remained in Ukrainian hands.

Now, out of a prewar population of 30,000 people, residents say only hundreds still live in Avdiivka. The Ukrainian authorities said on Monday that five children remained behind.

Washington Post, Editorial: How Russia turned America’s helping hand to Ukraine into a vast lie, Editorial Board, March 29, 2023. Information is the world’s lifeblood. It pulsates in torrents of facts and images. We are swamped with it.

But information can be poison, a dangerous weapon. A disinformation operation now being waged by Russia shows in stark detail how this malevolence works. Taking a program by the United States that was intended to make people healthier and safer in the former Soviet Union, a program it had welcomed and participated in for 22 years, Russia twisted facts into a cloud of falsehoods. The campaign, rooted in decades-old traditions of disinformation by the Kremlin, has intensified during Russia’s ruinous war on Ukraine in the last year.

On Aug. 29, 2005, Barack Obama, then a Democratic senator from Illinois, and Sen. Richard G. Lugar, Republican of Indiana, visited a laboratory at Kyiv’s Central Sanitary and Epidemiological Station in Ukraine. This facility was not well secured and, by the nature of its public health work, held dangerous pathogens. Andy Weber, a U.S. Defense Department official, showed Mr. Obama a tray of small vials: samples of Bacillus anthracis, the bacterium that causes anthrax. “I saw test tubes filled with anthrax and the plague lying virtually unlocked and unguarded — dangers we were told could only be secured with America’s help,” Mr. Obama recalled.

There was deep concern after 9/11 that terrorists could obtain such materials. On the day of Mr. Obama’s visit, Ukraine signed an agreement with the United States to upgrade and modernize the labs.

The agreement with Ukraine grew out of the 1992 Nunn-Lugar legislation, sponsored by Mr. Lugar and Sen. Sam Nunn (D-Ga.) to clean up the Cold War legacy of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons in the former Soviet Union, an effort that became known as Cooperative Threat Reduction. In the 1990s, thousands of nuclear warheads and missiles were liquidated, followed by vast stocks of chemical weapons. Later, the Nunn-Lugar program expanded into reducing biological threats in Russian laboratories, as well as other former Soviet republics. Among other efforts, a public health reference laboratory was opened in Tbilisi, Georgia, in 2011, named the Lugar Center. Pathogens stored in a Soviet-era research institute in the center of Tbilisi were moved to a purpose-built, secure facility.

The Nunn-Lugar program was partially in the U.S. interest. But it was also an act of benevolence. The sole remaining superpower extended a hand to nations that were weak and struggling, providing about $1 billion a year to the former Soviet republics. Since 2005, the U.S. agreement with Ukraine has led to $200 million in aid for 46 biomedical and health facilities. The assistance was not forced on anyone — it was designed to make people safer and healthier. The recipients were eager for it. The aid to Russia was terminated by President Vladimir Putin in 2014 but continued elsewhere.
Turning the truth upside down

In more recent years, the Nunn-Lugar program became a frequent target of Russia’s disinformation campaigns. Because the funding came partially through the Pentagon’s Defense Threat Reduction Agency, Russia frequently claimed that military research was underway in the recipient facilities. The Lugar Center was a major focus. In December 2009, an item in the Russian newspaper Pravda claimed “biological weapons are being secretly developed on Georgia territory.” The article contained no fewer than nine discrete false allegations.

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U.S. Abortion, #MeToo, LGBQT, Rape Laws

Washington Post, Analysis: Some abortion clinics are opening new locations near states with bans, Rachel Roubein and McKenzie Beard, March 29, 2023 (print ed.). West Virginia’s only abortion clinic wrote on its website that it would no longer perform abortions the morning after state lawmakers passed a near-total ban on the procedure in mid-September.

Now, the clinics’ operators plan to announce today that they’ll soon open a new location in Cumberland, Md., roughly five miles from the West Virginia border.

“This is a new option for not just Western Marylanders, not just West Virginians, but for people who are living in the abortion desert that is central Appalachia,” said Katie Quiñonez, the executive director of Women's Health Center of West Virginia, which will open Women’s Health Center of Maryland in June.

In the post-Roe era, some abortion providers are rushing to relocate or open in states that are keeping abortion legal, such as New Mexico, Illinois and Minnesota.

It’s still a relatively small number that have done so, since it takes planning, time and money. But those that have are picking states with strong abortion protections and within striking distance of states with prohibitions on the procedure and abortion pills, an attempt to cut down on travel time. The effort is emblematic of the red-blue divide that has ensued since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in June with antiabortion groups celebrating their victory curtailing abortions across various regions of the United States.

Washington Post, Idaho bill would restrict minors from leaving state for abortions without parents’ consent, Timothy Bella, March 29, 2023. A Republican-led Idaho House bill would limit minors’ ability to travel for an abortion without parental consent, even in states where the procedure is legal.

Less than a year after Idaho banned nearly all abortions, lawmakers are set to vote on a bill that would prohibit minors from interstate travel for the procedure, inching closer to becoming the first state to ban what Republicans are dubbing “abortion trafficking.”

During an Idaho Senate State Affairs Committee on Monday, lawmakers agreed to hold a full vote in the chamber on a Republican-led House bill that would establish the new crime of “abortion trafficking,” which would limit minors’ ability to travel for an abortion without parental consent, even in states where the procedure is legal. House Bill 242 would also mean that adults could face felony charges if they have “the intent to conceal an abortion from the parents or guardian of a pregnant, unemancipated minor, either procures an abortion … or obtains an abortion-inducing drug” for a minor.

“Recruiting, harboring, or transporting the pregnant minor within this state commits the crime of abortion trafficking,” the legislation reads.

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Climate, Environment, Weather, Energy, Disasters, U.S. Transportation

Charlie Weissinger, tosses away the paneling from one of the desks in his father's demolished law office in Rolling Fork, Miss., Saturday, March 25, 2023. Emergency officials in Mississippi say several people have been killed by tornadoes that tore through the state on Friday night, destroying buildings and knocking out power as severe weather produced hail the size of golf balls moved through several southern states. (AP Photo/Rogelio V. Solis)

New York Times, In a Tornado’s Wake, a Mississippi Town Wrestles With Grief and Gratitude, Rick Rojas, Eduardo Medina, Emily Cochrane and Anushka Patil, March 27, 2023 (print ed.). Following a storm that killed at least 26 people across two states, residents tried to make sense of the lives lost and spared. The cleanup has started in Rolling Fork, with residents and volunteers picking through the rubble to salvage what they can. Officials have even started talking about rebuilding, contemplating the long and arduous road the community must now navigate.

But many in Rolling Fork were struggling to maneuver the present amid grief so pervasive it was hard to look ahead.

New York Times, Can Nations Be Sued for Weak Climate Action? We’ll Soon Get an Answer, Somini Sengupta, March 29, 2023. Vanuatu, a disaster-prone Pacific country, has secured United Nations approval to take that question to the International Court of Justice.

A tiny Pacific island nation has pulled off the kind diplomatic win that can elude global superpowers.

On Wednesday, Vanuatu, population 300,000, rallied a majority of countries to ask the world’s highest court to weigh in on a high-stakes question: Can countries be sued under international law for failing to slow down climate change?

The measure passed by consensus, meaning none of the 193 member states requested a vote. The General Assembly Hall erupted in applause.

That it was adopted by consensus reflects widespread frustration over the fact that the greenhouse gas emissions warming the planet and wreaking havoc on the poorest nations are not being reduced quickly enough.

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Pandemics, Public Health, Privacy

New York Times, ‘We’re Going Away’: A State’s Choice to Forgo Medicaid Funds Is Killing Hospitals, Sharon LaFraniere, March 29, 2023 (print ed.). Mississippi is one of 10 states, all with Republican-led legislatures, that continue to reject federal funding to expand health insurance for the poor.

Since its opening in a converted wood-frame mansion 117 years ago, Greenwood Leflore Hospital had become a medical hub for this part of Mississippi’s fertile but impoverished Delta, with 208 beds, an intensive-care unit, a string of walk-in clinics and a modern brick-and-glass building.

But on a recent weekday, it counted just 13 inpatients clustered in a single ward. The I.C.U. and maternity ward were closed for lack of staffing and the rest of the building was eerily silent, all signs of a hospital savaged by too many poor patients.

Greenwood Leflore lost $17 million last year alone and is down to a few million in cash reserves, said Gary Marchand, the hospital’s interim chief executive. “We’re going away,” he said. “It’s happening.”

Rural hospitals are struggling all over the nation because of population declines, soaring labor costs and a long-term shift toward outpatient care. But those problems have been magnified by a political choice in Mississippi and nine other states, all with Republican-controlled legislatures.

They have spurned the federal government’s offer to shoulder almost all the cost of expanding Medicaid coverage for the poor. And that has heaped added costs on hospitals because they cannot legally turn away patients, insured or not.

States that opted against Medicaid expansion, or had just recently adopted it, accounted for nearly three-fourths of rural hospital closures between 2010 and 2021, according to the American Hospital Association.

Opponents of expansion, who have prevailed in Texas, Florida and much of the Southeast, typically say they want to keep government spending in check. States are required to put up 10 percent of the cost in order for the federal government to release the other 90 percent.

But the number of holdouts is dwindling. On Monday, North Carolina became the 40th state to expand Medicaid since the option to cover all adults with incomes below 138 percent of the poverty line opened up in 2014 under the terms of the 2010 Affordable Care Act. The law, a major victory for President Barack Obama, has continued to defy Republican efforts to kill or limit it.

New York Times, To Cut Overdose Deaths, F.D.A. Approves Over-the-Counter Narcan, Jan Hoffman, March 29, 2023. The nasal spray reverses opioid overdoses, and public health officials hope that making it more widely available could reduce drug fatalities. Narcan, a prescription nasal spray that reverses opioid overdoses, can now be sold over the counter, the Food and Drug Administration said on Wednesday, authorizing a move long-sought by public health officials and treatment experts, who hope wider availability of the medicine will reduce the nation’s alarmingly high drug fatality rates.

By late summer, over-the-counter Narcan is expected to be for sale in big-box chains, vending machines, supermarkets, convenience stores, gas stations and online retailers.

The commissioner of the F.D.A., Dr. Robert M. Califf, said in a statement that the over-the-counter authorization was meant to address a “dire public health need.”

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Media, Education, Arts, High Tech

Washington Post, Analysis: How Fox News is trying to guide its viewers away from Trump, Philip Bump, March 29, 2023 (print ed.). The network’s (and Murdoch’s) initial skepticism of Trump in the 2016 primaries gave way to four years of hagiography. There was a good reason for this, articulated by journalists Peter Baker and Susan Glasser in a book published last year. Trump, longtime Fox News honcho Roger Ailes believed, “was someone who connected with the Fox audience even more than Fox did.” So the network allied with Trump in an effort to placate his base.

Then he lost. Murdoch told allies a few weeks after the election that, in a month, Trump would “be becoming irrelevant.” He predicted Trump would concede. But Trump didn’t concede and, instead, stoked his base to demand fealty to Trump’s false claims about election fraud. Suddenly, Fox found itself at risk of falling victim to the imbalance that Ailes had feared. Its hosts grasped at conspiracy theories to bolster viewership.

After the Capitol riot, Murdoch tried again.

“We want to make Trump a non person,” Murdoch wrote to another executive. It soon became apparent that, like many other Trump-skeptical Republicans, the network saw DeSantis as the best transition away from Trump: echoing the former president’s politics but without being Trump. In July 2022, a video segment produced by Fox went viral as it focused on various former Trump voters hyping DeSantis as their new favorite.

Trump’s interview with Hannity — deep enough in the tank for Trump that it probably gets lonely — was the former president’s first interview on the network in months. Hannity gave Trump the usual kid-glove treatment, helping steer the 2024 candidate away from iffy rhetoric where he could. His question about DeSantis, though, yielded an extended riff about DeSantis’s perceived disloyalty.

New York Times, Tech Leaders, Including Elon Musk, Call for a Pause on A.I., Cade Metz and Gregory Schmidt March 29, 2023. More than 1,000 tech leaders and others signed a letter that urged a moratorium on the development of some A.I. systems, citing “profound risks to society.”

More than 1,000 technology leaders and researchers, including Elon Musk, have urged artificial intelligence labs to pause development of the most advanced systems, warning in an open letter that A.I. tools present “profound risks to society and humanity.”

A.I. developers are “locked in an out-of-control race to develop and deploy ever more powerful digital minds that no one — not even their creators — can understand, predict or reliably control,” according to the letter, which was released Wednesday by the nonprofit group Future of Life Institute.

Others who signed the letter include Steve Wozniak, a co-founder of Apple; Andrew Yang, an entrepreneur and candidate in the 2020 U.S. presidential election; and Rachel Bronson, the president of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, which sets the Doomsday Clock.

“These things are shaping our world,” said Gary Marcus, an entrepreneur and academic who has long complained of flaws in A.I. systems, in an interview. “We have a perfect storm of corporate irresponsibility, widespread adoption, lack of regulation and a huge number of unknowns.”

New York Times, Tinkering With ChatGPT, Workers Wonder: Will This Take My Job?  Lydia DePillis and Steve Lohr, March 29, 2023 (print ed.). Artificial intelligence is confronting white-collar professionals more directly than ever. It could make them more productive — or obsolete.

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• Washington Post, Analysis: America’s online privacy problems are much bigger than TikTok, Will Oremus
• New York Times, Twitter Says Parts of Its Source Code Were Leaked Online
• New York Times, Elon Musk Values Twitter at $20 Billion

March 28

Top Headlines

• New York Times, What We Know About the Nashville School Shooting
• New York Times, The head of the school and the daughter of the church’s pastor were among those who died in the shooting
• Associated Press, Nashville school shooter had drawn maps, done surveillance
• Politico, Biden renews push to ban assault weapons in wake of Nashville shooting
• Washington Post, ‘Enough is enough,’ White House says, demands GOP act on assault weapons ban
• Washington Post, Activist group led by Ginni Thomas received nearly $600,000 in anonymous donations
• Washington Post, Turmoil in Israel: Netanyahu announces he will delay judicial plan, backtracking after unprecedented protests
• New York Times, Inside the U.S. Pressure Campaign Over Israel’s Judicial Overhaul
• New York Times, In a Tornado’s Wake, a Mississippi Town Wrestles With Grief and Gratitude
• Politico, Judge says Pence must testify to Jan. 6 grand jury
• New York Times, Fire in Mexico Kills at Least 39 in Migration Center Near U.S. Border
• New York Times, U.S. Border Policies Have Created a Volatile Logjam in Mexico
• Politico, Juror in Oath Keepers trial reveals secrets from the deliberation room, Kyle Cheney 

U.S. Banks, Economy, Jobs, CryptoCurrency

• Washington Post, U.S. targets world’s biggest crypto market with charges against Binance
• New York Times, Live Updates: Regulators Blame Banks’ Mismanagement for Failures
• New York Times, Sam Bankman-Fried Is Charged With Foreign Bribery
• Palmer Report, Opinion: Bad news all around for Donald Trump in the Manhattan criminal case against him, Bill Palmer
• Associated Press, First Citizens to acquire troubled Silicon Valley Bank
• Politico, Crypto sector sees an existential moment in the U.S.
• Washington Post, Indicted Chinese exile controls Gettr social media site, ex-employees say

Global News, Migration, Human Rights

• New York Times, Opinion: Netanyahu Cannot Be Trusted, Thomas L. Friedman
• Associated Press, Israeli unions launch strike, upping pressure on Netanyahu
• New York Times, Key Israeli Party Agrees to Delay Divisive Judicial Plan as Protests Rage
• Washington Post, Netanyahu’s political touch eludes him as Israel spirals into chaos
• New York Times, Analysis: China’s Cities Are Buried in Debt, but They Keep Shoveling It On, Li Yuan
• New York Times, Alibaba, China’s E-Commerce Giant, Will Split Into Six Units
• New York Times, After Doling Out Huge Loans, China Is Now Bailing Out Countries
• Wayne Madsen Report, Investigative Commentary: ANTIFA (Anti-fascism) is on the streets around the world, Wayne Madsen
• New York Times, Taiwan’s Ex-President Heads to China in Historic and Closely Watched Visit
• Washington Post, Harris heads to Africa amid Biden’s urgent courtship of the continent
• New York Times, Kamala Harris, at Former Slave Port in Ghana, Ties Past to Present
• New York Times, Randall Robinson, Anti-Apartheid Catalyst, Is Dead at 81, Sam Roberts

U.S. Politics, Elections, Governance

• Politico, Biden’s nominees hit the Senate skids
• Washington Post, Christie repeatedly berates Trump in N.H., signals 2024 decision by June
• Washington Post, Opinion: DeSantis has never been tested. And it shows, Jennifer Rubin
• Politico, Durbin endorses Vallas for Chicago mayor, Shia Kapos
• New York Times, The Dual Education of Hakeem Jeffries

More On Trump Probes, Prospects, Allies

• New York Times, A Trump Rally Comes to Waco, 30 Years After Its Darkest Hour
• Palmer Report, Opinion: Bad news all around for Donald Trump in the Manhattan criminal case against him, Bill Palmer
• Washington Post, Trump extends election-rigging myth to his potential criminal charges
• Politico, Former National Enquirer publisher testifies before Trump grand jury
• New York Times, Ezra Klein Show: Trump’s Legal Jeopardy and America’s Political Crossroads, Host Ezra Klein with guest David French
• New York Times, What We Know About the Potential Indictment of Donald Trump
• New York Times, Lawmakers Tour D.C. Jail Where Jan. 6 Defendants Are Held

Ukraine War

• New York Times, Torture and Turmoil at Ukrainian Nuclear Plant: An Insider’s Account
• New York Times, The Latest On War in Ukraine: A rare glimpse of Avdiivka reveals a ruined city where residents huddle in basements
• Washington Post, Kyiv doctor killed in Russian airstrike shows war’s fallout far from front
• New York Times, Putin Says He Could Put Tactical Nuclear Weapons in Belarus by Summer

U.S. Courts, Crime, Immigration, Guns

• Washington Post, What damage can an AR-15 do to a human body? A rare look
• Washington Post, From outcast to political symbol: How the AR-15 emerged as an icon
• New York Times, The Largest Source of Stolen Guns? Parked Cars
• New York Times, Appeals Court Reinstates Adnan Syed’s Murder Conviction in ‘Serial’ Case

 Disasters, Climate, Environment, U.S. Transportation, Energy

• New York Times, Philadelphia Monitoring Water Supply After Chemical Spill

U.S. Abortion, #MeToo, Stalking, Rape Laws, Politics

• Washington Post, Analysis: Some abortion clinics are opening new locations near states with bans
• Washington Post, This Texas teen wanted an abortion. She now has twins

Pandemics, Public Health, Privacy

• New York Times, ‘We’re Going Away’: A State’s Choice to Forgo Medicaid Funds Is Killing Hospitals
• New York Times, You May Need That Procedure. But Do You Really Need an Escort?
• Washington Post, Analysis: The White House covid response team is winding down, Rachel Roubein and McKenzie Beard

U.S. Media, Education, Arts, Sports

• New York Times, Tinkering With ChatGPT, Workers Wonder: Will This Take My Job?

Top Stories

Associated Press, Nashville school shooter had drawn maps, done surveillance, Jonathan Mattise, Travis Loller and Holly Meyer, March 28, 2023 (print ed.). The suspect in a Nashville school shooting on Monday had drawn a detailed map of the school, including potential entry points, and conducted surveillance before killing three students and three adults in the latest in a series of mass shootings in a country growing increasingly unnerved by bloodshed in schools.

The suspect, who was killed by police, is believed to be a former student at The Covenant School in Nashville, where the shooting took place.

The shooter was armed with two “assault-style” weapons — a rifle and a pistol — as well as a handgun, authorities said. At least two of them were believed to have been obtained legally in the Nashville area.

The victims were identified as Evelyn Dieckhaus, Hallie Scruggs, and William Kinney, all 9 years old, and adults Cynthia Peak, 61; Katherine Koonce, 60; and Mike Hill, 61.

For hours, police identified the shooter as a 28-year-old woman and eventually identified the person as Audrey Hale. Then at a late afternoon press conference, the police chief said that Hale was transgender.

The attack at The Covenant School — which has about 200 students from preschool through sixth grade, as well as roughly 50 staff members — comes as communities around the nation are reeling from a spate of school violence, including the massacre at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, last year; a first grader who shot his teacher in Virginia; and a shooting last week in Denver that wounded two administrators.

“I was literally moved to tears to see this and the kids as they were being ushered out of the building,” Metropolitan Nashville Police Chief John Drake said Monday during one of several news conferences.

New York Times, What We Know About the Nashville School Shooting, Adeel Hassan, March 28, 2023. An assailant fatally shot six people, including three children, at a private elementary school. The motive for the shooting is under investigation.

Federal and local investigators in Nashville were working on Tuesday to piece together clues about the actions and motives of the shooter who killed three students and three adults at a private school before being shot dead by the police.

The assailant who opened fire at the Christian elementary school in Nashville on Monday was identified by officials as Audrey E. Hale, a 28-year-old former student who lived in the area.

The Nashville police chief, John Drake, said on Monday that the attack was targeted, rather than random, but that it was too early to discuss a possible motive. Local and federal investigators working on the case were reviewing writings and had made contact with the shooter’s father, Chief Drake said.

The school, called the Covenant School, is in the wealthy Green Hills neighborhood of Nashville, a few miles south of downtown, and enrolls about 200 students in preschool through sixth grade. The attack on Monday was the 13th school shooting in the United States this year that resulted in injury or death, according to Education Week.

New York Times, The head of the school and the daughter of the church’s pastor were among those who died in the shooting, Eliza Fawcett, Ruth Graham and Emily Cochrane, March 28, 2023 (print ed.). Details are still emerging about the six people killed in a mass shooting on Monday at the Covenant School in Nashville.

Of the three 9-year-old children whose lives were abruptly ended, one was Hallie Scruggs; she was the daughter of Chad Scruggs, the pastor of Covenant Presbyterian Church, according to a biography published online by his former church in Dallas. The other two were identified as Evelyn Dieckhaus and William Kinney.

And the three adults killed included Cynthia Peak, 61, a substitute teacher; Mike Hill, 61, a custodian at the school; and Katherine Koonce, 60, Covenant’s head. In a message on its website, Dr. Koonce said the school wanted to help students “challenge their thinking and help them learn critical skills.”

“We are about more than simply educating our students — we are participating in the miracle of their development and seeing them transform into who they will be,” she wrote.

Joseph Fisher, a truck driver, learned of Dr. Koonce’s death while driving between Arizona and Utah. Stunned, he parked his truck and walked up a mountainside.

Dr. Koonce served as his math tutor when he was a home-schooled middle schooler, he said, and the two worked together at a school just a short drive from Covenant, Christ Presbyterian Academy.

He remembered her going carefully through each page of a math lesson, making sure that he understood every problem. When his mind drifted, she reeled him back in.

Politico, Biden renews push to ban assault weapons in wake of Nashville shooting, Kierra Frazier, March 28, 2023 (print ed.). “I call on Congress again to pass my assault weapon ban. It’s about time we begin to make some progress, but there’s more to learn,” Biden said.

President Joe Biden on Monday revived his push for a federal assault weapons ban in the aftermath of a deadly elementary school shooting.

“I call on Congress again to pass my assault weapon ban. It’s about time we begin to make some progress, but there’s more to learn,” Biden said at a Small Business Administration Women’s Business Summit.

The event in the East Room of the White House began lightheartedly as Biden, shown at right in a file photo, opened his address by discussing his favorite ice cream flavor and talking to kids in the audience.

“I came down because I heard there was chocolate chip ice cream,” Biden said. His speech quickly shifted to calling on Congress to ban assault weapons in the wake of the shooting.

Biden called the shooting “heartbreaking” and a “family’s worst nightmare.”

“We have to do more to stop gun violence; it’s ripping our communities apart — ripping the soul of this nation,” Biden said. “And we have to do more to protect our schools, so they aren’t turned into prisons.”

Palmer Report, Opinion: Bad news all around for Donald Trump in the Manhattan criminal case against him, Bill Palmer, March 28, 2023. First Donald Trump claimed to know that he would be arrested last Tuesday. That turned out to have been something he’d made up. Then Trump claimed to know this past weekend that the Manhattan criminal case against him had been dropped. That also turned out to have been something he’d made up. It’s a good reminder that Trump is not a source for anything, and the media shouldn’t give him special editorial consideration just because he once stole the presidency.

What’s playing out right now in Manhattan is also a good reminder of something else. A criminal indictment is not something that just falls out of the sky whenever a prosecutor decides to snap their fingers. If an indictment hasn’t happened yet, it’s not because that prosecutor is sitting there “doing nothing” and refusing to snap their fingers. A criminal indictment is the culmination of a complex investigative process, with the sole goal of building the kind of indictment that can get a conviction at trial.

It’s why, before prosecutors even go through the process of bringing a criminal indictment, they have to take the time to work through every possible witness on every possible topic. They need these things in their arsenal, so that when for instance a defendant like Donald Trump sends someone like Robert Costello in there with a bunch of stories aimed at discrediting key witness Michael Cohen, the prosecutor just has to look back through all the testimony that’s been amassed and figure out how to discredit the defendant’s claims.

In this instance it was a matter of the Manhattan DA putting former National Enquirer boss David Pecker back in front of the grand jury this week. He already testified to the grand jury awhile ago. Back then he gave whatever testimony was considered necessary and appropriate for the indictment process.

But now the DA has brought back Pecker to give additional testimony for the specific purpose of refuting Costello’s testimony and vindicating Cohen’s testimony. This suggests that the Manhattan DA had already gotten this additional information out of Pecker awhile ago, and didn’t need it at the time, but is now able to pull it out of his arsenal and use it to fit the situation.

This is part of why prosecutors have to take so long lining up all of this beforehand. Once the process gets going, they need to be able to pull these kinds of things out of a hat in real time. And it’s not because of magic, it’s because they did their homework first.

The kicker is that because Costello told his story to the grand jury under oath, he’s now stuck with that version of events. If Pecker’s testimony has now dismantled Costello’s claims and made him useless as a defense witness at trial, Costello can’t just change his story at trial and float a new version of events aimed at helping Trump, because that would get Costello nailed for perjury.

We still don’t fully understand Donald Trump’s rationale for sending his would-be surprise trial witness Costello to the grand jury like this. Trump appears to have panicked at the prospect of indictment, and decided to take his shot now instead of trying it at trial. But by any measure the move failed. Trump only managed to delay his Manhattan indictment by about a week, and in the process he’s forfeited a friendly witness who could have tried to help him at trial.

This is why it doesn’t matter that anyone out there is “tired of waiting” or finds themselves annoyed that the Manhattan indictment is dropping on this day instead of that day. First of all, this isn’t meant for anyone’s entertainment. Nor is it a matter of everyone waiting impatiently for some prosecutor to flip some magic switch somewhere. This is a living, breathing process. It’s never, ever as simple as someone in the backseat yelling “Are we there yet?”

Washington Post, Activist group led by Ginni Thomas received nearly $600,000 in anonymous donations, Shawn Boburg and Emma Brown, March 28, 2023. Funding for group that battled ‘cultural Marxism’ was channeled through right-wing think tank, Post investigation finds.

A little-known conservative activist group led by Virginia “Ginni” Thomas, the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, collected nearly $600,000 in anonymous donations to wage a cultural battle against the left over three years, a Washington Post investigation found.

The previously unreported donations to the fledgling group Crowdsourcers for Culture and Liberty were channeled through a right-wing think tank in Washington that agreed to serve as a funding conduit from 2019 until the start of last year, according to documents and interviews. The arrangement, known as a “fiscal sponsorship,” effectively shielded from public view details about Crowdsourcers’ activities and spending, information it would have had to disclose publicly if it operated as a separate nonprofit organization, experts said.

The Post’s investigation sheds new light on the role money from donors who are not publicly identified has played in supporting Ginni Thomas’s political advocacy, long a source of controversy. The funding is the first example of anonymous donors backing her activism since she founded a conservative charity more than a decade ago. She stepped away from that charity amid concerns that it created potential conflicts for her husband on hot-button issues before the court.

Thomas’s activism has set her apart from other spouses of Supreme Court justices. She has allied with numerous people and groups that have interests before the court, and she has dedicated herself to causes involving some of the most polarizing issues in the country.

White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows walks to board Marine One from the South Lawn of the White House in July 2020. Later that year, Ginni Thomas privately pressed Meadows to pursue efforts to overturn the presidential election. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)

In 2020, she privately pressed White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows to pursue efforts to overturn the presidential election, and she sent emails urging swing-state lawmakers to set aside Joe Biden’s popular-vote victory in awarding electoral votes. When those efforts were revealed by The Post last year, they intensified questions about whether her husband should recuse himself from cases related to the election and attempts to subvert it.

In recent months, the high court has faced increasing scrutiny over a range of ethical issues, including the lack of transparency surrounding potential conflicts of interest and a whistleblower’s claim that wealthy Christian activists sought access to justices at social gatherings to shore up their resolve on abortion and other conservative priorities.

In a brief statement to The Post, Mark Paoletta, a lawyer for Ginni Thomas, said she was “proud of the work she did with Crowdsourcers, which brought together conservative leaders to discuss amplifying conservative values with respect to the battle over culture.”

“She believes Crowdsourcers identified the Left’s dominance in most cultural lanes, while conservatives were mostly funding political organizations,” Paoletta wrote. “In her work, she has complied with all reporting and disclosure requirements.”

He wrote: “There is no plausible conflict of interest issue with respect to Justice Thomas.”

A spokeswoman for the Supreme Court did not respond to questions for Clarence Thomas.

In 2019, anonymous donors gave the think tank Capital Research Center, or CRC, $596,000 that was designated for Crowdsourcers, according to tax filings and audits the think tank submitted to state regulators. The majority of that money, $400,000, was routed through yet another nonprofit, Donors Trust, according to that organization’s tax filings. Donors Trust is a fund that receives money from wealthy donors whose identities are not disclosed and steers it toward conservative causes.

The documents do not say how or whether the money was spent. It is not clear how much compensation, if any, Ginni Thomas received.

Washington Post, ‘Enough is enough,’ White House says, demands GOP act on assault weapons ban, Mariana Alfaro, March 28, 2023 (print ed.). The White House had a message for Republicans in the immediate aftermath of the Nashville shooting: “Enough is enough.”

“How many more children have to be murdered before Republicans in Congress will step up and act to pass the assault weapons ban, to close loopholes in our background check system, or to require the safe storage of guns?” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters Monday. “We need to do something.”

Jean-Pierre said President Biden has been briefed on the shooting and added that, while “we don’t know yet all the details in this latest tragic shooting, we know that too often our schools and communities are being devastated by gun violence.”

Washington Post, Turmoil in Israel: Netanyahu announces he will delay judicial plan, backtracking after unprecedented protests, Miriam Berger, Leo Sands, Steve Hendrix and Shira Rubin, March 28, 2023 (print ed.).  Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced Monday that he would delay his government’s plan to overhaul Israel’s judiciary, an effort that has spurred months of mass protests and led to unprecedented nationwide strikes on Monday, including a shutdown of the international airport.

“Out of national responsibility, from a desire to prevent the nation from being torn apart, I am calling to suspend the legislation,” said Netanyahu, adding that he reached the decision with the agreement of the majority of his coalition members.“When there is a possibility to prevent a civil war through negotiations, I will give a time-out for negotiations.” he said.

The plan to remake the courts — which would give Netanyahu’s government greater power to handpick judges, including those presiding over Netanyahu’s corruption trial, in which he is charged in three cases and faces potential prison time — has pitted liberal and secular Jewish Israelis against more right-wing and religiously conservative citizens, along a fault line long in emerging.

New York Times, Inside the U.S. Pressure Campaign Over Israel’s Judicial Overhaul, David E. Sanger, March 28, 2023 (print ed.). President Biden bombarded the Israeli government with warnings that the country’s image as the sole democracy in the Middle East was at stake.

In the 48 hours before Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu reluctantly delayed his effort to overhaul the Israeli judiciary, his government was bombarded by warnings from the Biden administration that he was imperiling Israel’s reputation as the true democracy at the heart of the Middle East.

In a statement on Sunday night, soon after Mr. Netanyahu fired his defense minister because he had broken with the government on the judicial overhaul, the White House noted that President Biden had told Mr. Netanyahu by phone a week ago that democratic values “have always been, and must remain, a hallmark of the U.S.-Israel relationship.” Major changes to the system, Mr. Biden said, must only “be pursued with the broadest possible base of popular support.”

Politico, Judge says Pence must testify to Jan. 6 grand jury, Kyle Cheney, March 28, 2023. A federal judge presiding over the special counsel investigation into Donald Trump’s attempt to subvert the 2020 election has largely rejected an effort by the ex-president to assert executive privilege over the testimony of his former vice president, Mike Pence, according to a person familiar with the ruling.

However, Chief U.S. District Judge James Boasberg, right, agreed that Pence does enjoy a degree of immunity from testifying due to his role as president of the Senate on Jan. 6. It was not immediately clear whether that ruling is broad enough to satisfy Pence’s resistance to the subpoena — issued by special counsel Jack Smith — or whether he intends to appeal.

Pence has indicated he’s open to answering certain categories of questions related to Trump’s effort to overturn the 2020 election despite losing the race to Joe Biden. But he argued that the vice president’s unusual role — both a top member of the Executive Branch and President of the Senate — entitles him to immunity typically afforded to members of Congress.

Charlie Weissinger, tosses away the paneling from one of the desks in his father's demolished law office in Rolling Fork, Miss., Saturday, March 25, 2023. Emergency officials in Mississippi say several people have been killed by tornadoes that tore through the state on Friday night, destroying buildings and knocking out power as severe weather produced hail the size of golf balls moved through several southern states. (AP Photo/Rogelio V. Solis)

New York Times, In a Tornado’s Wake, a Mississippi Town Wrestles With Grief and Gratitude, Rick Rojas, Eduardo Medina, Emily Cochrane and Anushka Patil, March 27, 2023 (print ed.). Following a storm that killed at least 26 people across two states, residents tried to make sense of the lives lost and spared. The cleanup has started in Rolling Fork, with residents and volunteers picking through the rubble to salvage what they can. Officials have even started talking about rebuilding, contemplating the long and arduous road the community must now navigate.

But many in Rolling Fork were struggling to maneuver the present amid grief so pervasive it was hard to look ahead.

• Associated Press, Biden declares emergency as crews dig through storm wreckage, Leah Willingham

Washington Post, Trump, under legal threat, tries to short-circuit DeSantis momentum, Isaac Arnsdorf, Isaac Stanley-Becker and Hannah Knowles, March 26, 2023 (print ed.). The former president holds his first rally of the 2024 campaign on Saturday, as he seeks to further slow his chief GOP rival.

Donald Trump’s relentless attacks against Ron DeSantis and his recent polling gains over his top GOP rival are rattling some close allies of the Florida governor, according to people with knowledge of the situation, tempering their expectations about the presidential primary.

Pollsters and strategists attribute a recent shift in momentum to Trump supporters returning to his corner — forgetting their dissatisfaction over key midterm losses and remembering what they liked about his record as president. Polls show Trump has opened up double-digit leads over DeSantis, while Trump’s attacks on DeSantis have resonated with Republicans, some recent focus groups conducted by anti-Trump GOP strategist Sarah Longwell show.

The 2024 contest is just beginning and the dynamics could change when DeSantis engages in the race as an official candidate. But the early measures of public support suggest Trump is building his political strength amid criminal investigations, including a possible indictment by the Manhattan district attorney.

The former president has used increasingly ominous language to describe the situation, echoing his language before the attack on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. He warned Friday of “potential death & destruction” if he’s charged and had previously urged a “PROTEST” over his potential arrest.

On Saturday, Trump held the first mega-rally of his 2024 campaign, in Waco, Texas, amid the 30th anniversary of a deadly federal raid there that fueled the growth of the anti-government militia movement. Trump aides said the timing and location was unrelated, and rooted in a desire to appeal to evangelicals, with a revival this week at nearby Baylor University, and to appear in a large and centrally located venue in a state that votes on “Super Tuesday,” a key date in the nominating competition.

“When they go after me, they’re going after you,” Trump told a crowd of thousands in a roughly hour-and-a-half speech in which he sought to cast himself as the victim of one “phony investigation after another.” Behind him, supporters held up signs that read “WITCH HUNT.”

Trump made an extended attack on DeSantis, at one point giving a mocking portrayal of DeSantis begging for his endorsement in Florida’s 2018 gubernatorial primary. But the audience appeared most engaged when Trump was railing against targets that unify the Republican base — President Biden, the “fake news,” “gender ideology.” Trump spoke of “demonic forces” and reiterated a dark refrain that, “for those who have been wronged and betrayed … I am your retribution.”

DeSantis has moved toward entering the race but is not expected to officially join until at least May. Some of his political aides as well as at least one executive appointee close to the governor, among others in his circles, have adjusted their thinking about the contest, according to the people with knowledge of the discussions, who like others spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe private talks. Whereas some allies had been anticipating a “coronation,” as one person described the thinking of people close to the governor, more are now stressing that a DeSantis victory will require a lengthy, 50-state delegate fight.

DeSantis’s political team didn’t comment on the matter.

“There’s no denying that former president Trump has an organization that’s ready to go and a very high floor with upward mobility,” said Jimmy Centers, a Republican operative based in Iowa who is not aligned with a 2024 candidate. He stressed that many primary voters in the state remain open to other contenders. “It’s also just a result of folks knowing President Trump whereas other candidates have a lot of work to do.”

In four high-quality national surveys that have measured the field since winter, Trump has built his lead over DeSantis in the past few months. Trump leads DeSantis by 16 points in Yahoo/YouGov’s survey this month (and in late February), up from one or two points in previous months. Monmouth University’s poll swung from a 13-point lead for DeSantis in December to a 14-point lead for Trump now. A March Quinnipiac poll found Trump with a 14-point lead, up from a six-point lead he had over DeSantis in February, and a February Economist/YouGov poll saw Trump’s lead grow from where it was in November.

Early primary polls are often volatile, and the recent history of Republican primaries is bursting with examples of early leaders who never made to the ballot. Still, both rival teams are now adapting to the momentum shift, with Trump’s campaign projecting confidence and DeSantis’s campaign-in-waiting hunkering down for a drawn-out contest.

“What’s hurt DeSantis is he’s gotten into a lane where he’s trying to say, ‘I’ll be Trump but not Trump,’ and most of these voters say, ‘We want Trump,’” said John McLaughlin, a pollster for the Trump campaign whose latest findings track with the public surveys. “My only problem is the election is still 20 months out.”

Some DeSantis allies said the governor remains in a strong position and will have plenty of time to catch up. One person in touch with DeSantis’s team said they have always been clear-eyed about the challenges of taking on Trump. Another person close to the governor’s political orbit said DeSantis has “steel for a spine” and ridiculed the idea that DeSantis would “bend to silly smear tactics.”

Other supporters voiced public confidence. “Should he announce, I think you’ll see him get a bump,” said former Republican congressman Lou Barletta of Pennsylvania, an early Trump backer in 2016 who is now squarely behind DeSantis. “People in many states are just getting to know him, and campaigns are long.”

New York Times, Fire in Mexico Kills at Least 39 in Migration Center Near U.S. Border, Mike Ives, Euan Ward and Emiliano Rodríguez Mega, March 28, 2023.  President Andrés Manuel López Obrador said the blaze at a National Migration Institute facility in Ciudad Juárez, a border city near Texas, was the result of a protest by migrants who were set to be deported.

At least 39 people were killed on Monday night and 29 others seriously injured when a fire broke out at a government-run migration facility in northern Mexico, near the border with the United States, the authorities said.

The fire broke out in the accommodation area of a National Migration Institute facility in Ciudad Juárez, a border city across from El Paso, Texas, shortly before 10 p.m., according to a statement by the facility. Sixty-eight men from Central and South America were being housed there, it said.

The Mexican authorities did not immediately respond to a request for comment, but according to the statement from the institute, the 29 injured men were in serious condition and had been transported to local hospitals for urgent care.

President Andrés Manuel López Obrador said the men housed at the facility had been angry at authorities.

“As protest, at the door of the shelter, they put mattresses and set them on fire, and they did not imagine that this was going to cause this terrible tragedy,” said Mr. López Obrador at his regular daily news conference on Tuesday morning.

“We assume it was because they found out they were going to be deported,” he added.

The migrants were mainly from Central America and Venezuela, Mr. López Obrador said.

Television footage showed a swarm of police cars, ambulances and other emergency vehicles in the area. What appeared to be a number of bodies wrapped in large foil blankets could be seen in the facility’s parking lot, and people outside clung to the perimeter fence as emergency responders tended to the victims.

The institute said that it had begun communicating “with consular authorities from different countries” in order to identify the dead. A formal complaint had been lodged with what the statement identified as the “corresponding authorities,” clearing the way for an investigation, the statement said.

New York Times, U.S. Border Policies Have Created a Volatile Logjam in Mexico, Miriam Jordan and Edgar Sandoval, March 28, 2023. As the United States has cracked down on border entries, Mexico has borne the burden of housing and feeding tens of thousands of desperate migrants.

A series of tough new border policies have sharply reduced the number of migrants crossing into the United States to their lowest levels since President Biden took office, but the measures have created a combustible bottleneck along Mexico’s northern border, with tens of thousands of frustrated migrants languishing in overcrowded shelters from Tijuana to Reynosa.

The situation exploded on Monday when a protest at a government-run migrant detention center in Ciudad Juárez led to a fire that killed at least 40 people. But scenes of overcrowding and desperation have been unfolding in recent weeks along the length of the border as the Biden administration prepares for yet another surge in migration this spring.

Migrants have been waiting in anticipation of a major policy shift, expected in May, when the United States plans to lift a pandemic-era health policy that has allowed U.S. border authorities to swiftly expel many unauthorized migrants crossing the border from Mexico.

Separate new entry restrictions that have already taken effect require most migrants hoping to win U.S. asylum to apply for an appointment at a port of entry. Problems with the new mobile app have left thousands trying in vain for an appointment while stranded in Mexican border towns, where many have already been waiting for months.

“What we have in Tijuana and other Mexican border cities is a bottleneck,” said Enrique Lucero, director of the migration services office for the city of Tijuana, across the border from San Diego. “Thousands of migrants are waiting for the opportunity to enter the U.S., and more keep arriving.”

The city’s 30 shelters can accommodate 5,600 people; as many as 15,000 migrants are currently in the city, he said.

“The number of people who are able to access the United States is a couple hundred a day,” he said, “but we have thousands here. Shelters are at full capacity.”

Even before Monday’s fire, frustration had boiled over earlier this month in Juárez, when hundreds of migrants, mostly from Venezuela, tried to storm their way across the international bridges to reach El Paso, only to clash with U.S. authorities.

Earlier this month in Juárez, hundreds of migrants, mostly from Venezuela, tried to storm their way across the international bridges to reach El Paso.Credit...Herika Martinez/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
A large group of people stands on the banks of the Rio Grande as a smaller group stands on a bridge.

“It’s desperation,” said Ricardo Samaniego, the county judge in El Paso, which lies across the border from Ciudad Juárez. “You dangle the end of Title of 42 and then you say, ‘Nevermind,’ and people get stuck.”

He said he had learned through his counterparts in Mexico that shelters and detention centers in Juárez were at near capacity and that they were bracing for yet another surge in the days and weeks to come with plans to lift Title 42 on May 11.

Immigrant advocates have been warning for months that the situation was becoming explosive.

“The 39 lives lost last night in Ciudad Juárez are a horrifying indictment. The systems of enforcement that we have erected to patrol people who migrate are steel hands in velvet gloves, and death is part of the overhead. We are all responsible,” Dylan Corbett, executive director of the Hope Border Institute, a faith-based organization, said on Twitter.

With shelters in many border cities full, new arrivals have resorted to sleeping in dingy hotels until their money runs out, and have then ended up on the streets and in abandoned buildings. Tensions have flared, resulting in confrontations with Mexican law enforcement officers, whom migrants have accused of beating, arresting and extorting them. Powerful cartels that control illegal border passage have kidnapped and tortured migrants.

Politico, Juror in Oath Keepers trial reveals secrets from the deliberation room, Kyle Cheney, March 28, 2023. In a newly released interview, the juror recounts being disturbed by the tactics of some defense attorneys.

Jurors in the recently concluded trial of six Oath Keeper affiliates were “horrified” by a defense attorney’s effort to provoke his autistic client into a “breakdown” on the witness stand, one of those jurors said Tuesday in a newly released interview.

A woman who helped decide the fate of the six defendants sat last week for a 90-minute interview with C-SPAN — her employer of 32 years — just two days after the jury completed its work. She provided extraordinary details about the tense closed-door deliberations that resulted in four defendants being convicted of obstructing Congress for their role in the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol.

Identified only as Ellen, the juror told C-SPAN founder Brian Lamb that several members of the jury cried in the courtroom while they watched one of those defendants, William Isaacs, take the stand under grilling from his own attorney. The jury interpreted the strategy as a “stunt” designed to accentuate Isaacs’ struggle with autism, she said.

“His defense attorney tried to get him to fall apart by yelling at him and not letting him wear his headset,” Ellen recalled. “He was torturing his client to get us to feel sympathy.”

What was worse, the juror recalled, was that the judge ultimately instructed the jury not to consider Isaacs’ autism as a defense against his potential crimes, which meant the entire spectacle had been “a waste of time.”

The result of the jury’s six-day deliberations was a conviction of four defendants — including Isaacs — on all of the charges they faced. A fifth defendant, Bennie Parker, was convicted of one felony count and a misdemeanor but acquitted of other charges, and a sixth, Michael Greene, was convicted of a single misdemeanor charge and acquitted of several others.

Jurors rarely provide public commentary about their service, especially not to the detailed degree that Ellen did in her C-SPAN interview. She revealed that she worked with Lamb for more than 30 years and agreed to sit with him after he contacted her following the trial. The result was an eye-opening look at the jury’s lengthy deliberations: the fault-lines, the close calls and the persuasion efforts that resulted in guilty verdicts on most of the counts.

Isaacs’ attorney, Charles Greene, acknowledged that most of the jury recoiled at his posture toward his autistic client. It was all by design, he said, because he viewed acquittal as possible only if the jury could see Isaacs’ profound struggle.

“The strategy was: The jury’s going to hate me, but usually when you kick a puppy, the jury hates the person who kicks the puppy but they have sympathy for the puppy,” Greene told POLITICO.

He said that he had prepped for the testimony for days, running it by Isaacs’ family to ensure it wouldn’t cause a medical episode, but said he didn’t warn Isaacs because he needed his client’s response to be genuine.

“We had to wing it … He couldn’t be prepared for it. He couldn’t know what was coming,” Greene said. “I was crying. I didn’t like doing it. The days leading up to it, just thinking about it, it was traumatic for me too. I had to do it in a way that came across as heartless.”
Protesters supporting U.S. President Donald Trump break into the U.S. Capitol on January 06, 2021.

Ellen indicated that she and another juror who happened to be a lawyer helped spearhead a lot of the deliberations. Some jurors, she said, did not seem to have followed every twist and turn of the trial. Others, she said, seemed to have preconceived notions against convicting anyone regardless of the facts — which the jury had to overcome to arrive at its verdict. And when she completed her service, after a five-week trial and lengthy deliberations, Ellen came away with a conclusion: If she were ever on trial, she would waive her right to a jury and instead let the judge decide her fate.

“I would never want my fate in the hands of people who are mostly completely ill-equipped to understand what’s going on,” she said.

U.S. Banks, Economy, Jobs, CryptoCurrencies

Washington Post, U.S. targets world’s biggest crypto market with charges against Binance, Julian Mark, March 28, 2023. Binance, the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange, was charged on Monday by U.S. commodities regulators who allege the company violated regulations and showed American customers how to evade compliance controls.

The Commodity Futures Trading Commission filed a civil complaint in federal court in the Northern District of Illinois, charging Binance and its founder Changpeng Zhao with violating the Commodity Exchange Act and CFTC rules, which regulate the crypto derivatives such as futures. Samuel Lim, the firm’s former chief compliance officer, was also charged.

“For years, Binance knew they were violating CFTC rules, working actively to both keep the money flowing and avoid compliance,” Rostin Behnam, the commission’s chairman, said in a news release announcing the civil complaint. “This should be a warning to anyone in the digital asset world that the CFTC will not tolerate willful avoidance of U.S. law.”

New York Times, Live Updates: Regulators Blame Banks’ Mismanagement for Failures, Jeanna Smialek, March 28, 2023. Top officials from the Federal Reserve, the Treasury and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation defended their response on Tuesday to the collapse of two banks this month that shocked the global financial system and ramped up the risk of a recession in the United States.

The Senate Banking Committee sharply questioned the regulators during a hearing that lawmakers from both parties opened by criticizing the management of the two failed banks, Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank.

Senator Sherrod Brown of Ohio, the chairman of the committee, blamed three factors: “hubris, entitlement, greed,” while the committee’s ranking Republican, Tim Scott of South Carolina, also faulted regulators for not preventing the crisis.

Here’s what to know:

The officials testifying are Michael S. Barr, the Fed’s vice chair for supervision; Martin Gruenberg, the chair of the F.D.I.C.; and Nellie Liang, the Treasury’s under secretary for domestic finance. Mr. Barr blamed the failure of Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank on mismanagement by its leaders. The Fed, SVB’s primary regulator, has been emphasizing executives’ culpability. “Fundamentally, the bank failed because its management failed to appropriately address clear interest rate risk and clear liquidity risk,” he said, noting that those problems were pointed out to the bank starting in November 2021. Catch up on what happened with the banks at the center of the crisis.

Mr. Gruenberg said that both banks “were allowed to fail” — drawing a distinction between previous bailouts of financial institutions and what the federal authorities decided to do this month: backstopping all depositors.

In response to questions about their actions to stabilize deposits, Mr. Gruenberg said that there would have been “contagion” — a spreading of the crisis. Ms. Liang agreed, saying without federal action, bank runs “would have intensified and caused serious problems.”

This is the first of two days of testimony. The same officials will appear before the House Financial Services Committee on Wednesday.

Senator J.D. Vance, an Ohio Republican, begins his questioning by explaining that he comes from the venture capital world and knows that venture capital companies occasionally keep giant sums of cash in their bank accounts. “What we did was bail them out,” he said, suggesting that the government rescued the venture capital firms with millions stashed at SVB

It’s striking to hear Republicans asking why there wasn’t more regulation of this bank after years of complaining that regulation was too onerous, particularly for mid-sized banks.

New York Times, Sam Bankman-Fried Is Charged With Foreign Bribery, Matthew Goldstein, March 28, 2023. Federal prosecutors said the FTX founder had instructed employees to pay a $40 million bribe to one or more Chinese officials.

Federal prosecutors added a foreign bribery charge to the growing list of crimes already pending against the FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried, right, according to a new indictment filed in federal court in Manhattan on Tuesday.

Federal prosecutors said that in 2021 Mr. Bankman-Fried instructed those working for him to pay a bribe of $40 million to one or more Chinese officials to help unfreeze trading accounts maintained by Alameda Research, FTX’s sister company, that held about $1 billion in cryptocurrencies.

The bribe money was paid to the Chinese officials in cryptocurrency, the document said. The indictment said the effort to pay off the unnamed Chinese officials was successful in getting the trading accounts unfrozen.

The bribery charge was brought under the Foreign Corrupt Business Practices Act, a federal law used by the authorities to go after big corporations for paying bribes to operate in other countries.

Associated Press, First Citizens to acquire troubled Silicon Valley Bank, Staff Report, March 28, 2023 (print ed.). North Carolina-based First Citizens will buy Silicon Valley Bank, the tech industry-focused financial institution that collapsed earlier this month, rattling the banking industry and sending shockwaves around the world.

The deal could reassure investors at a time of shaken confidence in banks, though the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. and other regulators had already taken extraordinary steps to head off a wider banking crisis by guaranteeing that depositors in SVB and another failed U.S. bank would be able to access all of their money.

Customers of SVB will automatically become customers of First Citizens, which is headquartered in Raleigh. The 17 former branches of SVB will open as First Citizens branches Monday, the FDIC said.

Nasdaq-traded shares of First Citizen BancShares Inc. jumped 12.4% to $654.95 in premarket trading Monday. Shares in mid-sized San Francisco-based First Republic Bank, which serves a similar clientele as Silicon Valley Bank and had appeared to be facing a similar crisis, surged 24.3% in premarket trading.

Politico, Crypto sector sees an existential moment in the U.S., Declan Harty, March 27, 2023 (print ed.). The clash marks the latest front in what is already an all-out battle between the once high-flying industry and officials in Washington.

Crypto businesses have warned for months that the Biden administration is quietly moving to push them out of the U.S.

Now, with the collapse of three crypto-friendly banks, they say the evidence is piling up.

The Federal Reserve and other top regulators are cautioning banks about crypto’s risks. The SEC is threatening to sue the largest digital asset exchange. And White House officials recently questioned whether digital tokens had any “fundamental value.”

The $1 trillion crypto industry is going on the offensive against what executives say is an existential threat to “de-bank” digital asset businesses, mounting a lobbying campaign to oppose efforts to discourage lenders from taking them on as customers.

“The concern is very real,” Sen. Bill Hagerty (R-Tenn.), one of several GOP lawmakers allied with the industry, said in an interview. “We’ve seen this sort of regulatory abuse before with Operation Choke Point,” the Obama-era program that pushed banks away from financing gun dealers and payday lenders. “A lot of the facts are lining up in the same manner right here, right now.”

The clash marks the latest front in what is already an all-out battle between the once high-flying industry and officials in Washington that could shape the future of crypto in the U.S. European lawmakers are trying to court crypto companies, sparking concern among Republicans that the U.S. may see its reputation as a home for financial innovation diminished.

The Blockchain Association, a leading advocacy group, is vowing to investigate concerns that regulators are de-banking crypto firms. Ryan Selkis, CEO of Messari, a major research firm, is pressing lawmakers to scrutinize agencies like the FDIC over claims that the fall of both Silvergate Capital and Signature Bank was connected to their crypto ties. And lawmakers like Hagerty and Rep. Tom Emmer of Minnesota, the No. 3 Republican in the House, are joining the fight.

Washington Post, Indicted Chinese exile controls Gettr social media site, ex-employees say, Joseph Menn, March 27, 2023 (print ed.). Guo Wengui, arrested March 15 on fraud charges, was known to have invested, but the extent of his influence on the site has not been previously reported.

An exiled Chinese tycoon indicted in New York earlier this month in a billion-dollar fraud case controls the conservative social media platform Gettr and used it to promote cryptocurrencies and propaganda, former employees have told The Washington Post.

They said the arrested expatriate, Guo Wengui, and his longtime money manager, William Je, called the shots at the company while Donald Trump senior adviser Jason Miller was its chief executive and public face. Miller served in that capacity from before Gettr’s July 4, 2021, launch until this month, when he returned to work on his third Trump presidential campaign.

Gettr doled out tens of thousands of dollars to right-wing figures including Trump adviser Stephen K. Bannon, sent money to contractors affiliated with Guo, and altered information on Gettr users that law enforcement agencies had sought, according to the former employees and internal company documents obtained by The Post.

The revelations show that a man accused of massive fraud on two continents climbed high into Trump’s political sphere and dictated messaging at a social media site that reaches millions of Americans.

Guo was arrested March 15 at his Fifth Avenue penthouse in New York, where a fire broke out as agents hunted for documents. Je, who lives in London, remains at large.

Federal prosecutors in Manhattan have charged both men with 11 counts of securities and wire fraud, money laundering and related offenses and Je with an additional count of obstruction. The legal documents do not allege any wrongdoing at Gettr; prosecutors did not return a call seeking comment Friday.

Guo was known to have been a Gettr investor, but his dominant financing role and ability to influence hiring and content decisions at the platform have not previously been reported.

Miller has said previously that Guo invested in Gettr indirectly through a family foundation and that an international fund was another part-owner. But two former Gettr employees told The Post that Miller told them that the international fund was Hamilton Investment Management, where Je is founder and chief executive.

Miller “publicly mentioned an international investment fund. To me, he specified the name Hamilton Investments,” Ben Badejo, Gettr’s former director of trust and safety, said in an interview.

The second former employee, speaking on the condition of anonymity to avoid retaliation, said that they had asked Miller about Guo’s backing before joining the company and that Miller misled them by saying Guo had an indirect, minority stake. They said that after they had been working there for a time, Miller said another significant investor was Hamilton.

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Global News, Migration, Human Rights

New York Times, Opinion: Netanyahu Cannot Be Trusted, Thomas L. Friedman, right, March 28, 2023. Thank goodness that Israel’s civil society has forced Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to pause, for now, his attempt to impose his control over Israel’s independent judiciary and gain a free hand to rule as he wishes.

But this whole affair has exposed a new and troubling reality for the United States: For the first time, the leader of Israel is an irrational actor, a danger not only to Israelis but also to important American interests and values.

This demands an immediate reassessment by both President Biden and the pro-Israel Jewish lobby in America. Netanyahu essentially told them all: “Trust the process,” “Israel is a healthy democracy” and, in a whisper, “Don’t worry about the religious zealots and Jewish supremacists I brought into power to help block my trial for corruption. I will keep Israel within its traditional political and foreign policy boundaries. It’s me, your old pal, Bibi.”

They wanted to trust him, and it all turned out to be a lie.

From Day 1, it has been obvious to many of us that this Israeli government would go to extremes that none before it ever dared. With no real guardrails, it would take the United States and world Jewry across redlines they never imagined crossing, while possibly destabilizing Jordan and the Abraham Accords, eliminating hope of a two-state solution and bringing Israel in its 75th anniversary year to the edge of civil war.

That is because the key to implementing the government’s radical agenda was always, first, getting control over Israel’s Supreme Court — the only legitimate independent brake on the ambitions of Netanyahu and his extremist coalition partners — through a process disguised as “judicial reform.”

Israeli security personnel, right, confront demonstrators (Photo by Noga Tarnopolsky).

Associated Press, Israeli unions launch strike, upping pressure on Netanyahu, Tia Goldenberg, March 27, 2023. Workers from a range of sectors in Israel launched a nationwide strike on Monday, threatening to paralyze the economy as they joined a surging protest movement against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s plan to overhaul the judiciary.

Workers from a range of sectors in Israel launched a nationwide strike on Monday, threatening to paralyze the economy as they joined a surging protest movement against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s plan to overhaul the judiciary.

Departing flights from the country’s main international airport were grounded, large mall chains and universities shut their doors, and Israel’s largest trade union called for its 800,000 members — in health, transit, banking and other fields — to stop work. Local governments were expected to close the preschools they run and cut other services, and the main doctors union announced its members would also walk off the job.

The growing resistance to Netanyahu’s plan came hours after tens of thousands of people burst into the streets around the country in a spontaneous show of anger at the prime minister’s decision to fire his defense minister, Yoav Gallant, shown at right in 2016 photo, after he called for a pause to the overhaul. Chanting “the country is on fire,” they lit bonfires on Tel Aviv’s main highway, closing the thoroughfare and many others throughout the country for hours.

Thousands of protesters gathered Monday outside the Knesset, or parliament, to keep up the pressure.

New York Times, Key Israeli Party Agrees to Delay Divisive Judicial Plan as Protests Rage, Patrick Kingsley, March 28, 2023 (print ed.). Here’s the latest in Israel’s political crisis.

The head of a powerful far-right political party, Itamar Ben Gvir, said Monday he was now open to delaying a vote on a contentious overhaul of the judiciary, giving Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu the breathing room he may need to de-escalate the protests that have ground Israel to a halt.

Mr. Ben-Gvir, the head of the Jewish Power party in Mr. Netanyahu’s governing coalition, said he had agreed with the Israeli leader that divisive plans to overhaul the judiciary could be delayed until after the upcoming parliamentary recess, removing what had been viewed as the biggest obstacle to any postponement.

• Washington Post, Netanyahu’s political touch eludes him as Israel spirals into chaos
• Associated Press, Netanyahu fires defense minister for urging halt to overhaul

 New York Times, Analysis: China’s Cities Are Buried in Debt, but They Keep Shoveling It On, Li Yuan, March 28, 2023. China has long pursued growth through public spending, even after the payoff has faded, our columnist writes.

In 2015, when Shangqiu, a municipality in central China, laid out a plan for the next two decades, it positioned itself as a transportation hub with a sprawling network of railways, highways and river shipping routes.

By the end of 2020, Shangqiu had built 114 miles of high-speed rail, and today several national railways make stops in the city. By 2025, Shangqiu expects the coverage of its highway network to have increased by 87 percent. The city is building its first two airports, three new highways and enough parking space for 20,000 additional slots.

The infrastructure splurge is far from over. On Feb. 23, the Shangqiu Communist Party secretary reiterated the city’s vision as a logistics power when celebrating a new partnership with a state-owned investment firm, which could help Shangqiu borrow money for even more projects.

That morning, the city’s bus operator announced that it would have to suspend services because of financial difficulties. The pandemic had hit it hard, the company said, and the Shangqiu government hadn’t provided subsidies that it had promised. As a result, the company had not paid its employees for months — it couldn’t even afford to charge its electric buses. A few hours after posting its announcement, the company deleted it, after it had made national headlines and the Shangqiu government had intervened.

China is full of Shangqius these days. As part of the ruling Communist Party’s all-in push for economic growth this year, local governments already in debt from borrowing to pay for massive infrastructure are taking on additional debt. They’re building more roads, railways and industrial parks even though the economic returns on that activity are increasingly meager. In their struggle to find the money to fund their new projects, and the interest payments on their old ones, cities are cutting public services and benefits.

Shangqiu is one of more than 20 towns and cities in China where bus services were shut down or put in peril because local governments had failed to provide the necessary operating funds. Wuhan and other cities cut health insurance. Still others slashed the pay of government workers. Many local governments in Hebei Province, which borders Beijing, failed to pay heating subsidies for natural gas during the winter, leaving residents to shiver during a record-setting cold wave.

For nearly three decades, China’s local governments were the envy of the world. They seemed to have unlimited resources to binge-build airports, roads and industrial parks, many of which were funded by selling land.

Now, many of them are in fiscal disarray. In the country’s single-minded pursuit of its “zero Covid” policy, local governments exhausted their coffers to comply with strict testing, quarantine and lockdown rules. Struggling businesses are paying less in taxes. After blow upon blow of government crackdowns, property developers are reluctant to buy land.

New York Times, After Doling Out Huge Loans, China Is Now Bailing Out Countries, Keith Bradsher, March 28, 2023 (print ed.). Beijing is emerging as a new heavyweight in providing emergency funds to debt-ridden countries, catching up to the I.M.F. as a lender of last resort.

Wayne Madsen Report, Investigative Commentary: ANTIFA (Anti-fascism) is on the streets around the world, Wayne Madsen, March 27-28, 2023. From Tbilisi and Tel Aviv to New Delhi and Cusco, the forces of anti-fascism, or "Antifa" if one likes, are taking a stand against fascist tyrants trying to overturn democratic governance.

In Israel, protesters and strikers have all but shut the country down as hard-right Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu tries to force through legislation that would put him and his far-right political allies in charge of the judiciary, including the Supreme Court. Enactment of the law would prevent a continuing criminal investigation of Netanyahu from proceeding. Republicans in the U.S. House are attempting something similar by proposing a law that would prevent local and state prosecutors from investigating former President Donald Trump.

The massive protests in Israel and the Republic of Georgia are shining examples of people who have had enough of fascism. In Georgia, protests in the capital of Tbilisi forced the pro-Russian government of Prime Minister Irakli Garibashvili to temporarily scrap a law that would require "foreign agents" -- defined as journalists, human rights advocates, and others -- to register with the government. The inspiration for the law is one enacted by Vladimir Putin in Russia. Georgia's pro-Western president, Salome Zourabichvili, had promised to veto the bill before it was withdrawn.

New York Times, Taiwan’s Ex-President Heads to China in Historic and Closely Watched Visit, Chris Horton, March 28, 2023 (print ed.). Though his visit is not official, it is nonetheless significant and may offer clues to political calculations on both sides of the increasingly tense Taiwan Strait.

Taiwan’s former president, Ma Ying-jeou, landed in China on Monday in the first visit to the country by any sitting or former Taiwanese leader since China’s civil war ended with the Nationalist government retreating to the island from the mainland in 1949.

Though the 12-day visit by Mr. Ma, who was president from 2008 to 2016, is unofficial, it is likely to be watched closely at home and abroad for clues on how Beijing might seek to influence Taiwan, its democratic neighbor, ahead of a presidential election in January. The timing of Mr. Ma’s trip is also noteworthy because he departed just days before Taiwan’s current leader, President Tsai Ing-wen, visits the United States, a trip that has been met with objections by China, which claims Taiwan as its territory.

The contrasting destinations highlight what each politician’s party sees as its advantage. Ms. Tsai, of the Democratic Progressive Party, has strengthened U.S.-Taiwan ties during her eight years in office, while the Chinese Nationalist Party, or Kuomintang, to which Mr. Ma belongs, bills itself as better able to deal with Beijing.

President Tsai will leave Taiwan on Wednesday for a trip to Central America, with what officials have described as transit stops in the United States planned in New York and Los Angeles. Beijing has said it “strongly opposed” Ms. Tsai’s planned U.S. trip and any form of contact between the United States and Taiwan’s authorities. On Saturday, in a blow to Taipei’s international standing shortly before Ms. Tsai’s overseas trip, Honduras announced it was severing diplomatic ties with Taipei in favor of Beijing.

Washington Post, Harris heads to Africa amid Biden’s urgent courtship of the continent, Cleve R. Wootson Jr. and Katharine Houreld, March 26, 2023 (print ed.). The United States seeks to counter efforts by China, Russia and others to woo the continent after the turbulent Trump years.

As Vice President Harris on Saturday launches her first trip to Africa since taking office — part of an all-out push by the Biden administration to show African leaders it is committed to bolstering ties — she will confront widespread suspicions on the continent that the effort reflects a drive to counter China and Russia, not a deeper desire to improve relations with Africans for their own sake.

Harris’s week-long trip includes stops in Ghana, Tanzania and Zambia, chosen because they are striving to maintain democracy in the face of economic pressures roiling the continent, White House officials said. Harris met with the leaders of all three countries during the U.S.-Africa Leaders Summit in December, and she sees the nine-day journey as an extension of those dialogues, the officials said.

“The message is the same that the president delivered when we had the African leaders summit here in December,” said White House spokesman John Kirby. “And that’s that Africa matters, the continent matters, and our relationships across the continent all matter. So this is very much about Africa — African leaders, African nations — and not about anybody else.”

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More On Probes of Trump, Allies

Washington Post, Trump extends election-rigging myth to his potential criminal charges, Isaac Arnsdorf and Hannah Knowles, March 28, 2023. Former president Donald Trump opened the first mega-rally of his 2024 campaign by playing a recording of the national anthem sung by inmates charged in the riot at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

In the 90-minute remarks that followed on Saturday, Trump repeatedly emphasized — even more than in last year’s rallies for the midterms — his false insistence that the 2020 election was stolen from him. But he added a new twist: that his political opponents were now bent on rigging the next election against him through the prospect of criminal charges.

“This is their new form of trying to beat people at the polls,” Trump elaborated to reporters on his flight home from the rally, according to a recording obtained by The Washington Post. “This is worse than stuffing the ballot boxes, which they did.”

Saturday’s speech by the early polling leader for the Republican nomination shows how Trump is seeking to adapt the stolen election myth, continually absorbing new allegations when old ones are debunked or obsolete — from supposed foreign plots to tamper with voting machines to alleged manipulation of social media and now potential prosecution. The latest version also underscores Trump’s continued determination to elevate conspiracy theories with inflammatory rhetoric that has already inspired violence by his supporters, which he continues to downplay or defend.

“President Trump has always sounded the alarm on election interference, but what is happening with these legal witch hunts is the updated version of that in 2024,” campaign spokesman Steven Cheung said. “It’s an ‘us vs. them’ moment that harks back to his core message in 2016: They’re coming after us, but Trump is the only person standing in the way.”

Trump himself leveled a similar argument from the podium on Saturday, declaring: “When they go after me, they’re going after you.”

Palmer Report, Opinion: Bad news all around for Donald Trump in the Manhattan criminal case against him, Bill Palmer, March 28, 2023. First Donald Trump claimed to know that he would be arrested last Tuesday. That turned out to have been something he’d made up. Then Trump claimed to know this past weekend that the Manhattan criminal case against him had been dropped. That also turned out to have been something he’d made up. It’s a good reminder that Trump is not a source for anything, and the media shouldn’t give him special editorial consideration just because he once stole the presidency.

What’s playing out right now in Manhattan is also a good reminder of something else. A criminal indictment is not something that just falls out of the sky whenever a prosecutor decides to snap their fingers. If an indictment hasn’t happened yet, it’s not because that prosecutor is sitting there “doing nothing” and refusing to snap their fingers. A criminal indictment is the culmination of a complex investigative process, with the sole goal of building the kind of indictment that can get a conviction at trial.

It’s why, before prosecutors even go through the process of bringing a criminal indictment, they have to take the time to work through every possible witness on every possible topic. They need these things in their arsenal, so that when for instance a defendant like Donald Trump sends someone like Robert Costello in there with a bunch of stories aimed at discrediting key witness Michael Cohen, the prosecutor just has to look back through all the testimony that’s been amassed and figure out how to discredit the defendant’s claims.

In this instance it was a matter of the Manhattan DA putting former National Enquirer boss David Pecker back in front of the grand jury this week. He already testified to the grand jury awhile ago. Back then he gave whatever testimony was considered necessary and appropriate for the indictment process.

But now the DA has brought back Pecker to give additional testimony for the specific purpose of refuting Costello’s testimony and vindicating Cohen’s testimony. This suggests that the Manhattan DA had already gotten this additional information out of Pecker awhile ago, and didn’t need it at the time, but is now able to pull it out of his arsenal and use it to fit the situation.

This is part of why prosecutors have to take so long lining up all of this beforehand. Once the process gets going, they need to be able to pull these kinds of things out of a hat in real time. And it’s not because of magic, it’s because they did their homework first.

The kicker is that because Costello told his story to the grand jury under oath, he’s now stuck with that version of events. If Pecker’s testimony has now dismantled Costello’s claims and made him useless as a defense witness at trial, Costello can’t just change his story at trial and float a new version of events aimed at helping Trump, because that would get Costello nailed for perjury.

We still don’t fully understand Donald Trump’s rationale for sending his would-be surprise trial witness Costello to the grand jury like this. Trump appears to have panicked at the prospect of indictment, and decided to take his shot now instead of trying it at trial. But by any measure the move failed. Trump only managed to delay his Manhattan indictment by about a week, and in the process he’s forfeited a friendly witness who could have tried to help him at trial.

This is why it doesn’t matter that anyone out there is “tired of waiting” or finds themselves annoyed that the Manhattan indictment is dropping on this day instead of that day. First of all, this isn’t meant for anyone’s entertainment. Nor is it a matter of everyone waiting impatiently for some prosecutor to flip some magic switch somewhere. This is a living, breathing process. It’s never, ever as simple as someone in the backseat yelling “Are we there yet?”

New York Times, Ezra Klein Show: Trump’s Legal Jeopardy and America’s Political Crossroads, Host Ezra Klein, right, with guest David French, New York Times columnist and author of recent piece, Opinion: MAGA, Not Trump, Controls the Movement Now, 28, 2023. 

Donald Trump’s legal troubles are mounting. A Manhattan grand jury investigation into the hush-money payment to Stormy Daniels could soon make Trump the first former American president ever to be criminally indicted.

But the Manhattan case isn’t the only source of legal risk for Trump. In Georgia, the Fulton County district attorney is considering criminal charges for Trump’s efforts to influence the 2020 election, and the Department of Justice is investigating his role in the Jan. 6 riots and the removal of classified documents from the White House.

This level of legal vulnerability surrounding a former president is unprecedented. It’s also unsurprising — Trump routinely flouts protocols and norms. But even more than his disregard for convention, Trump has a knack for forcing our legal and political systems into predicaments that don’t really have good solutions. How should a political system handle criminal charges against a current political candidate? Is it appropriate for prosecutors to consider the risk of mob violence in weighing charges? And what’s the risk of damage to our institutions of holding Trump accountable — and for failing to do so?

[You can listen to this episode of “The Ezra Klein Show” on Apple, Spotify, Amazon Music, Google or wherever you get your podcasts.]

Washington Post, Trump extends election-rigging myth to his potential criminal charges, Isaac Arnsdorf and Hannah Knowles, March 28, 2023. Former president Donald Trump opened the first mega-rally of his 2024 campaign by playing a recording of the national anthem sung by inmates charged in the riot at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

In the 90-minute remarks that followed on Saturday, Trump repeatedly emphasized — even more than in last year’s rallies for the midterms — his false insistence that the 2020 election was stolen from him. But he added a new twist: that his political opponents were now bent on rigging the next election against him through the prospect of criminal charges.

“This is their new form of trying to beat people at the polls,” Trump elaborated to reporters on his flight home from the rally, according to a recording obtained by The Washington Post. “This is worse than stuffing the ballot boxes, which they did.”

Saturday’s speech by the early polling leader for the Republican nomination shows how Trump is seeking to adapt the stolen election myth, continually absorbing new allegations when old ones are debunked or obsolete — from supposed foreign plots to tamper with voting machines to alleged manipulation of social media and now potential prosecution. The latest version also underscores Trump’s continued determination to elevate conspiracy theories with inflammatory rhetoric that has already inspired violence by his supporters, which he continues to downplay or defend.

“President Trump has always sounded the alarm on election interference, but what is happening with these legal witch hunts is the updated version of that in 2024,” campaign spokesman Steven Cheung said. “It’s an ‘us vs. them’ moment that harks back to his core message in 2016: They’re coming after us, but Trump is the only person standing in the way.”

Trump himself leveled a similar argument from the podium on Saturday, declaring: “When they go after me, they’re going after you.”

Justice Department Special Prosecutor Jack Smith, left, and former President Donald Trump, shown in a collage via CNN.

Palmer Report, Opinion: Jack Smith is racing to the finish line against Donald Trump, Bill Palmer, March 27, 2023. Even as far too many observers have sat back and accused the DOJ and other prosecutors of “doing nothing” against Donald Trump, what the DOJ has actually been doing all this time is building the kind of extraordinarily comprehensive case required to convince the court system to order key witnesses to testify. The good news is that, after a very long effort on that front, the DOJ has finally made the breakthroughs in court it’s long been seeking.

The catch here has always been that Trump purposely relied on people like presidential advisers and his own attorneys as his co-conspirators, specifically so things like executive privilege and attorney-client privilege would keep those co-conspirators from ever testifying against him even if they wanted to. That’s why the DOJ has had to go to painstaking lengths to convince the courts to waive such privilege.

But last week the DOJ finally managed to get there, on two fronts. First the U.S. Court of Appeals ordered Trump’s attorney Evan Corcoran to testify to the grand jury in the classified documents scandal, which he did on Friday.

Then a federal judge ordered that Trump White House advisers like Mark Meadows had to testify against him to the grand jury in the January 6th case. This ruling is still subject to appeal, and we don’t know whether or not the U.S. Court of Appeals will process it as swiftly as it did the Corcoran appeal. But we do know that the DOJ will win this ruling, and that even if it doesn’t happen overnight, it’ll happen soon.

In other words, after a very long and grueling process to meet the court’s bar for waiving these various forms of privilege that’s been going on since long before Jack Smith arrived on the case, Smith and the DOJ are now in a position where they essentially get to race to the finish line. The hard part is done. The time consuming part is over. One ruling from the U.S. Court of Appeals on January 6th executive privilege, and those folks will all be in front of the grand jury.

To that end, on Sunday morning, Robert Costa reported on CBS Face The Nation that the grand jury in the Trump case is now hearing testimony about the “national security levers” that Trump was inquiring about in the hope of overthrowing the election. In other words, Jack Smith and the DOJ are criminally indicting Donald Trump for everything.

Moreover, in spite of what some folks on social media seem to think, Jack Smith and the DOJ do know how to read a calendar. They will make a point of criminally indicting Donald Trump with enough time left before the start of the 2024 election cycle such that they can get to trial and get a conviction before Trump can even get a whiff of the 2024 election. And no, Trump doesn’t have some magic wand for just delaying his trial for as long as he pleases.

This was all over for Donald Trump when he committed crimes in the name of trying to remain in office, failed, was forced to leave office, and was then stupid enough to commit even more crimes on his way out the door. He was always going to be criminally indicted for those crimes, and it was always going to happen with more than enough time left to try and convict him before Trump was ever going to be able to get serious about 2024. There wasn’t going to be a different outcome – and that’s now becoming more clear than ever.

Politico, Former National Enquirer publisher testifies before Trump grand jury, Erica Orden and Wesley Parnell, March 28, 2023 (print ed.). Former National Enquirer publisher David Pecker, shown at right in the file photo above, testified Monday before the grand jury examining Donald Trump’s alleged role in paying hush money to a porn star, according to a news report and related photograph.

Monday was the first time in a week that the grand jury heard evidence in the Trump case. The panel was called off Wednesday and then examined an unrelated matter Thursday. The delay prompted a fiery response from Trump, leading some Democrats to rally around Bragg on Monday morning.

Bragg’s investigation is centered on a $130,000 payment facilitated by Trump’s former fixer, Michael Cohen, and made to the porn star, Stormy Daniels. The adult entertainer alleged she had an affair with Trump and considered selling her story to the National Enquirer, at a time when Pecker was the tabloid’s publisher, according to federal prosecutors. Instead, Cohen paid Daniels directly, a step he told a court he took “in coordination with and at the direction of” Trump.

Trump has denied the affair and any wrongdoing with the payment.

Pecker previously testified before the Manhattan grand jury examining the Trump investigation, according to a person familiar with the matter. It wasn’t clear why he was called back to provide further testimony. Before the publisher, the grand jury heard from Robert Costello, a former legal adviser to Cohen, who is the prosecution’s central witness in the case.

Costello said at a press conference after his testimony that he sought to discredit Cohen while speaking to the grand jury.

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U.S. Politics, Elections, Economy, Governance

Politico, Biden’s nominees hit the Senate skids, Burgess Everett, Daniella Diaz and Daniel Lippman, March 28, 2023. Democrats’ 51-seat majority isn’t stopping a growing line of presidential picks — from the federal bench to the Interior Department — from screeching to a halt.

President Joe Biden’s nominees are hitting a rough patch in the Senate. And things may only get trickier from here.

It looked at the beginning of the year like Democrats would have an easier time confirming Biden picks, having gained a seat last fall after a historically lengthy run in a 50-50 Senate. But this Congress has brought a host of new challenges despite that padded margin for Biden’s party.

Two high-profile Biden administration hopefuls have withdrawn in the past month alone. The president’s Labor Department pick faces a tough road to confirmation. And the administration is in danger of a first: having to abandon a judicial nominee due to tepid Democratic support.

That’s in addition to the Pentagon promotions being stalled by a Republican senator and the judicial appointments delayed due to a senior Democratic senator’s extended absence.

Underlining the tension between the narrowly divided Senate and the administration was the Saturday evening withdrawal of Phil Washington, tapped to lead the Federal Aviation Administration. Democrats blamed a GOP campaign against him, led by Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), but the reality is that Biden’s own party could have saved Washington had they kept their own side united and put up a simple majority.

In Washington’s case, Commerce Committee member Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (I-Ariz.) had communicated her concerns to the Biden administration. And Sen. Jon Tester (D-Mont.) stayed undecided ahead of the committee vote, right up until Washington bowed out.

“That’s a better question for the president,” Tester, who faces a reelection campaign this cycle, said of the FAA imbroglio. Asked if he supported the nominee, he responded: “Never had to make that vote.

Washington Post, Christie repeatedly berates Trump in N.H., signals 2024 decision by June, Colby Itkowitz, March 28, 2023. Former New Jersey governor Chris Christie sharply criticized Donald Trump on Monday during his first trip this year to New Hampshire, as he kept the door open to entering the GOP presidential primary against his former ally and signaled he would decide by June.

In a nearly two-hour town hall at St. Anselm College’s New Hampshire Institute of Politics, Christie said Trump’s name more than 20 times, attacking the former president over his efforts to overturn the 2020 election that he lost, mocking his policy acumen and blaming him for Republican losses in the 2022 midterms. Christie also portrayed himself as uniquely well positioned to take on Trump.

“You know, Donald Trump said a couple of weeks ago, ‘I am your retribution.’ Guess what, everybody? No thanks. No thanks,” Christie said to applause from his audience in an early-nominating state. “If I was going to pay somebody to be my retribution, I guarantee this, it wouldn’t be him.”

Christie, who has been publicly critical of Trump as he weighs a White House bid, continued, “Here’s why it wouldn’t be him, because he doesn’t want to be my retribution. That’s baloney. The only person he cares about is him. And if we haven’t learned that since Election Day of 2020 to today, then we are not paying attention.”

Asked for his response to Christie’s attacks, Trump spokesman Steven Cheung replied, “Who’s that?”

Christie threw his support to Trump after ending his own campaign for president in 2016 and backed him again in 2020. Christie referenced the possibility that he might run for president again several times, saying the latest he believes a viable candidate can announce a candidacy is June because the first scheduled debate is in August.

Washington Post, Opinion: DeSantis has never been tested. And it shows, Jennifer Rubin, right, March 28, 2023. Count me among those not in the least surprised that Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) is finding a pre-presidential announcement tour tough sledding, as his slide in the polls reflects. He has flipped and flopped on Ukraine, gotten an avalanche of bad press about his lack of interpersonal skills (and table manners) and felt compelled to at least tepidly defend defeated former president Donald Trump against Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg. DeSantis’s “experience” as Florida governor for a term and a few months looks to be insufficient to shield him from the bright lights of a national race.

Indeed, his Florida experience might be the problem.

Most important, DeSantis has not faced strong opposition. His first gubernatorial election was against a candidate hobbled by scandal; his second was against a stale opponent, former governor Charlie Crist, who failed to excite the Democratic base. Unlike some Republican governors who had to prove their mettle against Democratic legislatures (e.g., former Massachusetts governor Charlie Baker and former Maryland governor Larry Hogan), DeSantis has had a passive Republican legislature. The “challenge” for DeSantis has been to whip those lawmakers into ever more extreme positions.

During the Trump years, DeSantis had a friendly figure in the White House. And during the Biden years — as much as he wished to pick fights over the coronavirus response — DeSantis wound up twice on the receiving end of federal largesse, once after the Surfside building collapse and also in the aftermath of Hurricane Ian. That isn’t what the base is looking for.

Like a boxer who has never had an adequate sparring partner, DeSantis seems utterly unprepared for the flurry of insults from Trump. DeSantis tried ignoring him and then tried halfheartedly shoving back. But Trump, an aggressive potential opponent with a feral instinct for weakness, has consistently outplayed DeSantis. Like most Republicans, DeSantis found himself criticizing Bragg and ignoring Trump’s outrageous threats of violence.

During his governorship, DeSantis’s fights have been against politically weaker people: schoolchildren, LGBTQ youths, schoolteachers, African American historians and ex-prisoners. Even his tussle with Disney was against a corporation that couldn’t very well pick up and leave the state. One might say DeSantis is out of practice, but in fact he has never had to face off against someone of equal or greater political heft. And now, up against a bigger bully, he looks overwhelmed.

Politico, Durbin endorses Vallas for Chicago mayor, Shia Kapos, March 28, 2023 (print ed.). U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL), right, who made the announcement in Greektown ahead of the annual Greek Independence Day Parade, called Vallas, above left, “a lifelong Democrat” who can be a “bridge” to the community and offer “support and straight talk” to law enforcement.

Durbin’s endorsement drew an outcry on Twitter from the left-leaning supporters of Vallas’ rival, Brandon Johnson, above right, who has worked to portray Vallas as conservative.

The claim has been Vallas’ Achilles heel. His past appearances on conservative talk shows, where he dissed some revered Democrats, has been a persistent talking point during the campaign.

Durbin’s endorsement gives cover to moderate Democrats who have waivered on voting because they see Vallas as too far right or Johnson too far left.

The endorsement by the second highest ranking Democrat in the Senate comes ahead of Sen. Bernie Sanders headlining a pre-election rally for Johnson. The progressive Vermont senator doesn’t exactly have coattails in Illinois, but he can energize Johnson’s base.

Factoid: Durbin is an ally of President Joe Biden, who in the 2020 primary beat Sanders in Chicago, via Block Club.

Not endorsing: Gov. JB Pritzker, who’s butted heads with Durbin at times over Illinois Democratic Party politics, is staying out of the race.

The issue of race is dominating the final days of the election: “It’s playing out in one of the most segregated cities in the country, where a Black progressive is competing against a white moderate and where the course of the city’s next four years, including the safety of its residents, may very well turn on the coveted Black vote — a vote neither Johnson nor Vallas won in the first round,” by NBC’s Natasha Korecki.

Numbers to chew on: The Chicago Board of Elections crunched the citywide turnout totals from the Feb. 28 election by age group and sex. Chart here

About the polling: Neither candidate has “sparked interest” among Latino voters, says Rod McCulloch of Victory Research, whose recent polling shows “a dead heat” between Vallas and Johnson, via The Crisis Cast with Lissa Druss and Thom Serafin.

New York Times, The Dual Education of Hakeem Jeffries, Nicholas Fandos, March 28, 2023 (print ed.). Shaped by Black Brooklyn and trained by Manhattan’s legal elite, the House Democrats’ new leader is not easily pigeonholed.

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More On Ukraine War

New York Times, Torture and Turmoil at Ukrainian Nuclear Plant: An Insider’s Account, Marc Santora, March 28, 2023. The former director of the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant described abuse of Ukrainian workers and careless practices by the Russians who took control.

By the time Russian soldiers threw a potato sack over his head and forced him to record a false video statement about conditions at Europe’s largest nuclear facility, Ihor Murashov had already witnessed enough chaos at the plant to be deeply worried.

Mr. Murashov, the former director general of the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant in Ukraine, did not know how much more stress the workers there could endure as they raced from one crisis to another to avert a nuclear catastrophe.

He watched as staff members were dragged off to a place they called “the pit” at a nearby police station, returning beaten and bruised — if they returned at all. He was there when advancing Russian soldiers opened fire at the facility in the first days of the war and he fretted as the they mined the surrounding grounds. He witnessed Russians use nuclear reactor rooms to hide military equipment, risking an accident.

Mr. Murashov, 46, is gone from Zaporizhzhia now, having been expelled from Russian occupied territory in October. In the months since, the situation at the plant has only grown more precarious, according to Ukrainian officials and international observers.

New York Times, The Latest: War in Ukraine,A rare glimpse of Avdiivka reveals a ruined city where residents huddle in basements, Yousur Al-Hlou and Masha Froliak, March 28, 2023. Moscow still aims to capture Bakhmut even as fighting elsewhere escalates, Ukraine says. A father’s conviction in Russia may keep his 12-year-old daughter in an orphanage.

When the shelling starts, the people who have remained in this town in eastern Ukraine hardly flinch. In truth, the shelling barely stops.

Russian efforts to capture Avdiivka began over a year ago and in recent weeks have escalated. On Monday, as a Ukrainian police evacuation team went from basement to basement to try again to persuade people to leave, the thud of artillery could be heard every minute or two from Russian forces that have sometimes been stationed no more than a mile away.

Moscow’s intensified bombardment of Avdiivka and outlying villages is part of a broader offensive that has centered on the city of Bakhmut, about 34 miles to the northeast. Although Russia’s latest push has failed to capture any major town, its strikes have continued to lay waste to parts of eastern Ukraine.

On Monday, the town’s military administrator, Vitaliy Barabash, ordered the remaining public officials to leave and barred journalists and aid workers from entering, citing safety concerns. A team of New York Times journalists visited just before the ban was announced.

Avdiivka was once a bedroom community for Donetsk, the regional capital that in 2014 fell to Russian-backed separatists. That turned Avdiivka into a frontline town and an early target when Moscow launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, although the city has remained in Ukrainian hands.

Now, out of a prewar population of 30,000 people, residents say only hundreds still live in Avdiivka. The Ukrainian authorities said on Monday that five children remained behind.

New York Times, Thousands of Ukrainians are enduring dire conditions around Bakhmut as the fighting shows no signs of letting up, aid groups say, Matthew Mpoke Bigg and Victoria Kim, March 25, 2023. The battle for the city has been the most violent of recent months, creating an increasingly dire humanitarian crisis for the few remaining civilians.

Ukrainian forces could be close to stabilizing the front lines in Bakhmut, the commander of the country’s armed forces said, as international aid workers warned that civilians remaining in the war-ravaged eastern city faced a dire humanitarian situation.

The battle for Bakhmut, which began in the summer, has become one of Russia’s longest-running and deadliest confrontations in the 13 months of war. The fighting in and around the city has been the most violent of recent months and does not appear to be letting up, with both Russian and Ukrainian officials expressing this past week an unwillingness to yield.

The Ukrainian commander, Gen. Valeriy Zaluzhnyi, said in a post on the Telegram messaging app on Friday that, thanks to the “titanic efforts” of the city’s defenders, the situation “could be stabilized,” though he acknowledged the ferocity of the battle.

Other Ukrainian officials, backed by a report from British intelligence, maintained that the overall pace of Russian attacks in eastern Ukraine was subsiding, indicating that Moscow’s winter offensive may be running out of steam after heavy losses.

• New York Times, Support Grows to Have Russia Pay for Ukraine’s Rebuilding, March 25, 2023.

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U.S. Courts, Crime, Immigration, Guns

Washington Post, What damage can an AR-15 do to a human body? A rare look, N. Kirkpatrick, Atthar Mirza and Manuel Canales, March 28, 2023. The Washington Post examined autopsy and postmortem reports from nearly a hundred victims of previous mass shootings that involved AR-15-style rifles.

Washington Post, From outcast to political symbol: How the AR-15 emerged as an icon, Todd C. Frankel, Shawn Boburg, Josh Dawsey, Ashley Parker and Alex Horton, March 28, 2023 (print ed.). The AR-15 thrives in times of tension and tragedy. This is how it came to dominate the marketplace – and loom so large in the American psyche.

The AR-15 wasn’t supposed to be a best-seller. It's the result of a dramatic shift in American gun culture fueled by the firearms industry and its allies.

New York Times, ISIS Matchmaker Gets 18 Years in First Trial Under N.Y. Terrorism Law, Colin Moynihan, March 23, 2023. Abdullah el-Faisal, a Jamaican cleric, was the first person to face a jury under state terrorism laws passed after Sept. 11. He was not in the city when he committed his crimes.

After ISIS promised in 2014 that the world would “hear and understand the meaning of terrorism,” fervent western support came from a Jamaican preacher once imprisoned in Britain for urging violence, and later expelled from Kenya by officials fearing he would encourage radicalism.

Over the next three years, according to the Manhattan district attorney’s office, the preacher, Abdullah el-Faisal, helped ISIS any way he could, praising its ideology in lectures, publishing propaganda online and even acting as a marriage broker for its fighters.

Mr. Faisal was convicted this year of conspiracy and supporting terrorism after prosecutors presented evidence that he had discussed ISIS with an undercover New York City police officer and given her a phone number for a fighter in Syria.

On Thursday, Justice Maxwell Wiley of State Supreme Court in Manhattan sentenced Mr. Faisal to 18 years in prison, saying he had “continually advocated for murder, kidnapping and other violent crimes.”

New York Times, The Largest Source of Stolen Guns? Parked Cars, Richard Fausset, March 25, 2023. The growing number of firearms kept in vehicles has become a new point of contention in the debate over gun safety.

On a Sunday in January 2022, a Glock 9mm pistol, serial number AFDN559, disappeared from a Dodge Charger parked near a Midtown Nashville bank after someone smashed in the rear driver’s side window.

Ten months later, Nashville police officers arrested three teenagers suspected in a series of shootings, and discovered a cache of weapons in a nearby apartment. Among them was AFDN559. Forensic analysts would later tie the Glock to three shootings, including an attack in August that wounded four youths and another that wounded a 17-year-old girl in September.

In a country awash with guns, with more firearms than people, the parked car, or in many cases the parked pickup truck, has become a new flashpoint in the debates over how and whether to regulate gun safety.

There is little question about the scope of the problem. A report issued in May by the gun-control group Everytown for Gun Safety analyzed FBI crime data in 271 American cities, large and small, from 2020 and found that guns stolen from vehicles have become the nation’s largest source of stolen firearms — with an estimated 40,000 guns stolen from cars in those cities alone.

New York Times, 2 Migrants Found Dead and 13 Others Ill on Train in Texas, Officials Say, Edgar Sandoval, March 25, 2023 (print ed.). The migrants were found trapped inside a sweltering shipping container that was stopped near a town in Uvalde County, according to officials.

The bodies of two people believed to be migrants who had crossed into Texas from Mexico were found on Friday, along with 13 more people, including at least five who were in critical condition, inside a shipping container on a train in Uvalde County, officials said.

The train, which was stopped by U.S. Border Patrol agents, was traveling near the town of Knippa through an area of Texas known for frequent immigration crossings.

At 3:50 p.m., a person called 911 and told dispatchers that about 12 to 15 people were experiencing severe symptoms of dehydration and were trapped inside a sweltering shipping container in an area where spring temperatures have hovered in the 80s in recent days, said Daniel Rodriguez, the chief of police for the city of Uvalde, about 11 miles west of Knippa. “The way they said it was, they were suffocating — they were having trouble breathing” he said.

It was unclear if the call had come from inside the container or if one of the people trapped inside had managed to call a relative and ask for help, said the mayor of Uvalde, Don McLaughlin Jr., who was briefed by the authorities.

The local police immediately contacted U.S. Border Patrol agents, who were able to stop the train about three miles east of Knippa, a town of fewer than 1,000 people, the chief said. When the Border Patrol agents arrived, the container was locked and “wired shut,” Mr. McLaughlin said.

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U.S. Abortion, #MeToo, LGBQT, Rape Laws

Washington Post, Analysis: Some abortion clinics are opening new locations near states with bans, Rachel Roubein and McKenzie Beard, March 28, 2023. West Virginia’s only abortion clinic wrote on its website that it would no longer perform abortions the morning after state lawmakers passed a near-total ban on the procedure in mid-September.

Now, the clinics’ operators plan to announce today that they’ll soon open a new location in Cumberland, Md., roughly five miles from the West Virginia border.

“This is a new option for not just Western Marylanders, not just West Virginians, but for people who are living in the abortion desert that is central Appalachia,” said Katie Quiñonez, the executive director of Women's Health Center of West Virginia, which will open Women’s Health Center of Maryland in June.

In the post-Roe era, some abortion providers are rushing to relocate or open in states that are keeping abortion legal, such as New Mexico, Illinois and Minnesota.

It’s still a relatively small number that have done so, since it takes planning, time and money. But those that have are picking states with strong abortion protections and within striking distance of states with prohibitions on the procedure and abortion pills, an attempt to cut down on travel time. The effort is emblematic of the red-blue divide that has ensued since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in June with antiabortion groups celebrating their victory curtailing abortions across various regions of the United States.

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Climate, Environment, Weather, Energy, Disasters, U.S. Transportation

New York Times, Philadelphia Monitoring Water Supply After Chemical Spill, Emily Schmall, March 27, 2023 (print ed.). Philadelphia officials on Sunday evening stepped back from a suggestion earlier in the day that residents consider using bottled water rather than tap water for drinking and cooking after a chemical leaked into a tributary of the Delaware River, a source of drinking water for about 14 million people across four states.

The previous advisory, issued on Sunday morning, came after a pipe ruptured at Trinseo PLC, a chemical plant, late on Friday, sending about 8,100 gallons of a water-soluble acrylic polymer solution into Otter Creek in Bucks County, north of Philadelphia, officials said.

Officials emphasized that contaminants had not been found in the city’s water system.

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Pandemics, Public Health, Privacy

New York Times, ‘We’re Going Away’: A State’s Choice to Forgo Medicaid Funds Is Killing Hospitals, Sharon LaFraniere March 28, 2023. Mississippi is one of 10 states, all with Republican-led legislatures, that continue to reject federal funding to expand health insurance for the poor.

Since its opening in a converted wood-frame mansion 117 years ago, Greenwood Leflore Hospital had become a medical hub for this part of Mississippi’s fertile but impoverished Delta, with 208 beds, an intensive-care unit, a string of walk-in clinics and a modern brick-and-glass building.

But on a recent weekday, it counted just 13 inpatients clustered in a single ward. The I.C.U. and maternity ward were closed for lack of staffing and the rest of the building was eerily silent, all signs of a hospital savaged by too many poor patients.

Greenwood Leflore lost $17 million last year alone and is down to a few million in cash reserves, said Gary Marchand, the hospital’s interim chief executive. “We’re going away,” he said. “It’s happening.”

Rural hospitals are struggling all over the nation because of population declines, soaring labor costs and a long-term shift toward outpatient care. But those problems have been magnified by a political choice in Mississippi and nine other states, all with Republican-controlled legislatures.

They have spurned the federal government’s offer to shoulder almost all the cost of expanding Medicaid coverage for the poor. And that has heaped added costs on hospitals because they cannot legally turn away patients, insured or not.

States that opted against Medicaid expansion, or had just recently adopted it, accounted for nearly three-fourths of rural hospital closures between 2010 and 2021, according to the American Hospital Association.

Opponents of expansion, who have prevailed in Texas, Florida and much of the Southeast, typically say they want to keep government spending in check. States are required to put up 10 percent of the cost in order for the federal government to release the other 90 percent.

But the number of holdouts is dwindling. On Monday, North Carolina became the 40th state to expand Medicaid since the option to cover all adults with incomes below 138 percent of the poverty line opened up in 2014 under the terms of the 2010 Affordable Care Act. The law, a major victory for President Barack Obama, has continued to defy Republican efforts to kill or limit it.

New York Times, You May Need That Procedure. But Do You Really Need an Escort? Paula Span, March 25, 2023. Robert Lewinger is tired of being berated by his gastroenterologist because he’s overdue for a colonoscopy. He’s perfectly willing to have one. And he’s more than ready for cataract surgery on his second eye.

The problem: Mr. Lewinger, 72, a retired lawyer who lives in Manhattan, can’t schedule either of these procedures, which involve anesthesia or sedation, unless he supplies the name and phone number of the person taking him home afterward. Otherwise, clinics and outpatient surgical centers refuse to make appointments.

Mr. Lewinger is also willing to undergo Mohs surgery, as his dermatologist has recommended, for two small skin cancers on his face. But the surgeons associated with her practice also insist on medical escorts, even though most Mohs surgery is performed under local anesthesia and doesn’t require them.

Transportation itself isn’t the difficulty; Mr. Lewinger could summon an Uber or a Lyft, call a car service or hail a cab. What he needs is “someone to escort me out of the building, take me back to my apartment and see me into it,” he explained. “It shouldn’t be so hard.”

The problem is “rampant,” said Janet Seckel-Cerrotti, executive director of FriendshipWorks, a nonprofit whose trained volunteers serve as free medical escorts in and around Boston. “We see it every day. It’s hard on your dignity.”

Doctors explain that door-through-door requirements are a safety measure. With a colonoscopy, for instance, patients often receive an anesthetic, like propofol, or a narcotic such as Demerol or fentanyl, combined with anti-anxiety medication like Versed or Valium.

New York Times, Tennessee’s Rejection of Federal Funds Alarms H.I.V. Prevention Groups, Ava Sasani, March 25, 2023 (print ed.). Some organizations are concerned they will be cut off from state funding if they don’t align with Gov. Bill Lee’s conservative politics.

After offering free H.I.V. testing at a drive-through event last year, staff members at Nashville CARES, a nonprofit sexual health clinic, made an alarming discovery: a cluster of positive tests from a single neighborhood.

“There was one person who had unknowingly passed it to multiple partners, and we were able to intervene quickly before it became a full-blown outbreak,” said Lisa Binkley, who leads the clinic’s H.I.V. prevention team.

For this work and other efforts to try to curb the spread of H.I.V. in the Nashville region, Ms. Binkley and her colleagues have relied heavily on federal grant money. So they were stunned when Tennessee’s health commissioner announced earlier this year that the state would no longer accept $8.8 million in federal grant money, which for more than a decade has been distributed among nonprofit groups, county health departments and health care organizations.

Tennessee is the only state to have rejected the funding; Gov. Bill Lee, a Republican, instead plans to allocate $9 million in new state funding for H.I.V. prevention and monitoring in July. The governor said the move would offer the state greater independence in its decision-making. But some organizations say they are concerned that the state will not offer them funding if they do not align with the governor’s conservative positions on issues like transgender rights, and his opposition to abortion access.

The state has not announced which groups will receive the funds, or the rules on how they can be used, but the governor’s office has indicated that its priorities include “vulnerable populations, such as victims of human trafficking, mothers and children, and first responders.”

Public health experts say Mr. Lee’s listed examples are at odds with the reality on the ground, as those groups represent only a tiny fraction of new H.I.V. cases in Tennessee, according to a recent report from the AIDS charity amfAR. Some of the highest-risk groups in the state are sexually active gay men, transgender women and those who inject drugs, according to Greg Millett, the director of amfAR and an epidemiologist.

New York Times, China Approves an mRNA Covid Vaccine, Its First, Nicole Hong and Alexandra Stevenson, March 23, 2023 (print ed.). The homegrown shot is a crucial tool that China has been lacking — a vaccine based on a technology considered among the most effective the world has to offer.

China has for the first time approved a Covid-19 vaccine based on mRNA technology, greenlighting a homegrown shot months after the ruling Communist Party eliminated its strict pandemic restrictions.

China has long refused to use the foreign-made mRNA shots that were crucial in easing the pandemic in many parts of the world and that the United States first authorized for emergency use in December 2020. Beijing chose instead to promote its own pharmaceutical firms, first in rolling out a more traditional but less effective Covid vaccine, and later, in the pursuit of a homegrown mRNA, or messenger RNA, vaccine.

Relevant Recent Headlines

• New York Times, Tennessee’s Rejection of Federal Funds Alarms H.I.V. Prevention Groups
• New York Times, Biden Plan to Cut Billions in Medicare Fraud Ignites Lobbying Frenzy
• New York Times, Another Mental Illness Tragedy Spurs Questions About Health System, Campbell Robertson and Neelam Bohra
• Washington Post, Troubled U.S. organ transplant system targeted for overhaul, Lenny Bernstein
• Washington Post, New liver transplant rules yield winners, losers as wasted organs reach record high
• New York Times, Commentary: The A.I. Chatbots Have Arrived. Time to Talk to Your Kids, Christina Caron
• New York Times, China Approves an mRNA Covid Vaccine, Its First

Media, Education, Arts, High Tech

New York Times, Tinkering With ChatGPT, Workers Wonder: Will This Take My Job?  Lydia DePillis and Steve Lohr, March 28, 2023. Artificial intelligence is confronting white-collar professionals more directly than ever. It could make them more productive — or obsolete.

New York Times, Twitter Says Parts of Its Source Code Were Leaked Online, Ryan Mac and Kate Conger, March 27, 2023 (print ed.). The leak adds to the challenges facing Elon Musk’s company, which is trying to identify the person responsible and any others who downloaded the code.

Parts of Twitter’s source code, the underlying computer code on which the social network runs, were leaked online, according to a legal filing, a rare and major exposure of intellectual property as the company struggles to reduce technical issues and reverse its business fortunes under Elon Musk.

Recent Related Headlines

• New York Times, TikTok Chief Faces Scathing Questions From Both Parties in Congress
• Washington Post, Analysis: America’s online privacy problems are much bigger than TikTok, Will Oremus
• New York Times, Twitter Says Parts of Its Source Code Were Leaked Online
• New York Times, Elon Musk Values Twitter at $20 Billion
• New York Times, Commentary: The A.I. Chatbots Have Arrived. Time to Talk to Your Kids, Christina Caron
• New York Times, Opinion: Our New Promethean Moment, Thomas L. Friedman
• Washington Post, Perspective: ChatGPT can ace logic tests now. But don’t ask it to be creative, Geoffrey A. Fowler
• Washington Post, Analysis: AI chatbots won’t enjoy tech’s legal shield, lawmakers say, Cristiano Lima and David DiMolfetta
• New York Times, U.S. Pushes for TikTok Sale to Resolve National Security Concerns
• Washington Post, Rupert Murdoch, 92, decides to have another go at marriage, Paul Farhi
• Washington Post, Gordon Moore, Silicon Valley pioneer who co-founded Intel, dies at 94
• Washington Post, NPR cancels 4 podcasts in biggest wave of layoffs in decades
• Texas Tribune, Texas Observer, legendary crusading liberal magazine, is closing and laying off its staff
• New York Times, Commentary: The Privilege of a New Start
• Associated Press, Utah social media law is ambitious, but is it enforceable?

March 27

Top Headlines

• Associated Press, Nashville school shooter had drawn maps, done surveillance
• Politico, Biden renews push to ban assault weapons in wake of Nashville shooting
• Washington Post, ‘Enough is enough,’ White House says, demands GOP act on assault weapons ban
• Washington Post, Turmoil in Israel: Netanyahu announces he will delay judicial plan, backtracking after unprecedented protests
• New York Times, Inside the U.S. Pressure Campaign Over Israel’s Judicial Overhaul
• Associated Press, Israeli unions launch strike, upping pressure on Netanyahu
• New York Times, Key Israeli Party Agrees to Delay Divisive Judicial Plan as Protests Rage
• Palmer Report, Opinion: Jack Smith is racing to the finish line against Donald Trump, Bill Palmer
• Politico, Former National Enquirer publisher testifies before Trump grand jury
• Washington Post, Netanyahu’s political touch eludes him as Israel spirals into chaos
• New York Times, In a Tornado’s Wake, a Mississippi Town Wrestles With Grief and Gratitude
• Politico, Crypto sector sees an existential moment in the U.S.
• Washington Post, Indicted Chinese exile controls Gettr social media site, ex-employees say

Global News, Migration, Human Rights

• New York Times, After Doling Out Huge Loans, China Is Now Bailing Out Countries
• Wayne Madsen Report, Investigative Commentary: ANTIFA (Anti-fascism) is on the streets around the world, Wayne Madsen
• New York Times, Taiwan’s Ex-President Heads to China in Historic and Closely Watched Visit
• Washington Post, Harris heads to Africa amid Biden’s urgent courtship of the continent

U.S. Politics, Elections, Governance

• New York Times, Opinion: MAGA, Not Trump, Controls the Movement Now, David French
• Politico, Durbin endorses Vallas for Chicago mayor, Shia Kapos
• Washington Post, Retropolis, The Past, Rediscovered: One of Edgar Allen Poe’s darkest stories is the mystery of his own death, Randy Dotinga
• New York Times, The Dual Education of Hakeem Jeffries
• Washington Post, D.C. political consultant’s 2022 death in New York ruled a homicide

More On Trump Probes, Prospects, Allies

• New York Times, A Trump Rally Comes to Waco, 30 Years After Its Darkest Hour
• New York Times, What We Know About the Potential Indictment of Donald Trump
• New York Times, Lawmakers Tour D.C. Jail Where Jan. 6 Defendants Are Held

Ukraine War

• Washington Post, Kyiv doctor killed in Russian airstrike shows war’s fallout far from front
• New York Times, Putin Says He Could Put Tactical Nuclear Weapons in Belarus by Summer

U.S. Courts, Crime, Immigration, Guns

• Washington Post, From outcast to political symbol: How the AR-15 emerged as an icon
• New York Times, The Largest Source of Stolen Guns? Parked Cars

U.S. Banks, Economy, Jobs, CryptoCurrency

• Associated Press, First Citizens to acquire troubled Silicon Valley Bank

 Disasters, Climate, Environment, U.S. Transportation, Energy

• New York Times, Philadelphia Monitoring Water Supply After Chemical Spill

U.S. Abortion, #MeToo, Stalking, Rape Laws, Politics

• Washington Post, This Texas teen wanted an abortion. She now has twins

Pandemics, Public Health, Privacy

• New York Times, You May Need That Procedure. But Do You Really Need an Escort?
• Washington Post, Analysis: The White House covid response team is winding down, Rachel Roubein and McKenzie Beard

U.S. Media, Education, Arts, Sports

• New York Times, Twitter Says Parts of Its Source Code Were Leaked Online
• New York Times, Elon Musk Values Twitter at $20 Billion
• Texas Tribune, Texas Observer, legendary crusading liberal magazine, is closing and laying off its staff
• New York Times, Commentary: The Privilege of a New Start
• Associated Press, Utah social media law is ambitious, but is it enforceable?

Top Stories

Associated Press, Nashville school shooter had drawn maps, done surveillance, Jonathan Mattise, Travis Loller and Holly Meyer, March 27, 2023. The suspect in a Nashville school shooting on Monday had drawn a detailed map of the school, including potential entry points, and conducted surveillance before killing three students and three adults in the latest in a series of mass shootings in a country growing increasingly unnerved by bloodshed in schools.

The suspect, who was killed by police, is believed to be a former student at The Covenant School in Nashville, where the shooting took place.

The shooter was armed with two “assault-style” weapons — a rifle and a pistol — as well as a handgun, authorities said. At least two of them were believed to have been obtained legally in the Nashville area.

The victims were identified as Evelyn Dieckhaus, Hallie Scruggs, and William Kinney, all 9 years old, and adults Cynthia Peak, 61; Katherine Koonce, 60; and Mike Hill, 61.

For hours, police identified the shooter as a 28-year-old woman and eventually identified the person as Audrey Hale. Then at a late afternoon press conference, the police chief said that Hale was transgender.

The attack at The Covenant School — which has about 200 students from preschool through sixth grade, as well as roughly 50 staff members — comes as communities around the nation are reeling from a spate of school violence, including the massacre at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, last year; a first grader who shot his teacher in Virginia; and a shooting last week in Denver that wounded two administrators.

“I was literally moved to tears to see this and the kids as they were being ushered out of the building,” Metropolitan Nashville Police Chief John Drake said Monday during one of several news conferences.

Drake did not give a specific motive when asked by reporters but gave chilling examples of the shooter’s prior planning for the targeted attack.

• Washington Post, 3 children, 3 adults dead in Nashville school shooting, Brittany Shammas, Ben Brasch and Holly Bailey

Politico, Biden renews push to ban assault weapons in wake of Nashville shooting, Kierra Frazier, March 27, 2023. “I call on Congress again to pass my assault weapon ban. It’s about time we begin to make some progress, but there’s more to learn,” Biden said.

President Joe Biden on Monday revived his push for a federal assault weapons ban in the aftermath of a deadly elementary school shooting.

“I call on Congress again to pass my assault weapon ban. It’s about time we begin to make some progress, but there’s more to learn,” Biden said at a Small Business Administration Women’s Business Summit.

The event in the East Room of the White House began lightheartedly as Biden, shown at right in a file photo, opened his address by discussing his favorite ice cream flavor and talking to kids in the audience.

“I came down because I heard there was chocolate chip ice cream,” Biden said. His speech quickly shifted to calling on Congress to ban assault weapons in the wake of the shooting.

Biden called the shooting “heartbreaking” and a “family’s worst nightmare.”

“We have to do more to stop gun violence; it’s ripping our communities apart — ripping the soul of this nation,” Biden said. “And we have to do more to protect our schools, so they aren’t turned into prisons.”

Washington Post, ‘Enough is enough,’ White House says, demands GOP act on assault weapons ban, Mariana Alfaro, March 27, 2023. The White House had a message for Republicans in the immediate aftermath of the Nashville shooting: “Enough is enough.”

“How many more children have to be murdered before Republicans in Congress will step up and act to pass the assault weapons ban, to close loopholes in our background check system, or to require the safe storage of guns?” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters Monday. “We need to do something.”

Jean-Pierre said President Biden has been briefed on the shooting and added that, while “we don’t know yet all the details in this latest tragic shooting, we know that too often our schools and communities are being devastated by gun violence.”

Washington Post, Turmoil in Israel: Netanyahu announces he will delay judicial plan, backtracking after unprecedented protests, Miriam Berger, Leo Sands, Steve Hendrix and Shira Rubin, March 27, 2023. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced Monday that he would delay his government’s plan to overhaul Israel’s judiciary, an effort that has spurred months of mass protests and led to unprecedented nationwide strikes on Monday, including a shutdown of the international airport.

“Out of national responsibility, from a desire to prevent the nation from being torn apart, I am calling to suspend the legislation,” said Netanyahu, adding that he reached the decision with the agreement of the majority of his coalition members.“When there is a possibility to prevent a civil war through negotiations, I will give a time-out for negotiations.” he said.

The plan to remake the courts — which would give Netanyahu’s government greater power to handpick judges, including those presiding over Netanyahu’s corruption trial, in which he is charged in three cases and faces potential prison time — has pitted liberal and secular Jewish Israelis against more right-wing and religiously conservative citizens, along a fault line long in emerging.

New York Times, Inside the U.S. Pressure Campaign Over Israel’s Judicial Overhaul, David E. Sanger, March 27, 2023. President Biden bombarded the Israeli government with warnings that the country’s image as the sole democracy in the Middle East was at stake.

In the 48 hours before Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu reluctantly delayed his effort to overhaul the Israeli judiciary, his government was bombarded by warnings from the Biden administration that he was imperiling Israel’s reputation as the true democracy at the heart of the Middle East.

In a statement on Sunday night, soon after Mr. Netanyahu fired his defense minister because he had broken with the government on the judicial overhaul, the White House noted that President Biden had told Mr. Netanyahu by phone a week ago that democratic values “have always been, and must remain, a hallmark of the U.S.-Israel relationship.” Major changes to the system, Mr. Biden said, must only “be pursued with the broadest possible base of popular support.”

Israeli security personnel, right, confront demonstrators (Photo by Noga Tarnopolsky).

Associated Press, Israeli unions launch strike, upping pressure on Netanyahu, Tia Goldenberg, March 27, 2023. Workers from a range of sectors in Israel launched a nationwide strike on Monday, threatening to paralyze the economy as they joined a surging protest movement against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s plan to overhaul the judiciary.

Workers from a range of sectors in Israel launched a nationwide strike on Monday, threatening to paralyze the economy as they joined a surging protest movement against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s plan to overhaul the judiciary.

Departing flights from the country’s main international airport were grounded, large mall chains and universities shut their doors, and Israel’s largest trade union called for its 800,000 members — in health, transit, banking and other fields — to stop work. Local governments were expected to close the preschools they run and cut other services, and the main doctors union announced its members would also walk off the job.

The growing resistance to Netanyahu’s plan came hours after tens of thousands of people burst into the streets around the country in a spontaneous show of anger at the prime minister’s decision to fire his defense minister, Yoav Gallant, shown at right in 2016 photo, after he called for a pause to the overhaul. Chanting “the country is on fire,” they lit bonfires on Tel Aviv’s main highway, closing the thoroughfare and many others throughout the country for hours.

Thousands of protesters gathered Monday outside the Knesset, or parliament, to keep up the pressure.

New York Times, Key Israeli Party Agrees to Delay Divisive Judicial Plan as Protests Rage, Patrick Kingsley, March 27, 2023. Here’s the latest in Israel’s political crisis.

The head of a powerful far-right political party, Itamar Ben Gvir, said Monday he was now open to delaying a vote on a contentious overhaul of the judiciary, giving Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu the breathing room he may need to de-escalate the protests that have ground Israel to a halt.

Mr. Ben-Gvir, the head of the Jewish Power party in Mr. Netanyahu’s governing coalition, said he had agreed with the Israeli leader that divisive plans to overhaul the judiciary could be delayed until after the upcoming parliamentary recess, removing what had been viewed as the biggest obstacle to any postponement.

Washington Post, Netanyahu’s political touch eludes him as Israel spirals into chaos, Steve Hendrix, March 27, 2023 (print ed.). Little about his government’s sudden push to remake the courts, or its response to the international backlash, bears the hallmark of a Netanyahu production.

Few figures have stood astride the Israeli public arena like Benjamin Netanyahu, right, the longest-serving prime minister in the country’s history.

Over a record six terms, the leader known as “Bibi” has honed an image that is more puppet-master than politician, so often has he eluded scandal, bounced back from defeat and outwitted opponents (and more than a few allies).

But his government’s move to overhaul the judicial system has created a paralyzing political crisis — setting off mass protests, sending the currency plummeting and sparking warnings of “civil war” from Israel’s president. As the upheaval nears its fourth month with no sign of easing, and even spreads into the ranks of Israel’s revered military, the prime minister seems unable, or unwilling, to apply his vaunted touch.

“Where is he in all this? That’s what we’ve all been talking about,” said a former senior member of Netanyahu’s government, who spoke on the condition of anonymity so he could talk candidly about his old boss.

Israel’s military joins nationwide protests over judicial overhaul

Little about the new government’s sudden push to dramatically remake the courts, or its response to the enormous international backlash, bears the hallmark of a Netanyahu production, according to political observers.

“It really is a mystery,” said Anshel Pfeffer, a Jerusalem-based columnist and author of a Netanyahu biography. “It seems almost impossible that this guy who is Israel’s master tactician, political strategist, the maestro of presentation, how did he misread this so badly?”

Netanyahu did not campaign on overhauling the courts in last fall’s election, which resulted in a four-seat parliamentary majority for his coalition of conservative, ultra-Orthodox and nationalist parties. He did not mention judicial changes in his inaugural address, which focused on pledges to counter Iran, befriend Saudi Arabia and modernize infrastructure.

• Associated Press, Netanyahu fires defense minister for urging halt to overhaul

Justice Department Special Prosecutor Jack Smith, left, and former President Donald Trump, shown in a collage via CNN.

Palmer Report, Opinion: Jack Smith is racing to the finish line against Donald Trump, Bill Palmer, March 27, 2023. Even as far too many observers have sat back and accused the DOJ and other prosecutors of “doing nothing” against Donald Trump, what the DOJ has actually been doing all this time is building the kind of extraordinarily comprehensive case required to convince the court system to order key witnesses to testify. The good news is that, after a very long effort on that front, the DOJ has finally made the breakthroughs in court it’s long been seeking.

The catch here has always been that Trump purposely relied on people like presidential advisers and his own attorneys as his co-conspirators, specifically so things like executive privilege and attorney-client privilege would keep those co-conspirators from ever testifying against him even if they wanted to. That’s why the DOJ has had to go to painstaking lengths to convince the courts to waive such privilege.

But last week the DOJ finally managed to get there, on two fronts. First the U.S. Court of Appeals ordered Trump’s attorney Evan Corcoran to testify to the grand jury in the classified documents scandal, which he did on Friday.

Then a federal judge ordered that Trump White House advisers like Mark Meadows had to testify against him to the grand jury in the January 6th case. This ruling is still subject to appeal, and we don’t know whether or not the U.S. Court of Appeals will process it as swiftly as it did the Corcoran appeal. But we do know that the DOJ will win this ruling, and that even if it doesn’t happen overnight, it’ll happen soon.

In other words, after a very long and grueling process to meet the court’s bar for waiving these various forms of privilege that’s been going on since long before Jack Smith arrived on the case, Smith and the DOJ are now in a position where they essentially get to race to the finish line. The hard part is done. The time consuming part is over. One ruling from the U.S. Court of Appeals on January 6th executive privilege, and those folks will all be in front of the grand jury.

To that end, on Sunday morning, Robert Costa reported on CBS Face The Nation that the grand jury in the Trump case is now hearing testimony about the “national security levers” that Trump was inquiring about in the hope of overthrowing the election. In other words, Jack Smith and the DOJ are criminally indicting Donald Trump for everything.

Moreover, in spite of what some folks on social media seem to think, Jack Smith and the DOJ do know how to read a calendar. They will make a point of criminally indicting Donald Trump with enough time left before the start of the 2024 election cycle such that they can get to trial and get a conviction before Trump can even get a whiff of the 2024 election. And no, Trump doesn’t have some magic wand for just delaying his trial for as long as he pleases.

This was all over for Donald Trump when he committed crimes in the name of trying to remain in office, failed, was forced to leave office, and was then stupid enough to commit even more crimes on his way out the door. He was always going to be criminally indicted for those crimes, and it was always going to happen with more than enough time left to try and convict him before Trump was ever going to be able to get serious about 2024. There wasn’t going to be a different outcome – and that’s now becoming more clear than ever.

Politico, Former National Enquirer publisher testifies before Trump grand jury, Erica Orden and Wesley Parnell, March 27, 2023. Former National Enquirer publisher David Pecker, shown at right in the file photo above, testified Monday before the grand jury examining Donald Trump’s alleged role in paying hush money to a porn star, according to a news report and related photograph.

Monday was the first time in a week that the grand jury heard evidence in the Trump case. The panel was called off Wednesday and then examined an unrelated matter Thursday. The delay prompted a fiery response from Trump, leading some Democrats to rally around Bragg on Monday morning.

Bragg’s investigation is centered on a $130,000 payment facilitated by Trump’s former fixer, Michael Cohen, and made to the porn star, Stormy Daniels. The adult entertainer alleged she had an affair with Trump and considered selling her story to the National Enquirer, at a time when Pecker was the tabloid’s publisher, according to federal prosecutors. Instead, Cohen paid Daniels directly, a step he told a court he took “in coordination with and at the direction of” Trump.

Trump has denied the affair and any wrongdoing with the payment.

Pecker previously testified before the Manhattan grand jury examining the Trump investigation, according to a person familiar with the matter. It wasn’t clear why he was called back to provide further testimony. Before the publisher, the grand jury heard from Robert Costello, a former legal adviser to Cohen, who is the prosecution’s central witness in the case.

Costello said at a press conference after his testimony that he sought to discredit Cohen while speaking to the grand jury.

Charlie Weissinger, tosses away the paneling from one of the desks in his father's demolished law office in Rolling Fork, Miss., Saturday, March 25, 2023. Emergency officials in Mississippi say several people have been killed by tornadoes that tore through the state on Friday night, destroying buildings and knocking out power as severe weather produced hail the size of golf balls moved through several southern states. (AP Photo/Rogelio V. Solis)

New York Times, In a Tornado’s Wake, a Mississippi Town Wrestles With Grief and Gratitude, Rick Rojas, Eduardo Medina, Emily Cochrane and Anushka Patil, March 27, 2023 (print ed.). Following a storm that killed at least 26 people across two states, residents tried to make sense of the lives lost and spared. The cleanup has started in Rolling Fork, with residents and volunteers picking through the rubble to salvage what they can. Officials have even started talking about rebuilding, contemplating the long and arduous road the community must now navigate.

But many in Rolling Fork were struggling to maneuver the present amid grief so pervasive it was hard to look ahead.

Even as the mayor, Eldridge Walker, vowed Rolling Fork would “come back, bigger and better than ever before,” he acknowledged what he was seeing in his other job as a funeral director. “I’m having to meet my families, those that have lost loved ones,” Mr. Walker said in a news conference on Sunday, “and help them make it through this traumatic time.”

The turbulence reached beyond Rolling Fork as more severe weather pummeled the Southeast on Sunday. Two tornadoes touched down on Sunday in Georgia, scraping through three counties south of Atlanta, damaging dozens of structures, including 20 homes, and causing some injuries, the authorities said. There were also threats of possible tornadoes in parts of Louisiana and Mississippi.

State and federal officials surveyed the destruction in Mississippi on Sunday and promised an influx of support. “Help is on the way,” Gov. Tate Reeves told residents.

“We are here not just today but for the long haul,” Alejandro Mayorkas, the homeland security secretary, said during a visit to Rolling Forks on Sunday.

And just like in Rolling Fork, the storm system on Friday also left communities scattered along its path to grapple with what had been lost.

In Carroll County, Miss., which is nearly 90 miles northeast of Rolling Fork, Helen Munford and her husband, Danny, were killed with their 14-year-old son, Jadarrion, when their home was leveled along with several others on family property there.

• Associated Press, Biden declares emergency as crews dig through storm wreckage, Leah Willingham

Washington Post, Trump, under legal threat, tries to short-circuit DeSantis momentum, Isaac Arnsdorf, Isaac Stanley-Becker and Hannah Knowles, March 26, 2023 (print ed.). The former president holds his first rally of the 2024 campaign on Saturday, as he seeks to further slow his chief GOP rival.

Donald Trump’s relentless attacks against Ron DeSantis and his recent polling gains over his top GOP rival are rattling some close allies of the Florida governor, according to people with knowledge of the situation, tempering their expectations about the presidential primary.

Pollsters and strategists attribute a recent shift in momentum to Trump supporters returning to his corner — forgetting their dissatisfaction over key midterm losses and remembering what they liked about his record as president. Polls show Trump has opened up double-digit leads over DeSantis, while Trump’s attacks on DeSantis have resonated with Republicans, some recent focus groups conducted by anti-Trump GOP strategist Sarah Longwell show.

The 2024 contest is just beginning and the dynamics could change when DeSantis engages in the race as an official candidate. But the early measures of public support suggest Trump is building his political strength amid criminal investigations, including a possible indictment by the Manhattan district attorney.

The former president has used increasingly ominous language to describe the situation, echoing his language before the attack on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. He warned Friday of “potential death & destruction” if he’s charged and had previously urged a “PROTEST” over his potential arrest.

On Saturday, Trump held the first mega-rally of his 2024 campaign, in Waco, Texas, amid the 30th anniversary of a deadly federal raid there that fueled the growth of the anti-government militia movement. Trump aides said the timing and location was unrelated, and rooted in a desire to appeal to evangelicals, with a revival this week at nearby Baylor University, and to appear in a large and centrally located venue in a state that votes on “Super Tuesday,” a key date in the nominating competition.

“When they go after me, they’re going after you,” Trump told a crowd of thousands in a roughly hour-and-a-half speech in which he sought to cast himself as the victim of one “phony investigation after another.” Behind him, supporters held up signs that read “WITCH HUNT.”

Trump made an extended attack on DeSantis, at one point giving a mocking portrayal of DeSantis begging for his endorsement in Florida’s 2018 gubernatorial primary. But the audience appeared most engaged when Trump was railing against targets that unify the Republican base — President Biden, the “fake news,” “gender ideology.” Trump spoke of “demonic forces” and reiterated a dark refrain that, “for those who have been wronged and betrayed … I am your retribution.”

DeSantis has moved toward entering the race but is not expected to officially join until at least May. Some of his political aides as well as at least one executive appointee close to the governor, among others in his circles, have adjusted their thinking about the contest, according to the people with knowledge of the discussions, who like others spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe private talks. Whereas some allies had been anticipating a “coronation,” as one person described the thinking of people close to the governor, more are now stressing that a DeSantis victory will require a lengthy, 50-state delegate fight.

DeSantis’s political team didn’t comment on the matter.

“There’s no denying that former president Trump has an organization that’s ready to go and a very high floor with upward mobility,” said Jimmy Centers, a Republican operative based in Iowa who is not aligned with a 2024 candidate. He stressed that many primary voters in the state remain open to other contenders. “It’s also just a result of folks knowing President Trump whereas other candidates have a lot of work to do.”

In four high-quality national surveys that have measured the field since winter, Trump has built his lead over DeSantis in the past few months. Trump leads DeSantis by 16 points in Yahoo/YouGov’s survey this month (and in late February), up from one or two points in previous months. Monmouth University’s poll swung from a 13-point lead for DeSantis in December to a 14-point lead for Trump now. A March Quinnipiac poll found Trump with a 14-point lead, up from a six-point lead he had over DeSantis in February, and a February Economist/YouGov poll saw Trump’s lead grow from where it was in November.

Early primary polls are often volatile, and the recent history of Republican primaries is bursting with examples of early leaders who never made to the ballot. Still, both rival teams are now adapting to the momentum shift, with Trump’s campaign projecting confidence and DeSantis’s campaign-in-waiting hunkering down for a drawn-out contest.

“What’s hurt DeSantis is he’s gotten into a lane where he’s trying to say, ‘I’ll be Trump but not Trump,’ and most of these voters say, ‘We want Trump,’” said John McLaughlin, a pollster for the Trump campaign whose latest findings track with the public surveys. “My only problem is the election is still 20 months out.”

Some DeSantis allies said the governor remains in a strong position and will have plenty of time to catch up. One person in touch with DeSantis’s team said they have always been clear-eyed about the challenges of taking on Trump. Another person close to the governor’s political orbit said DeSantis has “steel for a spine” and ridiculed the idea that DeSantis would “bend to silly smear tactics.”

Other supporters voiced public confidence. “Should he announce, I think you’ll see him get a bump,” said former Republican congressman Lou Barletta of Pennsylvania, an early Trump backer in 2016 who is now squarely behind DeSantis. “People in many states are just getting to know him, and campaigns are long.”

Washington Post, Indicted Chinese exile controls Gettr social media site, ex-employees say, Joseph Menn, March 27, 2023 (print ed.). Guo Wengui, arrested March 15 on fraud charges, was known to have invested, but the extent of his influence on the site has not been previously reported.

An exiled Chinese tycoon indicted in New York earlier this month in a billion-dollar fraud case controls the conservative social media platform Gettr and used it to promote cryptocurrencies and propaganda, former employees have told The Washington Post.

They said the arrested expatriate, Guo Wengui, and his longtime money manager, William Je, called the shots at the company while Donald Trump senior adviser Jason Miller was its chief executive and public face. Miller served in that capacity from before Gettr’s July 4, 2021, launch until this month, when he returned to work on his third Trump presidential campaign.

Gettr doled out tens of thousands of dollars to right-wing figures including Trump adviser Stephen K. Bannon, sent money to contractors affiliated with Guo, and altered information on Gettr users that law enforcement agencies had sought, according to the former employees and internal company documents obtained by The Post.

The revelations show that a man accused of massive fraud on two continents climbed high into Trump’s political sphere and dictated messaging at a social media site that reaches millions of Americans.

Guo was arrested March 15 at his Fifth Avenue penthouse in New York, where a fire broke out as agents hunted for documents. Je, who lives in London, remains at large.

Federal prosecutors in Manhattan have charged both men with 11 counts of securities and wire fraud, money laundering and related offenses and Je with an additional count of obstruction. The legal documents do not allege any wrongdoing at Gettr; prosecutors did not return a call seeking comment Friday.

Guo was known to have been a Gettr investor, but his dominant financing role and ability to influence hiring and content decisions at the platform have not previously been reported.

Miller has said previously that Guo invested in Gettr indirectly through a family foundation and that an international fund was another part-owner. But two former Gettr employees told The Post that Miller told them that the international fund was Hamilton Investment Management, where Je is founder and chief executive.

Miller “publicly mentioned an international investment fund. To me, he specified the name Hamilton Investments,” Ben Badejo, Gettr’s former director of trust and safety, said in an interview.

The second former employee, speaking on the condition of anonymity to avoid retaliation, said that they had asked Miller about Guo’s backing before joining the company and that Miller misled them by saying Guo had an indirect, minority stake. They said that after they had been working there for a time, Miller said another significant investor was Hamilton.

Politico, Crypto sector sees an existential moment in the U.S., Declan Harty, March 27, 2023 (print ed.). The clash marks the latest front in what is already an all-out battle between the once high-flying industry and officials in Washington.

Crypto businesses have warned for months that the Biden administration is quietly moving to push them out of the U.S.

Now, with the collapse of three crypto-friendly banks, they say the evidence is piling up.

The Federal Reserve and other top regulators are cautioning banks about crypto’s risks. The SEC is threatening to sue the largest digital asset exchange. And White House officials recently questioned whether digital tokens had any “fundamental value.”

The $1 trillion crypto industry is going on the offensive against what executives say is an existential threat to “de-bank” digital asset businesses, mounting a lobbying campaign to oppose efforts to discourage lenders from taking them on as customers.

“The concern is very real,” Sen. Bill Hagerty (R-Tenn.), one of several GOP lawmakers allied with the industry, said in an interview. “We’ve seen this sort of regulatory abuse before with Operation Choke Point,” the Obama-era program that pushed banks away from financing gun dealers and payday lenders. “A lot of the facts are lining up in the same manner right here, right now.”

The clash marks the latest front in what is already an all-out battle between the once high-flying industry and officials in Washington that could shape the future of crypto in the U.S. European lawmakers are trying to court crypto companies, sparking concern among Republicans that the U.S. may see its reputation as a home for financial innovation diminished.

The Blockchain Association, a leading advocacy group, is vowing to investigate concerns that regulators are de-banking crypto firms. Ryan Selkis, CEO of Messari, a major research firm, is pressing lawmakers to scrutinize agencies like the FDIC over claims that the fall of both Silvergate Capital and Signature Bank was connected to their crypto ties. And lawmakers like Hagerty and Rep. Tom Emmer of Minnesota, the No. 3 Republican in the House, are joining the fight.

Global News, Migration, Human Rights

New York Times, After Doling Out Huge Loans, China Is Now Bailing Out Countries, Keith Bradsher, March 27, 2023. Beijing is emerging as a new heavyweight in providing emergency funds to debt-ridden countries, catching up to the I.M.F. as a lender of last resort.

Wayne Madsen Report, Investigative Commentary: ANTIFA (Anti-fascism) is on the streets around the world, Wayne Madsen, March 27, 2023. From Tbilisi and Tel Aviv to New Delhi and Cusco, the forces of anti-fascism, or "Antifa" if one likes, are taking a stand against fascist tyrants trying to overturn democratic governance.

In Israel, protesters and strikers have all but shut the country down as hard-right Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu tries to force through legislation that would put him and his far-right political allies in charge of the judiciary, including the Supreme Court. Enactment of the law would prevent a continuing criminal investigation of Netanyahu from proceeding. Republicans in the U.S. House are attempting something similar by proposing a law that would prevent local and state prosecutors from investigating former President Donald Trump.

The massive protests in Israel and the Republic of Georgia are shining examples of people who have had enough of fascism. In Georgia, protests in the capital of Tbilisi forced the pro-Russian government of Prime Minister Irakli Garibashvili to temporarily scrap a law that would require "foreign agents" -- defined as journalists, human rights advocates, and others -- to register with the government. The inspiration for the law is one enacted by Vladimir Putin in Russia. Georgia's pro-Western president, Salome Zourabichvili, had promised to veto the bill before it was withdrawn.

New York Times, Taiwan’s Ex-President Heads to China in Historic and Closely Watched Visit, Chris Horton, March 27, 2023. Though his visit is not official, it is nonetheless significant and may offer clues to political calculations on both sides of the increasingly tense Taiwan Strait.

Taiwan’s former president, Ma Ying-jeou, landed in China on Monday in the first visit to the country by any sitting or former Taiwanese leader since China’s civil war ended with the Nationalist government retreating to the island from the mainland in 1949.

Though the 12-day visit by Mr. Ma, who was president from 2008 to 2016, is unofficial, it is likely to be watched closely at home and abroad for clues on how Beijing might seek to influence Taiwan, its democratic neighbor, ahead of a presidential election in January. The timing of Mr. Ma’s trip is also noteworthy because he departed just days before Taiwan’s current leader, President Tsai Ing-wen, visits the United States, a trip that has been met with objections by China, which claims Taiwan as its territory.

The contrasting destinations highlight what each politician’s party sees as its advantage. Ms. Tsai, of the Democratic Progressive Party, has strengthened U.S.-Taiwan ties during her eight years in office, while the Chinese Nationalist Party, or Kuomintang, to which Mr. Ma belongs, bills itself as better able to deal with Beijing.

President Tsai will leave Taiwan on Wednesday for a trip to Central America, with what officials have described as transit stops in the United States planned in New York and Los Angeles. Beijing has said it “strongly opposed” Ms. Tsai’s planned U.S. trip and any form of contact between the United States and Taiwan’s authorities. On Saturday, in a blow to Taipei’s international standing shortly before Ms. Tsai’s overseas trip, Honduras announced it was severing diplomatic ties with Taipei in favor of Beijing.

Washington Post, Harris heads to Africa amid Biden’s urgent courtship of the continent, Cleve R. Wootson Jr. and Katharine Houreld, March 26, 2023 (print ed.). The United States seeks to counter efforts by China, Russia and others to woo the continent after the turbulent Trump years.

As Vice President Harris on Saturday launches her first trip to Africa since taking office — part of an all-out push by the Biden administration to show African leaders it is committed to bolstering ties — she will confront widespread suspicions on the continent that the effort reflects a drive to counter China and Russia, not a deeper desire to improve relations with Africans for their own sake.

Harris’s week-long trip includes stops in Ghana, Tanzania and Zambia, chosen because they are striving to maintain democracy in the face of economic pressures roiling the continent, White House officials said. Harris met with the leaders of all three countries during the U.S.-Africa Leaders Summit in December, and she sees the nine-day journey as an extension of those dialogues, the officials said.

“The message is the same that the president delivered when we had the African leaders summit here in December,” said White House spokesman John Kirby. “And that’s that Africa matters, the continent matters, and our relationships across the continent all matter. So this is very much about Africa — African leaders, African nations — and not about anybody else.”

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More On Probes of Trump, Allies 

Meidas Touch Network, Commentary: The SECRETS of Trump’s New Lawyer EXPOSED, Ben Meiselas, March 26, 2023. MeidasTouch host Ben Meiselas delivers this exposé on Donald Trump’s new lawyer, Jennifer Little (shown in a screenshot from a CBS News appearance), who was just compelled to testify under the crime fraud exception by federal judge Beryl Howell in DC Federal Court.

New York Times, What We Know About the Potential Indictment of Donald Trump, Ben Protess, Jonah E. Bromwich and William K. Rashbaum
March 20, 2023. A case against the former president — who is also a current presidential candidate — would pose challenges for prosecutors. Here’s why.

Washington Post, Trump lawyer Evan Corcoran appears before Mar-a-Lago grand jury in D.C., Perry Stein, Josh Dawsey, Devlin Barrett and Jacqueline Alemany, March 25, 2023 (print ed.). Appearance follows an appeals court victory for prosecutors seeking evidence from the former president’s lawyer in the classified-documents case.

A key lawyer for Donald Trump appeared Friday before a federal grand jury investigating whether the former president sought to keep top-secret documents in his home — testimony that capped an ultimately losing effort by Trump’s legal team to prevent prosecutors from reviewing the lawyer’s notes and other documents in the case.

Shortly before 9 a.m., Evan Corcoran, right, strode into the federal courthouse in D.C., where judges had previously ruled he could not use attorney-client privilege to shield his material from investigators. He left about 12:20 p.m. Both Corcoran and his lawyer, Michael Levy — who accompanied his client to the courthouse but is not allowed to enter the grand jury room with him — declined to comment to waiting reporters.

U.S. District Judge Beryl Howell ruled last week that there was evidence suggesting Trump misled his lawyers in the course of the classified-documents investigation, and therefore prosecutors were allowed to review the evidence, according to people familiar with the case who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive legal issues.

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U.S. Politics, Elections, Economy, Governance

New York Times, Opinion: MAGA, Not Trump, Controls the Movement Now, David French, right, March 27, 2023 (print ed.). To understand the social and political dynamic on the modern right, you have to understand how millions of Americans became inoculated against the truth. Throughout the 2016 Republican primaries, there was no shortage of Republican leaders and commentators who were willing to call out Trump. John McCain and Mitt Romney, the party’s two previous presidential nominees, even took the extraordinary step of condemning their successor in no uncertain terms.

Yet every time Trump faced pushback, he and his allies called critics “elitist” or “fake news” or “weak” or “cowards.” It was much easier to say the Trump skeptics had “Trump derangement syndrome,” or were “just establishment stooges,” than to engage with substantive critique. Thus began the coddling of the populist mind (ironic for a movement that delighted in calling progressive students “snowflakes”).

Disagreement on the right quickly came to be seen as synonymous with disrespect. If “we the people” (the term Trump partisans apply to what they call the “real America”) believe something, then the people deserve to have that view reflected right back to them by their politicians and pundits.

We see this in the internal Fox News documents that surfaced in the Dominion defamation litigation, in which Dominion Voting Systems sued Fox News for broadcasting false claims about its voting machines after the 2020 election. Repeatedly, Fox leaders and personalities who did not seem to believe the 2020 election was stolen referred to the need to “respect” their audience by telling them otherwise. For these Fox staffers, respecting the audience didn’t mean relaying the truth (a true act of respect). Instead, it meant feeding viewers’ insatiable hunger for confirmation of their conspiracy theories.

Politico, Durbin endorses Vallas for Chicago mayor, Shia Kapos, March 27, 2023. U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL), right, who made the announcement in Greektown ahead of the annual Greek Independence Day Parade, called Vallas, above left, “a lifelong Democrat” who can be a “bridge” to the community and offer “support and straight talk” to law enforcement.

Durbin’s endorsement drew an outcry on Twitter from the left-leaning supporters of Vallas’ rival, Brandon Johnson, above right, who has worked to portray Vallas as conservative.

The claim has been Vallas’ Achilles heel. His past appearances on conservative talk shows, where he dissed some revered Democrats, has been a persistent talking point during the campaign.

Durbin’s endorsement gives cover to moderate Democrats who have waivered on voting because they see Vallas as too far right or Johnson too far left.

The endorsement by the second highest ranking Democrat in the Senate comes ahead of Sen. Bernie Sanders headlining a pre-election rally for Johnson. The progressive Vermont senator doesn’t exactly have coattails in Illinois, but he can energize Johnson’s base.

Factoid: Durbin is an ally of President Joe Biden, who in the 2020 primary beat Sanders in Chicago, via Block Club.

Not endorsing: Gov. JB Pritzker, who’s butted heads with Durbin at times over Illinois Democratic Party politics, is staying out of the race.

The issue of race is dominating the final days of the election: “It’s playing out in one of the most segregated cities in the country, where a Black progressive is competing against a white moderate and where the course of the city’s next four years, including the safety of its residents, may very well turn on the coveted Black vote — a vote neither Johnson nor Vallas won in the first round,” by NBC’s Natasha Korecki.

Numbers to chew on: The Chicago Board of Elections crunched the citywide turnout totals from the Feb. 28 election by age group and sex. Chart here

About the polling: Neither candidate has “sparked interest” among Latino voters, says Rod McCulloch of Victory Research, whose recent polling shows “a dead heat” between Vallas and Johnson, via The Crisis Cast with Lissa Druss and Thom Serafin.

New York Times, The Dual Education of Hakeem Jeffries, Nicholas Fandos, March 27, 2023. Shaped by Black Brooklyn and trained by Manhattan’s legal elite, the House Democrats’ new leader is not easily pigeonholed.

Washington Post, RetropolisThe Past, Rediscovered: One of Edgar Allen Poe’s darkest stories is the mystery of his own death, Randy Dotinga, March 26, 2023. New research suggests election fraud may have contributed to the famous author’s demise in Baltimore.

He’s our reigning master of the macabre, whose ghostly imagination still transports us to the eeriest of places. But one of Edgar Allan Poe’s darkest stories didn’t come from his pen. It’s the haunting mystery of his own death.

On a fall morning in 1849, Poe (shown above in a 1921 painting now at the Library of Congress) died in a Baltimore hospital after a stranger had found him “in great distress” a few days earlier outside a polling place during an election. The 40-year-old had been missing for almost a week. His deathbed symptoms — fever and delusions — were so vague that they’ve spawned dozens of theories, including poisoning, alcoholism, rabies, syphilis, suicide and homicide.

Now an Ohio journalist has conducted an extensive investigation into Poe’s death. In his new book, A Mystery of Mysteries: The Death and Life of Edgar Allan Poe, Mark Dawidziak contends that the evidence points to tuberculosis, an illness that is forever linked to artistic genius and literary martyrdom. But he says there’s a co-conspirator: an affliction known as election fraud.

Dawidziak believes that Poe failed to get proper medical care because he was “cooped” — an election-rigging scheme at the time that involved snatching someone from the streets, confining and perhaps drugging him, then trotting him out to vote again and again.

“It’s a very Baltimore explanation,” Dawidziak said. “It was a tough, tough town, nicknamed Mobtown because they took their rioting seriously.” Poe knew this as well as anyone: In 1835, when he and his family lived in the city, a three-day riot over the failure of a local bank left prominent houses burned and at least 12 people fatally shot.

While Poe will forever be linked to Baltimore — his final resting place and the home of an NFL team named in honor of his poem “The Raven” — he was only passing through the nation’s second-largest city right before he died. (Baltimore, in an overwhelmingly rural country, towered over Philadelphia, Boston and New Orleans in 1850 with a population of 169,000.)

On Sept. 27, 1849, Poe appears to have boarded a steamer in Richmond, where he had been wooing a childhood sweetheart. A day later, he disembarked in Baltimore, apparently to catch a train to Philadelphia, where he had a temporary poetry-editing gig lined up, before going on to New York City, the only U.S. city with more people than Baltimore.

Poe’s clothes seem to be an important clue. He turned up on election day, and the tavern where he was found served as a polling place as Marylanders chose their representatives in Congress. (At the time, states set their own election dates.) This is the crux of the theory that Poe was “cooped.”

Around election time, “ruffians would go out in the street, find someone vulnerable and indigent, hit them over the head, ‘coop’ them up in a room, and feed them alcohol and maybe opium until it’s time to vote,” Jang said. The kidnappers might change the man’s appearance throughout the day, she said, so they could fool election workers and have the person vote multiple times.

Washington Post, D.C. political consultant’s 2022 death in New York ruled a homicide, Salvador Rizzo, March 27, 2023 (print ed.). Before she could grieve her son, Linda Clary had to find out how he really died.

John Umberger, a political consultant in the District, was found dead in a Manhattan townhouse in June 2022, his accounts mysteriously drained of more than $20,000 after he went to a popular gay nightclub and left with two men, Clary said.

The medical examiner said Umberger died of “intoxication by the combined effects of fentanyl” and four other substances, according to his death certificate.

“They wanted to tell me that John died of a drug overdose — he got robbed and was just depressed,” Clary said. “And I said no.”

Along with her sisters and a niece, Clary dug through Umberger’s call records and text messages, discovering that he never got into the last cab he ordered, while more than $20,000 had been withdrawn from his bank accounts, she said. Clary said she traveled from her home in Georgia to show a timeline she had put together to the New York Police Department’s 19th Precinct, hoping to spur more of an investigation.

The New York medical examiner ruled Umberger’s death a homicide March 3, nine months after his body was found, according to a city spokesperson.

Clary said police have told her they are investigating organized robbery rings that drug their targets and then gain access to their electronic devices — and the sensitive data stored on them — by using facial recognition security features.

New York authorities said that another victim, Julio Ramirez, died by overdosing on the same drugs as Umberger after leaving a bar in the same neighborhood about a month earlier, his funds also drained from his accounts. On Friday, city officials said Kathryn Gallagher, a 36-year-old fashion designer who was found dead about two months after Umberger from a similar drug cocktail, also was a homicide victim.

Clary said she is frustrated by the length of time it took for her son’s death to be ruled a homicide and for a full investigation to be underway.

Umberger, who grew up in the Atlanta area and worked as an aide to politicians, including Republican National Committee chair Reince Priebus and Sen. Saxby Chambliss (R-Ga.), was usually the one telling people in the doldrums to stop “complaining and go do something about it,” Clary said.

Friends, family and former bosses recalled in interviews how Umberger had a knack for enlivening rooms and conversations. He was a gyrokinesis instructor, a folk art collector, a fan of Nepali dumplings in Adams Morgan and impromptu games of backgammon, they said. Umberger volunteered for a group that plants trees along Embassy Row in the District, according to his obituary. At the time of his death, he was the director of diplomacy and political programs for the American Center for Law and Justice, a conservative legal group.

Umberger had a presidential appointment as the FERC’s director of operations during the Trump administration, but “he was such a larger-than-life figure that his role there significantly surpassed whatever title was ascribed to him,” Chatterjee said.

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More On Ukraine War

New York Times, Thousands of Ukrainians are enduring dire conditions around Bakhmut as the fighting shows no signs of letting up, aid groups say, Matthew Mpoke Bigg and Victoria Kim, March 25, 2023. The battle for the city has been the most violent of recent months, creating an increasingly dire humanitarian crisis for the few remaining civilians.

Ukrainian forces could be close to stabilizing the front lines in Bakhmut, the commander of the country’s armed forces said, as international aid workers warned that civilians remaining in the war-ravaged eastern city faced a dire humanitarian situation.

The battle for Bakhmut, which began in the summer, has become one of Russia’s longest-running and deadliest confrontations in the 13 months of war. The fighting in and around the city has been the most violent of recent months and does not appear to be letting up, with both Russian and Ukrainian officials expressing this past week an unwillingness to yield.

The Ukrainian commander, Gen. Valeriy Zaluzhnyi, said in a post on the Telegram messaging app on Friday that, thanks to the “titanic efforts” of the city’s defenders, the situation “could be stabilized,” though he acknowledged the ferocity of the battle.

Other Ukrainian officials, backed by a report from British intelligence, maintained that the overall pace of Russian attacks in eastern Ukraine was subsiding, indicating that Moscow’s winter offensive may be running out of steam after heavy losses.

• New York Times, Support Grows to Have Russia Pay for Ukraine’s Rebuilding, March 25, 2023.

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U.S. Courts, Crime, Immigration, Guns

Washington Post, From outcast to political symbol: How the AR-15 emerged as an icon, Todd C. Frankel, Shawn Boburg, Josh Dawsey, Ashley Parker and Alex Horton, March 27, 2023. The AR-15 thrives in times of tension and tragedy. This is how it came to dominate the marketplace – and loom so large in the American psyche.

The AR-15 wasn’t supposed to be a best-seller. It's the result of a dramatic shift in American gun culture fueled by the firearms industry and its allies.

New York Times, ISIS Matchmaker Gets 18 Years in First Trial Under N.Y. Terrorism Law, Colin Moynihan, March 23, 2023. Abdullah el-Faisal, a Jamaican cleric, was the first person to face a jury under state terrorism laws passed after Sept. 11. He was not in the city when he committed his crimes.

After ISIS promised in 2014 that the world would “hear and understand the meaning of terrorism,” fervent western support came from a Jamaican preacher once imprisoned in Britain for urging violence, and later expelled from Kenya by officials fearing he would encourage radicalism.

Over the next three years, according to the Manhattan district attorney’s office, the preacher, Abdullah el-Faisal, helped ISIS any way he could, praising its ideology in lectures, publishing propaganda online and even acting as a marriage broker for its fighters.

Mr. Faisal was convicted this year of conspiracy and supporting terrorism after prosecutors presented evidence that he had discussed ISIS with an undercover New York City police officer and given her a phone number for a fighter in Syria.

On Thursday, Justice Maxwell Wiley of State Supreme Court in Manhattan sentenced Mr. Faisal to 18 years in prison, saying he had “continually advocated for murder, kidnapping and other violent crimes.”

New York Times, The Largest Source of Stolen Guns? Parked Cars, Richard Fausset, March 25, 2023. The growing number of firearms kept in vehicles has become a new point of contention in the debate over gun safety.

On a Sunday in January 2022, a Glock 9mm pistol, serial number AFDN559, disappeared from a Dodge Charger parked near a Midtown Nashville bank after someone smashed in the rear driver’s side window.

Ten months later, Nashville police officers arrested three teenagers suspected in a series of shootings, and discovered a cache of weapons in a nearby apartment. Among them was AFDN559. Forensic analysts would later tie the Glock to three shootings, including an attack in August that wounded four youths and another that wounded a 17-year-old girl in September.

In a country awash with guns, with more firearms than people, the parked car, or in many cases the parked pickup truck, has become a new flashpoint in the debates over how and whether to regulate gun safety.

There is little question about the scope of the problem. A report issued in May by the gun-control group Everytown for Gun Safety analyzed FBI crime data in 271 American cities, large and small, from 2020 and found that guns stolen from vehicles have become the nation’s largest source of stolen firearms — with an estimated 40,000 guns stolen from cars in those cities alone.

New York Times, 2 Migrants Found Dead and 13 Others Ill on Train in Texas, Officials Say, Edgar Sandoval, March 25, 2023 (print ed.). The migrants were found trapped inside a sweltering shipping container that was stopped near a town in Uvalde County, according to officials.

The bodies of two people believed to be migrants who had crossed into Texas from Mexico were found on Friday, along with 13 more people, including at least five who were in critical condition, inside a shipping container on a train in Uvalde County, officials said.

The train, which was stopped by U.S. Border Patrol agents, was traveling near the town of Knippa through an area of Texas known for frequent immigration crossings.

At 3:50 p.m., a person called 911 and told dispatchers that about 12 to 15 people were experiencing severe symptoms of dehydration and were trapped inside a sweltering shipping container in an area where spring temperatures have hovered in the 80s in recent days, said Daniel Rodriguez, the chief of police for the city of Uvalde, about 11 miles west of Knippa. “The way they said it was, they were suffocating — they were having trouble breathing” he said.

It was unclear if the call had come from inside the container or if one of the people trapped inside had managed to call a relative and ask for help, said the mayor of Uvalde, Don McLaughlin Jr., who was briefed by the authorities.

The local police immediately contacted U.S. Border Patrol agents, who were able to stop the train about three miles east of Knippa, a town of fewer than 1,000 people, the chief said. When the Border Patrol agents arrived, the container was locked and “wired shut,” Mr. McLaughlin said.

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U.S. Banks, Economy, Jobs, CryptoCurrencies

Associated Press, First Citizens to acquire troubled Silicon Valley Bank, Staff Report, March 27, 2023. North Carolina-based First Citizens will buy Silicon Valley Bank, the tech industry-focused financial institution that collapsed earlier this month, rattling the banking industry and sending shockwaves around the world.

The deal could reassure investors at a time of shaken confidence in banks, though the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. and other regulators had already taken extraordinary steps to head off a wider banking crisis by guaranteeing that depositors in SVB and another failed U.S. bank would be able to access all of their money.

Customers of SVB will automatically become customers of First Citizens, which is headquartered in Raleigh. The 17 former branches of SVB will open as First Citizens branches Monday, the FDIC said.

Nasdaq-traded shares of First Citizen BancShares Inc. jumped 12.4% to $654.95 in premarket trading Monday. Shares in mid-sized San Francisco-based First Republic Bank, which serves a similar clientele as Silicon Valley Bank and had appeared to be facing a similar crisis, surged 24.3% in premarket trading.

Washington Post, Hundreds of banks would be vulnerable in SVB-style runs, researchers say, Erica Werner, March 25, 2023 (print ed.). Hundreds of banks in the United States would be in danger of failing if they were hit by runs similar to the one that recently brought down Silicon Valley Bank, according to a study published Friday.

Economists at Stanford, University of Southern California, Columbia and Northwestern found that because of rising interest rates hurting the value of certain assets such as bonds, U.S. banks hold $2 trillion less in assets than they appear to have on paper. As a result, the study found, some banks would not survive a scenario in which many customers withdrew some or all of their uninsured deposits. These banks would find themselves in the position of Silicon Valley Bank, unable to cover mass withdrawals and subject to government takeover, researchers warn.

The study, which is based on data covering more than 4,800 U.S. banks, found that 1,619 banks would be at risk of failing if all their uninsured deposits were withdrawn. In a scenario where half of uninsured depositors withdraw their funds, 186 banks would be at risk, the study concluded.

Washington Post, Recent banking turmoil is spurring many to move their money, Abha Bhattarai, March 25, 2023 (print ed.). An estimated $500 billion in funds have moved out of smaller banks to big institutions and money market funds, JPMorgan says.

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