March 2023 News

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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 24

Top Headlines

 

Tik Tok, Social Media, Artificial Intelligence

 

 More On Trump Probes, Prospects, Allies

 

More On U.S. Election Deniers, Insurrectionists

 

Top Global News

 

More On Russia-China-West Rivalries

 

U.S. Banks, Economy, Jobs, CryptoCurrency


U.S. Election Deniers, Insurrectionists

 

U.S. Politics, Elections, Governance

 

More On Ukraine War

 

U.S. Courts, Crime, Immigration, Guns

 

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

 

climate change photo

 

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

 

Pandemics, Public Health, Privacy

 

U.S. Media, Education, Arts, Sports


Top Stories

ny times logoNew York Times, U.S. and Canada Reach an Agreement on Turning Away Asylum Seekers, Michael D. Shear and Ian Austen, March 24, 2023 (print ed.). The deal allows both countries to turn away people who cross their borders without authorization at a time when migration has surged.

canadian flagThe deal, which is set to be announced Friday by President Biden and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, left, after the two leaders meet in Ottawa, justin trudeau twitterwill allow Canada to turn back immigrants at Roxham Road, a popular unofficial crossing point from New York for migrants seeking asylum in Canada.

In exchange, Canada has agreed to provide a new, legal refugee program for 15,000 migrants who are fleeing violence, persecution and economic devastation in South and Central America, the official said, lessening the pressure of illegal crossings into the United States from Mexico.

Mr. Biden was due to arrive in Ottawa on Thursday evening for a 24-hour visit meant to underscore the unity of purpose between the United States and Canada after four years of frosty and even openly hostile exchanges between Mr. Trudeau and former President Donald J. Trump.

 

 

Justice Department Special Prosecutor Jack Smith, left, and former President Donald Trump, shown in a collage via CNN.

Justice Department Special Prosecutor Jack Smith, left, and former President Donald Trump, shown in a collage via CNN.

ny times logoNew York Times, Court Action Underscores Peril for Trump in Documents Investigation, Maggie Haberman, Alan Feuer, Ben Protess and William K. Rashbaum, March 24, 2023 (print ed.). Prosecutors are building a case that former President Trump obstructed efforts to reclaim classified files and that he may have misled his lawyer.

The behind-the-scenes legal fight over obtaining evidence from a lawyer who represented former President Donald J. Trump in the investigation into his handling of classified documents has brought into sharper view where the Justice Department might be headed with the case.

According to the wisps of information that have seeped out of sealed court filings and closed-door hearings, prosecutors believe they have compelling evidence that Mr. Trump obstructed the government’s efforts to reclaim the sensitive records and may have even misled his own lawyers.

This theory of the case has not changed much since federal agents obtained a search warrant in August based on three possible crimes, obstruction being one of them. The search turned up hundreds of sensitive government records being kept at Mar-a-Lago, Mr. Trump’s heavily trafficked compound in Florida, after his lawyers had earlier assured the Justice Department that all such documents had been returned.

Still, the more recent developments stemming from efforts to force testimony and other evidence from the lawyer, M. Evan Corcoran, in Federal District Court in Washington, indicate that prosecutors have continued to build a case and that the inquiry remains a serious threat to Mr. Trump.

 

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ny times logoNew York Times, A Trump Rally Comes to Waco, 30 Years After Its Darkest Hour, Charles Homans, March 24, 2023. For some, it’s no accident that former President Trump will speak in a city where a fiery raid symbolizes government overreach to the far right. Thirty years ago, a fiery federal raid on a doomsday sect turned the city into a symbol of government overreach. Donald Trump will speak there on Saturday, and some supporters — and critics — say it’s no accident.

In the chapel at Mount Carmel, the longtime home of the Branch Davidian sect outside Waco, Tex., the pastor preaches about the coming apocalypse, as the sect’s doomed charismatic leader David Koresh did three decades ago.

But the prophecies offered by the pastor, Charles Pace, are different from Mr. Koresh’s. For one thing, they involve Donald J. Trump.

“Donald Trump is the anointed of God,” Mr. Pace said in an interview. “He is the battering ram that God is using to bring down the Deep State of Babylon.”

Mr. Trump, embattled by multiple investigations and publicly predicting an imminent indictment in one, announced last week that he would hold the first rally of his 2024 presidential campaign on Saturday at the regional airport in Waco.

The date falls in the middle of the 30th anniversary of the weekslong standoff involving federal agents and followers of Mr. Koresh that left 82 Branch Davidians and four agents dead at Mount Carmel, the group’s compound east of the city.

Mr. Trump has not linked the rally to the anniversary, and his campaign did not respond to requests for comment on whether the rally — his first ever in the city of 140,000 — was an intentional nod to the most infamous episode in Waco’s history. And there are other reasons for the former president to open his campaign in Texas, a state rich in electoral votes where he trailed Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida by double digits in a state Republican Party poll late last year.

But the historical resonance has not been lost on some of Mr. Trump’s most ardent followers. “Waco was an overreach of the government, and today the New York district attorney is practicing an overreach of the government again,” said Sharon Anderson, a retiree from Etowah, Tenn., who is traveling to Waco for Saturday’s event, her 33rd Trump rally.

Mr. Pace said he believed it was “a statement — that he was sieged by the F.B.I. at Mar-a-Lago and that they were accusing him of different things that aren’t really true, just like David Koresh was accused by the F.B.I. when they sieged him.”

ny times logoNew York Times, Prosecutor in Trump Hush-Money Case Fires Back at House Republicans, Luke Broadwater, Jonah E. Bromwich and Ben Protess, March 24, 2023 (print ed.). The grand jury examining the former president’s role in a hush-money payment typically does not hear testimony about the inquiry on Thursdays, making an indictment unlikely before next week.

The Manhattan district attorney on Thursday responded to House Republicans who have scrutinized his office’s criminal investigation into Donald J. Trump, pushing back forcefully against what the office called an inappropriate attempt by Congress to impede a local prosecution.

alvin bragg twitterThe office of the district attorney, Alvin L. Bragg, right, was responding to a Monday letter demanding that he provide communications, documents and testimony about his investigation — an extraordinary request by three Republican committee chairmen to involve themselves in an inquiry that is expected to result in criminal charges against the former president.

The response from the district attorney’s office, signed by its general counsel, Leslie Dubeck, called the Republicans’ request “an unprecedented inquiry into a pending local prosecution.”

Mr. Bragg’s office is investigating the role Mr. Trump played in a hush-money payment to a porn star and there have been several signals that the prosecutors are nearing an indictment. Still, the exact timing remains unknown.

Though the special grand jury hearing evidence about Mr. Trump meets on Thursdays, it typically does not hear evidence about the Trump case that day, according to a person with knowledge of the matter. Special grand juries, which unlike regular grand juries sit for months at a time and hear complex cases, routinely consider multiple cases simultaneously.

Republicans have rushed to the former president’s side this week, following a Saturday post from Mr. Trump inaccurately predicting that he would be arrested Tuesday and calling on his supporters to protest in charged language reminiscent of his social media posts in the weeks before the attack on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

On Saturday, following Mr. Trump’s post, the speaker of the House, Representative Kevin McCarthy, called for investigations into whether federal funds were being used for “politically motivated prosecutions,” an act clearly intended as a threat to Mr. Bragg.

Wayne Madsen Report, Investigative Commentary: Recognizing symbols of hate and right-wing rebellion in the United States, Wayne Madsen, left, March 22-23, 2023. Nazi and other far-wayne madsen may 29 2015 cropped Smallright symbology spreading across America.

The transformation of the Republican Party into a Donald Trump cult and platform advocating fascism has resulted in the mushrooming of symbols of wayne madesen report logohate across the United States. In some cases, flags and banners proclaim loyalty to Trump even though they deface the U.S. flag, thus violating the U.S. Flag Code. Other banners, such as the "Don't Tread on Me" or Gadsden Flag misuse and misrepresent historical flags in being adopted as hate symbols. Nazi swastikas and symbols of the Confederacy have also been resurrected by the Trumpist cult.

Absent a domestic terrorism law, the FBI and other law enforcement agencies are hard-pressed to conduct systematic and uniform surveillance of far-right insurrectionists, but many far-right groups make no effort to hide themselves. In fact, actual and potential seditionists like the Proud Boys, Oath Keepers, and Boogaloo Bois shamefully fly from their vehicles and on their front lawns their symbols of rebellion and hate.

Spotting symbols of insurrection and hate should be a top priority for every American who abides by the rule of law and the Constitution. The black "No Quarter Given" flag is an extremely dangerous symbol. Those who fly it are sovereign citizens who are giving warning that they will shoot to kill anyone on their property.

ny times logoNew York Times, Republicans Say Spending Is Fueling Inflation. The Fed Chair Disagrees, Jim Tankersley, March 24, 2023 (print ed.). Jerome Powell has said that snarled supply chains, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and shifts among American consumers are primarily behind rapid price growth.

jerome powellThe chair of the Federal Reserve, Jerome H. Powell, right, has repeatedly undercut a central claim Republicans make as they seek sharp cuts in federal spending: Government spending is driving the nation’s still-hot inflation rate.

Republican lawmakers say spending programs signed into law by President Biden are pumping too much money into the economy and federal reserve system Customfueling an annual inflation rate that was 6 percent in February — a decline from last year’s highs, but still well above historical norms. Mr. Powell disputed those claims in congressional testimony earlier this month and in a news conference on Wednesday, after the Fed announced it would once again raise interest rates in an effort to bring inflation back toward normal levels.

Asked whether federal tax and spending policies were contributing to price growth, Mr. Powell pointed to a decline in federal spending from the height of the Covid-19 pandemic.

“You have to look at the fiscal impulse from spending,” Mr. Powell said on Wednesday, referring to a measure of how much tax and spending policies are adding or subtracting to economic growth. “Fiscal impulse is actually not what’s driving inflation right now. It was at the beginning perhaps, but that’s not the story right now.”

volodymyer zelensky 3 22 2023 bahkmut ukraine

washington post logoWashington Post, Ukraine Live Updates: Zelensky visits Bakhmut; China’s Xi leaves Russia with no clear progress on ending war, Rachel Pannett and Adela Suliman, March 23, 2023 (print ed.). Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky, shown above at right, made a visit to the front line in Bakhmut, where Russian forces have almost encircled Ukrainian troops, cutting off major transport and supply lines. His office said in a statement Wednesday that Zelensky heard operational updates and presented service men with awards. Controlling Bakhmut is unlikely to tip the war’s outcome but would give Russia a symbolic victory after months of battlefield setbacks.

Chinese leader Xi Jinping departed Russia on Wednesday, wrapping up a three-day trip that underscored Beijing and Moscow’s desire to reshape the global order against Western power but that offered little concrete progress on China’s pledge to promote peace in the Ukraine conflict. Xi and Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a series of agreements to expand trade and deepen strategic ties. Xi reiterated that China has an “impartial position” on the war in Ukraine. The United States later accused China of “parroting the Russian propaganda.”

China’s 12-point proposal does not address the withdrawal of Russian troops from occupied areas of Ukraine and is vague about key issues such as Ukraine’s sovereignty. U.S. officials say any impending cease-fire would only buy Russian troops more time to regroup and would effectively ratify much of the illegal annexation of large swaths of Ukraine. Xi is expected to hold talks with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky following his return from Moscow, although the timing of those discussions is not confirmed.

Ben Barnes, left, with Lady Bird Johnson and her husband, former President Lyndon B. Johnson, in Austin, Tex., on Aug. 29, 1970 (Associated Press photo by Ted Powers).

Ben Barnes, left, with Lady Bird Johnson and her husband, former President Lyndon B. Johnson, in Austin, Tex., on Aug. 29, 1970 (Associated Press photo by Ted Powers). The New York Times reported this week that Barnes revealed to the newspaper that he had played a role, largely unwittingly, in helping Republicans delay the release by Iran of U.S. hostages in 1980 in order to hurt President Jimmy Carter, a Democrat, and help the election campaign of Republican Ronald Reagan. President Carter is shown below in a 1980 Associated Press photo telling the American public that a rescue attempt he had authorized had failed, with resulting in U.S. military rescuers' deaths.

Jimmy Carter 1980

ny times logoNew York Times, Former Iran Hostages Are Divided on Jimmy Carter and a Sabotage Claim, Michael Levenson, March 23, 2023 (print ed.). A report about a covert effort to delay their release until after the 1980 presidential election drew anger, resignation and disbelief from the survivors of the crisis.

They are the last survivors of an international crisis that hobbled Jimmy Carter’s presidency and may have cost him re-election. Many are now in their 80s.

With the former president gravely ill in hospice care, some of the 52 Americans who were held hostage in Iran for 444 days are looking back on Mr. Carter’s legacy with a mix of frustration, sadness and gratitude.

Many feel neglected by the government, which has paid them only about a quarter of the $4.4 million that they were each promised by Congress in 2015, after decades of lobbying for compensation, said their lawyer, V. Thomas Lankford. Some endured physical and mental abuse, including mock executions, during the hostage crisis. About half have died.

Last week, their ordeal was thrust back into the news with the account of a covert effort to delay their release until after the 1980 presidential election in a bid to help the campaign of Mr. Carter’s Republican challenger, Ronald Reagan.

A former Texas politician, Ben Barnes, told The New York Times that he had toured the Middle East that summer with John B. Connally Jr., the former Texas governor, who told regional leaders that Mr. Reagan would win and give the Iranians a “better deal.” Mr. Connally, a former Democrat turned Republican, was angling for a cabinet position.

Mr. Barnes, 84, said that he was speaking out now because “history needs to know that this happened.”

He told The Times that he did not know if the message that Mr. Connally gave to Middle Eastern leaders ever reached the Iranians, or whether it influenced them. Mr. Connally died in 1993. Nor was it clear if Mr. Reagan knew about the trip. Mr. Barnes said Mr. Connally had briefed William J. Casey, the chairman of Mr. Reagan’s campaign and later the director of the Central Intelligence Agency, in an airport lounge after the trip.

The account stirred anger among some of the former hostages, while others dismissed his story of election sabotage as not credible. They are a diverse group that includes former diplomats, retired military officers and academics, and members of both major political parties.

“It’s nice that Mr. Barnes is trying to soothe his soul during the last years of his life,” said Barry Rosen, 79, who was press attaché at the embassy in Tehran when it was overrun on Nov. 4, 1979. “But for the hostages who went through hell, he has not helped us at all. He has made it just as bad or worse.”

Mr. Rosen, who lives in New York, said that Mr. Barnes should have come forward 43 years ago, given the decades of speculation about political interference.

“It’s the definition of treason,” he said, “knowing that there was a possibility that the Carter administration might have been able to negotiate us out of Iran earlier.”

A Four-Decade Secret:

But Kevin Hermening, a certified financial planner in Mosinee, Wis., who was a Marine Corps sergeant guarding the embassy, said that he did not believe Mr. Barnes’s account and that, even if it were true, the effort would not have influenced his captors.

“The Iranians were very clear that they were not going to release us while President Carter was in office,” said Mr. Hermening, 63. “He was despised by the mullahs and those people who followed the Ayatollah.”

The Barnes account cast a new light on these long-ago events, troubling David M. Roeder, a retired colonel who was the deputy Air Force attaché at the embassy. Mr. Roeder said that he had repeatedly told his captors that if Mr. Reagan won, they would be dealing with a “much tougher person.”

“I have come to the conclusion — perhaps because I want to — that hopefully President Reagan was unaware that this was going on,” said Mr. Roeder, 83, of Pinehurst, N.C. But, he added, “I gained a great deal more respect for President Carter because I’ve seen what he went through with us in captivity.”

 

greg palast logo

Greg Palast Investigates, Commentary: Reagan’s Treason, Two Bushes and the $23 Million Payoff, Greg Palast, March 23-24, 2023. This week, a Texas pol, Ben Barnes, confessed that he was personally involved—and therefore an eyewitness to–high treason: The Ronald Reagan campaign’s successful secret deal with the Iranian government to hold 52 Americans hostages so that Reagan could defeat Jimmy Carter.

ronald reagan 1981 wReagan’s skanky deal worked. In 1980, Carter’s failure to bring home the hostages destroyed his chance of reelection. Reagan, right, ultimately would repay the favor from Iran’s murder-crats with weapons and even, for the Ayatollah Khomeini, a birthday cake from Reagan advisor Oliver North.

The question is, why now? Why did Barnes suddenly blow the whistle on this crime—and a crime it is—four decades late? His cute excuse, reported without question by the New York Times, is that, “History needs to know that this happened.”

Wrong. “History” doesn’t need to know—American voters needed to know about Reagan’s treason before the 1980 election.

So, then, why did Barnes squirrel away the truth for decades? Follow the money.

It’s a money trail that leads to two Bushes who would not have become president if not for Barnes’ silence about Iran—and Barnes’ omertà about another creepy Bush scheme.

george w bush air force HRIn 1999, for The Guardian, I discovered that Barnes, in his previous role as Lt. Governor of Texas, used his political juice to get Congressman George Bush Sr.’s son, “Dubya” into the Texas Air Guard—over literally thousands of far-more-qualified applicants. (Little Bush scored 25 out of 100 on the test, just one point above “too dumb to fly.”)

And so, Dubya, shown at left, dodged the draft and Vietnam.

Barnes hid the truth despite pleas from Texas Gov. Ann Richards, who, in 1994, lost a squeaker of an election too.

In Austin, Texas, I received unshakeable evidence that Barnes was the fixer who got Congressman Bush’s son out of the Vietnam draft. (This, while Bush Sr. was voting to send other men’s sons to Vietnam.)

What did Barnes get for his burial of Reagan’s deal with Iran and Bush Jr.’s draft dodging? Did $23 million do it?

In 1999, I was investigating a company, GTech, which ran both the British and Texas lotteries. Texas had disqualified GTech from operating the state lottery based on strong evidence of corruption. But oddly, the new Governor of Texas, George W. Bush, fired the lottery director who banned GTEch. Then Bush’s new lottery commissioner gave GTech back its multi-billion-dollar contract, no bidding.

Notably, Bush’s firing of the state’s lottery director came two days after a meeting with GTech’s lobbyist—Ben Barnes.

Barnes’ fees from GTech? $23 million.

I wasn’t in the Bush-Barnes little tête-à-tête: the info came from a confidential memo from the lottery director that was well buried inside Justice Department files.

In a civil suit, Barnes supposedly denied any quid pro quo with Gov. Bush. Maybe. A nice payment from GTech to the wronged lottery director sealed Barnes’ testimony from the public.

  • Maybe Bush met with Barnes just to reminisce. But if Barnes had the Bush family’s entire political fortune in his pocket, did he really need to remind Dubya of the consequences if the Governor did not take care of Barnes’ client?
  • Secretly conspiring with a foreign power to keep Americans imprisoned, secretly negotiating with and providing weapons to a foreign enemy is the definition of treason—and so would a cover-up for cash.
  • This was another example, I wrote in The Guardian, how the Bushes turned America into “the best democracy money can buy.”
  • I then wrote a book of that title and made a film, Bush Family Fortunes, detailing the Bush Family crime-wave, for BBC Television.

Today, you can download that documentary, Bush Family Fortunes, free of charge. (If you want to throw in a tax-deductible donation, hey, we won’t say ‘no.’ Our nvestigations continue: The cast of characters has changed, but not the crimes.)

And a word about the creeps, cowards and conmen who call themselves “journalists.” Let’s start with a trivia question: Who is Dan Rather? He’s a former TV star and one-time reporter who took my story of Bush’s draft dodging, stuck it on 60 Minutes and, in violation of any sense of ethics and decency, exposed a whistleblower, Texas Air Guard Col. Bill Burkett, a man of inestimable courage and integrity.

Rather’s exposure ruined Burkett. No Texan would sell him feed. His cattle were dying, so he lost his ranch.

Dan Rather was fired by CBS for getting the network in hot water with the Bush White House. Then, by his own admission, Rather agreed to backtrack on the story of Bush the draft dodger in return for a promise of a return to the CBS airwaves. CBS screwed Rather—but that often happens to feckless recreants.

Neither I nor the BBC nor The Guardian retracted a single word of our story of Dubya the Draft Dodger nor the tale of the $23 million questionable payment.

There are zeroes—and there are heroes. The story of Reagan and his “October Surprise” was first busted open by Robert Parry – who also uncovered the Iran-Contra scandal. Instead of getting a Pulitzer, Parry’s career was destroyed. For uncovering too many uncomfortable truths, he was bounced from the Associated Press, Newsweek, Bloomberg, and The Nation.

Parry died in 2018, in journalistic exile.

Greg Palast (Rolling Stone, Guardian, BBC) is the author of The New York Times bestsellers, "The Best Democracy Money Can Buy" and "Billionaires & Ballot Bandits," out as major motion non-fiction movie: "The Best Democracy Money Can Buy: The Case of the Stolen Election," available on Amazon and Amazon Prime.

Tik Tok, Social Media, Artificial Intelligence

ny times logoNew York Times, TikTok Chief Faces Scathing Questions From Both Parties in Congress, Sapna Maheshwari, March 24, 2023 (print ed.). The Chinese-owned video app has become a battleground as the U.S. and China duel for tech leadership; Shou Chew’s first appearance before U.S. lawmakers comes as their distrust of the video app’s Chinese ownership has escalated; China said on Thursday that it would “firmly oppose” a forced sale of TikTok.

tiktok logo square CustomShou Chew, the chief executive of TikTok, will testify before Congress for the first time on Thursday, in an appearance that is expected to reflect U.S. lawmakers’ escalating distrust of the short-form video app’s Chinese ownership.

The hearing, which will begin at 10 a.m. before the House Energy and Commerce Committee, will give lawmakers a rare opportunity to ask Mr. Chew questions directly about TikTok’s relationship with its Chinese owner, ByteDance, as well as about the app’s handling of sensitive U.S. user data and the risks it may pose to teens and children.

TikTok is working to secure its future in the United States, one of its biggest markets, where it says it has 150 million users and where it has become a culture-making machine. But lawmakers have questions about ByteDance’s links to the Chinese government and whether those could put TikTok’s U.S. user data into the hands of Beijing officials. U.S. intelligence officials like the director of the F.B.I., Christopher A. Wray, have also warned that the Chinese government could use TikTok’s algorithm for “influence operations.”

TikTok, which was initially hailed as China’s first global internet success story, has come to represent the growing divide between the United States and China over tech leadership and national security. The app has become a battleground in a technological Cold War between the two countries, with U.S. threats of a TikTok ban recalling how China has long blocked many American platforms.

ny times logoNew York Times, TikTok Claims It’s Limiting Teen Screen Time. Teens Say It Isn’t, Sapna Maheshwari, March 24, 2023 (print ed.). This month, the company announced a 60-minute cap for users under 18. But for some, staying on the app takes just a few taps.

 

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ny times logoNew York Times, Meet the lonely New York progressive who says TikTok is the victim of anti-China “hysteria,” Nicholas Fandos and David McCabe, March 23, 2023 (print ed.). Representative Jamaal Bowman of New York, above, says the drive to ban TikTok stems from anti-China “hysteria.” His Democratic colleagues disagree.

Of TikTok’s 150 million American users, there may be none more valuable to the embattled platform right now than Representative Jamaal Bowman of New York.

democratic donkey logoA backbench Democrat, Mr. Bowman commands neither TikTok’s largest following (he has about 159,000 fans) nor exceptional legislative clout. But in recent days, he has gone where almost no one else on Capitol Hill would, appointing himself the platform’s unofficial defender in face of a bipartisan race to target what President Biden sees as a national security threat.

tiktok logo Custom“Why the hell are we whipping ourselves into a hysteria to scapegoat TikTok?” Mr. Bowman asked in a telephone interview as he traveled by train to Washington on Wednesday.

Hours later, he held a news conference outside the House touting the platform’s virtues, alongside dozens of influencers brought in by TikTok for a day of lobbying ahead of Thursday’s congressional hearing with its chief executive. Only two other Democrats attended, while some of the congressman’s most outspoken allies declined to weigh in, like Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a fellow member of the group of left-leaning lawmakers known as the squad.

ny times logochat gpt logoNew York Times, Commentary: The A.I. Chatbots Have Arrived. Time to Talk to Your Kids, Christina Caron (a reporter for the Well section and a mother of two who experimented with ChatGPT for hours to help fellow parents better understand how it works), March 24, 2023 (print ed.).  Artificial intelligence can make adults nervous, but experts say exploring it as a family is the best way to understand its pros and cons.

 

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ny times logoNew York Times, Opinion: Our New Promethean Moment, tom friedman twitterThomas L. Friedman, right, March 22, 2023 (print ed.). I had a most remarkable but unsettling experience last week.

Craig Mundie, the former chief research and strategy officer for Microsoft, was giving me a demonstration of GPT-4, the most advanced version of the artificial intelligence chatbot ChatGPT, developed by OpenAI and launched in November. Craig was preparing to brief the board of my wife’s museum, Planet Word, of which he is a member, about the effect ChatGPT will have on words, language and innovation.

“You need to understand,” Craig warned me before he started his demo, “this is going to change everything about how we do everything. I think that it represents microsoft logo Custommankind’s greatest invention to date. It is qualitatively different — and it will be transformational.”

Large language modules like ChatGPT will steadily increase in their capabilities, Craig added, and take us “toward a form of artificial general intelligence,” delivering efficiencies in operations, ideas, discoveries and insights “that have never been attainable before across every domain.”

Then he did a demonstration. And I realized Craig’s words were an understatement.

 

Top Global News

rishi sunak

ny times logoNew York Times, U.K. Lawmakers Approve Key Measure of Northern Ireland Trade Deal, Megan Specia, March 23, 2023 (print ed.). An important element of the agreement known as the Windsor Framework, a Brexit provision negotiated with the European Union, was roundly endorsed in the British Parliament.

United Kingdom flagBritish lawmakers on Wednesday voted overwhelmingly in favor of a key component of a long-awaited deal on Northern Ireland trade rules, an emphatic victory for Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, shown above, as he tries to resolve one of the most vexing legacies of Britain’s exit from the European Union.

Despite the strong backing of the agreement, the leading unionist party in the North, which seeks to remain part of the United Kingdom, said that it did not accept the deal and would refuse to form a local government, signaling more political turmoil ahead.

Several prominent members of the governing Conservative Party also broke ranks with the government and voted against the part of the deal that was under debate, including Boris Johnson and Liz Truss, two former prime ministers. Nonetheless, the measure passed in a landslide, 515 to 29.

The vote on Wednesday was on just one element of the agreement, known as the Stormont Brake, which would allow Northern Ireland to block the Sir Jeffrey Donaldson dupimplementation of any “significantly different” new European rules on goods. The measure was aimed at addressing the North’s concerns that Brussels would have too much control over its trade rules. But the leading unionist party, the D.U.P. (whose leader, Sir Jeffrey Donaldson, is shown at left) rejected the Stormont Brake as insufficient.

The lopsided nature of the vote was good news for Mr. Sunak, who has championed the broader trade deal, known as the Windsor Framework, that was negotiated with the European Union last month.

The vote on the Stormont Brake on Wednesday was the first time that British lawmakers had had a chance to weigh in on the deal, so it had been seen as a measure of their approval.

The D.U.P. said this week that it would not vote for the Windsor Framework agreement, and as the vote on the Stormont Brake approached, its leaders confirmed that they had no plans either to enter into a power-sharing government in Northern Ireland’s devolved local assembly, known as Stormont. Northern Ireland’s other largest parties, including a different unionist party, have said that they support the framework.

india flag map

ny times logoNew York Times, Leader of Indian Party Opposing Modi Is Sentenced in Defamation Case, Karan Deep Singh, March 24, 2023 (print ed.). Rahul Gandhi, who leads the narendra modi 2014main opposition party, received a two-year sentence for a comment in 2019 criticizing Prime Minister Narendra Modi, right.

Rahul Gandhi, the leader of the main party opposing Prime Minister Narendra Modi of India, was convicted of defamation and sentenced to prison on Thursday, the latest blow to the beleaguered opposition party just a year before national elections.

Mr. Gandhi was immediately granted 30 days’ bail. His party, the Indian National Congress, said he would appeal the conviction.

A court in Gujarat, Mr. Modi’s home state, sentenced Mr. Gandhi to two years in prison. He was convicted in connection with a 2019 speech in which he linked the prime minister’s family name to that of two Indian fugitives accused of swindling millions of dollars, Nirav Modi and Lalit Modi.

“How come all the thieves have Modi as the common name?” Mr. Gandhi said while campaigning during the 2019 elections.

Relevant Recent Headlines

 

More On Probes of Trump, Allies 

ny times logoNew York Times, That Missing Trump Portrait? Found, Next to Some Old Yoga Mats, Maria Abi-Habib and Ana Maria Hanssen, March 24, 2023 (print ed.). After a tip, The Times found a painting of former President Trump that Democrats were looking for. It was propped up in an obscure spot in a Trump hotel.

In the bowels of the Trump National Doral hotel in Miami, in a small space leading to electrical rooms, an enormous portrait of the 45th president of the United States rests on a piece of deteriorating purple-colored foam.

Stored next to a stack of old yoga mats, the former president’s portrait sits underneath a halogen light and the metal sheen of air ducts, propped between two doors with placards that read “ELECTRICAL ROOM No Storage.”

The tiny room is overwhelmed by the grandiose portrait, standing about eight feet tall and featuring a grinning Donald J. Trump.

While the portrait has apparently sat there ignored for months, back in Washington, it is at the center of a debate over the laws and ethics covering presidential gifts.

ny times logoNew York Times, Appeals Court Orders Trump Lawyer to Hand Over Records in Documents Inquiry, Alan Feuer, March 23, 2023 (print ed.). The ruling compelling the lawyer, M. Evan Corcoran, to turn over documents came after a lightning round of appeals court filings overnight.

A federal appeals court ruled on Wednesday that a lawyer representing former President Donald J. Trump in an inquiry into his handling of classified materials had to give prosecutors what are likely to be dozens of documents related to his legal work for Mr. Trump.

The ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia came after a lightning round of filings that began on Tuesday evening when Mr. Trump sought evan corcoranan order to stop the lawyer, M. Evan Corcoran, right, from handing over documents to investigators.

The pitched behind-the-scenes legal fight continued overnight and into early Wednesday morning, with prosecutors responding to Mr. Trump’s request for a stay in the case with papers submitted before dawn. It played out as a separate legal proceeding involving Mr. Trump — the Manhattan district attorney’s consideration of whether to seek an indictment of the former president on charges related to a hush-money payment to a porn actress — remained unresolved.

The fight in Washington over Mr. Corcoran’s level of compliance in the documents case suggests that the prosecutors are working to assemble evidence that Mr. Trump could have committed a crime in defying the government’s efforts to reclaim the classified materials he took with him after leaving the White House.

As a legal matter, the litigation — all of which has taken place behind closed doors or under seal — involves a balancing act between attorney-client privilege, which generally protects lawyers from divulging private communications with their clients to the government, and a special provision of the law known as the crime-fraud exception. That exception allows prosecutors to work around attorney-client privilege when they have reason to believe that legal advice or legal services have been used in furthering a crime.

The spat began last month when the office of the special counsel, Jack Smith, sought to pierce assertions of attorney-client privilege that Mr. Corcoran and Mr. Trump had made in the documents inquiry. In an initial appearance before a grand jury investigating the case, Mr. Corcoran had asserted the privilege as a way to limit the scope of the questions he would have to answer as well as the number of legal records he would have to turn over.

 Understand the Trump Documents Inquiry: The Justice Department is conducting a criminal investigation into Donald Trump’s handling of classified files after he left office.

  • Special Counsel: Attorney General Merrick Garland appointed Jack Smith, a longtime prosecutor, to take over the inquiry. Here is what Smith’s role entails.
  • Trump Lawyer: The special counsel’s investigation into Trump has prompted a pitched legal battle over whether prosecutors have sufficient evidence to force one of his lawyers to testify to a grand jury and provide documents related to his work for the former president.
  • Passing the Gavel: James Boasberg will take over from Beryl Howell as the chief judge of the Federal District Court in Washington, a post that plays a key role in the federal special counsel investigations into Trump’s handling of the documents and the events surrounding Jan. 6.
  • Comparison With Biden Case: The discovery of classified documents from President Biden’s time as vice president prompted comparisons to Trump’s hoarding of records. But there are key differences.

 

djt march 2020 Custom

ny times logoNew York Times, Former President Trump is facing several investigations. See where they stand, Ben Protess, Alan Feuer and Danny Hakim, March 23, 2023 (print ed.). The Manhattan district attorney’s office appears to be nearing a potential indictment of the former president, as federal and state prosecutors bear down on Mr. Trump in a number of inquiries.

After avoiding indictment for years, former President Donald J. Trump now appears closer than ever to facing criminal charges in Manhattan.

The Manhattan district attorney’s office recently signaled to Mr. Trump’s lawyers that he could face criminal charges for his role in a hush-money payment to a porn star, the strongest indication yet that prosecutors are nearing an indictment of the former president, according to four people with knowledge of the matter.

The district attorney, Alvin L. Bragg, impaneled a grand jury in January to hear evidence in the longest-running criminal inquiry facing the former president. Since then, his prosecutors have questioned at least nine witnesses before the panel, though it is unclear whether they have completed their presentation of evidence.

Any case would mark the first indictment of a former American president. Yet Mr. Bragg might not be the last prosecutor to seek charges against Mr. Trump. Several federal and state prosecutors are scrutinizing him as well.

Here is where the notable inquiries involving the former president stand.

ny times logoNew York Times, Trump Inquiries Present a Stress Test for Justice in a Polarized Nation, Glenn Thrush and Adam Goldman, March 24, 2023 (print ed.).On the morning of Jan. 6, 2021, Merrick B. Garland was busy typing away in his upstairs office at home, finalizing remarks he planned to deliver the following day when he was to be introduced as Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s nominee to be attorney general.

merrick garlandThe speech was originally a summons to restore the Justice Department “norms” of independence after political meddling during the Trump administration that depleted morale and sapped public confidence. Then, after protesters burst through the barricades at the Capitol, Mr. Garland, right, began a major rewrite that referenced the attack, and fortified his pledge to hold anyone who threatened democracy to account, from bottom to top.

Justice Department log circularThe department would impartially investigate the attack, without “one rule for the powerful and one for the powerless,” Mr. Garland said during his somber introduction on Jan. 7.

Mr. Garland’s conjoined promises — restoring broad confidence in the department’s impartiality while investigating without favor the politically powerful — were not mutually exclusive. But achieving both simultaneously is proving to be an elusive goal as prosecutors at the federal and local level investigate former President Donald J. Trump on multiple fronts.

ny times logoNew York Times, Opinion: Trump Faces Prosecution. America Faces a Test, Charles M. Blow, right, March 23, 2023 (print ed.). Of course, Donald Trump went to social media charles blow Customto speculate that he’d be arrested on Tuesday of this week and — big surprise — that turned out not to be true.

Of course, he’s trying to incite his followers with the prospect of their beloved leader facing criminal charges, and simultaneously using that to squeeze them for more money.

Of course, many Republicans are not only rushing to Trump’s defense, armed with a quiver of false equivalencies, but also seeking any opportunity to bash Democrats and call them hypocrites for seeking to hold Trump accountable.

Of course, many Democrats are, on the one hand, relishing the idea that charges may begin sticking to Slick Donald, but on the other hand, twisting themselves into knots worrying whether an indictment will actually strengthen his standing with his base.

If a former president is indicted, it will be unprecedented. But the atmospherics will be all-too-familiar, a kind of political déjà vu, as we remain trapped in a repeating cycle of Trump-era truisms: the defense of hardcore political acolytes, the rapid erosion of norms and a paralyzing reticence among those who could check his abuses of power.

It’s impossible to completely game out the legal and political ramifications of a Trump indictment, but because the public is hungry for theories and pundits are champing at the bit to provide them, we’re awash in takes about what happens next.

But I challenge you to tune all of that out.

We know Trump and how he operates. He tries — often successfully — to spin his negatives into positives, to deny his misdeeds while charging that those trying to hold him accountable are the real culprits.

Trump’s strategy from the very beginning of his political foray has been to discredit or destroy the gatekeepers, in politics and the media, who might one day be called upon to expose him. (“Low-energy” Jeb Bush, anyone?) He continues to brand them as weak, dishonest and out to get anyone who supports him.

And every time an attempt to hold him accountable falls short of delivering the most fitting consequences, he counts that as a victory, and the effort’s “failure” as proof of its illegitimacy. Then he rolls all this together in his rhetoric to bolster his contention that all investigations of him and members of his inner circle amount to a campaign of political harassment.

In a video Trump released early Tuesday morning, he railed that the “horrible, radical left, Democrat investigations of your all-time-favorite president, me, is just a continuation of the most disgusting witch hunt in the history of our country,” adding: “It’s gone on forever.”

He goes on to call Robert Mueller’s special counsel investigation, which explored his campaign’s communications with Russia during the 2016 election, “a hoax,” and contends that investigators “even spied on my campaign.” He then ties in new investigations — the classified documents probe, the Georgia election interference investigation and the allegations about hush money payments to Stormy Daniels.

Trump will never not be this guy. He’s never going to concede or show contrition in the face of any accusation. He’s going to fight. And that’s precisely why his people adore him. That’s why they’ll continue to support and defend him. They want to be like him: not forced to back down, even when they are wrong.

Republicans will accuse prosecutors of partisanship and overreach. Let them.

Trump will scream like a baby. Let him.

We’re at a point in the nation’s history where we are called to endure what I call the inconvenience of the necessary, a point at which something is morally right — and morally unavoidable — but the political timing is problematic.

Palmer Report, Opinion: Donald Trump’s violent new social media post about Alvin Bragg is going to come with consequences he doesn’t like, Bill Palmer, right, March bill palmer23, 2023. After he briefly began expressing the delusional hope that he might not be criminally indicted in Manhattan, Donald Trump is now back to making defeatist social media posts about how he expects to be indicted. One of Trump’s new posts disturbingly depicts him as swinging a baseball bat in the direction of Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg.

bill palmer report logo headerThis was predictable. Trump has a long history of trying to incite violence among his supporters in the hope of achieving political gain. So of course he was going to try it again in this instance. He’s a creature of habit who only knows one way of doing things. He’s forever under the belief that if a tactic has worked for him in the past, it should work again, whether or not it’s the same situation.

The trouble for Trump is that this is not the same situation as any he’s ever been in. He has past experience in the circuses that are civil court cases. He has experience trying to pressure the courts to uphold executive orders that he’s signed and such. But he does not have any prior experience as a defendant in the criminal justice system, because he’s never been charged or indicted before.

Starting with his arraignment hearing, Trump is about to find out the hard way that criminal defendants have a reduced set of rights while awaiting trial. Even if Trump gets out on bail or recognizance, the judge will surely tell him about the behaviors he’ll need to avoid if he wants to remain under minimal restriction. If Trump tries to run his mouth publicly about the prosecutor, the judge will at some point hit him with a gag order. If Trump defies the gag order, the judge will start applying incrementally severe punishment, up to and potentially including pretrial detention.

Trump is off to a bad start by posting this image of himself getting violent against the District Attorney. This post will no doubt be submitted as evidence at his arraignment, and the judge will not take kindly to it. This is the kind of thing that could result in Trump getting hit with an immediate gag order about the case instead of being allowed some rope first. The judge could also use this violent post as a basis for imposing travel restrictions and such on Trump while he’s awaiting trial. And that’s just the beginning of what the judge in the case can do to Trump in order to keep him under control ahead of trial.

If Donald Trump had any sense at all, he’d be on his best behavior – at least for the moment – in the hope of getting the most lenient pretrial conditions possible. Instead he’s handing the judge in the case every excuse to impose more restrictive conditions on Trump, all of which could get in the way of Trump’s ability to keep carrying out his “2024 campaign” pipe dream.

The judge doesn’t get assigned to the case until the indictment comes down, so perhaps Trump is under the mistaken impression that he can still magically get away with anything he wants. But when Alvin Bragg submits Trump’s baseball post to the judge at arraignment, and the judge gives Trump a harsher initial set of pretrial conditions as a result, perhaps Trump will start to figure out that he’s not in charge of anything that happens from here on in.

 Relevant Recent Headlines

 

More On U.S. Election Deniers, Insurrectionists

ny times logoNew York Times, Arizona Supreme Court Turns Down Kari Lake’s Appeal in Her Election Lawsuit, Neil Vigdor, March 24, 2023 (print ed.). The justices refused to hear Ms. Lake’s claims disputing her loss in the governor’s race, but sent one part of her lawsuit back to a trial court for review.

arizona mapArizona’s Supreme Court on Wednesday denied a request from Kari Lake to hear her lawsuit disputing her loss last year in the governor’s kari lake gage skidmorerace. The lawsuit was based on what the court said was a false claim by Ms. Lake, left, a Republican, that more than 35,000 unaccounted ballots were accepted.

In a five-page order written by Chief Justice Robert Brutinel, the court determined that a vast majority of Ms. Lake’s legal claims, which had earlier been dismissed by lower courts, lacked merit.

“The Court of Appeals aptly resolved these issues,” Chief Justice Brutinel wrote, adding that the “petitioner’s challenges on these grounds are insufficient to warrant the requested relief under Arizona or federal law.”

But the justices on Wednesday ordered a trial court in Arizona’s most populous county, Maricopa, to conduct an additional review of that county’s procedures for verifying signatures on mail-in ballots, keeping one part of her lawsuit alive.

Politico, Trump, Pence urge judge to reject special counsel bid to obtain former VP’s testimony, Kyle Cheney, March 24, 2023 (print ed.). It’s one of the weightiest constitutional fights for the special counsel.

politico CustomIt’s one of the weightiest constitutional fights that Smith is likely to undertake, one that could shape the balance of power between all three branches of government in unpredictable ways. Assistant U.S. Attorney Thomas Windom, one of Smith’s lead investigators, was seen entering the courtroom as well.

It’s also an early test for Chief U.S. District Court Judge James Boasberg, who took the chief’s gavel last week after his predecessor Beryl Howell’s seven-year term as chief expired. The chief judge is tasked with overseeing all grand jury matters in the district, which include Smith’s special counsel probes.

Pence’s fight to block the subpoena is not the only way Smith’s inquiry could have far-reaching constitutional consequences. A three-judge appeals court panel is expected to rule imminently on his separate effort to access the cellphone data of Rep. Scott Perry (R-Pa.), a key ally in Trump’s bid to overturn the 2020 election results. Perry, like Pence, is arguing that his communications should be shielded by the Constitution’s “speech or debate” clause, which grants Congress sweeping immunity from compelled testimony — if it pertains to lawmakers’ official duties.

The Perry dispute drew intervention from the House of Representatives, which filed a sealed amicus brief in the matter that raised concerns about the implications for the institution should the appeals court adopt a narrow view of “speech or debate” immunity.

The hearing also underscored the extraordinary confluence of acute legal and criminal matters Trump is facing.

Corcoran himself has been ordered by a federal judge to testify as soon as Friday in Smith’s other ongoing criminal probe of Trump’s handling of sensitive national security records discovered at his Mar-a-Lago estate. And while Corcoran was waiting in the cafeteria Thursday, an attorney for Joseph Biggs — one of five Proud Boys facing seditious conspiracy charges for actions on Jan. 6 — approached him to attempt to serve a subpoena on Trump.

The attorney, Norm Pattis, said Corcoran told him he was ”not authorized” to accept service on Trump’s behalf.

Politico, Judge sentences Jan. 6 defendant who breached Pelosi’s office to 36 months in prison, Kyle Cheney, March 24, 2023 (print ed.). A jury convicted Riley Williams of riley williams collagecivil disorder and resisting police but deadlocked on a charge that Williams, right, obstructed Congress and abetted the theft of Pelosi’s laptop.

politico CustomU.S. District Court Judge Amy Berman Jackson’s sentence was the close of one of the earliest sagas to emerge after the Jan. 6 attack. Williams was one of the first felony defendants charged, and she was suspected at the time of stealing Nancy Pelosi’s laptop, in part because she told friends that she did.

A jury convicted Williams in December of civil disorder and resisting police but deadlocked on a charge that Williams obstructed Congress and abetted the theft of Pelosi’s laptop. Williams is on tape entering Pelosi’s conference room while other rioters took the laptop, and she encouraged them to steal it, but Williams’ lawyers contended that it was unclear if the other rioters heard her comment.

djt maga hatJackson spent much of her sentencing colloquy dismantling the defense’s claim that Williams was too young or too small to be responsible for the grave offenses the government charged. The defense team leaned on Williams’ youthful demeanor and the fact that she seemed briefly confused about which building was being stormed — calling it the White House as she approached. But Jackson said any momentary confusion Williams expressed was clarified by her repeated acknowledgment of why she was there.

It was not, Jackson emphasized, “because her dizzy little head was confused about which building in Washington was which.”

Fuentes, she noted, was born the same year as Williams. People can sign up for the military at 18, she added, noting that Williams was old enough on Jan. 6 to have completed a tour of duty. John Lewis was 21 when he became a freedom fighter, Jackson added.

“She was old enough to be one of the police officers she resisted,” Jackson said.

Jackson also took on the defense’s repeated assertions about Williams’ diminutive stature, noting that figures like Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, Liz Cheney and Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson had all achieved prominence despite their size.

“Riley June Williams was old enough and tall enough to be held accountable for her actions,” Jackson said.

 

Ray Epps and his wife, Robyn Epps. A letter from their lawyer noted the costs that the couple had faced by being the target of a Jan. 6 conspiracy theory (New York Times photo by Alan Feuer).

 Ray Epps and his wife, Robyn Epps. A letter from their lawyer noted the costs that the couple had faced by being the target of a Jan. 6 conspiracy theory (New York Times photo by Alan Feuer).

ny times logoNew York Times, Man at Center of Jan. 6 Conspiracy Theory Demands Retraction From Fox, Alan Feuer, March 24, 2023 (print ed.). A lawyer for Ray Epps has demanded that the Fox host Tucker Carlson publicly apologize for “false and defamatory statements” that Mr. Epps served as a federal agent during the Capitol attack.

A lawyer for Ray Epps, the man at the center of a prominent conspiracy theory about the Capitol riot, sent a letter on Thursday to the Fox News host Tucker Carlson demanding that he publicly retract his “false and defamatory statements” that Mr. Epps had worked as a government provocateur on Jan. 6, 2021, and helped to instigate the mob attack.

The letter to Mr. Carlson from the lawyer, Michael Teter, also demanded a “formal on-air apology for the lies” that have been “spread about Mr. Epps” by others at Fox.

“The fanciful notions that Mr. Carlson advances on his show regarding Mr. Epps’s involvement in the Jan. 6 insurrection are demonstrably (and already proven to be) false,” Mr. Teter wrote. “And yet Mr. Carlson persists with his assault on the truth.”

Letters seeking retractions and apologies are often sent when lawyers are preparing to file a defamation lawsuit. As Mr. Teter noted, Mr. Epps’s demands come as Mr. Carlson and other top figures at Fox are already under pressure from a $1.6 billion defamation suit brought by Dominion Voting Systems accusing them of amplifying lies that the voting machine company was involved in a bizarre plot to steal votes from President Donald J. Trump during the 2020 election.

In a series of recent filings, Dominion revealed embarrassing text messages and emails swapped by several leading Fox employees showing that in private they dismissed the idea that the company was involved in voting fraud, even though they supported the notion in public. The internal communications also suggested that Fox’s corporate leadership permitted lies about the election to be spread on the network in order to keep ratings high and viewers watching.
Fox News v. Dominion Voter Systems

Documents from a lawsuit filed by the voting machine maker Dominion against Fox News have shed light on the debate inside the network over false claims related to the 2020 election.

“Recent revelations from the Dominion Voting lawsuit may help explain why Fox News has allowed the falsehoods about Mr. Epps to continue to spread, and be amplified, through its network,” Mr. Teter wrote. “But fear of losing viewers by telling them the truth is not a defense to defamation and false light.”

A spokeswoman for Fox did not immediately respond to a message seeking comment.

Mr. Epps, a former Marine, traveled to Washington from his home in Arizona to support Mr. Trump and was videotaped on the night before the attack urging people to go inside the Capitol. He was also in the crowd on Jan. 6 moving past barricades outside the building, although he never went inside and ultimately sought to de-escalate tensions in the mob.

Still, he became the face of the conspiracy theory that the federal government had instigated the Capitol attack for a single reason: He was never charged for what he did on Jan. 6. In reality, prosecutors declined to file charges against thousands of people who had breached the barricades outside the Capitol but never entered the building.

Mr. Carlson was one of the first major figures in the news media to give the stories about Mr. Epps a wide audience. Ultimately, they were also echoed by Republican members of Congress like Representative Thomas Massie of Kentucky and Senator Ted Cruz of Texas.

Mr. Carlson featured Mr. Epps on his show on Fox again this month in a segment based on tens of thousands of hours of Capitol surveillance video footage, to which Speaker Kevin McCarthy granted him exclusive access. Mr. Epps appeared only briefly on the show, which broadly sought to play down the events of Jan. 6 and falsely paint the Capitol attack as a largely peaceful gathering of “sightseers.”

Mr. Teter mocked Mr. Carlson in his letter, suggesting that the TV host was trying to have it both ways.

“Oddly, Mr. Carlson now also espouses the view that those rioters were akin to peaceful tourists,” Mr. Teter wrote. “This leads to the obvious question: Is Mr. Carlson now accusing Mr. Epps of provoking peaceful protests?”

 

U.S. Politics, Elections, Economy, Governance

Politico, Sinema Trashes Dems: ‘Old Dudes Eating Jell-O,’ Jonathan Martin, March 24, 2023 (print ed.). The Arizona senator courts GOP donors by ridiculing her former kyrsten sinema oDemocratic colleagues.

politico CustomEver since Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, right, became an independent in December, her Democratic colleagues have been restrained about the shift, careful not to alienate the Arizona lawmaker when they only have a single-seat majority and need her support on legislation and nominees.

Hoping to get through this year, and then gain clarity about whether Sinema will even seek reelection in 2024 let alone continue to caucus with her old party, Senate Democrats have dodged questions about the mercurial marathoner who’s still barely in their ranks.

But Sinema may be making the Democrats’ deliberations easier.

As she races to stockpile campaign money and post an impressive, statement-making first-quarter fundraising number, Sinema has used a series of Republican-dominated receptions and retreats this year to belittle her Democratic colleagues, shower her GOP allies with praise and, in one case, quite literally give the middle finger to President Joe Biden’s White House.

Speaking in private, whether one-on-one or with small groups of Republican senators, she’s even more cutting, particularly about Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, whom she derides in harshly critical terms, according to senior Republican officials directly familiar with her comments.

 

barney bishop ron desantis david statue

Tallahassee Democrat, Tallahassee principal ousted after complaints about Michelangelo's 'David' in art lesson, Ana Goñi-Lessan, March 24, 2023 (print ed.). “It saddens me that my time here had to end this way,” Hope Carrasquilla told the Tallahassee Democrat.

A local charter school principal said she was forced to resign after a parent complained a Renaissance art lesson was pornographic.

Hope Carrasquilla had been principal for less than a year at Tallahassee Classical School in Leon County before she resigned from her position during an emergency board meeting Monday.

“It saddens me that my time here had to end this way,” Carrasquilla told the Tallahassee Democrat.

Carrasquilla said last week she was told by the school’s board chair, Barney Bishop, shown above left with photos of the statue and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, that she would have to resign or she would be fired. She believes the catalyst for the ultimatum was complaints about an art lesson on the Renaissance period.

Bishop, who confirmed he did give Carrasquilla that ultimatum, said he could not say why he asked her to resign because of the school’s employment lawyer’s advice.

An email sent to parents Monday evening stated the new principal would be Cara Wynn, formerly of North Florida Christian School. She will be the school’s third principal since it opened three years ago, according to Bishop. “It’s not unusual in new charter schools to go through several principals,” Bishop said.

Tallahassee Classical, a Hillsdale College curriculum school, is required to teach about Renaissance art in sixth grade.

But three parents complained that the lesson’s content, which included learning about Michelangelo’s sculpture, “David,” upset their children.

Wayne Madsen Report, Investigative Commentary: Resistance to DeSantis: Woke African-American History Lesson Sheet #18, Jackie "Moms" Mabley, Wayne Madsen, March 23-24, 2023.

 

New Mexico State Rep. Andrea Reeb (R), left, emailed the New Mexico DA saying her involvement

New Mexico State Rep. Andrea Reeb (R), left, emailed the New Mexico DA saying her involvement "might help," the report said. Reeb was part of the team that brought charges against movie star Alex Baldwin for a film set shooting death.

Insider, The ex-prosecutor in the "Rust" case suggested it may help her political campaign, the NYT reported, Natalie Musumeci, March 22, 2023. The ex-special prosecutor who helped charge Alec Baldwin in the "Rust" movie set shooting death of cinematographer Halyna Hutchins emailed her boss that the high-profile case could "help" her GOP campaign for the New Mexico state legislature, according to a report from The New York Times.

republican elephant logoAndrea Reeb, a former district attorney and Republican lawmaker who won a seat in the New Mexico House of Representatives last November, was brought on as a special prosecutor in the "Rust" case in June 2022 while she was running for office.

New Mexico First Judicial District Attorney Mary Carmack-Altwies appointed Reeb to the case, and Reeb emailed the DA that she did not plan to tell the press about her involvement, the Times reported on Tuesday, citing from correspondence the news outlet obtained under the state's Inspection of Public Records Act.

"At some point though," Reeb said in the June 9 email, according to the Times, "I'd at least like to get out there that I am assisting you … as it might help in my campaign lol."

Carmack-Altwies responded to Reeb, saying, "I am intending to either introduce you or send it in a press release when we get the investigation!" according to the Times.

The DA and Reeb wound up bringing charges of involuntary manslaughter against Baldwin and an armorer in connection to the October 2021 shooting of 42-year-old Hutchins on the Santa Fe, New Mexico, film set.

Reeb stepped down from her role as special prosecutor last week after Baldwin's camp argued that her appointment was unconstitutional.

Baldwin's legal team referenced the Times report about the emails in a new court filing on Tuesday, calling it "yet another troubling development regarding the State's prosecution of this case."

"Representative Reeb's prosecution of this case against Mr. Baldwin to advance her political career is a further abuse of the system and yet another violation of Mr. Baldwin's constitutional rights," the actor's lawyers argued.

Reeb and Carmack-Altwies' office did not immediately respond to a request for comment by Insider on Wednesday.

Relevant Recent Headlines

 

More On Russia-China-West Conflicts

 

 A photograph released by Russian state media showing Chinese President Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin meeting at the Kremlin (Photo by Sergei Karpukhin of Sputnik).

A photograph released by Russian state media showing Chinese President Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin meeting at the Kremlin (Photo by Sergei Karpukhin of Sputnik).

ny times logoNew York Times, Analysis: In a Brother Act With Putin, Xi Reveals China’s Fear of Containment, Chris Buckley, March 23, 2023 (print ed.). Instead of focusing on Ukraine, Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin’s meetings in Moscow reinforced their shared opposition to American dominance.

China’s leader, Xi Jinping, flew into Moscow this week cast by Beijing as its emissary for peace in Ukraine. His summit with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, however, demonstrated that his priority remains shoring up ties with Moscow to gird against what he sees as a long campaign by the United States to hobble China’s ascent.

Talk of Ukraine was overshadowed by Mr. Xi’s vow of ironclad solidarity with Russia as a political, diplomatic, economic and military partner: two superpowers aligned in countering American dominance and a Western-led world order. The summit showed Mr. Xi’s intention to entrench Beijing’s tilt toward Moscow against what he recently called an effort by the United States at the full-fledged “containment” of China.

Mr. Xi and Mr. Putin used the pomp of the three-day state visit that ended on Wednesday to signal to their publics and to Western capitals that the bond between their two countries remained robust and, in their eyes, indispensable, 13 months after Mr. Putin launched his invasion of Ukraine. They laid out their vision for the world in a nine-point joint statement that covered everything from Taiwan to climate change and relations with Mongolia, often depicting the United States as the obstacle to a better, fairer world.

 

nato logo flags name

Wayne Madsen Report, Investigative Commentary, Finland in NATO will be a gateway to the subjugated Finno-Ugric peoples of Russia, Wayne Madsen, left, author of 22 books and former U.S. Navy intelligence officer based in Finland, March 21-22, wayne madsen may 29 2015 cropped Small2023. With Türkiye's announcement that it will ratify Finland's membership in NATO, as well as holdout Hungary's signaling that it will soon move ratification of Finland's and Sweden's accession to NATO through its parliament, there is renewed hope among the beleaguered colonized Finno-Ugric nations colonized by Russia that their cause will soon receive greater international attention.

wayne madesen report logoFinland is slated to become a full NATO member at the NATO Summit scheduled for July 11-12 in Vilnius, Lithuania.

finland flagFinland has maintained "soft power" contacts with the Finno-Ugric bloc of formerly autonomous republics in Russia. They are Karelia, which was once part of Finland; Komi, Mari-El, Mordovia, Udmurtia, and Komi Permiak. Putin has curtailed contacts between the Finno-Ugric nations and Finland. These relations will be further hampered by the Kremlin after Finland becomes a full member of NATO.

Putin's war in Ukraine has emboldened some Finno-Ugric leaders in Russia to resurrect their calls for independence from Russia. In December 2022, many of these leaders were joined by representatives of other captive nations within Russia at the Forum of Free Peoples of Post-Russia (FSNPR) held in Helsingborg, Sweden. There, Finno-Ugric representatives were joined by Tatars, Chechens, Bashkirs, Nogais, Circassians, Cossacks, and others in calling for the "end of the existence of the Russian Federation.”

Relevant Recent Headlines

 

U.S. Banks, Economy, Jobs, CryptoCurrencies

washington post logoWashington Post, Weighing bank distress and inflation, Fed faces next rate hike, Rachel Siegel, March 23, 2023 (print ed.).There’s much more uncertainty this time around as to whether the Fed will hike by a quarter of a percentage point, or hit pause until the banking fiasco is truly over.

The Federal Reserve faces a pivotal decision Wednesday — whether to push ahead with its urgent fight against inflation or ease up in the aftermath of bank failures that forced a sweeping government intervention earlier this month.

federal reserve system CustomFinancial markets expect an increase of a quarter of a percentage point, which would bring the Fed’s base policy rate to between 4.75 and 5 percent. But nothing is guaranteed, and some Fed experts are urging policymakers to hit pause. Their argument is that it is too soon to know if jerome powellthe banking fiasco is over, and that the financial system may still be too fragile to absorb another hike right now, even though inflation remains too high.

The central bank, led by Jerome Powell, right, is also facing questions about its regulatory oversight of Silicon Valley Bank, as Washington tries to figure out whether the government could have prevented the turmoil in the banking sector.

ny times logoNew York Times, Double-Barreled Economic Threat Puts Congress on Edge, Carl Hulse, March 23, 2023. Republicans and Democrats disagree over how recent bank closures should affect the debt limit stalemate, and have taken divergent lessons from past crises.

Recent Related Headlines

 

More On Ukraine War

ny times logoNew York Times, Zelensky Tours Kherson as Ukraine Tries to Pressure Russian Forces, Enjoli Liston, March 24, 2023 (print ed.). President Volodymyr Zelensky toured areas affected by Russian strikes, a day after he met with troops near the embattled eastern city of Bakhmut.

President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine visited the southern Ukrainian region of Kherson, touring areas affected by Russia’s full-scale invasion and its monthslong campaign to destroy Ukraine’s energy infrastructure, he said on Thursday.

“We have to ensure full restoration and protection of our energy sector!” Mr. Zelensky said in a post on Telegram, the social messaging app. “I am grateful to everyone who works for this and returns the light to our people!”

President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine visited the southern Ukrainian region of Kherson, touring areas affected by Russia’s full-scale invasion and its monthslong campaign to destroy Ukraine’s energy infrastructure, he said on Thursday.

“We have to ensure full restoration and protection of our energy sector!” Mr. Zelensky said in a post on Telegram, the social messaging app. “I am grateful to everyone who works for this and returns the light to our people!”

The visit was Mr. Zelensky’s second to a frontline area in two days. On Wednesday, he made a defiant trip to the area around the devastated eastern city of Bakhmut, which has become a potent symbol of Ukrainian resistance as Kyiv’s forces battle to hold off a relentless Russian onslaught.

Mr. Zelensky’s travels to regions partly occupied by Russia come as Western allies ramp up supplies of weapons and ammunition to Ukraine, which is preparing for an anticipated counteroffensive that could include a push to retake captured territory.

Though Ukraine recaptured the city of Kherson, the regional capital, from Russian forces last November in one of its most significant victories of the yearlong war, Moscow still controls territory in the wider Kherson province. Russian forces have used positions on the eastern bank of the Dnipro River to shell the city of Kherson on the opposite side of the waterway, preventing Kyiv from being able to restore a sense of normality in the city.

On Thursday, Ukraine’s Armed Forces said they were escalating artillery strikes against Russian positions east of the Dnipro. “We are working to make the enemy feel our presence, our pressure,” Natalia Humeniuk, a spokeswoman for the Ukrainian military’s southern command, said on national television.

Russia has sought to toughen its defenses, and there was no immediate indication that shelling of the city of Kherson had lessened. Vladimir Saldo, the Russian-appointed governor of Kherson, said on Russian television this week that Moscow’s forces had “strengthened by a factor of three the line of defense” on the eastern side of the river.

Over the winter months, parts of the Kherson region endured weeks without access to electricity and water, as Russian forces rained missiles, rockets and drones down on energy infrastructure targets in an apparent bid to freeze residents.

During the trip on Thursday, Mr. Zelensky said he visited Posad-Pokrovske, a farming village that was largely destroyed during the fight for the city of Kherson, which is about 20 miles away. “Currently, the restoration of electricity and water supply is underway here, the medical clinic is being rebuilt, and people are returning,” Mr. Zelensky said on Telegram.

His visits near the frontline have come days after Russia’s president, Vladimir V. Putin, visited the southern Ukrainian city of Mariupol, now occupied by Russian forces after one of Moscow’s most brutal campaigns of the war.

Mr. Putin’s trip to Mariupol, about 50 miles southeast of the Ukrainian-controlled town of Vuhledar — where Russian forces sustained heavy losses just weeks ago and where fighting continues — is believed to be the closest the Russian leader has come to the front line since his forces’ invasion last year.

ny times logoNew York Times, Ukrainian Tank Commanders Grow Impatient: ‘Give Me an Abrams!’ Carlotta Gall, Photographs by Daniel Berehulak, March 24, 2023 (print ed.). For now, they are holding on with inferior Soviet-era tanks, but relish the idea of taking on the Russians with modern Western equipment.

ny times logoNew York Times, She Posted About the War in Ukraine. Then She Faced a Prison Term, Valerie Hopkins, March 23, 2023 (print ed.). The case of Olesya Krivtsova, a Russian student who ended up on the Kremlin’s terrorist list, has underscored the perils of criticizing the invasion.

Sitting in a small courtroom flanked by her two lawyers last month, Olesya Krivtsova was facing a stiff penalty for her fondness for posting on social media. Barely 20 and until this year a university student in northern Russia, she was accused of “justifying terrorism” and “discrediting the Russian armed forces,” and was facing up to a decade in prison.

Her apparent crime? An Instagram post asking why Ukrainians had rejoiced when the main bridge to Russian-occupied Crimea was attacked in October.

The post eventually landed Ms. Krivtsova on the Kremlin’s official list of terrorists and extremists. She was placed under house arrest and forbidden from using the phone or the internet.

Ms. Krivtsova did not wait for a courtroom verdict: Last week, she fled the country.

“I decided to leave because I was desperate,” Ms. Krivtsova said by telephone on Friday from Vilnius, Lithuania. “It is impossible to prove anything to the Russian court.”

As the Kremlin intensifies its crackdown on free speech, social media platforms have become a more frequent target for punishment. The government is increasingly penalizing people for posts it considers critical of the fighting in Ukraine — with fines, imprisonment and, in extreme cases, temporarily losing custody of their children.

In the Ryazan region south of Moscow, for instance, investigators opened a criminal case against a man who posted a joke about the Russian retreat from Kherson, in southern Ukraine. A student who ran an antiwar channel on the messaging app Telegram was denounced by the rector of his university for posts that criticized the Kremlin’s invasion of Ukraine as well as alleged Russian atrocities in Bucha and Mariupol. This month, he was sentenced to eight and a half years in a penal colony.

ny times logoNew York Times, Russia reprised brutal tactics to attack the eastern Ukrainian city of Avdiivka, Marc Santora, March 22, 2023 (print ed.). Russian forces have stepped up their assaults on the Ukrainian stronghold of Avdiivka in eastern Ukraine, making limited and costly gains in a furious attempt to encircle the long-battered city.

Ukrainian officials have said in recent days that Avdiivka is turning into another Bakhmut, the eastern city that Russian forces have sought to capture by sending waves of lightly trained recruits on near-suicidal attacks of Ukrainian defensive lines. In Avdiivka, as in Bakhmut, Ukraine says that Russian advances are also ukraine flagthreatening key supply lines while bombardments are killing civilians.

Local officials said on Tuesday that a woman had been killed and two more civilians injured when a shell fired from a tank blasted the city center.

“Russians are intensively attacking from both sides, from the south and the north,” Maj. Maksym Morozov, a member of the Special Forces regiment fighting in the area, told the Ukrainian news media on Monday night. He added that the Russian tactic of using waves of soldiers — dubbed “cannon fodder” by the Ukrainians — was having some success.

“First, cannon fodder goes to expose our firing positions, and then professionals behind them quickly and accurately try to extinguish our firing lines,” he said. But he said that Ukrainian artillery and tanks were firing back at the Russian forces, who “have to pay a rather high price for this advance.”

Avdiivka is about 15 miles west of the city of Donetsk, which Russian proxy forces took over in 2014. But Avdiivka had not experienced violence on the scale unleashed in Russia’s full-scale invasion last year.

By last April, Russian artillery had destroyed more than 800 homes and scores of businesses, according to local officials. Only about 2,300 of the city’s 30,000 prewar residents remain, according to Vitaliy Barabash, the head of the Ukrainian military administration in the city.

washington post logoWashington Post, U.S. will speed transfer of Abrams tanks to Ukraine, Pentagon says, Dan Lamothe, March 22, 2023 (print ed.). The new plan calls for refurbishing tank hulls already in the U.S. arsenal rather than procuring new vehicles, which had been expected to take up to two years.

Department of Defense SealThe Pentagon, in a significant shift, said Tuesday that it will send M1 Abrams tanks to Ukraine by the fall, after facing scrutiny for initially saying it could take a year or two to procure the powerful weapons and get them to the battlefield.

The new plan calls for refurbishing tank hulls already in the U.S. arsenal, officials said. President Biden, under intensifying pressure from Ukrainian officials, agreed in January to pledge 31 M1 tanks as part of a long-term arrangement that afforded German leaders political cover so that they could approve the immediate provision of Leopard battle tanks.

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U.S. Courts, Crime, Immigration, Guns

ny times logoNew York Times, 1 Dead and Multiple Hostages Rescued in Houston F.B.I. Operation, Christine Hauser, March 24, 2023 (print ed.). One person died and several hostages were rescued during an operation that lasted several days and involved federal and local law enforcement officials in North Houston, the F.B.I. said in a statement on Thursday.

FBI logoAll of the hostages had been “safely rescued” by Thursday morning, the F.B.I. said. The agency said one person had died after “an agent-involved shooting,” and that none of its personnel were injured.

The F.B.I. released few other details and did not answer questions about the shooting or the nature of the hostage situation. The agency’s Houston office said on Twitter that “no additional information” would be provided for now, and that no news conferences were planned.

ny times logoNew York Times, In Memphis, Car Seizures Are a Lucrative and Punishing Police Tactic, Jessica Jaglois and Mike Baker, March 24, 2023 (print ed.). It has been used to combat street racing and other crimes, but critics said that vehicles have been kept for months from people not even convicted.

As he drove to work on a summer afternoon in Memphis last year, Ralph Jones saw a woman on the sidewalk flagging him down. Thinking she was in distress or needed a ride, Mr. Jones said, he pulled over.

memphis police logoAfter a brief conversation in which she tried to lure him to a nearby motel, Mr. Jones said, he drove away but was soon stopped by the police and yanked from his truck. The 70-year-old welder said that with just 86 cents in his pocket, he had neither the intent nor the money to solicit a prostitute, as the officers were claiming.

His protests were to no avail. Mr. Jones was cited, and his truck, along with the expensive tools inside, was seized. The charges were eventually dropped, but the truck and his work equipment remained corralled in a city impound lot for six weeks, when prosecutors finally agreed to return it in exchange for a $750 payment.

“It’s nothing but a racket,” Mr. Jones said.

Police departments around the country have long used asset forfeiture laws to seize property believed to be associated with criminal activity, a tactic intended to deprive lawbreakers of ill-gotten gains, deter future crimes and, along the way, provide a lucrative revenue source for police departments.

But it became a favored law-enforcement tactic in Memphis, where the elite street crime unit involved in the death of Tyre Nichols on Jan. 7, known as the Scorpion unit, was among several law enforcement teams in the city making widespread use of vehicle seizures.

Like Mr. Jones, some of the people affected by the seizures had not been convicted of any crime, and defense lawyers said they disproportionately affected low-income residents, and people of color.

Over the past decade, civil rights advocates in several states have successfully pushed to make it harder for the police to seize property, but Tennessee continues to have some of the most aggressive seizure laws in the country.

While some states now require a criminal conviction before forfeiting property, Tennessee’s process can be much looser, requiring only that the government show, in a civil process, that the property was more likely than not to have been connected to certain types of criminal activity — a less rigorous burden of proof. Tennessee allows local law enforcement agencies to keep the bulk of the proceeds of the assets they seize.

Brennan Center for Justice, NYU Law School, Analysis: Constitution watchers brace for upcoming Supreme Court rulings on the Voting Rights Act, affirmative action, and the “independent state legislature theory,” Michael Waldman, March 21-22, 2023. The Marble Palace on First Street gets most of the attention. In the meantime, federal judges across the country are showing us what happens when the lower courts are stuffed with right-wing ideologues.

After a hearing last week, Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk in Amarillo, Texas, is expected to soon rule on an outlandish demand to ban the use of the abortion pill mifepristone — medication used for more than half of all abortions in the United States. If the judge rules to revoke the decades-old FDA approval for the pill, he will affect not just women in Texas, but women in every state.

How can a single federal judge have such power over the medical decisions of more than 167 million people? Believe it or not, the Supreme Court has never ruled on whether nationwide injunctions are constitutional. Liberals used this tactic on occasion to block the Trump administration’s policies, such as the single judge who blocked the “Muslim ban” in 2017. But conservatives have undeniably perfected it.

In Texas, a quirk of the rules lets people choose where they bring a federal lawsuit and essentially handpick the judge who will hear their case — judge shopping to boost the chances of a favorable ruling. When a plaintiff files a federal suit in Amarillo, they are 100 percent guaranteed to get Kacsmaryk, a judge with a reputation as a Federalist Society militant. His sister recently told reporters it was his mission to end abortion in the United States. He has called homosexuality “disordered.” He made the government reinstate the Trump-era “Remain in Mexico” policy, which was later overturned by the Supreme Court.

Such a track record would make him the ideal judge for anti-abortion groups seeking someone sympathetic to their case.

Worse, Kacsmaryk may be readying his abortion pill ruling based on the brand-new “major questions doctrine,” which is all of nine months old. First articulated in a case last year that slashed the Environmental Protection Agency’s regulatory power, the doctrine claims federal agencies need clear congressional authorization to act on issues that have “major” economic or political significance. This conveniently flexible legal theory is poised to be the go-to reasoning for right-wing judges to block any policies they don’t like.

The Texas case isn’t the only evidence of the impact of skewed lower courts. The Supreme Court’s sweeping decision in New York State Rifle and Pistol Association v. Bruen, which held that gun laws must pass the test of “history and tradition” rather than public safety, has led to judicial rulings that verge on satirical. One federal judge in western New York blocked most of the state’s new gun law, declaring he could find no colonial-era law banning guns in summer camps, which, of course, did not exist at the time. And surprise, surprise, he found no trace of 18th-century prohibitions on guns in subways, either. Though he let the ban on guns in churches stand, another New York judge ruled shortly afterward that this restriction, too, was ahistorical.

Other examples abound, and there will no doubt be many more to come. Trump isn’t only responsible for appointing three Supreme Court justices — he appointed 226 federal judges during his presidency. They were overwhelmingly pre-vetted by the Federalist Society.

These appointments have left a lasting impact, and there is an urgent need to rebalance the scales of the federal judiciary. Last week, the Judicial Conference of the United States, led by Chief Justice John Roberts, recommended adding 68 federal judges to the courts to meet demanding new workloads. This would be a good step toward countering the partisanship plaguing the courts. But most importantly, we need to understand the significance of what has happened with the federal courts.

We cannot let one judge with a gavel and a grudge govern our country.

 

hillary clinton donald trump crop Oct. 19 3rd debate

ny times logoNew York Times, Trial of 2016 Twitter Troll to Test Limits of Online Speech, Colin Moynihan and Alan Feuer, March 21, 2023 (print ed.).  Douglass Mackey tried to trick Black people into thinking they could vote for president by text, prosecutors said.

The images appeared on Twitter in late 2016 just as the presidential campaign was entering its final stretch. Some featured the message “vote for Hillary” and the phrases “avoid the line” and “vote from home.”

Aimed at Democratic voters, and sometimes singling out Black people, the messages were actually intended to help Donald J. Trump, not Hillary Clinton. The goal, federal prosecutors said, was to suppress votes for Ms. Clinton by persuading her supporters to falsely believe they could cast presidential ballots by text message.

twitter bird CustomThe misinformation campaign was carried out by a group of conspirators, prosecutors said, including a man in his 20s who called himself Ricky Vaughn. On Monday he will go on trial in Federal District Court in Brooklyn under his real name, Douglass Mackey, after being charged with conspiring to spread misinformation designed to deprive others of their right to vote.

“The defendant exploited a social media platform to infringe one of the most basic and sacred rights guaranteed by the Constitution,” Nicholas L. McQuaid, acting assistant attorney general for the Justice Department’s Criminal Division, said in 2021 when charges against Mr. Mackey were announced.

Prosecutors have said that Mr. Mackey, who went to Middlebury College in Vermont and said he lived on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, used hashtags and memes as part of his deception and outlined his strategies publicly on Twitter and with co-conspirators in private Twitter group chats.

“Obviously we can win Pennsylvania,” Mr. Mackey said on Twitter, using one of his pseudonymous accounts less than a week before the election, according to a complaint and affidavit. “The key is to drive up turnout with non-college whites, and limit black turnout.”

That tweet, court papers said, came a day after Mr. Mackey tweeted an image showing a Black woman in front of a sign supporting Ms. Clinton. That tweet told viewers they could vote for Ms. Clinton by text message.

Prosecutors said nearly 5,000 people texted the number shown in the deceptive images, adding that the images stated they had been paid for by the Clinton campaign and had been viewed by people in the New York City area.

Mr. Mackey’s trial is expected to provide a window into a small part of what the authorities have described as broad efforts to sway the 2016 election through lies and disinformation. While some of those attempts were orchestrated by Russian security services, others were said to have emanated from American internet trolls.

People whose names may surface during the trial or who are expected to testify include a man who tweeted about Jews and Black people and was then disinvited from the DeploraBall, a far-right event in Washington, D.C., the night before Mr. Trump’s inauguration; a failed congressional candidate from Wisconsin; and an obscure federal cooperator who will be allowed to testify under a code name.

As the trial has approached, people sympathetic to Mr. Mackey have cast his case as part of a political and cultural war, a depiction driven in part by precisely the sort of partisan social media-fueled effort that he is accused of engineering.

Mr. Mackey’s fans have portrayed him as a harmless prankster who is being treated unfairly by the state for engaging in a form of free expression. That notion, perhaps predictably, has proliferated on Twitter, advanced by people using some of the same tools that prosecutors said Mr. Mackey used to disseminate lies. Mackey supporters have referred to him on social media as a “meme martyr” and spread a meme showing him wearing a red MAGA hat and accompanied by the hashtag “#FreeRicky.”

Some tweets about Mr. Mackey from prominent figures have included apocalyptic-sounding language. The Fox personality Tucker Carlson posted a video of himself on Twitter calling the trial “the single greatest assault on free speech and human rights in this country’s modern history.”

ny times logoNew York Times, Video Shows Virginia Man’s Death in Custody, Campbell Robertson and Christine Hauser, March 22, 2023 (print ed.). Seven deputies in Henrico County have been charged with second-degree murder in the death of Irvo Otieno at a hospital.

Surveillance video from a state psychiatric hospital in Virginia shows a group of sheriff’s deputies and medical staff piling on a handcuffed man, Irvo Otieno, and pinning him for nearly 11 minutes until his death on March 6.

The video, which was obtained by The Washington Post before its expected release on Tuesday, shows at least seven deputies from the Henrico County sheriff’s office enter a room at Central State Hospital in Dinwiddie County dragging Mr. Otieno, who is shirtless and in handcuffs and leg shackles. The deputies push him into a small couch and then force him to the floor, where they pinion him until his death while medical staff stand aside, the video shows.

The Dinwiddie County prosecutor, Ann Cabell Baskervill, has charged seven sheriff’s deputies and three employees of the hospital with second degree murder. She had announced that she was publicly releasing the video on Tuesday, though some defense lawyers had filed motions to block its release. However, The Post accessed the video through a court filing and published it.

Mr. Otieno, who had long been struggling with mental health and had been taken from his home three days earlier, had been moved to the hospital by sheriff’s deputies from a county jail earlier that day. In the video, people who seem to be part of the medical staff walk in and out of the room as the deputies pile on Mr. Otieno, 28, pinning his legs and arms and pushing his body down to the floor.

washington post logoWashington Post, Gladys Kessler, federal judge in landmark tobacco lawsuit, dies at 85, Emily Langer, March 23, 2023 (print ed.). In a major gladys kesslerruling in 2006, she found that cigarette makers had conspired for decades to deceive the public about the deadly threat posed by smoking.

Judge Kessler, a former public-interest lawyer who served for 17 years on the D.C. Superior Court, was appointed by President Bill Clinton in 1994 to the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.

Politico, Fear, burnout and insubordination: Insiders spill details about life at the highest levels of FBI, Josh Gerstein and Kyle Cheney, March 21, 2023 (print ed.).  A christopher-wray-o.jpgdiscrimination case has pulled back the curtain on the tense atmosphere at the bureau’s legal office; FBI employees and guests listen at an installation ceremony for FBI Director Chris Wray, right.

politico CustomA gender discrimination trial in Washington, D.C., shined a harsh spotlight on one of the most important legal offices in the U.S. government, portraying it as a hotbed of dysfunction, turf wars, mismanagement and paranoia.

The lawsuit, which came to a head earlier this month in federal court in the nation’s capital, centered on claims of gender discrimination in the FBI’s general counsel’s office, where some of the most powerful attorneys in the country are charged with helping safeguard Americans from terrorism, cyber threats, organized crime and corruption.

FBI logoA federal jury ultimately sided with the FBI, but not before a parade of witnesses testified to startling revelations about the bureau, exposing dysfunction and management woes that at times have been exploited by the bureau’s detractors — most notably amid Donald Trump’s crusade against investigations into his activities.

The trial drew little notice inside the federal courthouse in Washington, D.C., where numerous high-profile Jan. 6 defendants were simultaneously standing trial, and grand juries probing potential crimes by Trump and his allies remain active. But the proceedings offered a peek inside the secretive confines of the FBI — describing degrees of dysfunction that are rarely aired, particularly by the FBI insiders themselves.

The list of trial witnesses included Jim Baker, who testified that when he took over as FBI general counsel in 2014, his staff of about 200 lawyers were burned out, locked in bureaucratic turf battles and wracked by fear of their own colleagues. Baker said that in the early part of his tenure, some employees were so afraid to raise concerns in front of others that they “frequently” slipped anonymous notes under his door overnight — typewritten to conceal handwriting.

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More On U.S. Abortion, #MeToo, Stalking, Rape Laws

washington post logoWashington Post, Opinion: Senate Democrats should be holding oversight hearings of their own, Jennifer Rubin, right, March 22, 2023. House jennifer rubin new headshotRepublicans have given oversight a bad name. Oversight should not be about baseless fishing expeditions (e.g., political pressure on Twitter), political payback (e.g., Hunter Biden), or obstruction of the Justice Department or local prosecutors (for instance, wholly overstepping congressional authority and violating states’ policing authority in harassing Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg).

For starters, oversight hearings must have a legitimate legislative purpose. Done properly, an information-gathering and public-education process can provide the basis for thoughtful legislation. But when it comes to necessary oversight, Senate Democrats have done precious little despite an array of topics crying out for congressional investigation.

Abortion: The Supreme Court decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization has triggered a slew of abortion bans, with devastating consequences for women and their families. The lawsuit filed in Texas by five women and two doctors documents the danger and suffering the state’s abortion ban has inflicted on women, the dire consequences for women who need appropriate care for miscarriages, and the impact on the medical profession.

A new report from the National Center for Health Statistics documents that even before Dobbs, the United States’ already-high maternal death rate was rising (32.9 deaths per 100,000 live births in 2021 compared with 23.8 in 2020 and 20.1 in 2019), especially for Black women (2.6 times that of White women). After Dobbs, that figure can be expected to soar.

Where are the Senate hearings on this health crisis? Senators should bring in a variety of health-care specialists, hospital officials, medical ethicists, women, families of female victims, sociologists and statisticians (to highlight the economic, emotional and family impact when women are forced to give birth against their will), and legal scholars (to, among other things, explain the inherent vagueness and unworkability of state statutes). Senate Republicans who have cheered these bans should see evidence of the harm they support.

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

climate change photo

ny times logoNew York Times, Storm-Ravaged California Prepares for More Rain and Snow, Jesus Jiménez, March 22, 2023 (print ed.). Some in the central part of the state were being urged to evacuate, though the latest system was not expected to be as powerful as previous weather events this year.

California is bracing for yet another storm system, one that is expected to bring heavy rain and snow on Tuesday and into Wednesday to a state that has been battered by storm after storm over the past few weeks.

The latest storm system is forecast to bring up to four inches of rain to parts of Southern and Central California, and up to four feet of snow in elevations above 6,000 feet, according to the National Weather Service. The merging threats of rain, snow and gusty winds up to 75 miles per hour may lead to downed trees and power lines, as well as flooding and a “significant threat of avalanches” at higher elevations, the Weather Service said.

By Tuesday morning, it was already raining in many parts of the state. Some areas had received nearly an inch of rain since midnight. Meteorologists with the Weather Service in Hanford, Calif., were keeping an eye on water levels on rivers, creeks and steams, which they said were “extremely high,” and that heavy rain below 4,000 feet could cause flooding. The heaviest rain was expected in the afternoon and evening

ny times logoNew York Times, A Water System So Broken That One Pipe Leaks 5 Million Gallons a Day, Sarah Fowler, March 23, 2023 (print ed.). As a water shortage ballooned into a crisis in Jackson, Miss., the leak grew bigger and bigger, gouging out a swimming pool-size crater in the earth.

because their faucets were dry, the break at the old Colonial Country Club squandered an estimated five million gallons of drinking water a day in a city that had none to spare.

It is enough water to serve the daily needs of 50,000 people, or a third of the city residents who rely on the beleaguered water utility.

No one knows for sure when the leak reached its current size. But newly appointed water officials say the city discovered the broken mainline pipe in 2016 and left it to gush, even as the water gouged out a swimming pool-size crater in the earth and city residents were forced to endure one drinking water crisis after another.

Jackson’s water system has been flirting with collapse for decades thanks to a combination of mismanagement, crumbling infrastructure and a series of ill-fated decisions that cost the utility money that it did not have. In 2022, the Justice Department reached an agreement with the city requiring it to bring in an outside manager to run the water department.

ny times logoNew York Times, A Different Kind of Pipeline Project Scrambles Midwest Politics, Mitch Smith, Photographs by Alyssa Schukar, March 21, 2023 (print ed.).  Plans that would bury carbon underground rather than release it in the air have stoked debate over climate and property rights, creating unlikely alliances.

For more than a decade, the Midwest was the site of bitter clashes over plans for thousand-mile pipelines meant to carry crude oil beneath cornfields and cattle ranches.

Now high-dollar pipeline fights are happening again, but with a twist.

Instead of oil, these projects would carry millions of tons of carbon dioxide from ethanol plants to be injected into underground rock formations rather than dispersed as pollutants in the air.

What is playing out is a very different kind of environmental battle, a huge test not just for farmers and landowners but for emerging technologies promoted as ways to safely store planet-warming carbon.

The technology has generated support from powerful politicians in both parties, as well as major farming organizations, ethanol producers and some environmental groups.

Supporters, including some farmers who have signed agreements to have a pipeline buried on their property, frame the ideas being proposed by two companies as a win for both the economy and environment. They say the pipelines, boosted by federal tax credits, including from the Inflation Reduction Act that President Biden signed last year, would lower carbon emissions while aiding the agricultural economy through continued ethanol production.

But opponents are concerned about property rights and safety, and are not convinced of the projects’ claimed environmental benefits. They have forged unlikely alliances that have blurred the region’s political lines, uniting conservative farmers with liberal urbanites, white people with Native Americans, small-government Republicans with climate-conscious Democrats.

The result, both sides agree, is a high-stakes economic and environmental struggle pitting pipeline advocates against opponents who honed their political and legal strategies over nearly 15 years of fighting the Dakota Access oil pipeline, which has been in operation since 2017, and the Keystone XL oil pipeline, which was never built.

There is no question that technology exists to remove carbon from industrial sites and to transport and store it underground. Less clear: Is carbon capture really an effective counterweight to the overheating planet? And, if so, at what cost?

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Pandemics, Public Health, Privacy

ny times logoNew York Times, Another Mental Illness Tragedy Spurs Questions About Health System, Campbell Robertson and Neelam Bohra, March 24, 2023 (print ed.). Irvo Otieno’s death after sheriff’s deputies pinned him to the floor shows that changes in Virginia have not solved deep problems, critics say.

One evening in May 2018, a 24-year-old high school biology teacher crashed his car at a highway exit in Richmond, Va. He got out of the car, naked and apparently in mental distress, and for several moments writhed on the ground. Then, with nothing in his hands, he stood, strode toward a police officer and lunged. The officer shot and killed him.

The death of the young man, Marcus-David Peters, has come up again and again in Virginia since Irvo Otieno died on March 6, after he was pinned to the floor by sheriff’s deputies for nearly 12 minutes at a psychiatric hospital in Petersburg. To his family and many others across the state, the death of Mr. Otieno, a 28-year-old musician with a history of mental illness, proves that despite incremental signs of improvement, Virginia’s mental health system is still profoundly flawed in how it responds to people in acute distress, especially when law enforcement agencies are involved.

“Having a mental health crisis cannot be a death sentence,” said Princess Blanding, Mr. Peters’s sister, who pushed for improvements to the system but believes that the changes that resulted from her brother’s death were still inadequate. “When a person’s kidneys fail them or their heart stops functioning, we don’t throw them in jail. Why are we doing that when their brains are not functioning the way they normally would?”

Mr. Otieno’s death minutes after sheriff’s deputies brought him to Central State Hospital falls into a bleak pattern that goes back years, in which a tragedy involving someone with mental illness inspires pledges of change until the next tragedy reveals how short the changes have fallen.

tennessee map

ny times logoNew York Times, Tennessee’s Rejection of Federal Funds Alarms H.I.V. Prevention Groups, Ava Sasani, March 24, 2023. 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.

ny times logoNew York Times, In Montana, It’s Youth vs. the State in a Landmark Climate Case, David Gelles, March 24, 2023. Sixteen young Montanans have sued their state, arguing that its support of fossil fuels violates its constitution.

ny times logoNew York Times, Biden Plan to Cut Billions in Medicare Fraud Ignites Lobbying Frenzy, Reed Abelson and Margot Sanger-Katz, March 23, 2023 (print ed.). The Biden administration has proposed changes to how it would pay private Medicare Advantage plans, setting off a lobbying frenzy.

joe biden resized oThe multimillion dollar ad buy is part of an aggressive campaign by the health insurance industry and its allies to stop the Biden proposal. It would significantly lower payments — by billions of dollars a year — to Medicare Advantage, the private plans that now cover about half of the government’s health program for older Americans.

The change in payment formulas is an effort, Biden administration officials say, to tackle widespread abuses and fraud in the increasingly popular private program. In the last decade, reams of evidence uncovered in lawsuits and audits revealed systematic overbilling of the government. A final decision on the payments is expected shortly, and is one of a series of tough new rules aimed at reining in the industry. The changes fit into a broader effort by the White House to shore up the Medicare trust fund.

ny times logoNew 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.

covad 19 photo.jpg Custom 2China 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.

China’s new mRNA vaccine, developed by CSPC Pharmaceutical Group Ltd., based in the northern Chinese city of Shijiazhuang, was approved for emergency use by China’s health regulator, according to a statement from the company on Wednesday.

Among the vaccines currently available in China, the most widely known are made by the companies Sinopharm and Sinovac. Like other traditional vaccines, they rely on a century-old method for inoculation, which use an inactivated virus to trigger a response by the immune system, and have since proven to be less effective in protecting against symptomatic disease.

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washington post logoWashington Post, Jake Paul, Lindsay Lohan among 8 charged in SEC cryptocurrency case, Bryan Pietsch, March 24, 2023 (print ed.). The Securities and Exchange Commission said Wednesday it had charged a handful of celebrities — including the internet provocateur-turned-professional boxer Jake Paul and actress Lindsay Lohan — with promoting cryptocurrencies without disclosing that they were compensated for doing so.

Paul, Lohan, the former teen heartthrob Austin Mahone and the rapper Soulja Boy (whose legal name is DeAndre Cortez Way) were among eight celebrities the SEC said had illegally promoted cryptocurrencies Tronix (TRX) and BitTorrent (BTT).

The SEC also charged entrepreneur Justin Sun and three of his companies for “the unregistered offer and sale” of TRX and BTT.

The complaint, filed Wednesday in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, also alleged that Sun “directed the manipulative wash trading of TRX to create the artificial appearance of legitimate investor interest and keep TRX’s price afloat,” referring to a scheme in which securities are essentially traded at the same time between associated entities, making the asset “appear actively traded without an actual change in beneficial ownership.”

Sun — a Chinese entrepreneur who became a citizen of Grenada, the small island nation in the West Indies that grants citizenship to those who make large investments in the country — gained worldwide attention in 2019 after he paid $4.6 million to have lunch with Warren Buffett, but then canceled it, apologizing for “excessive self-promotion.”

Instead of lunch with Warren Buffett, Chinese entrepreneur Justin Sun eats humble pie

The celebrities’ promotional messages about the cryptocurrencies were posted on social media, according to the SEC. Lohan, who has more than 8 million Twitter followers, tweeted on Feb. 11, 2021 that she was “already liking” three of Sun’s cryptocurrencies, including TRX. “Super fast and 0 fee,” she wrote. “Good job @justinsuntron.”

In March 2021, she promoted an auction — in TRX — for an NFT, or non-fungible token, of one of her songs. “Just over 9 hours left to bid!” she tweeted on April 1, 2021.

washington post logoWashington Post, Judge sounds skeptical of some Fox arguments in Dominion lawsuit, Jeremy Barr, March 22, 2023 (print ed.). Judge Eric M. Davis pushed back on assertions from both sides in Dominion’s libel lawsuit against Fox News, but he seemed particularly skeptical of the network’s claims

ny times logoNew York Times, Inside the 3 Months That Could Cost Fox $1.6 Billion, Jeremy W. Peters, March 21, 2023 (print ed.). The decision by Fox News executives in November 2020 to treat the more hard-right Newsmax as a mortal threat spawned a possibly more serious danger.

fox news logo SmallSince 2002, when Fox News first overtook CNN as the most-watched cable news channel, one thing has been as certain and predictable as its dominance: Every time a Democrat wins the White House, the right-leaning network’s ratings take a momentary dip.

That happened after the election of President Biden in 2020, too. But the reaction inside Fox was far different than before.

There was panic. From the chairman of Fox Corporation on down, executives scrambled as they tried to keep viewers tuned in, believing they were facing a crisis. Now, because of the decisions made after former President Donald J. Trump’s loss, Fox News is reckoning with a threat that could prove far more serious.

dominion voting systemsA $1.6 billion defamation suit from Dominion Voting Systems claims Fox knowingly spread false information about the role of the firm’s election technology in a made-up conspiracy to flip votes. On Tuesday, the two sides will present oral arguments before a judge in Delaware state court as they prepare for a trial next month.

Fox has insisted that it wasn’t presenting claims about Dominion as fact but was reporting and opining on them as any news organization would.

She says lawyers made her give misleading Dominion testimony.

As part of the suit, Dominion obtained thousands of internal Fox emails and text messages and deposed dozens of Fox employees. That evidence shows in extraordinary detail how the network lost its way in the weeks after the election. Here is a timeline of that fateful period, as told in court filings. Some of these exchanges have been lightly condensed for clarity.

 

tucker carlson fox horizontal

ny times logoNew York Times, A Fox News producer sued the network, saying she was coerced into giving misleading testimony in the Dominion case, Nicholas Confessore and Katie Robertson, March 21, 2023 (print ed.). The producer, Abby Grossberg, said in a pair of lawsuits that the effort to place blame on her and Maria Bartiromo, the Fox Business host, was rooted in rampant misogyny and discrimination at the company.

maria bartiromoA Fox News producer who has worked with the hosts Maria Bartiromo, right, and Tucker Carlson filed lawsuits against the company in New York and Delaware on Monday, accusing Fox lawyers of coercing her into giving misleading testimony in the continuing legal battle around the network’s coverage of unfounded claims about election fraud.

The producer, Abby Grossberg, said Fox lawyers had tried to position her and Ms. Bartiromo to take the blame for Fox’s repeated airing of conspiracy theories about Dominion Voting Systems and its supposed role in manipulating the results of the 2020 presidential election. Dominion has filed a $1.6 billion defamation suit against Fox. Ms. Grossberg said the effort to place blame on her and Ms. Bartiromo was rooted in rampant misogyny and discrimination at the network.

fox news logo SmallThe new lawsuits, coupled with revelations from the Dominion legal fight, shed light on the rivalries and turf battles that raged at Fox News in the wake of the 2020 election, as network executives fought to hold on to viewers furious at the top-rated network for accurately reporting on President Donald J. Trump’s defeat in Arizona, a crucial swing state.

The lawsuits also include details about Ms. Grossberg’s work life at Fox and on Mr. Carlson’s show. Ms. Grossberg says she and other women endured frank and open sexism from co-workers and superiors at the network, which has been dogged for years by lawsuits and allegations about sexual harassment by Fox executives and stars.

The network’s disregard for women, Ms. Grossberg alleged, left her and Ms. Bartiromo understaffed — stretched too thin to properly vet the truthfulness of claims made against Dominion on the air. At times, Ms. Grossberg said, she was the only full-time employee dedicated solely to Ms. Bartiromo’s Sunday-morning show.

dominion voting systemsIn her complaints, Ms. Grossberg accuses lawyers for Fox News of coaching her in “a coercive and intimidating manner” before her September deposition in the Dominion case. The lawyers, she said, gave her the impression that she had to avoid mentioning prominent male executives and on-air talent to protect them from any blame, while putting her own reputation at risk.

On Monday afternoon, Fox filed its own suit against Ms. Grossberg, seeking to enjoin her from filing claims that would shed light on her discussions with the company’s lawyers. A judge has not yet ruled on Fox’s suit. Later on Monday, according to her lawyer, Parisis G. Filippatos, Fox also placed Ms. Grossberg on forced administrative leave.

Ms. Grossberg’s lawsuits were filed in the Southern District of New York and in Superior Court in Delaware, where a pretrial hearing in the Dominion defamation lawsuit is scheduled for Tuesday.

In a statement, a Fox spokeswoman said: “Fox News Media engaged an independent outside counsel to immediately investigate the concerns raised by Ms. Grossberg, which were made following a critical performance review. We will vigorously defend these claims.”

According to the lawsuits filed by Ms. Grossberg, Fox superiors called Ms. Bartiromo a “crazy bitch” who was “menopausal” and asked Ms. Grossberg to cut the host out of coverage discussions.

Last year, she began working as a senior booking producer at “Tucker Carlson Tonight.” On her first full day, according to the lawsuit, Ms. Grossberg discovered that the show’s Manhattan work space was decorated with large pictures of Representative Nancy Pelosi of California, then the House speaker, wearing a plunging swimsuit.

Later that fall, it said, before an appearance on the show by Tudor Dixon, the Republican candidate for Michigan governor, Mr. Carlson’s staff held a mock debate about whether they would prefer to have sex with Ms. Dixon or her Democratic opponent, Gov. Gretchen Whitmer.

After Ms. Grossberg complained about harassment from two male producers on the show, she was pulled into a meeting with human resources and told that she was not performing her duties, according to the complaint.

ny times logoNew York Times, DNA From Beethoven’s Hair Unlocks Medical and Family Secrets, Gina Kolata, March 23, 2023 (print ed.). By analyzing samples of hair said to have come from Ludwig van Beethoven, researchers debunked myths about the revered composer while raising new questions.

It was March 1827 and Ludwig van Beethoven was dying. As he lay in bed, wracked with abdominal pain and jaundiced, grieving friends and acquaintances came to visit. And some asked a favor: Could they clip a lock of his hair for remembrance?

The parade of mourners continued after Beethoven’s death at age 56, even after doctors performed a gruesome craniotomy, looking at the folds in Beethoven’s brain and removing his ear bones in a vain attempt to understand why the revered composer lost his hearing.

Within three days of Beethoven’s death, not a single strand of hair was left on his head.

Ever since, a cottage industry has aimed to understand Beethoven’s illnesses and the cause of his death.

Now, an analysis of strands of his hair has upended long held beliefs about his health. The report provides an explanation for his debilitating ailments and even his death, while also raising new questions about his genealogical origins and hinting at a dark family secret.

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Justice Department Special Prosecutor Jack Smith, left, and former President Donald Trump, shown in a collage via CNN.

Justice Department Special Prosecutor Jack Smith, left, and former President Donald Trump, shown in a collage via CNN.

ny times logoNew York Times, Appeals Court Orders Trump Lawyer to Hand Over Records in Documents Inquiry, Alan Feuer, March 23, 2023 (print ed.). The ruling compelling the lawyer, M. Evan Corcoran, to turn over documents came after a lightning round of appeals court filings overnight.

A federal appeals court ruled on Wednesday that a lawyer representing former President Donald J. Trump in an inquiry into his handling of classified materials had to give prosecutors what are likely to be dozens of documents related to his legal work for Mr. Trump.

The ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia came after a lightning round of filings that began on Tuesday evening when Mr. Trump sought evan corcoranan order to stop the lawyer, M. Evan Corcoran, right, from handing over documents to investigators.

The pitched behind-the-scenes legal fight continued overnight and into early Wednesday morning, with prosecutors responding to Mr. Trump’s request for a stay in the case with papers submitted before dawn. It played out as a separate legal proceeding involving Mr. Trump — the Manhattan district attorney’s consideration of whether to seek an indictment of the former president on charges related to a hush-money payment to a porn actress — remained unresolved.

The fight in Washington over Mr. Corcoran’s level of compliance in the documents case suggests that the prosecutors are working to assemble evidence that Mr. Trump could have committed a crime in defying the government’s efforts to reclaim the classified materials he took with him after leaving the White House.

As a legal matter, the litigation — all of which has taken place behind closed doors or under seal — involves a balancing act between attorney-client privilege, which generally protects lawyers from divulging private communications with their clients to the government, and a special provision of the law known as the crime-fraud exception. That exception allows prosecutors to work around attorney-client privilege when they have reason to believe that legal advice or legal services have been used in furthering a crime.

The spat began last month when the office of the special counsel, Jack Smith, sought to pierce assertions of attorney-client privilege that Mr. Corcoran and Mr. Trump had made in the documents inquiry. In an initial appearance before a grand jury investigating the case, Mr. Corcoran had asserted the privilege as a way to limit the scope of the questions he would have to answer as well as the number of legal records he would have to turn over.

 Understand the Trump Documents Inquiry: The Justice Department is conducting a criminal investigation into Donald Trump’s handling of classified files after he left office.

  • Special Counsel: Attorney General Merrick Garland appointed Jack Smith, a longtime prosecutor, to take over the inquiry. Here is what Smith’s role entails.
  • Trump Lawyer: The special counsel’s investigation into Trump has prompted a pitched legal battle over whether prosecutors have sufficient evidence to force one of his lawyers to testify to a grand jury and provide documents related to his work for the former president.
  • Passing the Gavel: James Boasberg will take over from Beryl Howell as the chief judge of the Federal District Court in Washington, a post that plays a key role in the federal special counsel investigations into Trump’s handling of the documents and the events surrounding Jan. 6.
  • Comparison With Biden Case: The discovery of classified documents from President Biden’s time as vice president prompted comparisons to Trump’s hoarding of records. But there are key differences.

ny times logoNew York Times, Prosecutor in Trump Hush-Money Case Fires Back at House Republicans, Luke Broadwater, Jonah E. Bromwich and Ben Protess, March 23, 2023. The grand jury examining the former president’s role in a hush-money payment typically does not hear testimony about the inquiry on Thursdays, making an indictment unlikely before next week.

The Manhattan district attorney on Thursday responded to House Republicans who have scrutinized his office’s criminal investigation into Donald J. Trump, pushing back forcefully against what the office called an inappropriate attempt by Congress to impede a local prosecution.

alvin bragg twitterThe office of the district attorney, Alvin L. Bragg, right, was responding to a Monday letter demanding that he provide communications, documents and testimony about his investigation — an extraordinary request by three Republican committee chairmen to involve themselves in an inquiry that is expected to result in criminal charges against the former president.

The response from the district attorney’s office, signed by its general counsel, Leslie Dubeck, called the Republicans’ request “an unprecedented inquiry into a pending local prosecution.”

Mr. Bragg’s office is investigating the role Mr. Trump played in a hush-money payment to a porn star and there have been several signals that the prosecutors are nearing an indictment. Still, the exact timing remains unknown.

Though the special grand jury hearing evidence about Mr. Trump meets on Thursdays, it typically does not hear evidence about the Trump case that day, according to a person with knowledge of the matter. Special grand juries, which unlike regular grand juries sit for months at a time and hear complex cases, routinely consider multiple cases simultaneously.

Republicans have rushed to the former president’s side this week, following a Saturday post from Mr. Trump inaccurately predicting that he would be arrested Tuesday and calling on his supporters to protest in charged language reminiscent of his social media posts in the weeks before the attack on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

On Saturday, following Mr. Trump’s post, the speaker of the House, Representative Kevin McCarthy, called for investigations into whether federal funds were being used for “politically motivated prosecutions,” an act clearly intended as a threat to Mr. Bragg.

washington post logoWashington Post, Fed raises benchmark rate by 0.25 point despite bank turmoil, Rachel Siegel, March 23, 2023 (print ed.). Central bank officials have said they’ll keep trying to slow the economy until inflation eases back to normal levels. But Silicon Valley Bank’s collapse weighed heavily on the latest decision.

jerome powellThe Federal Reserve, led by Jerome Powell, right, raised interest rates by a quarter of a percentage point on Wednesday, moving forward with its fight against high inflation despite concern that its rate hikes may be fueling instability in the banking system.

federal reserve system CustomFinancial markets expected the move, which brings the Fed’s base policy rate to between 4.75 and 5 percent.

Less than two weeks after the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank jarred the nation’s financial stability, policymakers said the banking system is “sound and resilient” in a statement released at the end of the Fed’s two-day meeting. Still, events from the past few weeks could hamper the economy, which the central bank is still trying to slow down to control price increases.

“Recent developments are likely to result in tighter credit conditions for households and businesses and to weigh on economic activity, hiring and inflation,” the statement read. “The extent of these effects is uncertain.”

The central bank is also facing questions about its regulatory oversight of SVB, as Washington tries to figure out whether the government could have prevented the turmoil in the banking sector.

“There is risk for the Fed here,” Tim Duy, a Fed expert at the University of Oregon and chief economist at SGH Macro Advisors, wrote in an analyst note. “If the Fed hikes, it must be reasonably confident that regulators have ringfenced the banking problems. If the Fed hikes rates and bank failures multiply, the political fallout will be intense.”

Fighting inflation, rescuing banks: The Fed’s sprawling jobs collide

In a fresh crop of economic projections, officials penciled in one more quarter-point rate increase this year, though future moves depend heavily on how the economy behaves. Officials otherwise made small tweaks to their previous estimates from December. They now expect the unemployment rate to end the year at 4.5 percent (down from 4.6 percent the last time the bank made projections) and that the economy will grow by 0.4 percent this year (down from 0.5 percent they projected in December). Inflation will remain above normal levels through the end of 2023.

Wayne Madsen Report, Investigative Commentary: Recognizing symbols of hate and right-wing rebellion in the United States, Wayne Madsen, left, March 22-23, 2023. Nazi and other far-wayne madsen may 29 2015 cropped Smallright symbology spreading across America.

The transformation of the Republican Party into a Donald Trump cult and platform advocating fascism has resulted in the mushrooming of symbols of wayne madesen report logohate across the United States. In some cases, flags and banners proclaim loyalty to Trump even though they deface the U.S. flag, thus violating the U.S. Flag Code. Other banners, such as the "Don't Tread on Me" or Gadsden Flag misuse and misrepresent historical flags in being adopted as hate symbols. Nazi swastikas and symbols of the Confederacy have also been resurrected by the Trumpist cult.

Absent a domestic terrorism law, the FBI and other law enforcement agencies are hard-pressed to conduct systematic and uniform surveillance of far-right insurrectionists, but many far-right groups make no effort to hide themselves. In fact, actual and potential seditionists like the Proud Boys, Oath Keepers, and Boogaloo Bois shamefully fly from their vehicles and on their front lawns their symbols of rebellion and hate.

Spotting symbols of insurrection and hate should be a top priority for every American who abides by the rule of law and the Constitution. The black "No Quarter Given" flag is an extremely dangerous symbol. Those who fly it are sovereign citizens who are giving warning that they will shoot to kill anyone on their property.

ny times logoNew York Times, Former President Trump is facing several investigations. See where they stand, Ben Protess, Alan Feuer and Danny Hakim, March 23, 2023 (print ed.). The Manhattan district attorney’s office appears to be nearing a potential indictment of the former president, as federal and state prosecutors bear down on Mr. Trump in a number of inquiries.

After avoiding indictment for years, former President Donald J. Trump now appears closer than ever to facing criminal charges in Manhattan.

The Manhattan district attorney’s office recently signaled to Mr. Trump’s lawyers that he could face criminal charges for his role in a hush-money payment to a porn star, the strongest indication yet that prosecutors are nearing an indictment of the former president, according to four people with knowledge of the matter.

The district attorney, Alvin L. Bragg, impaneled a grand jury in January to hear evidence in the longest-running criminal inquiry facing the former president. Since then, his prosecutors have questioned at least nine witnesses before the panel, though it is unclear whether they have completed their presentation of evidence.

Any case would mark the first indictment of a former American president. Yet Mr. Bragg might not be the last prosecutor to seek charges against Mr. Trump. Several federal and state prosecutors are scrutinizing him as well.

Here is where the notable inquiries involving the former president stand.

ny times logoNew York Times, Republicans Say Spending Is Fueling Inflation. The Fed Chair Disagrees, Jim Tankersley, March 23, 2023. Jerome Powell has said that snarled supply chains, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and shifts among American consumers are primarily behind rapid price growth.

The chair of the Federal Reserve, Jerome H. Powell, has repeatedly undercut a central claim Republicans make as they seek sharp cuts in federal spending: Government spending is driving the nation’s still-hot inflation rate.

Republican lawmakers say spending programs signed into law by President Biden are pumping too much money into the economy and fueling an annual inflation rate that was 6 percent in February — a decline from last year’s highs, but still well above historical norms. Mr. Powell disputed those claims in congressional testimony earlier this month and in a news conference on Wednesday, after the Fed announced it would once again raise interest rates in an effort to bring inflation back toward normal levels.

Asked whether federal tax and spending policies were contributing to price growth, Mr. Powell pointed to a decline in federal spending from the height of the Covid-19 pandemic.

“You have to look at the fiscal impulse from spending,” Mr. Powell said on Wednesday, referring to a measure of how much tax and spending policies are adding or subtracting to economic growth. “Fiscal impulse is actually not what’s driving inflation right now. It was at the beginning perhaps, but that’s not the story right now.”

ny times logoNew York Times, U.S. and Canada Reach an Agreement on Turning Away Asylum Seekers, Michael D. Shear and Ian Austen, March 23, 2023. The deal allows both countries to turn away people who cross their borders without authorization at a time when migration has surged.

The deal, which is set to be announced Friday by President Biden and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau after the two leaders meet in Ottawa, will allow Canada to turn back immigrants at Roxham Road, a popular unofficial crossing point from New York for migrants seeking asylum in Canada.

In exchange, Canada has agreed to provide a new, legal refugee program for 15,000 migrants who are fleeing violence, persecution and economic devastation in South and Central America, the official said, lessening the pressure of illegal crossings into the United States from Mexico.

Mr. Biden was due to arrive in Ottawa on Thursday evening for a 24-hour visit meant to underscore the unity of purpose between the United States and Canada after four years of frosty and even openly hostile exchanges between Mr. Trudeau and former President Donald J. Trump.

 

volodymyer zelensky 3 22 2023 bahkmut ukraine

washington post logoWashington Post, Ukraine Live Updates: Zelensky visits Bakhmut; China’s Xi leaves Russia with no clear progress on ending war, Rachel Pannett and Adela Suliman, March 23, 2023 (print ed.). Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky, shown above at right, made a visit to the front line in Bakhmut, where Russian forces have almost encircled Ukrainian troops, cutting off major transport and supply lines. His office said in a statement Wednesday that Zelensky heard operational updates and presented service men with awards. Controlling Bakhmut is unlikely to tip the war’s outcome but would give Russia a symbolic victory after months of battlefield setbacks.

Chinese leader Xi Jinping departed Russia on Wednesday, wrapping up a three-day trip that underscored Beijing and Moscow’s desire to reshape the global order against Western power but that offered little concrete progress on China’s pledge to promote peace in the Ukraine conflict. Xi and Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a series of agreements to expand trade and deepen strategic ties. Xi reiterated that China has an “impartial position” on the war in Ukraine. The United States later accused China of “parroting the Russian propaganda.”

China’s 12-point proposal does not address the withdrawal of Russian troops from occupied areas of Ukraine and is vague about key issues such as Ukraine’s sovereignty. U.S. officials say any impending cease-fire would only buy Russian troops more time to regroup and would effectively ratify much of the illegal annexation of large swaths of Ukraine. Xi is expected to hold talks with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky following his return from Moscow, although the timing of those discussions is not confirmed.

Ben Barnes, left, with Lady Bird Johnson and her husband, former President Lyndon B. Johnson, in Austin, Tex., on Aug. 29, 1970 (Associated Press photo by Ted Powers).

Ben Barnes, left, with Lady Bird Johnson and her husband, former President Lyndon B. Johnson, in Austin, Tex., on Aug. 29, 1970 (Associated Press photo by Ted Powers). The New York Times reported this week that Barnes revealed to the newspaper that he had played a role, largely unwittingly, in helping Republicans delay the release by Iran of U.S. hostages in 1980 in order to hurt President Jimmy Carter, a Democrat, and help the election campaign of Republican Ronald Reagan. President Carter is shown below in a 1980 Associated Press photo telling the American public that a rescue attempt he had authorized had failed, with resulting in U.S. military rescuers' deaths.

Jimmy Carter 1980

ny times logoNew York Times, Former Iran Hostages Are Divided on Jimmy Carter and a Sabotage Claim, Michael Levenson, March 23, 2023 (print ed.). A report about a covert effort to delay their release until after the 1980 presidential election drew anger, resignation and disbelief from the survivors of the crisis.

They are the last survivors of an international crisis that hobbled Jimmy Carter’s presidency and may have cost him re-election. Many are now in their 80s.

With the former president gravely ill in hospice care, some of the 52 Americans who were held hostage in Iran for 444 days are looking back on Mr. Carter’s legacy with a mix of frustration, sadness and gratitude.

Many feel neglected by the government, which has paid them only about a quarter of the $4.4 million that they were each promised by Congress in 2015, after decades of lobbying for compensation, said their lawyer, V. Thomas Lankford. Some endured physical and mental abuse, including mock executions, during the hostage crisis. About half have died.

Last week, their ordeal was thrust back into the news with the account of a covert effort to delay their release until after the 1980 presidential election in a bid to help the campaign of Mr. Carter’s Republican challenger, Ronald Reagan.

A former Texas politician, Ben Barnes, told The New York Times that he had toured the Middle East that summer with John B. Connally Jr., the former Texas governor, who told regional leaders that Mr. Reagan would win and give the Iranians a “better deal.” Mr. Connally, a former Democrat turned Republican, was angling for a cabinet position.

Mr. Barnes, 84, said that he was speaking out now because “history needs to know that this happened.”

He told The Times that he did not know if the message that Mr. Connally gave to Middle Eastern leaders ever reached the Iranians, or whether it influenced them. Mr. Connally died in 1993. Nor was it clear if Mr. Reagan knew about the trip. Mr. Barnes said Mr. Connally had briefed William J. Casey, the chairman of Mr. Reagan’s campaign and later the director of the Central Intelligence Agency, in an airport lounge after the trip.

The account stirred anger among some of the former hostages, while others dismissed his story of election sabotage as not credible. They are a diverse group that includes former diplomats, retired military officers and academics, and members of both major political parties.

“It’s nice that Mr. Barnes is trying to soothe his soul during the last years of his life,” said Barry Rosen, 79, who was press attaché at the embassy in Tehran when it was overrun on Nov. 4, 1979. “But for the hostages who went through hell, he has not helped us at all. He has made it just as bad or worse.”

Mr. Rosen, who lives in New York, said that Mr. Barnes should have come forward 43 years ago, given the decades of speculation about political interference.

“It’s the definition of treason,” he said, “knowing that there was a possibility that the Carter administration might have been able to negotiate us out of Iran earlier.”

A Four-Decade Secret:

But Kevin Hermening, a certified financial planner in Mosinee, Wis., who was a Marine Corps sergeant guarding the embassy, said that he did not believe Mr. Barnes’s account and that, even if it were true, the effort would not have influenced his captors.

“The Iranians were very clear that they were not going to release us while President Carter was in office,” said Mr. Hermening, 63. “He was despised by the mullahs and those people who followed the Ayatollah.”

The Barnes account cast a new light on these long-ago events, troubling David M. Roeder, a retired colonel who was the deputy Air Force attaché at the embassy. Mr. Roeder said that he had repeatedly told his captors that if Mr. Reagan won, they would be dealing with a “much tougher person.”

“I have come to the conclusion — perhaps because I want to — that hopefully President Reagan was unaware that this was going on,” said Mr. Roeder, 83, of Pinehurst, N.C. But, he added, “I gained a great deal more respect for President Carter because I’ve seen what he went through with us in captivity.”

 

greg palast logo

Greg Palast Investigates, Commentary: Reagan’s Treason, Two Bushes and the $23 Million Payoff, Greg Palast, March 23, 2023. This week, a Texas pol, Ben Barnes, confessed that he was personally involved—and therefore an eyewitness to–high treason: The Ronald Reagan campaign’s successful secret deal with the Iranian government to hold 52 Americans hostages so that Reagan could defeat Jimmy Carter.

ronald reagan 1981 wReagan’s skanky deal worked. In 1980, Carter’s failure to bring home the hostages destroyed his chance of reelection. Reagan, right, ultimately would repay the favor from Iran’s murder-crats with weapons and even, for the Ayatollah Khomeini, a birthday cake from Reagan advisor Oliver North.

The question is, why now? Why did Barnes suddenly blow the whistle on this crime—and a crime it is—four decades late? His cute excuse, reported without question by the New York Times, is that, “History needs to know that this happened.”

Wrong. “History” doesn’t need to know—American voters needed to know about Reagan’s treason before the 1980 election.

So, then, why did Barnes squirrel away the truth for decades? Follow the money.

It’s a money trail that leads to two Bushes who would not have become president if not for Barnes’ silence about Iran—and Barnes’ omertà about another creepy Bush scheme.

george w bush air force HRIn 1999, for The Guardian, I discovered that Barnes, in his previous role as Lt. Governor of Texas, used his political juice to get Congressman George Bush Sr.’s son, “Dubya” into the Texas Air Guard—over literally thousands of far-more-qualified applicants. (Little Bush scored 25 out of 100 on the test, just one point above “too dumb to fly.”)

And so, Dubya, shown at left, dodged the draft and Vietnam.

Barnes hid the truth despite pleas from Texas Gov. Ann Richards, who, in 1994, lost a squeaker of an election too.

In Austin, Texas, I received unshakeable evidence that Barnes was the fixer who got Congressman Bush’s son out of the Vietnam draft. (This, while Bush Sr. was voting to send other men’s sons to Vietnam.)

What did Barnes get for his burial of Reagan’s deal with Iran and Bush Jr.’s draft dodging? Did $23 million do it?

In 1999, I was investigating a company, GTech, which ran both the British and Texas lotteries. Texas had disqualified GTech from operating the state lottery based on strong evidence of corruption. But oddly, the new Governor of Texas, George W. Bush, fired the lottery director who banned GTEch. Then Bush’s new lottery commissioner gave GTech back its multi-billion-dollar contract, no bidding.

Notably, Bush’s firing of the state’s lottery director came two days after a meeting with GTech’s lobbyist—Ben Barnes.

Barnes’ fees from GTech? $23 million.

I wasn’t in the Bush-Barnes little tête-à-tête: the info came from a confidential memo from the lottery director that was well buried inside Justice Department files.

In a civil suit, Barnes supposedly denied any quid pro quo with Gov. Bush. Maybe. A nice payment from GTech to the wronged lottery director sealed Barnes’ testimony from the public.

  • Maybe Bush met with Barnes just to reminisce. But if Barnes had the Bush family’s entire political fortune in his pocket, did he really need to remind Dubya of the consequences if the Governor did not take care of Barnes’ client?
  • Secretly conspiring with a foreign power to keep Americans imprisoned, secretly negotiating with and providing weapons to a foreign enemy is the definition of treason—and so would a cover-up for cash.
  • This was another example, I wrote in The Guardian, how the Bushes turned America into “the best democracy money can buy.”
  • I then wrote a book of that title and made a film, Bush Family Fortunes, detailing the Bush Family crime-wave, for BBC Television.

Today, you can download that documentary, Bush Family Fortunes, free of charge. (If you want to throw in a tax-deductible donation, hey, we won’t say ‘no.’ Our nvestigations continue: The cast of characters has changed, but not the crimes.)

And a word about the creeps, cowards and conmen who call themselves “journalists.” Let’s start with a trivia question: Who is Dan Rather? He’s a former TV star and one-time reporter who took my story of Bush’s draft dodging, stuck it on 60 Minutes and, in violation of any sense of ethics and decency, exposed a whistleblower, Texas Air Guard Col. Bill Burkett, a man of inestimable courage and integrity.

Rather’s exposure ruined Burkett. No Texan would sell him feed. His cattle were dying, so he lost his ranch.

Dan Rather was fired by CBS for getting the network in hot water with the Bush White House. Then, by his own admission, Rather agreed to backtrack on the story of Bush the draft dodger in return for a promise of a return to the CBS airwaves. CBS screwed Rather—but that often happens to feckless recreants.

Neither I nor the BBC nor The Guardian retracted a single word of our story of Dubya the Draft Dodger nor the tale of the $23 million questionable payment.

There are zeroes—and there are heroes. The story of Reagan and his “October Surprise” was first busted open by Robert Parry – who also uncovered the Iran-Contra scandal. Instead of getting a Pulitzer, Parry’s career was destroyed. For uncovering too many uncomfortable truths, he was bounced from the Associated Press, Newsweek, Bloomberg, and The Nation.

Parry died in 2018, in journalistic exile.

Greg Palast (Rolling Stone, Guardian, BBC) is the author of The New York Times bestsellers, "The Best Democracy Money Can Buy" and "Billionaires & Ballot Bandits," out as major motion non-fiction movie: "The Best Democracy Money Can Buy: The Case of the Stolen Election," available on Amazon and Amazon Prime.

Tik Tok, Social Media, Artificial Intelligence

ny times logoNew York Times, TikTok Chief Faces Scathing Questions From Both Parties in Congress, Sapna Maheshwari, March 23, 2023. The Chinese-owned video app has become a battleground as the U.S. and China duel for tech leadership; Shou Chew’s first appearance before U.S. lawmakers comes as their distrust of the video app’s Chinese ownership has escalated; China said on Thursday that it would “firmly oppose” a forced sale of TikTok.

tiktok logo square CustomShou Chew, the chief executive of TikTok, will testify before Congress for the first time on Thursday, in an appearance that is expected to reflect U.S. lawmakers’ escalating distrust of the short-form video app’s Chinese ownership.

The hearing, which will begin at 10 a.m. before the House Energy and Commerce Committee, will give lawmakers a rare opportunity to ask Mr. Chew questions directly about TikTok’s relationship with its Chinese owner, ByteDance, as well as about the app’s handling of sensitive U.S. user data and the risks it may pose to teens and children.

TikTok is working to secure its future in the United States, one of its biggest markets, where it says it has 150 million users and where it has become a culture-making machine. But lawmakers have questions about ByteDance’s links to the Chinese government and whether those could put TikTok’s U.S. user data into the hands of Beijing officials. U.S. intelligence officials like the director of the F.B.I., Christopher A. Wray, have also warned that the Chinese government could use TikTok’s algorithm for “influence operations.”

TikTok, which was initially hailed as China’s first global internet success story, has come to represent the growing divide between the United States and China over tech leadership and national security. The app has become a battleground in a technological Cold War between the two countries, with U.S. threats of a TikTok ban recalling how China has long blocked many American platforms.

ny times logoNew York Times, TikTok Claims It’s Limiting Teen Screen Time. Teens Say It Isn’t, Sapna Maheshwari, March 23, 2023. This month, the company announced a 60-minute cap for users under 18. But for some, staying on the app takes just a few taps.

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ny times logoNew York Times, Meet the lonely New York progressive who says TikTok is the victim of anti-China “hysteria,” Nicholas Fandos and David McCabe, March 23, 2023 (print ed.). Representative Jamaal Bowman of New York, above, says the drive to ban TikTok stems from anti-China “hysteria.” His Democratic colleagues disagree.

Of TikTok’s 150 million American users, there may be none more valuable to the embattled platform right now than Representative Jamaal Bowman of New York.

democratic donkey logoA backbench Democrat, Mr. Bowman commands neither TikTok’s largest following (he has about 159,000 fans) nor exceptional legislative clout. But in recent days, he has gone where almost no one else on Capitol Hill would, appointing himself the platform’s unofficial defender in face of a bipartisan race to target what President Biden sees as a national security threat.

tiktok logo Custom“Why the hell are we whipping ourselves into a hysteria to scapegoat TikTok?” Mr. Bowman asked in a telephone interview as he traveled by train to Washington on Wednesday.

Hours later, he held a news conference outside the House touting the platform’s virtues, alongside dozens of influencers brought in by TikTok for a day of lobbying ahead of Thursday’s congressional hearing with its chief executive. Only two other Democrats attended, while some of the congressman’s most outspoken allies declined to weigh in, like Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a fellow member of the group of left-leaning lawmakers known as the squad.

ny times logochat gpt logoNew York Times, Commentary: The A.I. Chatbots Have Arrived. Time to Talk to Your Kids, Christina Caron (a reporter for the Well section and a mother of two who experimented with ChatGPT for hours to help fellow parents better understand how it works), March 23, 2023. Artificial intelligence can make adults nervous, but experts say exploring it as a family is the best way to understand its pros and cons.

 

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ny times logoNew York Times, Opinion: Our New Promethean Moment, tom friedman twitterThomas L. Friedman, right, March 22, 2023 (print ed.). I had a most remarkable but unsettling experience last week.

Craig Mundie, the former chief research and strategy officer for Microsoft, was giving me a demonstration of GPT-4, the most advanced version of the artificial intelligence chatbot ChatGPT, developed by OpenAI and launched in November. Craig was preparing to brief the board of my wife’s museum, Planet Word, of which he is a member, about the effect ChatGPT will have on words, language and innovation.

“You need to understand,” Craig warned me before he started his demo, “this is going to change everything about how we do everything. I think that it represents microsoft logo Custommankind’s greatest invention to date. It is qualitatively different — and it will be transformational.”

Large language modules like ChatGPT will steadily increase in their capabilities, Craig added, and take us “toward a form of artificial general intelligence,” delivering efficiencies in operations, ideas, discoveries and insights “that have never been attainable before across every domain.”

Then he did a demonstration. And I realized Craig’s words were an understatement.

ny times logoNew York Times, Commentary: The A.I. Chatbots Have Arrived. Time to Talk to Your Kids, Christina Caron (a reporter for the Well section and a mother of two who experimented with ChatGPT for hours to help fellow parents better understand how it works), March 23, 2023. Artificial intelligence can make adults nervous, but experts say exploring it as a family is the best way to understand its pros and cons.

 

Pandemics, Public Health, Privacy

ny times logoNew York Times, Biden Plan to Cut Billions in Medicare Fraud Ignites Lobbying Frenzy, Reed Abelson and Margot Sanger-Katz, March 23, 2023 (print ed.). The Biden administration has proposed changes to how it would pay private Medicare Advantage plans, setting off a lobbying frenzy.

joe biden resized oThe multimillion dollar ad buy is part of an aggressive campaign by the health insurance industry and its allies to stop the Biden proposal. It would significantly lower payments — by billions of dollars a year — to Medicare Advantage, the private plans that now cover about half of the government’s health program for older Americans.

The change in payment formulas is an effort, Biden administration officials say, to tackle widespread abuses and fraud in the increasingly popular private program. In the last decade, reams of evidence uncovered in lawsuits and audits revealed systematic overbilling of the government. A final decision on the payments is expected shortly, and is one of a series of tough new rules aimed at reining in the industry. The changes fit into a broader effort by the White House to shore up the Medicare trust fund.

ny times logoNew 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.

covad 19 photo.jpg Custom 2China 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.

China’s new mRNA vaccine, developed by CSPC Pharmaceutical Group Ltd., based in the northern Chinese city of Shijiazhuang, was approved for emergency use by China’s health regulator, according to a statement from the company on Wednesday.

Among the vaccines currently available in China, the most widely known are made by the companies Sinopharm and Sinovac. Like other traditional vaccines, they rely on a century-old method for inoculation, which use an inactivated virus to trigger a response by the immune system, and have since proven to be less effective in protecting against symptomatic disease.

washington post logoWashington Post, Troubled U.S. organ transplant system targeted for overhaul, Lenny Bernstein, March 23, 2023 (print ed.). The government’s plan, which would break up the monopoly power of the nonprofit organization that runs the system, would leave little unaffected in the sprawling, multibillion-dollar network.

The government announced plans Wednesday to overhaul the troubled U.S. organ transplant system, including breaking up the monopoly power of the nonprofit organization that has run it for the past 37 years.

If successful, the proposal would leave little unaffected in the sprawling, multibillion-dollar network that sends kidneys, livers and other organs from deceased donors to severely ill recipients. That system has long been criticized as inadequate: Nearly 104,000 people are on waiting lists for organs, most of them kidneys; 22 people die each day awaiting transplants, with poor and minority patients generally faring worse than affluent and White people.

Carole Johnson, administrator of the federal Health Resources and Services Administration, the agency responsible for the network, is proposing to break up responsibility for some of the functions performed by its nonprofit manager, the United Network for Organ Sharing. UNOS is the only entity ever to operate the U.S. transplant system.

She said in an interview that she would invite other organizations to take over those areas. They would bid for separate contracts, creating the first competitive environment in the history of the transplant system.

“Our goal is to get best in class for all the functions we think are essential to running the transplant network,” Johnson said.

A spokeswoman for UNOS did not respond to an email seeking comment on the proposal Tuesday evening.

Under UNOS, which holds a $6.5 million annual contract with HRSA, the network has been plagued by problems: Too many organs are discarded, damaged in transit or simply not collected, faulty technology sometimes jeopardizes transplants, and poor performers face little accountability.

The proposal also aims to install a strong board of directors independent of UNOS, create a public dashboard for the voluminous data the system generates and bring more transparency to the sometimes opaque process of how patients and organs are matched.

washington post logoWashington Post, Idaho hospital to stop delivering babies, partly due to ‘political climate,’ Brittany Shammas and Marisa Iati, March 22, 2023 (print ed.). Brooke Macumber planned to have her fourth child in the same small hospital where two of her older children were born — the same place her husband had been delivered decades earlier.

idaho map localBut at 23 weeks pregnant, she found out that the facility, Bonner General Health in rural Sandpoint, Idaho, was shuttering its obstetrics unit after almost 75 years. Now, the closest hospital able to deliver her baby is more than an hour’s drive from her home.

“I’ve just had nightmares of making my husband pull off and delivering in the front seat of our car,” said Macumber, 25, who lives on the outskirts of a 500-resident town near the Montana border.

The closure of Bonner’s labor and delivery department follows a national trend that researchers have associated with potentially dangerous out-of-hospital and preterm births. Access to obstetric services has been on the decline for years in rural areas, with at least 89 obstetrics units in rural U.S. hospitals closing their doors between 2015 and 2019, according to the American Hospital Association. More than half of rural counties — home to 2.2 million women of childbearing age — are now maternity-care deserts.

Some obstetricians say the problem has been exacerbated by the recent passage of laws criminalizing abortion, which can make recruiting and retaining physicians all the more difficult.

Relevant Recent Headlines

 

Top Global News

ny times logoNew York Times, Israel’s Parliament Passes Law Making It Harder to Remove Prime Minister, Isabel Kershner, March 23, 2023. Prime Minister Benjamin Benjamin Netanyahu smile TwitterNetanyahu, right, is also expected to speak soon, leading to speculation that he might delay parts of his divisive legislative program.

Israel’s Parliament passed legislation early Thursday that would make it more difficult to declare prime ministers incapacitated and remove them from office, a move that critics said was aimed at protecting the country’s leader, Benjamin Netanyahu, who is on trial for corruption.

Israel FlagUnder the legislation, the latest in a series of divisive bills pursued by the government, a sitting prime minister could only be declared incapacitated on physical or mental health grounds.

The bill, passed by a bare majority of 61 in the 120-seat Parliament, came just before tens of thousands of Israelis took to the streets for another stormy day of protest against the government plan for a broad overhaul of the judiciary.

Opponents of the plan, which would give the government more control over judicial appointments and weaken the Supreme Court by severely restricting judicial review of legislation, say that it would subvert the country’s democratic system.

A black-and-white image shows a crowd of people waving small American flags as people disembark from a jet with “United States of America” written on its side.

ny times logoNew York Times, Migration Tops Agenda as President Biden Visits Canada, Ian Austen and Vjosa Isai, March 23, 2023. Canada is seeking a renegotiation of an agreement with the U.S. that binds it to accept asylum seekers at unofficial crossing points.

canadian flagNearly every day at Roxham Road, people cross over from the United States into the arms of the Canadian police and ask for asylum.

When President Biden arrives in Canada’s capital on Thursday for his first visit to the country since taking the Oval Office, the influx of migrants at that road, an unofficial border crossing on a country lane in Quebec, will be near the top of the agenda for his meetings with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, below left.

justin trudeau twitterMr. Trudeau’s government has welcomed refugees from Syria and elsewhere, and has pledged striking increases in immigration to the country, earning Canada a reputation as being more open to migrants than many other Western nations. But over the past year, as migration has swelled at Canada’s border, with a surge of asylum seekers walking into Roxham Road from a sleepy village in New York State, there are signs that Canada’s famed hospitality toward migrants may be fraying.

The surge of nearly 40,000 migrants who crossed into the country last year — more than double the number in 2019 — has given Canada a small taste of the challenges that other Western countries have faced in settling refugees and has prompted Mr. Trudeau’s opponents to call for him to renegotiate a key agreement on asylum seekers with the United States. The number arriving each month has spiked, with almost 5,000 people arriving in January.

with the United States that his political opponents say is fueling the surge. On Wednesday, Mr. Trudeau suggested that a deal may be announced before Mr. Biden returns to Washington on Friday evening.

“We’ve been working very closely with the Americans for many months, and we hope to have an announcement soon,” he told reporters.

A Canadian government official, who spoke about the talks on the condition that he not be identified, said that the United States was interested in reworking the agreement because it is facing a growing number of people headed the other way, from Canada into the United States.

 

rishi sunak

ny times logoNew York Times, U.K. Lawmakers Approve Key Measure of Northern Ireland Trade Deal, Megan Specia, March 22, 2023. An important element of the agreement known as the Windsor Framework, a Brexit provision negotiated with the European Union, was roundly endorsed in the British Parliament.

United Kingdom flagBritish lawmakers on Wednesday voted overwhelmingly in favor of a key component of a long-awaited deal on Northern Ireland trade rules, an emphatic victory for Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, shown above, as he tries to resolve one of the most vexing legacies of Britain’s exit from the European Union.

Despite the strong backing of the agreement, the leading unionist party in the North, which seeks to remain part of the United Kingdom, said that it did not accept the deal and would refuse to form a local government, signaling more political turmoil ahead.

Several prominent members of the governing Conservative Party also broke ranks with the government and voted against the part of the deal that was under debate, including Boris Johnson and Liz Truss, two former prime ministers. Nonetheless, the measure passed in a landslide, 515 to 29.

The vote on Wednesday was on just one element of the agreement, known as the Stormont Brake, which would allow Northern Ireland to block the Sir Jeffrey Donaldson dupimplementation of any “significantly different” new European rules on goods. The measure was aimed at addressing the North’s concerns that Brussels would have too much control over its trade rules. But the leading unionist party, the D.U.P. (whose leader, Sir Jeffrey Donaldson, is shown at left) rejected the Stormont Brake as insufficient.

The lopsided nature of the vote was good news for Mr. Sunak, who has championed the broader trade deal, known as the Windsor Framework, that was negotiated with the European Union last month.

The vote on the Stormont Brake on Wednesday was the first time that British lawmakers had had a chance to weigh in on the deal, so it had been seen as a measure of their approval.

The D.U.P. said this week that it would not vote for the Windsor Framework agreement, and as the vote on the Stormont Brake approached, its leaders confirmed that they had no plans either to enter into a power-sharing government in Northern Ireland’s devolved local assembly, known as Stormont. Northern Ireland’s other largest parties, including a different unionist party, have said that they support the framework.

india flag map

ny times logoNew York Times, Leader of Indian Party Opposing Modi Is Sentenced in Defamation Case, Karan Deep Singh, March 23, 2023. Rahul Gandhi, who leads the narendra modi 2014main opposition party, received a two-year sentence for a comment in 2019 criticizing Prime Minister Narendra Modi, right.

Rahul Gandhi, the leader of the main party opposing Prime Minister Narendra Modi of India, was convicted of defamation and sentenced to prison on Thursday, the latest blow to the beleaguered opposition party just a year before national elections.

Mr. Gandhi was immediately granted 30 days’ bail. His party, the Indian National Congress, said he would appeal the conviction.

A court in Gujarat, Mr. Modi’s home state, sentenced Mr. Gandhi to two years in prison. He was convicted in connection with a 2019 speech in which he linked the prime minister’s family name to that of two Indian fugitives accused of swindling millions of dollars, Nirav Modi and Lalit Modi.

“How come all the thieves have Modi as the common name?” Mr. Gandhi said while campaigning during the 2019 elections.

ny times logoNew York Times, A ‘New Cold War’ Looms in Africa as U.S. Pushes Against Russian Gains, Declan Walsh, March 19, 2023. The U.S. is reprising its playbook in Ukraine, where it has used classified information to expose plans by Russia. The next target: Chad.

Fueled by guns, gold and social media, the rivalry between Russia and the West in Africa is rapidly escalating. The latest flashpoint is Chad, a sprawling desert nation at the crossroads of the continent, now a plum target for Russia’s expanding effort.

The United States recently warned Chad’s president that Russian mercenaries were plotting to kill him and three senior aides and that Moscow was backing Chadian rebels massing in the neighboring Central African Republic. At the same time, Moscow is courting sympathizers inside Chad’s ruling elite, including cabinet ministers and a half brother of the president.

ny times logoNew York Times, As Haiti’s Police Retreat, Gangs Take Over Much of the Capital, Andre Paultre and Chris Cameron, March 23, 2023 (print ed.). Even wealthier areas in the capital, Port-au-Prince, are no longer immune to violence as gangs attack police officers and destroy police stations.

One by one, schools and hospitals have closed. Kidnappings are an everyday risk and gang warfare rages openly on the streets. But now, the chaos that has long consumed many parts of Port-au-Prince, the capital of Haiti, has spread: The national police, outgunned, outnumbered, underpaid and demoralized, have ceded control of most of the city to gangs.

Almost no one is safe anymore, analysts and residents say. Even the wealthy who have long looked down at the gang-ridden city from their homes in the mountains above Port-au-Prince are no longer immune.

Gangs operate with impunity across Port-au-Prince and increasingly in wealthy enclaves above the city, analysts say, tightening their grip by attacking police officers and destroying police stations.

“Today, security in Haiti is not a matter of means,’’ said Youri Mevs, the managing partner of an industrial park who lives in the mountains overlooking the city. “It is a matter of avoiding the wrong place at the wrong time. And, the wrong place is almost everywhere, just as the wrong time is literally all the time.”

ny times logoNew York Times, Uganda Passes Strict Anti-Gay Bill That Imposes Death Penalty for Some, Abdi Latif Dahir, March 23, 2023 (print ed.). The legislation also calls for life in prison for anyone engaging in gay sex. Policies to stifle gay rights have been on the rise in several African nations.

uganda map with ugandan flag printsLawmakers in Uganda have passed a sweeping anti-gay law that can bring punishments as severe as the death penalty — the culmination of a long-running campaign to criminalize homosexuality and target L.G.B.T.Q. people in the conservative nation in East Africa.

The law, which was passed late on Tuesday night after more than seven hours of discussion and amendments, calls for a life sentence for anyone engaging in gay sex. Even attempting to have same-sex relations would be met with a seven-year prison term.

The death penalty would be applied to people convicted of “aggravated homosexuality,” a sweeping term defined in the law as homosexual acts committed by anyone infected with H.I.V. or involving children, disabled people or anyone drugged against their will.

The parliamentary vote in Uganda caps a struggle over gay rights in Uganda that has drawn international attention for nearly 15 years. It comes as anti-gay policies and discrimination have been on the rise in several African nations, including Kenya, Ghana and Zambia.

Relevant Recent Headlines

 

 More On Probes of Trump, Allies 

 

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Proof, Going Deep, Investigative Commentary: A Primer for the Imminent Indictment of Former President Trump, Seth Abramson, left, best-selling author, attorney and journalism professor, March 20-23, 2023. A man who seth abramson graphicpresents as a malignant-narcissist sociopath—having already incited an insurrection and stoked far-right fantasies of a Second U.S. Civil War—is about to be indicted. Here’s what to expect.

Introduction: The pieces are all in place.

seth abramson proof logoDonald Trump’s cultish followers are on social media promising en masse to launch a violent civil war against the rest of us if their leader is finally treated the same way the rest of us would be if we’d repeatedly committed state and federal crimes over a span of decades.

Current and future Trumpist insurrectionists are being goaded on by far-right media—which falsely assures them that Mr. Trump is being mistreated via an overcharged case in New York City—and by Trump himself, who’s lately added to his repertoire of regularly calling the Black prosecutors investigating him “racists” and falsely alleging that they’re part of a vast left-wing conspiracy the further libels that (a) he’s a victim of Extortion by adult-film actress Stormy Daniels (he is not), (b) the prosecutors in his case are engaged in prosecutorial misconduct because they’re well aware that the statute of limitations has run on the crimes he’s about to be charged with (they are not and it has not), and (c) his prospective indictment in a Manhattan courthouse is a response to his nascent presidential campaign (it is not, as anyone old enough to remember Trump’s co-conspirator Michael Cohen getting a lengthy federal prison sentence in 2018 over the exact same sequence of facts will readily understand).

Trump’s scurrilous claims are being echoed not just by Fox News and, in even more aggressive terms, OANN and Newsmax and Breitbart and Trump whisperer Steve Bannon’s “War Room” podcast, but also by rogue attorneys like Alan Dershowitz who sagely assure Trumpists who know nothing about U.S. criminal law that their emotionalized overreaction to someone they personally like staring down a criminal indictment isn’t just psychologically or socioculturally but legally warranted (it is not).

Fox News in particular has been trying to use the coming Trump indictment in New York to regain the viewership it lost after many Trumpists abandoned it in the wake of January 6, citing—at the time—its allegedly soft commitment to the devolution of the United States into an autocratic hellscape run by America’s first unabashed tyrant. If you’ve been following Fox News in recent days you’re seeing the same signals you saw when the network was spreading the “Big Lie” about the 2020 presidential election, a course of astonishly premeditated corporate malfeasance that is currently the subject of a civil lawsuit that could cataclysmically effect the far-right propaganda organ.

Fox News anchors are repeatedly misstating the law, giving Trump agents and aides and advisers and allies and attorneys free reign to misstate the facts of the allegations against him and recklessly malign career public servants, and in what may be an even more sinister maneuver than either of those easily clocked gambits is carpeting its airwaves with the notion that just because America has never before had a President of the United States as corrupt as Trump—and therefore has never needed to indict a former president before—it must actually be the case that anyone who wants to see our rule of law adapt to upsetting new circumstances is in fact seeking to demolish America from within.

Here’s the truth: (1) We knew years ago that Trump was “Individual-1” in a criminal conspiracy that violated federal law and has already landed one of its flunkies, Cohen—not a ringleader like Trump—in federal prison, and (2) while many in media may call the state case Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg is apparently about to bring against Trump a “hush-money” case, it is actually a case about Trump trying to steal the 2016 presidential election under the noses of American voters and doing so successfully.

Steve Bannon, then Trump’s campaign CEO, would later say that for Trump to run for president “a hundred” women had to be shut up so that American voters wouldn’t learn (or, charitably, come to fully appreciate) that Trump was and has always been a serial philanderer and sexual assailant who treats women like disposable property. (Keep in mind, here, that women make up more than half of the American electorate.)

We would even later learn that Trump pal and fixer David Pecker, a sleazy magazine publisher, had an entire “vault” in his office full of “catch-and-kill” stories he had purchased from former Trump mistresses just so that he could bury them on Trump’s behalf. And as discussed and substantiated in the 2019 New York Times bestseller Proof of Conspiracy (Macmillan, 2019), there is every reason to think Pecker got at least some of the money for these clandestine payoffs from infamous murderer and U.S. election-tamperer, Saudi crown prince Mohammed bin Salman.

(You may recall, too, that per the Mueller Report, Michael Cohen—the same Trump friend, fixer, attorney, and employee who subsequently went to prison for paying to keep Stormy Daniels quiet—spent October 2016 trying to keep quiet evidence that both he and Trump believed existed of Trump carrying himself in Russia, on several occasions, like a man who is a serial philanderer and sexual assailant who treats women like disposable property.)

So when, just days after the Access Hollywood tape dropped, Trump set in motion the series of state and federal crimes that ended with an illegal payoff to Stormy Daniels, he was trying to hide from U.S. voters a series of facts that he personally believed, as did everyone else in his inner circle, would cost him the presidency (if his own thus-far inept campaign hadn’t done that already; little did Trump know—yet—that the actions of his unscrupulous attorneys Rudy Giuliani and Joseph diGenova would soon help convince the FBI to needlessly reopen a closed criminal investigation of Hillary Clinton, which ultimately was the reason Trump won election to the White House).

.... [Several thousand words of discussion and analysis]

Conclusion:

America is in the position it is in right now for three primary reasons: the persistent criminality of Donald Trump; the cowardice of Republican leadership in not standing up to such misconduct and advocating for its punishment; and the reticence of federal and state officials of all political stripes—across decades and jurisdictions—to do the hard work of ensuring that criminal statutes are applied equally to all Americans regardless of their race, ethnicity, gender, wealth, fame, or political clout.

This is, without a doubt, a time of testing for America. We can come out stronger than we were before if we remember what it is that made America and being an American so important to us in the first place. The goal of Trump and his sycophants is to get us to forget all we know—or, alternatively, ignore all that experts have learned and come forward to disseminate publicly—about criminal law, free and fair elections, basic civic responsibility, religious morality and secular ethics, and simple human decency.

If we can hold fast to these truths in a time of crisis, we can endure here in the United States for another quarter millennium. If we can’t, America may cross a tipping point sometime during the next 18 months from which there simply isn’t any way back.

  • MeidasTouch Network, Commentary: Trump gets HUMILIATED after demand for protests GOES BUST, Extremism expert Kristofer Goldsmith reports, March 22, 2023 (4:59 min. video). Donald Trump’s calls for supporters to protest his possible indictment fell flat on their face as barely anybody showed up to come to the disgraced ex-president's defense.

ny times logoNew York Times, Trump Lawyer in Mar-a-Lago Case Must Hand Over Records, Appeals Court Says, Alan Feuer, Ben Protess and Maggie Haberman, March 23, 2023 (print ed.). The ruling compelling the lawyer, M. Evan Corcoran, to turn over dozens of documents came after a lightning round of appeals court filings overnight.

A federal appeals court ruled on Wednesday that a lawyer representing former President Donald J. Trump in the investigation into his handling of classified material had to answer a grand jury’s questions and give prosecutors documents related to his legal work.

The ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia was a victory for the special counsel overseeing the investigation and followed Mr. Trump’s effort to stop the lawyer, M. Evan Corcoran, from handing over what are likely to be dozens of documents to investigators.

The behind-the-scenes fight shed new light on the efforts by prosecutors to assemble evidence about whether Mr. Trump committed a crime in defying the government’s efforts to reclaim classified materials he took after leaving the White House.

The litigation — all of which has taken place behind closed doors or under seal — centers on whether prosecutors can force Mr. Corcoran to provide information on who knew what about the continued presence of classified material at Mar-a-Lago, Mr. Trump’s residence and private club in Florida, after the government had demanded its return last spring.

ny times logoNew York Times, Trump Inquiries Present a Stress Test for Justice in a Polarized Nation, Glenn Thrush and Adam Goldman, March 23, 2023. On the morning of Jan. 6, 2021, Merrick B. Garland was busy typing away in his upstairs office at home, finalizing remarks he planned to deliver the following day when he was to be introduced as Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s nominee to be attorney general.

merrick garlandThe speech was originally a summons to restore the Justice Department “norms” of independence after political meddling during the Trump administration that depleted morale and sapped public confidence. Then, after protesters burst through the barricades at the Capitol, Mr. Garland, right, began a major rewrite that referenced the attack, and fortified his pledge to hold anyone who threatened democracy to account, from bottom to top.

Justice Department log circularThe department would impartially investigate the attack, without “one rule for the powerful and one for the powerless,” Mr. Garland said during his somber introduction on Jan. 7.

Mr. Garland’s conjoined promises — restoring broad confidence in the department’s impartiality while investigating without favor the politically powerful — were not mutually exclusive. But achieving both simultaneously is proving to be an elusive goal as prosecutors at the federal and local level investigate former President Donald J. Trump on multiple fronts.

ny times logoNew York Times, Opinion: Trump Faces Prosecution. America Faces a Test, Charles M. Blow, right, March 23, 2023. Of course, Donald Trump went to social media charles blow Customto speculate that he’d be arrested on Tuesday of this week and — big surprise — that turned out not to be true.

Of course, he’s trying to incite his followers with the prospect of their beloved leader facing criminal charges, and simultaneously using that to squeeze them for more money.

Of course, many Republicans are not only rushing to Trump’s defense, armed with a quiver of false equivalencies, but also seeking any opportunity to bash Democrats and call them hypocrites for seeking to hold Trump accountable.

Of course, many Democrats are, on the one hand, relishing the idea that charges may begin sticking to Slick Donald, but on the other hand, twisting themselves into knots worrying whether an indictment will actually strengthen his standing with his base.

If a former president is indicted, it will be unprecedented. But the atmospherics will be all-too-familiar, a kind of political déjà vu, as we remain trapped in a repeating cycle of Trump-era truisms: the defense of hardcore political acolytes, the rapid erosion of norms and a paralyzing reticence among those who could check his abuses of power.

It’s impossible to completely game out the legal and political ramifications of a Trump indictment, but because the public is hungry for theories and pundits are champing at the bit to provide them, we’re awash in takes about what happens next.

But I challenge you to tune all of that out.

We know Trump and how he operates. He tries — often successfully — to spin his negatives into positives, to deny his misdeeds while charging that those trying to hold him accountable are the real culprits.

Trump’s strategy from the very beginning of his political foray has been to discredit or destroy the gatekeepers, in politics and the media, who might one day be called upon to expose him. (“Low-energy” Jeb Bush, anyone?) He continues to brand them as weak, dishonest and out to get anyone who supports him.

And every time an attempt to hold him accountable falls short of delivering the most fitting consequences, he counts that as a victory, and the effort’s “failure” as proof of its illegitimacy. Then he rolls all this together in his rhetoric to bolster his contention that all investigations of him and members of his inner circle amount to a campaign of political harassment.

In a video Trump released early Tuesday morning, he railed that the “horrible, radical left, Democrat investigations of your all-time-favorite president, me, is just a continuation of the most disgusting witch hunt in the history of our country,” adding: “It’s gone on forever.”

He goes on to call Robert Mueller’s special counsel investigation, which explored his campaign’s communications with Russia during the 2016 election, “a hoax,” and contends that investigators “even spied on my campaign.” He then ties in new investigations — the classified documents probe, the Georgia election interference investigation and the allegations about hush money payments to Stormy Daniels.

Trump will never not be this guy. He’s never going to concede or show contrition in the face of any accusation. He’s going to fight. And that’s precisely why his people adore him. That’s why they’ll continue to support and defend him. They want to be like him: not forced to back down, even when they are wrong.

Republicans will accuse prosecutors of partisanship and overreach. Let them.

Trump will scream like a baby. Let him.

We’re at a point in the nation’s history where we are called to endure what I call the inconvenience of the necessary, a point at which something is morally right — and morally unavoidable — but the political timing is problematic.

 

ulysses grant

washington post logoWashington Post, RetropolisThe Past, Rediscovered, No president or former president has ever been indicted. But a sitting president was arrested once, Michael S. Rosenwald, March 22, 2023 (print ed.). Donald Trump’s claim that he will be arrested imminently has sparked political maneuvering and a debate about the implications of indicting an ex-president.

In 1872, President Ulysses S. Grant was arrested at the corner of 13th and M streets NW in Washington. This was not a high crime, but it was — at least theoretically speaking — a misdemeanor.

The man who led the North to victory in the Civil War was busted for speeding in his horse-drawn carriage.

Palmer Report, Opinion: Donald Trump’s violent new social media post about Alvin Bragg is going to come with consequences he doesn’t like, Bill Palmer, right, March bill palmer23, 2023. After he briefly began expressing the delusional hope that he might not be criminally indicted in Manhattan, Donald Trump is now back to making defeatist social media posts about how he expects to be indicted. One of Trump’s new posts disturbingly depicts him as swinging a baseball bat in the direction of Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg.

bill palmer report logo headerThis was predictable. Trump has a long history of trying to incite violence among his supporters in the hope of achieving political gain. So of course he was going to try it again in this instance. He’s a creature of habit who only knows one way of doing things. He’s forever under the belief that if a tactic has worked for him in the past, it should work again, whether or not it’s the same situation.

The trouble for Trump is that this is not the same situation as any he’s ever been in. He has past experience in the circuses that are civil court cases. He has experience trying to pressure the courts to uphold executive orders that he’s signed and such. But he does not have any prior experience as a defendant in the criminal justice system, because he’s never been charged or indicted before.

Starting with his arraignment hearing, Trump is about to find out the hard way that criminal defendants have a reduced set of rights while awaiting trial. Even if Trump gets out on bail or recognizance, the judge will surely tell him about the behaviors he’ll need to avoid if he wants to remain under minimal restriction. If Trump tries to run his mouth publicly about the prosecutor, the judge will at some point hit him with a gag order. If Trump defies the gag order, the judge will start applying incrementally severe punishment, up to and potentially including pretrial detention.

Trump is off to a bad start by posting this image of himself getting violent against the District Attorney. This post will no doubt be submitted as evidence at his arraignment, and the judge will not take kindly to it. This is the kind of thing that could result in Trump getting hit with an immediate gag order about the case instead of being allowed some rope first. The judge could also use this violent post as a basis for imposing travel restrictions and such on Trump while he’s awaiting trial. And that’s just the beginning of what the judge in the case can do to Trump in order to keep him under control ahead of trial.

If Donald Trump had any sense at all, he’d be on his best behavior – at least for the moment – in the hope of getting the most lenient pretrial conditions possible. Instead he’s handing the judge in the case every excuse to impose more restrictive conditions on Trump, all of which could get in the way of Trump’s ability to keep carrying out his “2024 campaign” pipe dream.

The judge doesn’t get assigned to the case until the indictment comes down, so perhaps Trump is under the mistaken impression that he can still magically get away with anything he wants. But when Alvin Bragg submits Trump’s baseball post to the judge at arraignment, and the judge gives Trump a harsher initial set of pretrial conditions as a result, perhaps Trump will start to figure out that he’s not in charge of anything that happens from here on in.

 

Francisco Antonio López Benavides, a Salvadoran artist, showing part of a life-size portrait of former President Donald J. Trump that he was commissioned to paint in 2020 (New York Times photo by Daniele Volpe).

 Francisco Antonio López Benavides, a Salvadoran artist, showing part of a life-size portrait of former President Donald J. Trump that he was commissioned to paint in 2020 (New York Times photo by Daniele Volpe).

ny times logoNew York Times, A Massive Trump Painting Has Mysteriously Gone Missing, Maria Abi-Habib, March 23, 2023 (print ed.). A portrait of former President Donald J. Trump by a Salvadoran painter is one of several gifts to the presidential family that is now unaccounted for.

It was the commission of a lifetime for this artist, who grew up poor in El Salvador with no formal training: Paint a portrait of the 45th president of the United States, Donald J. Trump.

His personal mission? Make it larger than life, to show a great man, doing great things, with God on his side. Now, Democrats want to know where the eight-foot portrait of the former president disappeared to, but that is anybody’s guess.

Nearly three years after the painting was delivered to Mr. Trump, the artist says he is honored that the artwork is one of several gifts given to the former president and his family during his presidency that are unaccounted for, according to a report released Friday by Democrats on the House Committee on Oversight and Accountability.

“I’m flattered that he cherished it. Because he’s a billionaire,” said the artist, Francisco Antonio López Benavides, 59. “He can have a thousand paintings of him. But if he took my painting, it’s because he loves and values the art. I’m happy.”

Other missing gifts include a piece of ornate jewelry gifted by officials in Saudi Arabia and an expensive golf putter from the former Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe, the report said.

The portrait is one of about 100 gifts worth more than $250,000 that were given to the presidential family, but were never disclosed, according to the Democrats’ report.

Every U.S. government department and agency is required to notify the State Department of gifts received from foreign governments worth more than $415, a measure intended to prevent bribery or undue influence. Officials can keep those gifts if they reimburse the government the appraised value.

Departing presidential administrations are expected to report the gifts they received in their final year to ensure they have followed the law. The Trump White House failed to do this, the report charges, leaving Democrats and watchdogs asking questions about where they ended up.

Mr. López said he does not understand why Democrats are looking for the painting, a “great gift” from Mr. Trump’s friend, El Salvador’s President Nayib Bukele.

 Relevant Recent Headlines

 

More On U.S. Election Deniers, Insurrectionists

ny times logoNew York Times, Arizona Supreme Court Turns Down Kari Lake’s Appeal in Her Election Lawsuit, Neil Vigdor, March 23, 2023. The justices refused to hear Ms. Lake’s claims disputing her loss in the governor’s race, but sent one part of her lawsuit back to a trial court for review.

arizona mapArizona’s Supreme Court on Wednesday denied a request from Kari Lake to hear her lawsuit disputing her loss last year in the governor’s race. The lawsuit was based on what the court said was a false claim by Ms. Lake, a Republican, that more than 35,000 unaccounted ballots were accepted.

In a five-page order written by Chief Justice Robert Brutinel, the court determined that a vast majority of Ms. Lake’s legal claims, which had earlier been dismissed by lower courts, lacked merit.

“The Court of Appeals aptly resolved these issues,” Chief Justice Brutinel wrote, adding that the “petitioner’s challenges on these grounds are insufficient to warrant the requested relief under Arizona or federal law.”

But the justices on Wednesday ordered a trial court in Arizona’s most populous county, Maricopa, to conduct an additional review of that county’s procedures for verifying signatures on mail-in ballots, keeping one part of her lawsuit alive.

Politico, Trump, Pence urge judge to reject special counsel bid to obtain former VP’s testimony, Kyle Cheney, March 23, 2023. It’s one of the weightiest constitutional fights for the special counsel.

politico CustomIt’s one of the weightiest constitutional fights that Smith is likely to undertake, one that could shape the balance of power between all three branches of government in unpredictable ways. Assistant U.S. Attorney Thomas Windom, one of Smith’s lead investigators, was seen entering the courtroom as well.

It’s also an early test for Chief U.S. District Court Judge James Boasberg, who took the chief’s gavel last week after his predecessor Beryl Howell’s seven-year term as chief expired. The chief judge is tasked with overseeing all grand jury matters in the district, which include Smith’s special counsel probes.

Pence’s fight to block the subpoena is not the only way Smith’s inquiry could have far-reaching constitutional consequences. A three-judge appeals court panel is expected to rule imminently on his separate effort to access the cellphone data of Rep. Scott Perry (R-Pa.), a key ally in Trump’s bid to overturn the 2020 election results. Perry, like Pence, is arguing that his communications should be shielded by the Constitution’s “speech or debate” clause, which grants Congress sweeping immunity from compelled testimony — if it pertains to lawmakers’ official duties.

The Perry dispute drew intervention from the House of Representatives, which filed a sealed amicus brief in the matter that raised concerns about the implications for the institution should the appeals court adopt a narrow view of “speech or debate” immunity.

The hearing also underscored the extraordinary confluence of acute legal and criminal matters Trump is facing.

Corcoran himself has been ordered by a federal judge to testify as soon as Friday in Smith’s other ongoing criminal probe of Trump’s handling of sensitive national security records discovered at his Mar-a-Lago estate. And while Corcoran was waiting in the cafeteria Thursday, an attorney for Joseph Biggs — one of five Proud Boys facing seditious conspiracy charges for actions on Jan. 6 — approached him to attempt to serve a subpoena on Trump.

The attorney, Norm Pattis, said Corcoran told him he was ”not authorized” to accept service on Trump’s behalf.

Politico, Judge sentences Jan. 6 defendant who breached Pelosi’s office to 36 months in prison, Kyle Cheney, March 23, 2023. A jury convicted Riley Williams of riley williams collagecivil disorder and resisting police but deadlocked on a charge that Williams, right, obstructed Congress and abetted the theft of Pelosi’s laptop.

politico CustomU.S. District Court Judge Amy Berman Jackson’s sentence was the close of one of the earliest sagas to emerge after the Jan. 6 attack. Williams was one of the first felony defendants charged, and she was suspected at the time of stealing Nancy Pelosi’s laptop, in part because she told friends that she did.

A jury convicted Williams in December of civil disorder and resisting police but deadlocked on a charge that Williams obstructed Congress and abetted the theft of Pelosi’s laptop. Williams is on tape entering Pelosi’s conference room while other rioters took the laptop, and she encouraged them to steal it, but Williams’ lawyers contended that it was unclear if the other rioters heard her comment.

djt maga hatJackson spent much of her sentencing colloquy dismantling the defense’s claim that Williams was too young or too small to be responsible for the grave offenses the government charged. The defense team leaned on Williams’ youthful demeanor and the fact that she seemed briefly confused about which building was being stormed — calling it the White House as she approached. But Jackson said any momentary confusion Williams expressed was clarified by her repeated acknowledgment of why she was there.

It was not, Jackson emphasized, “because her dizzy little head was confused about which building in Washington was which.”

Fuentes, she noted, was born the same year as Williams. People can sign up for the military at 18, she added, noting that Williams was old enough on Jan. 6 to have completed a tour of duty. John Lewis was 21 when he became a freedom fighter, Jackson added.

“She was old enough to be one of the police officers she resisted,” Jackson said.

Jackson also took on the defense’s repeated assertions about Williams’ diminutive stature, noting that figures like Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, Liz Cheney and Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson had all achieved prominence despite their size.

“Riley June Williams was old enough and tall enough to be held accountable for her actions,” Jackson said.

 

Ray Epps and his wife, Robyn Epps. A letter from their lawyer noted the costs that the couple had faced by being the target of a Jan. 6 conspiracy theory (New York Times photo by Alan Feuer).

 Ray Epps and his wife, Robyn Epps. A letter from their lawyer noted the costs that the couple had faced by being the target of a Jan. 6 conspiracy theory (New York Times photo by Alan Feuer).

ny times logoNew York Times, Man at Center of Jan. 6 Conspiracy Theory Demands Retraction From Fox, Alan Feuer, March 23, 2023. A lawyer for Ray Epps has demanded that the Fox host Tucker Carlson publicly apologize for “false and defamatory statements” that Mr. Epps served as a federal agent during the Capitol attack.

A lawyer for Ray Epps, the man at the center of a prominent conspiracy theory about the Capitol riot, sent a letter on Thursday to the Fox News host Tucker Carlson demanding that he publicly retract his “false and defamatory statements” that Mr. Epps had worked as a government provocateur on Jan. 6, 2021, and helped to instigate the mob attack.

The letter to Mr. Carlson from the lawyer, Michael Teter, also demanded a “formal on-air apology for the lies” that have been “spread about Mr. Epps” by others at Fox.

“The fanciful notions that Mr. Carlson advances on his show regarding Mr. Epps’s involvement in the Jan. 6 insurrection are demonstrably (and already proven to be) false,” Mr. Teter wrote. “And yet Mr. Carlson persists with his assault on the truth.”

Letters seeking retractions and apologies are often sent when lawyers are preparing to file a defamation lawsuit. As Mr. Teter noted, Mr. Epps’s demands come as Mr. Carlson and other top figures at Fox are already under pressure from a $1.6 billion defamation suit brought by Dominion Voting Systems accusing them of amplifying lies that the voting machine company was involved in a bizarre plot to steal votes from President Donald J. Trump during the 2020 election.

In a series of recent filings, Dominion revealed embarrassing text messages and emails swapped by several leading Fox employees showing that in private they dismissed the idea that the company was involved in voting fraud, even though they supported the notion in public. The internal communications also suggested that Fox’s corporate leadership permitted lies about the election to be spread on the network in order to keep ratings high and viewers watching.
Fox News v. Dominion Voter Systems

Documents from a lawsuit filed by the voting machine maker Dominion against Fox News have shed light on the debate inside the network over false claims related to the 2020 election.

“Recent revelations from the Dominion Voting lawsuit may help explain why Fox News has allowed the falsehoods about Mr. Epps to continue to spread, and be amplified, through its network,” Mr. Teter wrote. “But fear of losing viewers by telling them the truth is not a defense to defamation and false light.”

A spokeswoman for Fox did not immediately respond to a message seeking comment.

Mr. Epps, a former Marine, traveled to Washington from his home in Arizona to support Mr. Trump and was videotaped on the night before the attack urging people to go inside the Capitol. He was also in the crowd on Jan. 6 moving past barricades outside the building, although he never went inside and ultimately sought to de-escalate tensions in the mob.

Still, he became the face of the conspiracy theory that the federal government had instigated the Capitol attack for a single reason: He was never charged for what he did on Jan. 6. In reality, prosecutors declined to file charges against thousands of people who had breached the barricades outside the Capitol but never entered the building.

Mr. Carlson was one of the first major figures in the news media to give the stories about Mr. Epps a wide audience. Ultimately, they were also echoed by Republican members of Congress like Representative Thomas Massie of Kentucky and Senator Ted Cruz of Texas.

Mr. Carlson featured Mr. Epps on his show on Fox again this month in a segment based on tens of thousands of hours of Capitol surveillance video footage, to which Speaker Kevin McCarthy granted him exclusive access. Mr. Epps appeared only briefly on the show, which broadly sought to play down the events of Jan. 6 and falsely paint the Capitol attack as a largely peaceful gathering of “sightseers.”

Mr. Teter mocked Mr. Carlson in his letter, suggesting that the TV host was trying to have it both ways.

“Oddly, Mr. Carlson now also espouses the view that those rioters were akin to peaceful tourists,” Mr. Teter wrote. “This leads to the obvious question: Is Mr. Carlson now accusing Mr. Epps of provoking peaceful protests?”

 

U.S. Politics, Elections, Economy, Governance

Politico, Sinema Trashes Dems: ‘Old Dudes Eating Jell-O,’ Jonathan Martin, March 23, 2023. The Arizona senator courts GOP donors by ridiculing her former kyrsten sinema oDemocratic colleagues.

politico CustomEver since Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, right, became an independent in December, her Democratic colleagues have been restrained about the shift, careful not to alienate the Arizona lawmaker when they only have a single-seat majority and need her support on legislation and nominees.

Hoping to get through this year, and then gain clarity about whether Sinema will even seek reelection in 2024 let alone continue to caucus with her old party, Senate Democrats have dodged questions about the mercurial marathoner who’s still barely in their ranks.

But Sinema may be making the Democrats’ deliberations easier.

As she races to stockpile campaign money and post an impressive, statement-making first-quarter fundraising number, Sinema has used a series of Republican-dominated receptions and retreats this year to belittle her Democratic colleagues, shower her GOP allies with praise and, in one case, quite literally give the middle finger to President Joe Biden’s White House.

Speaking in private, whether one-on-one or with small groups of Republican senators, she’s even more cutting, particularly about Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, whom she derides in harshly critical terms, according to senior Republican officials directly familiar with her comments.

Tallahassee Democrat, Tallahassee principal ousted after complaints about Michelangelo's 'David' in art lesson, Ana Goñi-Lessan, March 23, 2023. “It saddens me that my time here had to end this way,” Hope Carrasquilla told the Tallahassee Democrat.

A local charter school principal said she was forced to resign after a parent complained a Renaissance art lesson was pornographic.

Hope Carrasquilla had been principal for less than a year at Tallahassee Classical School in Leon County before she resigned from her position during an emergency board meeting Monday.

“It saddens me that my time here had to end this way,” Carrasquilla told the Tallahassee Democrat.

Carrasquilla said last week she was told by the school’s board chair, Barney Bishop, that she would have to resign or she would be fired. She believes the catalyst for the ultimatum was complaints about an art lesson on the Renaissance period.

Bishop, who confirmed he did give Carrasquilla that ultimatum, said he could not say why he asked her to resign because of the school’s employment lawyer’s advice.

An email sent to parents Monday evening stated the new principal would be Cara Wynn, formerly of North Florida Christian School. She will be the school’s third principal since it opened three years ago, according to Bishop.
“It’s not unusual in new charter schools to go through several principals,” Bishop said.

Tallahassee Classical, a Hillsdale College curriculum school, is required to teach about Renaissance art in sixth grade.

But three parents complained that the lesson’s content, which included learning about Michelangelo’s sculpture, “David,” upset their children.

 

 

New Mexico State Rep. Andrea Reeb (R), left, emailed the New Mexico DA saying her involvement

New Mexico State Rep. Andrea Reeb (R), left, emailed the New Mexico DA saying her involvement "might help," the report said. Reeb was part of the team that brought charges against movie star Alex Baldwin for a film set shooting death.

Insider, The ex-prosecutor in the "Rust" case suggested it may help her political campaign, the NYT reported, Natalie Musumeci, March 22, 2023. The ex-special prosecutor who helped charge Alec Baldwin in the "Rust" movie set shooting death of cinematographer Halyna Hutchins emailed her boss that the high-profile case could "help" her GOP campaign for the New Mexico state legislature, according to a report from The New York Times.

republican elephant logoAndrea Reeb, a former district attorney and Republican lawmaker who won a seat in the New Mexico House of Representatives last November, was brought on as a special prosecutor in the "Rust" case in June 2022 while she was running for office.

New Mexico First Judicial District Attorney Mary Carmack-Altwies appointed Reeb to the case, and Reeb emailed the DA that she did not plan to tell the press about her involvement, the Times reported on Tuesday, citing from correspondence the news outlet obtained under the state's Inspection of Public Records Act.

"At some point though," Reeb said in the June 9 email, according to the Times, "I'd at least like to get out there that I am assisting you … as it might help in my campaign lol."

Carmack-Altwies responded to Reeb, saying, "I am intending to either introduce you or send it in a press release when we get the investigation!" according to the Times.

The DA and Reeb wound up bringing charges of involuntary manslaughter against Baldwin and an armorer in connection to the October 2021 shooting of 42-year-old Hutchins on the Santa Fe, New Mexico, film set.

Reeb stepped down from her role as special prosecutor last week after Baldwin's camp argued that her appointment was unconstitutional.

Baldwin's legal team referenced the Times report about the emails in a new court filing on Tuesday, calling it "yet another troubling development regarding the State's prosecution of this case."

"Representative Reeb's prosecution of this case against Mr. Baldwin to advance her political career is a further abuse of the system and yet another violation of Mr. Baldwin's constitutional rights," the actor's lawyers argued.

Reeb and Carmack-Altwies' office did not immediately respond to a request for comment by Insider on Wednesday.

Wayne Madsen Report, Investigative Commentary: Resistance to DeSantis: Woke African-American History Lesson Sheet #18, Jackie "Moms" Mabley, Wayne Madsen, March 23, 2023.

 

 

gop house chairs 2023

ny times logoNew York Times, At a retreat for House Republicans in Florida, the focus remained on former President Trump, Annie Karni, March 22, 2023 (print ed.). For the third year since he left office, former President Donald J. Trump continued to dominate an annual G.O.P. gathering in Florida, underscoring his grip on the party.

Speaker Kevin McCarthy arrived at an upscale resort here this week eager to use a Republican retreat to promote the party’s policy agenda and achievements so far, working to paper over the divisions that nearly sank his bid for his job and talk about anything but former President Donald J. Trump.

“I’m always optimistic,” a sunny Mr. McCarthy, dressed in a pair of trendy sneakers, jeans and a zip-up vest, told reporters of the prospect for resolving debt ceiling negotiations without an economy-crushing default. “I went 15 rounds to get speaker!”

But it was not long before Mr. Trump came to dominate the proceedings. With the former president expected to be indicted by a Manhattan grand jury, House Republicans rallied around him. They blasted the Manhattan district attorney, Alvin L. Bragg, as a pawn of George Soros, a longtime boogeyman of the right, and they vowed to open a remarkable congressional investigation into his active criminal inquiry.

It was the third year in a row that Mr. Trump has effectively taken over House Republicans’ annual gathering, underscoring how central the former president has remained to his party’s existence. Years after leaving office, Mr. Trump is still here, blotting out attempts to talk about any Republican agenda that does not involve him and making it all but impossible for the House G.O.P. to define itself as anything other than his frontline defenders.

It was true two years ago, when House Republicans headed to Florida desperate to talk about anything but Mr. Trump, who only weeks before had been impeached for inciting a deadly insurrection at the Capitol.

Instead, Representative Liz Cheney of Wyoming, then the No. 3 Republican, made several statements firmly repudiating Mr. Trump, and the retreat’s subtext was the ire of her fellow party leaders at her refusal to keep silent about the former president.

ny times logoNew York Times, Here’s a rough guide to the electoral fallout if former President Trump is indicted, Nate Cohn, March 22, 2023 (print ed.). It would be uncharted territory, but the F.B.I. search of Mar-a-Lago offers at least some precedent.

A lot of people believe I make political predictions, but that’s not really true. Instead, I try to marshal history, data, polling, reporting and more to help make sense of the political landscape. It usually amounts to one of those old, yellowish, distorted maps from the age of exploration. It offers only a rough guide of what lies ahead.

This week, we’re approaching uncharted waters. The front-runner for a major party nomination for president may soon be indicted. This is the blurry corner of the map where we can’t do much more than draw fantastical sea creatures. We know this part of the world is probably ocean, but we don’t know much else. We’re sure it’s dangerous.

Here’s the outline of the map as we edge toward a possible indictment:

  • The F.B.I. search of Mr. Trump’s property for classified records in August is probably the best precedent. While not an indictment, it represented a judgment by a court that there was probable cause to believe he committed a crime. The allegation was more serious than the Stormy Daniels case, as it carried potential implications for national security. But the search did not have a discernible effect on Mr. Trump’s standing among Republicans. Conservatives circled the wagons and argued that the search of a former president was an unjust act of partisan politics. There was no effect on his standing in the polls. In our Times/Siena polling last summer and fall, the Republican primary race was essentially unchanged after the F.B.I. search.
  • An indictment is still uncharted territory, so it’s worth being cautious about any potential fallout. A new legal line would be crossed, even if this story is already playing out much like the F.B.I. search.
  • But seriously, this indictment would seem particularly unlikely to hurt Mr. Trump’s base of support. The public already knows about Ms. Daniels. His supporters decided, long ago, that they did not especially care about the case’s underlying facts. An illegal cover-up of a private affair is more like the perjury accusation against Bill Clinton than Richard Nixon’s tapes.
  • The upside for Mr. Trump seems fairly limited. Yes, there really could be short-term gains for Mr. Trump if Republicans rally to his defense. Still, it’s a little much to argue that many Republicans who don’t support him for the nomination today would be far likelier to back him after an indictment. It could certainly energize his base, but an indictment would reinforce some of the reasons other Republicans are reluctant to back him in the first place. It’s not as if Mr. Trump became a juggernaut after the F.B.I. search of Mar-a-Lago.

ny times logoNew York Times, Los Angeles Enters Second Day Without Classes for 420,000 Students, Staff Report, March 23, 2023 (print ed.). Workers in the nation’s second-largest school district are holding a three-day walkout. Teachers have joined in solidarity.

The union representing teachers’ aides, custodians, bus drivers and other workers in the nation’s second-largest school district is holding a three-day walkout that teachers joined in solidarity.

ny times logoNew York Times, John Jenrette Jr., Congressman Nabbed in Abscam Sting, Dies at 86, Richard Sandomir, March 22, 2023 (print ed.).. Once a rising star of the Democratic Party, he served 13 months in prison for bribery after being targeted in an F.B.I. scam involving a phony sheikh.

ny times logoNew York Times, Trump Could Stand in the Middle of Fifth Avenue and Not Lose Mike Pence, Jamelle Bouie, right, March 22, 2023 (print ed.). Mike Pence wants to have it jamelle bouieboth ways.

He wants to be the conservative hero of Jan. 6: the steadfast Republican patriot who resisted the MAGA mob and defended the institutions of American democracy. “Make no mistake about it,” Pence said at the Gridiron Club Dinner in Washington, D.C., this month. “What happened that day was a disgrace, and it mocks decency to portray it in any other way. President Donald Trump was wrong. I had no right to overturn the election and his reckless words endangered my family and everyone at the Capitol that day.”

But Mike Pence also wants to be president. And he can’t fully repudiate the previous Republican president if he hopes to win the Republican presidential nomination, especially when that president is still on the stage, with a commanding role in Republican politics.

The result is that Mike Pence has to talk out of both sides of his mouth. With one breath, he takes a righteous stand against the worst dysfunction of the Trump years. “We have to resist the politics of personality, the lure of populism unmoored by timeless conservative values,” Pence said last week while speaking to an audience of Republican donors in Keene, N.H.

With his next breath, however, Pence rejects any effort to hold Trump accountable, especially when it asks him to do something more than give the occasional sound bite.

 

ron desantis mouth open uncredited

ny times logoNew York Times, Book Review: Ron DeSantis Has a Secret Theory of Trump, Carlos Lozada, March 20, 2023 (print ed.). Ron DeSantis has an enemies list, and you can probably guess who’s on it.

There’s the “woke dumpster fire” of the Democratic Party and the “swamp Republicans” who neglect their own voters. There’s the news media, with modifiers like “legacy” or “corporate” adding a nefarious touch. There’s Big Tech, that “censorship arm of the political left,” and the powerful corporations that cave to the “leftist-rage mob.” There are universities like Harvard and Yale, which DeSantis attended but did not inhale. There’s the administrative state and its pandemic-era spinoff, the “biomedical security state.” These are the villains of DeSantis’s recently published book, “The Courage to Be Free: Florida’s Blueprint for America’s Revival,” and its author feels free to assail them with a fusillade of generically irate prose.

There is one more antagonist — not an enemy, perhaps, but certainly a rival — whom DeSantis does not attack directly in his book, even as he looms over much of it. The far-too-early national polls for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination show a two-person contest with Donald Trump and DeSantis (who has yet to announce his potential candidacy) in the lead, and the Haleys, Pences and Pompeos of the world fighting for scraps. During his 2018 governor’s race, DeSantis aired an obsequious ad in which he built a cardboard border wall and read Trump’s “Art of the Deal” with his children, one of whom wore a MAGA onesie. Now DeSantis no longer bows before Trump. Instead, he dances around the former president; he is respectful but no longer deferential, critical but mainly by implication.

Yes, there is a DeSantis case against Trump scattered throughout these pages. You just need to squint through a magnifying glass to find it.

In the 250-plus pages of The Courage to Be Free, for instance, there is not a single mention of the events of Jan. 6, 2021. DeSantis cites Madison, Hamilton and the nation’s founding principles, but he does not pause to consider a frontal assault on America’s democratic institutions encouraged by a sitting president. The governor does not go so far as to defend Trump’s lies about the 2020 election; he just ignores them.

However, DeSantis does write that an energetic executive should lead “within the confines of a constitutional system,” and he criticizes unnamed elected officials for whom “perpetuating themselves in office supersedes fulfilling any policy mission.” Might DeSantis ever direct such criticisms at a certain former president so willing to subvert the Constitution to remain in power? Perhaps. For the moment, though, such indignation exists at a safe distance from any discussion of Trump himself.

ny times logoNew York Times, Republicans’ Investigative Chief Embraces Role of Biden Antagonist, Jonathan Swan and Luke Broadwater, March 22, 2023 (print ed.). The fourth-term Kentuckian and chairman of the House Oversight and Accountability Committee has become an aggressive promoter of sinister-sounding claims about the president and his family.

james comerSteering his S.U.V. through pounding rain on his way to the state capital on a recent Thursday, Representative James R. Comer, the chairman of the Oversight and Accountability Committee, reflected on the pressure he often faced from constituents to investigate unhinged claims about President Biden and Democrats.

“You know, the customer’s always right,” Mr. Comer said wryly, of his approach to the people who elected him and now brandish conspiracy theories, vulgar photographs featuring the president and his son, Hunter, and other lies they expect him to act upon.

“I say, ‘Let me see it,’ because I want to see where the source is,” Mr. Comer said. “They don’t know that it’s QAnon, but it’s QAnon stuff.”

Yet in his new role leading the Republican Party’s chief investigative committee in the House, Mr. Comer, 50, has himself become a promoter of sinister-sounding allegations against Mr. Biden and his family. This pursuit has propelled him to stardom in a party whose best customers — vengeful, hard-right voters — are bent on bringing down the Democratic president.

This month, Mr. Comer joined a panel at the Conservative Political Action Conference titled “The Biden Crime Family,” where he asserted that Mr. Biden and his family’s business activities with China posed “a threat to national security.”

Appearing on Fox News in January, Mr. Comer implied, without evidence, that there was a connection between Mr. Biden improperly holding on to classified documents when he was a private citizen and his son, Hunter, receiving a diamond from a Chinese tycoon. In another segment Mr. Comer lamented that Beau Biden, the president’s other son, who died of cancer in 2015, was never investigated.

His embrace of such statements reflects how Mr. Comer, who voted to certify Mr. Biden’s victory and was a favorite among Democrats in Kentucky’s Legislature, has transformed himself to command the Republican war machine in Congress — becoming a high-profile example of what it takes to rise and thrive in the Fox News-fed MAGA universe.

It also underscores the cutthroat instincts of Mr. Comer, who presents himself as an affable country boy of limited abilities, but who has proved to be a methodical and transactional political operator, willing to go to great lengths to crush his adversaries.

During his campaign for governor in 2015, facing allegations of abuse from an ex-girlfriend who also said he had taken her to get an abortion, Mr. Comer worked to discredit a blogger reporting on the claims and a campaign rival he believed was behind them, leaking private emails between the two. Mr. Comer denied the woman’s charges but lost the race anyway.

 

djt ron desantis cnn collage

Politico, The 2024 GOP 2024 Presidential Election field: How they win, how they lose, Steven Shepard, March 21, 2023 (print ed.). The race for the GOP presidential has a set of historic firsts: a former president seeking an Oval Office comeback, a vice president who refused to go along with a plot to steal the last election, the most politically accomplished woman ever to run as a Republican — and an already-popular governor waiting in the wings.

politico CustomWho ultimately wins out will take on President Joe Biden in a likely reelection bid — and potentially secure the White House.

rnc logoThere are also other candidates and would-be candidates, too. We've put the entire field into three categories — based roughly on their chances to capture the nod — along with full scouting reports for everything that could go right or wrong along the road to the 2024 convention in Milwaukee.

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More On Russia-China-West Conflicts

 

 A photograph released by Russian state media showing Chinese President Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin meeting at the Kremlin (Photo by Sergei Karpukhin of Sputnik).

A photograph released by Russian state media showing Chinese President Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin meeting at the Kremlin (Photo by Sergei Karpukhin of Sputnik).

ny times logoNew York Times, As Xi and Putin Resume Talks, Japan’s Leader Visits Ukraine, Staff Reports, March 22, 2023 (print ed.). On the second day of his visit to Moscow, China’s leader, Xi Jinping, said he had invited President Vladimir Putin of Russia to Beijing; In a competing display of support, Prime Minister Fumio Kishida of Japan made an unannounced visit to Ukraine.

As China’s leader, Xi Jinping, met for a second day with President Vladimir V. Putin in Moscow, Japan’s prime minister made an unannounced visit to Kyiv on Tuesday in a show of support for Ukraine against Russia’s invasion.

With his surprise foray into an active war zone, Prime Minister Fumio Kishida of Japan (shown at right in a Manichi photo) highlighted his nation’s unusually swift and proactive Fumio Kishida (shown in a Manichi photo)allegiance with Ukraine and set the stage for competing displays of diplomacy from two East Asian neighbors.

On the war in Ukraine, China has been trying to maintain a nearly impossible position, presenting itself as an impartial observer while maintaining close ties with Russia. Beijing has had practice: its balancing act predates President Vladimir V. Putin’s full-scale invasion. For decades it tried to build ties with Russia while also keeping Ukraine close.

In 1992, China was among the first countries to establish ties with a newly independent Ukraine after the collapse of the Soviet Union. It turned to Ukraine as a major supplier of corn, sunflower and grapeseed oil, as well as arms technology.

JapanAs Prime Minister Fumio Kishida of Japan visits Kyiv, it’s worth remembering that Japan has its own territorial dispute with Russia dating back to World War II over islands off the coast of Hokkaido. Talks on the issue broke down last March over Tokyo’s support for international sanctions against Moscow for its invasion of Ukraine.

washington post logoWashington Post, Xi and Putin showcase alliance but offer no path to peace in Ukraine, Robyn Dixon and Lily Kuo, March 22, 2023 (print ed.). Russian President Vladimir Putin and China’s Xi Jinping on Tuesday proclaimed their plans to deepen Sino-Russian political and economic cooperation for years to come — sending a strong message to the West about their determination to push back against the global domination of the United States.

But as the leaders wrapped up two days of formal discussions in Moscow, there was no visible progress on China’s cease-fire plan for Ukraine.

washington post logoWashington Post, Opinion: Here’s the real lesson from the showy Xi-Putin meeting, David Ignatius, March 22, 2023 (print ed.). A strong david ignatiusChina is bolstering a weak Russia. That’s the real headline that describes the showy meetings in Moscow this week between the two countries’ leaders.

The Chinese aren’t providing weapons (yet), but Xi certainly offered moral and psychological support in what might be described as a get-well visit to an ailing relative. White House spokesman John Kirby on Tuesday rightly called Putin a “junior partner.”

ny times logoNew York Times, Analysis: In a Brother Act With Putin, Xi Reveals China’s Fear of Containment, Chris Buckley, March 23, 2023 (print ed.). Instead of focusing on Ukraine, Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin’s meetings in Moscow reinforced their shared opposition to American dominance.

China’s leader, Xi Jinping, flew into Moscow this week cast by Beijing as its emissary for peace in Ukraine. His summit with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, however, demonstrated that his priority remains shoring up ties with Moscow to gird against what he sees as a long campaign by the United States to hobble China’s ascent.

Talk of Ukraine was overshadowed by Mr. Xi’s vow of ironclad solidarity with Russia as a political, diplomatic, economic and military partner: two superpowers aligned in countering American dominance and a Western-led world order. The summit showed Mr. Xi’s intention to entrench Beijing’s tilt toward Moscow against what he recently called an effort by the United States at the full-fledged “containment” of China.

Mr. Xi and Mr. Putin used the pomp of the three-day state visit that ended on Wednesday to signal to their publics and to Western capitals that the bond between their two countries remained robust and, in their eyes, indispensable, 13 months after Mr. Putin launched his invasion of Ukraine. They laid out their vision for the world in a nine-point joint statement that covered everything from Taiwan to climate change and relations with Mongolia, often depicting the United States as the obstacle to a better, fairer world.

 

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Wayne Madsen Report, Investigative Commentary, Finland in NATO will be a gateway to the subjugated Finno-Ugric peoples of Russia, Wayne Madsen, left, author of 22 books and former U.S. Navy intelligence officer based in Finland, March 21-22, wayne madsen may 29 2015 cropped Small2023. With Türkiye's announcement that it will ratify Finland's membership in NATO, as well as holdout Hungary's signaling that it will soon move ratification of Finland's and Sweden's accession to NATO through its parliament, there is renewed hope among the beleaguered colonized Finno-Ugric nations colonized by Russia that their cause will soon receive greater international attention.

wayne madesen report logoFinland is slated to become a full NATO member at the NATO Summit scheduled for July 11-12 in Vilnius, Lithuania.

finland flagFinland has maintained "soft power" contacts with the Finno-Ugric bloc of formerly autonomous republics in Russia. They are Karelia, which was once part of Finland; Komi, Mari-El, Mordovia, Udmurtia, and Komi Permiak. Putin has curtailed contacts between the Finno-Ugric nations and Finland. These relations will be further hampered by the Kremlin after Finland becomes a full member of NATO.

Putin's war in Ukraine has emboldened some Finno-Ugric leaders in Russia to resurrect their calls for independence from Russia. In December 2022, many of these leaders were joined by representatives of other captive nations within Russia at the Forum of Free Peoples of Post-Russia (FSNPR) held in Helsingborg, Sweden. There, Finno-Ugric representatives were joined by Tatars, Chechens, Bashkirs, Nogais, Circassians, Cossacks, and others in calling for the "end of the existence of the Russian Federation.”

ny times logoNew York Times, China is supplying drones to Russia, a sign of quiet collaboration between the two, Paul Mozur, Aaron Krolik and Keith Bradsher, March 22, 2023 (print ed.). China has shipped more than $12 million in drones to Russia since it invaded Ukraine, in an indication of quiet collaboration between the two.

China FlagThe Biden administration vowed last month to crack down on companies that sell critical technologies to Russia as part of its efforts to curtail the country’s war against Ukraine. But the continued flow of Chinese drones to the country explains why that will be hard.

While drone sales have slowed, American policies put in place after Russia’s invasion have failed to stanch exports of the unmanned aerial vehicles that work as eyes in the sky for frontline fighters. In the year since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, China has sold more than $12 million in drones and drone parts to the country, according to official Russian customs data from a third-party data provider.

It is hard to determine whether the Chinese drones contain American technologies that would violate the U.S. rules or whether they are legal. The shipments, a mix of products from DJI, the world’s best-known drone maker, and an array of smaller companies, often came through small-time middlemen and exporters.

Complicated sales channels and vague product descriptions within export data also make it hard to definitively show whether there are U.S. components in the Chinese products, which could constitute a violation of the American export controls. And the official sales are likely only one part of a larger flow of technologies through unofficial channels and other nations friendly to Russia, like Kazakhstan, Pakistan and Belarus.

The result is a steady supply of new drones to Russia that make their way to the front lines of its war with Ukraine. On the battlefield, the hovering quadcopters often last only a few flights before they are blown out of the skies. Refilling stockpiles of even the most basic unmanned aerial vehicles has become as critical as other basic necessities, such as procuring artillery shells and bullets.

Militarily, diplomatically and economically, Beijing has become an increasingly important buttress for Russia in its war effort. China has remained one of the largest buyers of Russian oil, helping finance the invasion. The two sides have also held joint military exercises and jointly assailed the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.

As China’s top leader, Xi Jinping, meets this week with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, U.S. officials have warned that China is still considering selling lethal weapons for use in Ukraine.

washington post logoWashington Post, Xi arrives in Russia to stand with Putin against West amid Ukraine war, Francesca Ebel and Lily Kuo, March 21, 2023 (print ed.). Russian analysts skeptical Putin-Xi talks will make progress on peace; Ukraine ‘ready’ for ‘closer dialogue with China.’

Chinese leader Xi Jinping landed in Russia on Monday for a much-anticipated three-day state visit, taking a joint stand with President Vladimir Putin against the West even as the Russian leader stands accused by the International Criminal Court of war crimes in Ukraine.

China FlagThe two men, each positioned as “leader for life” of a nuclear power, celebrated their “no limits” relationship in Beijing together in early 2022, just weeks before Putin ordered his full-scale invasion of Ukraine, and they have met about 40 times. But Monday’s visit, the first by Xi since the invasion, represents a display of tacit support by China for the war and a personal triumph for Putin, who is eager to show he is not isolated on the international stage.

Xi’s plane arrived at Vnukovo International Airport just southwest of the Russian capital at approximately 1 p.m. local time Monday. The presidential motorcade then made its way to the center of Moscow, where dozens of people waving Chinese and Russian flags greeted the delegation outside his hotel, the Soluxe Hotel in the north of the city. Initial talks were scheduled to begin in the afternoon, followed by a dinner later with Putin.

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More Global News, Migration, Human Rights Issues

washington post logoWashington Post, Macron defends move to raise retirement age as protests roil France, Ellen Francis and Claire Parker, March 23, 2023 (print ed.). French President Emmanuel Macron forcefully defended Wednesday his move to push through legislation to raise the retirement age, which has ignited angry protests and strikes around the country.

emmanuel marcon twitterIn his most direct comments to the nation since ramming the legislation through last week, Macron, right, described the plan that has roiled France for weeks as a necessity the people must bear together.

“We must advance because it is in the ultimate interest of the nation,” he said in a live interview with TF1 and France 2 TV from the Elysee Palace.

He said the pension reform plan should be in effect by the end of the year, but that it was now awaiting a decision from the Constitutional Council before moving forward.

The government’s use of executive powers to pass the pension bill without a vote from the parliament’s lower house plunged French politics into upheaval and escalated a simmering crisis.

ap logoAssociated Press via Washington Post, 11 killed as strong earthquake rattles Pakistan, Afghanistan, Munir Ahmed and Rahim Faiez, March 22, 2023 (print ed.). A magnitude 6.5 earthquake rattled much of Pakistan and Afghanistan on Tuesday, sending panicked residents fleeing from homes and offices and frightening people in remote villages. At least nine people died in Pakistan and two in Afghanistan, officials said Wednesday.

 

Released Saudi critic Saad Almadi of Florida, right, with his son Ibrahim Almadi (family photo via Getty Images).

Released Saudi-American critic Saad Almadi of Florida, right, with his son Ibrahim Almadi (family photo via Getty Images).

ny times logoNew York Times, Saudi Arabia Releases U.S. Dual Citizen Jailed in Crackdown on Dissent, ivian Nereim, March 21, 2023. Saad Almadi, 72, a Florida resident, was one of several Americans and hundreds of Saudis caught up in the crackdown under Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. He still cannot fly home, his son said.

Saudi-American dual citizen who spent more than a year in a Saudi prison over Twitter posts critical of the kingdom’s government was released from detention on Tuesday, but will not be able to leave the country, according to his son.

Saad Almadi, a 72-year-old Florida resident, is staying with family members in the Saudi capital of Riyadh, his son, Ibrahim Almadi, said by telephone from Washington. The younger Mr. Almadi said he would continue to campaign to overturn a Saudi bar on his father leaving the kingdom.

“The fight will continue and hopefully we’ll have him back soon,” he said.

Mr. Almadi, a retired project manager, was one of several U.S. citizens and hundreds of Saudis caught up in a deepening crackdown on dissent under Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. He was arrested during a visit to Saudi Arabia in 2021.

Prosecutors cited Twitter posts he wrote that were critical of the Saudi government and an “insulting picture” of Prince Mohammed saved on his phone as proof that he had “adopted a terrorist agenda by defaming symbols of the state,” according to court documents. He was sentenced to 16 years in prison, lengthened on appeal last month to 19 years.

ny times logoNew York Times, Ferraris and Hungry Children: Venezuela’s Socialist Vision in Shambles, Isayen Herrera and Frances Robles, Photographs by Adriana Loureiro Fernandez, March 22, 2023 (print ed.). After years of extreme scarcity, some Venezuelans lead lives of luxury as others scrape by.

In the capital, a store sells Prada purses and a 110-inch television for $115,000. Not far away, a Ferrari dealership has opened, while a new restaurant allows well-off diners to enjoy a meal seated atop a giant crane overlooking the city.

“When was the last time you did something for the first time?” the restaurant’s host boomed over a microphone to excited customers as they sang along to a Coldplay song.

This is not Dubai or Tokyo, but Caracas, the capital of Venezuela, where a socialist revolution once promised equality and an end to the bourgeoisie.

Venezuela’s economy imploded nearly a decade ago, prompting a huge outflow of migrants in one of worst crises in modern Latin American history. Now there are signs the country is settling into a new, disorienting normality, with everyday products easily available, poverty starting to lessen — and surprising pockets of wealth arising.

ny times logoNew York Times, Macron’s Government Survives but Faces Wrath of France Over Pension Overhaul, Roger Cohen, March 21, 2023 (print ed.). Two no-confidence votes failed to oust the cabinet of President Emmanuel Macron over a bill that proposes to raise the retirement age to 64 from 62.

French FlagThe French National Assembly rejected a no-confidence motion against the government of President Emmanuel Macron on Monday, ensuring that a fiercely contested bill raising the retirement age to 64 from 62 becomes the law of the land.

The first of two motions received 278 votes, nine short of the 287 needed to pass. The close result reflected widespread anger at the pension overhaul, at Mr. Macron for his apparent aloofness and at the way the measure was rammed through Parliament last week without a full vote on the bill itself. The Senate, France’s upper house of Parliament, passed the pension bill this month.

A second no-confidence motion, filed by the far-right National Rally, failed on Monday, as well, with only 94 lawmakers voting in favor.

The change, which Mr. Macron has sought since the beginning of his first term in 2017, has provoked two months of demonstrations, intermittent strikes and occasional violence. It has split France, with polls consistently showing two-thirds of the population opposing the overhaul.

washington post logoWashington Post, American hostage freed 6 years after being taken captive by militants in Africa, John Hudson, March 21, 2023 (print ed.). Jeffery Woodke, a Christian aid worker, was abducted in Niger in 2016. An American aid worker who was taken captive by militants in West Africa more than six years ago has been freed, his family and the Biden administration said Monday, but officials shared little about his years in captivity or the identity of the group that held him.

Jeffery Woodke, a Christian aid worker, was abducted in Niger in 2016 and believed to have been later taken to Mali. He is undergoing a medical evaluation in Niamey, the capital of Niger, then will return home to be reunited with his family, said Bob Klamer, a spokesman for the Woodke family.

“I’m gratified & relieved to see the release of U.S. hostage Jeff Woodke after over 6 years in captivity,” White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan said on Twitter. President Biden also praised the release and told reporters that the United States “will continue our work to bring home all Americans held hostage or unjustly detained.”

Woodke’s wife, Els Woodke, spoke to her husband Monday. “He was in great spirits and thrilled to be free,” she said. She expressed her “profound thanks to the many people in governments and others around the world who have worked so hard to see this result.”

Sullivan thanked the government of Niger for helping secure Woodke’s return. Secretary of State Antony Blinken just returned from Niger on Friday, in the first visit to the West African country by a sitting secretary of state. Blinken reaffirmed the United States’ interest in securing Woodke’s release, said a senior administration official, but no ransom or concessions were given. No direct negotiations were held between the U.S. government and the group that held him, said the official, who spoke to reporters on the condition of anonymity given the sensitivity surrounding the long-sought release.

The official declined to identify the group that held Woodke but noted that his capture happened as a result of an “overlapping and intersecting network in that part of West Africa — operating in an area that includes Mali and Burkina Faso — who see kidnapping and hostage-taking as part of their business model, frankly, and as a source of revenue and support.”

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U.S. Banks, Economy, Jobs

washington post logoWashington Post, Weighing bank distress and inflation, Fed faces next rate hike, Rachel Siegel, March 23, 2023 (print ed.).There’s much more uncertainty this time around as to whether the Fed will hike by a quarter of a percentage point, or hit pause until the banking fiasco is truly over.

The Federal Reserve faces a pivotal decision Wednesday — whether to push ahead with its urgent fight against inflation or ease up in the aftermath of bank failures that forced a sweeping government intervention earlier this month.

federal reserve system CustomFinancial markets expect an increase of a quarter of a percentage point, which would bring the Fed’s base policy rate to between 4.75 and 5 percent. But nothing is guaranteed, and some Fed experts are urging policymakers to hit pause. Their argument is that it is too soon to know if jerome powellthe banking fiasco is over, and that the financial system may still be too fragile to absorb another hike right now, even though inflation remains too high.

The central bank, led by Jerome Powell, right, is also facing questions about its regulatory oversight of Silicon Valley Bank, as Washington tries to figure out whether the government could have prevented the turmoil in the banking sector.

ny times logoNew York Times, Double-Barreled Economic Threat Puts Congress on Edge, Carl Hulse, March 23, 2023. Republicans and Democrats disagree over how recent bank closures should affect the debt limit stalemate, and have taken divergent lessons from past crises.

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More On Ukraine War

ny times logoNew York Times, Zelensky Tours Kherson as Ukraine Tries to Pressure Russian Forces, Enjoli Liston, March 23, 2023. President Volodymyr Zelensky toured areas affected by Russian strikes, a day after he met with troops near the embattled eastern city of Bakhmut.

President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine visited the southern Ukrainian region of Kherson, touring areas affected by Russia’s full-scale invasion and its monthslong campaign to destroy Ukraine’s energy infrastructure, he said on Thursday.

“We have to ensure full restoration and protection of our energy sector!” Mr. Zelensky said in a post on Telegram, the social messaging app. “I am grateful to everyone who works for this and returns the light to our people!”

President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine visited the southern Ukrainian region of Kherson, touring areas affected by Russia’s full-scale invasion and its monthslong campaign to destroy Ukraine’s energy infrastructure, he said on Thursday.

“We have to ensure full restoration and protection of our energy sector!” Mr. Zelensky said in a post on Telegram, the social messaging app. “I am grateful to everyone who works for this and returns the light to our people!”

The visit was Mr. Zelensky’s second to a frontline area in two days. On Wednesday, he made a defiant trip to the area around the devastated eastern city of Bakhmut, which has become a potent symbol of Ukrainian resistance as Kyiv’s forces battle to hold off a relentless Russian onslaught.

Mr. Zelensky’s travels to regions partly occupied by Russia come as Western allies ramp up supplies of weapons and ammunition to Ukraine, which is preparing for an anticipated counteroffensive that could include a push to retake captured territory.

Though Ukraine recaptured the city of Kherson, the regional capital, from Russian forces last November in one of its most significant victories of the yearlong war, Moscow still controls territory in the wider Kherson province. Russian forces have used positions on the eastern bank of the Dnipro River to shell the city of Kherson on the opposite side of the waterway, preventing Kyiv from being able to restore a sense of normality in the city.

On Thursday, Ukraine’s Armed Forces said they were escalating artillery strikes against Russian positions east of the Dnipro. “We are working to make the enemy feel our presence, our pressure,” Natalia Humeniuk, a spokeswoman for the Ukrainian military’s southern command, said on national television.

Russia has sought to toughen its defenses, and there was no immediate indication that shelling of the city of Kherson had lessened. Vladimir Saldo, the Russian-appointed governor of Kherson, said on Russian television this week that Moscow’s forces had “strengthened by a factor of three the line of defense” on the eastern side of the river.

Over the winter months, parts of the Kherson region endured weeks without access to electricity and water, as Russian forces rained missiles, rockets and drones down on energy infrastructure targets in an apparent bid to freeze residents.

During the trip on Thursday, Mr. Zelensky said he visited Posad-Pokrovske, a farming village that was largely destroyed during the fight for the city of Kherson, which is about 20 miles away. “Currently, the restoration of electricity and water supply is underway here, the medical clinic is being rebuilt, and people are returning,” Mr. Zelensky said on Telegram.

His visits near the frontline have come days after Russia’s president, Vladimir V. Putin, visited the southern Ukrainian city of Mariupol, now occupied by Russian forces after one of Moscow’s most brutal campaigns of the war.

Mr. Putin’s trip to Mariupol, about 50 miles southeast of the Ukrainian-controlled town of Vuhledar — where Russian forces sustained heavy losses just weeks ago and where fighting continues — is believed to be the closest the Russian leader has come to the front line since his forces’ invasion last year.

ny times logoNew York Times, Ukrainian Tank Commanders Grow Impatient: ‘Give Me an Abrams!’ Carlotta Gall, Photographs by Daniel Berehulak, March 23, 2023. For now, they are holding on with inferior Soviet-era tanks, but relish the idea of taking on the Russians with modern Western equipment.

ny times logoNew York Times, She Posted About the War in Ukraine. Then She Faced a Prison Term, Valerie Hopkins, March 23, 2023 (print ed.). The case of Olesya Krivtsova, a Russian student who ended up on the Kremlin’s terrorist list, has underscored the perils of criticizing the invasion.

Sitting in a small courtroom flanked by her two lawyers last month, Olesya Krivtsova was facing a stiff penalty for her fondness for posting on social media. Barely 20 and until this year a university student in northern Russia, she was accused of “justifying terrorism” and “discrediting the Russian armed forces,” and was facing up to a decade in prison.

Her apparent crime? An Instagram post asking why Ukrainians had rejoiced when the main bridge to Russian-occupied Crimea was attacked in October.

The post eventually landed Ms. Krivtsova on the Kremlin’s official list of terrorists and extremists. She was placed under house arrest and forbidden from using the phone or the internet.

Ms. Krivtsova did not wait for a courtroom verdict: Last week, she fled the country.

“I decided to leave because I was desperate,” Ms. Krivtsova said by telephone on Friday from Vilnius, Lithuania. “It is impossible to prove anything to the Russian court.”

As the Kremlin intensifies its crackdown on free speech, social media platforms have become a more frequent target for punishment. The government is increasingly penalizing people for posts it considers critical of the fighting in Ukraine — with fines, imprisonment and, in extreme cases, temporarily losing custody of their children.

In the Ryazan region south of Moscow, for instance, investigators opened a criminal case against a man who posted a joke about the Russian retreat from Kherson, in southern Ukraine. A student who ran an antiwar channel on the messaging app Telegram was denounced by the rector of his university for posts that criticized the Kremlin’s invasion of Ukraine as well as alleged Russian atrocities in Bucha and Mariupol. This month, he was sentenced to eight and a half years in a penal colony.

ny times logoNew York Times, Russia reprised brutal tactics to attack the eastern Ukrainian city of Avdiivka, Marc Santora, March 22, 2023 (print ed.). Russian forces have stepped up their assaults on the Ukrainian stronghold of Avdiivka in eastern Ukraine, making limited and costly gains in a furious attempt to encircle the long-battered city.

Ukrainian officials have said in recent days that Avdiivka is turning into another Bakhmut, the eastern city that Russian forces have sought to capture by sending waves of lightly trained recruits on near-suicidal attacks of Ukrainian defensive lines. In Avdiivka, as in Bakhmut, Ukraine says that Russian advances are also ukraine flagthreatening key supply lines while bombardments are killing civilians.

Local officials said on Tuesday that a woman had been killed and two more civilians injured when a shell fired from a tank blasted the city center.

“Russians are intensively attacking from both sides, from the south and the north,” Maj. Maksym Morozov, a member of the Special Forces regiment fighting in the area, told the Ukrainian news media on Monday night. He added that the Russian tactic of using waves of soldiers — dubbed “cannon fodder” by the Ukrainians — was having some success.

“First, cannon fodder goes to expose our firing positions, and then professionals behind them quickly and accurately try to extinguish our firing lines,” he said. But he said that Ukrainian artillery and tanks were firing back at the Russian forces, who “have to pay a rather high price for this advance.”

Avdiivka is about 15 miles west of the city of Donetsk, which Russian proxy forces took over in 2014. But Avdiivka had not experienced violence on the scale unleashed in Russia’s full-scale invasion last year.

By last April, Russian artillery had destroyed more than 800 homes and scores of businesses, according to local officials. Only about 2,300 of the city’s 30,000 prewar residents remain, according to Vitaliy Barabash, the head of the Ukrainian military administration in the city.

washington post logoWashington Post, U.S. will speed transfer of Abrams tanks to Ukraine, Pentagon says, Dan Lamothe, March 22, 2023 (print ed.). The new plan calls for refurbishing tank hulls already in the U.S. arsenal rather than procuring new vehicles, which had been expected to take up to two years.

Department of Defense SealThe Pentagon, in a significant shift, said Tuesday that it will send M1 Abrams tanks to Ukraine by the fall, after facing scrutiny for initially saying it could take a year or two to procure the powerful weapons and get them to the battlefield.

The new plan calls for refurbishing tank hulls already in the U.S. arsenal, officials said. President Biden, under intensifying pressure from Ukrainian officials, agreed in January to pledge 31 M1 tanks as part of a long-term arrangement that afforded German leaders political cover so that they could approve the immediate provision of Leopard battle tanks.

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U.S. Courts, Crime, Immigration, Guns

ny times logoNew York Times, 1 Dead and Multiple Hostages Rescued in Houston F.B.I. Operation, Christine Hauser, March 23, 2023. One person died and several hostages were rescued during an operation that lasted several days and involved federal and local law enforcement officials in North Houston, the F.B.I. said in a statement on Thursday.

FBI logoAll of the hostages had been “safely rescued” by Thursday morning, the F.B.I. said. The agency said one person had died after “an agent-involved shooting,” and that none of its personnel were injured.

The F.B.I. released few other details and did not answer questions about the shooting or the nature of the hostage situation. The agency’s Houston office said on Twitter that “no additional information” would be provided for now, and that no news conferences were planned.

ny times logoNew York Times, In Memphis, Car Seizures Are a Lucrative and Punishing Police Tactic, Jessica Jaglois and Mike Baker, March 23, 2023. It has been used to combat street racing and other crimes, but critics said that vehicles have been kept for months from people not even convicted.

As he drove to work on a summer afternoon in Memphis last year, Ralph Jones saw a woman on the sidewalk flagging him down. Thinking she was in distress or needed a ride, Mr. Jones said, he pulled over.

memphis police logoAfter a brief conversation in which she tried to lure him to a nearby motel, Mr. Jones said, he drove away but was soon stopped by the police and yanked from his truck. The 70-year-old welder said that with just 86 cents in his pocket, he had neither the intent nor the money to solicit a prostitute, as the officers were claiming.

His protests were to no avail. Mr. Jones was cited, and his truck, along with the expensive tools inside, was seized. The charges were eventually dropped, but the truck and his work equipment remained corralled in a city impound lot for six weeks, when prosecutors finally agreed to return it in exchange for a $750 payment.

“It’s nothing but a racket,” Mr. Jones said.

Police departments around the country have long used asset forfeiture laws to seize property believed to be associated with criminal activity, a tactic intended to deprive lawbreakers of ill-gotten gains, deter future crimes and, along the way, provide a lucrative revenue source for police departments.

But it became a favored law-enforcement tactic in Memphis, where the elite street crime unit involved in the death of Tyre Nichols on Jan. 7, known as the Scorpion unit, was among several law enforcement teams in the city making widespread use of vehicle seizures.

Like Mr. Jones, some of the people affected by the seizures had not been convicted of any crime, and defense lawyers said they disproportionately affected low-income residents, and people of color.

Over the past decade, civil rights advocates in several states have successfully pushed to make it harder for the police to seize property, but Tennessee continues to have some of the most aggressive seizure laws in the country.

While some states now require a criminal conviction before forfeiting property, Tennessee’s process can be much looser, requiring only that the government show, in a civil process, that the property was more likely than not to have been connected to certain types of criminal activity — a less rigorous burden of proof. Tennessee allows local law enforcement agencies to keep the bulk of the proceeds of the assets they seize.

Brennan Center for Justice, NYU Law School, Analysis: Constitution watchers brace for upcoming Supreme Court rulings on the Voting Rights Act, affirmative action, and the “independent state legislature theory,” Michael Waldman, March 21-22, 2023. The Marble Palace on First Street gets most of the attention. In the meantime, federal judges across the country are showing us what happens when the lower courts are stuffed with right-wing ideologues.

After a hearing last week, Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk in Amarillo, Texas, is expected to soon rule on an outlandish demand to ban the use of the abortion pill mifepristone — medication used for more than half of all abortions in the United States. If the judge rules to revoke the decades-old FDA approval for the pill, he will affect not just women in Texas, but women in every state.

How can a single federal judge have such power over the medical decisions of more than 167 million people? Believe it or not, the Supreme Court has never ruled on whether nationwide injunctions are constitutional. Liberals used this tactic on occasion to block the Trump administration’s policies, such as the single judge who blocked the “Muslim ban” in 2017. But conservatives have undeniably perfected it.

In Texas, a quirk of the rules lets people choose where they bring a federal lawsuit and essentially handpick the judge who will hear their case — judge shopping to boost the chances of a favorable ruling. When a plaintiff files a federal suit in Amarillo, they are 100 percent guaranteed to get Kacsmaryk, a judge with a reputation as a Federalist Society militant. His sister recently told reporters it was his mission to end abortion in the United States. He has called homosexuality “disordered.” He made the government reinstate the Trump-era “Remain in Mexico” policy, which was later overturned by the Supreme Court.

Such a track record would make him the ideal judge for anti-abortion groups seeking someone sympathetic to their case.

Worse, Kacsmaryk may be readying his abortion pill ruling based on the brand-new “major questions doctrine,” which is all of nine months old. First articulated in a case last year that slashed the Environmental Protection Agency’s regulatory power, the doctrine claims federal agencies need clear congressional authorization to act on issues that have “major” economic or political significance. This conveniently flexible legal theory is poised to be the go-to reasoning for right-wing judges to block any policies they don’t like.

The Texas case isn’t the only evidence of the impact of skewed lower courts. The Supreme Court’s sweeping decision in New York State Rifle and Pistol Association v. Bruen, which held that gun laws must pass the test of “history and tradition” rather than public safety, has led to judicial rulings that verge on satirical. One federal judge in western New York blocked most of the state’s new gun law, declaring he could find no colonial-era law banning guns in summer camps, which, of course, did not exist at the time. And surprise, surprise, he found no trace of 18th-century prohibitions on guns in subways, either. Though he let the ban on guns in churches stand, another New York judge ruled shortly afterward that this restriction, too, was ahistorical.

Other examples abound, and there will no doubt be many more to come. Trump isn’t only responsible for appointing three Supreme Court justices — he appointed 226 federal judges during his presidency. They were overwhelmingly pre-vetted by the Federalist Society.

These appointments have left a lasting impact, and there is an urgent need to rebalance the scales of the federal judiciary. Last week, the Judicial Conference of the United States, led by Chief Justice John Roberts, recommended adding 68 federal judges to the courts to meet demanding new workloads. This would be a good step toward countering the partisanship plaguing the courts. But most importantly, we need to understand the significance of what has happened with the federal courts.

We cannot let one judge with a gavel and a grudge govern our country.

 

hillary clinton donald trump crop Oct. 19 3rd debate

ny times logoNew York Times, Trial of 2016 Twitter Troll to Test Limits of Online Speech, Colin Moynihan and Alan Feuer, March 21, 2023 (print ed.).  Douglass Mackey tried to trick Black people into thinking they could vote for president by text, prosecutors said.

The images appeared on Twitter in late 2016 just as the presidential campaign was entering its final stretch. Some featured the message “vote for Hillary” and the phrases “avoid the line” and “vote from home.”

Aimed at Democratic voters, and sometimes singling out Black people, the messages were actually intended to help Donald J. Trump, not Hillary Clinton. The goal, federal prosecutors said, was to suppress votes for Ms. Clinton by persuading her supporters to falsely believe they could cast presidential ballots by text message.

twitter bird CustomThe misinformation campaign was carried out by a group of conspirators, prosecutors said, including a man in his 20s who called himself Ricky Vaughn. On Monday he will go on trial in Federal District Court in Brooklyn under his real name, Douglass Mackey, after being charged with conspiring to spread misinformation designed to deprive others of their right to vote.

“The defendant exploited a social media platform to infringe one of the most basic and sacred rights guaranteed by the Constitution,” Nicholas L. McQuaid, acting assistant attorney general for the Justice Department’s Criminal Division, said in 2021 when charges against Mr. Mackey were announced.

Prosecutors have said that Mr. Mackey, who went to Middlebury College in Vermont and said he lived on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, used hashtags and memes as part of his deception and outlined his strategies publicly on Twitter and with co-conspirators in private Twitter group chats.

“Obviously we can win Pennsylvania,” Mr. Mackey said on Twitter, using one of his pseudonymous accounts less than a week before the election, according to a complaint and affidavit. “The key is to drive up turnout with non-college whites, and limit black turnout.”

That tweet, court papers said, came a day after Mr. Mackey tweeted an image showing a Black woman in front of a sign supporting Ms. Clinton. That tweet told viewers they could vote for Ms. Clinton by text message.

Prosecutors said nearly 5,000 people texted the number shown in the deceptive images, adding that the images stated they had been paid for by the Clinton campaign and had been viewed by people in the New York City area.

Mr. Mackey’s trial is expected to provide a window into a small part of what the authorities have described as broad efforts to sway the 2016 election through lies and disinformation. While some of those attempts were orchestrated by Russian security services, others were said to have emanated from American internet trolls.

People whose names may surface during the trial or who are expected to testify include a man who tweeted about Jews and Black people and was then disinvited from the DeploraBall, a far-right event in Washington, D.C., the night before Mr. Trump’s inauguration; a failed congressional candidate from Wisconsin; and an obscure federal cooperator who will be allowed to testify under a code name.

As the trial has approached, people sympathetic to Mr. Mackey have cast his case as part of a political and cultural war, a depiction driven in part by precisely the sort of partisan social media-fueled effort that he is accused of engineering.

Mr. Mackey’s fans have portrayed him as a harmless prankster who is being treated unfairly by the state for engaging in a form of free expression. That notion, perhaps predictably, has proliferated on Twitter, advanced by people using some of the same tools that prosecutors said Mr. Mackey used to disseminate lies. Mackey supporters have referred to him on social media as a “meme martyr” and spread a meme showing him wearing a red MAGA hat and accompanied by the hashtag “#FreeRicky.”

Some tweets about Mr. Mackey from prominent figures have included apocalyptic-sounding language. The Fox personality Tucker Carlson posted a video of himself on Twitter calling the trial “the single greatest assault on free speech and human rights in this country’s modern history.”

ny times logoNew York Times, Video Shows Virginia Man’s Death in Custody, Campbell Robertson and Christine Hauser, March 22, 2023 (print ed.). Seven deputies in Henrico County have been charged with second-degree murder in the death of Irvo Otieno at a hospital.

Surveillance video from a state psychiatric hospital in Virginia shows a group of sheriff’s deputies and medical staff piling on a handcuffed man, Irvo Otieno, and pinning him for nearly 11 minutes until his death on March 6.

The video, which was obtained by The Washington Post before its expected release on Tuesday, shows at least seven deputies from the Henrico County sheriff’s office enter a room at Central State Hospital in Dinwiddie County dragging Mr. Otieno, who is shirtless and in handcuffs and leg shackles. The deputies push him into a small couch and then force him to the floor, where they pinion him until his death while medical staff stand aside, the video shows.

The Dinwiddie County prosecutor, Ann Cabell Baskervill, has charged seven sheriff’s deputies and three employees of the hospital with second degree murder. She had announced that she was publicly releasing the video on Tuesday, though some defense lawyers had filed motions to block its release. However, The Post accessed the video through a court filing and published it.

Mr. Otieno, who had long been struggling with mental health and had been taken from his home three days earlier, had been moved to the hospital by sheriff’s deputies from a county jail earlier that day. In the video, people who seem to be part of the medical staff walk in and out of the room as the deputies pile on Mr. Otieno, 28, pinning his legs and arms and pushing his body down to the floor.

washington post logoWashington Post, Gladys Kessler, federal judge in landmark tobacco lawsuit, dies at 85, Emily Langer, March 23, 2023 (print ed.). In a major gladys kesslerruling in 2006, she found that cigarette makers had conspired for decades to deceive the public about the deadly threat posed by smoking.

Judge Kessler, a former public-interest lawyer who served for 17 years on the D.C. Superior Court, was appointed by President Bill Clinton in 1994 to the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.

Politico, Fear, burnout and insubordination: Insiders spill details about life at the highest levels of FBI, Josh Gerstein and Kyle Cheney, March 21, 2023 (print ed.).  A christopher-wray-o.jpgdiscrimination case has pulled back the curtain on the tense atmosphere at the bureau’s legal office; FBI employees and guests listen at an installation ceremony for FBI Director Chris Wray, right.

politico CustomA gender discrimination trial in Washington, D.C., shined a harsh spotlight on one of the most important legal offices in the U.S. government, portraying it as a hotbed of dysfunction, turf wars, mismanagement and paranoia.

The lawsuit, which came to a head earlier this month in federal court in the nation’s capital, centered on claims of gender discrimination in the FBI’s general counsel’s office, where some of the most powerful attorneys in the country are charged with helping safeguard Americans from terrorism, cyber threats, organized crime and corruption.

FBI logoA federal jury ultimately sided with the FBI, but not before a parade of witnesses testified to startling revelations about the bureau, exposing dysfunction and management woes that at times have been exploited by the bureau’s detractors — most notably amid Donald Trump’s crusade against investigations into his activities.

The trial drew little notice inside the federal courthouse in Washington, D.C., where numerous high-profile Jan. 6 defendants were simultaneously standing trial, and grand juries probing potential crimes by Trump and his allies remain active. But the proceedings offered a peek inside the secretive confines of the FBI — describing degrees of dysfunction that are rarely aired, particularly by the FBI insiders themselves.

The list of trial witnesses included Jim Baker, who testified that when he took over as FBI general counsel in 2014, his staff of about 200 lawyers were burned out, locked in bureaucratic turf battles and wracked by fear of their own colleagues. Baker said that in the early part of his tenure, some employees were so afraid to raise concerns in front of others that they “frequently” slipped anonymous notes under his door overnight — typewritten to conceal handwriting.

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More On U.S. Abortion, #MeToo, Stalking, Rape Laws 

washington post logoWashington Post, Oklahoma must allow abortion if mother’s life is threatened, court rules, Andrew Jeong, March 23, 2023 (print ed.). The Oklahoma Supreme Court overturned part of the state’s near-total abortion ban, ruling in a 5-to-4 decision that the procedure would be lawful if there is a reasonable chance that a pregnancy could threaten a pregnant person’s life.

Oklahoma’s constitution protects the right to an abortion if “the woman’s physician has determined to a reasonable degree of medical certainty” that continuing “the pregnancy will endanger the woman’s life,” the court’s justices said in Tuesday’s ruling. “Absolute certainty” that the pregnancy will be life-threatening isn’t required, but “mere possibility or speculation” is insufficient, they added.

Previously, the state allowed abortions only in cases of medical emergencies, requiring the patient to “be in actual and present danger in order for her to obtain a medically necessary abortion,” the justices wrote.

washington post logoWashington Post, Opinion: Senate Democrats should be holding oversight hearings of their own, Jennifer Rubin, right, March 22, 2023. House jennifer rubin new headshotRepublicans have given oversight a bad name. Oversight should not be about baseless fishing expeditions (e.g., political pressure on Twitter), political payback (e.g., Hunter Biden), or obstruction of the Justice Department or local prosecutors (for instance, wholly overstepping congressional authority and violating states’ policing authority in harassing Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg).

For starters, oversight hearings must have a legitimate legislative purpose. Done properly, an information-gathering and public-education process can provide the basis for thoughtful legislation. But when it comes to necessary oversight, Senate Democrats have done precious little despite an array of topics crying out for congressional investigation.

Abortion: The Supreme Court decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization has triggered a slew of abortion bans, with devastating consequences for women and their families. The lawsuit filed in Texas by five women and two doctors documents the danger and suffering the state’s abortion ban has inflicted on women, the dire consequences for women who need appropriate care for miscarriages, and the impact on the medical profession.

A new report from the National Center for Health Statistics documents that even before Dobbs, the United States’ already-high maternal death rate was rising (32.9 deaths per 100,000 live births in 2021 compared with 23.8 in 2020 and 20.1 in 2019), especially for Black women (2.6 times that of White women). After Dobbs, that figure can be expected to soar.

Where are the Senate hearings on this health crisis? Senators should bring in a variety of health-care specialists, hospital officials, medical ethicists, women, families of female victims, sociologists and statisticians (to highlight the economic, emotional and family impact when women are forced to give birth against their will), and legal scholars (to, among other things, explain the inherent vagueness and unworkability of state statutes). Senate Republicans who have cheered these bans should see evidence of the harm they support.

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

climate change photo

ny times logoNew York Times, Storm-Ravaged California Prepares for More Rain and Snow, Jesus Jiménez, March 22, 2023 (print ed.). Some in the central part of the state were being urged to evacuate, though the latest system was not expected to be as powerful as previous weather events this year.

California is bracing for yet another storm system, one that is expected to bring heavy rain and snow on Tuesday and into Wednesday to a state that has been battered by storm after storm over the past few weeks.

The latest storm system is forecast to bring up to four inches of rain to parts of Southern and Central California, and up to four feet of snow in elevations above 6,000 feet, according to the National Weather Service. The merging threats of rain, snow and gusty winds up to 75 miles per hour may lead to downed trees and power lines, as well as flooding and a “significant threat of avalanches” at higher elevations, the Weather Service said.

By Tuesday morning, it was already raining in many parts of the state. Some areas had received nearly an inch of rain since midnight. Meteorologists with the Weather Service in Hanford, Calif., were keeping an eye on water levels on rivers, creeks and steams, which they said were “extremely high,” and that heavy rain below 4,000 feet could cause flooding. The heaviest rain was expected in the afternoon and evening

ny times logoNew York Times, A Water System So Broken That One Pipe Leaks 5 Million Gallons a Day, Sarah Fowler, March 23, 2023 (print ed.). As a water shortage ballooned into a crisis in Jackson, Miss., the leak grew bigger and bigger, gouging out a swimming pool-size crater in the earth.

because their faucets were dry, the break at the old Colonial Country Club squandered an estimated five million gallons of drinking water a day in a city that had none to spare.

It is enough water to serve the daily needs of 50,000 people, or a third of the city residents who rely on the beleaguered water utility.

No one knows for sure when the leak reached its current size. But newly appointed water officials say the city discovered the broken mainline pipe in 2016 and left it to gush, even as the water gouged out a swimming pool-size crater in the earth and city residents were forced to endure one drinking water crisis after another.

Jackson’s water system has been flirting with collapse for decades thanks to a combination of mismanagement, crumbling infrastructure and a series of ill-fated decisions that cost the utility money that it did not have. In 2022, the Justice Department reached an agreement with the city requiring it to bring in an outside manager to run the water department.

ny times logoNew York Times, A Different Kind of Pipeline Project Scrambles Midwest Politics, Mitch Smith, Photographs by Alyssa Schukar, March 21, 2023 (print ed.).  Plans that would bury carbon underground rather than release it in the air have stoked debate over climate and property rights, creating unlikely alliances.

For more than a decade, the Midwest was the site of bitter clashes over plans for thousand-mile pipelines meant to carry crude oil beneath cornfields and cattle ranches.

Now high-dollar pipeline fights are happening again, but with a twist.

Instead of oil, these projects would carry millions of tons of carbon dioxide from ethanol plants to be injected into underground rock formations rather than dispersed as pollutants in the air.

What is playing out is a very different kind of environmental battle, a huge test not just for farmers and landowners but for emerging technologies promoted as ways to safely store planet-warming carbon.

The technology has generated support from powerful politicians in both parties, as well as major farming organizations, ethanol producers and some environmental groups.

Supporters, including some farmers who have signed agreements to have a pipeline buried on their property, frame the ideas being proposed by two companies as a win for both the economy and environment. They say the pipelines, boosted by federal tax credits, including from the Inflation Reduction Act that President Biden signed last year, would lower carbon emissions while aiding the agricultural economy through continued ethanol production.

But opponents are concerned about property rights and safety, and are not convinced of the projects’ claimed environmental benefits. They have forged unlikely alliances that have blurred the region’s political lines, uniting conservative farmers with liberal urbanites, white people with Native Americans, small-government Republicans with climate-conscious Democrats.

The result, both sides agree, is a high-stakes economic and environmental struggle pitting pipeline advocates against opponents who honed their political and legal strategies over nearly 15 years of fighting the Dakota Access oil pipeline, which has been in operation since 2017, and the Keystone XL oil pipeline, which was never built.

There is no question that technology exists to remove carbon from industrial sites and to transport and store it underground. Less clear: Is carbon capture really an effective counterweight to the overheating planet? And, if so, at what cost?

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Media, Education, Arts, High Tech

washington post logoWashington Post, Jake Paul, Lindsay Lohan among 8 charged in SEC cryptocurrency case, Bryan Pietsch, March 23, 2023. The Securities and Exchange Commission said Wednesday it had charged a handful of celebrities — including the internet provocateur-turned-professional boxer Jake Paul and actress Lindsay Lohan — with promoting cryptocurrencies without disclosing that they were compensated for doing so.

Paul, Lohan, the former teen heartthrob Austin Mahone and the rapper Soulja Boy (whose legal name is DeAndre Cortez Way) were among eight celebrities the SEC said had illegally promoted cryptocurrencies Tronix (TRX) and BitTorrent (BTT).

The SEC also charged entrepreneur Justin Sun and three of his companies for “the unregistered offer and sale” of TRX and BTT.

The complaint, filed Wednesday in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, also alleged that Sun “directed the manipulative wash trading of TRX to create the artificial appearance of legitimate investor interest and keep TRX’s price afloat,” referring to a scheme in which securities are essentially traded at the same time between associated entities, making the asset “appear actively traded without an actual change in beneficial ownership.”

Sun — a Chinese entrepreneur who became a citizen of Grenada, the small island nation in the West Indies that grants citizenship to those who make large investments in the country — gained worldwide attention in 2019 after he paid $4.6 million to have lunch with Warren Buffett, but then canceled it, apologizing for “excessive self-promotion.”

Instead of lunch with Warren Buffett, Chinese entrepreneur Justin Sun eats humble pie

The celebrities’ promotional messages about the cryptocurrencies were posted on social media, according to the SEC. Lohan, who has more than 8 million Twitter followers, tweeted on Feb. 11, 2021 that she was “already liking” three of Sun’s cryptocurrencies, including TRX. “Super fast and 0 fee,” she wrote. “Good job @justinsuntron.”

In March 2021, she promoted an auction — in TRX — for an NFT, or non-fungible token, of one of her songs. “Just over 9 hours left to bid!” she tweeted on April 1, 2021.

washington post logoWashington Post, Judge sounds skeptical of some Fox arguments in Dominion lawsuit, Jeremy Barr, March 22, 2023 (print ed.). Judge Eric M. Davis pushed back on assertions from both sides in Dominion’s libel lawsuit against Fox News, but he seemed particularly skeptical of the network’s claims

ny times logoNew York Times, Inside the 3 Months That Could Cost Fox $1.6 Billion, Jeremy W. Peters, March 21, 2023 (print ed.). The decision by Fox News executives in November 2020 to treat the more hard-right Newsmax as a mortal threat spawned a possibly more serious danger.

fox news logo SmallSince 2002, when Fox News first overtook CNN as the most-watched cable news channel, one thing has been as certain and predictable as its dominance: Every time a Democrat wins the White House, the right-leaning network’s ratings take a momentary dip.

That happened after the election of President Biden in 2020, too. But the reaction inside Fox was far different than before.

There was panic. From the chairman of Fox Corporation on down, executives scrambled as they tried to keep viewers tuned in, believing they were facing a crisis. Now, because of the decisions made after former President Donald J. Trump’s loss, Fox News is reckoning with a threat that could prove far more serious.

dominion voting systemsA $1.6 billion defamation suit from Dominion Voting Systems claims Fox knowingly spread false information about the role of the firm’s election technology in a made-up conspiracy to flip votes. On Tuesday, the two sides will present oral arguments before a judge in Delaware state court as they prepare for a trial next month.

Fox has insisted that it wasn’t presenting claims about Dominion as fact but was reporting and opining on them as any news organization would.

She says lawyers made her give misleading Dominion testimony.

As part of the suit, Dominion obtained thousands of internal Fox emails and text messages and deposed dozens of Fox employees. That evidence shows in extraordinary detail how the network lost its way in the weeks after the election. Here is a timeline of that fateful period, as told in court filings. Some of these exchanges have been lightly condensed for clarity.

 

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ny times logoNew York Times, A Fox News producer sued the network, saying she was coerced into giving misleading testimony in the Dominion case, Nicholas Confessore and Katie Robertson, March 21, 2023 (print ed.). The producer, Abby Grossberg, said in a pair of lawsuits that the effort to place blame on her and Maria Bartiromo, the Fox Business host, was rooted in rampant misogyny and discrimination at the company.

maria bartiromoA Fox News producer who has worked with the hosts Maria Bartiromo, right, and Tucker Carlson filed lawsuits against the company in New York and Delaware on Monday, accusing Fox lawyers of coercing her into giving misleading testimony in the continuing legal battle around the network’s coverage of unfounded claims about election fraud.

The producer, Abby Grossberg, said Fox lawyers had tried to position her and Ms. Bartiromo to take the blame for Fox’s repeated airing of conspiracy theories about Dominion Voting Systems and its supposed role in manipulating the results of the 2020 presidential election. Dominion has filed a $1.6 billion defamation suit against Fox. Ms. Grossberg said the effort to place blame on her and Ms. Bartiromo was rooted in rampant misogyny and discrimination at the network.

fox news logo SmallThe new lawsuits, coupled with revelations from the Dominion legal fight, shed light on the rivalries and turf battles that raged at Fox News in the wake of the 2020 election, as network executives fought to hold on to viewers furious at the top-rated network for accurately reporting on President Donald J. Trump’s defeat in Arizona, a crucial swing state.

The lawsuits also include details about Ms. Grossberg’s work life at Fox and on Mr. Carlson’s show. Ms. Grossberg says she and other women endured frank and open sexism from co-workers and superiors at the network, which has been dogged for years by lawsuits and allegations about sexual harassment by Fox executives and stars.

The network’s disregard for women, Ms. Grossberg alleged, left her and Ms. Bartiromo understaffed — stretched too thin to properly vet the truthfulness of claims made against Dominion on the air. At times, Ms. Grossberg said, she was the only full-time employee dedicated solely to Ms. Bartiromo’s Sunday-morning show.

dominion voting systemsIn her complaints, Ms. Grossberg accuses lawyers for Fox News of coaching her in “a coercive and intimidating manner” before her September deposition in the Dominion case. The lawyers, she said, gave her the impression that she had to avoid mentioning prominent male executives and on-air talent to protect them from any blame, while putting her own reputation at risk.

On Monday afternoon, Fox filed its own suit against Ms. Grossberg, seeking to enjoin her from filing claims that would shed light on her discussions with the company’s lawyers. A judge has not yet ruled on Fox’s suit. Later on Monday, according to her lawyer, Parisis G. Filippatos, Fox also placed Ms. Grossberg on forced administrative leave.

Ms. Grossberg’s lawsuits were filed in the Southern District of New York and in Superior Court in Delaware, where a pretrial hearing in the Dominion defamation lawsuit is scheduled for Tuesday.

In a statement, a Fox spokeswoman said: “Fox News Media engaged an independent outside counsel to immediately investigate the concerns raised by Ms. Grossberg, which were made following a critical performance review. We will vigorously defend these claims.”

According to the lawsuits filed by Ms. Grossberg, Fox superiors called Ms. Bartiromo a “crazy bitch” who was “menopausal” and asked Ms. Grossberg to cut the host out of coverage discussions.

Last year, she began working as a senior booking producer at “Tucker Carlson Tonight.” On her first full day, according to the lawsuit, Ms. Grossberg discovered that the show’s Manhattan work space was decorated with large pictures of Representative Nancy Pelosi of California, then the House speaker, wearing a plunging swimsuit.

Later that fall, it said, before an appearance on the show by Tudor Dixon, the Republican candidate for Michigan governor, Mr. Carlson’s staff held a mock debate about whether they would prefer to have sex with Ms. Dixon or her Democratic opponent, Gov. Gretchen Whitmer.

After Ms. Grossberg complained about harassment from two male producers on the show, she was pulled into a meeting with human resources and told that she was not performing her duties, according to the complaint.

ny times logoNew York Times, DNA From Beethoven’s Hair Unlocks Medical and Family Secrets, Gina Kolata, March 23, 2023 (print ed.). By analyzing samples of hair said to have come from Ludwig van Beethoven, researchers debunked myths about the revered composer while raising new questions.

It was March 1827 and Ludwig van Beethoven was dying. As he lay in bed, wracked with abdominal pain and jaundiced, grieving friends and acquaintances came to visit. And some asked a favor: Could they clip a lock of his hair for remembrance?

The parade of mourners continued after Beethoven’s death at age 56, even after doctors performed a gruesome craniotomy, looking at the folds in Beethoven’s brain and removing his ear bones in a vain attempt to understand why the revered composer lost his hearing.

Within three days of Beethoven’s death, not a single strand of hair was left on his head.

Ever since, a cottage industry has aimed to understand Beethoven’s illnesses and the cause of his death.

Now, an analysis of strands of his hair has upended long held beliefs about his health. The report provides an explanation for his debilitating ailments and even his death, while also raising new questions about his genealogical origins and hinting at a dark family secret.

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washington post logoWashington Post, Ukraine Live Updates: Zelensky visits Bakhmut; China’s Xi leaves Russia with no clear progress on ending war, Rachel Pannett and Adela Suliman, March 22, 2023. Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky, shown above at right, made a visit to the front line in Bakhmut, where Russian forces have almost encircled Ukrainian troops, cutting off major transport and supply lines. His office said in a statement Wednesday that Zelensky heard operational updates and presented service men with awards. Controlling Bakhmut is unlikely to tip the war’s outcome but would give Russia a symbolic victory after months of battlefield setbacks.

Chinese leader Xi Jinping departed Russia on Wednesday, wrapping up a three-day trip that underscored Beijing and Moscow’s desire to reshape the global order against Western power but that offered little concrete progress on China’s pledge to promote peace in the Ukraine conflict. Xi and Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a series of agreements to expand trade and deepen strategic ties. Xi reiterated that China has an “impartial position” on the war in Ukraine. The United States later accused China of “parroting the Russian propaganda.”

China’s 12-point proposal does not address the withdrawal of Russian troops from occupied areas of Ukraine and is vague about key issues such as Ukraine’s sovereignty. U.S. officials say any impending cease-fire would only buy Russian troops more time to regroup and would effectively ratify much of the illegal annexation of large swaths of Ukraine. Xi is expected to hold talks with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky following his return from Moscow, although the timing of those discussions is not confirmed.

 

 

Justice Department Special Prosecutor Jack Smith, left, and former President Donald Trump, shown in a collage via CNN.

Justice Department Special Prosecutor Jack Smith, left, and former President Donald Trump, shown in a collage via CNN.

ny times logoNew York Times, Appeals Court Orders Trump Lawyer to Hand Over Records in Documents Inquiry, Alan Feuer, March 22, 2023. The ruling compelling the lawyer, M. Evan Corcoran, to turn over documents came after a lightning round of appeals court filings overnight.

A federal appeals court ruled on Wednesday that a lawyer representing former President Donald J. Trump in an inquiry into his handling of classified materials had to give prosecutors what are likely to be dozens of documents related to his legal work for Mr. Trump.

The ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia came after a lightning round of filings that began on Tuesday evening when Mr. Trump sought evan corcoranan order to stop the lawyer, M. Evan Corcoran, right, from handing over documents to investigators.

The pitched behind-the-scenes legal fight continued overnight and into early Wednesday morning, with prosecutors responding to Mr. Trump’s request for a stay in the case with papers submitted before dawn. It played out as a separate legal proceeding involving Mr. Trump — the Manhattan district attorney’s consideration of whether to seek an indictment of the former president on charges related to a hush-money payment to a porn actress — remained unresolved.

The fight in Washington over Mr. Corcoran’s level of compliance in the documents case suggests that the prosecutors are working to assemble evidence that Mr. Trump could have committed a crime in defying the government’s efforts to reclaim the classified materials he took with him after leaving the White House.

As a legal matter, the litigation — all of which has taken place behind closed doors or under seal — involves a balancing act between attorney-client privilege, which generally protects lawyers from divulging private communications with their clients to the government, and a special provision of the law known as the crime-fraud exception. That exception allows prosecutors to work around attorney-client privilege when they have reason to believe that legal advice or legal services have been used in furthering a crime.

The spat began last month when the office of the special counsel, Jack Smith, sought to pierce assertions of attorney-client privilege that Mr. Corcoran and Mr. Trump had made in the documents inquiry. In an initial appearance before a grand jury investigating the case, Mr. Corcoran had asserted the privilege as a way to limit the scope of the questions he would have to answer as well as the number of legal records he would have to turn over.

 Understand the Trump Documents Inquiry: The Justice Department is conducting a criminal investigation into Donald Trump’s handling of classified files after he left office.

  • Special Counsel: Attorney General Merrick Garland appointed Jack Smith, a longtime prosecutor, to take over the inquiry. Here is what Smith’s role entails.
  • Trump Lawyer: The special counsel’s investigation into Trump has prompted a pitched legal battle over whether prosecutors have sufficient evidence to force one of his lawyers to testify to a grand jury and provide documents related to his work for the former president.
  • Passing the Gavel: James Boasberg will take over from Beryl Howell as the chief judge of the Federal District Court in Washington, a post that plays a key role in the federal special counsel investigations into Trump’s handling of the documents and the events surrounding Jan. 6.
  • Comparison With Biden Case: The discovery of classified documents from President Biden’s time as vice president prompted comparisons to Trump’s hoarding of records. But there are key differences.

washington post logoWashington Post, Fed raises benchmark rate by 0.25 point despite bank turmoil, Rachel Siegel, March 22, 2023. Central bank officials have said they’ll keep trying to slow the economy until inflation eases back to normal levels. But Silicon Valley Bank’s collapse weighed heavily on the latest decision.

jerome powellThe Federal Reserve, led by Jerome Powell, right, raised interest rates by a quarter of a percentage point on Wednesday, moving forward with its fight against high inflation despite concern that its rate hikes may be fueling instability in the banking system.

federal reserve system CustomFinancial markets expected the move, which brings the Fed’s base policy rate to between 4.75 and 5 percent.

Less than two weeks after the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank jarred the nation’s financial stability, policymakers said the banking system is “sound and resilient” in a statement released at the end of the Fed’s two-day meeting. Still, events from the past few weeks could hamper the economy, which the central bank is still trying to slow down to control price increases.

“Recent developments are likely to result in tighter credit conditions for households and businesses and to weigh on economic activity, hiring and inflation,” the statement read. “The extent of these effects is uncertain.”

The central bank is also facing questions about its regulatory oversight of SVB, as Washington tries to figure out whether the government could have prevented the turmoil in the banking sector.

“There is risk for the Fed here,” Tim Duy, a Fed expert at the University of Oregon and chief economist at SGH Macro Advisors, wrote in an analyst note. “If the Fed hikes, it must be reasonably confident that regulators have ringfenced the banking problems. If the Fed hikes rates and bank failures multiply, the political fallout will be intense.”

Fighting inflation, rescuing banks: The Fed’s sprawling jobs collide

In a fresh crop of economic projections, officials penciled in one more quarter-point rate increase this year, though future moves depend heavily on how the economy behaves. Officials otherwise made small tweaks to their previous estimates from December. They now expect the unemployment rate to end the year at 4.5 percent (down from 4.6 percent the last time the bank made projections) and that the economy will grow by 0.4 percent this year (down from 0.5 percent they projected in December). Inflation will remain above normal levels through the end of 2023.

Wayne Madsen Report, Investigative Commentary: Recognizing symbols of hate and right-wing rebellion in the United States, Wayne Madsen, left, March 22, 2023.  Nazi and other far-wayne madsen may 29 2015 cropped Smallright symbology spreading across America.

The transformation of the Republican Party into a Donald Trump cult and platform advocating fascism has resulted in the mushrooming of symbols of wayne madesen report logohate across the United States. In some cases, flags and banners proclaim loyalty to Trump even though they deface the U.S. flag, thus violating the U.S. Flag Code. Other banners, such as the "Don't Tread on Me" or Gadsden Flag misuse and misrepresent historical flags in being adopted as hate symbols. Nazi swastikas and symbols of the Confederacy have also been resurrected by the Trumpist cult.

Absent a domestic terrorism law, the FBI and other law enforcement agencies are hard-pressed to conduct systematic and uniform surveillance of far-right insurrectionists, but many far-right groups make no effort to hide themselves. In fact, actual and potential seditionists like the Proud Boys, Oath Keepers, and Boogaloo Bois shamefully fly from their vehicles and on their front lawns their symbols of rebellion and hate.

Spotting symbols of insurrection and hate should be a top priority for every American who abides by the rule of law and the Constitution. The black "No Quarter Given" flag is an extremely dangerous symbol. Those who fly it are sovereign citizens who are giving warning that they will shoot to kill anyone on their property.

ny times logoNew York Times, Former President Trump is facing several investigations. See where they stand, Ben Protess, Alan Feuer and Danny Hakim, March 22, 2023. The Manhattan district attorney’s office appears to be nearing a potential indictment of the former president, as federal and state prosecutors bear down on Mr. Trump in a number of inquiries.

After avoiding indictment for years, former President Donald J. Trump now appears closer than ever to facing criminal charges in Manhattan.

The Manhattan district attorney’s office recently signaled to Mr. Trump’s lawyers that he could face criminal charges for his role in a hush-money payment to a porn star, the strongest indication yet that prosecutors are nearing an indictment of the former president, according to four people with knowledge of the matter.

The district attorney, Alvin L. Bragg, impaneled a grand jury in January to hear evidence in the longest-running criminal inquiry facing the former president. Since then, his prosecutors have questioned at least nine witnesses before the panel, though it is unclear whether they have completed their presentation of evidence.

Any case would mark the first indictment of a former American president. Yet Mr. Bragg might not be the last prosecutor to seek charges against Mr. Trump. Several federal and state prosecutors are scrutinizing him as well.

Here is where the notable inquiries involving the former president stand.

 

chat gpt logo

ny times logoNew York Times, Opinion: Our New Promethean Moment, tom friedman twitterThomas L. Friedman, right, March 22, 2023. I had a most remarkable but unsettling experience last week.

Craig Mundie, the former chief research and strategy officer for Microsoft, was giving me a demonstration of GPT-4, the most advanced version of the artificial intelligence chatbot ChatGPT, developed by OpenAI and launched in November. Craig was preparing to brief the board of my wife’s museum, Planet Word, of which he is a member, about the effect ChatGPT will have on words, language and innovation.

“You need to understand,” Craig warned me before he started his demo, “this is going to change everything about how we do everything. I think that it represents microsoft logo Custommankind’s greatest invention to date. It is qualitatively different — and it will be transformational.”

Large language modules like ChatGPT will steadily increase in their capabilities, Craig added, and take us “toward a form of artificial general intelligence,” delivering efficiencies in operations, ideas, discoveries and insights “that have never been attainable before across every domain.”

Then he did a demonstration. And I realized Craig’s words were an understatement.

ny times logoNew York Times, As Haiti’s Police Retreat, Gangs Take Over Much of the Capital, Andre Paultre and Chris Cameron, March 22, 2023. Even wealthier areas in the capital, Port-au-Prince, are no longer immune to violence as gangs attack police officers and destroy police stations.

One by one, schools and hospitals have closed. Kidnappings are an everyday risk and gang warfare rages openly on the streets. But now, the chaos that has long consumed many parts of Port-au-Prince, the capital of Haiti, has spread: The national police, outgunned, outnumbered, underpaid and demoralized, have ceded control of most of the city to gangs.

Almost no one is safe anymore, analysts and residents say. Even the wealthy who have long looked down at the gang-ridden city from their homes in the mountains above Port-au-Prince are no longer immune.

Gangs operate with impunity across Port-au-Prince and increasingly in wealthy enclaves above the city, analysts say, tightening their grip by attacking police officers and destroying police stations.

“Today, security in Haiti is not a matter of means,’’ said Youri Mevs, the managing partner of an industrial park who lives in the mountains overlooking the city. “It is a matter of avoiding the wrong place at the wrong time. And, the wrong place is almost everywhere, just as the wrong time is literally all the time.”

ny times logoNew York Times, Uganda Passes Strict Anti-Gay Bill That Imposes Death Penalty for Some, Abdi Latif Dahir, March 22, 2023. The legislation also calls for life in prison for anyone engaging in gay sex. Policies to stifle gay rights have been on the rise in several African nations.

uganda map with ugandan flag printsLawmakers in Uganda have passed a sweeping anti-gay law that can bring punishments as severe as the death penalty — the culmination of a long-running campaign to criminalize homosexuality and target L.G.B.T.Q. people in the conservative nation in East Africa.

The law, which was passed late on Tuesday night after more than seven hours of discussion and amendments, calls for a life sentence for anyone engaging in gay sex. Even attempting to have same-sex relations would be met with a seven-year prison term.

The death penalty would be applied to people convicted of “aggravated homosexuality,” a sweeping term defined in the law as homosexual acts committed by anyone infected with H.I.V. or involving children, disabled people or anyone drugged against their will.

The parliamentary vote in Uganda caps a struggle over gay rights in Uganda that has drawn international attention for nearly 15 years. It comes as anti-gay policies and discrimination have been on the rise in several African nations, including Kenya, Ghana and Zambia.

washington post logoWashington Post, Troubled U.S. organ transplant system targeted for overhaul, Lenny Bernstein, March 22, 2023. The government’s plan, which would break up the monopoly power of the nonprofit organization that runs the system, would leave little unaffected in the sprawling, multibillion-dollar network.

The government announced plans Wednesday to overhaul the troubled U.S. organ transplant system, including breaking up the monopoly power of the nonprofit organization that has run it for the past 37 years.

If successful, the proposal would leave little unaffected in the sprawling, multibillion-dollar network that sends kidneys, livers and other organs from deceased donors to severely ill recipients. That system has long been criticized as inadequate: Nearly 104,000 people are on waiting lists for organs, most of them kidneys; 22 people die each day awaiting transplants, with poor and minority patients generally faring worse than affluent and White people.

Carole Johnson, administrator of the federal Health Resources and Services Administration, the agency responsible for the network, is proposing to break up responsibility for some of the functions performed by its nonprofit manager, the United Network for Organ Sharing. UNOS is the only entity ever to operate the U.S. transplant system.

She said in an interview that she would invite other organizations to take over those areas. They would bid for separate contracts, creating the first competitive environment in the history of the transplant system.

“Our goal is to get best in class for all the functions we think are essential to running the transplant network,” Johnson said.

A spokeswoman for UNOS did not respond to an email seeking comment on the proposal Tuesday evening.

Under UNOS, which holds a $6.5 million annual contract with HRSA, the network has been plagued by problems: Too many organs are discarded, damaged in transit or simply not collected, faulty technology sometimes jeopardizes transplants, and poor performers face little accountability.

The proposal also aims to install a strong board of directors independent of UNOS, create a public dashboard for the voluminous data the system generates and bring more transparency to the sometimes opaque process of how patients and organs are matched.

washington post logoWashington Post, New liver transplant rules yield winners, losers as wasted organs reach record high, Malena Carollo and Ben Tane, March 22, 2023 (print ed.). The number of lifesaving liver transplants has plummeted in some Southern and Midwestern states that struggle with higher death rates from liver disease.

 

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djt march 2020 Custom

Proof, Going Deep, Investigative Commentary: A Primer for the Imminent Indictment of Former President Trump, Seth Abramson, left, best-selling author, attorney and journalism professor, March 20-22, 2023. A man who seth abramson graphicpresents as a malignant-narcissist sociopath—having already incited an insurrection and stoked far-right fantasies of a Second U.S. Civil War—is about to be indicted. Here’s what to expect.

Introduction: The pieces are all in place.

seth abramson proof logoDonald Trump’s cultish followers are on social media promising en masse to launch a violent civil war against the rest of us if their leader is finally treated the same way the rest of us would be if we’d repeatedly committed state and federal crimes over a span of decades.

Current and future Trumpist insurrectionists are being goaded on by far-right media—which falsely assures them that Mr. Trump is being mistreated via an overcharged case in New York City—and by Trump himself, who’s lately added to his repertoire of regularly calling the Black prosecutors investigating him “racists” and falsely alleging that they’re part of a vast left-wing conspiracy the further libels that (a) he’s a victim of Extortion by adult-film actress Stormy Daniels (he is not), (b) the prosecutors in his case are engaged in prosecutorial misconduct because they’re well aware that the statute of limitations has run on the crimes he’s about to be charged with (they are not and it has not), and (c) his prospective indictment in a Manhattan courthouse is a response to his nascent presidential campaign (it is not, as anyone old enough to remember Trump’s co-conspirator Michael Cohen getting a lengthy federal prison sentence in 2018 over the exact same sequence of facts will readily understand).

Trump’s scurrilous claims are being echoed not just by Fox News and, in even more aggressive terms, OANN and Newsmax and Breitbart and Trump whisperer Steve Bannon’s “War Room” podcast, but also by rogue attorneys like Alan Dershowitz who sagely assure Trumpists who know nothing about U.S. criminal law that their emotionalized overreaction to someone they personally like staring down a criminal indictment isn’t just psychologically or socioculturally but legally warranted (it is not).

Fox News in particular has been trying to use the coming Trump indictment in New York to regain the viewership it lost after many Trumpists abandoned it in the wake of January 6, citing—at the time—its allegedly soft commitment to the devolution of the United States into an autocratic hellscape run by America’s first unabashed tyrant. If you’ve been following Fox News in recent days you’re seeing the same signals you saw when the network was spreading the “Big Lie” about the 2020 presidential election, a course of astonishly premeditated corporate malfeasance that is currently the subject of a civil lawsuit that could cataclysmically effect the far-right propaganda organ.

Fox News anchors are repeatedly misstating the law, giving Trump agents and aides and advisers and allies and attorneys free reign to misstate the facts of the allegations against him and recklessly malign career public servants, and in what may be an even more sinister maneuver than either of those easily clocked gambits is carpeting its airwaves with the notion that just because America has never before had a President of the United States as corrupt as Trump—and therefore has never needed to indict a former president before—it must actually be the case that anyone who wants to see our rule of law adapt to upsetting new circumstances is in fact seeking to demolish America from within.

Here’s the truth: (1) We knew years ago that Trump was “Individual-1” in a criminal conspiracy that violated federal law and has already landed one of its flunkies, Cohen—not a ringleader like Trump—in federal prison, and (2) while many in media may call the state case Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg is apparently about to bring against Trump a “hush-money” case, it is actually a case about Trump trying to steal the 2016 presidential election under the noses of American voters and doing so successfully.

Steve Bannon, then Trump’s campaign CEO, would later say that for Trump to run for president “a hundred” women had to be shut up so that American voters wouldn’t learn (or, charitably, come to fully appreciate) that Trump was and has always been a serial philanderer and sexual assailant who treats women like disposable property. (Keep in mind, here, that women make up more than half of the American electorate.)

We would even later learn that Trump pal and fixer David Pecker, a sleazy magazine publisher, had an entire “vault” in his office full of “catch-and-kill” stories he had purchased from former Trump mistresses just so that he could bury them on Trump’s behalf. And as discussed and substantiated in the 2019 New York Times bestseller Proof of Conspiracy (Macmillan, 2019), there is every reason to think Pecker got at least some of the money for these clandestine payoffs from infamous murderer and U.S. election-tamperer, Saudi crown prince Mohammed bin Salman.

(You may recall, too, that per the Mueller Report, Michael Cohen—the same Trump friend, fixer, attorney, and employee who subsequently went to prison for paying to keep Stormy Daniels quiet—spent October 2016 trying to keep quiet evidence that both he and Trump believed existed of Trump carrying himself in Russia, on several occasions, like a man who is a serial philanderer and sexual assailant who treats women like disposable property.)

So when, just days after the Access Hollywood tape dropped, Trump set in motion the series of state and federal crimes that ended with an illegal payoff to Stormy Daniels, he was trying to hide from U.S. voters a series of facts that he personally believed, as did everyone else in his inner circle, would cost him the presidency (if his own thus-far inept campaign hadn’t done that already; little did Trump know—yet—that the actions of his unscrupulous attorneys Rudy Giuliani and Joseph diGenova would soon help convince the FBI to needlessly reopen a closed criminal investigation of Hillary Clinton, which ultimately was the reason Trump won election to the White House).

.... [Several thousand words of discussion and analysis]

Conclusion:

America is in the position it is in right now for three primary reasons: the persistent criminality of Donald Trump; the cowardice of Republican leadership in not standing up to such misconduct and advocating for its punishment; and the reticence of federal and state officials of all political stripes—across decades and jurisdictions—to do the hard work of ensuring that criminal statutes are applied equally to all Americans regardless of their race, ethnicity, gender, wealth, fame, or political clout.

This is, without a doubt, a time of testing for America. We can come out stronger than we were before if we remember what it is that made America and being an American so important to us in the first place. The goal of Trump and his sycophants is to get us to forget all we know—or, alternatively, ignore all that experts have learned and come forward to disseminate publicly—about criminal law, free and fair elections, basic civic responsibility, religious morality and secular ethics, and simple human decency.

If we can hold fast to these truths in a time of crisis, we can endure here in the United States for another quarter millennium. If we can’t, America may cross a tipping point sometime during the next 18 months from which there simply isn’t any way back.

ny times logoNew York Times, ‘The Circus Continues’: For Trump, Legal Woes Resurrect Old Habits, Michael C. Bender, March 22, 2023 (print ed.). Former President Trump strengthened his political position in recent weeks, but his response to a potential indictment could alienate key voters.

Donald J. Trump, the former prime-time reality TV star known for his love of big stages and vast crowds, has embraced a more humbling and traditional style on the campaign trail in recent months.

He held intimate events in New Hampshire and South Carolina. He fielded questions from voters in Iowa. And in multiple cities, he surprised diners with unannounced visits to restaurants where, with his more familiar Trumpian flair, he made a dramatic show of sliding a wad of cash from his pocket to buy everyone a bite to eat.

This strategy has highlighted the billionaire’s counterintuitive political strength at connecting with voters on a personal level — while also underscoring the chief weakness of his main potential Republican rival, Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, who can often come across as snappish or uncomfortable.

But now Mr. Trump faces a likely indictment in New York in the coming days, and how he responds to this moment could determine whether he continues to stabilize his standing as the Republican presidential front-runner or whether he further alienates the voters he will need to return to the White House.

The result will help answer a pressing question about his candidacy for many Republican primary voters: Can Mr. Trump show enough restraint to persuade moderate Republicans and independent swing voters to choose him over President Biden in 2024?

washington post logoWashington Post, Trump campaign prepares for ‘new normal’: Running while in legal peril, Isaac Arnsdorf, Josh Dawsey, Michael Scherer and Hannah Knowles, March 22, 2023 (print ed.). The former president’s team is pressuring other Republicans to show support, basking in favorable coverage from right-wing media and collecting checks. But advisers privately acknowledge many potential risks.

washington post logoWashington Post, The porn star, the checks and the president: Trump’s tawdry path to legal trouble, Rosalind S. Helderman, March 22, 2023 (print ed.). The first indictment of a former president may result from an episode with a long, rippling tail of criminal consequence

washington post logoWashington Post, Opinion: ‘An indictment would help Trump!’ is wholly premature, Jennifer Rubin, right, March 22, 2023. With a decision jennifer rubin new headshotlooming from a New York grand jury and Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg (D) regarding an indictment of Donald Trump, likely for keeping false business records, media coverage has repeated ad nauseam speculation that such an indictment would “only help” the former president.

One cannot discount the potential for a temporary Republican rally-around-the-flag reaction if Trump is indeed arrested on charges related to alleged payments to adult-film actress Stormy Daniels to stop her from revealing, ahead of the 2016 election, their sexual relationship. (He denies the affair.) But an indictment’s long-term impact might be anything but positive.

ulysses grant

washington post logoWashington Post, RetropolisThe Past, Rediscovered, No president or former president has ever been indicted. But a sitting president was arrested once, Michael S. Rosenwald, March 22, 2023 (print ed.). Donald Trump’s claim that he will be arrested imminently has sparked political maneuvering and a debate about the implications of indicting an ex-president.

In 1872, President Ulysses S. Grant was arrested at the corner of 13th and M streets NW in Washington. This was not a high crime, but it was — at least theoretically speaking — a misdemeanor.

The man who led the North to victory in the Civil War was busted for speeding in his horse-drawn carriage.

washington post logoWashington Post, N.Y. grand jury weighing possible Trump indictment not expected to meet today, John Wagner and Mariana Alfaro, March 22, 2023. Today, a President Donald Trump officialgrand jury in New York hearing evidence in a case involving alleged hush-money payments to adult-film actress Stormy Daniels is not meeting as expected, leaving open the question of whether former president Donald Trump will be indicted.

Trump, who had previously predicted incorrectly he would be arrested Tuesday, shared on social media a news report suggesting that Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg could take a pass on prosecuting him — while he continued to attack Bragg.

In Washington, it’s a busy hearing day on Capitol Hill. Among those testifying: Norfolk Southern chief executive Alan Shaw and several senior Biden administration officials, including Treasury Secretary Janet L. Yellen.

 

Francisco Antonio López Benavides, a Salvadoran artist, showing part of a life-size portrait of former President Donald J. Trump that he was commissioned to paint in 2020 (New York Times photo by Daniele Volpe).

 Francisco Antonio López Benavides, a Salvadoran artist, showing part of a life-size portrait of former President Donald J. Trump that he was commissioned to paint in 2020 (New York Times photo by Daniele Volpe).

ny times logoNew York Times, A Massive Trump Painting Has Mysteriously Gone Missing, Maria Abi-Habib, Updated March 22, 2023. A portrait of former President Donald J. Trump by a Salvadoran painter is one of several gifts to the presidential family that is now unaccounted for.

It was the commission of a lifetime for this artist, who grew up poor in El Salvador with no formal training: Paint a portrait of the 45th president of the United States, Donald J. Trump.

His personal mission? Make it larger than life, to show a great man, doing great things, with God on his side. Now, Democrats want to know where the eight-foot portrait of the former president disappeared to, but that is anybody’s guess.

Nearly three years after the painting was delivered to Mr. Trump, the artist says he is honored that the artwork is one of several gifts given to the former president and his family during his presidency that are unaccounted for, according to a report released Friday by Democrats on the House Committee on Oversight and Accountability.

“I’m flattered that he cherished it. Because he’s a billionaire,” said the artist, Francisco Antonio López Benavides, 59. “He can have a thousand paintings of him. But if he took my painting, it’s because he loves and values the art. I’m happy.”

Other missing gifts include a piece of ornate jewelry gifted by officials in Saudi Arabia and an expensive golf putter from the former Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe, the report said.

The portrait is one of about 100 gifts worth more than $250,000 that were given to the presidential family, but were never disclosed, according to the Democrats’ report.

Every U.S. government department and agency is required to notify the State Department of gifts received from foreign governments worth more than $415, a measure intended to prevent bribery or undue influence. Officials can keep those gifts if they reimburse the government the appraised value.

Departing presidential administrations are expected to report the gifts they received in their final year to ensure they have followed the law. The Trump White House failed to do this, the report charges, leaving Democrats and watchdogs asking questions about where they ended up.

Mr. López said he does not understand why Democrats are looking for the painting, a “great gift” from Mr. Trump’s friend, El Salvador’s President Nayib Bukele.

Emptywheel, Analysis: With Friends Like These: A rough start to testimony from defense witnesses at Proud Boys sedition trial, Brandi Buchman, March 21, 2023.  A new phase of the Proud Boys seditious conspiracy trial has started out rough with defense witnesses fumbling through testimony.

Emptywheel, Analysis: Lordy, There Are [Transcribed] Tapes, Emptywheel (Marcy Wheeler), March 21, 2023. Among the things marcy wheelerthat then-Chief Judge Beryl Howell ordered Evan Corcoran to turn over on Friday were "transcriptions of personal audio recordings" involving his representation of Donald Trump. Lordy, there are [transcribed] tapes!

ABC News reports that among the things Beryl Howell ordered Trump’s lawyer, Evan Corcoran, to turn over were “transcriptions of personal audio recordings” involving his representation of Donald Trump.

Sources added that Howell also ordered Corcoran to hand over a number of records tied to what Howell described as Trump’s alleged “criminal scheme,” echoing prosecutors. Those records include handwritten notes, invoices, and transcriptions of personal audio recordings.

It also reported that Howell ordered Jennifer Little, an Atlanta attorney who signed a big challenge to Fani Willis’ investigation into Trump’s attempts to cheat in Georgia, to testify further as well.

Sources told ABC News that Howell ordered Little’s testimony as well, with the exception of one of the topics for which she sought to assert attorney-client privilege.

CNN reports that Trump is appealing this decision.

Emptywheel, Analysis: Barbara Jones Rules Project Veritas Was Not Engaged in Journalism When Brokering Ashley Biden's Stolen Diary, Emptywheel (Marcy marcy wheelerWheeler, right), March 21, 2023. In the investigation of the Ashley Biden diary theft, Barbara Jones has ruled against Project Veritas on most issues.

After 16 months, Barbara Jones has submitted her Special Master report in the Project Veritas (PV) investigation to Judge Analisa Torres.

Much of the decision builds off the guilty pleas that Miles Kerlander and Aimee Harris entered into last August. Having already identified PV’s sources and established a crime had been committed, many of the questions regarding journalistic equities were far more limited.

Jones never mentioned that this case arose — and the first warrants against journalists obtained — under the Trump Administration. Though she does scoff at PV’s claims of malice.

Perhaps the most significant part of this ruling pertains to how she applies Bartnicki, which protects the publication of illegally obtained materials that the journalist had no role in obtaining. Not only does she except the case of PV, who are subjects of the investigation, but she seems to distinguish between investigative protection and criminal protection.

The judge in this case will now decide whether to accept this report. But the case against James O’Keefe and others would still take some time for resolution.

In another case where a search warrant originally appeared abusive but turned out to be tied to something beyond journalism, NPR reports on how Rolling Stone protected James Meek in its story breaking the story of the search targeting him in child sexual abuse material case.

ny times logoNew York Times, Alvin Bragg, the Manhattan district attorney, has waded into treacherous political waters, Jonah E. Bromwich, March 22, 2023 (print ed.). Bragg, the Manhattan district attorney, appears poised to indict former President Donald J. Trump, and the political firestorm has already begun.

alvin bragg twitterAlvin L. Bragg, right, the Manhattan district attorney, has insisted that he does not pay attention to politics when deciding whether to charge someone with a crime.

But Mr. Bragg’s stated reluctance to consider the political ramifications of his office’s decisions has not quelled the storm brewing around him: He now appears poised to become the first prosecutor to indict a former president.

Charging former President Donald J. Trump in connection with a hush-money payment to a porn star would catapult Mr. Bragg onto the national stage. Already he faces second-guessing, even from putative allies, about the strength of the case and the wisdom of bringing it. And Mr. Trump, who has denied all wrongdoing, has begun attacking Mr. Bragg, a Democrat, as the latest in a string of politically-motivated prosecutors determined to bring him down. The ex-president has marshaled the support of his Republican allies in Congress and beyond.

It is unlikely that Mr. Bragg entered the race for district attorney expecting to indict Mr. Trump. When he announced his campaign in June 2019, there was little sign that the office’s then-dormant investigation would lead to criminal charges. And Mr. Bragg, 49, who has lived in New York nearly his entire life, had a vision for the office that had nothing to do with the president.

But the Trump question came to dominate the Democratic primary as the race entered its final stretch in 2021. As the district attorney’s investigation against the former president began to heat up, Mr. Bragg and his opponents started to signal to prospective voters that they had the bona fides to lead a potential prosecution of Mr. Trump.

Mr. Bragg had some history to draw on. In 2017 and 2018 he served as a senior official in the New York attorney general’s office, which at the time brought a bevy of lawsuits against Mr. Trump’s administration. One of them, filed in June 2018, accused the Donald J. Trump Foundation and the Trump family of “a shocking pattern of illegality.” That lawsuit was successful, leading to the foundation’s dissolution.

Still, as a candidate, Mr. Bragg was mostly focused elsewhere. His fundamental campaign promise was to balance public safety and fairness, following in the footsteps of a wave of recently elected prosecutors who pledged a new approach to crime. They argued that cracking down on minor infractions only led to recidivism, and that taking a more merciful approach to defendants made cities safer.

“When you look at who he defined himself to be, it wasn’t about Trump. It was an approach to the justice system that was fair, balanced and equitable,” said Kim Foxx, the state’s attorney of Cook County, which includes Chicago, who campaigned on a platform similar to that of Mr. Bragg.

When Mr. Bragg took office, and his prosecutors were presenting evidence about Mr. Trump and his businesses to a grand jury, the new district attorney stopped them, concerned that the case, which centered on whether Mr. Trump fraudulently inflated the value of his properties, was not strong enough to move forward. The public backlash was swift.

In much the way that Mr. Trump shifted the conversation in Mr. Bragg’s campaign, the former president has shifted the focus of the district attorney’s administration. And Mr. Bragg will likely find that his tenure is now intertwined with the former president.

In an appearance on the Rev. Al Sharpton’s MSNBC show earlier this month, Mr. Bragg, who declined to grant an interview for this article, was asked what figured into his decision to bring a case against any defendant.

“We’re looking at the facts and the law,” Mr. Bragg said, adding, “Yes we live in this world where we may hear what this pundit says and we may hear all the commentary but our focus is on the evidence and the law.”

That emphasis on the law is in part informed by Mr. Bragg’s time as a federal prosecutor in New York, where he focused on public corruption and white collar crime, and then at the New York attorney general’s office, where he led a unit focused on police accountability. He has long been uncomfortable with the more political aspects of his job.

 

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.

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.

ny times logoNew York Times, Opinion: Make No Mistake, the Investigation of Donald Trump and the Stormy Daniels Scheme Is Serious, Ryan Goodman and Andrew andrew weissmann croppedWeissmann (Mr. Goodman and Mr. Weissmann, right, are professors at N.Y.U. School of Law), March 22, 2023 (print ed.).

Though it may be tempting to do so, it is a mistake to assess the Manhattan district attorney’s investigation of Donald Trump by comparing its relative severity with those of myriad other crimes possibly committed by him. That is not how state and federal prosecutors will — or should — be thinking about the issue of charging Mr. Trump, or for that matter, any other defendant.

Prosecutors are trained to consider whether a case can be brought — in other words, is there proof beyond a reasonable doubt to support a conviction? They also consider whether a case should be brought — principally, is the crime one that is typically charged by the office in like circumstances? Put another way: Is bringing the charge consistent with the rule of law that requires treating likes alike?

Alvin Bragg, the Manhattan district attorney, would be well within his discretion in determining that the answer to those questions is yes and therefore supports charging Mr. Trump in connection with any crimes arising from an effort to keep Stormy Daniels from disclosing an alleged affair to the electorate before the 2016 election.

This case is just one of a few ongoing criminal investigations into Mr. Trump’s conduct — including potentially a much larger financial investigation by the Manhattan district attorney — and the hush money scheme is no doubt the least serious of the crimes. It does not involve insurrection and undermining the peaceful transfer of power fundamental to our democracy, nor the retention of highly classified documents and obstruction of a national security investigation.

But does that mean the Manhattan criminal case is an example of selective prosecution — in other words, going after a political enemy for a crime that no one else would be charged with? Not by a long shot.

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More On Russia-China-West Conflicts

 

 A photograph released by Russian state media showing Chinese President Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin meeting at the Kremlin (Photo by Sergei Karpukhin of Sputnik).

A photograph released by Russian state media showing Chinese President Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin meeting at the Kremlin (Photo by Sergei Karpukhin of Sputnik).

ny times logoNew York Times, As Xi and Putin Resume Talks, Japan’s Leader Visits Ukraine, Staff Reports, March 22, 2023 (print ed.). On the second day of his visit to Moscow, China’s leader, Xi Jinping, said he had invited President Vladimir Putin of Russia to Beijing; In a competing display of support, Prime Minister Fumio Kishida of Japan made an unannounced visit to Ukraine.

As China’s leader, Xi Jinping, met for a second day with President Vladimir V. Putin in Moscow, Japan’s prime minister made an unannounced visit to Kyiv on Tuesday in a show of support for Ukraine against Russia’s invasion.

With his surprise foray into an active war zone, Prime Minister Fumio Kishida of Japan (shown at right in a Manichi photo) highlighted his nation’s unusually swift and proactive Fumio Kishida (shown in a Manichi photo)allegiance with Ukraine and set the stage for competing displays of diplomacy from two East Asian neighbors.

On the war in Ukraine, China has been trying to maintain a nearly impossible position, presenting itself as an impartial observer while maintaining close ties with Russia. Beijing has had practice: its balancing act predates President Vladimir V. Putin’s full-scale invasion. For decades it tried to build ties with Russia while also keeping Ukraine close.

In 1992, China was among the first countries to establish ties with a newly independent Ukraine after the collapse of the Soviet Union. It turned to Ukraine as a major supplier of corn, sunflower and grapeseed oil, as well as arms technology.

JapanAs Prime Minister Fumio Kishida of Japan visits Kyiv, it’s worth remembering that Japan has its own territorial dispute with Russia dating back to World War II over islands off the coast of Hokkaido. Talks on the issue broke down last March over Tokyo’s support for international sanctions against Moscow for its invasion of Ukraine.

washington post logoWashington Post, Xi and Putin showcase alliance but offer no path to peace in Ukraine, Robyn Dixon and Lily Kuo, March 22, 2023 (print ed.). Russian President Vladimir Putin and China’s Xi Jinping on Tuesday proclaimed their plans to deepen Sino-Russian political and economic cooperation for years to come — sending a strong message to the West about their determination to push back against the global domination of the United States.

But as the leaders wrapped up two days of formal discussions in Moscow, there was no visible progress on China’s cease-fire plan for Ukraine.

washington post logoWashington Post, Opinion: Here’s the real lesson from the showy Xi-Putin meeting, David Ignatius, March 22, 2023 (print ed.). A strong david ignatiusChina is bolstering a weak Russia. That’s the real headline that describes the showy meetings in Moscow this week between the two countries’ leaders.

The Chinese aren’t providing weapons (yet), but Xi certainly offered moral and psychological support in what might be described as a get-well visit to an ailing relative. White House spokesman John Kirby on Tuesday rightly called Putin a “junior partner.”

ny times logoNew York Times, Analysis: In a Brother Act With Putin, Xi Reveals China’s Fear of Containment, Chris Buckley, March 22, 2023. Instead of focusing on Ukraine, Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin’s meetings in Moscow reinforced their shared opposition to American dominance.

China’s leader, Xi Jinping, flew into Moscow this week cast by Beijing as its emissary for peace in Ukraine. His summit with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, however, demonstrated that his priority remains shoring up ties with Moscow to gird against what he sees as a long campaign by the United States to hobble China’s ascent.

Talk of Ukraine was overshadowed by Mr. Xi’s vow of ironclad solidarity with Russia as a political, diplomatic, economic and military partner: two superpowers aligned in countering American dominance and a Western-led world order. The summit showed Mr. Xi’s intention to entrench Beijing’s tilt toward Moscow against what he recently called an effort by the United States at the full-fledged “containment” of China.

Mr. Xi and Mr. Putin used the pomp of the three-day state visit that ended on Wednesday to signal to their publics and to Western capitals that the bond between their two countries remained robust and, in their eyes, indispensable, 13 months after Mr. Putin launched his invasion of Ukraine. They laid out their vision for the world in a nine-point joint statement that covered everything from Taiwan to climate change and relations with Mongolia, often depicting the United States as the obstacle to a better, fairer world.

 

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Wayne Madsen Report, Investigative Commentary, Finland in NATO will be a gateway to the subjugated Finno-Ugric peoples of Russia, Wayne Madsen, left, author of 22 books and former U.S. Navy intelligence officer based in Finland, March 21-22, wayne madsen may 29 2015 cropped Small2023. With Türkiye's announcement that it will ratify Finland's membership in NATO, as well as holdout Hungary's signaling that it will soon move ratification of Finland's and Sweden's accession to NATO through its parliament, there is renewed hope among the beleaguered colonized Finno-Ugric nations colonized by Russia that their cause will soon receive greater international attention.

wayne madesen report logoFinland is slated to become a full NATO member at the NATO Summit scheduled for July 11-12 in Vilnius, Lithuania.

finland flagFinland has maintained "soft power" contacts with the Finno-Ugric bloc of formerly autonomous republics in Russia. They are Karelia, which was once part of Finland; Komi, Mari-El, Mordovia, Udmurtia, and Komi Permiak. Putin has curtailed contacts between the Finno-Ugric nations and Finland. These relations will be further hampered by the Kremlin after Finland becomes a full member of NATO.

Putin's war in Ukraine has emboldened some Finno-Ugric leaders in Russia to resurrect their calls for independence from Russia. In December 2022, many of these leaders were joined by representatives of other captive nations within Russia at the Forum of Free Peoples of Post-Russia (FSNPR) held in Helsingborg, Sweden. There, Finno-Ugric representatives were joined by Tatars, Chechens, Bashkirs, Nogais, Circassians, Cossacks, and others in calling for the "end of the existence of the Russian Federation.”

ny times logoNew York Times, China is supplying drones to Russia, a sign of quiet collaboration between the two, Paul Mozur, Aaron Krolik and Keith Bradsher, March 22, 2023 (print ed.). China has shipped more than $12 million in drones to Russia since it invaded Ukraine, in an indication of quiet collaboration between the two.

China FlagThe Biden administration vowed last month to crack down on companies that sell critical technologies to Russia as part of its efforts to curtail the country’s war against Ukraine. But the continued flow of Chinese drones to the country explains why that will be hard.

While drone sales have slowed, American policies put in place after Russia’s invasion have failed to stanch exports of the unmanned aerial vehicles that work as eyes in the sky for frontline fighters. In the year since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, China has sold more than $12 million in drones and drone parts to the country, according to official Russian customs data from a third-party data provider.

It is hard to determine whether the Chinese drones contain American technologies that would violate the U.S. rules or whether they are legal. The shipments, a mix of products from DJI, the world’s best-known drone maker, and an array of smaller companies, often came through small-time middlemen and exporters.

Complicated sales channels and vague product descriptions within export data also make it hard to definitively show whether there are U.S. components in the Chinese products, which could constitute a violation of the American export controls. And the official sales are likely only one part of a larger flow of technologies through unofficial channels and other nations friendly to Russia, like Kazakhstan, Pakistan and Belarus.

The result is a steady supply of new drones to Russia that make their way to the front lines of its war with Ukraine. On the battlefield, the hovering quadcopters often last only a few flights before they are blown out of the skies. Refilling stockpiles of even the most basic unmanned aerial vehicles has become as critical as other basic necessities, such as procuring artillery shells and bullets.

Militarily, diplomatically and economically, Beijing has become an increasingly important buttress for Russia in its war effort. China has remained one of the largest buyers of Russian oil, helping finance the invasion. The two sides have also held joint military exercises and jointly assailed the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.

As China’s top leader, Xi Jinping, meets this week with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, U.S. officials have warned that China is still considering selling lethal weapons for use in Ukraine.

washington post logoWashington Post, Xi arrives in Russia to stand with Putin against West amid Ukraine war, Francesca Ebel and Lily Kuo, March 21, 2023 (print ed.). Russian analysts skeptical Putin-Xi talks will make progress on peace; Ukraine ‘ready’ for ‘closer dialogue with China.’

Chinese leader Xi Jinping landed in Russia on Monday for a much-anticipated three-day state visit, taking a joint stand with President Vladimir Putin against the West even as the Russian leader stands accused by the International Criminal Court of war crimes in Ukraine.

China FlagThe two men, each positioned as “leader for life” of a nuclear power, celebrated their “no limits” relationship in Beijing together in early 2022, just weeks before Putin ordered his full-scale invasion of Ukraine, and they have met about 40 times. But Monday’s visit, the first by Xi since the invasion, represents a display of tacit support by China for the war and a personal triumph for Putin, who is eager to show he is not isolated on the international stage.

Xi’s plane arrived at Vnukovo International Airport just southwest of the Russian capital at approximately 1 p.m. local time Monday. The presidential motorcade then made its way to the center of Moscow, where dozens of people waving Chinese and Russian flags greeted the delegation outside his hotel, the Soluxe Hotel in the north of the city. Initial talks were scheduled to begin in the afternoon, followed by a dinner later with Putin.

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Global News, Migration, Human Rights Issues

washington post logoWashington Post, Macron defends move to raise retirement age as protests roil France, Ellen Francis and Claire Parker, March 22, 2023. French President Emmanuel Macron forcefully defended Wednesday his move to push through legislation to raise the retirement age, which has ignited angry protests and strikes around the country.

In his most direct comments to the nation since ramming the legislation through last week, Macron described the plan that has roiled France for weeks as a necessity the people must bear together.

“We must advance because it is in the ultimate interest of the nation,” he said in a live interview with TF1 and France 2 TV from the Elysee Palace.

He said the pension reform plan should be in effect by the end of the year, but that it was now awaiting a decision from the Constitutional Council before moving forward.

The government’s use of executive powers to pass the pension bill without a vote from the parliament’s lower house plunged French politics into upheaval and escalated a simmering crisis.

ap logoAssociated Press via Washington Post, 11 killed as strong earthquake rattles Pakistan, Afghanistan, Munir Ahmed and Rahim Faiez, March 22, 2023 (print ed.). A magnitude 6.5 earthquake rattled much of Pakistan and Afghanistan on Tuesday, sending panicked residents fleeing from homes and offices and frightening people in remote villages. At least nine people died in Pakistan and two in Afghanistan, officials said Wednesday.

 

Released Saudi critic Saad Almadi of Florida, right, with his son Ibrahim Almadi (family photo via Getty Images).

Released Saudi-American critic Saad Almadi of Florida, right, with his son Ibrahim Almadi (family photo via Getty Images).

ny times logoNew York Times, Saudi Arabia Releases U.S. Dual Citizen Jailed in Crackdown on Dissent, ivian Nereim, March 21, 2023. Saad Almadi, 72, a Florida resident, was one of several Americans and hundreds of Saudis caught up in the crackdown under Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. He still cannot fly home, his son said.

Saudi-American dual citizen who spent more than a year in a Saudi prison over Twitter posts critical of the kingdom’s government was released from detention on Tuesday, but will not be able to leave the country, according to his son.

Saad Almadi, a 72-year-old Florida resident, is staying with family members in the Saudi capital of Riyadh, his son, Ibrahim Almadi, said by telephone from Washington. The younger Mr. Almadi said he would continue to campaign to overturn a Saudi bar on his father leaving the kingdom.

“The fight will continue and hopefully we’ll have him back soon,” he said.

Mr. Almadi, a retired project manager, was one of several U.S. citizens and hundreds of Saudis caught up in a deepening crackdown on dissent under Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. He was arrested during a visit to Saudi Arabia in 2021.

Prosecutors cited Twitter posts he wrote that were critical of the Saudi government and an “insulting picture” of Prince Mohammed saved on his phone as proof that he had “adopted a terrorist agenda by defaming symbols of the state,” according to court documents. He was sentenced to 16 years in prison, lengthened on appeal last month to 19 years.

ny times logoNew York Times, Ferraris and Hungry Children: Venezuela’s Socialist Vision in Shambles, Isayen Herrera and Frances Robles, Photographs by Adriana Loureiro Fernandez, March 22, 2023 (print ed.). After years of extreme scarcity, some Venezuelans lead lives of luxury as others scrape by.

In the capital, a store sells Prada purses and a 110-inch television for $115,000. Not far away, a Ferrari dealership has opened, while a new restaurant allows well-off diners to enjoy a meal seated atop a giant crane overlooking the city.

“When was the last time you did something for the first time?” the restaurant’s host boomed over a microphone to excited customers as they sang along to a Coldplay song.

This is not Dubai or Tokyo, but Caracas, the capital of Venezuela, where a socialist revolution once promised equality and an end to the bourgeoisie.

Venezuela’s economy imploded nearly a decade ago, prompting a huge outflow of migrants in one of worst crises in modern Latin American history. Now there are signs the country is settling into a new, disorienting normality, with everyday products easily available, poverty starting to lessen — and surprising pockets of wealth arising.

ny times logoNew York Times, Macron’s Government Survives but Faces Wrath of France Over Pension Overhaul, Roger Cohen, March 21, 2023 (print ed.). Two no-confidence votes failed to oust the cabinet of President Emmanuel Macron over a bill that proposes to raise the retirement age to 64 from 62.

French FlagThe French National Assembly rejected a no-confidence motion against the government of President Emmanuel Macron on Monday, ensuring that a fiercely contested bill raising the retirement age to 64 from 62 becomes the law of the land.

The first of two motions received 278 votes, nine short of the 287 needed to pass. The close result reflected widespread anger at the pension overhaul, at Mr. Macron for his apparent aloofness and at the way the measure was rammed through Parliament last week without a full vote on the bill itself. The Senate, France’s upper house of Parliament, passed the pension bill this month.

A second no-confidence motion, filed by the far-right National Rally, failed on Monday, as well, with only 94 lawmakers voting in favor.

The change, which Mr. Macron has sought since the beginning of his first term in 2017, has provoked two months of demonstrations, intermittent strikes and occasional violence. It has split France, with polls consistently showing two-thirds of the population opposing the overhaul.

washington post logoWashington Post, American hostage freed 6 years after being taken captive by militants in Africa, John Hudson, March 21, 2023 (print ed.). Jeffery Woodke, a Christian aid worker, was abducted in Niger in 2016. An American aid worker who was taken captive by militants in West Africa more than six years ago has been freed, his family and the Biden administration said Monday, but officials shared little about his years in captivity or the identity of the group that held him.

Jeffery Woodke, a Christian aid worker, was abducted in Niger in 2016 and believed to have been later taken to Mali. He is undergoing a medical evaluation in Niamey, the capital of Niger, then will return home to be reunited with his family, said Bob Klamer, a spokesman for the Woodke family.

“I’m gratified & relieved to see the release of U.S. hostage Jeff Woodke after over 6 years in captivity,” White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan said on Twitter. President Biden also praised the release and told reporters that the United States “will continue our work to bring home all Americans held hostage or unjustly detained.”

Woodke’s wife, Els Woodke, spoke to her husband Monday. “He was in great spirits and thrilled to be free,” she said. She expressed her “profound thanks to the many people in governments and others around the world who have worked so hard to see this result.”

Sullivan thanked the government of Niger for helping secure Woodke’s return. Secretary of State Antony Blinken just returned from Niger on Friday, in the first visit to the West African country by a sitting secretary of state. Blinken reaffirmed the United States’ interest in securing Woodke’s release, said a senior administration official, but no ransom or concessions were given. No direct negotiations were held between the U.S. government and the group that held him, said the official, who spoke to reporters on the condition of anonymity given the sensitivity surrounding the long-sought release.

The official declined to identify the group that held Woodke but noted that his capture happened as a result of an “overlapping and intersecting network in that part of West Africa — operating in an area that includes Mali and Burkina Faso — who see kidnapping and hostage-taking as part of their business model, frankly, and as a source of revenue and support.”

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U.S. Banks, Economy, Jobs

washington post logoWashington Post, Weighing bank distress and inflation, Fed faces next rate hike, Rachel Siegel, March 22, 2023. There’s much more uncertainty this time around as to whether the Fed will hike by a quarter of a percentage point, or hit pause until the banking fiasco is truly over.

The Federal Reserve faces a pivotal decision Wednesday — whether to push ahead with its urgent fight against inflation or ease up in the aftermath of bank failures that forced a sweeping government intervention earlier this month.

federal reserve system CustomFinancial markets expect an increase of a quarter of a percentage point, which would bring the Fed’s base policy rate to between 4.75 and 5 percent. But nothing is guaranteed, and some Fed experts are urging policymakers to hit pause. Their argument is that it is too soon to know if jerome powellthe banking fiasco is over, and that the financial system may still be too fragile to absorb another hike right now, even though inflation remains too high.

The central bank, led by Jerome Powell, right, is also facing questions about its regulatory oversight of Silicon Valley Bank, as Washington tries to figure out whether the government could have prevented the turmoil in the banking sector.

ny times logoNew York Times, Yellen Says U.S. Ready to Protect Smaller Banks if Necessary, Alan Rappeport, March 22, 2023 (print ed.). Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen pledged that the Biden administration would take additional steps as needed to support the banking system.

janet yellen oTreasury Secretary Janet L. Yellen, right, expressed confidence in the nation’s banks on Tuesday but said that she is prepared to take additional actions to safeguard smaller financial institutions as the Biden administration and federal regulators work to contain fallout from fears over the stability of the banking system.

Ms. Yellen, seeking to calm nerves as the U.S. financial system faces its worst turmoil in more than a decade, said that the steps the administration and federal regulators have taken so far have helped restore confidence but that policymakers remain focused on making sure that the broader banking system remains secure.

silicon valley bank svb“Our intervention was necessary to protect the broader U.S. banking system,” Ms. Yellen said in prepared remarks to be delivered to the Washington meeting of the American Bankers Association, the industry’s leading lobbying group. “And similar actions could be warranted if smaller institutions suffer deposit runs that pose the risk of contagion.”

She added: “The situation is stabilizing. And the U.S. banking system remains sound.”

The comments come as government officials contemplate additional options to stem the flows of deposits out of small and medium-size banks, and as concerns grow that more will need to be done.

ny times logoNew York Times, Opinion: How Big a Deal Is the Banking Mess? Paul Krugman, paul krugmanright, March 22, 2023 (print ed.). A murky economic outlook just got even murkier.

So as everyone knows, Silicon Valley Bank — not a huge institution, but an integral part of the tech industry’s financial ecosystem — has been taken over by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation after facing a classic bank run. Signature Bank soon followed; First Republic Bank is under severe pressure. Swiss authorities have arranged a takeover of Credit Suisse, a major bank, by its rival UBS. And everyone is wondering what other land mines may be about to go off.

There will and should be many inquests into how and why these banks managed to get into so much trouble. In the case of S.V.B. it appears that regulators had known for some time that the bank was a problem case, but for some reason didn’t or couldn’t rein it in.

But the more pressing question is forward-looking. How much does the banking mess change economic conditions? How much should it change economic policy?

Some commentators — mainly, as far as I can tell, cryptocurrency enthusiasts — are issuing apocalyptic warnings about hyperinflation and the imminent collapse of the dollar. But that’s almost certainly the opposite of the truth. When depositors pull their money out of banks, the effect is disinflationary, even deflationary.

What this probably means in practice is that the Fed should pause its rate hikes until there’s more clarity about both the inflation picture and the effects of the banking mess — and it should be clear that that’s what it is doing.

ny times logoNew York Times, Strains Emerge Inside the Union That Beat Amazon, Noam Scheiber, March 22, 2023 (print ed.). Nearly a year after its victory on Staten Island, the Amazon Labor Union is grappling with election losses and internal conflict.

One year after its surprise victory at a Staten Island warehouse, the only union in the country representing Amazon workers has endured a series of setbacks and conflicts that have caused longtime supporters to question if it will survive.

In interviews, a dozen people who have been closely involved with the Amazon Labor Union said the union had made little progress bringing Amazon to the bargaining table, to say nothing of securing a contract. Many cited lopsided losses at two other warehouses, unstable funding and an internal feud that has made it difficult for the union to alter a strategy that they considered flawed.

At the heart of the feud is a dispute between the union’s president, Christian Smalls, and several longtime organizers.

Mr. Smalls’s former allies complain that he has pursued elections at other warehouses without strong support from workers or a plan to ensure victory. They say he has focused on travel and public appearances while neglecting the contract fight at the Staten Island warehouse, known as JFK8, where Amazon is still contesting the election result.

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U.S. Politics, Elections, Economy, Governance

 

gop house chairs 2023

ny times logoNew York Times, At a retreat for House Republicans in Florida, the focus remained on former President Trump, Annie Karni, March 22, 2023 (print ed.). For the third year since he left office, former President Donald J. Trump continued to dominate an annual G.O.P. gathering in Florida, underscoring his grip on the party.

Speaker Kevin McCarthy arrived at an upscale resort here this week eager to use a Republican retreat to promote the party’s policy agenda and achievements so far, working to paper over the divisions that nearly sank his bid for his job and talk about anything but former President Donald J. Trump.

“I’m always optimistic,” a sunny Mr. McCarthy, dressed in a pair of trendy sneakers, jeans and a zip-up vest, told reporters of the prospect for resolving debt ceiling negotiations without an economy-crushing default. “I went 15 rounds to get speaker!”

But it was not long before Mr. Trump came to dominate the proceedings. With the former president expected to be indicted by a Manhattan grand jury, House Republicans rallied around him. They blasted the Manhattan district attorney, Alvin L. Bragg, as a pawn of George Soros, a longtime boogeyman of the right, and they vowed to open a remarkable congressional investigation into his active criminal inquiry.

It was the third year in a row that Mr. Trump has effectively taken over House Republicans’ annual gathering, underscoring how central the former president has remained to his party’s existence. Years after leaving office, Mr. Trump is still here, blotting out attempts to talk about any Republican agenda that does not involve him and making it all but impossible for the House G.O.P. to define itself as anything other than his frontline defenders.

It was true two years ago, when House Republicans headed to Florida desperate to talk about anything but Mr. Trump, who only weeks before had been impeached for inciting a deadly insurrection at the Capitol.

Instead, Representative Liz Cheney of Wyoming, then the No. 3 Republican, made several statements firmly repudiating Mr. Trump, and the retreat’s subtext was the ire of her fellow party leaders at her refusal to keep silent about the former president.

ny times logoNew York Times, Here’s a rough guide to the electoral fallout if former President Trump is indicted, Nate Cohn, March 22, 2023 (print ed.). It would be uncharted territory, but the F.B.I. search of Mar-a-Lago offers at least some precedent.

A lot of people believe I make political predictions, but that’s not really true. Instead, I try to marshal history, data, polling, reporting and more to help make sense of the political landscape. It usually amounts to one of those old, yellowish, distorted maps from the age of exploration. It offers only a rough guide of what lies ahead.

This week, we’re approaching uncharted waters. The front-runner for a major party nomination for president may soon be indicted. This is the blurry corner of the map where we can’t do much more than draw fantastical sea creatures. We know this part of the world is probably ocean, but we don’t know much else. We’re sure it’s dangerous.

Here’s the outline of the map as we edge toward a possible indictment:

  • The F.B.I. search of Mr. Trump’s property for classified records in August is probably the best precedent. While not an indictment, it represented a judgment by a court that there was probable cause to believe he committed a crime. The allegation was more serious than the Stormy Daniels case, as it carried potential implications for national security. But the search did not have a discernible effect on Mr. Trump’s standing among Republicans. Conservatives circled the wagons and argued that the search of a former president was an unjust act of partisan politics. There was no effect on his standing in the polls. In our Times/Siena polling last summer and fall, the Republican primary race was essentially unchanged after the F.B.I. search.
  • An indictment is still uncharted territory, so it’s worth being cautious about any potential fallout. A new legal line would be crossed, even if this story is already playing out much like the F.B.I. search.
  • But seriously, this indictment would seem particularly unlikely to hurt Mr. Trump’s base of support. The public already knows about Ms. Daniels. His supporters decided, long ago, that they did not especially care about the case’s underlying facts. An illegal cover-up of a private affair is more like the perjury accusation against Bill Clinton than Richard Nixon’s tapes.
  • The upside for Mr. Trump seems fairly limited. Yes, there really could be short-term gains for Mr. Trump if Republicans rally to his defense. Still, it’s a little much to argue that many Republicans who don’t support him for the nomination today would be far likelier to back him after an indictment. It could certainly energize his base, but an indictment would reinforce some of the reasons other Republicans are reluctant to back him in the first place. It’s not as if Mr. Trump became a juggernaut after the F.B.I. search of Mar-a-Lago.

ny times logoNew York Times, Los Angeles Enters Second Day Without Classes for 420,000 Students, Staff Report, March 22, 2023. Workers in the nation’s second-largest school district are holding a three-day walkout. Teachers have joined in solidarity.

The union representing teachers’ aides, custodians, bus drivers and other workers in the nation’s second-largest school district is holding a three-day walkout that teachers joined in solidarity.

ny times logoNew York Times, John Jenrette Jr., Congressman Nabbed in Abscam Sting, Dies at 86, Richard Sandomir, March 22, 2023. Once a rising star of the Democratic Party, he served 13 months in prison for bribery after being targeted in an F.B.I. scam involving a phony sheikh.

ny times logoNew York Times, Trump Could Stand in the Middle of Fifth Avenue and Not Lose Mike Pence, Jamelle Bouie, right, March 22, 2023 (print ed.). Mike Pence wants to have it jamelle bouieboth ways.

He wants to be the conservative hero of Jan. 6: the steadfast Republican patriot who resisted the MAGA mob and defended the institutions of American democracy. “Make no mistake about it,” Pence said at the Gridiron Club Dinner in Washington, D.C., this month. “What happened that day was a disgrace, and it mocks decency to portray it in any other way. President Donald Trump was wrong. I had no right to overturn the election and his reckless words endangered my family and everyone at the Capitol that day.”

But Mike Pence also wants to be president. And he can’t fully repudiate the previous Republican president if he hopes to win the Republican presidential nomination, especially when that president is still on the stage, with a commanding role in Republican politics.

The result is that Mike Pence has to talk out of both sides of his mouth. With one breath, he takes a righteous stand against the worst dysfunction of the Trump years. “We have to resist the politics of personality, the lure of populism unmoored by timeless conservative values,” Pence said last week while speaking to an audience of Republican donors in Keene, N.H.

With his next breath, however, Pence rejects any effort to hold Trump accountable, especially when it asks him to do something more than give the occasional sound bite.

 

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ny times logoNew York Times, Book Review: Ron DeSantis Has a Secret Theory of Trump, Carlos Lozada, March 20, 2023 (print ed.). Ron DeSantis has an enemies list, and you can probably guess who’s on it.

There’s the “woke dumpster fire” of the Democratic Party and the “swamp Republicans” who neglect their own voters. There’s the news media, with modifiers like “legacy” or “corporate” adding a nefarious touch. There’s Big Tech, that “censorship arm of the political left,” and the powerful corporations that cave to the “leftist-rage mob.” There are universities like Harvard and Yale, which DeSantis attended but did not inhale. There’s the administrative state and its pandemic-era spinoff, the “biomedical security state.” These are the villains of DeSantis’s recently published book, “The Courage to Be Free: Florida’s Blueprint for America’s Revival,” and its author feels free to assail them with a fusillade of generically irate prose.

There is one more antagonist — not an enemy, perhaps, but certainly a rival — whom DeSantis does not attack directly in his book, even as he looms over much of it. The far-too-early national polls for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination show a two-person contest with Donald Trump and DeSantis (who has yet to announce his potential candidacy) in the lead, and the Haleys, Pences and Pompeos of the world fighting for scraps. During his 2018 governor’s race, DeSantis aired an obsequious ad in which he built a cardboard border wall and read Trump’s “Art of the Deal” with his children, one of whom wore a MAGA onesie. Now DeSantis no longer bows before Trump. Instead, he dances around the former president; he is respectful but no longer deferential, critical but mainly by implication.

Yes, there is a DeSantis case against Trump scattered throughout these pages. You just need to squint through a magnifying glass to find it.

In the 250-plus pages of The Courage to Be Free, for instance, there is not a single mention of the events of Jan. 6, 2021. DeSantis cites Madison, Hamilton and the nation’s founding principles, but he does not pause to consider a frontal assault on America’s democratic institutions encouraged by a sitting president. The governor does not go so far as to defend Trump’s lies about the 2020 election; he just ignores them.

However, DeSantis does write that an energetic executive should lead “within the confines of a constitutional system,” and he criticizes unnamed elected officials for whom “perpetuating themselves in office supersedes fulfilling any policy mission.” Might DeSantis ever direct such criticisms at a certain former president so willing to subvert the Constitution to remain in power? Perhaps. For the moment, though, such indignation exists at a safe distance from any discussion of Trump himself.

ny times logoNew York Times, Republicans’ Investigative Chief Embraces Role of Biden Antagonist, Jonathan Swan and Luke Broadwater, March 22, 2023 (print ed.). The fourth-term Kentuckian and chairman of the House Oversight and Accountability Committee has become an aggressive promoter of sinister-sounding claims about the president and his family.

james comerSteering his S.U.V. through pounding rain on his way to the state capital on a recent Thursday, Representative James R. Comer, the chairman of the Oversight and Accountability Committee, reflected on the pressure he often faced from constituents to investigate unhinged claims about President Biden and Democrats.

“You know, the customer’s always right,” Mr. Comer said wryly, of his approach to the people who elected him and now brandish conspiracy theories, vulgar photographs featuring the president and his son, Hunter, and other lies they expect him to act upon.

“I say, ‘Let me see it,’ because I want to see where the source is,” Mr. Comer said. “They don’t know that it’s QAnon, but it’s QAnon stuff.”

Yet in his new role leading the Republican Party’s chief investigative committee in the House, Mr. Comer, 50, has himself become a promoter of sinister-sounding allegations against Mr. Biden and his family. This pursuit has propelled him to stardom in a party whose best customers — vengeful, hard-right voters — are bent on bringing down the Democratic president.

This month, Mr. Comer joined a panel at the Conservative Political Action Conference titled “The Biden Crime Family,” where he asserted that Mr. Biden and his family’s business activities with China posed “a threat to national security.”

Appearing on Fox News in January, Mr. Comer implied, without evidence, that there was a connection between Mr. Biden improperly holding on to classified documents when he was a private citizen and his son, Hunter, receiving a diamond from a Chinese tycoon. In another segment Mr. Comer lamented that Beau Biden, the president’s other son, who died of cancer in 2015, was never investigated.

His embrace of such statements reflects how Mr. Comer, who voted to certify Mr. Biden’s victory and was a favorite among Democrats in Kentucky’s Legislature, has transformed himself to command the Republican war machine in Congress — becoming a high-profile example of what it takes to rise and thrive in the Fox News-fed MAGA universe.

It also underscores the cutthroat instincts of Mr. Comer, who presents himself as an affable country boy of limited abilities, but who has proved to be a methodical and transactional political operator, willing to go to great lengths to crush his adversaries.

During his campaign for governor in 2015, facing allegations of abuse from an ex-girlfriend who also said he had taken her to get an abortion, Mr. Comer worked to discredit a blogger reporting on the claims and a campaign rival he believed was behind them, leaking private emails between the two. Mr. Comer denied the woman’s charges but lost the race anyway.

 

djt ron desantis cnn collage

Politico, The 2024 GOP 2024 Presidential Election field: How they win, how they lose, Steven Shepard, March 21, 2023 (print ed.). The race for the GOP presidential has a set of historic firsts: a former president seeking an Oval Office comeback, a vice president who refused to go along with a plot to steal the last election, the most politically accomplished woman ever to run as a Republican — and an already-popular governor waiting in the wings.

politico CustomWho ultimately wins out will take on President Joe Biden in a likely reelection bid — and potentially secure the White House.

rnc logoThere are also other candidates and would-be candidates, too. We've put the entire field into three categories — based roughly on their chances to capture the nod — along with full scouting reports for everything that could go right or wrong along the road to the 2024 convention in Milwaukee.

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More On Ukraine War

ny times logoNew York Times, She Posted About the War in Ukraine. Then She Faced a Prison Term, Valerie Hopkins, March 22, 2023. The case of Olesya Krivtsova, a Russian student who ended up on the Kremlin’s terrorist list, has underscored the perils of criticizing the invasion.

Sitting in a small courtroom flanked by her two lawyers last month, Olesya Krivtsova was facing a stiff penalty for her fondness for posting on social media. Barely 20 and until this year a university student in northern Russia, she was accused of “justifying terrorism” and “discrediting the Russian armed forces,” and was facing up to a decade in prison.

Her apparent crime? An Instagram post asking why Ukrainians had rejoiced when the main bridge to Russian-occupied Crimea was attacked in October.

The post eventually landed Ms. Krivtsova on the Kremlin’s official list of terrorists and extremists. She was placed under house arrest and forbidden from using the phone or the internet.

Ms. Krivtsova did not wait for a courtroom verdict: Last week, she fled the country.

“I decided to leave because I was desperate,” Ms. Krivtsova said by telephone on Friday from Vilnius, Lithuania. “It is impossible to prove anything to the Russian court.”

As the Kremlin intensifies its crackdown on free speech, social media platforms have become a more frequent target for punishment. The government is increasingly penalizing people for posts it considers critical of the fighting in Ukraine — with fines, imprisonment and, in extreme cases, temporarily losing custody of their children.

In the Ryazan region south of Moscow, for instance, investigators opened a criminal case against a man who posted a joke about the Russian retreat from Kherson, in southern Ukraine. A student who ran an antiwar channel on the messaging app Telegram was denounced by the rector of his university for posts that criticized the Kremlin’s invasion of Ukraine as well as alleged Russian atrocities in Bucha and Mariupol. This month, he was sentenced to eight and a half years in a penal colony.

ny times logoNew York Times, Russia reprised brutal tactics to attack the eastern Ukrainian city of Avdiivka, Marc Santora, March 22, 2023 (print ed.). Russian forces have stepped up their assaults on the Ukrainian stronghold of Avdiivka in eastern Ukraine, making limited and costly gains in a furious attempt to encircle the long-battered city.

Ukrainian officials have said in recent days that Avdiivka is turning into another Bakhmut, the eastern city that Russian forces have sought to capture by sending waves of lightly trained recruits on near-suicidal attacks of Ukrainian defensive lines. In Avdiivka, as in Bakhmut, Ukraine says that Russian advances are also ukraine flagthreatening key supply lines while bombardments are killing civilians.

Local officials said on Tuesday that a woman had been killed and two more civilians injured when a shell fired from a tank blasted the city center.

“Russians are intensively attacking from both sides, from the south and the north,” Maj. Maksym Morozov, a member of the Special Forces regiment fighting in the area, told the Ukrainian news media on Monday night. He added that the Russian tactic of using waves of soldiers — dubbed “cannon fodder” by the Ukrainians — was having some success.

“First, cannon fodder goes to expose our firing positions, and then professionals behind them quickly and accurately try to extinguish our firing lines,” he said. But he said that Ukrainian artillery and tanks were firing back at the Russian forces, who “have to pay a rather high price for this advance.”

Avdiivka is about 15 miles west of the city of Donetsk, which Russian proxy forces took over in 2014. But Avdiivka had not experienced violence on the scale unleashed in Russia’s full-scale invasion last year.

By last April, Russian artillery had destroyed more than 800 homes and scores of businesses, according to local officials. Only about 2,300 of the city’s 30,000 prewar residents remain, according to Vitaliy Barabash, the head of the Ukrainian military administration in the city.

washington post logoWashington Post, U.S. will speed transfer of Abrams tanks to Ukraine, Pentagon says, Dan Lamothe, March 22, 2023 (print ed.). The new plan calls for refurbishing tank hulls already in the U.S. arsenal rather than procuring new vehicles, which had been expected to take up to two years.

Department of Defense SealThe Pentagon, in a significant shift, said Tuesday that it will send M1 Abrams tanks to Ukraine by the fall, after facing scrutiny for initially saying it could take a year or two to procure the powerful weapons and get them to the battlefield.

The new plan calls for refurbishing tank hulls already in the U.S. arsenal, officials said. President Biden, under intensifying pressure from Ukrainian officials, agreed in January to pledge 31 M1 tanks as part of a long-term arrangement that afforded German leaders political cover so that they could approve the immediate provision of Leopard battle tanks.

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U.S. Courts, Crime, Immigration, Guns

Brennan Center for Justice, NYU Law School, Analysis: Constitution watchers brace for upcoming Supreme Court rulings on the Voting Rights Act, affirmative action, and the “independent state legislature theory,” Michael Waldman, March 21-22, 2023. The Marble Palace on First Street gets most of the attention. In the meantime, federal judges across the country are showing us what happens when the lower courts are stuffed with right-wing ideologues.

After a hearing last week, Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk in Amarillo, Texas, is expected to soon rule on an outlandish demand to ban the use of the abortion pill mifepristone — medication used for more than half of all abortions in the United States. If the judge rules to revoke the decades-old FDA approval for the pill, he will affect not just women in Texas, but women in every state.

How can a single federal judge have such power over the medical decisions of more than 167 million people? Believe it or not, the Supreme Court has never ruled on whether nationwide injunctions are constitutional. Liberals used this tactic on occasion to block the Trump administration’s policies, such as the single judge who blocked the “Muslim ban” in 2017. But conservatives have undeniably perfected it.

In Texas, a quirk of the rules lets people choose where they bring a federal lawsuit and essentially handpick the judge who will hear their case — judge shopping to boost the chances of a favorable ruling. When a plaintiff files a federal suit in Amarillo, they are 100 percent guaranteed to get Kacsmaryk, a judge with a reputation as a Federalist Society militant. His sister recently told reporters it was his mission to end abortion in the United States. He has called homosexuality “disordered.” He made the government reinstate the Trump-era “Remain in Mexico” policy, which was later overturned by the Supreme Court.

Such a track record would make him the ideal judge for anti-abortion groups seeking someone sympathetic to their case.

Worse, Kacsmaryk may be readying his abortion pill ruling based on the brand-new “major questions doctrine,” which is all of nine months old. First articulated in a case last year that slashed the Environmental Protection Agency’s regulatory power, the doctrine claims federal agencies need clear congressional authorization to act on issues that have “major” economic or political significance. This conveniently flexible legal theory is poised to be the go-to reasoning for right-wing judges to block any policies they don’t like.

The Texas case isn’t the only evidence of the impact of skewed lower courts. The Supreme Court’s sweeping decision in New York State Rifle and Pistol Association v. Bruen, which held that gun laws must pass the test of “history and tradition” rather than public safety, has led to judicial rulings that verge on satirical. One federal judge in western New York blocked most of the state’s new gun law, declaring he could find no colonial-era law banning guns in summer camps, which, of course, did not exist at the time. And surprise, surprise, he found no trace of 18th-century prohibitions on guns in subways, either. Though he let the ban on guns in churches stand, another New York judge ruled shortly afterward that this restriction, too, was ahistorical.

Other examples abound, and there will no doubt be many more to come. Trump isn’t only responsible for appointing three Supreme Court justices — he appointed 226 federal judges during his presidency. They were overwhelmingly pre-vetted by the Federalist Society.

These appointments have left a lasting impact, and there is an urgent need to rebalance the scales of the federal judiciary. Last week, the Judicial Conference of the United States, led by Chief Justice John Roberts, recommended adding 68 federal judges to the courts to meet demanding new workloads. This would be a good step toward countering the partisanship plaguing the courts. But most importantly, we need to understand the significance of what has happened with the federal courts.

We cannot let one judge with a gavel and a grudge govern our country.

 

hillary clinton donald trump crop Oct. 19 3rd debate

ny times logoNew York Times, Trial of 2016 Twitter Troll to Test Limits of Online Speech, Colin Moynihan and Alan Feuer, March 21, 2023 (print ed.).  Douglass Mackey tried to trick Black people into thinking they could vote for president by text, prosecutors said.

The images appeared on Twitter in late 2016 just as the presidential campaign was entering its final stretch. Some featured the message “vote for Hillary” and the phrases “avoid the line” and “vote from home.”

Aimed at Democratic voters, and sometimes singling out Black people, the messages were actually intended to help Donald J. Trump, not Hillary Clinton. The goal, federal prosecutors said, was to suppress votes for Ms. Clinton by persuading her supporters to falsely believe they could cast presidential ballots by text message.

twitter bird CustomThe misinformation campaign was carried out by a group of conspirators, prosecutors said, including a man in his 20s who called himself Ricky Vaughn. On Monday he will go on trial in Federal District Court in Brooklyn under his real name, Douglass Mackey, after being charged with conspiring to spread misinformation designed to deprive others of their right to vote.

“The defendant exploited a social media platform to infringe one of the most basic and sacred rights guaranteed by the Constitution,” Nicholas L. McQuaid, acting assistant attorney general for the Justice Department’s Criminal Division, said in 2021 when charges against Mr. Mackey were announced.

Prosecutors have said that Mr. Mackey, who went to Middlebury College in Vermont and said he lived on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, used hashtags and memes as part of his deception and outlined his strategies publicly on Twitter and with co-conspirators in private Twitter group chats.

“Obviously we can win Pennsylvania,” Mr. Mackey said on Twitter, using one of his pseudonymous accounts less than a week before the election, according to a complaint and affidavit. “The key is to drive up turnout with non-college whites, and limit black turnout.”

That tweet, court papers said, came a day after Mr. Mackey tweeted an image showing a Black woman in front of a sign supporting Ms. Clinton. That tweet told viewers they could vote for Ms. Clinton by text message.

Prosecutors said nearly 5,000 people texted the number shown in the deceptive images, adding that the images stated they had been paid for by the Clinton campaign and had been viewed by people in the New York City area.

Mr. Mackey’s trial is expected to provide a window into a small part of what the authorities have described as broad efforts to sway the 2016 election through lies and disinformation. While some of those attempts were orchestrated by Russian security services, others were said to have emanated from American internet trolls.

People whose names may surface during the trial or who are expected to testify include a man who tweeted about Jews and Black people and was then disinvited from the DeploraBall, a far-right event in Washington, D.C., the night before Mr. Trump’s inauguration; a failed congressional candidate from Wisconsin; and an obscure federal cooperator who will be allowed to testify under a code name.

As the trial has approached, people sympathetic to Mr. Mackey have cast his case as part of a political and cultural war, a depiction driven in part by precisely the sort of partisan social media-fueled effort that he is accused of engineering.

Mr. Mackey’s fans have portrayed him as a harmless prankster who is being treated unfairly by the state for engaging in a form of free expression. That notion, perhaps predictably, has proliferated on Twitter, advanced by people using some of the same tools that prosecutors said Mr. Mackey used to disseminate lies. Mackey supporters have referred to him on social media as a “meme martyr” and spread a meme showing him wearing a red MAGA hat and accompanied by the hashtag “#FreeRicky.”

Some tweets about Mr. Mackey from prominent figures have included apocalyptic-sounding language. The Fox personality Tucker Carlson posted a video of himself on Twitter calling the trial “the single greatest assault on free speech and human rights in this country’s modern history.”

ny times logoNew York Times, Video Shows Virginia Man’s Death in Custody, Campbell Robertson and Christine Hauser, March 22, 2023 (print ed.). Seven deputies in Henrico County have been charged with second-degree murder in the death of Irvo Otieno at a hospital.

Surveillance video from a state psychiatric hospital in Virginia shows a group of sheriff’s deputies and medical staff piling on a handcuffed man, Irvo Otieno, and pinning him for nearly 11 minutes until his death on March 6.

The video, which was obtained by The Washington Post before its expected release on Tuesday, shows at least seven deputies from the Henrico County sheriff’s office enter a room at Central State Hospital in Dinwiddie County dragging Mr. Otieno, who is shirtless and in handcuffs and leg shackles. The deputies push him into a small couch and then force him to the floor, where they pinion him until his death while medical staff stand aside, the video shows.

The Dinwiddie County prosecutor, Ann Cabell Baskervill, has charged seven sheriff’s deputies and three employees of the hospital with second degree murder. She had announced that she was publicly releasing the video on Tuesday, though some defense lawyers had filed motions to block its release. However, The Post accessed the video through a court filing and published it.

Mr. Otieno, who had long been struggling with mental health and had been taken from his home three days earlier, had been moved to the hospital by sheriff’s deputies from a county jail earlier that day. In the video, people who seem to be part of the medical staff walk in and out of the room as the deputies pile on Mr. Otieno, 28, pinning his legs and arms and pushing his body down to the floor.

washington post logoWashington Post, Gladys Kessler, federal judge in landmark tobacco lawsuit, dies at 85, Emily Langer, March 22, 2023. In a major gladys kesslerruling in 2006, she found that cigarette makers had conspired for decades to deceive the public about the deadly threat posed by smoking.

Judge Kessler, a former public-interest lawyer who served for 17 years on the D.C. Superior Court, was appointed by President Bill Clinton in 1994 to the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.

Politico, Fear, burnout and insubordination: Insiders spill details about life at the highest levels of FBI, Josh Gerstein and Kyle Cheney, March 21, 2023 (print ed.).  A christopher-wray-o.jpgdiscrimination case has pulled back the curtain on the tense atmosphere at the bureau’s legal office; FBI employees and guests listen at an installation ceremony for FBI Director Chris Wray, right.

politico CustomA gender discrimination trial in Washington, D.C., shined a harsh spotlight on one of the most important legal offices in the U.S. government, portraying it as a hotbed of dysfunction, turf wars, mismanagement and paranoia.

The lawsuit, which came to a head earlier this month in federal court in the nation’s capital, centered on claims of gender discrimination in the FBI’s general counsel’s office, where some of the most powerful attorneys in the country are charged with helping safeguard Americans from terrorism, cyber threats, organized crime and corruption.

FBI logoA federal jury ultimately sided with the FBI, but not before a parade of witnesses testified to startling revelations about the bureau, exposing dysfunction and management woes that at times have been exploited by the bureau’s detractors — most notably amid Donald Trump’s crusade against investigations into his activities.

The trial drew little notice inside the federal courthouse in Washington, D.C., where numerous high-profile Jan. 6 defendants were simultaneously standing trial, and grand juries probing potential crimes by Trump and his allies remain active. But the proceedings offered a peek inside the secretive confines of the FBI — describing degrees of dysfunction that are rarely aired, particularly by the FBI insiders themselves.

The list of trial witnesses included Jim Baker, who testified that when he took over as FBI general counsel in 2014, his staff of about 200 lawyers were burned out, locked in bureaucratic turf battles and wracked by fear of their own colleagues. Baker said that in the early part of his tenure, some employees were so afraid to raise concerns in front of others that they “frequently” slipped anonymous notes under his door overnight — typewritten to conceal handwriting.

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More On U.S. Abortion, #MeToo, Stalking, Rape Laws 

washington post logoWashington Post, Oklahoma must allow abortion if mother’s life is threatened, court rules, Andrew Jeong, March 22, 2023. The Oklahoma Supreme Court overturned part of the state’s near-total abortion ban, ruling in a 5-to-4 decision that the procedure would be lawful if there is a reasonable chance that a pregnancy could threaten a pregnant person’s life.

Oklahoma’s constitution protects the right to an abortion if “the woman’s physician has determined to a reasonable degree of medical certainty” that continuing “the pregnancy will endanger the woman’s life,” the court’s justices said in Tuesday’s ruling. “Absolute certainty” that the pregnancy will be life-threatening isn’t required, but “mere possibility or speculation” is insufficient, they added.

Previously, the state allowed abortions only in cases of medical emergencies, requiring the patient to “be in actual and present danger in order for her to obtain a medically necessary abortion,” the justices wrote.

washington post logoWashington Post, Opinion: Senate Democrats should be holding oversight hearings of their own, Jennifer Rubin, right, March 22, 2023. House jennifer rubin new headshotRepublicans have given oversight a bad name. Oversight should not be about baseless fishing expeditions (e.g., political pressure on Twitter), political payback (e.g., Hunter Biden), or obstruction of the Justice Department or local prosecutors (for instance, wholly overstepping congressional authority and violating states’ policing authority in harassing Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg).

For starters, oversight hearings must have a legitimate legislative purpose. Done properly, an information-gathering and public-education process can provide the basis for thoughtful legislation. But when it comes to necessary oversight, Senate Democrats have done precious little despite an array of topics crying out for congressional investigation.

Abortion: The Supreme Court decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization has triggered a slew of abortion bans, with devastating consequences for women and their families. The lawsuit filed in Texas by five women and two doctors documents the danger and suffering the state’s abortion ban has inflicted on women, the dire consequences for women who need appropriate care for miscarriages, and the impact on the medical profession.

A new report from the National Center for Health Statistics documents that even before Dobbs, the United States’ already-high maternal death rate was rising (32.9 deaths per 100,000 live births in 2021 compared with 23.8 in 2020 and 20.1 in 2019), especially for Black women (2.6 times that of White women). After Dobbs, that figure can be expected to soar.

Where are the Senate hearings on this health crisis? Senators should bring in a variety of health-care specialists, hospital officials, medical ethicists, women, families of female victims, sociologists and statisticians (to highlight the economic, emotional and family impact when women are forced to give birth against their will), and legal scholars (to, among other things, explain the inherent vagueness and unworkability of state statutes). Senate Republicans who have cheered these bans should see evidence of the harm they support.

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

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ny times logoNew York Times, Storm-Ravaged California Prepares for More Rain and Snow, Jesus Jiménez, March 22, 2023 (print ed.). Some in the central part of the state were being urged to evacuate, though the latest system was not expected to be as powerful as previous weather events this year.

California is bracing for yet another storm system, one that is expected to bring heavy rain and snow on Tuesday and into Wednesday to a state that has been battered by storm after storm over the past few weeks.

The latest storm system is forecast to bring up to four inches of rain to parts of Southern and Central California, and up to four feet of snow in elevations above 6,000 feet, according to the National Weather Service. The merging threats of rain, snow and gusty winds up to 75 miles per hour may lead to downed trees and power lines, as well as flooding and a “significant threat of avalanches” at higher elevations, the Weather Service said.

By Tuesday morning, it was already raining in many parts of the state. Some areas had received nearly an inch of rain since midnight. Meteorologists with the Weather Service in Hanford, Calif., were keeping an eye on water levels on rivers, creeks and steams, which they said were “extremely high,” and that heavy rain below 4,000 feet could cause flooding. The heaviest rain was expected in the afternoon and evening.

washington post logoWashington Post, Senate hearing to focus on Norfolk Southern’s safety record, Ian Duncan, Luz Lazo, Michael Laris and Scott Dance, March 22, 2023. Norfolk Southern chief executive Alan Shaw will return Wednesday to the Senate, where he is expected to face questions on the railroad’s safety record following the derailment of one of its trains last month in East Palestine, Ohio.

ny times logoNew York Times, A Different Kind of Pipeline Project Scrambles Midwest Politics, Mitch Smith, Photographs by Alyssa Schukar, March 21, 2023 (print ed.).  Plans that would bury carbon underground rather than release it in the air have stoked debate over climate and property rights, creating unlikely alliances.

For more than a decade, the Midwest was the site of bitter clashes over plans for thousand-mile pipelines meant to carry crude oil beneath cornfields and cattle ranches.

Now high-dollar pipeline fights are happening again, but with a twist.

Instead of oil, these projects would carry millions of tons of carbon dioxide from ethanol plants to be injected into underground rock formations rather than dispersed as pollutants in the air.

What is playing out is a very different kind of environmental battle, a huge test not just for farmers and landowners but for emerging technologies promoted as ways to safely store planet-warming carbon.

The technology has generated support from powerful politicians in both parties, as well as major farming organizations, ethanol producers and some environmental groups.

Supporters, including some farmers who have signed agreements to have a pipeline buried on their property, frame the ideas being proposed by two companies as a win for both the economy and environment. They say the pipelines, boosted by federal tax credits, including from the Inflation Reduction Act that President Biden signed last year, would lower carbon emissions while aiding the agricultural economy through continued ethanol production.

But opponents are concerned about property rights and safety, and are not convinced of the projects’ claimed environmental benefits. They have forged unlikely alliances that have blurred the region’s political lines, uniting conservative farmers with liberal urbanites, white people with Native Americans, small-government Republicans with climate-conscious Democrats.

The result, both sides agree, is a high-stakes economic and environmental struggle pitting pipeline advocates against opponents who honed their political and legal strategies over nearly 15 years of fighting the Dakota Access oil pipeline, which has been in operation since 2017, and the Keystone XL oil pipeline, which was never built.

There is no question that technology exists to remove carbon from industrial sites and to transport and store it underground. Less clear: Is carbon capture really an effective counterweight to the overheating planet? And, if so, at what cost?

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Media, Education, Arts, High Tech

washington post logoWashington Post, Judge sounds skeptical of some Fox arguments in Dominion lawsuit, Jeremy Barr, March 22, 2023 (print ed.). Judge Eric M. Davis pushed back on assertions from both sides in Dominion’s libel lawsuit against Fox News, but he seemed particularly skeptical of the network’s claims

ny times logoNew York Times, Inside the 3 Months That Could Cost Fox $1.6 Billion, Jeremy W. Peters, March 21, 2023 (print ed.). The decision by Fox News executives in November 2020 to treat the more hard-right Newsmax as a mortal threat spawned a possibly more serious danger.

fox news logo SmallSince 2002, when Fox News first overtook CNN as the most-watched cable news channel, one thing has been as certain and predictable as its dominance: Every time a Democrat wins the White House, the right-leaning network’s ratings take a momentary dip.

That happened after the election of President Biden in 2020, too. But the reaction inside Fox was far different than before.

There was panic. From the chairman of Fox Corporation on down, executives scrambled as they tried to keep viewers tuned in, believing they were facing a crisis. Now, because of the decisions made after former President Donald J. Trump’s loss, Fox News is reckoning with a threat that could prove far more serious.

dominion voting systemsA $1.6 billion defamation suit from Dominion Voting Systems claims Fox knowingly spread false information about the role of the firm’s election technology in a made-up conspiracy to flip votes. On Tuesday, the two sides will present oral arguments before a judge in Delaware state court as they prepare for a trial next month.

Fox has insisted that it wasn’t presenting claims about Dominion as fact but was reporting and opining on them as any news organization would.

She says lawyers made her give misleading Dominion testimony.

As part of the suit, Dominion obtained thousands of internal Fox emails and text messages and deposed dozens of Fox employees. That evidence shows in extraordinary detail how the network lost its way in the weeks after the election. Here is a timeline of that fateful period, as told in court filings. Some of these exchanges have been lightly condensed for clarity.

 

tucker carlson fox horizontal

ny times logoNew York Times, A Fox News producer sued the network, saying she was coerced into giving misleading testimony in the Dominion case, Nicholas Confessore and Katie Robertson, March 21, 2023 (print ed.). The producer, Abby Grossberg, said in a pair of lawsuits that the effort to place blame on her and Maria Bartiromo, the Fox Business host, was rooted in rampant misogyny and discrimination at the company.

maria bartiromoA Fox News producer who has worked with the hosts Maria Bartiromo, right, and Tucker Carlson filed lawsuits against the company in New York and Delaware on Monday, accusing Fox lawyers of coercing her into giving misleading testimony in the continuing legal battle around the network’s coverage of unfounded claims about election fraud.

The producer, Abby Grossberg, said Fox lawyers had tried to position her and Ms. Bartiromo to take the blame for Fox’s repeated airing of conspiracy theories about Dominion Voting Systems and its supposed role in manipulating the results of the 2020 presidential election. Dominion has filed a $1.6 billion defamation suit against Fox. Ms. Grossberg said the effort to place blame on her and Ms. Bartiromo was rooted in rampant misogyny and discrimination at the network.

fox news logo SmallThe new lawsuits, coupled with revelations from the Dominion legal fight, shed light on the rivalries and turf battles that raged at Fox News in the wake of the 2020 election, as network executives fought to hold on to viewers furious at the top-rated network for accurately reporting on President Donald J. Trump’s defeat in Arizona, a crucial swing state.

The lawsuits also include details about Ms. Grossberg’s work life at Fox and on Mr. Carlson’s show. Ms. Grossberg says she and other women endured frank and open sexism from co-workers and superiors at the network, which has been dogged for years by lawsuits and allegations about sexual harassment by Fox executives and stars.

The network’s disregard for women, Ms. Grossberg alleged, left her and Ms. Bartiromo understaffed — stretched too thin to properly vet the truthfulness of claims made against Dominion on the air. At times, Ms. Grossberg said, she was the only full-time employee dedicated solely to Ms. Bartiromo’s Sunday-morning show.

dominion voting systemsIn her complaints, Ms. Grossberg accuses lawyers for Fox News of coaching her in “a coercive and intimidating manner” before her September deposition in the Dominion case. The lawyers, she said, gave her the impression that she had to avoid mentioning prominent male executives and on-air talent to protect them from any blame, while putting her own reputation at risk.

On Monday afternoon, Fox filed its own suit against Ms. Grossberg, seeking to enjoin her from filing claims that would shed light on her discussions with the company’s lawyers. A judge has not yet ruled on Fox’s suit. Later on Monday, according to her lawyer, Parisis G. Filippatos, Fox also placed Ms. Grossberg on forced administrative leave.

Ms. Grossberg’s lawsuits were filed in the Southern District of New York and in Superior Court in Delaware, where a pretrial hearing in the Dominion defamation lawsuit is scheduled for Tuesday.

In a statement, a Fox spokeswoman said: “Fox News Media engaged an independent outside counsel to immediately investigate the concerns raised by Ms. Grossberg, which were made following a critical performance review. We will vigorously defend these claims.”

According to the lawsuits filed by Ms. Grossberg, Fox superiors called Ms. Bartiromo a “crazy bitch” who was “menopausal” and asked Ms. Grossberg to cut the host out of coverage discussions.

Last year, she began working as a senior booking producer at “Tucker Carlson Tonight.” On her first full day, according to the lawsuit, Ms. Grossberg discovered that the show’s Manhattan work space was decorated with large pictures of Representative Nancy Pelosi of California, then the House speaker, wearing a plunging swimsuit.

Later that fall, it said, before an appearance on the show by Tudor Dixon, the Republican candidate for Michigan governor, Mr. Carlson’s staff held a mock debate about whether they would prefer to have sex with Ms. Dixon or her Democratic opponent, Gov. Gretchen Whitmer.

After Ms. Grossberg complained about harassment from two male producers on the show, she was pulled into a meeting with human resources and told that she was not performing her duties, according to the complaint.

ny times logoNew York Times, DNA From Beethoven’s Hair Unlocks Medical and Family Secrets, Gina Kolata, March 22, 2023. By analyzing samples of hair said to have come from Ludwig van Beethoven, researchers debunked myths about the revered composer while raising new questions.

It was March 1827 and Ludwig van Beethoven was dying. As he lay in bed, wracked with abdominal pain and jaundiced, grieving friends and acquaintances came to visit. And some asked a favor: Could they clip a lock of his hair for remembrance?

The parade of mourners continued after Beethoven’s death at age 56, even after doctors performed a gruesome craniotomy, looking at the folds in Beethoven’s brain and removing his ear bones in a vain attempt to understand why the revered composer lost his hearing.

Within three days of Beethoven’s death, not a single strand of hair was left on his head.

Ever since, a cottage industry has aimed to understand Beethoven’s illnesses and the cause of his death.

Now, an analysis of strands of his hair has upended long held beliefs about his health. The report provides an explanation for his debilitating ailments and even his death, while also raising new questions about his genealogical origins and hinting at a dark family secret.

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Pandemics, Public Health, Privacy

ny times logoNew York Times, China Approves an mRNA Covid Vaccine, Its First, Nicole Hong and Alexandra Stevenson, March 22, 2023. 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.

China’s new mRNA vaccine, developed by CSPC Pharmaceutical Group Ltd., based in the northern Chinese city of Shijiazhuang, was approved for emergency use by China’s health regulator, according to a statement from the company on Wednesday.

Among the vaccines currently available in China, the most widely known are made by the companies Sinopharm and Sinovac. Like other traditional vaccines, they rely on a century-old method for inoculation, which use an inactivated virus to trigger a response by the immune system, and have since proven to be less effective in protecting against symptomatic disease.

washington post logoWashington Post, Idaho hospital to stop delivering babies, partly due to ‘political climate,’ Brittany Shammas and Marisa Iati, March 22, 2023 (print ed.). Brooke Macumber planned to have her fourth child in the same small hospital where two of her older children were born — the same place her husband had been delivered decades earlier.

idaho map localBut at 23 weeks pregnant, she found out that the facility, Bonner General Health in rural Sandpoint, Idaho, was shuttering its obstetrics unit after almost 75 years. Now, the closest hospital able to deliver her baby is more than an hour’s drive from her home.

“I’ve just had nightmares of making my husband pull off and delivering in the front seat of our car,” said Macumber, 25, who lives on the outskirts of a 500-resident town near the Montana border.

The closure of Bonner’s labor and delivery department follows a national trend that researchers have associated with potentially dangerous out-of-hospital and preterm births. Access to obstetric services has been on the decline for years in rural areas, with at least 89 obstetrics units in rural U.S. hospitals closing their doors between 2015 and 2019, according to the American Hospital Association. More than half of rural counties — home to 2.2 million women of childbearing age — are now maternity-care deserts.

Some obstetricians say the problem has been exacerbated by the recent passage of laws criminalizing abortion, which can make recruiting and retaining physicians all the more difficult.

ny times logoNew York Times, Covid Politics Leave a Florida Public Hospital Shaken, Patricia Mazzei, March 20, 2023 (print ed.). Staff members of Sarasota Memorial Hospital are bewildered by critics who continue to wage a campaign against federal guidelines on Covid treatment.

covad 19 photo.jpg Custom 2The turmoil at Sarasota Memorial, one of Florida’s largest public hospitals, began last year after three candidates running on a platform of “health freedom” won seats on the nine-member board that oversees the hospital. Board meetings, once sleepy, started drawing hundreds of angry people who, like the new members, denounced the hospital’s treatment protocols for Covid-19.

An internal review last month found that Sarasota Memorial did far better than some of its competitors in saving Covid patients’ lives. But that did little to quell detractors, whose campaign against the hospital has not relented. By then, the hospital had become the latest public institution under siege by an increasingly large and vocal right-wing contingent in one of Florida’s most affluent counties, where a backlash to pandemic policies has started reshaping local government.

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Proof, Going Deep, Investigative Commentary: A Primer for the Imminent Indictment of Former President Trump, Seth Abramson, left, best-selling author, attorney and journalism professor, March 20-21, 2023. A man who seth abramson graphicpresents as a malignant-narcissist sociopath—having already incited an insurrection and stoked far-right fantasies of a Second U.S. Civil War—is about to be indicted. Here’s what to expect.

Introduction: The pieces are all in place.

seth abramson proof logoDonald Trump’s cultish followers are on social media promising en masse to launch a violent civil war against the rest of us if their leader is finally treated the same way the rest of us would be if we’d repeatedly committed state and federal crimes over a span of decades.

Current and future Trumpist insurrectionists are being goaded on by far-right media—which falsely assures them that Mr. Trump is being mistreated via an overcharged case in New York City—and by Trump himself, who’s lately added to his repertoire of regularly calling the Black prosecutors investigating him “racists” and falsely alleging that they’re part of a vast left-wing conspiracy the further libels that (a) he’s a victim of Extortion by adult-film actress Stormy Daniels (he is not), (b) the prosecutors in his case are engaged in prosecutorial misconduct because they’re well aware that the statute of limitations has run on the crimes he’s about to be charged with (they are not and it has not), and (c) his prospective indictment in a Manhattan courthouse is a response to his nascent presidential campaign (it is not, as anyone old enough to remember Trump’s co-conspirator Michael Cohen getting a lengthy federal prison sentence in 2018 over the exact same sequence of facts will readily understand).

Trump’s scurrilous claims are being echoed not just by Fox News and, in even more aggressive terms, OANN and Newsmax and Breitbart and Trump whisperer Steve Bannon’s “War Room” podcast, but also by rogue attorneys like Alan Dershowitz who sagely assure Trumpists who know nothing about U.S. criminal law that their emotionalized overreaction to someone they personally like staring down a criminal indictment isn’t just psychologically or socioculturally but legally warranted (it is not).

Fox News in particular has been trying to use the coming Trump indictment in New York to regain the viewership it lost after many Trumpists abandoned it in the wake of January 6, citing—at the time—its allegedly soft commitment to the devolution of the United States into an autocratic hellscape run by America’s first unabashed tyrant. If you’ve been following Fox News in recent days you’re seeing the same signals you saw when the network was spreading the “Big Lie” about the 2020 presidential election, a course of astonishly premeditated corporate malfeasance that is currently the subject of a civil lawsuit that could cataclysmically effect the far-right propaganda organ.

Fox News anchors are repeatedly misstating the law, giving Trump agents and aides and advisers and allies and attorneys free reign to misstate the facts of the allegations against him and recklessly malign career public servants, and in what may be an even more sinister maneuver than either of those easily clocked gambits is carpeting its airwaves with the notion that just because America has never before had a President of the United States as corrupt as Trump—and therefore has never needed to indict a former president before—it must actually be the case that anyone who wants to see our rule of law adapt to upsetting new circumstances is in fact seeking to demolish America from within.

Here’s the truth: (1) We knew years ago that Trump was “Individual-1” in a criminal conspiracy that violated federal law and has already landed one of its flunkies, Cohen—not a ringleader like Trump—in federal prison, and (2) while many in media may call the state case Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg is apparently about to bring against Trump a “hush-money” case, it is actually a case about Trump trying to steal the 2016 presidential election under the noses of American voters and doing so successfully.

Steve Bannon, then Trump’s campaign CEO, would later say that for Trump to run for president “a hundred” women had to be shut up so that American voters wouldn’t learn (or, charitably, come to fully appreciate) that Trump was and has always been a serial philanderer and sexual assailant who treats women like disposable property. (Keep in mind, here, that women make up more than half of the American electorate.)

We would even later learn that Trump pal and fixer David Pecker, a sleazy magazine publisher, had an entire “vault” in his office full of “catch-and-kill” stories he had purchased from former Trump mistresses just so that he could bury them on Trump’s behalf. And as discussed and substantiated in the 2019 New York Times bestseller Proof of Conspiracy (Macmillan, 2019), there is every reason to think Pecker got at least some of the money for these clandestine payoffs from infamous murderer and U.S. election-tamperer, Saudi crown prince Mohammed bin Salman.

(You may recall, too, that per the Mueller Report, Michael Cohen—the same Trump friend, fixer, attorney, and employee who subsequently went to prison for paying to keep Stormy Daniels quiet—spent October 2016 trying to keep quiet evidence that both he and Trump believed existed of Trump carrying himself in Russia, on several occasions, like a man who is a serial philanderer and sexual assailant who treats women like disposable property.)

So when, just days after the Access Hollywood tape dropped, Trump set in motion the series of state and federal crimes that ended with an illegal payoff to Stormy Daniels, he was trying to hide from U.S. voters a series of facts that he personally believed, as did everyone else in his inner circle, would cost him the presidency (if his own thus-far inept campaign hadn’t done that already; little did Trump know—yet—that the actions of his unscrupulous attorneys Rudy Giuliani and Joseph diGenova would soon help convince the FBI to needlessly reopen a closed criminal investigation of Hillary Clinton, which ultimately was the reason Trump won election to the White House).

.... [Several thousand words of discussion and analysis]

Conclusion:

America is in the position it is in right now for three primary reasons: the persistent criminality of Donald Trump; the cowardice of Republican leadership in not standing up to such misconduct and advocating for its punishment; and the reticence of federal and state officials of all political stripes—across decades and jurisdictions—to do the hard work of ensuring that criminal statutes are applied equally to all Americans regardless of their race, ethnicity, gender, wealth, fame, or political clout.

This is, without a doubt, a time of testing for America. We can come out stronger than we were before if we remember what it is that made America and being an American so important to us in the first place. The goal of Trump and his sycophants is to get us to forget all we know—or, alternatively, ignore all that experts have learned and come forward to disseminate publicly—about criminal law, free and fair elections, basic civic responsibility, religious morality and secular ethics, and simple human decency.

If we can hold fast to these truths in a time of crisis, we can endure here in the United States for another quarter millennium. If we can’t, America may cross a tipping point sometime during the next 18 months from which there simply isn’t any way back.

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washington post logoWashington Post, World is on brink of climate calamity, definitive U.N. climate report warns, Sarah Kaplan, March 21, 2023 (print ed.). A dangerous climate threshold is near, but ‘it does not mean we are doomed’ if swift action is taken, scientists say.

Human activities have transformed the planet at a pace and scale unmatched in recorded history, causing irreversible damage to communities and ecosystems, according to one of the most definitive reports ever published about climate change. Leading scientists warned that the world’s plans to combat these changes are inadequate and that more aggressive actions must be taken to avert catastrophic warming.

The report released Monday from the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change found the world is likely to miss its most ambitious climate target — limiting warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) above preindustrial temperatures — within a decade. Beyond that threshold, scientists have found, climate disasters will become so extreme people cannot adapt. Heat waves, famines and infectious diseases will claim millions of additional lives. Basic components of the Earth system will be fundamentally, irrevocably altered.

Monday’s assessment synthesizes years of studies on the causes and consequences of rising temperatures, leading U.N. Secretary General António Guterres to demand that developed countries like the United States eliminate carbon emissions by 2040 — a decade earlier than the rest of the world.

ny times logoNew York Times, First Official Estimate of Somalia’s Drought Shows 43,000 Dead, Abdi Latif Dahir, March 21, 2023 (print ed.). At least half of the deaths were children under the age of 5, according to the report by health researchers, the United Nations and the Somali government.

About 43,000 people died last year from the drought in Somalia, according to international agencies and the government, which on Monday released the first official death toll about the record drought devastating the Horn of Africa nation.

At least half of those deaths were children under the age of 5 who had been living in south-central Somalia, the center of the drought crisis. Experts called the drought the worst in decades even before the release of the report, which was conducted by the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and released by the World Health Organization, the United Nations Children’s Fund and the Somali government.

The researchers warned that in the first six months of this year, too, between 18,000 and 34,000 people are likely to succumb to the drought.

The new estimates illustrated the grim impact of the drought, which has led to massive displacement, outbreaks of disease and acute malnutrition among children — affecting millions not only in Somalia but also in Kenya and Ethiopia. The drought has wiped out millions of livestock animals that families depend on for food and income, and left nearly half of Somalia’s population of 16 million hungry.

 A photograph released by Russian state media showing Chinese President Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin meeting at the Kremlin (Photo by Sergei Karpukhin of Sputnik).

A photograph released by Russian state media showing Chinese President Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin meeting at the Kremlin (Photo by Sergei Karpukhin of Sputnik).

ny times logoNew York Times, Ukraine Live Updates: As Xi and Putin Resume Talks, Japan’s Leader Visits Ukraine, Staff Reports, March 21, 2023. On the second day of his visit to Moscow, China’s leader, Xi Jinping, said he had invited President Vladimir Putin of Russia to Beijing; In a competing display of support, Prime Minister Fumio Kishida of Japan made an unannounced visit to Ukraine.

As China’s leader, Xi Jinping, met for a second day with President Vladimir V. Putin in Moscow, Japan’s prime minister made an unannounced visit to Kyiv on Tuesday in a show of support for Ukraine against Russia’s invasion.

With his surprise foray into an active war zone, Prime Minister Fumio Kishida of Japan (shown at right in a Manichi photo) highlighted his nation’s unusually swift and proactive Fumio Kishida (shown in a Manichi photo)allegiance with Ukraine and set the stage for competing displays of diplomacy from two East Asian neighbors.

On the war in Ukraine, China has been trying to maintain a nearly impossible position, presenting itself as an impartial observer while maintaining close ties with Russia. Beijing has had practice: its balancing act predates President Vladimir V. Putin’s full-scale invasion. For decades it tried to build ties with Russia while also keeping Ukraine close.

In 1992, China was among the first countries to establish ties with a newly independent Ukraine after the collapse of the Soviet Union. It turned to Ukraine as a major supplier of corn, sunflower and grapeseed oil, as well as arms technology.

JapanAs Prime Minister Fumio Kishida of Japan visits Kyiv, it’s worth remembering that Japan has its own territorial dispute with Russia dating back to World War II over islands off the coast of Hokkaido. Talks on the issue broke down last March over Tokyo’s support for international sanctions against Moscow for its invasion of Ukraine.

ny times logoNew York Times, China is supplying drones to Russia, a sign of quiet collaboration between the two, Paul Mozur, Aaron Krolik and Keith Bradsher, March 21, 2023.  China has shipped more than $12 million in drones to Russia since it invaded Ukraine, in an indication of quiet collaboration between the two.

China FlagThe Biden administration vowed last month to crack down on companies that sell critical technologies to Russia as part of its efforts to curtail the country’s war against Ukraine. But the continued flow of Chinese drones to the country explains why that will be hard.

While drone sales have slowed, American policies put in place after Russia’s invasion have failed to stanch exports of the unmanned aerial vehicles that work as eyes in the sky for frontline fighters. In the year since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, China has sold more than $12 million in drones and drone parts to the country, according to official Russian customs data from a third-party data provider.

It is hard to determine whether the Chinese drones contain American technologies that would violate the U.S. rules or whether they are legal. The shipments, a mix of products from DJI, the world’s best-known drone maker, and an array of smaller companies, often came through small-time middlemen and exporters.

Complicated sales channels and vague product descriptions within export data also make it hard to definitively show whether there are U.S. components in the Chinese products, which could constitute a violation of the American export controls. And the official sales are likely only one part of a larger flow of technologies through unofficial channels and other nations friendly to Russia, like Kazakhstan, Pakistan and Belarus.

The result is a steady supply of new drones to Russia that make their way to the front lines of its war with Ukraine. On the battlefield, the hovering quadcopters often last only a few flights before they are blown out of the skies. Refilling stockpiles of even the most basic unmanned aerial vehicles has become as critical as other basic necessities, such as procuring artillery shells and bullets.

Militarily, diplomatically and economically, Beijing has become an increasingly important buttress for Russia in its war effort. China has remained one of the largest buyers of Russian oil, helping finance the invasion. The two sides have also held joint military exercises and jointly assailed the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.

As China’s top leader, Xi Jinping, meets this week with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, U.S. officials have warned that China is still considering selling lethal weapons for use in Ukraine.

ny times logoNew York Times, Live Updates: As Xi and Putin Meet, U.S. Assails ‘Diplomatic Cover’ for War Crimes, Anton Troianovski, Valerie Hopkins, Carly Olson and Chris Buckley, March 21, 2023 (print ed.). Three days after the International Criminal Court accused President Vladimir Putin of Russia of war crimes in Ukraine, President Xi Jinping of China arrived in Moscow for a state visit.

Here’s what to know about Xi’s visit to Russia.

Xi Jinping, China’s leader, and President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia met face-to-face on Monday in Moscow, where Mr. Xi hailed the two nations as “good neighbors and reliable partners” during a state visit that has been closely watched by Kyiv and its Western allies.

While Chinese officials have attempted to cast Mr. Xi as a mediator who can broker a peaceful resolution in Ukraine, officials in the United States have been wary of China’s involvement. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who previously warned that Beijing could provide weapons to Russia, said on Monday that the visit amounted to “diplomatic cover” for Russian war crimes.

Talks in Moscow on Monday between President Xi Jinping of China and President Vladimir V. Putin covered their plans to strengthen bilateral relations and also the war in Ukraine, according to an official Chinese summary of the meeting that gave no sign that any breakthrough had been reached over the fighting.

Citing the broadly worded framework for peace talks that China issued last month, Mr. Xi told his Russian counterpart that such negotiations were the only viable way of ending the yearlong war, according to a summary of their meeting released by Xinhua, the Chinese state news agency.

 

John F. Kirby, a White House spokesman, at a news briefing in Washington on Monday (White House pool photo by Jim Lo Scalzo).

 John F. Kirby, a White House spokesman, at a news briefing in Washington on Monday (White House pool photo by Jim Lo Scalzo).

U.S. officials are not certain that Beijing will provide weapons to Moscow to further the Russian invasion of Ukraine, John Kirby, a White House spokesman shown above, told reporters on Monday, weeks after Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken had warned of the possibility.

Mr. Kirby’s statement came as the leaders of China and Russia met in Moscow amid concern that China could decide to abandon its peacemaker stance on the invasion of Ukraine and arm Russia’s military.

Russian leader Vladimir Putin, left, and Chinese leader Xi Jinping, both wearing dark suits, speak to each other in front of the Russian and Chinese flags in Beijing last year (Sputnik photo via Reuters).

Russian leader Vladimir Putin, left, and Chinese leader Xi Jinping, both wearing dark suits, speak to each other in front of the Russian and Chinese flags in Beijing last year at the Winter Olympics shortly before Russia invaded Ukraine (Sputnik photo via Reuters). 

washington post logoWashington Post, Live Update: Xi arrives in Russia to stand with Putin against West amid Ukraine war, Francesca Ebel and Lily Kuo, March 21, 2023 (print ed.). Russian analysts skeptical Putin-Xi talks will make progress on peace; Ukraine ‘ready’ for ‘closer dialogue with China.’

Chinese leader Xi Jinping landed in Russia on Monday for a much-anticipated three-day state visit, taking a joint stand with President Vladimir Putin against the West even as the Russian leader stands accused by the International Criminal Court of war crimes in Ukraine.

China FlagThe two men, each positioned as “leader for life” of a nuclear power, celebrated their “no limits” relationship in Beijing together in early 2022, just weeks before Putin ordered his full-scale invasion of Ukraine, and they have met about 40 times. But Monday’s visit, the first by Xi since the invasion, represents a display of tacit support by China for the war and a personal triumph for Putin, who is eager to show he is not isolated on the international stage.

Xi’s plane arrived at Vnukovo International Airport just southwest of the Russian capital at approximately 1 p.m. local time Monday. The presidential motorcade then made its way to the center of Moscow, where dozens of people waving Chinese and Russian flags greeted the delegation outside his hotel, the Soluxe Hotel in the north of the city. Initial talks were scheduled to begin in the afternoon, followed by a dinner later with Putin.

ny times logoNew York Times, Trump’s Call for Protests of Pending Arrest Splits G.O.P., Shane Goldmacher and Alan Feuer, March 21, 2023 (print ed.). After Donald Trump urged supporters to protest his looming indictment, some Republicans have heeded the call, while many others have lobbied against it.

His call to protest his expected indictment has divided his allies on the right, as some fear mass gatherings could devolve into violence and lead to the prosecution of his supporters just as the Jan. 6 riot at the Capitol did two years ago.

While some Republicans have echoed Mr. Trump’s call to take to the streets, other prominent voices on the right are urging caution and for people to stay away, particularly from New York, where they note that any potential unrest would invite prosecution from the same official who is expected to charge Mr. Trump — the Manhattan district attorney, Alvin L. Bragg.

“Better to stay home,” advised Jeffrey Clark, the former Justice Department official who was nearly named acting attorney general by Mr. Trump in late 2020 as the president sought to overturn his election loss. “Think, rethink, and triple think before you physically go to protest anywhere in the Big Apple.”

The Republican speaker of the House, Kevin McCarthy, who owes his post in part to Mr. Trump’s support, was among those urging Trump supporters to stay away on Sunday. “I don’t think people should protest this, no,” he said during a news conference in Florida, adding, “And I think President Trump, if you talk to him, he doesn’t believe that, either.”

Mr. Trump, though, has long measured the strength of his standing by the blunt metric of the size of the crowds that show up for him, in good times and in bad ones.

When the “Access Hollywood” video first broke in 2016, Mr. Trump found comfort in the small band of supporters who stood in solidarity with Trump signs outside Trump Tower on Fifth Avenue, visiting them briefly with a fist pump. And, once he became president, the first mini-drama of his White House tenure was related to his insistent exaggerations about the crowd size at his inauguration.

ny times logoNew York Times, Four Convicted of Obstruction on Jan. 6 in Final Oath Keepers Trial, Alan Feuer and Zach Montague, March 21, 2023 (print ed.). The verdicts came after trials in which other members of the far-right militia were convicted of seditious conspiracy for their roles in the Capitol attack.

Four people who marched with the Oath Keepers militia into the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, were convicted on Monday of conspiracy to obstruct the work of Congress, bringing an end to the third and final trial examining the role that members of the far-right group played in the attack.

The four defendants — Sandra Parker, Laura Steele, Connie Meggs and William Isaacs — were also found guilty of an array of other charges, including destruction of government property and conspiracy to prevent members of Congress from discharging their duties by certifying the results of the 2020 election.

Two other people charged in the case — Ms. Parker’s husband, Bennie Parker, and Michael Greene, a close associate of Stewart Rhodes, the leader of the Oath Keepers — avoided conviction on conspiracy charges, but were both found guilty of illegally entering and remaining on the Capitol grounds.

The verdicts, handed up after more than a week of deliberations in Federal District Court in Washington, followed the convictions at two separate trials of Mr. Rhodes and five other members of his group on charges of seditious conspiracy, the most significant count to have been brought so far against any of the 1,000 people arrested in connection with the Capitol attack.

Mr. Rhodes and one of his top lieutenants, Kelly Meggs, the husband of Connie Meggs, were both found guilty of sedition at a trial that ended in November. In January, in another trial, four other Oath Keepers — Roberto Minuta, Joseph Hackett, David Moerschel and Edward Vallejo — were also convicted of sedition.

The defendants in the latest Oath Keepers trial never faced sedition charges and mostly played less significant roles in the Capitol attack than those in the two earlier trials. Mr. and Mrs. Parker, a retired couple from Ohio, were in their 60s and 70s, for example, and Mr. Isaacs, as his lawyer repeatedly argued, suffered from a severe form of autism.

Still, the jury apparently believed the prosecution’s claims that they had broken the law by either entering the Capitol or by breaching barricades outside and going into a restricted area.

“They seized and claimed a building that cannot belong to them alone,” Alexandra Hughes, a prosecutor, said of the defendants during her closing statement this month. “They imposed their will on the democratic process. They violated a principle that we all must abide.”

The three Oath Keepers trials have now led to felony convictions against 15 members of the group, all but crippling an organization that at its height had tens of thousands of adherents and conducted self-appointed vigilante missions for more than a decade in cities across the country.

The plight of the Oath Keepers stands in stark contrast to that of the Proud Boys, another far-right group whose leaders and members have faced charges in connection with Jan. 6. Even though five Proud Boys — including the group’s former chairman, Enrique Tarrio — are now on trial in the same federal courthouse facing sedition charges, the organization has remained involved in far-right events and operations.

In the latest Oath Keepers trial, Mr. Parker and Mr. Greene, a former soldier appointed by Mr. Rhodes to serve as his handpicked “ground commander” on Jan. 6, fared better with the jury than the rest of the defendants. Neither man went inside the Capitol that day, and the jurors acquitted each of some of the charges they faced while failing to return a verdict on others.

Much like the other two trials, statements made by Mr. Rhodes played a central role in this one. Prosecutors showed the jury reams of encrypted messages that Mr. Rhodes had sent to his compatriots in the run-up to the Capitol attack, many of them calling for civil war.

“On the 6th, they are going to put the final nail in the coffin of this republic, unless we fight our way out with Trump preferably or without him,” one of the messages read. “We have no choice.”

Politico, Fear, burnout and insubordination: Insiders spill details about life at the highest levels of FBI, Josh Gerstein and Kyle Cheney, March 21, 2023 (print ed.).  A christopher-wray-o.jpgdiscrimination case has pulled back the curtain on the tense atmosphere at the bureau’s legal office; FBI employees and guests listen at an installation ceremony for FBI Director Chris Wray, right.

politico CustomA gender discrimination trial in Washington, D.C., shined a harsh spotlight on one of the most important legal offices in the U.S. government, portraying it as a hotbed of dysfunction, turf wars, mismanagement and paranoia.

The lawsuit, which came to a head earlier this month in federal court in the nation’s capital, centered on claims of gender discrimination in the FBI’s general counsel’s office, where some of the most powerful attorneys in the country are charged with helping safeguard Americans from terrorism, cyber threats, organized crime and corruption.

FBI logoA federal jury ultimately sided with the FBI, but not before a parade of witnesses testified to startling revelations about the bureau, exposing dysfunction and management woes that at times have been exploited by the bureau’s detractors — most notably amid Donald Trump’s crusade against investigations into his activities.

The trial drew little notice inside the federal courthouse in Washington, D.C., where numerous high-profile Jan. 6 defendants were simultaneously standing trial, and grand juries probing potential crimes by Trump and his allies remain active. But the proceedings offered a peek inside the secretive confines of the FBI — describing degrees of dysfunction that are rarely aired, particularly by the FBI insiders themselves.

The list of trial witnesses included Jim Baker, who testified that when he took over as FBI general counsel in 2014, his staff of about 200 lawyers were burned out, locked in bureaucratic turf battles and wracked by fear of their own colleagues. Baker said that in the early part of his tenure, some employees were so afraid to raise concerns in front of others that they “frequently” slipped anonymous notes under his door overnight — typewritten to conceal handwriting.

 

More On Russia-China Summit

ny times logoNew York Times, Here’s why China and Russia are closer than ever, Nicole Hong, March 21, 2023 (print ed.). This week’s meeting between the leaders of China and Russia marks another key moment in the deepening relationship between the two powers.

Coming more than a year after Russia launched its invasion of Ukraine, the meeting will be watched closely by Western officials for any indications of how far China may be willing to go to act as a mediator in the conflict. Chinese officials have framed the meeting partly as a mission to promote constructive talks between Russia and Ukraine, even though U.S. officials have been skeptical of Mr. Xi’s recent efforts to become a global peacemaker.

Here are five things to know about the relationship between China and Russia.

washington post logoWashington Post, Putin sees his anti-U.S. world order taking shape, Robyn Dixon, March 21, 2023 (print ed.). For Vladimir Putin, the state visit to Russia by Chinese President Xi Jinping, which begins on Monday, provides a giant morale boost and a chance to showcase the much-vaunted new world order that the Russian leader believes he is forging through his war on Ukraine — in which the United States and NATO can no longer dictate anything to anyone.

Xi’s visit to Russia, just after cementing his precedent-breaking third term in power, brings together two men who have positioned themselves as leaders for life — and it sets the scene for global confrontation, with Beijing willing to use its partnership with Moscow to counter Washington, even if that means granting tacit approval to Putin’s brutal, destabilizing war.

“The grim outlook in China is that we are entering this era of confrontation with the U.S., the gloves are off, and Russia is an asset and a partner in this struggle,” said Alexander Gabuev, an analyst with the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

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More On Probes of Trump, Allies 

djt march 2020 Custom

ny times logoNew York Times, ‘The Circus Continues’: For Trump, Legal Woes Resurrect Old Habits, Michael C. Bender, March 21, 2023. Former President Trump strengthened his political position in recent weeks, but his response to a potential indictment could alienate key voters.

Donald J. Trump, the former prime-time reality TV star known for his love of big stages and vast crowds, has embraced a more humbling and traditional style on the campaign trail in recent months.

He held intimate events in New Hampshire and South Carolina. He fielded questions from voters in Iowa. And in multiple cities, he surprised diners with unannounced visits to restaurants where, with his more familiar Trumpian flair, he made a dramatic show of sliding a wad of cash from his pocket to buy everyone a bite to eat.

This strategy has highlighted the billionaire’s counterintuitive political strength at connecting with voters on a personal level — while also underscoring the chief weakness of his main potential Republican rival, Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, who can often come across as snappish or uncomfortable.

But now Mr. Trump faces a likely indictment in New York in the coming days, and how he responds to this moment could determine whether he continues to stabilize his standing as the Republican presidential front-runner or whether he further alienates the voters he will need to return to the White House.

The result will help answer a pressing question about his candidacy for many Republican primary voters: Can Mr. Trump show enough restraint to persuade moderate Republicans and independent swing voters to choose him over President Biden in 2024?

ny times logoNew York Times, Alvin Bragg, the Manhattan district attorney, has waded into treacherous political waters, Jonah E. Bromwich, Updated March 21, 2023. Alvin L. Bragg, the Manhattan district attorney, appears poised to indict former President Donald J. Trump, and the political firestorm has already begun.

alvin bragg twitterAlvin L. Bragg, right, the Manhattan district attorney, has insisted that he does not pay attention to politics when deciding whether to charge someone with a crime.

But Mr. Bragg’s stated reluctance to consider the political ramifications of his office’s decisions has not quelled the storm brewing around him: He now appears poised to become the first prosecutor to indict a former president.

Charging former President Donald J. Trump in connection with a hush-money payment to a porn star would catapult Mr. Bragg onto the national stage. Already he faces second-guessing, even from putative allies, about the strength of the case and the wisdom of bringing it. And Mr. Trump, who has denied all wrongdoing, has begun attacking Mr. Bragg, a Democrat, as the latest in a string of politically-motivated prosecutors determined to bring him down. The ex-president has marshaled the support of his Republican allies in Congress and beyond.

It is unlikely that Mr. Bragg entered the race for district attorney expecting to indict Mr. Trump. When he announced his campaign in June 2019, there was little sign that the office’s then-dormant investigation would lead to criminal charges. And Mr. Bragg, 49, who has lived in New York nearly his entire life, had a vision for the office that had nothing to do with the president.

But the Trump question came to dominate the Democratic primary as the race entered its final stretch in 2021. As the district attorney’s investigation against the former president began to heat up, Mr. Bragg and his opponents started to signal to prospective voters that they had the bona fides to lead a potential prosecution of Mr. Trump.

Mr. Bragg had some history to draw on. In 2017 and 2018 he served as a senior official in the New York attorney general’s office, which at the time brought a bevy of lawsuits against Mr. Trump’s administration. One of them, filed in June 2018, accused the Donald J. Trump Foundation and the Trump family of “a shocking pattern of illegality.” That lawsuit was successful, leading to the foundation’s dissolution.

Still, as a candidate, Mr. Bragg was mostly focused elsewhere. His fundamental campaign promise was to balance public safety and fairness, following in the footsteps of a wave of recently elected prosecutors who pledged a new approach to crime. They argued that cracking down on minor infractions only led to recidivism, and that taking a more merciful approach to defendants made cities safer.

“When you look at who he defined himself to be, it wasn’t about Trump. It was an approach to the justice system that was fair, balanced and equitable,” said Kim Foxx, the state’s attorney of Cook County, which includes Chicago, who campaigned on a platform similar to that of Mr. Bragg.

When Mr. Bragg took office, and his prosecutors were presenting evidence about Mr. Trump and his businesses to a grand jury, the new district attorney stopped them, concerned that the case, which centered on whether Mr. Trump fraudulently inflated the value of his properties, was not strong enough to move forward. The public backlash was swift.

In much the way that Mr. Trump shifted the conversation in Mr. Bragg’s campaign, the former president has shifted the focus of the district attorney’s administration. And Mr. Bragg will likely find that his tenure is now intertwined with the former president.

In an appearance on the Rev. Al Sharpton’s MSNBC show earlier this month, Mr. Bragg, who declined to grant an interview for this article, was asked what figured into his decision to bring a case against any defendant.

“We’re looking at the facts and the law,” Mr. Bragg said, adding, “Yes we live in this world where we may hear what this pundit says and we may hear all the commentary but our focus is on the evidence and the law.”

That emphasis on the law is in part informed by Mr. Bragg’s time as a federal prosecutor in New York, where he focused on public corruption and white collar crime, and then at the New York attorney general’s office, where he led a unit focused on police accountability. He has long been uncomfortable with the more political aspects of his job.

 

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.

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.

ny times logoNew York Times, Opinion: Make No Mistake, the Investigation of Donald Trump and the Stormy Daniels Scheme Is Serious, Ryan Goodman and Andrew andrew weissmann croppedWeissmann (Mr. Goodman and Mr. Weissmann, right, are professors at N.Y.U. School of Law), March 21, 2023.

Though it may be tempting to do so, it is a mistake to assess the Manhattan district attorney’s investigation of Donald Trump by comparing its relative severity with those of myriad other crimes possibly committed by him. That is not how state and federal prosecutors will — or should — be thinking about the issue of charging Mr. Trump, or for that matter, any other defendant.

Prosecutors are trained to consider whether a case can be brought — in other words, is there proof beyond a reasonable doubt to support a conviction? They also consider whether a case should be brought — principally, is the crime one that is typically charged by the office in like circumstances? Put another way: Is bringing the charge consistent with the rule of law that requires treating likes alike?

Alvin Bragg, the Manhattan district attorney, would be well within his discretion in determining that the answer to those questions is yes and therefore supports charging Mr. Trump in connection with any crimes arising from an effort to keep Stormy Daniels from disclosing an alleged affair to the electorate before the 2016 election.

This case is just one of a few ongoing criminal investigations into Mr. Trump’s conduct — including potentially a much larger financial investigation by the Manhattan district attorney — and the hush money scheme is no doubt the least serious of the crimes. It does not involve insurrection and undermining the peaceful transfer of power fundamental to our democracy, nor the retention of highly classified documents and obstruction of a national security investigation.

But does that mean the Manhattan criminal case is an example of selective prosecution — in other words, going after a political enemy for a crime that no one else would be charged with? Not by a long shot.

Palmer Report, Analysis: Federal judge gives Jack Smith the greenlight against Donald Trump, Bill Palmer, right, March 21, 2023. It was reported days ago that Federal bill palmerJudge Beryl Howell had ruled that Donald Trump’s attorney Evan Corcoran had to testify to the grand jury about an incriminating phone call that took place between them with regard to Jack Smith’s classified documents probe.

bill palmer report logo headerNow the details of that ruling are surfacing, and it turns out the judge has given Smith the greenlight all around. It also places the case in an entirely new light.

evan corcoranWhen the ruling first came down, it was widely presumed that Trump and Corcoran, right, allegedly conspired together to commit obstruction of justice by hiding classified documents from the federal investigators who were seeking them. But now ABC News is reporting that Jack Smith is alleging that Trump misled his attorneys about the classified documents in an effort to hide them from federal investigators. Further, Corcoran is being ordered to testify about the phone call in which Trump misled him about the documents.

This means Corcoran isn’t an alleged co-conspirator who’s being pressured into flipping on Donald Trump. He’s a witness to Trump’s obstruction of justice crimes, who’s being forced to testify against Trump because attorney-client privilege doesn’t apply when the attorney witnesses the client committing additional crimes in the name of trying to cover up the crime being investigated.

beryl howellThis also helps explain why the judge turned over a number of Corcoran-related records to Jack Smith. Judge Howell, left, wouldn’t have made this ruling based merely on taking anyone’s word for it. She had to have seen evidence to corroborate the Trump-Corcoran phone call really was what it’s alleged to be. And now she’s given that evidence to Smith, because he’ll need to present it to the grand jury alongside Corcoran’s testimony against Trump. Prosecutors always want to present supporting evidence and documents in any given situation, so that the grand jury doesn’t merely have to take the witness’ word for it.

So what happens next? Trump may try to appeal this ruling, but he won’t win, and he’s unlikely to buy himself any meaningful amount of time by appealing. More to the point, yesterday CNN reported that Evan Corcoran and his lawyer were spotted entering the federal courthouse. So whatever is playing out here, it’s advancing quickly. And once Corcoran does testify to the DOJ grand jury, that should complete the obstruction of justice criminal case against Donald Trump.

ny times logoNew York Times, Trump’s Call for Protests of Pending Arrest Splits G.O.P., Shane Goldmacher and Alan Feuer, March 21, 2023 (print ed.). After Donald Trump urged supporters to protest his looming indictment, some Republicans have heeded the call, while many others have lobbied against it.

His call to protest his expected indictment has divided his allies on the right, as some fear mass gatherings could devolve into violence and lead to the prosecution of his supporters just as the Jan. 6 riot at the Capitol did two years ago.

While some Republicans have echoed Mr. Trump’s call to take to the streets, other prominent voices on the right are urging caution and for people to stay away, particularly from New York, where they note that any potential unrest would invite prosecution from the same official who is expected to charge Mr. Trump — the Manhattan district attorney, Alvin L. Bragg.

“Better to stay home,” advised Jeffrey Clark, the former Justice Department official who was nearly named acting attorney general by Mr. Trump in late 2020 as the president sought to overturn his election loss. “Think, rethink, and triple think before you physically go to protest anywhere in the Big Apple.”

The Republican speaker of the House, Kevin McCarthy, who owes his post in part to Mr. Trump’s support, was among those urging Trump supporters to stay away on Sunday. “I don’t think people should protest this, no,” he said during a news conference in Florida, adding, “And I think President Trump, if you talk to him, he doesn’t believe that, either.”

Mr. Trump, though, has long measured the strength of his standing by the blunt metric of the size of the crowds that show up for him, in good times and in bad ones.

 

ron desantis serious

ny times logoNew York Times, DeSantis, Breaking Silence on Trump, Criticizes Manhattan Prosecutor, Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan, March 21, 2023 (print ed.).  However, Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida also pointedly noted the personal conduct over which former President Trump is being investigated.

Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida on Monday broke his silence about the potential indictment of his state’s most famous resident, former President Donald J. Trump, attacking the Manhattan district attorney pursuing the case but also pointedly noting the personal conduct over which Mr. Trump is being investigated.

Mr. DeSantis spoke in response to a reporter’s question at an event in Panama City, Fla., after two days of pressure from Mr. Trump’s team and his influential allies demanding that the governor speak out against an indictment that is likely to be brought by Alvin L. Bragg, the Manhattan district attorney.

After a reporter asked for Mr. DeSantis’s thoughts about the potential indictment and whether he might have a role in extraditing Mr. Trump to New York, the governor demurred, saying he did not know what was going to happen.

“But I do know this: The Manhattan district attorney is a Soros-funded prosecutor,” he said of Mr. Bragg, referring to indirect financial support the district attorney received in his 2021 campaign from George Soros, the liberal billionaire philanthropist. Those donations have been the subject of attacks from Mr. Trump and other Republicans.

“And so he, like other Soros-funded prosecutors, they weaponize their office to impose a political agenda on society at the expense of the rule of law and public safety,” Mr. DeSantis said.

robert costello msnbc

ny times logoNew York Times, Robert Costello, once an adviser to Michael Cohen, appeared before the grand jury to assail the former fixer’s credibility, Ben Protess, Sean Piccoli and Kate Christobek, March 21, 2023 (print ed.). Robert J. Costello, a former legal adviser to Michael Cohen, said after testifying, “I told the grand jury that this guy couldn’t tell the truth if you put a gun to his head.”

In a last-ditch effort to stave off the indictment of Donald J. Trump, a witness on Monday appeared before a Manhattan grand jury at the request of the former president’s lawyers, providing testimony aimed at attacking the credibility of the prosecution’s star witness.

The man who testified, Robert J. Costello, who was once a legal adviser to Michael D. Cohen, the crucial witness for the Manhattan district attorney’s office in its investigation of Mr. Trump. Mr. Cohen, Mr. Trump’s former fixer, has already spent hours testifying before the grand jury.

Mr. Costello and Mr. Cohen had a falling out a few years ago, and Mr. Trump’s lawyers hoped that Mr. Costello’s grand jury appearance on Monday would undercut Mr. Cohen’s testimony.

Under New York law, a person who prosecutors expect to indict can request that a witness appear on his or her behalf. The final decision to hear the witness rests with the grand jury.

In an interview after his appearance, Mr. Costello attacked the prosecutors, saying they had withheld evidence from the grand jury.

“They seemed clearly one-sided and not after the truth,” Mr. Costello said, adding that the prosecutors had “cherry-picked” information from a packet of more than 300 emails he provided them.

djt looking up

ny times logoNew York Times, Analysis: Out of Power, Donald Trump Still Exerts It as the Law Closes In, Maggie Haberman, March 21, 2023 (print ed.). A social media post amounted to a starter’s gun for G.O.P. officials: Many raced to his side, denouncing a Democratic prosecutor investigating him.

Since he left office, Democrats and a smaller number of Republicans have vowed to ensure that former President Donald J. Trump never recaptures the White House, where he would regain enormous power over the nation and around the globe.

Yet, in his insistence on forging ahead with a campaign while facing multiple criminal investigations, his dismissiveness toward supporting Ukraine against Russian aggression and his continued provocations on social media and in campaign speeches, Mr. Trump has shown that he does not need control over the levers of government to have an effect on the country — and, in the minds of many, to do damage.

To those who believed that the secret to banishing Mr. Trump was to deprive him of attention — that ignoring him would make him go away — he has shown that to be wishful thinking.

 

fani willis djt collage

ny times logoNew York Times, Donald Trump’s lawyers are seeking to quash a special grand jury report in Georgia into 2020 election interference, Richard Fausset, March 21, 2023 (print ed.). Lawyers for former President Donald J. Trump filed a motion in a Georgia court on Monday seeking to quash the final report of a special grand jury that investigated whether Mr. Trump and some of his allies interfered in the 2020 election results in Georgia. The motion also seeks to “preclude the use of any evidence derived” from the report, and asks that the office of Fani T. Willis, the Fulton County district attorney, be recused from the case.

The move comes as Mr. Trump has started pushing back more broadly against several criminal investigations into his conduct. Over the weekend, Mr. Trump said in a social media post that he would be arrested on Tuesday as part of an investigation by the Manhattan district attorney into a hush money payment he made to to a porn actress, and called on his supporters to protest.

In Georgia, Mr. Trump is seen as having two main areas of legal jeopardy: the calls he made in the weeks after the 2020 election to pressure state officials to overturn the results there, and his direct involvement in efforts to assemble an alternate slate of electors, even after three vote counts affirmed President Biden’s victory in the state. Experts have said that Ms. Willis appears to be building a case that could target multiple defendants with charges of conspiracy to commit election fraud or charges related to racketeering.

Notice of the filing appeared in the official court docket on Monday morning, but the filing itself was not yet public, so the lawyers’ reasoning was not yet clear. Mr. Findling acknowledged that he had filed it on Mr. Trump’s behalf, along with Ms. Little and another lawyer from Mr. Findling’s firm, Marissa Goldberg.

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couy griffin facebook

 

Global News, Migration, Human Rights Issues

ny times logoNew York Times, Americans’ Old Car Batteries Are Making Mexican Workers Sick, Steve Fisher, Photographs by Alejandro Cegarra, March 21, 2023 (print ed.). The removal of lead from car batteries at recycling plants in northern Mexico has led to high levels of lead contamination, a new report found.

After returning home from his job at a car battery recycling plant in northern Mexico one evening in 2019, Azael Mateo González Ramírez said he felt dizzy, his bones ‌ach‌ed and his throat was raspy. Then came ‌stomach pain, he said, followed by bouts of diarrhea.

The plant in Monterrey where he worked handled used car batteries, many from the United States, extracting lead as part of the process. Mr. González, 39, stacked the batteries, he said, near large containers of lead dust.

Medical tests, Mr. González said, showed high levels of lead in his body; experts agree that no level of lead is safe and over time it can result in neurological and gastrointestinal damage.

His superviso‌r at the facility, he said, insisted he keep working.

The city of Monterrey, a three-hour drive from Texas, has become the largest source of used car batteries from the United States, with steady growth over the past decade in the shipment of used American batteries to Mexico, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

 

rishi sunak

 ny times logoNew York Times, Sunak’s Pivot Away From ‘Global Britain’ Makes Friends on World Stage, Mark Landler, March 20, 2023 (print ed.). Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has dropped Boris Johnson’s bombastic approach to foreign policy, reflecting the country’s changed global status.

Prime Minister Rishi Sunak of Britain has mothballed his predecessors’ projects, large and small, from Liz Truss’s trickle-down tax cuts to Boris Johnson’s revamped royal yacht. But one of Mr. Sunak’s most symbolic changes since taking over as prime minister five months ago has received less attention: retiring the slogan “Global Britain.”

No longer does the phrase, a swashbuckling relic of Britain’s debate over its post-Brexit role, feature in speeches by cabinet ministers or in the government’s updated military and foreign policy blueprint released last Monday.

United Kingdom flagIn its place, Mr. Sunak has hashed out workmanlike deals on trade and immigration with Britain’s nearest neighbors — France and the rest of the European Union. In the process, analysts and diplomats said, he has begun, for the first time since Britain’s departure from the European Union, to chart a realistic role on the global stage.

Global Britain, as propounded by Mr. Johnson, was meant to evoke a Britain, unshackled from Brussels, that could be agile and opportunistic, a lightly regulated, free-trading powerhouse. In practice, it came to symbolize a country with far-fetched ambitions and, under Mr. Johnson, a habit of squabbling with its neighbors.

ny times logoNew York Times, Saudi Arabia Releases U.S. Dual Citizen Jailed in Crackdown on Dissent, ivian Nereim, March 21, 2023. Saad Almadi, 72, a Florida resident, was one of several Americans and hundreds of Saudis caught up in the crackdown under Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. He still cannot fly home, his son said.

Saudi-American dual citizen who spent more than a year in a Saudi prison over Twitter posts critical of the kingdom’s government was released from detention on Tuesday, but will not be able to leave the country, according to his son.

Saad Almadi, a 72-year-old Florida resident, is staying with family members in the Saudi capital of Riyadh, his son, Ibrahim Almadi, said by telephone from Washington. The younger Mr. Almadi said he would continue to campaign to overturn a Saudi bar on his father leaving the kingdom.

“The fight will continue and hopefully we’ll have him back soon,” he said.

Mr. Almadi, a retired project manager, was one of several U.S. citizens and hundreds of Saudis caught up in a deepening crackdown on dissent under Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. He was arrested during a visit to Saudi Arabia in 2021.

Prosecutors cited Twitter posts he wrote that were critical of the Saudi government and an “insulting picture” of Prince Mohammed saved on his phone as proof that he had “adopted a terrorist agenda by defaming symbols of the state,” according to court documents. He was sentenced to 16 years in prison, lengthened on appeal last month to 19 years.

ny times logoNew York Times, Ferraris and Hungry Children: Venezuela’s Socialist Vision in Shambles, Isayen Herrera and Frances Robles, Photographs by Adriana Loureiro Fernandez. March 21, 2023. After years of extreme scarcity, some Venezuelans lead lives of luxury as others scrape by.

In the capital, a store sells Prada purses and a 110-inch television for $115,000. Not far away, a Ferrari dealership has opened, while a new restaurant allows well-off diners to enjoy a meal seated atop a giant crane overlooking the city.

“When was the last time you did something for the first time?” the restaurant’s host boomed over a microphone to excited customers as they sang along to a Coldplay song.

This is not Dubai or Tokyo, but Caracas, the capital of Venezuela, where a socialist revolution once promised equality and an end to the bourgeoisie.

Venezuela’s economy imploded nearly a decade ago, prompting a huge outflow of migrants in one of worst crises in modern Latin American history. Now there are signs the country is settling into a new, disorienting normality, with everyday products easily available, poverty starting to lessen — and surprising pockets of wealth arising.

ny times logoNew York Times, Macron’s Government Survives but Faces Wrath of France Over Pension Overhaul, Roger Cohen, March 21, 2023 (print ed.). Two no-confidence votes failed to oust the cabinet of President Emmanuel Macron over a bill that proposes to raise the retirement age to 64 from 62.

French FlagThe French National Assembly rejected a no-confidence motion against the government of President Emmanuel Macron on Monday, ensuring that a fiercely contested bill raising the retirement age to 64 from 62 becomes the law of the land.

The first of two motions received 278 votes, nine short of the 287 needed to pass. The close result reflected widespread anger at the pension overhaul, at Mr. Macron for his apparent aloofness and at the way the measure was rammed through Parliament last week without a full vote on the bill itself. The Senate, France’s upper house of Parliament, passed the pension bill this month.

A second no-confidence motion, filed by the far-right National Rally, failed on Monday, as well, with only 94 lawmakers voting in favor.

The change, which Mr. Macron has sought since the beginning of his first term in 2017, has provoked two months of demonstrations, intermittent strikes and occasional violence. It has split France, with polls consistently showing two-thirds of the population opposing the overhaul.

washington post logoWashington Post, American hostage freed 6 years after being taken captive by militants in Africa, John Hudson, March 21, 2023 (print ed.). Jeffery Woodke, a Christian aid worker, was abducted in Niger in 2016. An American aid worker who was taken captive by militants in West Africa more than six years ago has been freed, his family and the Biden administration said Monday, but officials shared little about his years in captivity or the identity of the group that held him.

Jeffery Woodke, a Christian aid worker, was abducted in Niger in 2016 and believed to have been later taken to Mali. He is undergoing a medical evaluation in Niamey, the capital of Niger, then will return home to be reunited with his family, said Bob Klamer, a spokesman for the Woodke family.

“I’m gratified & relieved to see the release of U.S. hostage Jeff Woodke after over 6 years in captivity,” White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan said on Twitter. President Biden also praised the release and told reporters that the United States “will continue our work to bring home all Americans held hostage or unjustly detained.”

Woodke’s wife, Els Woodke, spoke to her husband Monday. “He was in great spirits and thrilled to be free,” she said. She expressed her “profound thanks to the many people in governments and others around the world who have worked so hard to see this result.”

Sullivan thanked the government of Niger for helping secure Woodke’s return. Secretary of State Antony Blinken just returned from Niger on Friday, in the first visit to the West African country by a sitting secretary of state. Blinken reaffirmed the United States’ interest in securing Woodke’s release, said a senior administration official, but no ransom or concessions were given. No direct negotiations were held between the U.S. government and the group that held him, said the official, who spoke to reporters on the condition of anonymity given the sensitivity surrounding the long-sought release.

The official declined to identify the group that held Woodke but noted that his capture happened as a result of an “overlapping and intersecting network in that part of West Africa — operating in an area that includes Mali and Burkina Faso — who see kidnapping and hostage-taking as part of their business model, frankly, and as a source of revenue and support.”

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U.S. Banks, Economy, Jobs

ny times logoNew York Times, Yellen Says U.S. Ready to Protect Smaller Banks if Necessary, Alan Rappeport, March 21, 2023. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen pledged that the Biden administration would take additional steps as needed to support the banking system.

Treasury Secretary Janet L. Yellen expressed confidence in the nation’s banks on Tuesday but said that she is prepared to take additional actions to safeguard smaller financial institutions as the Biden administration and federal regulators work to contain fallout from fears over the stability of the banking system.

Ms. Yellen, seeking to calm nerves as the U.S. financial system faces its worst turmoil in more than a decade, said that the steps the administration and federal regulators have taken so far have helped restore confidence but that policymakers remain focused on making sure that the broader banking system remains secure.

silicon valley bank svb“Our intervention was necessary to protect the broader U.S. banking system,” Ms. Yellen said in prepared remarks to be delivered to the Washington meeting of the American Bankers Association, the industry’s leading lobbying group. “And similar actions could be warranted if smaller institutions suffer deposit runs that pose the risk of contagion.”

She added: “The situation is stabilizing. And the U.S. banking system remains sound.”

The comments come as government officials contemplate additional options to stem the flows of deposits out of small and medium-size banks, and as concerns grow that more will need to be done.

ny times logoNew York Times, Opinion: How Big a Deal Is the Banking Mess? Paul Krugman, paul krugmanright, March 21, 2023. A murky economic outlook just got even murkier.

So as everyone knows, Silicon Valley Bank — not a huge institution, but an integral part of the tech industry’s financial ecosystem — has been taken over by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation after facing a classic bank run. Signature Bank soon followed; First Republic Bank is under severe pressure. Swiss authorities have arranged a takeover of Credit Suisse, a major bank, by its rival UBS. And everyone is wondering what other land mines may be about to go off.

There will and should be many inquests into how and why these banks managed to get into so much trouble. In the case of S.V.B. it appears that regulators had known for some time that the bank was a problem case, but for some reason didn’t or couldn’t rein it in.

But the more pressing question is forward-looking. How much does the banking mess change economic conditions? How much should it change economic policy?

Some commentators — mainly, as far as I can tell, cryptocurrency enthusiasts — are issuing apocalyptic warnings about hyperinflation and the imminent collapse of the dollar. But that’s almost certainly the opposite of the truth. When depositors pull their money out of banks, the effect is disinflationary, even deflationary.

What this probably means in practice is that the Fed should pause its rate hikes until there’s more clarity about both the inflation picture and the effects of the banking mess — and it should be clear that that’s what it is doing.

ny times logoNew York Times, Strains Emerge Inside the Union That Beat Amazon, Noam Scheiber, March 21, 2023. Nearly a year after its victory on Staten Island, the Amazon Labor Union is grappling with election losses and internal conflict.

One year after its surprise victory at a Staten Island warehouse, the only union in the country representing Amazon workers has endured a series of setbacks and conflicts that have caused longtime supporters to question if it will survive.

In interviews, a dozen people who have been closely involved with the Amazon Labor Union said the union had made little progress bringing Amazon to the bargaining table, to say nothing of securing a contract. Many cited lopsided losses at two other warehouses, unstable funding and an internal feud that has made it difficult for the union to alter a strategy that they considered flawed.

At the heart of the feud is a dispute between the union’s president, Christian Smalls, and several longtime organizers.

Mr. Smalls’s former allies complain that he has pursued elections at other warehouses without strong support from workers or a plan to ensure victory. They say he has focused on travel and public appearances while neglecting the contract fight at the Staten Island warehouse, known as JFK8, where Amazon is still contesting the election result.

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U.S. Politics, Elections, Economy, Governance

 

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ny times logoNew York Times, At a retreat for House Republicans in Florida, the focus remained on former President Trump, Annie Karni, March 21, 2023. For the third year since he left office, former President Donald J. Trump continued to dominate an annual G.O.P. gathering in Florida, underscoring his grip on the party.

Speaker Kevin McCarthy arrived at an upscale resort here this week eager to use a Republican retreat to promote the party’s policy agenda and achievements so far, working to paper over the divisions that nearly sank his bid for his job and talk about anything but former President Donald J. Trump.

“I’m always optimistic,” a sunny Mr. McCarthy, dressed in a pair of trendy sneakers, jeans and a zip-up vest, told reporters of the prospect for resolving debt ceiling negotiations without an economy-crushing default. “I went 15 rounds to get speaker!”

But it was not long before Mr. Trump came to dominate the proceedings. With the former president expected to be indicted by a Manhattan grand jury, House Republicans rallied around him. They blasted the Manhattan district attorney, Alvin L. Bragg, as a pawn of George Soros, a longtime boogeyman of the right, and they vowed to open a remarkable congressional investigation into his active criminal inquiry.

It was the third year in a row that Mr. Trump has effectively taken over House Republicans’ annual gathering, underscoring how central the former president has remained to his party’s existence. Years after leaving office, Mr. Trump is still here, blotting out attempts to talk about any Republican agenda that does not involve him and making it all but impossible for the House G.O.P. to define itself as anything other than his frontline defenders.

It was true two years ago, when House Republicans headed to Florida desperate to talk about anything but Mr. Trump, who only weeks before had been impeached for inciting a deadly insurrection at the Capitol.

Instead, Representative Liz Cheney of Wyoming, then the No. 3 Republican, made several statements firmly repudiating Mr. Trump, and the retreat’s subtext was the ire of her fellow party leaders at her refusal to keep silent about the former president.

ny times logoNew York Times, Here’s a rough guide to the electoral fallout if former President Trump is indicted, Nate Cohn, March 21, 2023. It would be uncharted territory, but the F.B.I. search of Mar-a-Lago offers at least some precedent.

A lot of people believe I make political predictions, but that’s not really true. Instead, I try to marshal history, data, polling, reporting and more to help make sense of the political landscape. It usually amounts to one of those old, yellowish, distorted maps from the age of exploration. It offers only a rough guide of what lies ahead.

This week, we’re approaching uncharted waters. The front-runner for a major party nomination for president may soon be indicted. This is the blurry corner of the map where we can’t do much more than draw fantastical sea creatures. We know this part of the world is probably ocean, but we don’t know much else. We’re sure it’s dangerous.

Here’s the outline of the map as we edge toward a possible indictment:

  • The F.B.I. search of Mr. Trump’s property for classified records in August is probably the best precedent. While not an indictment, it represented a judgment by a court that there was probable cause to believe he committed a crime. The allegation was more serious than the Stormy Daniels case, as it carried potential implications for national security. But the search did not have a discernible effect on Mr. Trump’s standing among Republicans. Conservatives circled the wagons and argued that the search of a former president was an unjust act of partisan politics. There was no effect on his standing in the polls. In our Times/Siena polling last summer and fall, the Republican primary race was essentially unchanged after the F.B.I. search.
  • An indictment is still uncharted territory, so it’s worth being cautious about any potential fallout. A new legal line would be crossed, even if this story is already playing out much like the F.B.I. search.
  • But seriously, this indictment would seem particularly unlikely to hurt Mr. Trump’s base of support. The public already knows about Ms. Daniels. His supporters decided, long ago, that they did not especially care about the case’s underlying facts. An illegal cover-up of a private affair is more like the perjury accusation against Bill Clinton than Richard Nixon’s tapes.
  • The upside for Mr. Trump seems fairly limited. Yes, there really could be short-term gains for Mr. Trump if Republicans rally to his defense. Still, it’s a little much to argue that many Republicans who don’t support him for the nomination today would be far likelier to back him after an indictment. It could certainly energize his base, but an indictment would reinforce some of the reasons other Republicans are reluctant to back him in the first place. It’s not as if Mr. Trump became a juggernaut after the F.B.I. search of Mar-a-Lago.

ny times logoNew York Times, Trump Could Stand in the Middle of Fifth Avenue and Not Lose Mike Pence, Jamelle Bouie, right, March 21, 2023. Mike Pence wants to have it jamelle bouieboth ways.

He wants to be the conservative hero of Jan. 6: the steadfast Republican patriot who resisted the MAGA mob and defended the institutions of American democracy. “Make no mistake about it,” Pence said at the Gridiron Club Dinner in Washington, D.C., this month. “What happened that day was a disgrace, and it mocks decency to portray it in any other way. President Donald Trump was wrong. I had no right to overturn the election and his reckless words endangered my family and everyone at the Capitol that day.”

But Mike Pence also wants to be president. And he can’t fully repudiate the previous Republican president if he hopes to win the Republican presidential nomination, especially when that president is still on the stage, with a commanding role in Republican politics.

The result is that Mike Pence has to talk out of both sides of his mouth. With one breath, he takes a righteous stand against the worst dysfunction of the Trump years. “We have to resist the politics of personality, the lure of populism unmoored by timeless conservative values,” Pence said last week while speaking to an audience of Republican donors in Keene, N.H.

With his next breath, however, Pence rejects any effort to hold Trump accountable, especially when it asks him to do something more than give the occasional sound bite.

 

ron desantis mouth open uncredited

ny times logoNew York Times, Book Review: Ron DeSantis Has a Secret Theory of Trump, Carlos Lozada, March 20, 2023 (print ed.). Ron DeSantis has an enemies list, and you can probably guess who’s on it.

There’s the “woke dumpster fire” of the Democratic Party and the “swamp Republicans” who neglect their own voters. There’s the news media, with modifiers like “legacy” or “corporate” adding a nefarious touch. There’s Big Tech, that “censorship arm of the political left,” and the powerful corporations that cave to the “leftist-rage mob.” There are universities like Harvard and Yale, which DeSantis attended but did not inhale. There’s the administrative state and its pandemic-era spinoff, the “biomedical security state.” These are the villains of DeSantis’s recently published book, “The Courage to Be Free: Florida’s Blueprint for America’s Revival,” and its author feels free to assail them with a fusillade of generically irate prose.

There is one more antagonist — not an enemy, perhaps, but certainly a rival — whom DeSantis does not attack directly in his book, even as he looms over much of it. The far-too-early national polls for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination show a two-person contest with Donald Trump and DeSantis (who has yet to announce his potential candidacy) in the lead, and the Haleys, Pences and Pompeos of the world fighting for scraps. During his 2018 governor’s race, DeSantis aired an obsequious ad in which he built a cardboard border wall and read Trump’s “Art of the Deal” with his children, one of whom wore a MAGA onesie. Now DeSantis no longer bows before Trump. Instead, he dances around the former president; he is respectful but no longer deferential, critical but mainly by implication.

Yes, there is a DeSantis case against Trump scattered throughout these pages. You just need to squint through a magnifying glass to find it.

In the 250-plus pages of The Courage to Be Free, for instance, there is not a single mention of the events of Jan. 6, 2021. DeSantis cites Madison, Hamilton and the nation’s founding principles, but he does not pause to consider a frontal assault on America’s democratic institutions encouraged by a sitting president. The governor does not go so far as to defend Trump’s lies about the 2020 election; he just ignores them.

However, DeSantis does write that an energetic executive should lead “within the confines of a constitutional system,” and he criticizes unnamed elected officials for whom “perpetuating themselves in office supersedes fulfilling any policy mission.” Might DeSantis ever direct such criticisms at a certain former president so willing to subvert the Constitution to remain in power? Perhaps. For the moment, though, such indignation exists at a safe distance from any discussion of Trump himself.

ny times logoNew York Times, Republicans’ Investigative Chief Embraces Role of Biden Antagonist, Jonathan Swan and Luke Broadwater, March 21, 2023. The fourth-term Kentuckian and chairman of the House Oversight and Accountability Committee has become an aggressive promoter of sinister-sounding claims about the president and his family.

james comerSteering his S.U.V. through pounding rain on his way to the state capital on a recent Thursday, Representative James R. Comer, the chairman of the Oversight and Accountability Committee, reflected on the pressure he often faced from constituents to investigate unhinged claims about President Biden and Democrats.

“You know, the customer’s always right,” Mr. Comer said wryly, of his approach to the people who elected him and now brandish conspiracy theories, vulgar photographs featuring the president and his son, Hunter, and other lies they expect him to act upon.

“I say, ‘Let me see it,’ because I want to see where the source is,” Mr. Comer said. “They don’t know that it’s QAnon, but it’s QAnon stuff.”

Yet in his new role leading the Republican Party’s chief investigative committee in the House, Mr. Comer, 50, has himself become a promoter of sinister-sounding allegations against Mr. Biden and his family. This pursuit has propelled him to stardom in a party whose best customers — vengeful, hard-right voters — are bent on bringing down the Democratic president.

This month, Mr. Comer joined a panel at the Conservative Political Action Conference titled “The Biden Crime Family,” where he asserted that Mr. Biden and his family’s business activities with China posed “a threat to national security.”

Appearing on Fox News in January, Mr. Comer implied, without evidence, that there was a connection between Mr. Biden improperly holding on to classified documents when he was a private citizen and his son, Hunter, receiving a diamond from a Chinese tycoon. In another segment Mr. Comer lamented that Beau Biden, the president’s other son, who died of cancer in 2015, was never investigated.

His embrace of such statements reflects how Mr. Comer, who voted to certify Mr. Biden’s victory and was a favorite among Democrats in Kentucky’s Legislature, has transformed himself to command the Republican war machine in Congress — becoming a high-profile example of what it takes to rise and thrive in the Fox News-fed MAGA universe.

It also underscores the cutthroat instincts of Mr. Comer, who presents himself as an affable country boy of limited abilities, but who has proved to be a methodical and transactional political operator, willing to go to great lengths to crush his adversaries.

During his campaign for governor in 2015, facing allegations of abuse from an ex-girlfriend who also said he had taken her to get an abortion, Mr. Comer worked to discredit a blogger reporting on the claims and a campaign rival he believed was behind them, leaking private emails between the two. Mr. Comer denied the woman’s charges but lost the race anyway.

 

djt ron desantis cnn collage

Politico, The 2024 GOP 2024 Presidential Election field: How they win, how they lose, Steven Shepard, March 21, 2023 (print ed.). The race for the GOP presidential has a set of historic firsts: a former president seeking an Oval Office comeback, a vice president who refused to go along with a plot to steal the last election, the most politically accomplished woman ever to run as a Republican — and an already-popular governor waiting in the wings.

politico CustomWho ultimately wins out will take on President Joe Biden in a likely reelection bid — and potentially secure the White House.

rnc logoThere are also other candidates and would-be candidates, too. We've put the entire field into three categories — based roughly on their chances to capture the nod — along with full scouting reports for everything that could go right or wrong along the road to the 2024 convention in Milwaukee.

  • The Favorites: Donald Trump, Ron DeSantis (shown above)
  • The Contenders: Portrait of Nikki Haley, Portrait of Mike Pence
  • The Long shots.

 andrew warren ron desantis ap

Wayne Madsen Report, Investigative Commentary: Republican Party adopts Putin fascism when it comes to local government, Wayne Madsen, left, March 20-21, 2023. republican elephant logowayne madsen may 29 2015 cropped SmallWhether it's calling for the Manhattan District Attorney to face sanction by the Republican-controlled U.S. House of Representatives or Republican governors firing local elected officials, many of whom are Democrats, the Republican Party has adopted in toto the fascist policies of Russian President Vladimir Putin. Putin has rolled back the autonomy of Russian republics, regions, and districts to a degree not seen since the Soviet dictatorship of Joseph Stalin.

wayne madesen report logoFlorida Governor Ron DeSantis, above right, fired the twice-elected Democratic State's Attorney for Hillsborough County, Andrew  Warren, above right, an act that a federal judge ruled violated the U.S. Constitution. DeSantis wiped out the self-governance of Disney World's Reedy Creek Investment District while permitting a similar district to govern The Villages, a Republican-dominated residential area in central Florida.

Emulating DeSantis, Republican governors of Oklahoma and South Dakota are making ominous moves against the federally-recognized sovereignty of Native American tribal lands. These governors are looking to the Republican-led Supreme Court to invalidate Native tribal sovereign rights.

Greg Abbott CustomIn Texas, Republican Governor Greg Abbott, right, ordered his Education Commissioner, Mike Morath, to fire all the elected members of the Houston Independent School District board and replace them with Abbott's hand-picked Republican cronies. This is exactly what DeSantis has done in Florida and Putin has done with regional and district leaders across Russia. When it comes to local and regional democratic governance, there's not a dime's worth of difference between the Republican Party and Putin's United Russia party.

Relevant Recent Headlines

 

More On Ukraine War

ny times logoNew York Times, Russia reprised brutal tactics to attack the eastern Ukrainian city of Avdiivka, Marc Santora, March 21, 2023. Russian forces have stepped up their assaults on the Ukrainian stronghold of Avdiivka in eastern Ukraine, making limited and costly gains in a furious attempt to encircle the long-battered city.

Ukrainian officials have said in recent days that Avdiivka is turning into another Bakhmut, the eastern city that Russian forces have sought to capture by sending waves of lightly trained recruits on near-suicidal attacks of Ukrainian defensive lines. In Avdiivka, as in Bakhmut, Ukraine says that Russian advances are also ukraine flagthreatening key supply lines while bombardments are killing civilians.

Local officials said on Tuesday that a woman had been killed and two more civilians injured when a shell fired from a tank blasted the city center.

“Russians are intensively attacking from both sides, from the south and the north,” Maj. Maksym Morozov, a member of the Special Forces regiment fighting in the area, told the Ukrainian news media on Monday night. He added that the Russian tactic of using waves of soldiers — dubbed “cannon fodder” by the Ukrainians — was having some success.

“First, cannon fodder goes to expose our firing positions, and then professionals behind them quickly and accurately try to extinguish our firing lines,” he said. But he said that Ukrainian artillery and tanks were firing back at the Russian forces, who “have to pay a rather high price for this advance.”

Avdiivka is about 15 miles west of the city of Donetsk, which Russian proxy forces took over in 2014. But Avdiivka had not experienced violence on the scale unleashed in Russia’s full-scale invasion last year.

By last April, Russian artillery had destroyed more than 800 homes and scores of businesses, according to local officials. Only about 2,300 of the city’s 30,000 prewar residents remain, according to Vitaliy Barabash, the head of the Ukrainian military administration in the city.

Relevant Recent Headlines

 

U.S. Courts, Crime, Immigration, Guns

Brennan Center for Justice, NYU Law School, Analysis: Constitution watchers brace for upcoming Supreme Court rulings on the Voting Rights Act, affirmative action, and the “independent state legislature theory,” Michael Waldman, March 21, 2023. The Marble Palace on First Street gets most of the attention. In the meantime, federal judges across the country are showing us what happens when the lower courts are stuffed with right-wing ideologues.

After a hearing last week, Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk in Amarillo, Texas, is expected to soon rule on an outlandish demand to ban the use of the abortion pill mifepristone — medication used for more than half of all abortions in the United States. If the judge rules to revoke the decades-old FDA approval for the pill, he will affect not just women in Texas, but women in every state.

How can a single federal judge have such power over the medical decisions of more than 167 million people? Believe it or not, the Supreme Court has never ruled on whether nationwide injunctions are constitutional. Liberals used this tactic on occasion to block the Trump administration’s policies, such as the single judge who blocked the “Muslim ban” in 2017. But conservatives have undeniably perfected it.

In Texas, a quirk of the rules lets people choose where they bring a federal lawsuit and essentially handpick the judge who will hear their case — judge shopping to boost the chances of a favorable ruling. When a plaintiff files a federal suit in Amarillo, they are 100 percent guaranteed to get Kacsmaryk, a judge with a reputation as a Federalist Society militant. His sister recently told reporters it was his mission to end abortion in the United States. He has called homosexuality “disordered.” He made the government reinstate the Trump-era “Remain in Mexico” policy, which was later overturned by the Supreme Court.

Such a track record would make him the ideal judge for anti-abortion groups seeking someone sympathetic to their case.

Worse, Kacsmaryk may be readying his abortion pill ruling based on the brand-new “major questions doctrine,” which is all of nine months old. First articulated in a case last year that slashed the Environmental Protection Agency’s regulatory power, the doctrine claims federal agencies need clear congressional authorization to act on issues that have “major” economic or political significance. This conveniently flexible legal theory is poised to be the go-to reasoning for right-wing judges to block any policies they don’t like.

The Texas case isn’t the only evidence of the impact of skewed lower courts. The Supreme Court’s sweeping decision in New York State Rifle and Pistol Association v. Bruen, which held that gun laws must pass the test of “history and tradition” rather than public safety, has led to judicial rulings that verge on satirical. One federal judge in western New York blocked most of the state’s new gun law, declaring he could find no colonial-era law banning guns in summer camps, which, of course, did not exist at the time. And surprise, surprise, he found no trace of 18th-century prohibitions on guns in subways, either. Though he let the ban on guns in churches stand, another New York judge ruled shortly afterward that this restriction, too, was ahistorical.

Other examples abound, and there will no doubt be many more to come. Trump isn’t only responsible for appointing three Supreme Court justices — he appointed 226 federal judges during his presidency. They were overwhelmingly pre-vetted by the Federalist Society.

These appointments have left a lasting impact, and there is an urgent need to rebalance the scales of the federal judiciary. Last week, the Judicial Conference of the United States, led by Chief Justice John Roberts, recommended adding 68 federal judges to the courts to meet demanding new workloads. This would be a good step toward countering the partisanship plaguing the courts. But most importantly, we need to understand the significance of what has happened with the federal courts.

We cannot let one judge with a gavel and a grudge govern our country.

 

hillary clinton donald trump crop Oct. 19 3rd debate

ny times logoNew York Times, Trial of 2016 Twitter Troll to Test Limits of Online Speech, Colin Moynihan and Alan Feuer, March 21, 2023 (print ed.).  Douglass Mackey tried to trick Black people into thinking they could vote for president by text, prosecutors said.

The images appeared on Twitter in late 2016 just as the presidential campaign was entering its final stretch. Some featured the message “vote for Hillary” and the phrases “avoid the line” and “vote from home.”

Aimed at Democratic voters, and sometimes singling out Black people, the messages were actually intended to help Donald J. Trump, not Hillary Clinton. The goal, federal prosecutors said, was to suppress votes for Ms. Clinton by persuading her supporters to falsely believe they could cast presidential ballots by text message.

twitter bird CustomThe misinformation campaign was carried out by a group of conspirators, prosecutors said, including a man in his 20s who called himself Ricky Vaughn. On Monday he will go on trial in Federal District Court in Brooklyn under his real name, Douglass Mackey, after being charged with conspiring to spread misinformation designed to deprive others of their right to vote.

“The defendant exploited a social media platform to infringe one of the most basic and sacred rights guaranteed by the Constitution,” Nicholas L. McQuaid, acting assistant attorney general for the Justice Department’s Criminal Division, said in 2021 when charges against Mr. Mackey were announced.

Prosecutors have said that Mr. Mackey, who went to Middlebury College in Vermont and said he lived on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, used hashtags and memes as part of his deception and outlined his strategies publicly on Twitter and with co-conspirators in private Twitter group chats.

“Obviously we can win Pennsylvania,” Mr. Mackey said on Twitter, using one of his pseudonymous accounts less than a week before the election, according to a complaint and affidavit. “The key is to drive up turnout with non-college whites, and limit black turnout.”

That tweet, court papers said, came a day after Mr. Mackey tweeted an image showing a Black woman in front of a sign supporting Ms. Clinton. That tweet told viewers they could vote for Ms. Clinton by text message.

Prosecutors said nearly 5,000 people texted the number shown in the deceptive images, adding that the images stated they had been paid for by the Clinton campaign and had been viewed by people in the New York City area.

Mr. Mackey’s trial is expected to provide a window into a small part of what the authorities have described as broad efforts to sway the 2016 election through lies and disinformation. While some of those attempts were orchestrated by Russian security services, others were said to have emanated from American internet trolls.

People whose names may surface during the trial or who are expected to testify include a man who tweeted about Jews and Black people and was then disinvited from the DeploraBall, a far-right event in Washington, D.C., the night before Mr. Trump’s inauguration; a failed congressional candidate from Wisconsin; and an obscure federal cooperator who will be allowed to testify under a code name.

As the trial has approached, people sympathetic to Mr. Mackey have cast his case as part of a political and cultural war, a depiction driven in part by precisely the sort of partisan social media-fueled effort that he is accused of engineering.

Mr. Mackey’s fans have portrayed him as a harmless prankster who is being treated unfairly by the state for engaging in a form of free expression. That notion, perhaps predictably, has proliferated on Twitter, advanced by people using some of the same tools that prosecutors said Mr. Mackey used to disseminate lies. Mackey supporters have referred to him on social media as a “meme martyr” and spread a meme showing him wearing a red MAGA hat and accompanied by the hashtag “#FreeRicky.”

Some tweets about Mr. Mackey from prominent figures have included apocalyptic-sounding language. The Fox personality Tucker Carlson posted a video of himself on Twitter calling the trial “the single greatest assault on free speech and human rights in this country’s modern history.”

ny times logoNew York Times, Video Shows Virginia Man’s Death in Custody, Campbell Robertson and Christine Hauser, March 21, 2023. Seven deputies in Henrico County have been charged with second-degree murder in the death of Irvo Otieno at a hospital.

Surveillance video from a state psychiatric hospital in Virginia shows a group of sheriff’s deputies and medical staff piling on a handcuffed man, Irvo Otieno, and pinning him for nearly 11 minutes until his death on March 6.

The video, which was obtained by The Washington Post before its expected release on Tuesday, shows at least seven deputies from the Henrico County sheriff’s office enter a room at Central State Hospital in Dinwiddie County dragging Mr. Otieno, who is shirtless and in handcuffs and leg shackles. The deputies push him into a small couch and then force him to the floor, where they pinion him until his death while medical staff stand aside, the video shows.

The Dinwiddie County prosecutor, Ann Cabell Baskervill, has charged seven sheriff’s deputies and three employees of the hospital with second degree murder. She had announced that she was publicly releasing the video on Tuesday, though some defense lawyers had filed motions to block its release. However, The Post accessed the video through a court filing and published it.

Mr. Otieno, who had long been struggling with mental health and had been taken from his home three days earlier, had been moved to the hospital by sheriff’s deputies from a county jail earlier that day. In the video, people who seem to be part of the medical staff walk in and out of the room as the deputies pile on Mr. Otieno, 28, pinning his legs and arms and pushing his body down to the floor.

ny times logoNew York Times, How Do People Released From Prison Find Housing? John J. Lennon, March 20, 2023. (John J. Lennon went to prison at age 24 with a ninth-grade education and learned to write in workshop at Attica. Today, he is a contributing editor at Esquire. He’s currently incarcerated at Sullivan Correctional Facility.)

Thousands of people released from prison in New York go directly to homeless shelters.

Kevin Brooks hopes he won’t have to go to a homeless shelter. In 1999, Mr. Brooks and four others were convicted of murder, and he was sentenced to 25 years to life in prison.

Now 52, more mature and remorseful, he has a clean disciplinary record and a bachelor’s degree. He believes he has a good shot at getting out after he appears before the parole board in January 2024.

He’s less confident about where he’ll live.

Before Mr. Brooks went away, he was living with his newborn daughter and girlfriend in a three-bedroom apartment in a brownstone in Crown Heights that rented for about $800 a month. Today the space would go for more than $3,000 a month. The average rent in Manhattan is $4,200, in Brooklyn it’s about $3,700.

So next year around this time, Mr. Brooks figures he is likely to join thousands of other formerly incarcerated people who will leave prison and have nowhere to live. Among all releases to community supervision in New York state during 2021 (not just those released from prisons), about 23 percent went directly to shelters, according to the New York Department of Corrections and Community Supervision; another 8 percent were “undomiciled,” or went to places like halfway houses and hotels.

There isn’t much assistance for people getting out of prison. We get $40 and a one-way bus ticket. Many of us head to the Port Authority in New York City. I say us, because I, too, am in prison. I interviewed Mr. Brooks as we sat at a table bolted to the floor in the communal space of a cellblock in Sullivan Correctional Facility, the prison where we both currently live.

Feeling priced out and left out, many parolees turn to illegal hustles. The state corrections department told me in an email that about 38 percent of people released in 2017 returned to the agency’s custody within three years.
Looking for Help

Our access to assistance is currently being discussed among New York state legislators. In January, Brian Kavanagh, a progressive Democrat who chairs the Senate Committee on Housing, Construction and Community Development, reintroduced the Housing Access Voucher Program (S. 2804B), which had support from both the senate and the assembly last year, but ultimately did not receive that same support from the Governor’s office during budget negotiations. The bill would provide vouchers to people in immediate need of housing assistance, either facing eviction or homelessness. Its language has recently been updated to include people about to be released from state prisons.

“They should be allowed to apply for various resources in advance of their release date so they get a chance of not going from prison to shelter,” the senator told me.

It could be significant for formerly incarcerated people who are shut out of other housing and programs. We can’t stay with, or even visit, family or friends who live in public housing projects. This is prohibited by New York City Housing Authority, but another bill, currently before the New York City Council, aims to prevent housing discrimination on the basis of arrest record or criminal history.

ny times logoNew York Times, Three Convicted in 2018 Murder of Rapper XXXTentacion, Joe Coscarelli, March 21, 2023 (print ed.). After more than 27 hours of deliberation, a Florida jury found three men guilty of killing the rising rapper during a robbery.

Nearly five years after the killing of the rising rap star XXXTentacion, who was fatally shot in broad daylight during a 2018 robbery just as his polarizing career was exploding, a jury in Florida on Monday ended more than a week of deliberations when it found three men guilty of first-degree murder in the case.

Prosecutors said that Michael Boatwright, 28, and Trayvon Newsome, 24, were the gunmen that June afternoon, with Boatwright firing the fatal shot during a struggle over money. The third man convicted, Dedrick Williams, 26, was said to be the getaway driver and mastermind behind the robbery.

All three face mandatory life sentences; prosecutors did not seek the death penalty in the case, which was tried at the Broward County Courthouse in Fort Lauderdale, Fla.

Surveillance video played in court showed the rapper’s BMW being blocked by an S.U.V. as he tried to leave a motor sports store in Deerfield Beach, Fla., leading to a confrontation with two masked assailants, who escaped with $50,000 in cash.

The trial turned largely on the jury’s interpretation of testimony from a fourth man present that day, Robert Allen, who pleaded guilty to second-degree murder last year and testified against his alleged co-conspirators. The Broward County prosecutors also relied on surveillance video from the store that showed two of the men inside, seemingly observing XXXTentacion (born Jahseh Onfroy), as well as cellphone and Bluetooth data tying the men to the location and the S.U.V.

The evidence also included videos that prosecutors said showed the defendants dancing and posing with cash hours after the killing.

During more than 27 hours of deliberations across eight days, jurors had asked to review more than 1,000 text messages, along with photos and videos, seized from the cellphones of two of the defendants, including a picture of a news story about the shooting.

ny times logoNew York Times, Residents’ Right to Be Rude Is Upheld by Massachusetts Supreme Court, Jenna Russell, March 20, 2023 (print ed.). In an age of division, the court ruled that towns could not mandate polite discourse at public meetings. One official called the decision “very dispiriting.”

In a decision that jangled the nerves of some elected officials, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court last week reaffirmed a basic liberty established by the founding fathers: the right to be rude at public meetings.

The ruling sent waves of consternation across the state, where many local select board and school committee members have emerged battle-scarred from the coronavirus pandemic and its fierce disputes over masks, vaccines and remote learning. Stemming from a lawsuit filed against the town of Southborough, Mass., by a resident who said selectmen had silenced her unlawfully, the decision pushed back against attempts to mandate good manners.

“On its face it’s very dispiriting,” said Geoff Beckwith, executive director of the Massachusetts Municipal Association, which until last week had been nudging towns to develop civility guidelines for meetings. “Will it encourage the very few, very vocal individuals whose goal is to be disruptive? The S.J.C. is saying that’s the price of true freedom of speech.”

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More On U.S. Abortion, #MeToo, Stalking, Rape Laws

washington post logoWashington Post, Abortion foes seek vows from 2024 GOP hopefuls, Rachel Roubein, March 20, 2023 (print ed.). Activists are planning to pressure presidential candidates to promise a variety of national abortion restrictions.

Leading antiabortion groups, fresh off their historic victory with the demise of Roe v. Wade, are drawing up plans for a new goal in the 2024 presidential election: Ensuring the Republican nominee promises to back nationwide restrictions on abortion.

One of the most influential groups, Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, is likely to ask candidates to sign a pledge supporting a federal minimum limit on abortion at no later than 15 weeks of pregnancy.

“If any GOP primary candidate fails to summon the moral courage to endorse a 15-week gestational minimum standard, then they don’t deserve to be the president of the United States,” said Marjorie Dannenfelser, the president of SBA Pro-Life America, who was instrumental in extracting antiabortion promises from former president Donald Trump during his 2016 campaign.

The Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank, is exploring holding candidate forums or debates, where the issue of abortion would be front and center. And Students for Life Action is developing a survey asking candidates whether they’ll promise to appoint cabinet members who oppose abortion, such as in the justice and health departments; if they’d sign legislation to restrict abortions early in pregnancy; their stances on abortion pills and more.

“Our biggest challenge right now is making sure we get everyone on the record and for them to understand that we expect substantial action to be taken,” said Kristan Hawkins, the president of Students for Life Action. She added: “We want to make sure that every candidate knows that they’re going to have to be ready to make their case for life.”

The Supreme Court’s decision last June striking down a constitutional protection for abortion rights means such questions are no longer merely hypothetical. If Republicans win enough House and Senate seats in a future election, they could feasibly pass some kind of federal abortion limit — and activists are determined to nail down presidential candidates on whether and to what extent they’d go along with it.

Exactly where to land on the issue may not be easy for all GOP presidential hopefuls. Former president Donald Trump jumped into the race first, and though he put a conservative supermajority on the Supreme Court, he frustrated antiabortion groups for comments blaming GOP losses last November on “the abortion issue,” particularly candidates who opposed exceptions for rape and incest. Trump cheered the Supreme Court decision last summer but didn’t respond to questions about where he stands on national restrictions on abortion.

Abortion rights groups scored major victories during last year’s midterm elections, even in some conservative-leaning states, and are aiming to build on that momentum. Democrats contend the results show the public is on their side, and nearly two-thirds of adults say abortion should be legal in most or all cases, according to a new survey from the Public Religion Research Institute, a nonpartisan group that surveyed Americans’ attitudes toward abortion last year.

Jennifer Fox made the film “The Tale” about the summer she was 13 (New York Times Photo by Ingmar Nolting).

Jennifer Fox made the film “The Tale” about the summer she was 13 (New York Times Photo by Ingmar Nolting).

ny times logoNew York Times, For Years She Said a Coach Abused Her. Now She Has Named a Legend, Juliet Macur, March 21, 2023 (print ed.). Jennifer Fox, who has long discussed what happened when she was 13 and her coach was 40, has revealed the final detail: his identity.

In 2018, Jennifer Fox made an Emmy-nominated film called “The Tale” about her pieced-together memories of what she now describes as childhood sexual abuse.

Laura Dern starred in the HBO drama, in which Fox unspooled what she remembered about the relationship she had as a 13-year-old with her 40-year-old coach.

The details were horrific and unsettling, and the lingering pain of the main character, also called Jennifer, was palpable. But the coach was given a pseudonym in the lightly fictionalized film.

ted nash 1972Now, a half century after the relationship ended in 1973, Fox has come forward with the name of the man who she said abused her. She said it was Ted Nash, a two-time Olympic medalist in rowing and nine-time Olympic coach who had mythic status in the sport. Early in his athletic career, Nash, shown in a 1972 photo, also coached girls and women in running.

“He was a very esteemed, very talented manipulator and beloved and looked good and acted right and had all the right credentials,” Fox told The New York Times in a series of interviews, adding that Nash, who died at 88 in 2021, seemed like someone she and her parents could trust. Fox has filed a complaint against Nash with U.S. Rowing, the sport’s national federation.

When told of the accusations, Aldina Nash-Hampe, Nash’s first wife, said they were “kind of a surprise to me.”

“But then,” she added, “he seemed to have affairs with a lot of women, and that’s one of the reasons I left.”

Nash-Hampe, 87, said that she and Nash divorced in 1972, after she found letters from Nash to some of those “many, many women,” and also that Nash had “kind of abandoned” her and their two young sons. She said that she didn’t know anything about the experiences Fox described, and that she was not aware of Nash having been involved with underage girls. But, she said, it was as if Ted Nash had two lives.

“He’s got a big reputation for being a wonderful guy,” she said. “But he does have this history.”

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

 

 

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washington post logoWashington Post, World is on brink of climate calamity, definitive U.N. climate report warns, Sarah Kaplan, March 21, 2023 (print ed.). A dangerous climate threshold is near, but ‘it does not mean we are doomed’ if swift action is taken, scientists say.

Human activities have transformed the planet at a pace and scale unmatched in recorded history, causing irreversible damage to communities and ecosystems, according to one of the most definitive reports ever published about climate change. Leading scientists warned that the world’s plans to combat these changes are inadequate and that more aggressive actions must be taken to avert catastrophic warming.

The report released Monday from the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change found the world is likely to miss its most ambitious climate target — limiting warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) above preindustrial temperatures — within a decade. Beyond that threshold, scientists have found, climate disasters will become so extreme people cannot adapt. Heat waves, famines and infectious diseases will claim millions of additional lives. Basic components of the Earth system will be fundamentally, irrevocably altered.

Monday’s assessment synthesizes years of studies on the causes and consequences of rising temperatures, leading U.N. Secretary General António Guterres to demand that developed countries like the United States eliminate carbon emissions by 2040 — a decade earlier than the rest of the world.

ny times logoNew York Times, First Official Estimate of Somalia’s Drought Shows 43,000 Dead, Abdi Latif Dahir, March 21, 2023 (print ed.). At least half of the deaths were children under the age of 5, according to the report by health researchers, the United Nations and the Somali government.

About 43,000 people died last year from the drought in Somalia, according to international agencies and the government, which on Monday released the first official death toll about the record drought devastating the Horn of Africa nation.

At least half of those deaths were children under the age of 5 who had been living in south-central Somalia, the center of the drought crisis. Experts called the drought the worst in decades even before the release of the report, which was conducted by the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and released by the World Health Organization, the United Nations Children’s Fund and the Somali government.

The researchers warned that in the first six months of this year, too, between 18,000 and 34,000 people are likely to succumb to the drought.

The new estimates illustrated the grim impact of the drought, which has led to massive displacement, outbreaks of disease and acute malnutrition among children — affecting millions not only in Somalia but also in Kenya and Ethiopia. The drought has wiped out millions of livestock animals that families depend on for food and income, and left nearly half of Somalia’s population of 16 million hungry.

ny times logoNew York Times, Storm-Ravaged California Prepares for More Rain and Snow, Jesus Jiménez, March 21, 2023. Some in the central part of the state were being urged to evacuate, though the latest system was not expected to be as powerful as previous weather events this year.

California is bracing for yet another storm system, one that is expected to bring heavy rain and snow on Tuesday and into Wednesday to a state that has been battered by storm after storm over the past few weeks.

The latest storm system is forecast to bring up to four inches of rain to parts of Southern and Central California, and up to four feet of snow in elevations above 6,000 feet, according to the National Weather Service. The merging threats of rain, snow and gusty winds up to 75 miles per hour may lead to downed trees and power lines, as well as flooding and a “significant threat of avalanches” at higher elevations, the Weather Service said.

By Tuesday morning, it was already raining in many parts of the state. Some areas had received nearly an inch of rain since midnight. Meteorologists with the Weather Service in Hanford, Calif., were keeping an eye on water levels on rivers, creeks and steams, which they said were “extremely high,” and that heavy rain below 4,000 feet could cause flooding. The heaviest rain was expected in the afternoon and evening.

ny times logoNew York Times, A Different Kind of Pipeline Project Scrambles Midwest Politics, Mitch Smith, Photographs by Alyssa Schukar, March 21, 2023 (print ed.).  Plans that would bury carbon underground rather than release it in the air have stoked debate over climate and property rights, creating unlikely alliances.

For more than a decade, the Midwest was the site of bitter clashes over plans for thousand-mile pipelines meant to carry crude oil beneath cornfields and cattle ranches.

Now high-dollar pipeline fights are happening again, but with a twist.

Instead of oil, these projects would carry millions of tons of carbon dioxide from ethanol plants to be injected into underground rock formations rather than dispersed as pollutants in the air.

What is playing out is a very different kind of environmental battle, a huge test not just for farmers and landowners but for emerging technologies promoted as ways to safely store planet-warming carbon.

The technology has generated support from powerful politicians in both parties, as well as major farming organizations, ethanol producers and some environmental groups.

Supporters, including some farmers who have signed agreements to have a pipeline buried on their property, frame the ideas being proposed by two companies as a win for both the economy and environment. They say the pipelines, boosted by federal tax credits, including from the Inflation Reduction Act that President Biden signed last year, would lower carbon emissions while aiding the agricultural economy through continued ethanol production.

But opponents are concerned about property rights and safety, and are not convinced of the projects’ claimed environmental benefits. They have forged unlikely alliances that have blurred the region’s political lines, uniting conservative farmers with liberal urbanites, white people with Native Americans, small-government Republicans with climate-conscious Democrats.

The result, both sides agree, is a high-stakes economic and environmental struggle pitting pipeline advocates against opponents who honed their political and legal strategies over nearly 15 years of fighting the Dakota Access oil pipeline, which has been in operation since 2017, and the Keystone XL oil pipeline, which was never built.

There is no question that technology exists to remove carbon from industrial sites and to transport and store it underground. Less clear: Is carbon capture really an effective counterweight to the overheating planet? And, if so, at what cost?

colorado river w

ny times logoNew York Times, Opinion: The Colorado River Is Running Dry, but Nobody Wants to Talk About the Mud, Dale Maharidge ( professor at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism), March 21, 2023 (print ed.).

It’s difficult to fathom how the Colorado River (whose route is shown above) could possibly carve the mile-deep chasm that is the Grand Canyon. But if one thinks of the river as a flume of liquid sandpaper rubbing the land over millions of years, it begins to make sense. “The finest workers in stone are not copper or steel tools,” Henry David Thoreau wrote, “but the gentle touches of air and water working at their leisure with a liberal allowance of time.”

In 1963, humans stopped time, when the brand new Glen Canyon Dam on the Utah-Arizona border cut off the reddish sediment that naturally eroded the Grand Canyon. Today the river runs vodka clear from the base of the dam.

For years this mud was hidden beneath Lake Powell’s blue waters. Now, as climate change and overuse of the Colorado have drawn the reservoir down to record lows, the silt is exposed — forming “‌mud glaciers‌‌.” And because of a gradient created when the lake level falls, the giant mud blobs are moving at a rate of 100 feet or more per day toward the dam.

These advancing mud blobs pose existential threats to the water supply of the Southwest: One day they could form a constipating plug that blocks Glen Canyon, preventing the water from flowing downriver. They could also someday endanger the structural integrity of the dam.

Asked about the dangers that the sediment posed, Floyd Dominy, the commissioner of the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation in 1963, later quipped, “We will let people in the future worry about it.”

Now the future is here. With Lake Powell just 23 percent full, and Lake Mead, outside of Las Vegas, at 28 percent capacity, it’s time to stop trying to “save” Lake Powell. It should be abandoned and its water stored in Lake Mead.

Yet the Bureau of Reclamation, the federal agency in charge of managing water in the West, is desperately trying to keep the reservoir because it wants keep the dam’s electricity-generating turbines working. If the water level drops another 30 feet from the present elevation, the turbines will become useless.

 Washington Post, Metal plant explosion leaves town with fear of lead exposure and few answers, Kim Bellware, March 19, 2023 (print ed.). Nearly a month after a metal-manufacturing plant exploded in the Cleveland suburb of Oakwood Village, Ohio, community and health advocates say they still don’t have clear answers to the urgent question of whether the blast released harmful levels of lead into the area. They’re also questioning why those living and working near the blast weren’t quickly informed that lead in the facility could pose a risk.

Investigators are still probing what caused the Feb. 20 blast at the I. Schumann & Co. plant, which according to WKYC-TV killed a 46-year-old maintenance worker and left 13 other people hospitalized. The afternoon explosion hurled billows of black smoke and flames into the air and scattered molten debris the length of a football field. The plant remains closed as the cleanup continues.

The incident has angered people in the wider community such as Yvonka M. Hall, a public health administrator who directs the Northeast Ohio Black Health Coalition and leads the volunteer-based Cleveland Lead Advocates for Safe Housing (CLASH). Hall said government officials “dropped the ball” by not immediately telling residents the site of the explosion contained lead and had been previously cited by the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency for hazardous waste and disposal violations.

Such frustration follows in the wake of the Feb. 3 Norfolk Southern train derailment in East Palestine, Ohio, just 75 miles away. Toxic chemicals in that derailed train were later burned in a “controlled release,” prompting skepticism among residents about state and federal government claims that the drinking water and air were safe.

But Hall said that unlike in East Palestine, a mostly White community where outcry prompted a Senate hearing, concerns about potentially devastating lead exposure in her community, which is two-thirds Black, have been largely shrugged off. Though East Palestine residents also struggled in the first hours and days after the derailment to have their concerns heard, Monday will mark a full month since the explosion in Oakwood Village.

In that month, none of the bulletins or news releases from local officials about the explosion have mentioned lead; a letter to residents from the Oakwood Village fire chief after the explosion said that neither the EPA nor third-party cleanup groups had notified city officials of any hazardous materials that were released. CLASH struggled to get timely answers from the Ohio EPA about whether the agency was looking for lead contamination and what the preliminary findings were, according to messages reviewed by The Washington Post. Hall, who used to work for the Cleveland Health Department, said that there are protocols for jumping to action after a disaster and that she remains critical of the Ohio EPA for not treating the Oakwood Village explosion as such.

“Do you see we have a community that is almost entirely White and got all the resources of the EPA almost immediately?” Hall said.

“I have to look at this through a racial equity lens,” she added. “If this were in East Palestine, we’d see boots on the ground and [officials] doing robocalls to the community.”

James Lee, a spokesperson for the Ohio EPA, said in a statement that the agency takes explosions such as the one at I. Schumann seriously and will be working with an independent environmental contractor hired by the metal company, which must comply with a plan reviewed and approved by the Ohio EPA.

washington post logoWashington Post, How Elon Musk knocked Tesla’s ‘Full Self-Driving’ off course, Faiz Siddiqui, March 20, 2023 (print ed.). Elon Musk had a pet project before Twitter: He wanted to make Tesla cars drive themselves.

Long before he became “Chief Twit” of Twitter, Elon Musk had a different obsession: making Teslas drive themselves. The technology was expensive and, two years ago when the supply chain was falling apart, Musk became determined to bring down the cost.

tesla logoHe zeroed in on a target: the car radar sensors, which are designed to detect hazards at long ranges and prevent the vehicles from barreling into other cars in traffic. The sleek bodies of the cars already bristled with eight cameras designed to view the road and spot hazards in each direction. That, Musk argued, should be enough.

Some Tesla engineers were aghast, said former employees with knowledge of his reaction, speaking on the condition of anonymity for fear of retribution. They contacted a trusted former executive for advice on how to talk Musk out of it, in previously unreported pushback. Without radar, Teslas would be susceptible to basic perception errors if the cameras were obscured by raindrops or even bright sunlight, problems that could lead to crashes.

Musk was unconvinced and overruled his engineers. In May 2021 Tesla announced it was eliminating radar on new cars. Soon after, the company began disabling radar in cars already on the road. The result, according to interviews with nearly a dozen former employees and test drivers, safety officials and other experts, was an uptick in crashes, near misses and other embarrassing mistakes by Tesla vehicles suddenly deprived of a critical sensor.

Musk has described the Tesla “Full Self-Driving” technology as “the difference between Tesla being worth a lot of money and being worth basically zero,” but his dream of autonomous cars is hitting roadblocks.

In recent weeks, Tesla has recalled and suspended the rollout of the technology to eligible vehicles amid concerns that its cars could disobey the speed limit and blow through stop signs, according to federal officials. Customer complaints have been piling up, including a lawsuit filed in federal court last month claiming that Musk has overstated the technology’s capabilities. And regulators and government officials are scrutinizing Tesla’s system and its past claims as evidence of safety problems mounts, according to company filings.

In interviews, former Tesla employees who worked on Tesla’s driver-assistance software attributed the company’s troubles to the rapid pace of development, cost-cutting measures like Musk’s decision to eliminate radar — which strayed from industry practice — and other problems unique to Tesla.

washington post logoWashington Post, At least 14 killed after 6.8-magnitude earthquake hits Ecuador and Peru, Kelly Kasulis Cho, March 20, 2023 (print ed.). At least 14 people were killed and 381 injured in Ecuador in a 6.8-magnitude earthquake that shattered buildings and crushed a car on Saturday afternoon, according to the Ecuadoran government. Tremors were felt as far as northern Peru.

The earthquake happened about five miles from the small coastal city of Balao, Ecuador, at a depth of nearly 41 miles, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. It sent multiple buildings plunging into the sea at a maritime port in the tourist town of Jambelí, their slanted roofs hovering just a few feet above the water’s surface, as members of Ecuador’s armed forces responded to the scene.

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Media, Education, Sports, Religion, High Tech

Guardian, Ecuadorian TV presenter wounded by bomb disguised as USB stick, Staff Report, March 22, 2023 (print ed.). Lenin Artieda was one of several journalists targeted by explosive devices mailed out across the country.

An Ecuadorian television presenter was wounded after a bomb disguised as a USB stick exploded when he inserted it in his computer, after explosive devices were sent to journalists across the country.

Lenin Artieda suffered minor injuries in the blast, which happened in the newsroom of Ecuavisa TV in Guayaquil.

The country’s attorney general’s office announced on Monday that it had launched a terrorism investigation after journalists at several news outlets were sent envelopes containing similar explosive devices.

“It’s a military-type explosive, but very small capsules,” said Xavier Chango, the national head of forensic science, referring to the explosive sent to Ecuavisa.

The envelopes sent to journalists had similar characteristics and the same contents and so would be investigated jointly, the attorney general’s office said in a statement, without naming the media organizations affected.

The police carried out a controlled detonation of a device sent to the news department of TC Television, also in Guayaquil, prosecutors said earlier on Monday.

Regional freedom of expression advocacy group Fundamedios said a third television station and radio outlet in Quito had also received envelopes with explosives.

The Television channel Teleamazonas said one of its journalists had received an anonymous envelope on Thursday and upon opening it had discovered a device, which the police confirmed contained explosives.

 

tucker carlson fox horizontal

ny times logoNew York Times, A Fox News producer sued the network, saying she was coerced into giving misleading testimony in the Dominion case, Nicholas Confessore and Katie Robertson, March 21, 2023 (print ed.). The producer, Abby Grossberg, said in a pair of lawsuits that the effort to place blame on her and Maria Bartiromo, the Fox Business host, was rooted in rampant misogyny and discrimination at the company.

A Fox News producer who has worked with the hosts Maria Bartiromo, left, and Tucker Carlson filed lawsuits against the company in New York and Delaware on maria bartiromoMonday, accusing Fox lawyers of coercing her into giving misleading testimony in the continuing legal battle around the network’s coverage of unfounded claims about election fraud.

The producer, Abby Grossberg, said Fox lawyers had tried to position her and Ms. Bartiromo to take the blame for Fox’s repeated airing of conspiracy theories about Dominion Voting Systems and its supposed role in manipulating the results of the 2020 presidential election. Dominion has filed a $1.6 billion defamation suit against Fox. Ms. Grossberg said the effort to place blame on her and Ms. Bartiromo was rooted in rampant misogyny and discrimination at the network.

fox news logo SmallThe new lawsuits, coupled with revelations from the Dominion legal fight, shed light on the rivalries and turf battles that raged at Fox News in the wake of the 2020 election, as network executives fought to hold on to viewers furious at the top-rated network for accurately reporting on President Donald J. Trump’s defeat in Arizona, a crucial swing state.

The lawsuits also include details about Ms. Grossberg’s work life at Fox and on Mr. Carlson’s show. Ms. Grossberg says she and other women endured frank and open sexism from co-workers and superiors at the network, which has been dogged for years by lawsuits and allegations about sexual harassment by Fox executives and stars.

The network’s disregard for women, Ms. Grossberg alleged, left her and Ms. Bartiromo understaffed — stretched too thin to properly vet the truthfulness of claims made against Dominion on the air. At times, Ms. Grossberg said, she was the only full-time employee dedicated solely to Ms. Bartiromo’s Sunday-morning show.

dominion voting systemsIn her complaints, Ms. Grossberg accuses lawyers for Fox News of coaching her in “a coercive and intimidating manner” before her September deposition in the Dominion case. The lawyers, she said, gave her the impression that she had to avoid mentioning prominent male executives and on-air talent to protect them from any blame, while putting her own reputation at risk.

On Monday afternoon, Fox filed its own suit against Ms. Grossberg, seeking to enjoin her from filing claims that would shed light on her discussions with the company’s lawyers. A judge has not yet ruled on Fox’s suit. Later on Monday, according to her lawyer, Parisis G. Filippatos, Fox also placed Ms. Grossberg on forced administrative leave.

Ms. Grossberg’s lawsuits were filed in the Southern District of New York and in Superior Court in Delaware, where a pretrial hearing in the Dominion defamation lawsuit is scheduled for Tuesday.

In a statement, a Fox spokeswoman said: “Fox News Media engaged an independent outside counsel to immediately investigate the concerns raised by Ms. Grossberg, which were made following a critical performance review. We will vigorously defend these claims.”

abby grossberg johns hopkinsAccording to the lawsuits filed by Ms. Grossberg (shown in a file photo), Fox superiors called Ms. Bartiromo a “crazy bitch” who was “menopausal” and asked Ms. Grossberg to cut the host out of coverage discussions.

Last year, she began working as a senior booking producer at “Tucker Carlson Tonight.” On her first full day, according to the lawsuit, Ms. Grossberg discovered that the show’s Manhattan work space was decorated with large pictures of Representative Nancy Pelosi of California, then the House speaker, wearing a plunging swimsuit.

The next day, Justin Wells, Mr. Carlson’s top producer, called Ms. Grossberg into his office, she said, to ask whether Ms. Bartiromo was having a sexual relationship with the House Republican leader, Kevin McCarthy.

Mr. Carlson’s staff joked about Jews and freely deployed a vulgar term for women, according to the complaint.

Later that fall, it said, before an appearance on the show by Tudor Dixon, the Republican candidate for Michigan governor, Mr. Carlson’s staff held a mock debate about whether they would prefer to have sex with Ms. Dixon or her Democratic opponent, Gov. Gretchen Whitmer.

After Ms. Grossberg complained about harassment from two male producers on the show, she was pulled into a meeting with human resources and told that she was not performing her duties, according to the complaint.

ny times logoNew York Times, Inside the 3 Months That Could Cost Fox $1.6 Billion, Jeremy W. Peters, March 21, 2023 (print ed.). The decision by Fox News executives in November 2020 to treat the more hard-right Newsmax as a mortal threat spawned a possibly more serious danger.

fox news logo SmallSince 2002, when Fox News first overtook CNN as the most-watched cable news channel, one thing has been as certain and predictable as its dominance: Every time a Democrat wins the White House, the right-leaning network’s ratings take a momentary dip.

That happened after the election of President Biden in 2020, too. But the reaction inside Fox was far different than before.

There was panic. From the chairman of Fox Corporation on down, executives scrambled as they tried to keep viewers tuned in, believing they were facing a crisis. Now, because of the decisions made after former President Donald J. Trump’s loss, Fox News is reckoning with a threat that could prove far more serious.

dominion voting systemsA $1.6 billion defamation suit from Dominion Voting Systems claims Fox knowingly spread false information about the role of the firm’s election technology in a made-up conspiracy to flip votes. On Tuesday, the two sides will present oral arguments before a judge in Delaware state court as they prepare for a trial next month.

Fox has insisted that it wasn’t presenting claims about Dominion as fact but was reporting and opining on them as any news organization would.

She says lawyers made her give misleading Dominion testimony.

As part of the suit, Dominion obtained thousands of internal Fox emails and text messages and deposed dozens of Fox employees. That evidence shows in extraordinary detail how the network lost its way in the weeks after the election. Here is a timeline of that fateful period, as told in court filings. Some of these exchanges have been lightly condensed for clarity.

Broadcasting & Cable, President Biden Yet to Withdraw Gigi Sohn’s FCC Nomination, John Eggerton, March 21, 2023. Administration may have been caught off guard by need for a fallback plan.

The Biden administration appears to be in no hurry to withdraw the nomination of Gigi Sohn, its first choice for the third Democratic seat on the five-member FCC, or perhaps it was caught somewhat off guard by the need to find a new candidate if it wants to start pursuing a non-bipartisan agenda, one that prominently includes the restoration of network-neutrality rules.

It has been more than two weeks since the embattled Federal Commuications Commission nominee informed the White House she was bowing out. She made that decision after weathering almost two years of withering criticism from conservatives and a campaign by some industry players to keep the progressive Democrat out of that key position.

But according to Congress.gov (opens in new tab), which tracks all actions on presidential nominees, at deadline Tuesday (March 21) the most recent action was the February 14 hearing for Sohn’s second nomination to the post. Her first nomination expired when she failed to get a Senate vote in the previous Congress.

The Biden administration will need a third Democrat on the FCC if the commission is to tackle partisan issues like restoring network neutrality rules, re-regulating broadcasters, or reforming the Universal Service Fund that subsidizes advanced communications to needy populations.

In a note to financial types, former top FCC official Blair Levin, now a media analyst, said a growing list of people apparently interested in the open seat suggests it would be a fair assumption that the White House did not have a plan B. “It may be sometime before it selects a new nominee, further delaying the moment when the Democrats obtain an FCC majority,” Levin said.

Given that it took the administration some four months after Sohn was vetted to pull the trigger on her initial nomination, according to someone familiar with that process, it could just be that the bureaucratic wheels are turning with their usual all deliberate speed.

In exiting the field, Sohn said she hoped the president would move swiftly on a new nominee. “[I]t is ironic that the 2-2 FCC will remain sidelined at the most consequential opportunity for broadband in our lifetimes,” she wrote in a statement at the time. “This means that your broadband will be more expensive for lack of competition, minority and underrepresented voices will be marginalized, and your private information will continue to be used and sold at the whim of your broadband provider.”

ny times logoNew York Times, Google Releases Bard, Its Competitor in the Race to Create A.I. Chatbots, Nico Grant and Cade Metz, March 21, 2023. The internet giant will grant users access to a chatbot after years of cautious development, chasing splashy debuts from rivals OpenAI and Microsoft.

google logo customFor more than three months, Google executives have watched as projects at Microsoft and a San Francisco start-up called OpenAI have stoked the public’s imagination with the potential for artificial intelligence.

chat gpt logoBut on Tuesday, Google tentatively stepped off the sidelines as it released a chatbot called Bard. The new A.I. chatbot will be available to a limited number of users in the United States and Britain and will accommodate additional users, countries and languages over time, Google executives said in an interview.

microsoft logo CustomThe cautious rollout is the company’s first public effort to address the recent chatbot craze driven by OpenAI and Microsoft, and it is meant to demonstrate that Google is capable of providing similar technology. But Google is taking a much more circumspect approach than its competitors, which have faced criticism that they are proliferating an unpredictable and sometimes untrustworthy technology.

Still, the release represents a significant step to stave off a threat to Google’s most lucrative business, its search engine. Many in the tech industry believe that Google — more than any other big tech company — has a lot to lose and to gain from A.I., which could help a range of Google products become more useful, but could also help other companies cut into Google’s huge internet search business. A chatbot can instantly produce answers in complete sentences that don’t force people to scroll through a list of results, which is what a search engine would offer.

 

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washington post logoWashington Post, Rupert Murdoch, 92, decides to have another go at marriage, Paul Farhi, March 21, 2023 (print ed.). Rupert Murdoch, four times married and divorced at 92, isn’t letting age or previous marital experience stand in the way of a fresh start. The billionaire media baron said he plans to marry a fifth time.

Murdoch announced he is engaged once again, this time to Ann Lesley Smith, 66, a former model, singer-songwriter, radio talk-show host, and police chaplain in San Francisco. The couple met last year.

Murdoch is fresh off his divorce from Jerry Hall, the model and actress he married in 2016 (shown together with him above in a file photo). Murdoch divorced Hall, rupert murdoch pink shirtsleevesthe mother of four of Mick Jagger’s children, last year.

fox news logo SmallMurdoch, left, broke the news of his engagement in the New York Post, the tabloid that helped launch his foray into the American and global media market when the Australian immigrant bought it in 1976. Murdoch-led companies have since founded or acquired the Fox broadcast network, Fox News Channel, the Wall Street Journal and HarperCollins book publishers, among dozens of other properties.

washington post logoWashington Post, Amazon cuts another 9,000 jobs as tech layoffs mount, Rachel Lerman, March 21, 2023 (print ed.). This brings the expected number of cuts to 27,000 at the e-commerce giant.

amazon logo smallAmazon will slash another 9,000 roles, the company announced Monday, adding to a mounting list of layoffs as the tech sector’s golden age fades.

The job losses build on the 18,000 previously announced, bringing the total to 27,000, and stand in a stark contrast to the past decade of explosive growth for the technology industry, and for Amazon in particular.

The Seattle company boomed during the early days of the pandemic, when consumers leaned into online ordering. But growth has waned for Amazon and fellow tech giants Facebook, Google and Microsoft, which have all have announced massive layoffs in the past several months. (Amazon founder Jeff Bezos owns The Washington Post.)

These are some of the notable companies laying off workers

It’s a significant reversal for the industry, which some had perceived as “recession-proof.” But others say the companies grew too big, too fast and needed to rein in spending. The layoffs have also hit start-ups and smaller firms, and funding has been less accessible as the sector struggles.

 

 

alex jones screen shot 2020 05 01 at 12.02.06 pm

Alex Jones, host and founder of the Texas-based Infowars show (file photo).

ny times logoNew York Times, Sandy Hook Families Take On Alex Jones and the Bankruptcy System Itself, Elizabeth Williamson and Emily Steel, March 19, 2023 (print ed.). As they seek over $1.4 billion in damages, a Times review shows Mr. Jones is moving millions to family and friends, potentially out of reach of creditors.

The Infowars conspiracy broadcaster Alex Jones, who faces more than $1.4 billion in legal damages for defaming the families of the Sandy Hook shooting victims, has devised a new way to taunt them: wriggling out of paying them the money they are owed.

Mr. Jones, who has an estimated net worth as high as $270 million, declared both business and personal bankruptcy last year as the families won historic verdicts in two lawsuits over his lies about the 2012 shooting that killed 20 first graders and six educators at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn.

A New York Times review of financial documents and court records filed over the past year found that Mr. Jones has transferred millions of dollars in property, cash and business deals to family and friends, including to a new company run by his former personal trainer, all potentially out of reach of creditors. He has also spent heavily on luxuries, including $80,000 on a private jet, bodyguards and a rented villa while he was in Connecticut to testify at a trial last fall.

“If anybody thinks they’re shutting me down, they’re mistaken,” Mr. Jones said on his new podcast last month.

The families now face a stark reality. It is not clear whether they will ever collect a significant portion of the assets Mr. Jones has transferred. So their ability to get anything remotely close to the jury awards is inextricably tied to Mr. Jones’s capacity to make a living as the purveyor of lies — including that the shooting was a hoax, the parents were actors and the children did not really die — that ignited years of torment and threats against them.

Lawyers for Mr. Jones said in a filing late last year that “any argument that Jones must give up his public life, or discontinue public discourse, is contrary to supporting his ability to fund a plan and pay creditors.”

Mark Bankston, the families’ Texas lawyer, does not disagree. “There’s a chance we’re going to be forced into a situation where we’re going to be checking to see how Infowars is doing every month to figure out if our clients are getting paid or not,” he said.

Earlier this month, Mr. Jones offered to pay the families and his other creditors a total of $43 million over five years as part of a bankruptcy plan, which lawyers for the families immediately dismissed as laughable and riddled with financial holes. The judge ordered Mr. Jones to fill in the gaps in his financial disclosures by the end of the month.

But Mr. Jones’s continued obfuscation about his net worth has given him leverage over the families, who are also fighting an American bankruptcy system that makes the survival of businesses a priority and has so far given Mr. Jones an advantage in court.

Although Infowars has estimated revenues of some $70 million a year — hardly a mom-and-pop shop — Mr. Jones was able to file for Chapter 11 under the more lenient bankruptcy rules of the Small Business Reorganization Act, known as Subchapter V. The law first took effect in early 2020, but was soon broadened to assist small businesses struggling during the pandemic.

Unlike in a traditional Chapter 11 bankruptcy, Subchapter V gives creditors like the Sandy Hook families virtually no say in a restructuring plan, nor can they file a competing plan. They can challenge Mr. Jones’s approach, but an impasse in talks could result in liquidation of the company, putting them in line to collect a fraction of the damages.

A liquidation would end Infowars, but Mr. Jones would be free to start another company just like it.

“We’re doing well in Chapter V,” Mr. Jones said on Infowars in September, misstating the name of the rule. “Whatever judgments they have can’t shut us down. Whatever profit there is in the future these jerks get, but who cares, we’re still on air.”

 chat gpt logowashington post logoWashington Post, Perspective: ChatGPT can ace logic tests now. But don’t ask it to be creative, Geoffrey A. Fowler, March 19, 2023 (print ed.). Our tech columnist tests LSAT puzzles and a writing challenge on GPT-4. Here’s what the artificial intelligence upgrade can — and can’t — do.

When the new version of the artificial intelligence tool ChatGPT arrived this week, I watched it do something impressive: solve logic puzzles.

One after the other, I fed the AI called GPT-4 questions from the logical reasoning portion of the LSAT used for law school admissions. Those always leave me with a headache, yet the software aced them like a competent law student.

But as cool as that is, it doesn’t mean AI is suddenly as smart as a lawyer.

The arrival of GPT-4, an upgrade from OpenAI to the chatbot software that captured the world’s imagination, is one the year’s most-hyped tech launches. Some feared its uncanny ability to imitate humans could be devastating for workers, be used as a chaotic “deepfake” machine or usher in an age of sentient computers.

That is not how I see GPT-4 after using it for a few days. While it has gone from a D student to a B student at answering logic questions, AI hasn’t crossed a threshold into human intelligence. For one, when I asked GPT-4 to flex its improved “creative” writing capability by crafting the opening paragraph to this column in the style of me (Geoffrey A. Fowler), it couldn’t land on one that didn’t make me cringe.

washington post logoWashington Post, Analysis: AI chatbots won’t enjoy tech’s legal shield, lawmakers say, Cristiano Lima and David DiMolfetta, March 20, 2023 (print ed.). A Supreme Court case last month examining tech companies’ liability shield kicked off an unexpected debate: Will the protections apply to tools powered by artificial intelligence, like ChatGPT?

chat gpt logoThe question, which Justice Neil M. Gorsuch raised during arguments for Gonzalez v. Google, could have sweeping implications as tech companies race to capitalize on the popularity of the OpenAI chatbot and integrate similar products, as my colleague Will Oremus wrote last month.

But the two lawmakers behind the law told The Technology 202 that the answer is already clear: No, they won’t be protected under Section 230.

The 1996 law, authored by Reps. Ron Wyden and Chris Cox, shields digital services from lawsuits over user content they host. And courts have typically held that Section 230 applies to search engines when they link to or publish excerpts from third parties, as Will wrote.

But Gorsuch suggested last month that those protections might not apply for AI-generated content, positing that the tool “generates polemics today that would be content that goes beyond picking, choosing, analyzing or digesting content. And that is not protected.”

Gorsuch’s comment ignited a lively debate that’s becoming increasingly prescient as more Silicon Valley giants redouble their AI investments and roll out new products.
According to Wyden and Cox, Gorsuch was right — meaning companies could be open to a deluge of lawsuits if AI tools go awry.

"AI tools like ChatGPT, Stable Diffusion and others being rapidly integrated into popular digital services should not be protected by Section 230,” Wyden (D-Ore.), now a senator and a staunch defender of the law, said in a statement. “And it isn’t a particularly close call.”

Wyden, who has proposed requiring companies to vet AI for biases, added that, “Section 230 is about protecting users and sites for hosting and organizing users’ speech” and “has nothing to do with protecting companies from the consequences of their own actions and products.”

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Pandemics, Public Health, Privacy

washington post logoWashington Post, Long-covid symptoms are less common now than earlier in the pandemic, Amy Goldstein and Dan Keating, March 19, 2023 (print ed.). An covad 19 photo.jpg Custom 2analysis of nearly 5 million U.S. patients who had covid also shows that patients with certain underlying conditions have twice the odds of seeking care for long covid. 

ny times logoNew York Times, Covid Politics Leave a Florida Public Hospital Shaken, Patricia Mazzei, March 20, 2023 (print ed.). Staff members of Sarasota Memorial Hospital are bewildered by critics who continue to wage a campaign against federal guidelines on Covid treatment.

The turmoil at Sarasota Memorial, one of Florida’s largest public hospitals, began last year after three candidates running on a platform of “health freedom” won seats on the nine-member board that oversees the hospital. Board meetings, once sleepy, started drawing hundreds of angry people who, like the new members, denounced the hospital’s treatment protocols for Covid-19.

An internal review last month found that Sarasota Memorial did far better than some of its competitors in saving Covid patients’ lives. But that did little to quell detractors, whose campaign against the hospital has not relented. By then, the hospital had become the latest public institution under siege by an increasingly large and vocal right-wing contingent in one of Florida’s most affluent counties, where a backlash to pandemic policies has started reshaping local government.

washington post logoWashington Post, Senior care is crushingly expensive. Boomers aren’t ready, Christopher Rowland, March 20, 2023 (print ed.). An estimated 18 million middle-income baby boomers will not have enough to pay for care for moderate to severe needs, according to one analysis.

A wave of Americans has been reaching retirement age largely unprepared for the extraordinary costs of specialized care. These aging baby boomers — 73 million strong, the oldest of whom turn 77 this year — pose an unprecedented challenge to the U.S. economy, as individual families shoulder an increasingly ruinous financial burden with little help from stalemated policymakers in Washington.

ny times logoNew York Times, Opinion: What if Kids Are Sad and Stressed Because Their Parents Are? David French, right, March 21, 2023 (print ed.). There is a depressing familiarity now david frenchto the conversations I’m hearing among parents of teenagers. After the obligatory pleasantries, talk often turns to mental health. Someone’s daughter is struggling, battling body image issues. Someone’s son is sullen and lost in video games. The parental concerns of previous generations (sex, drugs and rock ’n’ roll) have been replaced by a new triumvirate: anxiety, depression and suicidal ideation.

As a parent of a teenager, I see this world every day. It’s the message I hear from my peers. So I’ve been following the discussion of rising teenage anxiety with intense interest — in particular, the role of social media, secularization and politics in immiserating our children. But there’s a factor that’s received insufficient attention in the debate over external factors in teenage suffering: What if the call is also coming from inside the house? What if parents are inadvertently contributing to their own kids’ pain?

Just as there is a depressing familiarity to parents’ conversations about their children, there is a similar familiarity to kids’ conversations about their parents. I spend much of my time traveling to college campuses, both secular and religious, and I hear a similar refrain all the time: “Something happened to my parents.” Sometimes (especially at elite schools) they share stories about parents obsessed with their kids’ education. More often I hear about parents consumed by politics. And at the extreme end, I hear stories about the impact of conspiracy theories of all kinds. Just as parents are upset about their children’s anxiety and depression, children are anxious about their parents’ mental health.

First, let’s map out the very bleak landscape. In 2021 nearly 60 percent of teenage girls reported feeling “persistent sadness,” Azeen Ghorayshi and Roni Caryn Rabin wrote in The Times. Overall, 44 percent of teenagers reported “persistent feelings of sadness or hopelessness,” according to The Washington Post, an increase from 26 percent in 2009. These are the familiar numbers — the scary uptick that has spawned soul searching across the length and breadth of this land.

But let’s place them in a grim context. The same year that 44 percent of teenagers reported suffering from serious sadness, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 41.5 percent of adults reported “recent symptoms of an anxiety or depressive disorder,” an increase from an already high baseline of 36.4 percent just months before.

Moreover, while suicide rates have gone up in the youngest cohort of Americans, they still materially lag suicide rates among their parents and grandparents. Deaths of despair — the name for deaths due to suicide, drug abuse or alcohol poisoning — have particularly afflicted white middle-aged men, and the numbers overall are simply staggering, especially since they started to increase sharply in 2000.

Aside from self-reported statistics about depression and anxiety or the grim toll of drug abuse and suicide, there are other indicators that the adults simply aren’t all right. Partisan animosity, for example, simply keeps rising. Adult anger and pessimism are pervasive: A recent NBC News poll indicated that a record 58 percent of registered voters surveyed believed that America’s best days were behind it.

And when we think about children and screens, let’s also consider the relationship between adults and their TVs and smartphones. Watch cable news (where grandparents get their news), and you’ll see a discourse dominated by fear and anger. If you spend any time at all on political Twitter (or observe the discourse on political Facebook posts), you’ll quickly see a level of vicious, personal attacks that differ little from the most extreme personal bullying a person can experience in middle school or high school.

Teens do not exist on an island. The connection between parental emotional health and the emotional health of their kids is well established. Moreover, the way parents raise their kids can, of course, directly affect emotional health. As Derek Thompson observed in The Atlantic, placing children in “pressure cooker” upper-income schools can harm student well-being.

Parenting styles have changed. As Peter Gray wrote last year in Psychology Today, the increase in teen suffering “has occurred during a period in which young people have been subjected to ever-increasing amounts of time being supervised, directed and protected by adults.” He argues that “the pressure and continuous monitoring and judgments from adults, coupled with the loss of freedom to follow their own interests and solve their own problems, results in anxiety, depression and general dissatisfaction with life.” And if we’re concerned about continuous monitoring, Covid only compounded the problem.

This isn’t to say parents are the full story. I’m open to the smartphone thesis (and the secularization thesis and the political thesis) as providing the primary explanation for teenage unhappiness, but I’m not convinced that the kids will ever be all right as long as Mom and Dad suffer from their own profound problems. Helicopter parenting is potentially stifling on its own terms, but it’s got to be incalculably worse when the hovering parent is gripped by fear and anxiety.

So what is to be done? I don’t mean to make parents feel even more anxious about their own anxiety, but to the extent our mental health is rooted in factors beyond our immediate control — an especially salient point when considering national politics — it might be worth asking a simple question: How much fear and anxiety should we import into our lives and homes? Forget teens, for the moment. Are we proving any more capable of handling the information age?

It’s a question I honestly ask myself. I know that my experiences online drift into family life. I know that my anxiety can radiate outward to affect my kids. Our own addictions — to alcohol or drugs, yes, but also to information and outrage — can devastate our families. I think often about the poignant words of a British pastor named Andrew Wilson (that, yes, I saw on Twitter): “One of the things that has struck me in my last two US visits has been how very painful the culture wars have become for many, many people. Online, you see combatants appearing to enjoy the fight (or even monetise it). But on the ground, you see the hurt, confusion and fatigue.”

Now it’s time for us to realize that our hurt can become our kids’ hurt, and if we want to heal our children, that process may well start by seeking the help we need to heal ourselves. 

washington post logoWashington Post, Covid changed parents’ view of schools — and ignited the education culture wars, Hannah Natanson, March 18, 2023. The scrutiny, distrust and hostility in one Ohio city is emblematic of a fissure over public schooling that has cracked America into pieces since the start of the pandemic.

It was a school board meeting, but not one of the shouting matches the nation has come to know over the past three years. No parents yelled about masking, library books or critical race theory. On the agenda: door signage and school security officer pensions. Tonight, there was no time allotted for public comment, meaning nobody in the audience was allowed to speak.

Nonetheless, nearly every chair was filled. On a frigid Tuesday in early March, a dozen adults sat split by an aisle into two camps: To the left were members of Support Public Education in Mentor, three of them clad in red T-shirts bearing the left-leaning group’s name. To the right were those affiliated with Concerned Mentor Taxpayers, which trends Christian and conservative. One man wore a camouflage baseball cap and a bracelet patterned with an American flag.

Neither side looked at the other.

The scrutiny, distrust and hostility on display here — between members of the opposing parent groups, between parents and the school board, and among board members, some of whom won election in 2021 by running partisan races — is emblematic of a fissure over public schooling that has cracked America into pieces since the start of the coronavirus pandemic, when politics and societal upheaval sharpened existing divides.

Concerns first emerged during the early phase of the pandemic, when parents facing school closures began showing up at school board meetings to demand in-person classes — or insist on continued virtual learning. Soon, membership exploded in Facebook groups that sought to end masking — or add new safety measures. From the start, the fight took on a political cast: Right-leaning parents tended to argue against precautions such as mandatory vaccination, while left-leaning parents advocated for them.

But as the covid case rates and death counts eventually abated, the anger and frustration did not. Instead, it morphed into conflicts over what schools should be teaching. Some conservative parents, granted an unprecedented glimpse into lessons during virtual learning, took issue with teacher-led discussions of race, gender and sexual orientation, arguing educators were promoting the views of the political left. They founded national organizations such as Moms for Liberty to promote greater parental control of education and eradicate books they deemed sexually inappropriate from school libraries. Politicians capitalized on the swelling discontent to pass at least 64 laws across 25 states restricting what children can learn and do at school, per a Washington Post analysis.

Those on the left have been slower to organize. But state-level and national advocacy groups are now emerging on that side, too — including the Florida Freedom to Read Project, a parent group fighting book bans, and Defense of Democracy, a national organization based in New York that aims to counter Moms for Liberty chapters nationwide.

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  A photograph released by Russian state media showing Chinese President Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin meeting at the Kremlin (Photo by Sergei Karpukhin of Sputnik).

 

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 A photograph released by Russian state media showing Chinese President Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin meeting at the Kremlin (Photo by Sergei Karpukhin of Sputnik).

A photograph released by Russian state media showing Chinese President Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin meeting at the Kremlin (Photo by Sergei Karpukhin of Sputnik).

ny times logoNew York Times, Live Updates: As Xi and Putin Meet, U.S. Assails ‘Diplomatic Cover’ for War Crimes, Anton Troianovski, Valerie Hopkins, Carly Olson and Chris Buckley, March 20, 2023. Three days after the International Criminal Court accused President Vladimir Putin of Russia of war crimes in Ukraine, President Xi Jinping of China arrived in Moscow for a state visit.

Here’s what to know about Xi’s visit to Russia.

Xi Jinping, China’s leader, and President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia met face-to-face on Monday in Moscow, where Mr. Xi hailed the two nations as “good neighbors and reliable partners” during a state visit that has been closely watched by Kyiv and its Western allies.

While Chinese officials have attempted to cast Mr. Xi as a mediator who can broker a peaceful resolution in Ukraine, officials in the United States have been wary of China’s involvement. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who previously warned that Beijing could provide weapons to Russia, said on Monday that the visit amounted to “diplomatic cover” for Russian war crimes.

Talks in Moscow on Monday between President Xi Jinping of China and President Vladimir V. Putin covered their plans to strengthen bilateral relations and also the war in Ukraine, according to an official Chinese summary of the meeting that gave no sign that any breakthrough had been reached over the fighting.

Citing the broadly worded framework for peace talks that China issued last month, Mr. Xi told his Russian counterpart that such negotiations were the only viable way of ending the yearlong war, according to a summary of their meeting released by Xinhua, the Chinese state news agency.

 

John F. Kirby, a White House spokesman, at a news briefing in Washington on Monday (White House pool photo by Jim Lo Scalzo).

 John F. Kirby, a White House spokesman, at a news briefing in Washington on Monday (White House pool photo by Jim Lo Scalzo).

U.S. officials are not certain that Beijing will provide weapons to Moscow to further the Russian invasion of Ukraine, John Kirby, a White House spokesman shown above, told reporters on Monday, weeks after Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken had warned of the possibility.

Mr. Kirby’s statement came as the leaders of China and Russia met in Moscow amid concern that China could decide to abandon its peacemaker stance on the invasion of Ukraine and arm Russia’s military.

Russian leader Vladimir Putin, left, and Chinese leader Xi Jinping, both wearing dark suits, speak to each other in front of the Russian and Chinese flags in Beijing last year (Sputnik photo via Reuters).

Russian leader Vladimir Putin, left, and Chinese leader Xi Jinping, both wearing dark suits, speak to each other in front of the Russian and Chinese flags in Beijing last year at the Winter Olympics shortly before Russia invaded Ukraine (Sputnik photo via Reuters). 

washington post logoWashington Post, Live Update: Xi arrives in Russia to stand with Putin against West amid Ukraine war, Francesca Ebel and Lily Kuo, March 20, 2023. Russian analysts skeptical Putin-Xi talks will make progress on peace; Ukraine ‘ready’ for ‘closer dialogue with China.’

Chinese leader Xi Jinping landed in Russia on Monday for a much-anticipated three-day state visit, taking a joint stand with President Vladimir Putin against the West even as the Russian leader stands accused by the International Criminal Court of war crimes in Ukraine.

China FlagThe two men, each positioned as “leader for life” of a nuclear power, celebrated their “no limits” relationship in Beijing together in early 2022, just weeks before Putin ordered his full-scale invasion of Ukraine, and they have met about 40 times. But Monday’s visit, the first by Xi since the invasion, represents a display of tacit support by China for the war and a personal triumph for Putin, who is eager to show he is not isolated on the international stage.

Xi’s plane arrived at Vnukovo International Airport just southwest of the Russian capital at approximately 1 p.m. local time Monday. The presidential motorcade then made its way to the center of Moscow, where dozens of people waving Chinese and Russian flags greeted the delegation outside his hotel, the Soluxe Hotel in the north of the city. Initial talks were scheduled to begin in the afternoon, followed by a dinner later with Putin.

ny times logoNew York Times, Macron’s Government Survives but Faces Wrath of France Over Pension Overhaul, Roger Cohen, March 20, 2023. Two no-confidence votes failed to oust the cabinet of President Emmanuel Macron over a bill that proposes to raise the retirement age to 64 from 62.

The French National Assembly rejected a no-confidence motion against the government of President Emmanuel Macron on Monday, ensuring that a fiercely contested bill raising the retirement age to 64 from 62 becomes the law of the land.

The first of two motions received 278 votes, nine short of the 287 needed to pass. The close result reflected widespread anger at the pension overhaul, at Mr. Macron for his apparent aloofness and at the way the measure was rammed through Parliament last week without a full vote on the bill itself. The Senate, France’s upper house of Parliament, passed the pension bill this month.

A second no-confidence motion, filed by the far-right National Rally, failed on Monday, as well, with only 94 lawmakers voting in favor.

The change, which Mr. Macron has sought since the beginning of his first term in 2017, has provoked two months of demonstrations, intermittent strikes and occasional violence. It has split France, with polls consistently showing two-thirds of the population opposing the overhaul.

ny times logoNew York Times, Trump’s Call for Protests of Pending Arrest Splits G.O.P., Shane Goldmacher and Alan Feuer, March 20, 2023. After Donald Trump urged supporters to protest his looming indictment, some Republicans have heeded the call, while many others have lobbied against it.

His call to protest his expected indictment has divided his allies on the right, as some fear mass gatherings could devolve into violence and lead to the prosecution of his supporters just as the Jan. 6 riot at the Capitol did two years ago.

While some Republicans have echoed Mr. Trump’s call to take to the streets, other prominent voices on the right are urging caution and for people to stay away, particularly from New York, where they note that any potential unrest would invite prosecution from the same official who is expected to charge Mr. Trump — the Manhattan district attorney, Alvin L. Bragg.

“Better to stay home,” advised Jeffrey Clark, the former Justice Department official who was nearly named acting attorney general by Mr. Trump in late 2020 as the president sought to overturn his election loss. “Think, rethink, and triple think before you physically go to protest anywhere in the Big Apple.”

The Republican speaker of the House, Kevin McCarthy, who owes his post in part to Mr. Trump’s support, was among those urging Trump supporters to stay away on Sunday. “I don’t think people should protest this, no,” he said during a news conference in Florida, adding, “And I think President Trump, if you talk to him, he doesn’t believe that, either.”

Mr. Trump, though, has long measured the strength of his standing by the blunt metric of the size of the crowds that show up for him, in good times and in bad ones.

When the “Access Hollywood” video first broke in 2016, Mr. Trump found comfort in the small band of supporters who stood in solidarity with Trump signs outside Trump Tower on Fifth Avenue, visiting them briefly with a fist pump. And, once he became president, the first mini-drama of his White House tenure was related to his insistent exaggerations about the crowd size at his inauguration.

ny times logoNew York Times, Four Convicted of Obstruction on Jan. 6 in Final Oath Keepers Trial, Alan Feuer and Zach Montague, March 20, 2023. The verdicts came after trials in which other members of the far-right militia were convicted of seditious conspiracy for their roles in the Capitol attack.

Four people who marched with the Oath Keepers militia into the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, were convicted on Monday of conspiracy to obstruct the work of Congress, bringing an end to the third and final trial examining the role that members of the far-right group played in the attack.

The four defendants — Sandra Parker, Laura Steele, Connie Meggs and William Isaacs — were also found guilty of an array of other charges, including destruction of government property and conspiracy to prevent members of Congress from discharging their duties by certifying the results of the 2020 election.

Two other people charged in the case — Ms. Parker’s husband, Bennie Parker, and Michael Greene, a close associate of Stewart Rhodes, the leader of the Oath Keepers — avoided conviction on conspiracy charges, but were both found guilty of illegally entering and remaining on the Capitol grounds.

The verdicts, handed up after more than a week of deliberations in Federal District Court in Washington, followed the convictions at two separate trials of Mr. Rhodes and five other members of his group on charges of seditious conspiracy, the most significant count to have been brought so far against any of the 1,000 people arrested in connection with the Capitol attack.

Mr. Rhodes and one of his top lieutenants, Kelly Meggs, the husband of Connie Meggs, were both found guilty of sedition at a trial that ended in November. In January, in another trial, four other Oath Keepers — Roberto Minuta, Joseph Hackett, David Moerschel and Edward Vallejo — were also convicted of sedition.

The defendants in the latest Oath Keepers trial never faced sedition charges and mostly played less significant roles in the Capitol attack than those in the two earlier trials. Mr. and Mrs. Parker, a retired couple from Ohio, were in their 60s and 70s, for example, and Mr. Isaacs, as his lawyer repeatedly argued, suffered from a severe form of autism.

Still, the jury apparently believed the prosecution’s claims that they had broken the law by either entering the Capitol or by breaching barricades outside and going into a restricted area.

“They seized and claimed a building that cannot belong to them alone,” Alexandra Hughes, a prosecutor, said of the defendants during her closing statement this month. “They imposed their will on the democratic process. They violated a principle that we all must abide.”

The three Oath Keepers trials have now led to felony convictions against 15 members of the group, all but crippling an organization that at its height had tens of thousands of adherents and conducted self-appointed vigilante missions for more than a decade in cities across the country.

The plight of the Oath Keepers stands in stark contrast to that of the Proud Boys, another far-right group whose leaders and members have faced charges in connection with Jan. 6. Even though five Proud Boys — including the group’s former chairman, Enrique Tarrio — are now on trial in the same federal courthouse facing sedition charges, the organization has remained involved in far-right events and operations.

In the latest Oath Keepers trial, Mr. Parker and Mr. Greene, a former soldier appointed by Mr. Rhodes to serve as his handpicked “ground commander” on Jan. 6, fared better with the jury than the rest of the defendants. Neither man went inside the Capitol that day, and the jurors acquitted each of some of the charges they faced while failing to return a verdict on others.

Much like the other two trials, statements made by Mr. Rhodes played a central role in this one. Prosecutors showed the jury reams of encrypted messages that Mr. Rhodes had sent to his compatriots in the run-up to the Capitol attack, many of them calling for civil war.

“On the 6th, they are going to put the final nail in the coffin of this republic, unless we fight our way out with Trump preferably or without him,” one of the messages read. “We have no choice.”

United Nations

washington post logoWashington Post, World is on brink of climate calamity, definitive U.N. climate report warns, Sarah Kaplan, March 20, 2023. A dangerous climate threshold is near, but ‘it does not mean we are doomed’ if swift action is taken, scientists say.

Human activities have transformed the planet at a pace and scale unmatched in recorded history, causing irreversible damage to communities and ecosystems, according to one of the most definitive reports ever published about climate change. Leading scientists warned that the world’s plans to combat these changes are inadequate and that more aggressive actions must be taken to avert catastrophic warming.

The report released Monday from the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change found the world is likely to miss its most ambitious climate target — limiting warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) above preindustrial temperatures — within a decade. Beyond that threshold, scientists have found, climate disasters will become so extreme people cannot adapt. Heat waves, famines and infectious diseases will claim millions of additional lives. Basic components of the Earth system will be fundamentally, irrevocably altered.

Monday’s assessment synthesizes years of studies on the causes and consequences of rising temperatures, leading U.N. Secretary General António Guterres to demand that developed countries like the United States eliminate carbon emissions by 2040 — a decade earlier than the rest of the world.

ny times logoNew York Times, First Official Estimate of Somalia’s Drought Shows 43,000 Dead, Abdi Latif Dahir, March 20, 2023. At least half of the deaths were children under the age of 5, according to the report by health researchers, the United Nations and the Somali government.

About 43,000 people died last year from the drought in Somalia, according to international agencies and the government, which on Monday released the first official death toll about the record drought devastating the Horn of Africa nation.

At least half of those deaths were children under the age of 5 who had been living in south-central Somalia, the center of the drought crisis. Experts called the drought the worst in decades even before the release of the report, which was conducted by the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and released by the World Health Organization, the United Nations Children’s Fund and the Somali government.

The researchers warned that in the first six months of this year, too, between 18,000 and 34,000 people are likely to succumb to the drought.

The new estimates illustrated the grim impact of the drought, which has led to massive displacement, outbreaks of disease and acute malnutrition among children — affecting millions not only in Somalia but also in Kenya and Ethiopia. The drought has wiped out millions of livestock animals that families depend on for food and income, and left nearly half of Somalia’s population of 16 million hungry.

ny times logoNew York Times, Macron Cabinet Faces No-Confidence Vote as Fury Grows Over French Pensions, Aurelien Breeden, March 20, 2023. Lawmakers will debate motions to oust President Emmanuel Macron’s cabinet, days after he rammed a proposal to raise the legal retirement age through Parliament.

President Emmanuel Macron’s government was facing a crucial and surprisingly close no-confidence vote in France’s lower house of Parliament on Monday after his government forced a pension overhaul through without a full vote, setting off the most intense political turmoil since his re-election last year.

In choosing to bypass Parliament, Mr. Macron incensed labor unions, sparked violent protests and prompted opponents to file two no-confidence motions in the National Assembly, the lower house of Parliament, against his cabinet. As debate in the assembly began on Monday, votes on both motions were expected within hours.

So far, the atmosphere is the National Assembly is very different from last week, when the government pushed through the bill without a vote. Lawmakers no longer bang their desks or sing the national anthem. They listen carefully and clap their hands every few minutes. It feels like a normal session, except legislators are voting on bringing down the government.

Politico, Fear, burnout and insubordination: Insiders spill details about life at the highest levels of FBI, Josh Gerstein and Kyle Cheney, March 20, 2023. A christopher-wray-o.jpgdiscrimination case has pulled back the curtain on the tense atmosphere at the bureau’s legal office; FBI employees and guests listen at an installation ceremony for FBI Director Chris Wray, right.

politico CustomA gender discrimination trial in Washington, D.C., shined a harsh spotlight on one of the most important legal offices in the U.S. government, portraying it as a hotbed of dysfunction, turf wars, mismanagement and paranoia.

The lawsuit, which came to a head earlier this month in federal court in the nation’s capital, centered on claims of gender discrimination in the FBI’s general counsel’s office, where some of the most powerful attorneys in the country are charged with helping safeguard Americans from terrorism, cyber threats, organized crime and corruption.

FBI logoA federal jury ultimately sided with the FBI, but not before a parade of witnesses testified to startling revelations about the bureau, exposing dysfunction and management woes that at times have been exploited by the bureau’s detractors — most notably amid Donald Trump’s crusade against investigations into his activities.

The trial drew little notice inside the federal courthouse in Washington, D.C., where numerous high-profile Jan. 6 defendants were simultaneously standing trial, and grand juries probing potential crimes by Trump and his allies remain active. But the proceedings offered a peek inside the secretive confines of the FBI — describing degrees of dysfunction that are rarely aired, particularly by the FBI insiders themselves.

The list of trial witnesses included Jim Baker, who testified that when he took over as FBI general counsel in 2014, his staff of about 200 lawyers were burned out, locked in bureaucratic turf battles and wracked by fear of their own colleagues. Baker said that in the early part of his tenure, some employees were so afraid to raise concerns in front of others that they “frequently” slipped anonymous notes under his door overnight — typewritten to conceal handwriting.

washington post logoWashington Post, Covid changed parents’ view of schools — and ignited the education culture wars, Hannah Natanson, March 18, 2023. The scrutiny, distrust and hostility in one Ohio city is emblematic of a fissure over public schooling that has cracked America into pieces since the start of the pandemic.

It was a school board meeting, but not one of the shouting matches the nation has come to know over the past three years. No parents yelled about masking, library books or critical race theory. On the agenda: door signage and school security officer pensions. Tonight, there was no time allotted for public comment, meaning nobody in the audience was allowed to speak.

Nonetheless, nearly every chair was filled. On a frigid Tuesday in early March, a dozen adults sat split by an aisle into two camps: To the left were members of Support Public Education in Mentor, three of them clad in red T-shirts bearing the left-leaning group’s name. To the right were those affiliated with Concerned Mentor Taxpayers, which trends Christian and conservative. One man wore a camouflage baseball cap and a bracelet patterned with an American flag.

Neither side looked at the other.

The scrutiny, distrust and hostility on display here — between members of the opposing parent groups, between parents and the school board, and among board members, some of whom won election in 2021 by running partisan races — is emblematic of a fissure over public schooling that has cracked America into pieces since the start of the coronavirus pandemic, when politics and societal upheaval sharpened existing divides.

Concerns first emerged during the early phase of the pandemic, when parents facing school closures began showing up at school board meetings to demand in-person classes — or insist on continued virtual learning. Soon, membership exploded in Facebook groups that sought to end masking — or add new safety measures. From the start, the fight took on a political cast: Right-leaning parents tended to argue against precautions such as mandatory vaccination, while left-leaning parents advocated for them.

But as the covid case rates and death counts eventually abated, the anger and frustration did not. Instead, it morphed into conflicts over what schools should be teaching. Some conservative parents, granted an unprecedented glimpse into lessons during virtual learning, took issue with teacher-led discussions of race, gender and sexual orientation, arguing educators were promoting the views of the political left. They founded national organizations such as Moms for Liberty to promote greater parental control of education and eradicate books they deemed sexually inappropriate from school libraries. Politicians capitalized on the swelling discontent to pass at least 64 laws across 25 states restricting what children can learn and do at school, per a Washington Post analysis.

Those on the left have been slower to organize. But state-level and national advocacy groups are now emerging on that side, too — including the Florida Freedom to Read Project, a parent group fighting book bans, and Defense of Democracy, a national organization based in New York that aims to counter Moms for Liberty chapters nationwide.

 

More On Russia-China Summit

ny times logoNew York Times, Here’s why China and Russia are closer than ever, Nicole Hong, March 20, 2023. This week’s meeting between the leaders of China and Russia marks another key moment in the deepening relationship between the two powers.

Coming more than a year after Russia launched its invasion of Ukraine, the meeting will be watched closely by Western officials for any indications of how far China may be willing to go to act as a mediator in the conflict. Chinese officials have framed the meeting partly as a mission to promote constructive talks between Russia and Ukraine, even though U.S. officials have been skeptical of Mr. Xi’s recent efforts to become a global peacemaker.

Here are five things to know about the relationship between China and Russia.

washington post logoWashington Post, Putin sees his anti-U.S. world order taking shape, Robyn Dixon, March 20, 2023. For Vladimir Putin, the state visit to Russia by Chinese President Xi Jinping, which begins on Monday, provides a giant morale boost and a chance to showcase the much-vaunted new world order that the Russian leader believes he is forging through his war on Ukraine — in which the United States and NATO can no longer dictate anything to anyone.

Xi’s visit to Russia, just after cementing his precedent-breaking third term in power, brings together two men who have positioned themselves as leaders for life — and it sets the scene for global confrontation, with Beijing willing to use its partnership with Moscow to counter Washington, even if that means granting tacit approval to Putin’s brutal, destabilizing war.

“The grim outlook in China is that we are entering this era of confrontation with the U.S., the gloves are off, and Russia is an asset and a partner in this struggle,” said Alexander Gabuev, an analyst with the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

washington post logoWashington Post, What is China’s relationship with Russia and Ukraine? Adam Taylor, March 20, 2023. The visit, set to last through Wednesday, will attract close scrutiny in Western capitals intent on discerning developments in the increasingly warm relationship between the two countries, both of which are nuclear-armed, permanent members of the U.N. Security Council.

More than a year into Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Putin is a pariah at most international meetings and has relatively few powerful allies abroad.

China has not endorsed Russia’s war on Ukraine and has promoted a 12-point proposal for ending it. But Beijing has stopped far short of condemning Russia’s aggression, and the visit is likely to be interpreted in some corners as a tacit endorsement of Russia’s actions.

 

Iraq War: 20 Years Later

 

iraq afghanistan map

washington post logoWashington Post, How a cancer-linked environmental debacle looms over the U.S. legacy in Iraq, Louisa Loveluck and Mustafa Salim, March 20, 2023 (print ed.). On American military bases, trash was burned in the open, poisoning the air. In the villages surrounding Iraq’s largest burn pit, sickness has been constant.

The smoke above the American air base was sometimes thick enough to blot out the sun. At first, residents had no idea what the foreign troops were burning. Before long, they were struggling to breathe.

Farmers would return home with soot streaks on their forearms and stories about what soldiers had tipped into the burn pit that day: batteries, human waste, plastic ration packs, even refrigerators.

“We were always coughing,” recalls Tamim Ahmed al-Tamimi, who worked the fields back then outside Joint Base Balad, 50 miles north of Baghdad. “But we didn’t know that this smoke could kill people. We thought that only rockets could kill people.”

Twenty years on from the American-led invasion of Iraq, the scars are still visible in shot-up walls and bombed-out buildings. But there is another legacy, too, more insidious and enduring than violence. Where soldiers established military bases, they burned their trash in the open, poisoning the air all around them. As American physicians and scientists started to worry about the health impact on returning troops, Iraqis were also falling sick and dying.

“The thing is, no one told us,” said Tamimi, now 35, as he took a deep breath and tried not to cry.

Though U.S. veterans prevailed recently in a long fight for government recognition of burn pit exposure, there has been no American effort to assess the local impact, let alone treat or compensate Iraqis who breathed the same air.

On a recent trip to the area, Washington Post reporters interviewed more than a dozen residents who said that they had developed cancer or respiratory problems while working on the Balad base or living nearby. Most said that they been young and fit when they fell ill, without family histories of similar ailments. Their accounts are corroborated by experts who have studied burn pit exposure and by local doctors, who observed an alarming rise in illnesses consistent with such exposure in the years after the invasion.

ny times logoNew York Times, In the U.S.-Led Iraq War, Iran Was the Big Winner, Vivian Yee and Alissa J. Rubin, March 20, 2023 (print ed.). In the 20 years since the United States invaded Iraq, Iran has built loyal militias, gained deep political influence and reaped economic benefits.

iraq amazon imageIraq and Iran are the two largest Middle Eastern countries with a Shiite Muslim majority, and Shiites emerged from the Iraq war empowered across the region — often unnerving their ancient sectarian rivals, the Sunni Muslims, who dominate most other Arab countries.

Under the Iraqi dictatorship, the Sunni minority had formed the base of Mr. Hussein’s power; once he was killed, Iran set up loyal militias inside Iraq. It also went on to dismay Saudi Arabia and the other Persian Gulf monarchies and Israel by supporting proxies and partners, such as the Houthi militia in Yemen, that brought violence right to their doorsteps.

Before 2003, it would have been hard to imagine Saudi Arabia, a pillar of the United States’ Middle East policy for decades and a leading Sunni power, showing open anger toward American leaders over their conduct in the region. But the Saudi king at the time did just that in a January 2006 meeting with the American ambassador to Iraq, telling him that the way Washington saw things going in Baghdad reflected “wishful thinking,” according to a State Department cable released by WikiLeaks in 2010.

Relevant Recent Headlines

 

More On Probes of Trump, Allies

 

ny times logoNew York Times, Trump’s Call for Protests of Pending Arrest Splits G.O.P., Shane Goldmacher and Alan Feuer, March 20, 2023. After Donald Trump urged supporters to protest his looming indictment, some Republicans have heeded the call, while many others have lobbied against it.

His call to protest his expected indictment has divided his allies on the right, as some fear mass gatherings could devolve into violence and lead to the prosecution of his supporters just as the Jan. 6 riot at the Capitol did two years ago.

While some Republicans have echoed Mr. Trump’s call to take to the streets, other prominent voices on the right are urging caution and for people to stay away, particularly from New York, where they note that any potential unrest would invite prosecution from the same official who is expected to charge Mr. Trump — the Manhattan district attorney, Alvin L. Bragg.

“Better to stay home,” advised Jeffrey Clark, the former Justice Department official who was nearly named acting attorney general by Mr. Trump in late 2020 as the president sought to overturn his election loss. “Think, rethink, and triple think before you physically go to protest anywhere in the Big Apple.”

The Republican speaker of the House, Kevin McCarthy, who owes his post in part to Mr. Trump’s support, was among those urging Trump supporters to stay away on Sunday. “I don’t think people should protest this, no,” he said during a news conference in Florida, adding, “And I think President Trump, if you talk to him, he doesn’t believe that, either.”

Mr. Trump, though, has long measured the strength of his standing by the blunt metric of the size of the crowds that show up for him, in good times and in bad ones.

When the “Access Hollywood” video first broke in 2016, Mr. Trump found comfort in the small band of supporters who stood in solidarity with Trump signs outside Trump Tower on Fifth Avenue, visiting them briefly with a fist pump. And, once he became president, the first mini-drama of his White House tenure was related to his insistent exaggerations about the crowd size at his inauguration.

 

ron desantis serious

ny times logoNew York Times, DeSantis, Breaking Silence on Trump, Criticizes Manhattan Prosecutor, Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan, March 20, 2023. However, Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida also pointedly noted the personal conduct over which former President Trump is being investigated.

Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida on Monday broke his silence about the potential indictment of his state’s most famous resident, former President Donald J. Trump, attacking the Manhattan district attorney pursuing the case but also pointedly noting the personal conduct over which Mr. Trump is being investigated.

Mr. DeSantis spoke in response to a reporter’s question at an event in Panama City, Fla., after two days of pressure from Mr. Trump’s team and his influential allies demanding that the governor speak out against an indictment that is likely to be brought by Alvin L. Bragg, the Manhattan district attorney.

After a reporter asked for Mr. DeSantis’s thoughts about the potential indictment and whether he might have a role in extraditing Mr. Trump to New York, the governor demurred, saying he did not know what was going to happen.

“But I do know this: The Manhattan district attorney is a Soros-funded prosecutor,” he said of Mr. Bragg, referring to indirect financial support the district attorney received in his 2021 campaign from George Soros, the liberal billionaire philanthropist. Those donations have been the subject of attacks from Mr. Trump and other Republicans.

“And so he, like other Soros-funded prosecutors, they weaponize their office to impose a political agenda on society at the expense of the rule of law and public safety,” Mr. DeSantis said.

Then he twisted the knife regarding the actions over whic