May 2023 News, Views

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

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

 

May 31

Top Headlines

 

Global War, Sanctions Torture, Terrorism

 

U.S. Economy, Default, Debt, Budget, Jobs, Banking, Crypto

 

More On U.S. Courts, Crime, Immigration

 

U.S. Politics, Elections, Governance

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More On Ukraine War

 

More Global News, Views, Human Rights

 

Turkey's Elections, Impact 

 

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Pro-Trump Insurrectionists, Election Deniers

 

Trump Probes, Accusations

 

2024 U.S. Presidential Race


U.S. Abortion, Birth Control, #MeToo

 

Environment, Transportation, Energy, Space, Disasters, Climate

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Pandemics, Public Health, Privacy

 

More On U.S. Media, Education, Arts, Sports, Culture

 

Top Stories

kevin mccarthy hallway

ny times logoNew York Times, House Set to Vote on Debt Limit Bill as G.O.P. Resistance Grows, Catie Edmondson, May 31, 2023. Speaker Kevin McCarthy, shown in a Capitol Hill hallway, was working to push through the compromise he struck with President Biden, as lawmakers in both parties signaled their displeasure.

joe biden resized oSpeaker Kevin McCarthy toiled on Wednesday to lock down the votes to pass his deal with President Biden to lift the debt ceiling and set federal spending limits, as a stream of defections from hard-right lawmakers put the fate of the measure in question.

U.S. House logoWith the nation’s first-ever default looming in days, the House was on track to begin votes Wednesday afternoon on a plan to suspend the nation’s borrowing limit for two years in exchange for two years of spending caps and a string of policy concessions Republicans demanded.

To muster a 218-vote majority to push it through the closely divided House, congressional leaders must cobble together a coalition of Republicans willing to back it and enough Democrats to make up for what was shaping up to be a substantial number of G.O.P. defections.

Hard-right lawmakers are in open revolt over the compromise and have vowed to try to derail it. Multiple right-wing lawmakers have savaged the bill, publicly using a profanity-laced description to compare it to a foul-tasting sandwich and arguing that it does nothing to secure the kind of deep spending cuts and rollbacks of Biden administration policies for which they have agitated.

“Completely unacceptable,” said Representative Dan Bishop, Republican of North Carolina. “Trillions and trillions of dollars in debt, for crumbs. For a pittance.”

ny times logoNew York Times, Representative Chip Roy of Texas has emerged as the face of the Republican revolt against the debt limit deal, Luke Broadwater, May 31, 2023. The Texas Republican, who is the policy director for the hard-right House Freedom Caucus, has become the face of Republican opposition to a compromise forged to avert a federal default.

chip roy oAt the height of Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s quest for his post in January, Representative Chip Roy, right, Republican of Texas, darted from meeting to meeting ensuring that hard-line conservatives got what they wanted before agreeing to back the California Republican.

One by one, nearly all of their demands were met in what Mr. Roy would later call a “power-sharing” agreement between Mr. McCarthy and his right flank. The hard right won three seats on the influential House Rules Committee (one went to Mr. Roy); a commitment from Mr. McCarthy that Republicans would never raise the debt ceiling without deep spending cuts; and a rule allowing any one lawmaker to force a vote to oust the speaker should he fail to keep his promises.

Now, Mr. Roy, 50, the policy chairman of the ultraconservative House Freedom Caucus who has emerged as the hard right’s spending expert, is accusing Mr. McCarthy of having reneged on the deal, and is attempting to exert his leverage again — this time with potentially dire consequences. He and his allies are attempting to shoot down the agreement Mr. McCarthy reached with President Biden to suspend the debt ceiling just days before the country is headed for default.

If not, he said, the House Freedom Caucus might once again have to go toe-to-toe with Mr. McCarthy. Several members have floated the idea of calling for Mr. McCarthy’s removal.

“If we can’t kill it, we’re going to have to regroup and figure out the whole leadership arrangement again,” Mr. Roy said Tuesday on Glenn Beck’s radio show.

That’s a far cry from the position Mr. Roy found himself in only weeks ago, when he worked alongside House G.O.P. leaders to ensure passage of a far more conservative debt-limit bill, which would have lifted the borrowing limit only in exchange for substantial spending cuts. Representative Garret Graves, Republican of Louisiana and an ally of Mr. McCarthy’s, said he gained respect for Mr. Roy working tightly with him on that package.

“I didn’t have an incredibly high opinion of Representative Chip Roy going into it. He’s one of my best friends now,” Mr. Graves said.

Now, Mr. Roy, who is a mix of legislative wonk and speechifying firebrand, has been circulating documents breaking down all the different ways he believes Mr. McCarthy’s 99-page debt limit deal is, in his words, a “betrayal” of conservatives. In an easy-to-digest format, they lay out — step by step — how the agreement Mr. McCarthy reached with Mr. Biden falls short of conservative demands to rein in spending, streamline energy project permitting and impose stringent work requirements for social safety net benefits.

He and his allies view the country’s $31.5 trillion national debt as a greater threat to America than the Treasury Department’s warning that the country could default on certain bills by June 5.

ny times logoNew York Times, Climate Shocks Are Making Parts of America Uninsurable. It Just Got Worse, Christopher Flavelle, Jill Cowan and Ivan Penn, May 31, 2023.  The largest insurer in California said it would stop offering new coverage. It’s part of a broader trend of companies pulling back from dangerous areas.

The climate crisis is becoming a financial crisis.

state farm logoThis month, the largest homeowner insurance company in California, State Farm, announced that it would stop selling coverage to homeowners. That’s not just in wildfire zones, but everywhere in the state.

Insurance companies, tired of losing money, are raising rates, restricting coverage or pulling out of some areas altogether — making it more expensive for people to live in their homes.

“Risk has a price,” said Roy Wright, the former official in charge of insurance at the Federal Emergency Management Agency, and now head of the Insurance Institute for Business and Home Safety, a research group. “We’re just now seeing it.”

In parts of eastern Kentucky ravaged by storms last summer, the price of flood insurance is set to quadruple. In Louisiana, the top insurance official says the market is in crisis, and is offering millions of dollars in subsidies to try to draw insurers to the state.

And in much of Florida, homeowners are increasingly struggling to buy storm coverage. Most big insurers have pulled out of the state already, sending homeowners to smaller private companies that are straining to stay in business — a possible glimpse into California’s future if more big insurers leave.
Growing ‘catastrophe exposure’

State Farm, which insures more homeowners in California than any other company, said it would stop accepting applications for most types of new insurance policies in the state because of “rapidly growing catastrophe exposure.”

The company said that while it recognized the work of California officials to reduce losses from wildfires, it had to stop writing new policies “to improve the company’s financial strength.” A State Farm spokesman did not respond to a request for comment.

Insurance rates in California jumped after wildfires became more devastating than anyone had anticipated. A series of fires that broke out in 2017, many ignited by sparks from failing utility equipment, exploded in size with the effects of climate change. Some homeowners lost their insurance entirely because insurers refused to cover homes in vulnerable areas.

Michael Soller, a spokesman for the California Department of Insurance, said the agency was working to address the underlying factors that have caused disruption in the insurance industry across the country and around the world, including the biggest one: climate change.

 

Global War, Torture, Terrorism

ny times logoNew York Times, Drone Strikes Target Moscow in First Attack on Capital’s Civilian Areas, Anatoly Kurmanaev, Ivan Nechepurenko, Marc Santora and Victoria Kim, May 31, 2023 (print ed.). No injuries were reported after the assault by at least eight drones, which came after another Russian bombardment of the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv.

At least eight drones targeted Moscow early Tuesday, according to the Russian authorities, the first attack to hit civilian areas in the Russian capital and a potent sign that the war is increasingly reaching the heart of Russia.

The assault came after yet another overnight bombardment by Russian forces of the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv, which has faced a barrage of attacks in recent weeks that have put the city on edge and tested the country’s air defenses. Kyiv was attacked with at least 20 drones early Tuesday, leaving one person dead and unnerving residents still reeling from a rare daytime missile attack the previous day.

The dueling strikes reflected the dialed-up tension and shifting priorities ahead of Ukraine’s expected counteroffensive. Ukraine has increasingly been reaching far into Russia-held territory, while Moscow has been adjusting its tactics in an effort to inflict significant damage on Kyiv.

Tuesday’s aerial assault on Moscow — in which at least three residential buildings sustained minor damage — comes weeks after a pair of explosions over the Kremlin, a bold and symbolic strike aimed at President Vladimir V. Putin’s seat of power. U.S. officials said the attack on the Kremlin was most likely orchestrated by one of Ukraine’s special military or intelligence units.

The Russian Defense Ministry blamed Ukraine for Tuesday’s assault on Moscow, describing the strike as a “terrorist attack” and saying that the drones had been intercepted. The Kremlin’s reaction was muted. Dmitri S. Peskov, the Kremlin spokesman, told reporters that the ministry “acted well” in responding to the attack, but declined to comment further.

Mykhailo Podolyak, an adviser to President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine, said Kyiv was not “directly involved” but was “happy” to watch. Ukrainian officials have maintained a policy of strategic ambiguity over attacks in Russia.

ny times logoNew York Times, Investigation: Fake Signals and American Insurance: How a Dark Fleet Moves Russian Oil, Christiaan Triebert, Blacki Migliozzi, Alexander Cardia, Muyi Xiao and David Botti, May 31, 2023 (print edition and interactive).  We tracked oil tankers faking their locations while transporting Russian oil under Western sanctions, in an apparent effort to deceive their U.S. insurer.

ny times logoNew York Times, Israel Called Them ‘Precision’ Strikes. But Civilian Homes Were Hit, Too, Raja Abdulrahim, Photographs by Samar Abu Elouf, May 31, 2023. Palestinians say that the strikes against Islamic Jihad amount to a collective punishment aimed at making them fearful about who their neighbors might be.

As the Khoswan family slept, the Israeli military dropped three GBU-39 bombs into their sixth-floor apartment. One of the bombs exploded just outside the parents’ bedroom, leaving the apartment looking as if a tornado had swept through, killing three family members.

But they were not the stated target of the attack earlier this month.

The Israeli military had dropped the bombs into their home to assassinate a commander of the Palestinian armed group Islamic Jihad who lived in the apartment below.

Jamal Khoswan, a dentist, Mirvat Khoswan, a pharmacist, and their son, a 19-year-old dental student, were killed in the strike as well as the Islamic Jihad commander who lived downstairs, Tareq Izzeldeen, and two of his children, a girl, 11, and a boy, 9.

“Commanders have been targeted before,” Menna Khoswan, 16, said this month at a memorial service for her father at the hospital where he served as chairman of the board. “But to target the commander and those around him, honestly this is something we didn’t expect.”

Israel says that it conducts “precision strikes” aimed at taking out armed groups’ commanders or operation sites, and that it does not target civilians. But the airstrikes are often conducted in heavily populated areas, and many Palestinians in Gaza say they amount to a collective punishment aimed at making them fearful about who their neighbors might be.

Israel also destroys entire residential buildings or towers if it believes an armed group has an office or apartment there, although it usually issues an evacuation warning beforehand.

Menna’s parents and brother were among at least 12 civilians killed by Israeli strikes during five days of fighting between Israel and Islamic Jihad this month, according to the Palestinian Center for Human Rights. Israel says that nine civilians were killed in the strikes.

ny times logoNew York Times, At Guantánamo’s Court, Progress Is Stalled by State Secrets, Carol Rosenberg, May 31, 2023 (print ed.). The U.S. government is still sorting out what’s secret in an Indonesian bombing case more than two decades after the attack.

A defense lawyer was making a constitutional argument in the Guantánamo war court that the clock had run out on a case involving terrorist attacks in Indonesia 20 years ago when he was suddenly drowned out by white noise.

“It is repugnant …” were the last words the public heard from Lt. Ryan P. Hirschler, a military lawyer on the defense team.

Spectators watched through soundproof glass while lawyers huddled in confusion over what caused a court security officer to silence the lawyer midsentence. Once the audio was restored, the judge cautioned Lieutenant Hirschler to stick to legal principles and avoid the facts surrounding the case of Encep Nurjaman, an Indonesian man who is better known as Hambali, and two co-defendants.

Even without a fuller explanation, however, the episode helps show why justice comes so slowly at Guantánamo Bay.

More than 20 years have elapsed since the attacks in Bali and Jakarta killed more than 200 people, seven of them Americans. The three men have been in U.S. custody for nearly two decades, starting in C.I.A. prisons. But the lawyers and judge are still trying to figure out what portions of the proceedings are supposed to be secret.

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More On U.S. Economy, Debt, Budget, Jobs, Banking, Crypto

ny times logoNew York Times, Companies Push Prices Higher, Protecting Profits but Adding to Inflation, Talmon Joseph Smith and Joe Rennison, May 31, 2023 (print ed.). Corporate profits have been bolstered by higher prices even as some of the costs of doing business have fallen in recent months.

The prices of oil, transportation, food ingredients and other raw materials have fallen in recent months as the shocks stemming from the pandemic and the war in Ukraine have faded. Yet many big businesses have continued raising prices at a rapid clip.

Some of the world’s biggest companies have said they do not plan to change course and will continue increasing prices or keep them at elevated levels for the foreseeable future.

That strategy has cushioned corporate profits. And it could keep inflation robust, contributing to the very pressures used to justify surging prices.

As a result, some economists warn, policymakers at the Federal Reserve may feel compelled to keep raising interest rates, or at least not lower them, increasing the likelihood and severity of an economic downturn.

ny times logoNew York Times, Editorial: Pass the Debt Limit Deal. Then Figure Out How to End the Drama, Editorial Board, May 31, 2023 (print ed.). No one walked away satisfied by the agreement reached late Saturday to raise the debt ceiling: House Speaker Kevin McCarthy did not win the most destructive cuts sought by the right, and the Democratic proposals to raise revenue never seriously entered the conversation. Yet with the risk of ruinous economic default less than a week away, Congress should pass this agreement as quickly as possible.

The agreement reached by Mr. McCarthy and President Biden would suspend the debt ceiling until Jan. 1, 2025. Mr. Biden can, as the nation should, feel relief over this outcome. He also should feel a sense of urgency to make sure such a partisan impasse never repeats itself.

Mr. Biden had said he would not negotiate over the debt ceiling, which limits federal borrowing after money has been appropriated, and he had demanded that Congress raise it without conditions. The House responded by approving a bill to raise the ceiling for a year in exchange for stringent cutbacks on nondefense spending. That bill would have rolled back many of the president’s signature achievements and ended benefits for millions of people who get their health insurance through Medicaid, as well as those who rely on food and cash assistance.

As the deadline for the nation’s first credit default grew closer — the Treasury Department now says it will run out of money on June 5 — Mr. Biden set aside his earlier position and began closed-door negotiations with Mr. McCarthy over those demands.

The final agreement reflects this one-sided bargaining, with Mr. McCarthy refusing to truly entertain any of the Democrats’ proposals to raise revenue: None of the 2017 Trump tax cuts, which added $1.8 trillion to the deficit through 2029 for the benefit of corporations and the wealthy, will be rolled back. Republicans rejected the elimination of the carried-interest loophole, which benefits hedge-fund managers and private equity funds, and the end to fossil fuel tax subsidies that Mr. Biden proposed in his 2024 budget.

In fact, no measures to raise revenues were included; the deal is entirely about cutting spending. Reducing the national debt is an important long-term goal. A much more responsible form of fiscal discipline is to collect the taxes that are owed, to make considered spending cuts where appropriate and to reverse tax cuts that solely benefit the wealthy.

The details of the agreement, released on Sunday, show that it is a watered-down version of the Republican wish list. Spending on most domestic programs in fiscal year 2024 will stay at about the same level as 2023 and grow by 1 percent in 2025. That is effectively a cut over both years, given the pace of inflation and the potential for an economic downturn hovering. (Medicare and Social Security would not be affected.)

Under the deal, the Pentagon would be allowed to grow, as well as veterans’ programs. The two-year cap would shortchange many important investments in education, housing, infrastructure and disease prevention. It is a significant improvement, however, from the drastic cuts proposed in Mr. McCarthy’s bill — $860 billion compared with $3.2 trillion over a decade — and is roughly in line with what might have been expected in regular budget negotiations with the House.

That price was likely inevitable when Democrats lost the chamber last year and failed to raise or eliminate the debt ceiling during the lame duck session.

The White House should have insisted that military and domestic spending be held at the same rate of change, following a pattern set during the Obama administration. At least the military budget in this agreement would be at roughly the same level that Mr. Biden proposed in his 2024 budget. The deal also includes a helpful mechanism that would make it difficult for Republicans to spend less on domestic programs or more on the military when the time comes to write appropriation bills this year.

The most unfortunate aspect of the agreement is the change to eligibility for nutrition assistance, popularly known as food stamps, and the cash welfare program called Temporary Assistance for Needy Families. Though virtually every study has shown that work requirements for these benefits are not effective inducements to employment, Republicans were willing to let the government default on its debt if they didn’t get them. During the talks, Mr. Biden rejected the strict new work requirements for people on Medicaid, but he agreed to changes in the other two programs.

Under this concession, people 50 to 54 years old without dependents would be limited to three months of food stamps every three years unless they meet new work requirements, which the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities said would affect hundreds of thousands of older adults. State requirements for people who receive cash assistance from the TANF program will also be tightened. The only good news here is that, for the first time, the food stamp program would not subject homeless people, veterans or young adults formerly in foster care to time limits, under an agreement won by Mr. Biden.

One of the most nonsensical Republican demands was to cut $80 billion in new funding for the Internal Revenue Service to hire investigators to reduce tax cheating. The I.R.S. expansion would have reduced the budget deficit, according to the Congressional Budget Office, because it would bring in new tax revenue. Republicans refused to reduce the deficits by any means other than cutting spending. Mr. Biden agreed to reduce the new I.R.S. spending by about $21 billion over two years, though the money may be moved to the general fund to reduce the impact of the new spending caps.

The blunt instrument of the debt ceiling allowed this standoff and its concessions. With the Republicans in control of the House, Democrats in Congress have given up their path to change this for now. The president seemed to acknowledge that this month when he told reporters that he’d consider declaring the debt ceiling unconstitutional under the 14th Amendment’s debt clause and letting the courts decide whether he is right. “When we get by this, I’m thinking about taking a look at — months down the road — to see whether, what the court would say about whether or not the — it does work,” he said.

If Congress approves this agreement, the threat of default will be over for the next two years. At that point, Mr. Biden and his legal experts need to follow through on his interest in testing a constitutional solution and try to stop the debt crisis from returning in 2025 or thereafter.

ny times logoNew York Times, 14th Amendment Questions Linger Despite Debt Limit Deal, Alan Rappeport, May 31, 2023. President Biden has been considering ways to challenge the constitutionality of the debt limit to defuse the risk of default.

The agreement President Biden struck with House Republicans to raise the debt limit aims to avert a catastrophic default on the nation’s debt. But the brinkmanship that brought the United States within days of being unable to pay its bills has renewed calls for the Biden administration to stop the debt ceiling from continuing to be a political tool.

After declaring this year that he would not negotiate spending cuts in exchange for raising the debt limit, Mr. Biden did exactly that. The deal includes spending caps and scales back some of the president’s policy priorities in exchange for suspending the debt limit for two years.

The bill, which the House is expected to bring to a vote on Wednesday, has reopened the door to the debt limit being a perpetual point of leverage that allows the party in the minority — in this case, the Republicans — to use the borrowing cap to extract legislative concessions.

That has raised questions about whether there is a way to preclude another episode like this one — by abolishing the debt ceiling or using the 14th Amendment to render the statutory limit unconstitutional.

Mr. Biden opted against challenging the constitutionality of the debt limit this time around but suggested last week that he had the authority to do so and hinted that he might try to use it in the future.

“My hope and intention is when we resolve this problem, I’d find a rationale to take it to the courts to see whether or not the 14th Amendment is, in fact, something that would be able to stop it,” Mr. Biden said at a news conference in Japan after a gathering of leaders from the Group of 7 nations.

The president said on Sunday that any discussion about whether to invoke the 14th amendment was not imminent. “That’s another day,” he said.

solution to avoiding future debt limit fights because it includes a clause stating that “the validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law, including debts incurred for payment of pensions and bounties for services in suppressing insurrection or rebellion, shall not be questioned.”

Some legal scholars say that clause overrides the statutory borrowing limit, which is set by Congress and can be lifted or suspended only with lawmaker approval.

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U.S. Courts, Crime, Guns, Immigration

ny times logoNew York Times, Florida Art Scammer Sentenced to Over 2 Years in Federal Prison, Livia Albeck-Ripka, May 31, 2023. The art dealer, Daniel Elie Bouaziz, 69, was sentenced to 27 months in federal prison for laundering money made selling counterfeit art.

A Florida art dealer who promised bargains on works he claimed were originals by master artists including Roy Lichtenstein, Keith Haring and Henri Matisse has been sentenced to more than two years in federal prison for running a counterfeit scheme, federal officials said.

The man, Daniel Elie Bouaziz, 69, owned several art galleries in Palm Beach County, Fla., through which he operated the counterfeit scheme. He was sentenced on Tuesday in U.S. District Court in Miami to 27 months in federal prison, followed by three years of supervised release, and was ordered to pay a $15,000 fine, court filings show.

Mr. Bouaziz pleaded guilty in February to one charge of money laundering on the condition that federal prosecutors drop 16 other counts, according to the documents.

Neither Mr. Bouaziz nor his lawyer could immediately be reached for comment on Tuesday evening.

According to prosecutors, Mr. Bouaziz, a French and Israeli citizen born in Algeria, was in the United States on a B-2 visitor’s visa. They said the pieces he had represented as authentic works were cheap reproductions he had bought through online auctions. He was charged in June after an investigation that included the serving of search warrants at his galleries, a review of financial records and undercover purchases of what prosecutors had deemed to be fraudulent art.

According to the federal complaint, Mr. Bouaziz conducted his art dealing through three companies: Galerie Danieli, Danieli Fine Art and VIP Rentals L.L.C. The website for Danieli Fine Art advertises a collection from a wide range of notable artists, from Monet and Rodin to Jean-Michel Basquiat and Willem de Kooning.

But counterfeit Andy Warhols were what sent Mr. Bouaziz to prison.

ny times logoNew York Times, Sacklers Can Be Shielded From Opioid Liability, Appeals Court Rules, Jan Hoffman, May 31, 2023 (print ed.). The decision gives the Purdue Pharma owners long-sought protection, but it is a major step toward releasing billions of dollars from their fortune to states and communities to help cope with the costs of addiction.

Members of the Sackler family, the billionaire owners of Purdue Pharma, will receive full immunity from all civil legal claims — current and future — over their role in the company’s prescription opioids business, a federal appeals court panel ruled on Tuesday.

The ruling gives the family the sweeping protection that it has been demanding for years, in exchange for payment of up to $6 billion of the family’s fortune to help address the ongoing ravages of the opioid crisis.

It removes a major hurdle for that money, plus the company’s initial outlay of $500 million, to be dispensed to states and communities for addiction treatment and prevention programs, needs that soared during an epidemic that has grown far beyond abuse of Purdue’s signature prescription painkiller drug, OxyContin.

Unless it is successfully appealed to the Supreme Court — an unlikely prospect, legal experts said — the new ruling will close the door on Purdue’s hotly contested bankruptcy restructuring, which began nearly four years ago. The bankruptcy is at the core of a plan intended to resolve thousands of opioid cases against the company nationwide, plus roughly 400 against individual Sackler family members.

ny times logoNew York Times, Elizabeth Holmes Reports to Prison to Begin More Than 11-Year Sentence, Erin Griffith, May 31, 2023 (print ed.). The disgraced founder of the blood testing start-up Theranos, who was convicted of fraud, turned herself in at a minimum-security prison in Texas.

Elizabeth Holmes, the disgraced entrepreneur who was convicted of defrauding investors at her failed blood testing start-up, Theranos, reported to a federal prison in Texas on Tuesday to begin her 11-year, three-month sentence.

Ms. Holmes surrendered to F.P.C. Bryan, a minimum-security prison camp for women roughly 90 minutes from Houston. She pulled up in a Ford Expedition that appeared to be driven by her mother, Noel Holmes. Her father, Christian Holmes, appeared to be inside.

After some shuffling around, out of the view of the cameras gathered nearby, Elizabeth Holmes entered the facility wearing jeans, glasses and a sweater, and carrying some papers. As she entered the prison, a bystander watching from the street yelled her name.

F.P.C. Bryan’s 655 inmates are required to work in the cafeteria or in a manufacturing facility, where pay starts at $1.15 an hour, according to the prison’s handbook. Before starting work at the factory, Ms. Holmes may take a test to assess her strengths in areas such as business, clerical, numerical, logic, mechanical and “social.” Inmates can also enroll in a “Lean Six Sigma” training program to learn about efficiency.

Ms. Holmes, 39, was found guilty last year of four counts of wire fraud and conspiracy for falsely claiming that Theranos’s blood tests could detect a variety of ailments with just a few drops of blood. She and her former business partner, Ramesh Balwani, must together pay $452 million in restitution to investors who were defrauded. Ms. Holmes has appealed her case, though her requests to remain out of prison during the appeal have been denied.

Ms. Holmes founded Theranos in 2003 after dropping out of Stanford University at age 19. The company raised $950 million in funding, making her a billionaire on paper. Theranos collapsed in 2018. Ms. Holmes and Mr. Balwani were indicted that year.

The pair were tried separately. Mr. Balwani was convicted on 12 counts of fraud and is serving a nearly 13-year sentence in a federal prison in San Pedro, Calif. He has also appealed his case.

Ms. Holmes’s sentence was meant to send a message to others in Silicon Valley: There are consequences when ambitious start-up founders take an ethos known as “fake it till you make it” — when entrepreneurs speak ambitiously about what their companies can do, even if the companies can’t yet do those things — too far. Despite the tech industry’s long history of stretching the rules, as entrepreneurs invent new businesses and disrupt old ones, few have ever gone to prison for lying.

ny times logoNew York Times, Virginia Man Is Charged in Fatal Shooting of New Jersey Councilwoman, Ed Shanahan, May 31, 2023 (print ed.). Eunice Dwumfour, the first Black person elected to office in Sayreville, N.J., was killed as she sat in her car outside her home. She and the man who was arrested were connected through their church.

A 28-year-old Virginia man was charged with murder on Tuesday in the fatal shooting of a New Jersey councilwoman, Eunice Dwumfour, in February, the authorities said. Evidence uncovered by investigators indicated that the two knew each other, officials said.

The man, Rashid Ali Bynum, of Portsmouth, Va., was taken into custody in Chesapeake City, Va., Tuesday morning and was awaiting extradition, Yolanda Ciccone, the Middlesex County, N.J., prosecutor, said at a news conference. Mr. Bynum was charged with first-degree murder and two weapons counts, Ms. Ciccone said. It was not clear whether he had a lawyer.

Ms. Dwumfour, 30, had a number associated with Mr. Bynum listed in her cellphone contacts as “FCF,” an abbreviation for Fire Congress Fellowship, according to Ms. Ciccone. Mr. Bynum, Ms. Ciccone said, was a member of the fellowship, which is affiliated with Ms. Dwumfour’s church, Champions Royal Assembly in Newark, an offshoot of a megachurch based in Nigeria.

Federal tax filings describe Fire Congress Fellowship as a Bible study group, identify Ms. Dwumfour as its longtime treasurer and list its office at an address in Parlin, an unincorporated section of Sayreville, N.J., that is a two-minute drive from where the fatal shooting occurred.

Ms. Ciccone did not offer a motive for the killing. She said the investigation was continuing and declined to take questions. She was joined at the news conference by other law enforcement officials; Ms. Dwumfour’s father and sister; and a minister from Ms. Dwumfour’s parents’ church.

John Wisniewski, a lawyer for Ms. Dwumfour’s family, said they were “relieved to know that somebody was being charged and going to be held accountable.” But because they did not know anything about Mr. Bynum or what might have motivated him, they had a number of questions, he said.

“They’re really struggling with the why,” Mr. Wisniewski said.

Ms. Dwumfour was shot while she was in her car outside the complex of apartment buildings and duplexes where she lived in Parlin just before 7:30 p.m. on Feb. 1, the authorities said.

The car rolled down a steep incline before crashing into two cars at the bottom of the hill, the police said. Officers responding to reports of a shooting found Ms. Dwumfour with several gunshot wounds, and she was pronounced dead at the scene, the authorities said.

At the news conference, Ms. Ciccone described some of the evidence that led to Mr. Bynum’s arrest, including security video from the murder scene, location data from his cellphone and electronic toll information that traced his route from Virginia to New Jersey and back.

ny times logoNew York Times, What to Know as the Tree of Life Massacre Trial Begins, Campbell Robertson, May 30, 2023 (print ed.). Federal prosecutors will seek the death penalty for the man accused of killing 11 people at a Pittsburgh synagogue in 2018.

On the morning of Oct. 27, 2018, a gunman walked into the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh and killed 11 people who had gathered to worship, the deadliest antisemitic attack in the nation’s history.

After weeks of jury selection, opening statements are scheduled to begin on Tuesday in the federal trial of the man accused of carrying out the massacre.

Prosecutors are seeking the death penalty and the next phase of trial will take place in two parts, the first concerning guilt and the second on the penalty. As the facts surrounding the shooting are mostly undisputed, the proceedings will effectively be a monthslong tribunal about whether the defendant, Robert Bowers, 50, should be executed. His lawyers have offered to resolve the case with a guilty plea on all counts in exchange for life in prison without the possibility of release, but federal prosecutors have rejected these offers.

Trials for mass shooters are relatively rare, given that these massacres often end with the death of the attacker. The man who killed 12 people in a Colorado movie theater in 2012 was sentenced to life in prison after a 10-week trial; the white supremacist who killed nine Black churchgoers in Charleston, S.C., in 2015, was convicted and sentenced to death. The former student who killed 17 people at a high school in Parkland, Fla., pleaded guilty but faced a sentencing trial last year, where a jury voted to keep him in prison for life.

Here’s what to know as testimony begins this week after opening statements on Tuesday:

At the time of the attack, the Tree of Life*Or L’Simcha synagogue, which sits in a neighborhood with a rich Jewish history, was home to three separate congregations, all of which were gathering for services in different parts of the building. The Tree of Life congregation, founded in Pittsburgh more than 150 years ago, and the smaller New Light congregation are both part of the Conservative branch of Judaism; the third congregation, Dor Hadash, is Reconstructionist, a more liberal branch.

Members of all three congregations were killed in the attack. The victims were Joyce Fienberg, 75; Richard Gottfried, 65; Rose Mallinger, 97; Daniel Stein, 71; Melvin Wax, 87; Irving Younger, 69; Jerry Rabinowitz, 66; the couple Bernice, 84, and Sylvan Simon, 87; and the brothers Cecil, 59, and David Rosenthal, 54.

Six people were wounded, including four police officers.

The attack drew shock and outrage from across the world, and brought people from across religious communities in Pittsburgh together in support of the congregations that were attacked. Some members of Dor Hadash created a nonprofit to lobby for new gun laws. The Tree of Life building, which sat empty for years after the massacre, is being redesigned by the architect Daniel Libeskind and will soon become the home of a new organization dedicated to ending antisemitism.

Who is the accused gunman?

Mr. Bowers grew up in a Pittsburgh suburb, raised by his mother and extended family. When he was a child, his estranged father was charged with raping a woman in the same neighborhood where the mass shooting would later happen, and killed himself before trial.

After high school, Mr. Bowers worked as a delivery driver for a bakery and later as a long-haul trucker. He tinkered with electronics, worked on the website of a conservative talk radio show, and, neighbors said, kept mostly to himself, at least in the offline world.

Online, he was a prolific and virulent presence on right-wing forums, chatting with and reposting prominent white supremacists and in his own posts showing particular vitriol toward immigrants and Jews.

In several posts before the killing, he turned his ire on HIAS, an organization that helps resettle refugees in the United States. Dor Hadash had been one of hundreds of Jewish congregations nationwide to celebrate a National Refugee Shabbat a week before the massacre. Mr. Bowers singled that out in his posts, writing shortly before the killing: “HIAS likes to bring invaders in that kill our people. I can’t sit by and watch my people get slaughtered. Screw your optics, I’m going in.”

The authorities said that he had 21 guns registered in his name, and that he carried out the shooting at Tree of Life with three Glock .357 handguns and a Colt AR-15 semiautomatic rifle.

Mr. Bowers was injured during a shootout with the police that ended the attack. He was later charged with 63 crimes, including 11 counts of hate crimes resulting in death and 11 counts of obstruction of free exercise of religious beliefs resulting in death. He is facing 36 state charges as well, including 11 counts of murder, but the Allegheny County District Attorney is holding those charges in abeyance for the federal criminal proceedings.

His defense team includes Judy Clarke, who has made a career pleading with juries to spare the lives of people responsible for some of the nation’s most notorious acts of violence, including one of the Boston Marathon bombers, the Unabomber and the man who opened fire in an Arizona grocery store parking lot, killing six people and injuring 13, including former Representative Gabrielle Giffords.

Mr. Bowers’s lawyers have repeatedly but unsuccessfully challenged the government’s intention to seek the death penalty. In a filing this year, defense lawyers argued that under Attorney General Merrick B. Garland, the Justice Department had been arbitrary in deciding whether to pursue capital punishment. They cited hundreds of other murder cases in which Mr. Garland had elected not to seek the death penalty, including the 2019 mass shooting by an anti-immigrant extremist in a Walmart in El Paso.

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U.S. Supreme Court Associate Justice Clarence Thomas, left, and his billionaire friend and benefactor Harlan Crow (file photos).

U.S. Supreme Court Associate Justice Clarence Thomas, left, and his billionaire friend and benefactor Harlan Crow (file photos).

 

U.S. Politics, Elections, Governance

rosalynn carter jimmy carter carter center

washington post logoWashington Post, Former first lady Rosalynn Carter diagnosed with dementia, Timothy Bella, May 31, 2023 (print ed.). Former first lady Rosalynn Carter has been diagnosed with dementia, the Carter Center announced Tuesday, more than three months after her husband, former president Jimmy Carter, said he was spending his final days in hospice care.

In a news release, the Carter Center (which provided the photo of the couple above) said that Rosalynn Carter, 95, was comfortable and spending time with her 98-year-old husband at home in Plains, Ga.

“She continues to live happily at home with her husband, enjoying spring in Plains and visits with loved ones,” the organization said in a statement.

Carter, who was hailed by the organization as “the nation’s leading mental health advocate for much of her life,” frequently talked about caregiving before, during and after her time with her husband in the White House.

“The universality of caregiving is clear in our family, and we are experiencing the joy and the challenges of this journey,” the Carter Center said. “We do not expect to comment further and ask for understanding for our family and for everyone across the country serving in a caregiver role.”

Washington Post, Report: Utah GOP Rep. Chris Stewart to resign from Congress, Mariana Alfaro, May 31, 2023. Rep. Chris Stewart (R-Utah), who was first elected to Congress in 2012, will resign his seat to focus on his wife’s health, according to a published report.

The Salt Lake Tribune was the first to report on Stewart’s potential departure. A congressional official familiar with his plans confirmed the report to The Washington Post on the condition of anonymity ahead of an official announcement.

According to the Tribune, Stewart, 62, could resign as soon as this week, and he will leave office to address the “ongoing health issues” of his wife, Evie. Those medical issues are not publicly known.

A spokesman for Stewart did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Stewart’s departure would reduce the GOP’s already-slim majority in the House — 222 seats to Democrats’ 213. Currently, if Democrats oppose a piece of legislation, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) can afford to lose only four votes from his caucus.

Stewart, a retired Air Force pilot, represents Utah’s 2nd Congressional District, which includes Salt Lake City. He and his wife have six children.

Per Utah law, Stewart’s resignation will spark a special election, whose winner will fill the remainder of his term. Utah Gov. Spencer Cox (R) will announce the timeline for the race’s primary and general elections once Stewart officially announces his resignation.

Stewart, who serves on the Appropriations and Intelligence committees, has won handily in the Republican-leaning district since he was first elected in 2012. In 2022, Stewart defeated Democrat Nick Mitchell by more than 25 points. All of Utah’s four House seats, as well as its two Senate seats, are held by Republicans.

Palmer Report, Opinion: House Republican is reportedly about to resign, Bill Palmer, May 30, 2023. Politico, the AP, and the Salt Lake Tribune are all now reporting that House Republican Chris Stewart is about to resign, citing his wife’s health.

Politicians often use health issues and family issues as an excuse for abrupt resignations when there’s actually a scandal brewing. But until we hear otherwise, we’ll accept the story that this really is about his wife’s health, and we wish her well on that front. That said, even if there’s no scandal here for Stewart, this is still potentially a big deal for the House overall.

If Stewart really is resigning this week, there will soon be a special election to fill his seat. Stewart was a popular incumbent who was just reelected by 25 points. Sometimes when a popular incumbent bails, a race becomes more competitive. But even with Stewart out of the picture, this is a R+11 district, meaning it leans eleven points Republican by default.

The political headwinds are all blowing in the Democrats’ direction, but are they good enough to overcome an eleven point gap? That would be quite a stretch. But even if the Republicans do end up winning the special election, Stewart’s seat would sit empty for a bit. And with far right House Republicans now openly talking about trying to oust Kevin McCarthy over his budget deal, they may be about to have a brief window where the ouster math would be a little easier. For McCarthy, the timing for this resignation could not be worse.

House Republicans are holding onto a slim five vote majority, which given their overall dysfunctional state, has made it difficult for them to get anything done. Worse for Kevin McCarthy, he was elected Speaker with just a one vote margin – meaning he can’t lose anyone. Well, it looks like he’s about to lose someone.

ny times logoNew York Times, The District Gained Republicans. Could a Liberal Democrat Take It Back? Tracey Tully, May 31, 2023. Sue Altman, the leader of a progressive organization in New Jersey, is expected to announce a run for Congress against Rep. Tom Kean Jr.

New Jersey’s Seventh Congressional District was redrawn last year specifically to boost the chances of Republicans. It worked.

Now, Democrats are trying to win back the seat. But rather than turn to a centrist who mirrors the conservative ethos of the region, the party appears to be coalescing around a candidate who for four years has been the face of New Jersey’s progressive left: Sue Altman.

Ms. Altman, who leads the state’s liberal-leaning Working Families Alliance and is an ally of Gov. Philip D. Murphy, is expected to announce her candidacy Wednesday morning.

“We’ve trained hard in New Jersey to fight corruption,” Ms. Altman, 41, said in an interview. “And I’m ready to turn these skills toward a bigger, much more urgent fight.” Last year, redistricting shored up the odds of victory for the incumbent party in 11 of New Jersey’s 12 congressional districts. The only incumbent to lose was Tom Malinowski, a two-term Democrat who represented the Seventh Congressional District, which stretches from one side of northern New Jersey to the other and takes in mainly suburban and rural communities.

Tom Kean Jr., a former Republican state lawmaker and namesake of a well-liked governor, defeated Mr. Malinowski in November by 8,691 votes, or roughly three percentage points, to join Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s fractious, nine-member majority in Washington.

The seat has been identified as a key target of Democrats hoping to regain control of the House. Over Memorial Day weekend, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee ran an ad on a highway billboard that yoked Mr. Kean to former President Donald J. Trump, offering a peek at what is likely to be a nationwide strategy next year in races that coincide with the presidential contest.
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With a year and a half before the election, it is likely that additional Democratic challengers to Mr. Kean will emerge. But Ms. Altman’s early entry and name recognition gives her a clear edge in a race that even the state’s Democratic Party chairman, LeRoy J. Jones Jr., acknowledges will be an uphill fight.

“Sue Altman is a formidable candidate — and so far the only candidate,” Mr. Jones said. “Without hearing from anyone else, Sue is in a position to make her case to ultimately be the Democratic nominee.”

It is by some measures a counterintuitive choice. The candidate will be running from the left in a district where registered Republicans now outnumber Democrats by 16,000 voters.

Harrison Neely, a top political adviser to Mr. Kean, said Ms. Altman represented the “most divisive and extreme aspects of the fringe of her party.”

Mr. Neely said Mr. Kean’s focus on reducing the cost of living in New Jersey and his efforts to work across the aisle as a member of the bipartisan Problem Solvers Caucus illustrated his “common-sense solutions to our national challenges.” He said he was confident Mr. Kean would be re-elected.

ny times logoNew York Times, Feinstein, Back in the Senate, Relies Heavily on Staff to Function, Annie Karni, May 29, 2023 (print ed.). Senator Dianne Feinstein of California is surrounded by a large entourage of aides who tell her how and when to vote, and shield her from the public.

When Senator Dianne Feinstein entered a hearing room this month to reclaim her seat on the Senate Judiciary Committee after a monthslong absence, she was accompanied by a phalanx of aides.

Two staff members settled the 89-year-old California Democrat into a chair at the dais as the assembled senators greeted their ailing colleague with a round of applause. When Ms. Feinstein spoke — during a vote on one of several of President Biden’s judicial nominees whose approval had awaited her return — she appeared to read from a piece of paper handed to her by a female aide seated behind her.

“I ask to be recorded as voting in person on the three nominees considered earlier, Mr. Chairman, and I vote aye now,” she said.

The aide knelt next to her and whispered into her ear in between votes — popping up repeatedly from her seat to confer with the senator, at one point clearing away the paper Ms. Feinstein had read from and presenting her with a folder that appeared to contain background information about the nominees.

The scene was typical of Ms. Feinstein’s day-to-day existence on Capitol Hill, where she is surrounded by a retinue of staff members who serve not only the roles of typical congressional aides — advising on policy, keeping tabs on the schedule, drafting statements and speeches — but also as de facto companions to a senator whose age, frail health and memory issues make it difficult for her to function alone.

Their roles have come under more scrutiny as a number of Democrats and many of Ms. Feinstein’s constituents are increasingly concerned about her refusal to relinquish a post that she is not capable of fulfilling without heavy and constant reliance on her aides.

They push her wheelchair, remind her how and when she should vote and step in to explain what is happening when she grows confused. They stay with her in the cloak room just off the Senate floor, where Ms. Feinstein has taken to waiting her turn to vote, then appearing in the doorway to register her “aye” or “nay” from the outer edge of the chamber.

 

 Democratic-Republican Campaign logos

washington post logoWashington Post, Boebert dismisses antisemitism push as effort to target conservatives, Meryl Kornfield, May 27, 2023 (print ed.). After White House announces initiative to combat hatred of Jews, GOP congresswoman says it’s a way to ‘go after conservatives.’

President Biden on Thursday released the country’s first national strategy for combating antisemitism, a landmark lauded by Jewish and anti-hate groups as progress toward addressing the increasing instances of violence and bias toward Jewish people in the United States.

lauren boebertBut Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.), right, saw the effort as an attack on those of her political persuasion. “When they say stuff like this, they mean they want to go after conservatives,” she tweeted. “Their tactics are straight out of the USSR’s playbook.”

djt maga hatHer comments quickly attracted criticism from detractors who accused her of conflating a straightforward campaign against antisemitism with an assault on the right — and, by implication, equating conservatives with antisemites.

“So you agree? You think you’re antisemitic?” Rep. Sara Jacobs (D-Calif.) tweeted in a popular meme format from the teen comedy “Mean Girls.”

In response to questions about her tweet, Boebert’s office provided a statement equating the anti-hate effort with censorship of free speech and adding that she does not condone antisemitism.

 

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More on Ukraine War

ny times logoNew York Times, U.N. Nuclear Agency Sets New Rules for Plant Near Ukraine’s Front Line, Anushka Patil, May 31, 2023. The guidelines are intended to avert a catastrophe at the Ukrainian facility that has been controlled by Russian forces for more than a year. The guidelines are intended to avert a catastrophe at Europe’s largest nuclear facility, which Russian forces have controlled for over a year.

The head of the International Atomic Energy Agency said on Tuesday that he had established five basic rules to avoid nuclear catastrophe at Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant and that he would publicly report any violations.

Rafael Mariano Grossi, the director general of the I.A.E.A., briefed the U.N. Security Council on the rules, which are largely based on safety principles the agency established a year ago. The requirements are fairly straightforward — the first stipulates that “there should be no attack of any kind from or against the plant.”

Russian forces have controlled the plant — Europe’s largest — for more than a year. The plant is no longer producing electricity for outside use, but Ukrainian workers continue to perform essential functions, including operating critical cooling equipment.

Frontline fighting has repeatedly damaged the facility, disrupted its power supply and contributed to a staffing crisis that is “not sustainable,” Mr. Grossi said on Tuesday.

Mr. Grossi’s promise to report violations comes after months of unsuccessfully trying to establish a security zone around the plant, where the agency has stationed its own monitors. Even as Russia and Ukraine accused each other of causing damage and outages, Mr. Grossi largely avoided placing blame on either country while he sought to negotiate an agreement.

Here’s what we’re covering:

  • The I.A.E.A.’s new measures for the Zaporizhzhia plant are meant to avert nuclear catastrophe.
  • Blinken is expected to discuss Russia and China with European officials in Sweden.
  • Russia has carried out more than 1,000 attacks on Ukrainian health care facilities, the W.H.O. says.
  • Drone strikes force Moscow to adapt its Cold War missile shield to modern warfare.
  • The drone attacks in Moscow are the latest assault exposing Russia’s vulnerability.

 

 

President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia received Patriarch Kirill, the leader of the Russian Orthodox Church, on Wednesday in Moscow (Photo by Mikhail Klimentyev of Sputnik via Associated Press).

President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia received Patriarch Kirill, the leader of the Russian Orthodox Church, on Wednesday in Moscow (Photo by Mikhail Klimentyev of Sputnik via Associated Press).

ny times logoNew York Times, Barely Noting the Ukraine War in Public, Putin Acts Like Time Is on His Side, Anton Troianovski and Paul Sonne, May 28, 2023 (print ed.). President Vladimir Putin of Russia looks like a commander in absentia, treating the war as unfortunate but distant and still betting on outlasting his foes.

Pro-Ukrainian fighters stormed across the border into southwestern Russia this past week, prompting two days of the heaviest fighting on Russian territory in 15 months of war. Yet President Vladimir V. Putin, in public, ignored the matter entirely.

He handed out medals, met the patriarch of the Russian Orthodox Church, hosted friendly foreign leaders and made televised small talk with a Russian judge about how Ukraine was not a real country.

In managing Russia’s biggest war in generations, Mr. Putin increasingly looks like a commander in chief in absentia: In public, he says next to nothing about the course of the war and betrays little concern about Russia’s setbacks. Instead, he is telegraphing more clearly than ever that his strategy is to wait out Ukraine and the West — and that he thinks he can win by exhausting his foes.

“There’s no need for any illusions,” said Natalia Zubarevich, an expert on Russian social and economic development at Moscow State University. Mr. Putin, she said, has laid the domestic groundwork to sustain the war for a “long, long, long, long, long” time.

But while Western analysts and officials believe that Mr. Putin’s Russia does have the potential to keep fighting, his military, economic and political maneuvering room has narrowed, presenting obstacles to prosecuting a lengthy war.

Even as Mr. Putin refers to the fighting as distant “tragic events,” the war keeps hitting home — with growing fissures in the military leadership, unease among the Russian elite and worrying signs for the economy as the West vows to further wean itself off Russian energy.

On the battlefield, Russia’s ability to go on the offensive has shriveled as ammunition has run low and the monthslong battle for the eastern Ukrainian city of Bakhmut took thousands of soldiers’ lives. Yevgeny V. Prigozhin, the leader of the Wagner mercenary group that led the assault on Bakhmut, said he was starting to pull his soldiers out of the city while releasing one profane tirade after another aimed at Russia’s Kremlin-allied elites.

To mount a major new offensive, Western officials and analysts say that Mr. Putin would need to find new sources of ammunition — and impose a politically risky, second military draft to replenish his depleted troops. Still, the U.S. director of national intelligence, Avril D. Haines, told Congress this month that the chances that Mr. Putin would make any concessions in talks this year were “low,” unless he were to feel a domestic political threat.

ny times logoNew York Times, Ukraine Sees New Virtue in Wind Power: It’s Harder to Destroy, Maria Varenikova, May 30, 2023 (print ed.). Bombarding the power grid has been a big part of Russia’s invasion, but officials say it’s harder for missiles to badly damage a wind farm than a power plant.

In 15 months of war, Russia has launched countless missiles and exploding drones at power plants, hydroelectric dams and substations, trying to black out as much of Ukraine as it can, as often as it can, in its campaign to pound the country into submission. The new Tyligulska wind farm stands only a few dozen miles from Russian artillery, but Ukrainians say it has a crucial advantage over most of the country’s grid.

A single, well-placed missile can damage a power plant severely enough to take it out of action, but Ukrainian officials say that doing the same to a set of windmills, each one hundreds of feet apart from any other, would require dozens of missiles. A wind farm can be temporarily disabled by striking a transformer substation or transmission lines, but these are much easier to repair than power plants.

“It is our response to Russians,” said Maksym Timchenko, the chief executive of DTEK Group, the company that built the turbines, in the southern Mykolaiv region, the first phase of what is planned as Eastern Europe’s largest wind farm. “It is the most profitable and, as we know now, most secure form of energy.”

washington post logoWashington Post, Kyiv readies for counteroffensive as commander vows to ‘take back what’s ours,’ Kelsey Ables, Adela Suliman and Nick Parke, May 28, 2023 (print ed.). Ukrainian officials continue to talk up a much-anticipated counteroffensive against Russia, with the commander in chief of Ukraine’s army, Gen. Valery Zaluzhny, on Saturday releasing an “informational support campaign” video venerating his military forces and promising that “the time has come to take back what’s ours.”

ukraine flagThe recent warm, dry weather in southern Ukraine has raised expectations that the spring counterattack could begin soon — or may already be underway. President Volodymyr Zelensky and others have described the looming campaign as a make-or-break chance to show Western backers, who have provided military aid and training, that Ukraine is capable of taking back its land from Russia.

Here’s the latest on the war and its effects around the globe.

  • Key developments
  • Ukraine’s counteroffensive could begin “tomorrow, the day after tomorrow or in a week,” another senior Ukrainian security official, Oleksiy Danilov, told the BBC in an interview Saturday, describing it as a “historic opportunity” that “we cannot lose.” An adviser to Zelensky, Mykhailo Podolyak, has cautioned that Ukraine would not necessarily make a formal announcement before an offensive. “This is not a ‘single event’ that will begin at a specific hour of a specific day with a solemn cutting of the red ribbon,” he tweeted.
  • Wagner troops are withdrawing from positions around the embattled city of Bakhmut, according to Britain’s defense ministry. The Saturday observation Russian Flagaligns with comments made by the group’s chief Yevgeniy Prigozhin that his troops are rebasing, to be replaced by regular Russian military forces. Ukrainian officials have also noted withdrawals from the outskirts of Bakhmut, which Russia took control of this month after a months-long battle. “Wagner forces will likely be used for further offensive operations in the Donbas following reconstituting its forces,” the intelligence update from the ministry added.

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President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine in Hiroshima on Saturday (Ludovic Marin for Agence France-Presse via Getty Images).

President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine in Hiroshima on Saturday (Ludovic Marin for Agence France-Presse via Getty Images).

 

Turkey's Elections, Impact

 

nato logo flags name

ny times logoNew York Times, Will Erdogan’s Victory Soften Turkey’s Opposition to Sweden in NATO? Steven Erlanger, May 30, 2023 (print ed.). Recep Tayyip Erdogan, re-elected as Turkey’s president, is expected to toughen up at home but seek better ties with Washington and the military alliance.

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey, invoking themes of Turkish nationalism and counterterrorism, has been the main obstacle toward Sweden joining the NATO alliance after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Flag of TurkeyHis fierce public opposition played well in his re-election campaign. So did his role as an indispensable power broker, vital to NATO but also as an intermediary, able to maintain good relations with both Russia and Ukraine.

Now safely re-elected on Sunday as president of Turkey, Mr. Erdogan is expected to project the same image, by increasing his tight grip on power at home while balancing between his allies inside NATO and his economic dependency on Russia.

But with renewed nationalist credentials, he could feel freer to mend ties with the United States, analysts suggest, and could approve the membership of Sweden into NATO, perhaps in time for the yearly summit of the alliance in July.

Acquiescing has its own benefits for Mr. Erdogan. Sweden’s entry into NATO may unlock the sale of American F-16s and kits to upgrade Turkey’s older models. Those sales have been blocked in Congress, where many legislators are angry with Mr. Erdogan for his ties to Russia, his purchase of the Russian S-400 antiaircraft system and his crackdown on dissent.

recep erdogan with flag

ny times logoNew York Times, Opinion: Turkey’s Election Is a Warning About Trump, Bret Stephens, May 31, 2023.  “The totalitarian phenomenon,” the French philosopher Jean-François Revel once noted, “is not to be understood without making an allowance for the thesis that some important part of every society consists of people who actively want tyranny: either to exercise it themselves or — much more mysteriously — to submit to it.”

It’s an observation that should help guide our thinking about the re-election this week of Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Turkey, shown above. And it should serve as a warning about other places — including the Republican Party — where autocratic leaders, seemingly incompetent in many respects, are returning to power through democratic means.

That’s not quite the way Erdogan’s close-but-comfortable victory in Sunday’s runoff over the former civil servant Kemal Kilicdaroglu is being described in many analyses. The president, they say, has spent 20 years in power tilting every conceivable scale in his favor.

Erdogan has used regulatory means and abused the criminal-justice system to effectively control the news media. He has exercised his presidential power to deliver subsidies, tax cuts, cheap loans and other handouts to favored constituencies. He has sought to criminalize an opposition party on specious grounds of links to terrorist groups. In December, a Turkish court effectively barred Erdogan’s most serious prospective rival, Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu of Istanbul, from politics by sentencing him to prison on charges of insulting public officials.

Then, too, Kilicdaroglu was widely seen as a colorless and inept politician, promising a return to a status quo ante that many Turks remember, with no fondness, as a time of regular economic crises and a kind of repressive secularism.

All of this is true, as far as it goes, and it helps underscore the worldwide phenomenon of what Fareed Zakaria aptly calls “free and unfair elections.” But it doesn’t go far enough.

Turkey under Erdogan is in a dreadful state and has been for a long time. Inflation last year hit 85 percent and is still running north of 40 percent, thanks to Erdogan’s insistence on cutting interest rates in the teeth of rising prices. He has used a series of show trials — some based in fact, others pure fantasy — to eviscerate civil freedoms. February’s earthquakes, which took an estimated 50,000 lives and injured twice as many, were badly handled by the government and exposed the corruption of a system that cared more for patronage networks than for well-built buildings.

Under normal political expectations, Erdogan should have paid the political price with a crushing electoral defeat. Not only did he survive, he increased his vote share in some of the towns worst hit by, and most neglected after, the earthquakes. “We love him,” explained a resident quoted in The Economist. “For the call to prayer, for our homes, for our headscarves.”

That last line is telling, and not just because it gets to the importance of Erdogan’s Islamism as the secret of his success. It’s a rebuke to James Carville’s parochially American slogan, “It’s the economy, stupid.” Actually, no: It’s also God, tradition, values, identity, culture and the resentments that go with each. Only a denuded secular imagination fails to notice that there are things people care about more than their paychecks.

ny times logoNew York Times, Here are five takeaways from Turkey’s presidential election, Ben Hubbard, May 30, 2023 (print ed.). Crises including earthquakes and inflation did not stop the re-election of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. The vote was seen as free but not fair, as he used his power to tilt the playing field.

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s re-election grants him five more years to deepen his conservative imprint on Turkish society and to realize his ambition of kemal kılıçdaroğlu 2023increasing the country’s economic and geopolitical power.

Flag of TurkeyTurkey’s Supreme Election Council named Mr. Erdogan the victor after a runoff election on Sunday. He won 52.1 percent of the vote against the opposition candidate Kemal Kilicdaroglu, right, who had 47.9 percent with almost all votes counted, the council said.

The election was closely followed by Turkey’s NATO allies, including the United States, who have often seen Mr. Erdogan as frustrating partner because of his anti-Western rhetoric and close ties with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, which have grown since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

 

Pro-Trump Insurrectionists, Election Deniers, Durham Report

ny times logoNew York Times, Trump White House Aides Subpoenaed in Firing of Election Security Expert, Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan, May 31, 2023. The special counsel is scrutinizing the dismissal of Christopher Krebs, who contradicted former President Trump’s baseless claims about the 2020 election.

The special counsel investigating former President Donald J. Trump’s efforts to cling to power after he lost the 2020 election has subpoenaed staff members from the Trump White House who may have been involved in firing the government cybersecurity official whose agency judged the election “the most secure in American history,” according to two people briefed on the matter.

chris krebs oThe team led by the special counsel, Jack Smith, has been asking witnesses about the events surrounding the firing of Christopher Krebs, who was the Trump administration’s top cybersecurity official during the 2020 election. Mr. Krebs’s assessment that the election was secure was at odds with Mr. Trump’s baseless assertions that it was a “fraud on the American public.”

Mr. Smith’s team is also seeking information about how White House officials, including in the Presidential Personnel Office, approached the Justice Department, which Mr. Trump turned to after his election loss as a way to try to stay in power, people familiar with the questions said.

The investigators appear focused on Mr. Trump’s state of mind around the firing of Mr. Krebs, as well as on establishing a timeline of events leading up to the attack on the Capitol by a pro-Trump mob on Jan. 6, 2021. The latest subpoenas, issued roughly two weeks ago, went to officials in the personnel office, according to the two people familiar with the matter.

Mr. Krebs enraged Mr. Trump when his agency, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, released a statement nine days after the 2020 election attesting to the security of the results. The statement added a sharp rebuke — in boldface type — to the unfounded conspiracy theories that Mr. Trump and his allies were spreading about compromised voting machines.

“There is no evidence that any voting system deleted or lost votes, changed votes or was in any way compromised,” the statement from Mr. Krebs’s agency read.

Five days later, Mr. Trump tweeted that Mr. Krebs was “terminated” after releasing a “highly inaccurate” statement about the 2020 election.

Mr. Krebs later testified to the House special committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol that before his firing, he was aware of “skepticism” among Trump allies about his “loyalty to the president.

 

Jessica Watkins, second from left, and Donovan Ray Crowl, center, both from Ohio, walk down the east front steps of the U.S. Capitol with other Oath Keepers members on Jan. 6, 2021 (Reuters photo by Jim Bourg).

Jessica Watkins, second from left, and Donovan Ray Crowl, center, both from Ohio, walk down the east front steps of the U.S. Capitol with other Oath Keepers members on Jan. 6, 2021 (Reuters photo by Jim Bourg).

Emptywheel, Analysis: Oaths Broken, Oath Keepers Bowed: Sentences for 2 more in marquee Jan. 6 conspiracy case, Brandi Buchman, May 28-29, 2023. 
Raw emotions positively dominated a federal courthouse in Washington, D.C. this week as the Justice Department secured significant sentences for two more Oath Keepers involved in a larger conspiracy to forcibly stop America’s transfer of power on Jan. 6, 2021.

jessica watkins mugOn the heels of an 18-year-sentence delivered to a defiant Elmer Stewart Rhodes, the leader of the far-right group, and a 12-year-sentence handed down to Kelly Meggs, Rhodes’ deputy on the 6th, U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta sentenced Oath Keeper Jessica Watkins, right, ken harrelson mugonce the founder of the Ohio Regular Militia, to 8.5 years and Kenneth Harrelson, below left, a ground team leader on the 6th, to four years.

Both were acquitted of the sedition charge in this case but they were found guilty of multiple felonies including serious obstruction charges. Sedition itself is rarely prosecuted in the United States and rarer still are these prosecutions successful since the bar to prove this sort of conspiracy is set so high.

This week marked a victory for the Justice Department, the rule of law, and the victims of Jan. 6 even if Donald Trump, the man who started it all, has yet to bear any real legal responsibility for his role in inciting an attack on the U.S. Capitol to stay in power.

That day may come. But in the meantime, the willing pawns in Trump’s betrayal of the U.S. Constitution and common decency alike will now begin to serve their time.

Underlining the severity of events, prosecutors initially sought an 18-year sentence for Watkins noting the jury’s conclusion that her true objective on Jan.6 was to storm the Capitol, use her body—and the bodies of her recruits—to violently obstruct the certification of the 2020 election, and intimidate Congress and impede police.

washington post logoWashington Post, More Oath Keepers convicted with Rhodes for Jan. 6 attack are sentenced, Spencer S. Hsu, May 27, 2023 (print ed.). Army veterans Jessica Watkins and Kenneth Harrelson brought weapons to Virginia before marching into the Capitol in 2021, but were acquitted of seditious conspiracy.

A self-styled militia leader and bar owner from Ohio and a former welder from Florida were sentenced to 8½ years and four years in prison Friday for joining Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes in disrupting Congress’s confirmation of Joe Biden’s 2020 presidential election victory in the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol attack.

Army veterans Jessica Watkins and Kenneth Harrelson were acquitted of seditious conspiracy but convicted on other felony counts in November at trial with Rhodes and his on-the-ground leader, Kelly Meggs. Rhodes and Meggs were convicted of seditious conspiracy and sentenced Thursday. Rhodes received 18 years in prison, the longest for any Jan. 6 defendant. Meggs was sentenced to 12 years.

On Friday, U.S. District Judge Amit P. Mehta told Watkins after a two-hour sentencing hearing: “Nobody would suggest you’re Stewart Rhodes; I don’t think you’re Kelly Meggs. But your role in those events is more than that of just a foot soldier.”

He added, “As someone who takes a greater role in a conspiracy, you bear a greater responsibility not just for your conduct but for the conduct of those you bring to it.”

Watkins, 40, of Woodstock, Ohio, recruited three other people and was recorded on Jan. 6 on a walkie-talkie-style app saying she was walking with a group of about 30 to 40 people to the Capitol and “sticking together and sticking to the plan,” before she eventually met up with a group led by Meggs. The group marched single-file up the east Capitol steps and joined a mob that entered the Columbus doors by force.

Harrelson, 42, a former Army sergeant from Titusville, Fla., received firearms training with Meggs in Florida and, according to prosecutors, served as “Meggs’ right-hand man” in setting up video meetings and relaying instructions to other Florida Oath Keepers about stashing weapons for a “Quick Reaction Force” if violence erupted. Harrelson recorded himself yelling “Treason!” at Capitol occupants as he entered with Meggs.

Outside of Rhodes and Meggs, Watkins received the longest sentence to date for any Jan. 6 defendant who has not been convicted of assaulting a police officer. But Harrelson received a fraction of his co-defendants’ time and close to the 45-month average sentence for 22 other Jan. 6 defendants who were convicted of obstructing Congress but not found guilty of conspiring with an organized group or of committing violence.

Mehta found that Watkins’s and Harrelson’s actions qualified for an enhanced terrorism sentencing penalty for offenses calculated to coerce the government, but the judge slashed years off the penalties sought by prosecutors. Mehta noted that Watkins, like Harrelson, had been acquitted of conspiring to use force to oppose government authority, and that she turned herself in and cooperated short of pleading guilty.

The judge added that of 2,000 to 3,000 communications exchanged by co-conspirators, he found only “a couple dozen” by Harrelson. That suggested lesser intent and explained why the jury also acquitted him of conspiring to obstruct Congress, while he was convicted of actually obstructing it, plotting to interfere with police and destroying evidence, the judge said.

“What distinguishes you from everyone else so far is that there not a single word on a Signal communication that anyone would consider extremist, radicalized, encouraging someone to engage in violence, or words like ‘civil war,’ ‘revolution,’ or thinking about death,” Mehta said. “You are not someone who bears the same responsibility or culpability as the others.”

Watkins was accused of merging her local Ohio armed group with the Oath Keepers in 2020. She became a recruiter and organizer in advance of the Capitol attack, bringing firearms and other weapons and storing them outside Washington.

Watkins texted others, telling them to prepare for violence to keep Trump in office, beginning on Nov. 9, 2020, six days after the election, and she spoke of getting recruits “fighting fit by innaugeration” and uniting Oath Keepers and other extremist groups. “Be prepared to fight hand to hand,” she wrote. “Now or never.”

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More Global News, Views

ny times logoNew York Times, Pakistan’s Powerful Military Faces New Resistance From Courts, Christina Goldbaum and Salman Masood, May 31, 2023. Long seen as kowtowing to the military, the judiciary has defied it in recent rulings, signaling an important shift in Pakistan’s political landscape.

For most of Pakistan’s eight-decade history, its courts were largely aligned with the country’s powerful military. They gave three coups a legal stamp of approval, disqualified dozens of politicians who had fallen out of favor with the generals, and turned a blind eye to the disappearances of political dissidents.

But with Pakistan in the grip of a political crisis that has sparked violent protests across the country, the judiciary has openly contradicted the military and emerged as a political force in its own right, analysts say. In recent months, as former Prime Minister Imran Khan has clashed with the military and current civilian government, the courts have issued ruling after ruling that have thwarted what many consider attempts by the military to sideline Mr. Khan from politics.

That defiance was highlighted earlier this month, when shortly after the authorities arrested Mr. Khan in a corruption inquiry, the courts declared his arrest unlawful, ordered his release and granted him bail.

It is a striking shift in Pakistan, where the military has long acted as the country’s ultimate political power broker: Directly ruling for over half of the country’s existence and acting as the veiled power behind civilian governments. And as the courts strike out on their own, they are injecting even more uncertainty into an already volatile political climate.

ny times logoNew York Times, Sirens and Confusion in Seoul After False Evacuation Alert, Choe Sang-Hun, Victoria Kim and Jin Yu Young, May 31, 2023. South Koreans said the alarm, which was set off by a North Korean rocket launch, showed that their country was unprepared for a real emergency.

The emergency siren began wailing at 6:32 a.m. Several minutes later, personal cellphones around Seoul were screeching with a government alert urging residents to “prepare to evacuate,” children and the old and weak first.

For a half an hour on Wednesday morning, confusion and panic swept across this city of 10 million as news spread that North Korea had fired a rocket. Then, the next wave of messages hit: The South’s home ministry issued a notice saying the earlier alert was a “false alarm.”

Anxiety soon turned into anger and exasperation.

“They messed up big time,” said Lee Jae, an office worker in Seoul who woke up to the sirens.

South Koreans, who have grown inured to North Korea’s frequent provocations, were met with a disturbing taste of how their country might respond to a major military attack on Wednesday when their government caused confusion with its public alert system at a time of heightened tension in the region.

ny times logoNew York Times, German Court Convicts Left-Wing Group in Violent Attacks Against Far Right, Christopher F. Schuetze, May 31, 2023. A 28-year-old woman and three accomplices were sentenced to prison for their roles in a series of attacks on people they considered neo-Nazis.

A German court on Wednesday convicted a 28-year-old woman and three accomplices of organizing and carrying out brutal attacks against people they perceived to be neo-Nazis, in what experts have described as an uncommon case of left-wing extremist violence in the country.

The woman, who in accordance with Germany’s strict privacy laws was identified only as Lina E., was sentenced to five years and three months in prison by a court in Dresden, in eastern Germany, according to DPA, a German newswire, and MDR, a regional public broadcaster. Three other members of the group — identified as Lennart A., 28; Jannis R., 37; and Philipp M., 28 — received prison sentences ranging from two years and five months to three years and three months.

The case has been widely watched in Germany, where the authorities have long been accused of failing to prosecute or slow-walking the prosecution of figures tied to right-wing attacks, and especially in the east of the country, where the dominance of far-right groups has long overshadowed a smaller and apparently also violence-prone far-left scene. The trial also forced progressives to consider how far the fight against right-wing extremism should go, experts say.

Nancy Faeser, the country’s interior minister, said in a statement after the sentencing that “in a democratic constitutional state, there must be no room for vigilante justice.” She added, “No objective justifies political violence.”

ny times logoNew York Times, Tara Reade, Who Accused Biden of Assault, Says She Has Moved to Russia, Eduardo Medina, May 31, 2023 (print ed.). Years after accusing President Biden of sexual assault, Ms. Reade told a Russian outlet that she had moved in order to feel safe.

Tara Reade, the former Senate aide who accused President Biden of sexual assault as he ran for president in 2020, said on Tuesday that she had moved to Russia and was seeking citizenship there, according to Sputnik, a Russian-government-run news site.

Ms. Reade told Sputnik in a news conference that while her “dream is to live” in both the United States and Russia, she might reside only in Russia because that is where she feels “surrounded by protection and safety.”

In 2019, Ms. Reade, who briefly worked as a staff assistant in Mr. Biden’s Senate office in 1993, accused him of inappropriately touching her. Then in 2020, around the time when he appeared likely to win the Democratic nomination for president, she accused him of sexual assault. Mr. Biden flatly denied her allegations.

In interviews with The New York Times in April 2020, no former Biden staff members could corroborate any details of Ms. Reade’s allegation or recall any similar behavior by Mr. Biden toward her or any women. A friend of Ms. Reade’s said that she had told her the details of the allegation at the time.

In May 2020, a high-profile lawyer of the #MeToo era, Douglas H. Wigdor, dropped Ms. Reade as a client as her credibility came under harsh scrutiny after Antioch University disputed her claim of having received a bachelor’s degree from its Seattle campus.

On Tuesday, Ms. Reade told Sputnik that while her decision to go to Russia “was very difficult,” she believed she would be more safe there.

“As far as like going to another safe haven, I mean, there are many Americans here, and I don’t want to out a bunch of Americans, but there are people here that are coming to Russia,” Ms. Reade said.

She added that “luckily, the Kremlin is accommodating.”

“So we’re lucky,” she said.

Her departure to Russia comes as Moscow and Washington spar over the war in Ukraine, which President Vladimir V. Putin casts as an existential struggle with the West, which backs Kyiv.

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More On Probes, Suits Against Trump

ny times logoNew York Times, Mar-a-Lago Worker Provided Prosecutors New Details in Trump Documents Case, Alan Feuer and Maggie Haberman, May 27, 2023 (print ed.). A maintenance worker for the former president recounted helping to move boxes into a storage room a day before a Justice Department official came.

The day before a key meeting last year between a lawyer for former President Donald J. Trump and officials seeking the return of classified documents in Mr. Trump’s possession, a maintenance worker at the former president’s private club saw an aide moving boxes into a storage room, according to a person familiar with the matter.

The maintenance worker offered to help the aide — Walt Nauta, who was Mr. Trump’s valet in the White House — move the boxes and ended up lending him a hand. But the worker had no idea what was inside the boxes, the person familiar with the matter said. The maintenance worker has shared that account with federal prosecutors, the person said.

The worker’s account is potentially significant to prosecutors as they piece together details of how Mr. Trump handled sensitive documents he took with him from the White House upon leaving office and whether he obstructed efforts by the Justice Department and the National Archives to retrieve them.

Mr. Trump was found to have been keeping some of the documents in the storage room where Mr. Nauta and the maintenance worker were moving boxes on the day before the Justice Department’s top counterintelligence official, Jay Bratt, traveled to Mar-a-Lago last June to seek the return of any government materials being held by the former president.

The detail about the timing of Mr. Nauta’s interaction with the maintenance worker was reported earlier by The Washington Post. A lawyer for Mr. Nauta declined to comment. A lawyer for the maintenance worker would not publicly discuss the matter.

The New York Times reported this month that prosecutors had obtained cooperation from a witness who worked at Mar-a-Lago. Among other things, the witness provided investigators with a picture of the storage room.

The investigation, overseen by the special counsel, Jack Smith, has shown signs of entering its final phases, and this week lawyers for Mr. Trump — who is the current front-runner for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination — asked for a meeting to discuss the case with Attorney General Merrick B. Garland.

Meidas Touch Network, Commentary: Jack Smith’s SECRET WITNESS against Trump finally Revealed, Michael Popok, May 27, 2023. Michael Popok of Legal AF reports on breaking developments in the fast moving Jack Smith Mar-a-Lago criminal investigation of Trump, including new testimony and cooperation by an unnamed Mar-a-Lago maintenance worker who with photos and new facts shows that Trump orchestrated a scheme to hide classified documents from the FBI and DOJ.

Salon, Commentary: Trump and the Saudis: Is Jack Smith finally looking at this clear-cut corruption? Heather Digby Parton, May 26, 2023. Trump's links to the Saudi regime and its LIV Golf tour reek of obvious corruption. Maybe Jack Smith has noticed.

There's a lot of Trump legal news these days, what with the E. Jean Carroll verdict, the Manhattan hush money indictment, the news that Fulton County, Georgia, D.A. Fani Willis has put local authorities on notice to anticipate "something" coming in August, and a cascade of reporting on special counsel Jack Smith's investigation into the Mar-a-Lago classified documents case, with some suggestions evidence that will come to a conclusion very soon.

The possible Jan. 6 case against Donald Trump himself remains more obscure, but with the sentencing of Oath Keeper Stewart Rhodes to 18 years in prison for plotting the insurrection on Thursday, it's hard to see how Trump, who incited the riot, isn't equally implicated in what happened that day. But for some reason one obvious case has gotten very little media attention and, as far as we know, very little attention from investigators: Trump's cozy financial relationship with the Saudi-sponsored Public Investment Fund, the desert kingdom's massive sovereign wealth fund. (Its assets are estimated at more than $620 billion.)
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It's not at all surprising that the Republican House isn't looking into this. They're busy trying to find disappearing informants in the Hunter Biden laptop case and digging through the Biden family finances. Why the Democratic-led Senate hasn't bothered is another question. But it's obvious that Trump and his family are deeply financially involved with the Saudi government, and considering the fact that Trump is running for president yet again, it's shocking that nobody seems to care.

While all the other GOP presidential candidates were busy campaigning on Thursday, USA Today reported that Trump was kicking back at Trump National Golf Course in Virginia, which will soon host a tournament on the Saudi-backed LIV Golf tour — the third at a property owned by the former president just this year. (Two more will be scheduled at Trump properties in New Jersey and Florida.) Last year, Trump — in typically obtuse style — even scheduled a tournament at the New Jersey club on Sept. 11, drawing outrage from the families of 9/11 victims. Trump said he didn't know what they were talking about and defended Saudi Arabia, telling ESPN that "nobody has gotten to the bottom of 9/11."

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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.

 

More On U.S. Presidential Race

ny times logoNew York Times, Denouncing ‘Elites’ in Kickoff Speech, DeSantis Vows to ‘Impose Our Will,’ Shane Goldmacher and Nicholas Nehamas, May 31, 2023 (print ed.).  In Iowa, Ron DeSantis warned supporters of a “malignant ideology” taking hold across the country, described children facing “indoctrination” and vowed to fight for conservative causes.

Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida kicked off his presidential campaign in Iowa on Tuesday with a sweeping denunciation of the “elites” that he said dominated American institutions, pitching himself as an unrepentant fighter who could reverse a tide of progressivism in boardrooms, the government and the military.

“We must choose a path that will lead to a revival of American greatness,” Mr. DeSantis told supporters at an evangelical church in the suburbs of Des Moines.

In a strident speech, he painted a dark picture of America, saying he would be a salve to a “malignant ideology” that was taking hold across the nation. He described children facing “indoctrination.” He mocked transgender athletes, denounced the “woke Olympics” of diversity programs and reveled in his battle with Disney.

“It is time we impose our will on Washington, D.C.,” Mr. DeSantis said. “And you can’t do any of this if you don’t win.”

The Warning with Steve Schmidt, Why Ron DeSantis's aims of "destroying leftism" prove he is unfit to be president, Steve Schmidt, May 31, 2023 (8:24 min. video). Steve Schmidt breaks down Ron DeSantis’s comments that he is going to “destroy leftism.” He explains how that makes the Florida Governor unfit to be president and how it proves he is just cosplaying as a lesser version of Donald Trump.

ron desantis mouth open uncreditedMiami Herald, Watchdog group accuses DeSantis, political committee of breaking campaign-finance law, Mary Ellen Klas, May 31, 2023. A week into his official presidential campaign, Gov. Ron DeSantis and his political committee are being accused of violating federal election law for transferring $86 million from his state-based political committee to a federal super-PAC backing his candidacy.

The nonpartisan Campaign Legal Center alleged in a 52-page complaint filed Tuesday with the Federal Elections Commission that the state-based Friends of Ron DeSantis committee transferred the money to the federally-registered Never Back Down, Inc., in violation of the federal campaign contribution limit of $5,000. “The transfer of this colossal sum…is a brazen attempt to circumvent the federal campaign finance rules that are crucial to preventing corruption and establishing transparency about how our federal elections are financed,’’ the complaint states.

 

djt ron desantis cnn collage

ny times logoNew York Times, Trump Looks Like He Will Get the 2024 Crowd He Wants, Shane Goldmacher, Jonathan Swan and Maggie Haberman, May 29, 2023 (print ed.). Both Gov. Ron DeSantis, above right, and Senator Tim Scott entered the presidential race last week, with others to follow. For former President Trump, above left, the more the better.

Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida officially entered the presidential race last week, but he appears farther than ever from the one-on-one matchup that his allies believe he needs to wrest the nomination from former President Donald J. Trump.

Former Vice President Mike Pence is burrowing deeper into Iowa, crucial to his effort to dislodge the Republican front-runners, even before he has announced his bid. Former Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey is intensifying preparations for another campaign, with an expected focus on New Hampshire. And Republican donors and leadership on Capitol Hill are showing fresh interest in Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina, who kicked off his campaign last week. Even candidates who have barely been mentioned are suddenly expressing interest in 2024.

The rapidly ballooning field, combined with Mr. Trump’s seemingly unbreakable core of support, represents a grave threat to Mr. DeSantis, imperiling his ability to consolidate the non-Trump vote, and could mirror the dynamics that powered Mr. Trump’s takeover of the party in 2016.

It’s a matter of math: Each new entrant threatens to steal a small piece of Mr. DeSantis’s potential coalition — whether it be Mr. Pence with Iowa evangelicals or Mr. Scott with college-educated suburbanites. And these new candidates are unlikely to eat into Mr. Trump’s votes. The former president’s base — more than 30 percent of Republicans — remains strongly devoted to him.

washington post logoWashington Post, Opinion: Why fear of change will drive the GOP presidential primary, Paul Waldman, May 30, 2023. “Look, we know our country’s going in the wrong direction,” said Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis as he announced his presidential bid in a glitch-filled Twitter event last week. “We see it with our eyes and we feel it in our bones.” For the people DeSantis is trying to appeal to, the idea that everything is going wrong in America is indeed something they feel viscerally.

DeSantis might not be brimming with charisma, but he understands something important about our political divide and the GOP electorate’s contribution to it. The divide isn’t about President Biden’s policy choices or this quarter’s gross domestic product numbers. It’s about something much deeper, and grasping this is essential to understanding the coming 2024 contest.

republican elephant logoConsider some fascinating recent poll results from the Pew Research Center, which asked people in 19 countries if their nation “will be better off in the future if it sticks with its traditions and way of life,” or if it “will be better off in the future if it is open to changes” regarding its traditions and way of life.

Overall, differences between countries were small. A median 62 percent of respondents said their country will be better off if it is open to changes; in the United States, the figure was 63 percent.

But when they divided the data by ideology, they revealed something striking:

Americans are much more divided on this question than people in other countries, with both sides of the spectrum landing at the extremes. For instance, 60 percent of conservatives in Britain embrace change over tradition, as do 52 percent of Canadian conservatives — fewer than liberals in those countries but still substantial. But only 28 percent of American conservatives agree.

We’re the outlier on the left as well: 91 percent of American liberals favor change over tradition, compared to 73 percent of liberals in Germany and 67 percent in France.

joe biden kamala harris

washington post logoWashington Post, Biden circle seeks to boost Harris ahead of 2024, starting with debt talks, Cleve R. Wootson Jr., May 31, 2023 (print ed.). As Republicans zero in on the vice president, the White House seeks to elevate her, starting with the debt talks.

In an urgent May 16 meeting on the debt ceiling in the Oval Office, Vice President Harris sat between President Biden and House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), symbolically positioned at the center of the high-stakes talks aimed at staving off a first-ever U.S. default.

Two days later, Harris was on a teleconference with thousands of elected officials and opinion leaders, urging them to ramp up pressure for a deal. “President Biden and I met with our four congressional leaders Tuesday here at the White House. We had a productive conversation,” she reported. “We believe that it occurred in good faith, with all the leaders in that meeting agreeing that America will not default.”

The public staging of those moments, Democratic operatives say, is part of a concerted effort to bolster Harris’s image in the weeks since Biden announced his reelection. Republicans are already zeroing in on Harris with a sometimes morbid message that couples questions about the president’s longevity with doubts about the abilities of the woman who would succeed him.

washington post logoWashington Post, Trump campaign braces for Iowa battle as DeSantis team sees an opening, Isaac Arnsdorf, Hannah Knowles and Josh Dawsey, May 31, 2023 (print ed.). The former president faces well-funded resistance and other headwinds in the GOP’s first nominating contest, even as he pulls ahead in national polls.

Although Trump has taken a commanding lead in national polls and many Republicans are calling him the inevitable nominee, here in Iowa, which will kick off the GOP nominating process next year, a victory is far from assured, according to interviews with local lawmakers, strategists and voters. Already, a slew of prominent Republican voices is challenging Trump and promoting DeSantis. Such support is highly coveted in a caucus that could be decided by a few thousand highly-engaged party activists — record turnout in 2016 was just under 187,000.

republican elephant logoTrump and DeSantis will make competing trips to Iowa this week, beginning with DeSantis on Tuesday kicking off his first swing after officially announcing his candidacy last week. Trump will arrive on Wednesday and appear at a breakfast meeting of conservative activists in Urbandale Thursday morning. He will record a Fox News town hall in Clive the same day.

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U.S. Abortion, Birth Control, #MeToo

ny times logoNew York Times, Indiana Reprimands Doctor Who Provided Abortion to 10-Year-Old Rape Victim, Ava Sasani, May 27, 2023 (print ed.). Dr. Caitlin Bernard violated the privacy of her young patient by discussing the girl’s case with a reporter, the state’s medical board ruled.

\An Indiana doctor who provided an abortion to a 10-year-old rape victim last year violated her young patient’s privacy by discussing the case with a reporter, the state’s medical board ruled Thursday night.

Dr. Caitlin Bernard, an Indianapolis obstetrician-gynecologist, catapulted into the national spotlight last year after she provided an abortion for an Ohio girl soon after the Supreme Court decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, which left states free to severely restrict or outlaw abortion.

The state’s medical board voted to issue Dr. Bernard a letter of reprimand and a fine of $3,000. But it decided against stiffer penalties, which could have included suspension or probation, instead deciding that Dr. Bernard is fit to return to her practice.

The board also cleared her of other allegations that she failed to appropriately report the girl’s rape to authorities.

The decision was the culmination of a yearlong legal pursuit of Dr. Bernard by the state’s attorney general, Todd Rokita, a Republican who opposes abortion.

The Ohio girl had traveled to Indiana for the procedure after her home state enacted a ban on most abortions after six weeks of pregnancy. Dr. Bernard told a reporter for the Indianapolis Star about the case during an abortion rights rally. She didn’t name the patient, but the case quickly became a flash point in the early, heated days of debate after the Supreme Court ruling, catching the attention of President Biden and turning conservative attention and ire toward Dr. Bernard.

“I don’t think she intended for this to go viral,” said Dr. John Strobel, the president of the board, calling Dr. Bernard a “good doctor.”

“But I do think we as physicians need to be more careful in this situation,” he said.

Mr. Rokita, who had filed the complaints against Dr. Bernard with the medical board, praised the outcome.

“This case was about patient privacy and the trust between the doctor and the patient that was broken,” Mr. Rokita said in a statement late Thursday. “What if it was your child or your patient or your sibling who was going through a sensitive medical crisis, and the doctor, who you thought was on your side, ran to the press for political reasons?”

Dr. Bernard has criticized Mr. Rokita for turning the case into a “political stunt.”

During the hearing, which stretched for more than 15 hours, ending just before midnight, Dr. Bernard said that her own comments did not reveal the patient’s protected health information. Rather, Dr. Bernard said, it was the fierce political battle that followed. Some conservatives doubted her story and drove a demand to confirm it. Eventually, the man accused of raping the girl appeared in court and was linked to her case.

Dr. Bernard, who has publicly advocated for abortion rights, said she had an ethical obligation to educate the public about urgent matters of public health, especially questions about reproductive health — her area of expertise.

Dead State, Pastor at Christian college arrested for letting his ‘spiritual mentor’ sexually abuse young boys, Sky Palma, May 26, 2023. Police in Waco, Texas, arrested the former pastor at Baylor University on charges that he allowed a sex offender he called his “spiritual mentor” to sexually abuse two young relatives, the Waco Tribune-Herald reported.

Christopher Hundl, 38, was charged Tuesday with continuous sexual abuse of a child, which is a first-degree felony, and later released on $50,000 bond.

A statement from Baylor University earlier this month revealed that Hundl resigned from his position as minister for the Baylor chapter of Chi Alpha, a “worldwide Christian ministry sponsored by the Assembly of God Church,” according to the Herald.

baylor bears logoChi Alpha has been suspended from the university and is under investigation.

“Baylor University is aware of serious allegations of impropriety among leaders of the independent organization Chi Alpha,” the statement read. “Like all Chi Alpha college-based chapters, Baylor’s organization is led by the assigned Chi Alpha ministers and staff. These individuals are NOT Baylor employees.”

“We are deeply disturbed and grieved by these serious allegations against Chi Alpha’s leaders, and we will continue to examine Baylor’s affiliated student organization to ensure our students have a healthy and safe co-curricular environment.”

The sex offender in the case has not yet been arrested, according to the Tribune’s report (Graphic):

The warrant names the sex offender, who has not been arrested in this case. The Tribune-Herald is withholding his name at the request of Waco police. According to the warrant, Hundl brought the two children to the Houston home of the convicted sex offender several times between summer 2021 and March 2022. Hundl and the sex offender were in a sauna with the children, who were younger than 14 when the offense occurred, when the man instructed the children to masturbate in front of them, the warrant says. The warrant says similar abuse occurred at Hundl’s home in Waco while the sex offender was present. According to the warrant, the sex offender also abused the two children by touching them inappropriately while Hundl was present.

Other reports describe the victims as two boys, one of whom was 11 when the abuse occurred. The boy told investigators that Hundl and his sex offender accomplice told him not to tell anyone about the abuse.

Hundl reportedly said that the sex offender was like a “grandfather” to the children.

washington post logoWashington Post, In middle age, they realized they were trans: ‘A lightbulb went off’, Tara Bahrampour, May 28, 2023 (print ed.). Roughly a fifth of trans adults 45 and older have not told anyone they are trans, a Washington Post-KFF poll conducted late last year found.

Ray Gibson spent half a century living as a woman before realizing he might be a man.

Growing up in Omaha in the 1960s and ’70s as the child of the Hall of Fame pitcher Bob Gibson, he always felt something was off. At age 6, “I thought, ‘Gee, I’m the son my dad doesn’t know he has.’” When he got his period at age 13, he locked himself in the bathroom, screaming and crying.

“My mom came to the door — ‘What’s the matter? What’s the matter?’” he said. “I said, ‘I want a sex change.’ ... I’d never heard of such a thing. So I don’t even know where it came from. It came from my soul.”

For people with gender dysphoria, 20th-century America was a lonely place to grow up. Terms like “transgender” and “nonbinary” had not entered the common lexicon, and if transgender people appeared in popular culture at all, they were often portrayed as murderers, sex workers or homicide victims. There was no internet where people could seek out expertise or find community. The local library was the main source of information, and it often came up short.

Many came out as gay or lesbian, or hewed to a cisgender heterosexual presentation, but the sense of disharmony persisted. Only later in life, as awareness about transgender identity increased, did some recognize that what they were hearing from younger generations also fit them.

Americans who identify as trans today skew young. More than 4 in 10, 43 percent, are between 13 and 24, according to a 2022 report by the UCLA School of Law’s Williams Institute. Teenagers identify as trans at nearly triple the rate of all adults, and nearly five times the rate of people 65 and older. They are growing up at a time when trans role models abound, from classroom teachers to pop stars to Cabinet officials in Washington.

Their parents’ and grandparents’ generations experienced none of this. “You’ll hear of people who felt different and they thought they were the only one in the world,” said Aaron Tax, managing director of government affairs and policy advocacy at SAGE, an advocacy group for LGBTQ+ elders. “Must be a world of difference today, for people who have all kinds of access to trans stories or trans joy.”

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

 

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ny times logoNew York Times, Opinion: The Supreme Court Is Crippling Environmental Protections. Where Is Congress? Jim Murphy (the director of legal advocacy for the National Wildlife Federation), May 30, 2023 (print ed.). After half a century of painstaking restoration under the Clean Water Act, streams and wetlands nationwide are once again at risk of contamination by pollution and outright destruction as a result of a ruling on Thursday by the Supreme Court.

The Environmental Protection Agency has long interpreted the Clean Water Act as protecting most of the nation’s wetlands from pollution. But now the court has significantly limited the reach of the law, concluding that it precludes the agency from regulating discharges of pollution into wetlands unless they have “a continuous surface connection” to bodies of water that, using “ordinary parlance,” the court described as streams, oceans, rivers and lakes.

At least half of the nation’s wetlands could lose protection under this ruling, which provides an even narrower definition of “protected waters” than the Trump administration had sought.

Justice Brett Kavanaugh, who filed a concurring opinion in the judgment, acknowledged its impact, writing that it would have “significant repercussions for water quality and flood control throughout the United States.”

It is the latest sign that many decision makers in Washington have lost touch with the increasingly fragile state of the natural systems that provide drinking water, flood protection and critical habitat for people and wildlife in every state. In March, the Senate joined the House in trying to roll back clean-water regulations established by the Biden administration, even though they were less comprehensive than Clean Water Act protections before President Donald Trump weakened them. (President Biden vetoed the action.) Congress had also long failed to clarify language in the Clean Water Act that caused confusion among judges and put the law in the Supreme Court’s cross hairs.

Now it is up to Congress to defend the vision of the Clean Water Act, which Senator Howard Baker, a Republican from Tennessee, articulated in 1972 in a debate on the Senate floor.

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Pandemics, Public Health, Privacy

ny times logoNew York Times, The Most Common Eating Disorder in the U.S. Is Also the Least Understood, Dani Blum, May 31, 2023. Binge eating disorder entered the diagnostic manual on mental health conditions 10 years ago. It’s still getting overlooked.

At 2 or 3 a.m., David Tedrow would hide the empty cardboard cereal box, shoving it into the bottom of the trash can or the back of the cupboard, where his wife wouldn’t notice it. Mr. Tedrow was in his 60s and retired, and he often slept until the afternoon so he could stay up late, after everyone else had gone to bed.

During frantic late-night bursts, he would eat an entire box of cereal — Oatmeal Squares, Frosted Mini-Wheats, whatever was around — and then dispose of the evidence. He had eaten compulsively throughout his life, he said, but after months of going through a box of cereal each night, he decided to try to get help.

Binge eating disorder is the most common eating disorder in the United States. Exact numbers vary, but according to the National Institute of Mental Health, nearly 3 percent of the U.S. population has had binge eating disorder at some point in their lives, more than double the reported numbers for bulimia nervosa and anorexia. Yet, the disorder is under-discussed and underrecognized by both the general public and those in the medical field, partly because many don’t know about the diagnosis or its potential severity.

Often, people will exhibit symptoms for decades before receiving a diagnosis, said Cynthia Bulik, the founding director of the University of North Carolina’s Center of Excellence for Eating Disorders. “For so long, they’ve been told things like ‘Oh, this is just emotional eating’ or ‘You’re out of control’ or ‘It’s because you have no willpower’ or ‘Gluttony’s a sin,’ or whatever these things are that people explain it away, without realizing that they have a treatable condition,” she said.

ny times logoNew York Times, Hundreds of Thousands Lose Medicaid Coverage as Pandemic Protections End, Noah Weiland, May 27, 2023 (print ed.). Early data suggests that many recipients are losing their coverage for procedural reasons, even if they are still qualified for it.

Hundreds of thousands of low-income Americans have lost Medicaid coverage in recent weeks as part of a sprawling unwinding of a pandemic-era policy that prohibited states from removing people from the program.

Early data shows that many people lost coverage for procedural reasons, such as when Medicaid recipients did not return paperwork to verify their eligibility or could not be located. The large number of terminations on procedural grounds suggests that many people may be losing their coverage even though they are still qualified for it. Many of those who have been dropped have been children.

From the outset of the pandemic until this spring, states were barred from kicking people off Medicaid under a provision in a coronavirus relief package passed by Congress in 2020. The guarantee of continuous coverage spared people from regular eligibility checks during the public health crisis and caused enrollment in Medicaid to soar to record levels.

But the policy expired at the end of March, setting in motion a vast bureaucratic undertaking across the country to verify who remains eligible for coverage. In recent weeks, states have begun releasing data on who has lost coverage and why, offering a first glimpse of the punishing toll that the so-called unwinding is taking on some of the poorest and most vulnerable Americans.

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U.S. Media, Education, Sports, Arts, High Tech

ny times logoNew York Times, A.I. Poses ‘Risk of Extinction,’ Industry Leaders Warn, Kevin Roose, May 31, 2023 (print ed.). Leaders from OpenAI, Google Deepmind and other A.I. labs are set to issue a warning that future systems could be as deadly as pandemics and nuclear weapons.

A group of industry leaders is planning to warn on Tuesday that the artificial intelligence technology they are building may one day pose an existential threat to humanity and should be considered a societal risk on par with pandemics and nuclear wars.

“Mitigating the risk of extinction from A.I. should be a global priority alongside other societal-scale risks, such as pandemics and nuclear war,” reads a one-sentence statement expected to be released by the Center for AI Safety, a nonprofit organization. The open letter has been signed by more than 350 executives, researchers and engineers working in A.I.

The signatories included top executives from three of the leading A.I. companies: Sam Altman, chief executive of OpenAI; Demis Hassabis, chief executive of Google DeepMind; and Dario Amodei, chief executive of Anthropic.

Geoffrey Hinton and Yoshua Bengio, two of the three researchers who won a Turing Award for their pioneering work on neural networks and are often considered “godfathers” of the modern A.I. movement, signed the statement, as did other prominent researchers in the field (The third Turing Award winner, Yann LeCun, who leads Meta’s A.I. research efforts, had not signed as of Tuesday.)

The statement comes at a time of growing concern about the potential harms of artificial intelligence. Recent advancements in so-called large language models — the type of A.I. system used by ChatGPT and other chatbots — have raised fears that A.I. could soon be used at scale to spread misinformation and propaganda, or that it could eliminate millions of white-collar jobs.

Eventually, some believe, A.I. could become powerful enough that it could create societal-scale disruptions within a few years if nothing is done to slow it down, though researchers sometimes stop short of explaining how that would happen.

These fears are shared by numerous industry leaders, putting them in the unusual position of arguing that a technology they are building — and, in many cases, are furiously racing to build faster than their competitors — poses grave risks and should be regulated more tightly.

This month, Mr. Altman, Mr. Hassabis and Mr. Amodei met with President Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris to talk about A.I. regulation. In a Senate testimony after the meeting, Mr. Altman warned that the risks of advanced A.I. systems were serious enough to warrant government intervention and called for regulation of A.I. for its potential harms.

Dan Hendrycks, the executive director of the Center for AI Safety, said in an interview that the open letter represented a “coming-out” for some industry leaders who had expressed concerns — but only in private — about the risks of the technology they were developing.

“There’s a very common misconception, even in the A.I. community, that there only are a handful of doomers,” Mr. Hendrycks said. “But, in fact, many people privately would express concerns about these things.”

Some skeptics argue that A.I. technology is still too immature to pose an existential threat. When it comes to today’s A.I. systems, they worry more about short-term problems, such as biased and incorrect responses, than longer-term dangers.

But others have argued that A.I. is improving so rapidly that it has already surpassed human-level performance in some areas, and it will soon surpass it in others. They say the technology has showed signs of advanced capabilities and understanding, giving rise to fears that “artificial general intelligence,” or A.G.I., a type of artificial intelligence that can match or exceed human-level performance at a wide variety of tasks, may not be far-off.

In a blog post last week, Mr. Altman and two other OpenAI executives proposed several ways that powerful A.I. systems could be responsibly managed. They called for cooperation among the leading A.I. makers, more technical research into large language models and the formation of an international A.I. safety organization, similar to the International Atomic Energy Agency, which seeks to control the use of nuclear weapons.

Mr. Altman has also expressed support for rules that would require makers of large, cutting-edge A.I. models to register for a government-issued license.

In March, more than 1,000 technologists and researchers signed another open letter calling for a six-month pause on the development of the largest A.I. models, citing concerns about “an out-of-control race to develop and deploy ever more powerful digital minds.”

Politico, Fox News, backed by Trump White House lawyer, fights subpoena in leak lawsuit, Kyle Cheney and Josh Gerstein, May 31, 2023 (print ed.). The network is trying to protect a source who disclosed details of an FBI probe into a Chinese American scientist.

politico CustomA former Fox News reporter is fighting in court to scuttle a subpoena demanding that she reveal the source behind a series of stories that aired confidential details of a counterintelligence probe into a Chinese American scientist.

That scientist, Yanping Chen, is suing the FBI for damages, claiming that the leaked information was part of a campaign to damage her after federal prosecutors ended their six-year investigation of her without bringing charges. Chen, who operated a graduate education program based in Arlington, Virginia, also subpoenaed Fox and Catherine Herridge, now of CBS — to force her to disclose the source of several 2017 stories.

Notably, Fox News and Herridge are being represented by Patrick Philbin, a former top lawyer from Donald Trump’s White House. Philbin, who decried media leaks during Trump’s first impeachment trial, appeared in court Tuesday to help Herridge fend off the effort to expose her source.

The FBI initially suspected that Chen had lied on immigration forms about her work on the Chinese space program, and she was the subject of two search warrants and seizures of her devices. But she was informed in 2016 that she would not be charged with any wrongdoing.

Within a year, Herridge was reporting on key aspects of the probe, as well as on the divisions within the government about the decision not to charge Chen. Chen says the reports were followed by a sharp drop in enrollment and funding for her graduate program.

Herridge’s reporting included “snippets of her immigration forms, a summary of an FBI interview with her daughter, and personal photographs of her and her husband,” according to U.S. District Court Judge Christopher Cooper.

Chen sued the FBI, DOJ, Pentagon and Department of Homeland Security in 2018 seeking damages, an admission of wrongdoing from the government and prosecutions of any violations of the Privacy Act that may apply to her case. But after dozens of depositions failed to unmask the potential leaker, Chen turned her sights to Fox News and Herridge, which Chen’s attorneys say is a last resort.

The lawsuit has steadily advanced for five years despite generating little attention. Yet it represents the collision of a wide range of Washington interests and issues, carrying implications for how journalists’ First Amendment protections are balanced against the need to prevent leaks of sensitive government information that implicates privacy rights. Cooper noted in court Tuesday that while Congress passed the Privacy Act almost five decades ago, lawmakers have “not seen fit to pass a reporters’ shield law.”

“For better or worse,” the judge added.

Philbin, who works in the Washington office of the firm helmed by former White House counsel Pat Cipollone, sought to conduct Tuesday’s proceedings under seal, a nod to the voluminous details about the case that have been redacted from public view and the potential implications for the FBI’s counterintelligence operations. But Cooper declined, at first, to close the hearing to the public, instead urging Philbin to make broader legal arguments without delving into the sensitive details of the case. Cooper later sealed the hearing to permit the parties to delve into the sensitive details of the case.

During the public portion of the hearing, Philbin contended that Chen had failed to pursue all possible leads about the source of the leak before turning to a subpoena for Herridge. Chen’s inquiry centers around the existence of a PowerPoint document that contained details of the FBI’s probe that later wound up on Fox. Philbin said that while Chen narrowed down potential sources of the leak who “possessed” the PowerPoint to a handful of officials, she omitted a much larger number of people who had “access” to the file. That includes a counterintelligence “squad” of eight to 12 people who worked in an office where the PowerPoint was stored on a CD, he said.

Philbin’s comments prompted Justice Department senior litigation counsel Carol Federighi to interject, warning that he appeared to be veering into subjects meant to be kept from public view. Federighi intervened a second time when Philbin began to describe some binders that included pictures similar to information contained in the PowerPoint.

While journalists have won considerable protection in state courts and enjoy near-immunity from subpoenas by prosecutors in federal criminal cases due to DOJ regulations adopted by Attorney General Merrick Garland, Privacy Act lawsuits remain treacherous for members of the press.

In 2008, a judge handling a Privacy Act lawsuit brought by former government scientist Steven Hatfill ordered former USA Today reporter Toni Locy to pay escalating fines of up to $5,000 a day and attorneys’ fees for defying an order to identify her sources for stories about a federal investigation into Hatfill’s potential ties to deadly anthrax attacks in 2001.

Locy said she could not recall which sources provided specific information about Hatfill, but a judge rejected that.

While Locy’s appeal of that contempt order was pending, the U.S. government settled with Hatfill for $5.8 million, mooting the contempt fight.

Shortly after the settlement, the Justice Department informed Hatfill’s attorneys that investigators had ultimately concluded that Hatfill was not involved in the anthrax mailings.

Chen’s effort to seek damages comes just three months after the Biden administration shut down a China-focused anti-espionage program, known as the China Initiative, claiming it had created a false perception about Chinese Americans and U.S. residents from China.

Philbin has been a figure of intense interest in recent years for his presence in the White House during the crucial chaotic weeks at the end of Trump’s term, when Trump attempted to subvert the 2020 election and rebuffed calls to calm his supporters for hours as violence raged at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. Philbin has interviewed twice with prosecutors now working for special counsel Jack Smith. But he’s also been seen entering the federal courthouse for various civil matters that he and his firm are involved in.

Philbin had a harsh assessment about media leaks during Trump’s 2020 impeachment trial on charges that he abused his power and obstructed Congress over allegations that he pressured Ukraine’s president to launch a criminal probe of Joe Biden. At the time, Philbin assailed congressional Democrats for what he said was animus toward Trump, exemplified by leaks from closed-door depositions.

“The testimony that took place was selectively leaked to a compliant media to establish a false narrative about the president. If that sort of conduct had occurred in a real grand jury, that would have been a criminal violation.”

ny times logoNew York Times, Racing Regulators Hold Emergency Meeting to Investigate Horse Deaths, Joe Drape, May 31, 2023 (print ed.). The Horseracing Integrity and Safety Authority called a summit of veterinarians in response to the deaths of 12 horses at Churchill Downs.

Lisa Lazarus, the chief executive of the authority, called the “emergency veterinary summit” in Lexington, Ky., to review necropsies, toxicology reports and veterinarians’ and trainers’ notes on the deaths, seven of which preceded this month’s Kentucky Derby. The deaths have cast a pall over the Triple Crown season, the few weeks each spring when casual sports fans have heightened focus on horse racing.

In addition, the authority has asked a longtime California track superintendent, Dennis Moore, to examine the racing surfaces at Churchill Downs in Louisville, Ky., and offer an independent analysis of the dirt and turf courses’ suitability for racing.

“I have not had a single jockey or trainer tell me that they believe the track is a factor in these fatalities,” Lazarus said. Most of the deaths occurred after horses broke down while racing.

ny times logoNew York Times, James Beard Foundation, Whose Awards Honor Chefs, Is Now Investigating Them, Brett Anderson and Julia Moskin, May 31, 2023. The group behind “the Oscars of the food world” created a new process to weed out nominees with problematic pasts. But that process has troubles of its own.

The chef Sam Fore received an ominous voice mail message this month from an unknown number. The caller identified himself as a private investigator working for the James Beard Foundation. Later that day, Ms. Fore found herself on a Zoom call, answering questions from him and another man.

“They said to me, ‘We have an anonymous complaint we have to ask you about,’” she said.

Ms. Fore is a finalist in the James Beard awards, which for nearly three decades have been considered the most prestigious culinary honors in the United States, the so-called “Oscars of the food world.” As the #MeToo movement led to high-profile revelations of misbehavior and workplace abuse in the restaurant world in recent years, the Beard foundation overhauled its processes to make the awards more equitable and diverse, and to ensure that chefs with troubling histories are not honored.

Ms. Fore is among the first subjects of an investigatory process created in 2021 as part of that overhaul. But in many ways she is the kind of chef the retooled awards are meant to recognize more fully. Early indications suggest that the new process is vulnerable to failure in several ways.

While the awards have historically honored mostly white chefs serving European-derived food in expensive urban restaurants — in fact, the other four finalists in the Best Chef: Southeast category with Ms. Fore are white men — her business, Tuk Tuk, is a pop-up that serves cuisine inspired by what she grew up eating in Lexington, Ky., as the daughter of Sri Lankan immigrants.

In what she called “an interrogation,” the investigators asked her about social media posts she had made on both private and public accounts. Someone had sent them to the foundation through an anonymous tip line on its website. The men told Ms. Fore that the posts potentially violated the organization’s code of ethics — specifically that they amounted to “targeted harassment” and “bullying.”

They included an Instagram post, she said, that was part of a domestic-violence awareness campaign, and others related to her advocacy for victims of sexual violence, including “vague tweets” about people the posts did not name.

She said she told the investigators: “We’ve been talking for 90 minutes about these tweets, and you don’t know who I’m ‘targeting’ with them. How is that targeted harassment?”

Ms. Fore is still waiting to hear whether she has been disqualified from the awards, which will be given out at a ceremony in Chicago on June 5. But she now believes that what was supposed to be the honor of a lifetime could actually do her more harm than good.

“I realize that my presence is a good look for Beard, but I cooked my way across the country to get to this level,” she said. “Now all I’ve done can be dismissed because someone on the internet called me a bully?”

Started in 1985 to honor the food writer James Beard, the foundation established its chef and restaurant awards in 1991.

The foundation has identified itself more and more closely with chefs and restaurants over the years, riding the rise in popularity of chef culture starting in the 1990s. As the American public became increasingly fascinated by restaurants and the people who run them, the profile of the awards grew, the events became more glamorous, the brand partnerships more lucrative. (According to I.R.S. filings, the foundation’s revenues jumped from $5 million in 2010 to $18 million in 2020.)

To address those problems, the foundation established an ethics committee before the 2022 awards, along with the tip line and the pursuant investigations, to ensure that the awards would not celebrate chefs who failed to meet its standards. (Brett Anderson, who co-wrote this article, was on the restaurant awards committee from 2002 to 2012.)

“The James Beard awards are known as the standard bearers of excellence in the industry. We take that very seriously,” said Clare Reichenbach, the foundation’s chief executive. “We’ve built a process with great intentionality, that we think has rigor, that reflects our values and our mission, and we stand by it.”

But it is unclear whether the foundation is up to the task of vetting the finalists.

By making itself the chief arbiter of restaurant excellence, however, the foundation also made many of the restaurant world’s most pernicious problems — inequality, lack of diversity in leadership, workplace abuse of many kinds — its own.

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Poet Amanda Gorman provided an iconic appeal to youthful idealism by a reading at the 2021 Inauguration of President Joe Biden (Pool photo by Patrick Semansky of the Associated Press). poolPoet Amanda Gorman provided an iconic appeal to youthful idealism by reading her work at the 2021 Inauguration of President Joe Biden (Pool photo by Patrick Semansky of the Associated Press).

 

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ny times logoNew York Times, Debt Limit Bill Heads to Key Committee in First Test of G.O.P. Support, Carl Hulse, May 30, 2023. Some Republicans on the panel have already come out in opposition to the package, raising early questions about its fate.

Legislation to raise the government debt ceiling and set federal spending limits begins its obstacle-laden route through Congress on Tuesday with consideration by a crucial panel where it will face its first test, as congressional leaders rush to win passage before a default projected in less than a week.

The House Rules Committee is typically a rubber stamp for party leaders, but the panel includes some hard-right Republicans whom Speaker Kevin McCarthy added in January to help him win over conservatives during his battle for the speakership. Now that concession could prove problematic, with far right lawmakers in revolt over the debt limit deal between Mr. McCarthy and President Biden.

They have argued that the plan does not cut spending substantially enough and threatened to use their seats on the panel to try to block it from the floor.

The committee is scheduled to meet at 3 p.m. to consider the ground rules for bringing the package to a vote as early as Wednesday. The bill was finalized on Sunday after Mr. Biden and Mr. McCarthy sealed their deal, and aides rushed to draft it into legislation that will have to be considered swiftly to avoid a default as soon as June 5, when Treasury Secretary Janet L. Yellen has estimated the federal government will run out of cash to pay its bills without action by Congress.

Two of the Rules Committee’s arch-conservative members, Representative Chip Roy of Texas and Ralph Norman of South Carolina, have registered strong opposition to the measure and could vote against allowing it to move forward, in a sharp break with the speaker. If they are joined by another Republican on the committee, they could sideline the agreement before it even reaches the floor.

A third ultraconservative on the panel, Representative Thomas Massie of Kentucky, is considered a potential ally of Mr. Roy and Mr. Norman but has shown receptiveness to the debt limit deal. He has cited a provision he helped write that would automatically cut spending if Congress fails to enact the annual appropriations bills. Lawmakers are generally expected to back bills they had a hand in writing, even if they object to other aspects.

ny times logoNew York Times, New Details in Debt Limit Deal: Where $136 Billion in Cuts Would Come From, Jim Tankersley and Alan Rappeport, May 30, 2023 (print ed.). The full legislative text of Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s agreement in principle with President Biden to suspend the nation’s borrowing limit revealed new and important details about the deal, which House lawmakers are expected to vote on this week.

The centerpiece of the agreement remains a two-year suspension of the debt ceiling, which caps the total amount of money the government is allowed to borrow. Suspending that cap, which is now set at $31.4 trillion, would allow the government to keep borrowing money and pay its bills on time — as long as Congress passes the agreement before June 5, when Treasury has said the United States will run out of cash.

In exchange for suspending the limit, Republicans demanded a range of policy concessions from Mr. Biden. Chief among them are limits on the growth of federal discretionary spending over the next two years. Mr. Biden also agreed to some new work requirements for certain recipients of food stamps and the Temporary Aid for Needy Families program.

Both sides agreed to modest efforts meant to accelerate the permitting of some energy projects — and, in a surprise move, a fast track to construction for a new natural gas pipeline from West Virginia to Virginia that has been championed by Republican lawmakers and a key centrist Democrat.

Among the components in the deal are two years of spending caps, additional work requirements for food stamps and cuts to I.R.S. funding.

washington post logoWashington Post, Opinion: Biden’s underrated deal-making prowess strikes again, Jennifer Rubin, right, May 30, 2023. President Biden’s capacity to overperform after jennifer rubin new headshotan onslaught of negative press and Democratic hand-wringing is second to none. He did it with the Inflation Reduction Act, the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, NATO solidification and expansion, and now with the debt ceiling deal. It’s hard to conceive of an outcome more favorable to Biden.

Recall where this began: the Republican House Freedom Caucus making promises such as repealing much of the Inflation Reduction Act (including eliminating $80 billion in new funds for the Internal Revenue Service), capping nondefense spending at fiscal 2022 levels for a decade and blocking Biden’s $400 billion joe biden resized oproposed student debt relief. None of that happened.

When factoring in agreed-upon appropriations adjustments, the deal holds nondefense spending essentially flat in fiscal 2024 and increases it by 1 percent in fiscal 2025. According to White House aides, that’s a better outcome than a straight continuing resolution.

As for blocking $80 billion in new IRS funding — an expenditure Republicans had basically characterized as helping enlist an army of jackbooted thugs to knock down your door — the deal would repurpose $10 billion from fiscal 2024 and another $10 billion from fiscal 2025 appropriations, to be used in nondefense areas (further lessening the blow to nondefense discretionary programs).

But the IRS reportedly will have discretion to shift spending in the funding’s 10-year window so that the deal has little near-term impact. A decade from now, the country will have a new president, a new Congress and almost certainly a new budget framework.

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ny times logoNew York Times, Why the Debt Limit Spending Cuts Likely Won’t Shake the Economy, Jim Tankersley, May 30, 2023 (print ed.). With low unemployment and above-trend inflation, the economy is well positioned to absorb the budget cuts that President Biden and Republicans negotiated.

The last time the United States came perilously close to defaulting on its debt, a Democratic president and a Republican speaker of the House cut a deal to raise the nation’s borrowing limit and tightly restrain some federal spending growth for years to come. The deal averted default, but it hindered what was already a slow recovery from the Great Recession.

joe biden resized oThe debt deal that President Biden, right, and Speaker Kevin McCarthy, below left, have agreed to in principle is less restrictive than the one President Barack Obama and Speaker John Boehner cut in 2011, centered on just two years of cuts and caps in spending. The economy that will kevin mccarthyabsorb those cuts is in much better shape. As a result, economists say the agreement is unlikely to inflict the sort of lasting damage to the recovery that was caused by the 2011 debt ceiling deal — and, paradoxically, the newfound spending restraint might even help it.

“For months, I had worried about a major economic fallout from the negotiations, but the macro impact appears to be negligible at best,” said Ben Harris, a former deputy Treasury secretary for economic policy who left his post earlier this year.

“The most important impact is the stability that comes with having a deal,” Mr. Harris said. “Markets can function knowing that we don’t have a cataclysmic debt ceiling crisis looming.”

Mr. Biden expressed confidence earlier this month that any deal would not spark an economic downturn. That was in part because growth persisted over the past two years even as pandemic aid spending expired and total federal spending fell from elevated Covid levels, helping to reduce the annual deficit by $1.7 trillion last year.

Asked at a news conference at the Group of 7 summit in Japan this month if spending cuts in a budget deal would cause a recession, Mr. Biden replied: “I know they won’t. I know they won’t. Matter of fact, the fact that we were able to cut government spending by $1.7 trillion, that didn’t cause a recession. That caused growth.”

The agreement in principle still must pass the House and Senate, where it is facing opposition from the most liberal and conservative members of Congress. It goes well beyond spending limits, also including new work requirements for food stamps and other government aid and an effort to speed permitting for some energy projects.

ny times logoNew York Times, Analysis: In debt-limit negotiations, did President Biden find the reasonable middle or give away too much? Peter Baker, May 29, 2023 (print ed.). The deal to raise the debt ceiling bolsters President Biden’s argument that he is committed to bipartisanship, but it comes at the cost of rankling many in his own party.

House Republicans, the fiscal deal reached on Saturday to raise the debt ceiling while constraining federal spending bolsters President Biden’s argument that he is the one figure who can still do bipartisanship in a profoundly partisan era.

But it comes at the cost of rankling many in his own party who have little appetite for meeting Republicans in the middle and think the president cannot stop himself from giving away too much in an eternal and ephemeral quest for consensus. And it will now test his influence over fellow Democrats he will need to pass the deal in Congress.

The agreement in principle that he reached with Speaker Kevin McCarthy represents a case study in governing for Mr. Biden’s presidency, underscoring the fundamental tension of his leadership since the primaries in 2020 when he overcame progressive rivals to win the Democratic nomination. Mr. Biden believes in his bones in reaching across the aisle even at the expense of some of his own priorities.

He has shown that repeatedly since being inaugurated two and a half years ago even as skeptics doubted that cross-party accommodation was still possible. Most notably, he pushed through Congress a bipartisan public works program directing $1 trillion to building or fixing roads, bridges, airports, broadband and other infrastructure; legislation expanding treatment for veterans exposed to toxic burn pits; and an investment program to boost the nation’s semiconductor industry, all of which passed with Republican votes.

ny times logoNew York Times, With a debt limit deal in hand, President Biden and Speaker Kevin McCarthy turned to the task of selling it, Luke Broadwater and Chris Cameron, May 29, 2023 (print ed.). A day after striking a deal in principle with President Biden to raise the debt limit, Speaker Kevin McCarthy and his leadership team began an all-out sales pitch on Sunday to rally Republicans behind a compromise that was drawing intense resistance from the hard right.

U.S. House logoTo get the legislation through a fractious and closely divided Congress, Mr. McCarthy and top Democratic leaders must cobble together a coalition of Republicans and Democrats in the House and the Senate willing to back it. Members of the ultraconservative House Freedom Caucus have already declared war on the plan, which they say fails to impose meaningful spending cuts, and warned that they would seek to block it.

So after spending late nights and early mornings in recent days in feverish negotiations to strike the deal, proponents have turned their energies to ensuring it can pass in time to avert a default now projected on June 5.

“This is the most conservative spending package in my service in Congress, and this is my 10th term,” Representative Patrick T. McHenry, Republican of North Carolina and a lead member of Mr. McCarthy’s negotiating team, said at a news conference on Capitol Hill on Sunday morning.

Politico, Debt ceiling deal includes surprise approval of natural gas pipeline championed by Manchin, Josh Siegel, May 29, 2023 (print ed.). The controversial natural gas project has been a priority for West Virginia, but its approval will bring new criticism for the Biden administration.

politico CustomThe text of the debt ceiling bill released on Sunday would approve all the remaining permits to complete the stalled Mountain Valley Pipeline, delivering a big win for West Virginia Sens. Joe Manchin and Shelley Moore Capito.

joe biden black background resized serious fileBut the backing of the pipeline that would deliver gas from West Virginia into the Southeast is sure to set off bitter complaints from the environmental groups that have fought its construction for years and turned the project into a symbol of their struggle against fossil fuels.

Manchin hailed the bill’s language, saying finishing the pipeline would lower energy costs for the United States and West Virginia.

“I am proud to have fought for this critical project and to have secured the bipartisan support necessary to get it across the finish line,” he said in a statement.

The bill agreed by the White House and House Republicans must still be approved by both chambers of Congress, which is expected to happen in the coming week.

“After working with Speaker McCarthy and reiterating what completing the Mountain Valley Pipeline would mean for American jobs and domestic energy production, I am thrilled it is included in the debt ceiling package that avoids default,” Capito, a Republican, said in a statement. “Despite delay after delay, we continued to fight to get this critical natural gas pipeline up and running, and its inclusion in this deal is a significant victory for the future of West Virginia.”

The project has won support from the White House, which argues the controversial project is needed for U.S. energy security. Its approval comes after the approval of the Willow oil project in Alaska, which activists have said undercuts the Biden administration’s climate promises.

Including the project in the debt bill came as a surprise that wasn’t revealed by either negotiating side until the release of the bill text Sunday night.

The bill approves all outstanding permits for the pipeline, which has suffered court setbacks.

djt ron desantis cnn collage

ny times logoNew York Times, Trump Looks Like He Will Get the 2024 Crowd He Wants, Shane Goldmacher, Jonathan Swan and Maggie Haberman, May 29, 2023 (print ed.). Both Gov. Ron DeSantis, above right, and Senator Tim Scott entered the presidential race last week, with others to follow. For former President Trump, above left, the more the better.

Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida officially entered the presidential race last week, but he appears farther than ever from the one-on-one matchup that his allies believe he needs to wrest the nomination from former President Donald J. Trump.

Former Vice President Mike Pence is burrowing deeper into Iowa, crucial to his effort to dislodge the Republican front-runners, even before he has announced his bid. Former Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey is intensifying preparations for another campaign, with an expected focus on New Hampshire. And Republican donors and leadership on Capitol Hill are showing fresh interest in Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina, who kicked off his campaign last week. Even candidates who have barely been mentioned are suddenly expressing interest in 2024.

The rapidly ballooning field, combined with Mr. Trump’s seemingly unbreakable core of support, represents a grave threat to Mr. DeSantis, imperiling his ability to consolidate the non-Trump vote, and could mirror the dynamics that powered Mr. Trump’s takeover of the party in 2016.

It’s a matter of math: Each new entrant threatens to steal a small piece of Mr. DeSantis’s potential coalition — whether it be Mr. Pence with Iowa evangelicals or Mr. Scott with college-educated suburbanites. And these new candidates are unlikely to eat into Mr. Trump’s votes. The former president’s base — more than 30 percent of Republicans — remains strongly devoted to him.

ny times logoNew York Times, ‘It’s Time’: Ukraine’s Top Commander Says Counteroffensive Is Imminent, Marc Santora and Eric Schmitt, May 28, 2023 (print ed.). A blunt statement, accompanied by a video of troops preparing for battle, appeared designed to rally the nation and to spread anxiety among Russian forces.

Ukraine’s top military commander signaled on Saturday morning that the nation’s forces were ready to launch their long-anticipated counteroffensive following months of preparations, including recently stepped-up attacks on logistical targets as well as feints and disinformation intended to keep Russian forces on edge.

“It’s time to get back what’s ours,” Ukraine’s supreme military commander, Gen. Valeriy Zaluzhnyi, wrote in a statement.

The blunt statement, accompanied by a slickly produced video of Ukrainian troops preparing for battle and released on social media, appeared intended to rally a nation weary from 15 months of war and to deepen anxiety within the Russian ranks. But General Zaluzhnyi offered no indication of where and when Ukrainian forces might try to break Russia’s hold on occupied territory.

Other senior Ukrainian officials also suggested that the counteroffensive was imminent.

Oleksiy Danilov, the head of the Ukrainian National Security and Defense Council, told the BBC in an interview released on Saturday that Kyiv’s forces were “ready” and that a large-scale assault could come “tomorrow, the day after tomorrow or in a week.”

 

Global War, Torture, Terrorism

ny times logoNew York Times, Ukraine Live Updates: Drone Strikes Target Moscow in First Attack on Capital’s Civilian Areas, Anatoly Kurmanaev, Ivan Nechepurenko, Marc Santora and Victoria Kim, May 30, 2023. No injuries were reported after the assault by at least eight drones, which came after another Russian bombardment of the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv.

At least eight drones targeted Moscow early Tuesday, according to the Russian authorities, the first attack to hit civilian areas in the Russian capital and a potent sign that the war is increasingly reaching the heart of Russia.

The assault came after yet another overnight bombardment by Russian forces of the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv, which has faced a barrage of attacks in recent weeks that have put the city on edge and tested the country’s air defenses. Kyiv was attacked with at least 20 drones early Tuesday, leaving one person dead and unnerving residents still reeling from a rare daytime missile attack the previous day.

The dueling strikes reflected the dialed-up tension and shifting priorities ahead of Ukraine’s expected counteroffensive. Ukraine has increasingly been reaching far into Russia-held territory, while Moscow has been adjusting its tactics in an effort to inflict significant damage on Kyiv.

Tuesday’s aerial assault on Moscow — in which at least three residential buildings sustained minor damage — comes weeks after a pair of explosions over the Kremlin, a bold and symbolic strike aimed at President Vladimir V. Putin’s seat of power. U.S. officials said the attack on the Kremlin was most likely orchestrated by one of Ukraine’s special military or intelligence units.

The Russian Defense Ministry blamed Ukraine for Tuesday’s assault on Moscow, describing the strike as a “terrorist attack” and saying that the drones had been intercepted. The Kremlin’s reaction was muted. Dmitri S. Peskov, the Kremlin spokesman, told reporters that the ministry “acted well” in responding to the attack, but declined to comment further.

Mykhailo Podolyak, an adviser to President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine, said Kyiv was not “directly involved” but was “happy” to watch. Ukrainian officials have maintained a policy of strategic ambiguity over attacks in Russia.

ny times logoNew York Times, Shocks, Beatings, Mock Executions: Inside Kherson’s Detention Centers, Carlotta Gall, May 30, 2023 (print ed.). Ukraine charged four members of Russia’s National Guard with war crimes, saying they acted with such impunity that they did not mask their identities.

They beat prisoners relentlessly and tortured them with electric shocks, waterboarding and mock executions. Three people died in their custody. Yet such was their sense of impunity, the Russians who seized control of a detention center in southern Ukraine last year and filled it with 200 detainees were careless about concealing their identities.

Last week, Ukrainian prosecutors announced war crimes charges against four members of the Russian National Guard — the commander who ran the detention facility and three of his subordinates. They were accused in absentia for cruel treatment of civilians and violating the laws of war.

The case is one of the first to emerge from months of investigations by Ukrainian prosecutors in the southern region of Kherson, which Russian forces occupied for more than eight months until they were forced out by a Ukrainian counteroffensive in November. Investigators say they have uncovered hundreds of crimes that were carried out under the Russian occupation, including executions and deaths in custody, torture, sexual violence and beatings in the recaptured areas.

Investigators in the Kherson region have found 11 detention facilities with torture chambers where men and women were abused. The four men charged with war crimes oversaw the pretrial detention center at No. 3, Thermal Energy Street, in the center of the region’s main city, Kherson. Some of the victims helped identify them from photographs of the Russian National Guard unit that took over the detention center last summer. Prosecutors arranged for four of those victims to talk to journalists in Kyiv last week.

The National Guard was established in 2016 by President Vladimir V. Putin to consolidate Russia’s various Interior Ministry units. The National Guard, which is separate from the Armed Forces, is responsible for internal security and answers directly to the president.

Investigators said they had identified the National Guard unit using information from Ukraine’s intelligence service, telephone intercepts and witnesses. Much of the violence was gratuitous and applied during interrogations to force confessions, Andriy Kostin, the prosecutor general of Ukraine, wrote in a Facebook post about the Kherson case.

ny times logoNew York Times, At Guantánamo’s Court, Progress Is Stalled by State Secrets, Carol Rosenberg, May 30, 2023. The U.S. government is still sorting out what’s secret in an Indonesian bombing case more than two decades after the attack.

A defense lawyer was making a constitutional argument in the Guantánamo war court that the clock had run out on a case involving terrorist attacks in Indonesia 20 years ago when he was suddenly drowned out by white noise.

“It is repugnant …” were the last words the public heard from Lt. Ryan P. Hirschler, a military lawyer on the defense team.

Spectators watched through soundproof glass while lawyers huddled in confusion over what caused a court security officer to silence the lawyer midsentence. Once the audio was restored, the judge cautioned Lieutenant Hirschler to stick to legal principles and avoid the facts surrounding the case of Encep Nurjaman, an Indonesian man who is better known as Hambali, and two co-defendants.

Even without a fuller explanation, however, the episode helps show why justice comes so slowly at Guantánamo Bay.

More than 20 years have elapsed since the attacks in Bali and Jakarta killed more than 200 people, seven of them Americans. The three men have been in U.S. custody for nearly two decades, starting in C.I.A. prisons. But the lawyers and judge are still trying to figure out what portions of the proceedings are supposed to be secret.

 

More On U.S. Economy, Debt, Budget, Jobs, Banking, Crypto

ny times logoNew York Times, Companies Push Prices Higher, Protecting Profits but Adding to Inflation, Talmon Joseph Smith and Joe Rennison, May 30, 2023. Corporate profits have been bolstered by higher prices even as some of the costs of doing business have fallen in recent months.

The prices of oil, transportation, food ingredients and other raw materials have fallen in recent months as the shocks stemming from the pandemic and the war in Ukraine have faded. Yet many big businesses have continued raising prices at a rapid clip.

Some of the world’s biggest companies have said they do not plan to change course and will continue increasing prices or keep them at elevated levels for the foreseeable future.

That strategy has cushioned corporate profits. And it could keep inflation robust, contributing to the very pressures used to justify surging prices.

As a result, some economists warn, policymakers at the Federal Reserve may feel compelled to keep raising interest rates, or at least not lower them, increasing the likelihood and severity of an economic downturn.

ny times logoNew York Times, Editorial: Pass the Debt Limit Deal. Then Figure Out How to End the Drama, Editorial Board, May 30, 2023.  No one walked away satisfied by the agreement reached late Saturday to raise the debt ceiling: House Speaker Kevin McCarthy did not win the most destructive cuts sought by the right, and the Democratic proposals to raise revenue never seriously entered the conversation. Yet with the risk of ruinous economic default less than a week away, Congress should pass this agreement as quickly as possible.

The agreement reached by Mr. McCarthy and President Biden would suspend the debt ceiling until Jan. 1, 2025. Mr. Biden can, as the nation should, feel relief over this outcome. He also should feel a sense of urgency to make sure such a partisan impasse never repeats itself.

Mr. Biden had said he would not negotiate over the debt ceiling, which limits federal borrowing after money has been appropriated, and he had demanded that Congress raise it without conditions. The House responded by approving a bill to raise the ceiling for a year in exchange for stringent cutbacks on nondefense spending. That bill would have rolled back many of the president’s signature achievements and ended benefits for millions of people who get their health insurance through Medicaid, as well as those who rely on food and cash assistance.

As the deadline for the nation’s first credit default grew closer — the Treasury Department now says it will run out of money on June 5 — Mr. Biden set aside his earlier position and began closed-door negotiations with Mr. McCarthy over those demands.

The final agreement reflects this one-sided bargaining, with Mr. McCarthy refusing to truly entertain any of the Democrats’ proposals to raise revenue: None of the 2017 Trump tax cuts, which added $1.8 trillion to the deficit through 2029 for the benefit of corporations and the wealthy, will be rolled back. Republicans rejected the elimination of the carried-interest loophole, which benefits hedge-fund managers and private equity funds, and the end to fossil fuel tax subsidies that Mr. Biden proposed in his 2024 budget.

In fact, no measures to raise revenues were included; the deal is entirely about cutting spending. Reducing the national debt is an important long-term goal. A much more responsible form of fiscal discipline is to collect the taxes that are owed, to make considered spending cuts where appropriate and to reverse tax cuts that solely benefit the wealthy.

The details of the agreement, released on Sunday, show that it is a watered-down version of the Republican wish list. Spending on most domestic programs in fiscal year 2024 will stay at about the same level as 2023 and grow by 1 percent in 2025. That is effectively a cut over both years, given the pace of inflation and the potential for an economic downturn hovering. (Medicare and Social Security would not be affected.)

Under the deal, the Pentagon would be allowed to grow, as well as veterans’ programs. The two-year cap would shortchange many important investments in education, housing, infrastructure and disease prevention. It is a significant improvement, however, from the drastic cuts proposed in Mr. McCarthy’s bill — $860 billion compared with $3.2 trillion over a decade — and is roughly in line with what might have been expected in regular budget negotiations with the House.

That price was likely inevitable when Democrats lost the chamber last year and failed to raise or eliminate the debt ceiling during the lame duck session.

The White House should have insisted that military and domestic spending be held at the same rate of change, following a pattern set during the Obama administration. At least the military budget in this agreement would be at roughly the same level that Mr. Biden proposed in his 2024 budget. The deal also includes a helpful mechanism that would make it difficult for Republicans to spend less on domestic programs or more on the military when the time comes to write appropriation bills this year.

The most unfortunate aspect of the agreement is the change to eligibility for nutrition assistance, popularly known as food stamps, and the cash welfare program called Temporary Assistance for Needy Families. Though virtually every study has shown that work requirements for these benefits are not effective inducements to employment, Republicans were willing to let the government default on its debt if they didn’t get them. During the talks, Mr. Biden rejected the strict new work requirements for people on Medicaid, but he agreed to changes in the other two programs.

Under this concession, people 50 to 54 years old without dependents would be limited to three months of food stamps every three years unless they meet new work requirements, which the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities said would affect hundreds of thousands of older adults. State requirements for people who receive cash assistance from the TANF program will also be tightened. The only good news here is that, for the first time, the food stamp program would not subject homeless people, veterans or young adults formerly in foster care to time limits, under an agreement won by Mr. Biden.

One of the most nonsensical Republican demands was to cut $80 billion in new funding for the Internal Revenue Service to hire investigators to reduce tax cheating. The I.R.S. expansion would have reduced the budget deficit, according to the Congressional Budget Office, because it would bring in new tax revenue. Republicans refused to reduce the deficits by any means other than cutting spending. Mr. Biden agreed to reduce the new I.R.S. spending by about $21 billion over two years, though the money may be moved to the general fund to reduce the impact of the new spending caps.

The blunt instrument of the debt ceiling allowed this standoff and its concessions. With the Republicans in control of the House, Democrats in Congress have given up their path to change this for now. The president seemed to acknowledge that this month when he told reporters that he’d consider declaring the debt ceiling unconstitutional under the 14th Amendment’s debt clause and letting the courts decide whether he is right. “When we get by this, I’m thinking about taking a look at — months down the road — to see whether, what the court would say about whether or not the — it does work,” he said.

If Congress approves this agreement, the threat of default will be over for the next two years. At that point, Mr. Biden and his legal experts need to follow through on his interest in testing a constitutional solution and try to stop the debt crisis from returning in 2025 or thereafter.

The American Prospect, Opinion: X-DATE: As Deals Go, This Is One of Them, David Dayen, right, May 28-29, 2023. The second that Joe Biden agreed to negotiate with david dayen CustomHouse Republicans on the debt ceiling, the results were going to be bad. The people who benefit most from government action—the poor and the vulnerable—were going to be hurt, and those who benefit most from a weakened government—the rich and the powerful—were going to be aided. The only question was the degree.

With one potentially major exception, the relative harm and help was kept to a minimum in the final agreement. It will only be a little bit easier to commit wage theft, or to sell defective or poisoned products. It’ll only be a little harder to get rental assistance or tuition support. Only a few people will be freer to pollute the environment; only a few will find it more difficult to get food. The Internal Revenue Service will only be a little worse. A lot of things will stay the same. american prospect logoAlmost nothing will get any better.

That’s the broad strokes of a deal that the White House and House Republicans are selling to their respective bases right now. (House Republicans held a meeting immediately after the agreement was made last night; the White House isn’t holding anything for Democrats until this afternoon, after the bill text is supposed to be posted.) It will dictate federal spending on domestic discretionary programs for two years, and it will raise the debt ceiling for two years. After that, depending on the composition of Congress, we’ll all be here again. The stakes for the 2024 election just got even higher.

Imagine a world where we were a normal country with no debt ceiling, but everything else was exactly the same. Thanks to gerrymandering and the malpractice of the New York Democratic Party, Republicans still have the House, and the budget for the current fiscal year still expires on September 30. Republicans and Democrats would still have to negotiate that budget, and one likely outcome of that would be that negotiations fall apart, that there’s just no way to reconcile what both sides want. In that case, either the government shuts down or a continuing resolution is struck, which means that the government would operate at the current funding levels for a period of time. Maybe we’d live under a CR for the entire two years of this Congress.

That’s approximately what happened in this agreement. The funding levels for fiscal year 2024 on the non-defense discretionary side are at FY2023 levels. House Republicans are saying they clawed things back to FY2022, but a number of funding shifts—most prominently the return of tens of billions of dollars in unspent COVID aid—backfill the non-defense discretionary budget to get it to around FY2023. (The IRS money from last year’s Inflation Reduction Act also adds to this backfill, but while some reports still list that as a $10 billion fund shift, others put it as low as $1.9 billion, which is a little more than 2 percent of the total $80 billion outlay). This cap then rises by one percent in FY2025.

The goal here was to allow both sides to say contradictory things to their members. Republicans can say they achieved the target of the Limit, Save, Grow Act to limit discretionary spending to FY2022; Democrats can say they only froze spending at current levels. And both are sort of right.

Meanwhile, military spending, which is magic and has no impact on the federal budget, actually rises in FY2024 to the level in the Biden budget. (House Republicans wanted it even higher.) Veterans spending has similar privilege, and rises as well. Mandatory spending, like Social Security and Medicare, isn’t touched as well.

You’ll hear a lot about a spending “freeze,” but if you don’t increase spending at the rate of inflation, in real terms you’re cutting. Given that inflation will run around 4-5 percent this year and maybe 3 percent the next, if you do the math you’re talking about approximately a 5 percent cut to domestic discretionary programs over the next two years, maybe more depending on inflation’s persistence. (Republicans are claiming it’s a six-year deal, but after the first two years there are only non-binding appropriations targets. This is another way each side can say different things at once.)

The New York Times estimates that this will cut $650 billion in spending over ten years, but only if spending rises at the rate of inflation after the caps lift. That’s highly uncertain: a Democratic government could restore all the cuts, while a Republican government could cut further.

In macroeconomic terms, the near-term cuts will be offset by the increases to defense and veteran programs, plus the fact that the IRA’s energy tax credits, none of which were touched by this deal, are being used at about three times the rate of what was previously expected. Macro estimates so far are relatively negligible. What this deal really does is hurt the government’s capacity. Clean air and water, consumer product safety, labor laws, public lands, agricultural conservation—most of the stuff we think of as “the government” will be hit by this. “’Flat spending’ implies a further reduction in real government funding per person after a decade of Obama-Boehner austerity, followed by Trump’s assaults on the administrative state,” wrote Jeff Hauser of the Revolving Door Project.

These are just topline numbers in the deal. They have to be translated into appropriations bills. As I wrote on Friday, there is a mechanism if those appropriations don’t pass in time to snap in an automatic continuing resolution. That auto-CR would be at FY2023 levels, meaning lower levels for defense and veterans. That’s supposed to be the hammer that gets the appropriations bills done. But there’s still going to be tons of strife to enact these cuts, and a kind of opportunity for anyone who doesn’t think America needs to spend $886 billion on its military.

    Relevant Recent Headlines

 

U.S. Courts, Crime, Guns, Immigration

ny times logoNew York Times, 9 People Wounded in Memorial Day Shooting Near Florida Beach, Jesus Jiménez, May 30, 2023 (print ed.). Gunfire erupted in a dispute between two groups at the Hollywood Beach Broadwalk, as crowds strolled by the stretch of beachfront near shops, restaurants and hotels. Details about the victims remained unclear on Monday night with differing police and hospital accounts.

ny times logoNew York Times, What to Know as the Tree of Life Massacre Trial Begins, Campbell Robertson, May 30, 2023 (print ed.). Federal prosecutors will seek the death penalty for the man accused of killing 11 people at a Pittsburgh synagogue in 2018.

On the morning of Oct. 27, 2018, a gunman walked into the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh and killed 11 people who had gathered to worship, the deadliest antisemitic attack in the nation’s history.

After weeks of jury selection, opening statements are scheduled to begin on Tuesday in the federal trial of the man accused of carrying out the massacre.

Prosecutors are seeking the death penalty and the next phase of trial will take place in two parts, the first concerning guilt and the second on the penalty. As the facts surrounding the shooting are mostly undisputed, the proceedings will effectively be a monthslong tribunal about whether the defendant, Robert Bowers, 50, should be executed. His lawyers have offered to resolve the case with a guilty plea on all counts in exchange for life in prison without the possibility of release, but federal prosecutors have rejected these offers.

Trials for mass shooters are relatively rare, given that these massacres often end with the death of the attacker. The man who killed 12 people in a Colorado movie theater in 2012 was sentenced to life in prison after a 10-week trial; the white supremacist who killed nine Black churchgoers in Charleston, S.C., in 2015, was convicted and sentenced to death. The former student who killed 17 people at a high school in Parkland, Fla., pleaded guilty but faced a sentencing trial last year, where a jury voted to keep him in prison for life.

Here’s what to know as testimony begins this week after opening statements on Tuesday:

At the time of the attack, the Tree of Life*Or L’Simcha synagogue, which sits in a neighborhood with a rich Jewish history, was home to three separate congregations, all of which were gathering for services in different parts of the building. The Tree of Life congregation, founded in Pittsburgh more than 150 years ago, and the smaller New Light congregation are both part of the Conservative branch of Judaism; the third congregation, Dor Hadash, is Reconstructionist, a more liberal branch.

Members of all three congregations were killed in the attack. The victims were Joyce Fienberg, 75; Richard Gottfried, 65; Rose Mallinger, 97; Daniel Stein, 71; Melvin Wax, 87; Irving Younger, 69; Jerry Rabinowitz, 66; the couple Bernice, 84, and Sylvan Simon, 87; and the brothers Cecil, 59, and David Rosenthal, 54.

Six people were wounded, including four police officers.

The attack drew shock and outrage from across the world, and brought people from across religious communities in Pittsburgh together in support of the congregations that were attacked. Some members of Dor Hadash created a nonprofit to lobby for new gun laws. The Tree of Life building, which sat empty for years after the massacre, is being redesigned by the architect Daniel Libeskind and will soon become the home of a new organization dedicated to ending antisemitism.

Who is the accused gunman?

Mr. Bowers grew up in a Pittsburgh suburb, raised by his mother and extended family. When he was a child, his estranged father was charged with raping a woman in the same neighborhood where the mass shooting would later happen, and killed himself before trial.

After high school, Mr. Bowers worked as a delivery driver for a bakery and later as a long-haul trucker. He tinkered with electronics, worked on the website of a conservative talk radio show, and, neighbors said, kept mostly to himself, at least in the offline world.

Online, he was a prolific and virulent presence on right-wing forums, chatting with and reposting prominent white supremacists and in his own posts showing particular vitriol toward immigrants and Jews.

In several posts before the killing, he turned his ire on HIAS, an organization that helps resettle refugees in the United States. Dor Hadash had been one of hundreds of Jewish congregations nationwide to celebrate a National Refugee Shabbat a week before the massacre. Mr. Bowers singled that out in his posts, writing shortly before the killing: “HIAS likes to bring invaders in that kill our people. I can’t sit by and watch my people get slaughtered. Screw your optics, I’m going in.”

The authorities said that he had 21 guns registered in his name, and that he carried out the shooting at Tree of Life with three Glock .357 handguns and a Colt AR-15 semiautomatic rifle.

Mr. Bowers was injured during a shootout with the police that ended the attack. He was later charged with 63 crimes, including 11 counts of hate crimes resulting in death and 11 counts of obstruction of free exercise of religious beliefs resulting in death. He is facing 36 state charges as well, including 11 counts of murder, but the Allegheny County District Attorney is holding those charges in abeyance for the federal criminal proceedings.

His defense team includes Judy Clarke, who has made a career pleading with juries to spare the lives of people responsible for some of the nation’s most notorious acts of violence, including one of the Boston Marathon bombers, the Unabomber and the man who opened fire in an Arizona grocery store parking lot, killing six people and injuring 13, including former Representative Gabrielle Giffords.

Mr. Bowers’s lawyers have repeatedly but unsuccessfully challenged the government’s intention to seek the death penalty. In a filing this year, defense lawyers argued that under Attorney General Merrick B. Garland, the Justice Department had been arbitrary in deciding whether to pursue capital punishment. They cited hundreds of other murder cases in which Mr. Garland had elected not to seek the death penalty, including the 2019 mass shooting by an anti-immigrant extremist in a Walmart in El Paso.

north dakota map

ny times logoNew York Times, A Small Town’s Tragedy, Distorted by Donald Trump’s Megaphone, Charles Homans and Ken Bensinger, May 30, 2023 (print ed.). When a teen’s killing in North Dakota became a right-wing talking point, the rush to outrage obscured a more complicated story.

There were no known witnesses when Shannon Brandt and Cayler Ellingson got into an argument in the blurry hours after last call at Buck’s n Doe’s Bar & Grill in September. And no one but Mr. Brandt could say with certainty what led him to run over Mr. Ellingson with his Ford Explorer, crushing him to death in a gravel alley.

But the people of McHenry, a town of 64 in sparsely populated Foster County, N.D., have gotten used to hearing from people who think they know.

They include former President Donald J. Trump, who denounced the killing of Mr. Ellingson, an 18-year-old recent high school graduate, at the hands of a “deranged Democrat maniac who was angry that Cayler was a Republican” in a Truth Social post. Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia described Mr. Brandt on Twitter as a “Democrat political terrorist” and cited the case as evidence that “Democrats want Republicans dead, and they’ve already started the killings.”

marjorii taylor greene gun

Mr. Trump and Ms. Greene, above, were among a chorus of Republican politicians — including several members of Congress and the attorney general of North Dakota — who rushed to condemn Mr. Brandt. They relied on a handful of early news stories that cited a state highway patrol officer’s report, which suggested Mr. Brandt killed Mr. Ellingson because he believed he was a “Republican extremist.”

That claim, made weeks before the midterm elections, ignited a brief national political firestorm. Republican politicians and right-wing media figures claimed that Mr. Brandt had been inspired by President Biden’s recent warnings about “extremism” in the Republican Party. They complained that news media coverage of political violence willfully ignored instances when the assailants were Democrats.

But the episode quickly became an example of another media phenomenon: the distortion of complex, painful events to fit an opportune political narrative.

Although evidence in the case suggests the two men argued about politics that night, law enforcement officials concluded quickly that the killing was not politically motivated. The prosecutor for Foster County who brought the charges never accused Mr. Brandt of running over Mr. Ellingson because of political beliefs.

Acquaintances and a family member could not recall Mr. Brandt, a 42-year-old welder with no history of party registration, expressing political views.

Late last month, the murder charge against Mr. Brandt was downgraded to manslaughter, which carries a sentence of up to 10 years in prison. He agreed on May 18 to plead guilty.

By averting a courtroom trial, the plea leaves many questions hanging over a still largely unexplained incident — and over a town that found itself swept abruptly into a national political cyclone and just as abruptly cast out.

ny times logoNew York Times, With Watchful Eyes, a Nationwide Network Tracks Antisemitic Threats, Campbell Robertson, May 30, 2023 (print ed.). The mass shooting at a synagogue in Pittsburgh in 2018 led to arguably the most ambitious effort ever undertaken to protect Jewish institutions in America.

In a dimly lit conference room on an upper floor of a Chicago mid-rise, an intricately detailed snapshot of American peril is being taken, minute by unsettling minute.

Reports from around the country — of gunshots, bomb threats, menacing antisemitic posts — flash across more than a dozen screens. A half-dozen analysts with backgrounds in the military or private intelligence are watching them, ready to alert any one of thousands of synagogues, community centers or day schools that appear to be at risk. Often, the analysts are the first to call.

This is the headquarters of the Secure Community Network, the closest thing to an official security agency for American Jewish institutions. There are other organizations that specialize in security for Jewish facilities, but none as broad as this group, which was created by the Jewish Federations of North America after 9/11. It has grown exponentially over the past five years, from a small office with a staff of five to a national organization with 75 employees stationed around the country.

What prompted its rapid expansion was the murder of 11 worshipers from three congregations by a hate-spouting gunman at the Tree of Life synagogue on Oct. 27, 2018, the deadliest antisemitic attack in American history.

The trial for the gunman, scheduled to begin on Tuesday at the federal courthouse in Pittsburgh, is taking place in a country that will be less shocked by any revelations than it might have been five years ago, given the prevalence now of mass shootings and incidents of antisemitism. The White House last week announced what it called the first-ever national strategy to counter antisemitism, involving multiple agencies and focusing on training and prevention.

But if Jews in America are less surprised by such incidents now, they have become, by grim necessity, far more vigilant.

washington post logoWashington Post, Judges rebuke Social Security for errors as disability denials stack up, Lisa Rein, May 27, 2023 (print ed.). Hurled from a road-paving machine, Michael Sheldon tumbled 50 feet down a Colorado slope and struck a mound of boulders headfirst on a summer day in 2006. After eight surgeries to his head, neck and spinal cord, his debilitating headaches, chronic pain and post-traumatic stress have made it impossible to return to his work preparing roads for new subdivisions.

social security administrationYet for more than a decade, the Social Security Administration repeatedly denied Sheldon’s full claim for disability benefits that would pay him $1,415 a month.

Even after three federal judges found significant errors with how his case was handled and sent it back to Social Security for new hearings, the agency continued to reject Sheldon, court documents show.

“They’ve done everything to prolong this to get me to quit,” he said after testifying in March at his fifth hearing. Now 59, he lives with his wife in a trailer in Cortez, Colo., and depends on food stamps and state benefits for the indigent. “I can’t replace the battery on a vehicle. Why has this taken 14 years?”

Like Sheldon, thousands of other disabled Americans battle for years for benefits, even after federal courts rule in their favor.

In the last two fiscal years, federal judges considering appeals for denied benefits found fault with almost 6 in every 10 cases and sent them back to administrative law judges at Social Security for new hearings — the highest rate of rejections in years, agency statistics show. Court remands are on pace to reach similar levels this year.

Federal judges have complained of legal errors, inaccurate assessments of whether claimants can work, failures to consider medical evidence and factual mistakes, according to court rulings and Social Security’s own data. The scathing opinions have come from district and appellate court judges across the political spectrum, from conservatives appointed by President Ronald Reagan to liberal appointees of President Barack Obama.

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U.S. Supreme Court Associate Justice Clarence Thomas, left, and his billionaire friend and benefactor Harlan Crow (file photos).

U.S. Supreme Court Associate Justice Clarence Thomas, left, and his billionaire friend and benefactor Harlan Crow (file photos).

 

U.S. Politics, Elections, Governance

ny times logoNew York Times, Feinstein, Back in the Senate, Relies Heavily on Staff to Function, Annie Karni, May 29, 2023 (print ed.). Senator Dianne Feinstein of California is surrounded by a large entourage of aides who tell her how and when to vote, and shield her from the public.

When Senator Dianne Feinstein entered a hearing room this month to reclaim her seat on the Senate Judiciary Committee after a monthslong absence, she was accompanied by a phalanx of aides.

Two staff members settled the 89-year-old California Democrat into a chair at the dais as the assembled senators greeted their ailing colleague with a round of applause. When Ms. Feinstein spoke — during a vote on one of several of President Biden’s judicial nominees whose approval had awaited her return — she appeared to read from a piece of paper handed to her by a female aide seated behind her.

“I ask to be recorded as voting in person on the three nominees considered earlier, Mr. Chairman, and I vote aye now,” she said.

The aide knelt next to her and whispered into her ear in between votes — popping up repeatedly from her seat to confer with the senator, at one point clearing away the paper Ms. Feinstein had read from and presenting her with a folder that appeared to contain background information about the nominees.

The scene was typical of Ms. Feinstein’s day-to-day existence on Capitol Hill, where she is surrounded by a retinue of staff members who serve not only the roles of typical congressional aides — advising on policy, keeping tabs on the schedule, drafting statements and speeches — but also as de facto companions to a senator whose age, frail health and memory issues make it difficult for her to function alone.

Their roles have come under more scrutiny as a number of Democrats and many of Ms. Feinstein’s constituents are increasingly concerned about her refusal to relinquish a post that she is not capable of fulfilling without heavy and constant reliance on her aides.

They push her wheelchair, remind her how and when she should vote and step in to explain what is happening when she grows confused. They stay with her in the cloak room just off the Senate floor, where Ms. Feinstein has taken to waiting her turn to vote, then appearing in the doorway to register her “aye” or “nay” from the outer edge of the chamber. 

 

An 1865 photo of the graves of Union soldiers who were buried at the racecourse in Charleston, S.C., during the Civil War. (Library of Congress)An 1865 photo of the graves of Union soldiers who were buried at the racecourse in Charleston, S.C., during the Civil War. (Library of Congress)

washington post logoWashington Post, Retropolis: Black people may have started Memorial Day. Whites erased it from history, Donald Beaulieu, May 29, 2023 (print ed.). On May 1, 1865, thousands of newly freed Black people gathered in Charleston, S.C., for what may have been the nation’s first Memorial Day celebration. Attendees held a parade and put flowers on the graves of Union soldiers who had helped liberate them from slavery.

The event took place three weeks after the Civil War surrender of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee and two weeks after the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln. It was a remarkable moment in U.S. history — at the nexus of war and peace, destruction and reconstruction, servitude and emancipation.

But the day would not be remembered as the first Memorial Day. In fact, White Southerners made sure that for more than a century, the day wasn’t remembered at all.

It was “a kind of erasure from public memory,” said David Blight, a history professor at Yale University.

The contested Confederate roots of Memorial Day

In February 1865, Confederate soldiers withdrew from Charleston after the Union had bombarded it with offshore cannon fire for more than a year and began to cut off supply lines. The city surrendered to the Union army, leaving a massive population of freed formerly enslaved people.

Also left in the wake of the Confederate evacuation were the graves of more than 250 Union soldiers, buried without coffins behind the judge’s stand of the Washington Race Course, a Charleston horse track that had been converted into an outdoor prison for captured Northerners. The conditions were brutal, and most of those who had died succumbed to exposure or disease.

In April, about two dozen of Charleston’s freed men volunteered to disinter the bodies and rebury them in rows of marked graves, surrounded by a wooden, freshly whitewashed fence, according to newspaper accounts from the time.
The clubhouse at the Charleston racecourse, where Union officers were confined, in April 1865. (Library of Congress)

Then, on May 1, about 10,000 people — mostly formerly enslaved people — turned out for a memorial service that the freed people had organized, along with abolitionist and journalist James Redpath and some White missionaries and teachers from the North. Redpath described the day in the New-York Tribune as “such a procession of friends and mourners as South Carolina or the United States never saw before.”

The day’s events began around 9 a.m. with a parade led by about 2,800 Black schoolchildren, who had just been enrolled in new schools, bearing armfuls of flowers. They marched around the horse track and entered the cemetery gate under an arch with black-painted letters that read “Martyrs of the Race Course.” The schoolchildren proceeded through the cemetery and distributed the flowers on the gravesites.

ny times logoNew York Times, Texas House Votes to Impeach Ken Paxton, Exposing G.O.P. Fissures, J. David Goodman and Nicholas Bogel-Burroughs, May 28, 2023 (print ed.). Mr. Paxton, the state attorney general who has become a conservative star, will be immediately removed from office, pending a trial in the Senate.

The Texas House of Representatives vote Saturday to impeach Ken Paxton, right, the state’s Republican attorney general, temporarily removing him from office over charges that he had used his elected position to benefit himself and a campaign donor.

ken paxton mugThe extraordinary vote on impeachment, which came after several hours of debate, was one of the few ever taken in the Texas Capitol and the first of a statewide office holder since 1917. It comes after a bipartisan House committee, led by Republicans, filed 20 articles of impeachment against Mr. Paxton this week, detailing actions that the panel unanimously decided made him unfit for office.

texas mapThe impeachment means Mr. Paxton will be temporarily removed from office pending a trial on the charges in the State Senate, where some of his closest allies, including his wife, will serve as jurors. The Senate proceedings could well be delayed until after the regular legislative session, which ends on Monday.

The final vote was 121 members in favor of impeachment and 23 against, with two abstaining. It went well beyond the 75 necessary for a majority.

Representative Andrew Murr, the Republican chair of the House investigating committee that recommended impeachment, closed by urging his colleagues to impeach.

“The evidence presented to you is compelling and is more than sufficient to justify going to trial,” he said, adding: “Send this to trial.”

Mr. Paxton, 60, who has denied any wrongdoing, has been a strong supporter of conservative legal causes and one of the chief antagonists of the Biden administration on a range of issues, including the Affordable Care Act and immigration on the southern border.

He was elected to a third term last year even after the alleged offenses were prominently raised during the campaign, including by Republicans who ran against him in the primary election. He has accused the more moderate Republican leadership of the House of acting in concert with Democrats to oust him.

A member of the House investigating committee, Charlie Geren, said during the proceedings that Mr. Paxton had been personally lobbying members to vote against the impeachment. “Several members of this House on the floor of this House,” he said, “received a telephone call from General Paxton personally threatening them with political consequences in their next election.”

The debate moved later to opponents of impeachment, led off by Representative John Smithee, a Republican, who said there was not enough evidence to take such drastic action.

“This House cannot legitimately, and in good faith, and under the rule of law, impeach General Paxton today on the record that it has before it,” he said.

Voting to impeach at this stage, Mr. Smithee said, would be “what I call the ‘hang them now and judge them later’ policy.”

Here are the latest developments:

Ken Paxton had managed to weather a series of accusations and a criminal indictment while in office in large part because he has been one of the most aggressive fighters for conservative legal causes.

Former President Donald J. Trump had called the proceedings against Mr. Paxton “very unfair” and urged Republicans to block impeachment efforts.

 Democratic-Republican Campaign logos

washington post logoWashington Post, Boebert dismisses antisemitism push as effort to target conservatives, Meryl Kornfield, May 27, 2023 (print ed.). After White House announces initiative to combat hatred of Jews, GOP congresswoman says it’s a way to ‘go after conservatives.’

President Biden on Thursday released the country’s first national strategy for combating antisemitism, a landmark lauded by Jewish and anti-hate groups as progress toward addressing the increasing instances of violence and bias toward Jewish people in the United States.

lauren boebertBut Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.), right, saw the effort as an attack on those of her political persuasion. “When they say stuff like this, they mean they want to go after conservatives,” she tweeted. “Their tactics are straight out of the USSR’s playbook.”

djt maga hatHer comments quickly attracted criticism from detractors who accused her of conflating a straightforward campaign against antisemitism with an assault on the right — and, by implication, equating conservatives with antisemites.

“So you agree? You think you’re antisemitic?” Rep. Sara Jacobs (D-Calif.) tweeted in a popular meme format from the teen comedy “Mean Girls.”

In response to questions about her tweet, Boebert’s office provided a statement equating the anti-hate effort with censorship of free speech and adding that she does not condone antisemitism.

washington post logoWashington Post, Federal workers want to know what the debt ceiling fight means for them, Lisa Rein, May 28, 2023 (print ed.). With the threat of government default looming, the unions representing anxious federal workers have pressed the Biden administration for guidance on what a debt ceiling calamity might mean for their millions of members.

So far, the official answer has been consistent: We have nothing to tell you.

“‘We’re saying, ‘We don’t have a handle on this, and we need to get a handle on it,’” said Jefferson Friday, general counsel for the 100,000-member National Federation of Federal Employees, who was planning at a Zoom meeting Friday to bear down again on officials at the Office of Personnel Management. “They’re saying, ‘We don’t know anything.’ Or whatever they did know, they weren’t allowed to tell us.”

The 2.1 million employees who keep the vast federal government afloat find themselves in a precarious limbo as talks between the White House and House Republicans to raise the country’s borrowing limit approach a June 1 deadline, when the Treasury Department warns that the government might no longer be able to pay its bills. Bipartisan negotiations were proceeding Friday, but the White House and House Republicans hadn’t yet reached a final agreement to avert the crisis.

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More on Ukraine War

 

 

President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia received Patriarch Kirill, the leader of the Russian Orthodox Church, on Wednesday in Moscow (Photo by Mikhail Klimentyev of Sputnik via Associated Press).

President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia received Patriarch Kirill, the leader of the Russian Orthodox Church, on Wednesday in Moscow (Photo by Mikhail Klimentyev of Sputnik via Associated Press).

ny times logoNew York Times, Barely Noting the Ukraine War in Public, Putin Acts Like Time Is on His Side, Anton Troianovski and Paul Sonne, May 28, 2023 (print ed.). President Vladimir Putin of Russia looks like a commander in absentia, treating the war as unfortunate but distant and still betting on outlasting his foes.

Pro-Ukrainian fighters stormed across the border into southwestern Russia this past week, prompting two days of the heaviest fighting on Russian territory in 15 months of war. Yet President Vladimir V. Putin, in public, ignored the matter entirely.

He handed out medals, met the patriarch of the Russian Orthodox Church, hosted friendly foreign leaders and made televised small talk with a Russian judge about how Ukraine was not a real country.

In managing Russia’s biggest war in generations, Mr. Putin increasingly looks like a commander in chief in absentia: In public, he says next to nothing about the course of the war and betrays little concern about Russia’s setbacks. Instead, he is telegraphing more clearly than ever that his strategy is to wait out Ukraine and the West — and that he thinks he can win by exhausting his foes.

“There’s no need for any illusions,” said Natalia Zubarevich, an expert on Russian social and economic development at Moscow State University. Mr. Putin, she said, has laid the domestic groundwork to sustain the war for a “long, long, long, long, long” time.

But while Western analysts and officials believe that Mr. Putin’s Russia does have the potential to keep fighting, his military, economic and political maneuvering room has narrowed, presenting obstacles to prosecuting a lengthy war.

Even as Mr. Putin refers to the fighting as distant “tragic events,” the war keeps hitting home — with growing fissures in the military leadership, unease among the Russian elite and worrying signs for the economy as the West vows to further wean itself off Russian energy.

On the battlefield, Russia’s ability to go on the offensive has shriveled as ammunition has run low and the monthslong battle for the eastern Ukrainian city of Bakhmut took thousands of soldiers’ lives. Yevgeny V. Prigozhin, the leader of the Wagner mercenary group that led the assault on Bakhmut, said he was starting to pull his soldiers out of the city while releasing one profane tirade after another aimed at Russia’s Kremlin-allied elites.

To mount a major new offensive, Western officials and analysts say that Mr. Putin would need to find new sources of ammunition — and impose a politically risky, second military draft to replenish his depleted troops. Still, the U.S. director of national intelligence, Avril D. Haines, told Congress this month that the chances that Mr. Putin would make any concessions in talks this year were “low,” unless he were to feel a domestic political threat.

ny times logoNew York Times, Ukraine Sees New Virtue in Wind Power: It’s Harder to Destroy, Maria Varenikova, May 30, 2023 (print ed.). Bombarding the power grid has been a big part of Russia’s invasion, but officials say it’s harder for missiles to badly damage a wind farm than a power plant.

In 15 months of war, Russia has launched countless missiles and exploding drones at power plants, hydroelectric dams and substations, trying to black out as much of Ukraine as it can, as often as it can, in its campaign to pound the country into submission. The new Tyligulska wind farm stands only a few dozen miles from Russian artillery, but Ukrainians say it has a crucial advantage over most of the country’s grid.

A single, well-placed missile can damage a power plant severely enough to take it out of action, but Ukrainian officials say that doing the same to a set of windmills, each one hundreds of feet apart from any other, would require dozens of missiles. A wind farm can be temporarily disabled by striking a transformer substation or transmission lines, but these are much easier to repair than power plants.

“It is our response to Russians,” said Maksym Timchenko, the chief executive of DTEK Group, the company that built the turbines, in the southern Mykolaiv region, the first phase of what is planned as Eastern Europe’s largest wind farm. “It is the most profitable and, as we know now, most secure form of energy.”

washington post logoWashington Post, Kyiv readies for counteroffensive as commander vows to ‘take back what’s ours,’ Kelsey Ables, Adela Suliman and Nick Parke, May 28, 2023 (print ed.). Ukrainian officials continue to talk up a much-anticipated counteroffensive against Russia, with the commander in chief of Ukraine’s army, Gen. Valery Zaluzhny, on Saturday releasing an “informational support campaign” video venerating his military forces and promising that “the time has come to take back what’s ours.”

ukraine flagThe recent warm, dry weather in southern Ukraine has raised expectations that the spring counterattack could begin soon — or may already be underway. President Volodymyr Zelensky and others have described the looming campaign as a make-or-break chance to show Western backers, who have provided military aid and training, that Ukraine is capable of taking back its land from Russia.

Here’s the latest on the war and its effects around the globe.

  • Key developments
  • Ukraine’s counteroffensive could begin “tomorrow, the day after tomorrow or in a week,” another senior Ukrainian security official, Oleksiy Danilov, told the BBC in an interview Saturday, describing it as a “historic opportunity” that “we cannot lose.” An adviser to Zelensky, Mykhailo Podolyak, has cautioned that Ukraine would not necessarily make a formal announcement before an offensive. “This is not a ‘single event’ that will begin at a specific hour of a specific day with a solemn cutting of the red ribbon,” he tweeted.
  • Wagner troops are withdrawing from positions around the embattled city of Bakhmut, according to Britain’s defense ministry. The Saturday observation Russian Flagaligns with comments made by the group’s chief Yevgeniy Prigozhin that his troops are rebasing, to be replaced by regular Russian military forces. Ukrainian officials have also noted withdrawals from the outskirts of Bakhmut, which Russia took control of this month after a months-long battle. “Wagner forces will likely be used for further offensive operations in the Donbas following reconstituting its forces,” the intelligence update from the ministry added.
  • A Russian governor said two drones had caused an explosion, damaging the administrative building of an oil pipeline, early Saturday in the region of Pskov in northwestern Russia. Mikhail Vedernikov said on Telegram that the incident occurred near the village of Litvinovo; there were no casualties. The Washington Post could not independently verify his assertions. They follow reported attacks causing damage in Russian territory in recent weeks, for which Ukraine has denied any involvement.
  • President Biden criticized Russia’s plans to host tactical nuclear weapons in neighboring Belarus, saying his reaction to that was “extremely negative.” His comments on Friday came a day after Russia’s defense minister was in Minsk to sign the agreement with its ally. The European Union’s foreign policy chief, Josep Borrell, also condemned the deal, warning: “This is a step which will lead to further extremely dangerous escalation.”
  • Lawyers for U.S. reporter Evan Gershkovich appealed a three-month extension of his pretrial detention in Russia. Gershkovich was detained in March and accused of spying, which he; rights groups; and his employer, the Wall Street Journal, have denied. The United States considers him “wrongfully detained.”

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President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine in Hiroshima on Saturday (Ludovic Marin for Agence France-Presse via Getty Images).

President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine in Hiroshima on Saturday (Ludovic Marin for Agence France-Presse via Getty Images).

 

Turkey's Elections, Impact

 

nato logo flags name

ny times logoNew York Times, Will Erdogan’s Victory Soften Turkey’s Opposition to Sweden in NATO? Steven Erlanger, May 30, 2023 (print ed.). Recep Tayyip Erdogan, re-elected as Turkey’s president, is expected to toughen up at home but seek better ties with Washington and the military alliance.

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey, invoking themes of Turkish nationalism and counterterrorism, has been the main obstacle toward Sweden joining the NATO alliance after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Flag of TurkeyHis fierce public opposition played well in his re-election campaign. So did his role as an indispensable power broker, vital to NATO but also as an intermediary, able to maintain good relations with both Russia and Ukraine.

Now safely re-elected on Sunday as president of Turkey, Mr. Erdogan is expected to project the same image, by increasing his tight grip on power at home while balancing between his allies inside NATO and his economic dependency on Russia.

But with renewed nationalist credentials, he could feel freer to mend ties with the United States, analysts suggest, and could approve the membership of Sweden into NATO, perhaps in time for the yearly summit of the alliance in July.

Acquiescing has its own benefits for Mr. Erdogan. Sweden’s entry into NATO may unlock the sale of American F-16s and kits to upgrade Turkey’s older models. Those sales have been blocked in Congress, where many legislators are angry with Mr. Erdogan for his ties to Russia, his purchase of the Russian S-400 antiaircraft system and his crackdown on dissent.

recep erdogan with flag

ny times logoNew York Times, Here are five takeaways from Turkey’s presidential election, Ben Hubbard, May 30, 2023 (print ed.). Crises including earthquakes and inflation did not stop the re-election of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. The vote was seen as free but not fair, as he used his power to tilt the playing field.

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s re-election grants him five more years to deepen his conservative imprint on Turkish society and to realize his ambition of kemal kılıçdaroğlu 2023increasing the country’s economic and geopolitical power.

Flag of TurkeyTurkey’s Supreme Election Council named Mr. Erdogan the victor after a runoff election on Sunday. He won 52.1 percent of the vote against the opposition candidate Kemal Kilicdaroglu, right, who had 47.9 percent with almost all votes counted, the council said.

The election was closely followed by Turkey’s NATO allies, including the United States, who have often seen Mr. Erdogan as frustrating partner because of his anti-Western rhetoric and close ties with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, which have grown since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

 

Pro-Trump Insurrectionists, Election Deniers, Durham Report

 

Jessica Watkins, second from left, and Donovan Ray Crowl, center, both from Ohio, walk down the east front steps of the U.S. Capitol with other Oath Keepers members on Jan. 6, 2021 (Reuters photo by Jim Bourg).

Jessica Watkins, second from left, and Donovan Ray Crowl, center, both from Ohio, walk down the east front steps of the U.S. Capitol with other Oath Keepers members on Jan. 6, 2021 (Reuters photo by Jim Bourg).

Politico, Jan. 6 sentences are piling up. Here’s a look at some of the longest handed down, Kierra Frazier, May 31, 2023 (print ed.). More than 1,033 of the rioters have been arrested, with approximately 485 federal defendants receiving sentences.

politico CustomAfter more than two years since the Jan. 6 riot at the Capitol, the sentences are piling up — and last week saw the longest prison sentence yet.

More than 1,033 of the rioters have been arrested, with approximately 485 federal defendants receiving sentences. About 277 defendants have been sentenced to time behind bars, and roughly 113 defendants have been sentenced to a period of home detention.

Here are the notable figures and some of the longest sentences handed down to Jan. 6 rioters:

Stewart Rhodes, the leader of the far-right Oath Keepers, last week was sentenced to 18 years in prison for seditious conspiracy — the longest sentence imposed on a Jan. 6 defendant to date.

Prosecutors say Rhodes planned a weekslong effort to derail the transfer of power from Donald Trump to Joe Biden, leading to the organization of dozens of allies to descend on Washington on Jan. 6, 2021. Rhodes was convicted in November.

Rhodes, a Yale Law graduate and military veteran, is the first of 14 Jan. 6 defendants, including nine Oath Keepers, to face sentencing after being convicted of seditious conspiracy.

  • Kelly Meggs, Florida chapter leader of the Oath Keepers, was sentenced alongside Rhodes to 12 years behind bars.
  • Peter Schwartz of Pennsylvania was sentenced to just over 14 years in prison. Schwartz was found guilty in December on 10 charges, including four felony charges of assaulting, resisting or impeding officers while using a dangerous weapon. A jury convicted Schwartz on assault and civil disorder charges for throwing a chair at officers and spraying them with pepper spray. Schwartz also has a prior criminal history of 38 felony convictions dating back to 1991.

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stewart rhodes djt

 

More Global News, Views

ny times logoNew York Times, Investigation: A British Reporter Had a Big #MeToo Scoop. Her Editor Killed It, Jane Bradley, May 30, 2023 (print ed.). Seven women say that a star columnist groped them or made unwanted sexual advances. But Britain’s news media has a complicated relationship with outing its own.

Inside the Financial Times newsroom this winter, one of its star investigative reporters, Madison Marriage, had a potentially explosive scoop involving another newspaper.

A prominent left-wing columnist, Nick Cohen, had resigned from Guardian News & Media, and Ms. Marriage had evidence that his departure followed years of unwanted sexual advances and groping of female journalists.

Ms. Marriage specialized in such investigations. She won an award for exposing a handsy black-tie event for Britain’s business elite. A technology mogul got indicted on rape charges after another article.

But her investigation on Mr. Cohen, which she hoped would begin a broader look at sexual misconduct in the British news media, was never published. The Financial Times’ editor, Roula Khalaf, killed it, according to interviews with a dozen Financial Times journalists.

It was not spiked because of reporting problems. Two women were willing to speak openly, and Ms. Marriage had supporting documentation on others. Rather, Ms. Khalaf said that Mr. Cohen did not have a big enough business profile to make him an “F.T. story,” colleagues said.

Mr. Cohen’s departure and the death of Ms. Marriage’s article offer a window into the British news media’s complicated relationship with the #MeToo movement. Leading American newsrooms — Fox News, CNN, NBC, The New York Times and others — have confronted misconduct allegations. British journalism has seen no such reckoning.

For Lucy Siegle, the death of the Financial Times article hit especially hard. In 2018, she had reported Mr. Cohen to the Guardian for groping her in the newsroom, but nothing had happened. Now it seemed the whole industry was protecting itself.

“It just amplified this sense that #MeToo is nothing but a convenient hashtag for the British media,” Ms. Siegle said. “The silence on its own industry is just really conspicuous.”

The British news media is smaller and cozier than its American counterpart, with journalists often coming from the same elite schools. Stringent libel laws present another hurdle. And in a traditional newsroom culture of drinking and gender imbalances, many stories of misconduct go untold, or face a fight.

Jane Bradley, an investigative correspondent in Britain, interviewed more than 35 journalists at The Guardian and The Financial Times to examine sexual misconduct in the British news media, an industry she has worked in for 15 years.

ap logoAssociated Press via New York Times, Teenage Girl in Guyana Is Charged With 19 Counts of Murder in Dorm Fire, Staff Report, May 30, 2023.  Investigators have accused the 15-year-old student of starting the blaze in anger after her mobile phone was confiscated. Investigators accused the girl, who was not identified, of igniting the blaze at Mahdia Secondary School in anger with the administrator over the confiscation of her cellphone.

The government boarding school serves remote Indigenous villages in the country’s southwest.

ny times logoNew York Times, Ugly Fight Over Climate Bill Exposes Cracks in German Coalition, Erika Solomon and Melissa Eddy, May 30, 2023. Tensions in the three-party government have built for months. But the latest sniping is unusually fierce, raising fresh questions of dysfunction.

Germany’s coalition government was always an awkward trio of center-left Social Democrats, climate-conscious Greens and pro-business Free Democrats. Yet in the heady days after their election victory in 2021, the parties vowed to stick to a tradition of consensus-driven politics, keeping the drama behind closed doors.

Those doors have now swung open.

In recent days, the parties have engaged in an unusual level of public sniping over a wonkish bill with the seemingly humble aim of reducing fossil fuel emissions from heaters in homes and other buildings.

While the stakes would seem relatively minor, the level of vitriol has been anything but, reflecting a new era in which Germany’s once-staid politics have turned more fractious.

No one is predicting a collapse of the coalition. But the public sparring has raised questions over how Germany will meet commitments to Europe’s climate goals — as well as Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s ability to maintain effective stewardship of Europe’s most powerful economy.

ny times logoNew York Times, Uganda’s President Signs Punitive Anti-Gay Bill Into Law, Abdi Latif Dahir, May 30, 2023 (print ed.). President Yoweri Museveni dismissed widespread criticism of the anti-gay measure, which includes life imprisonment for people convicted of same-sex relations.

The president of Uganda signed a punitive anti-gay bill on Monday that includes the death penalty, enshrining into law an intensifying crackdown against L.G.B.T.Q. people in the conservative East African nation and dismissing widespread calls not to impose one of the world’s most restrictive anti-gay measures.

The law, which was introduced in Parliament in March, calls for life imprisonment for anyone who engages in gay sex. Anyone who tries to have same-sex relations could be liable for up to a decade in prison.

The law also decrees the death penalty for anyone convicted of “aggravated homosexuality,” a term defined as acts of same-sex relations with children or disabled people, those carried out under threat or while someone is unconscious. The offense of “attempted aggravated homosexuality” carries a sentence of up to 14 years.

The legislation is a major blow to efforts by the United Nations, Western governments and civil society groups that had implored the president, Yoweri Museveni, not to sign it.

ny times logoNew York Times, A Russian Deserter’s Flight to Norway Presents a Fraught Dilemma, Anatoly Kurmanaev and Henrik Pryser Libell, May 29, 2023 (print ed.). Andrei Medvedev fought with Russia’s Wagner mercenaries in Ukraine, then requested asylum in Norway. The authorities there must now weigh his plea against solidarity with Ukraine.

Sipping a $12 beer in one of the world’s wealthiest capitals, Andrei Medvedev reflected on the question hanging over him since he left the battlefields of Ukraine: Is he a hero or a war criminal?

He claims to have deserted from Russia’s notorious Wagner mercenary force during the monumental battle for the Ukrainian city of Bakhmut, and later to have escaped his native Russia by running across a frozen Arctic river. Now in Norway, Mr. Medvedev, 26, is seeking asylum, while providing information on Wagner to Norwegian authorities.

Since arriving in the country in January, Mr. Medvedev has voluntarily attended about a dozen interviews with Norwegian police officers investigating war crimes in Ukraine, including his potential role in them. Mr. Medvedev has described killing Ukrainians in combat and witnessing summary executions of comrades accused of cowardice. He claims that he did not participate or witness war crimes such as killings of prisoners of war and civilians.

“Yes, I have killed, I saw comrades die. It was war,” he said in an interview at an Oslo bar. “I have nothing to hide.”

His unlikely journey has made Mr. Medvedev one of only a handful of publicly known Russian combatants to seek protection in Europe after participating in the invasion. His asylum request is now forcing Norway to decide a case that pits the country’s humanitarian ethos against an increasingly assertive national security policy and solidarity with Ukraine.

To his lawyer, the credible threat of revenge facing Mr. Medvedev if he were sent back home qualifies him for asylum. And some Norwegian politicians have said that encouraging soldiers like Mr. Medvedev to defect would weaken Russia’s army and hasten the end of the war.

But as Norway evaluates his claim, it is facing pressure from activists in Ukraine and Western Europe, who say giving safe haven in Europe to Russian fighters, especially mercenaries like Mr. Medvedev, fails to hold Russians accountable for the invasion. And the former fighter may have complicated his own request with bar fights and detentions in Norway, and by briefly posting a video on YouTube suggesting he wanted to return to Russia.

Wayne Madsen Report, Investigative Commentary: Canada also has a Russiagate problem, Wayne Madsen, May 25, 2023. Canada has an emerging “Russiagate” of wayne madsen may 29 2015 cropped Smallits own to deal with.

After revelations of Chinese influence in Canadian elections emerged, with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau ordering a $140,000 donation directed by the Chinese government to the Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation -- named for the prime minister’s father – the Trudeau government appointed former Governor-wayne madesen report logoGeneral David Johnston as a special rapporteur on foreign interference.

Johnston’s mandate was to investigate all facets of foreign interference in Canadian elections dealing not only with the attempt by Beijing to influence the government with its donation to the Trudeau Foundation but also China’s targeting of the Hong Kong family of Conservative MP Michael Chong after he spoke out against China’s treatment of the Uighurs in western China. Canada responded to the targeting of Chong’s family by expelling Chinese diplomat Zhao Wei for his involvement in applying pressure on Wong.

Although Johnston was able to meet with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, the titular leader of the Liberal Party in the House of Commons, and the leaders of the New Democratic Party and Bloc Quebecois, to discuss foreign interference in Canadian elections, the extreme right-wing Conservative Leader of the Opposition, Pierre Poilievre, refused to meet with Johnston.

Poilievre, who has been likened to Texas Senator Ted Cruz due to his acerbic personality, called Johnston’s special rapporteur position a “fake job.” Poilievre characterized Johnston as a “ski buddy, cottage neighbor, and family friend” of Prime Minister Trudeau.

Poilievre may have other reasons to have avoided talking to Johnston. An earlier independent report by former Deputy Justice Minister Morris Rosenberg, titled “Report on the assessment of the 2021 Critical Election Incident Public Protocol,” which was commissioned by the Privy Council Office, concluded that, in addition to China, Russia had attempted to interfere in elections in 2019 and 2021. Prior to the 2019 election, Trudeau warned: “We saw very clearly that countries like Russia are behind a lot of the divisive campaigns, a lot of the divisive social media, you know, spreads that have turned our politics even more divisive and more anger-filled than they have been in the past.”

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More On Probes, Suits Against Trump

ny times logoNew York Times, Mar-a-Lago Worker Provided Prosecutors New Details in Trump Documents Case, Alan Feuer and Maggie Haberman, May 27, 2023 (print ed.). A maintenance worker for the former president recounted helping to move boxes into a storage room a day before a Justice Department official came.

The day before a key meeting last year between a lawyer for former President Donald J. Trump and officials seeking the return of classified documents in Mr. Trump’s possession, a maintenance worker at the former president’s private club saw an aide moving boxes into a storage room, according to a person familiar with the matter.

The maintenance worker offered to help the aide — Walt Nauta, who was Mr. Trump’s valet in the White House — move the boxes and ended up lending him a hand. But the worker had no idea what was inside the boxes, the person familiar with the matter said. The maintenance worker has shared that account with federal prosecutors, the person said.

The worker’s account is potentially significant to prosecutors as they piece together details of how Mr. Trump handled sensitive documents he took with him from the White House upon leaving office and whether he obstructed efforts by the Justice Department and the National Archives to retrieve them.

Mr. Trump was found to have been keeping some of the documents in the storage room where Mr. Nauta and the maintenance worker were moving boxes on the day before the Justice Department’s top counterintelligence official, Jay Bratt, traveled to Mar-a-Lago last June to seek the return of any government materials being held by the former president.

The detail about the timing of Mr. Nauta’s interaction with the maintenance worker was reported earlier by The Washington Post. A lawyer for Mr. Nauta declined to comment. A lawyer for the maintenance worker would not publicly discuss the matter.

The New York Times reported this month that prosecutors had obtained cooperation from a witness who worked at Mar-a-Lago. Among other things, the witness provided investigators with a picture of the storage room.

The investigation, overseen by the special counsel, Jack Smith, has shown signs of entering its final phases, and this week lawyers for Mr. Trump — who is the current front-runner for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination — asked for a meeting to discuss the case with Attorney General Merrick B. Garland.

Meidas Touch Network, Commentary: Jack Smith’s SECRET WITNESS against Trump finally Revealed, Michael Popok, May 27, 2023. Michael Popok of Legal AF reports on breaking developments in the fast moving Jack Smith Mar-a-Lago criminal investigation of Trump, including new testimony and cooperation by an unnamed Mar-a-Lago maintenance worker who with photos and new facts shows that Trump orchestrated a scheme to hide classified documents from the FBI and DOJ.

Salon, Commentary: Trump and the Saudis: Is Jack Smith finally looking at this clear-cut corruption? Heather Digby Parton, May 26, 2023. Trump's links to the Saudi regime and its LIV Golf tour reek of obvious corruption. Maybe Jack Smith has noticed.

There's a lot of Trump legal news these days, what with the E. Jean Carroll verdict, the Manhattan hush money indictment, the news that Fulton County, Georgia, D.A. Fani Willis has put local authorities on notice to anticipate "something" coming in August, and a cascade of reporting on special counsel Jack Smith's investigation into the Mar-a-Lago classified documents case, with some suggestions evidence that will come to a conclusion very soon.

The possible Jan. 6 case against Donald Trump himself remains more obscure, but with the sentencing of Oath Keeper Stewart Rhodes to 18 years in prison for plotting the insurrection on Thursday, it's hard to see how Trump, who incited the riot, isn't equally implicated in what happened that day. But for some reason one obvious case has gotten very little media attention and, as far as we know, very little attention from investigators: Trump's cozy financial relationship with the Saudi-sponsored Public Investment Fund, the desert kingdom's massive sovereign wealth fund. (Its assets are estimated at more than $620 billion.)
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It's not at all surprising that the Republican House isn't looking into this. They're busy trying to find disappearing informants in the Hunter Biden laptop case and digging through the Biden family finances. Why the Democratic-led Senate hasn't bothered is another question. But it's obvious that Trump and his family are deeply financially involved with the Saudi government, and considering the fact that Trump is running for president yet again, it's shocking that nobody seems to care.

While all the other GOP presidential candidates were busy campaigning on Thursday, USA Today reported that Trump was kicking back at Trump National Golf Course in Virginia, which will soon host a tournament on the Saudi-backed LIV Golf tour — the third at a property owned by the former president just this year. (Two more will be scheduled at Trump properties in New Jersey and Florida.) Last year, Trump — in typically obtuse style — even scheduled a tournament at the New Jersey club on Sept. 11, drawing outrage from the families of 9/11 victims. Trump said he didn't know what they were talking about and defended Saudi Arabia, telling ESPN that "nobody has gotten to the bottom of 9/11."

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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.

 

More On U.S. Presidential Race

washington post logoWashington Post, Opinion: Why fear of change will drive the GOP presidential primary, Paul Waldman, May 30, 2023. “Look, we know our country’s going in the wrong direction,” said Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis as he announced his presidential bid in a glitch-filled Twitter event last week. “We see it with our eyes and we feel it in our bones.” For the people DeSantis is trying to appeal to, the idea that everything is going wrong in America is indeed something they feel viscerally.

DeSantis might not be brimming with charisma, but he understands something important about our political divide and the GOP electorate’s contribution to it. The divide isn’t about President Biden’s policy choices or this quarter’s gross domestic product numbers. It’s about something much deeper, and grasping this is essential to understanding the coming 2024 contest.

republican elephant logoConsider some fascinating recent poll results from the Pew Research Center, which asked people in 19 countries if their nation “will be better off in the future if it sticks with its traditions and way of life,” or if it “will be better off in the future if it is open to changes” regarding its traditions and way of life.

Overall, differences between countries were small. A median 62 percent of respondents said their country will be better off if it is open to changes; in the United States, the figure was 63 percent.

But when they divided the data by ideology, they revealed something striking:

Americans are much more divided on this question than people in other countries, with both sides of the spectrum landing at the extremes. For instance, 60 percent of conservatives in Britain embrace change over tradition, as do 52 percent of Canadian conservatives — fewer than liberals in those countries but still substantial. But only 28 percent of American conservatives agree.

We’re the outlier on the left as well: 91 percent of American liberals favor change over tradition, compared to 73 percent of liberals in Germany and 67 percent in France.

joe biden kamala harris

washington post logoWashington Post, Biden circle seeks to boost Harris ahead of 2024, starting with debt talks, Cleve R. Wootson Jr., May 30, 2023. As Republicans zero in on the vice president, the White House seeks to elevate her, starting with the debt talks.

In an urgent May 16 meeting on the debt ceiling in the Oval Office, Vice President Harris sat between President Biden and House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), symbolically positioned at the center of the high-stakes talks aimed at staving off a first-ever U.S. default.

Two days later, Harris was on a teleconference with thousands of elected officials and opinion leaders, urging them to ramp up pressure for a deal. “President Biden and I met with our four congressional leaders Tuesday here at the White House. We had a productive conversation,” she reported. “We believe that it occurred in good faith, with all the leaders in that meeting agreeing that America will not default.”

The public staging of those moments, Democratic operatives say, is part of a concerted effort to bolster Harris’s image in the weeks since Biden announced his reelection. Republicans are already zeroing in on Harris with a sometimes morbid message that couples questions about the president’s longevity with doubts about the abilities of the woman who would succeed him.

washington post logoWashington Post, Trump campaign braces for Iowa battle as DeSantis team sees an opening, Isaac Arnsdorf, Hannah Knowles and Josh Dawsey, May 30, 2023. The former president faces well-funded resistance and other headwinds in the GOP’s first nominating contest, even as he pulls ahead in national polls.

Although Trump has taken a commanding lead in national polls and many Republicans are calling him the inevitable nominee, here in Iowa, which will kick off the GOP nominating process next year, a victory is far from assured, according to interviews with local lawmakers, strategists and voters. Already, a slew of prominent Republican voices is challenging Trump and promoting DeSantis. Such support is highly coveted in a caucus that could be decided by a few thousand highly-engaged party activists — record turnout in 2016 was just under 187,000.

republican elephant logoTrump and DeSantis will make competing trips to Iowa this week, beginning with DeSantis on Tuesday kicking off his first swing after officially announcing his candidacy last week. Trump will arrive on Wednesday and appear at a breakfast meeting of conservative activists in Urbandale Thursday morning. He will record a Fox News town hall in Clive the same day.

 

ron desantis mouth open uncredited

ny times logoNew York Times, Ron DeSantis Plows Ahead With Campaign Tour After Digital Rollout Misfires, Nicholas Nehamas, Maggie Astor and Alan Blinder, May 26, 2023 (print ed.). Trying to regroup after a bumpy Twitter rollout, the Florida governor sought to make new headlines ahead of a trip to Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina.

Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida plunged into his first full day of presidential campaigning on Thursday after his sputtering Twitter rollout the night before, holding a series of interviews with friendly conservative commentators and announcing a series of in-person events in Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina next week.

republican elephant logoFor Mr. DeSantis, the immediate challenge appeared to be moving past the rough kickoff and appealing to a mainstream Republican audience, after a Twitter discussion with the billionaire Elon Musk that often strayed into online right-wing grievances and away from the issues voters say they care about most, like the economy.

Acknowledging that a “very small percentage” of Republican primary voters were on Twitter, Mr. DeSantis defended his decision to announce his campaign on the social media platform.

“We felt that there would be a lot of buzz about it,” he told the conservative radio host Erick Erickson on Thursday afternoon. “And I think that was probably the biggest story in the world yesterday. And so hopefully we’ll get some people interested in our campaign who may not have been otherwise.”

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U.S. Abortion, Birth Control, #MeToo

ny times logoNew York Times, Indiana Reprimands Doctor Who Provided Abortion to 10-Year-Old Rape Victim, Ava Sasani, May 27, 2023 (print ed.). Dr. Caitlin Bernard violated the privacy of her young patient by discussing the girl’s case with a reporter, the state’s medical board ruled.

\An Indiana doctor who provided an abortion to a 10-year-old rape victim last year violated her young patient’s privacy by discussing the case with a reporter, the state’s medical board ruled Thursday night.

Dr. Caitlin Bernard, an Indianapolis obstetrician-gynecologist, catapulted into the national spotlight last year after she provided an abortion for an Ohio girl soon after the Supreme Court decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, which left states free to severely restrict or outlaw abortion.

The state’s medical board voted to issue Dr. Bernard a letter of reprimand and a fine of $3,000. But it decided against stiffer penalties, which could have included suspension or probation, instead deciding that Dr. Bernard is fit to return to her practice.

The board also cleared her of other allegations that she failed to appropriately report the girl’s rape to authorities.

The decision was the culmination of a yearlong legal pursuit of Dr. Bernard by the state’s attorney general, Todd Rokita, a Republican who opposes abortion.

The Ohio girl had traveled to Indiana for the procedure after her home state enacted a ban on most abortions after six weeks of pregnancy. Dr. Bernard told a reporter for the Indianapolis Star about the case during an abortion rights rally. She didn’t name the patient, but the case quickly became a flash point in the early, heated days of debate after the Supreme Court ruling, catching the attention of President Biden and turning conservative attention and ire toward Dr. Bernard.

“I don’t think she intended for this to go viral,” said Dr. John Strobel, the president of the board, calling Dr. Bernard a “good doctor.”

“But I do think we as physicians need to be more careful in this situation,” he said.

Mr. Rokita, who had filed the complaints against Dr. Bernard with the medical board, praised the outcome.

“This case was about patient privacy and the trust between the doctor and the patient that was broken,” Mr. Rokita said in a statement late Thursday. “What if it was your child or your patient or your sibling who was going through a sensitive medical crisis, and the doctor, who you thought was on your side, ran to the press for political reasons?”

Dr. Bernard has criticized Mr. Rokita for turning the case into a “political stunt.”

During the hearing, which stretched for more than 15 hours, ending just before midnight, Dr. Bernard said that her own comments did not reveal the patient’s protected health information. Rather, Dr. Bernard said, it was the fierce political battle that followed. Some conservatives doubted her story and drove a demand to confirm it. Eventually, the man accused of raping the girl appeared in court and was linked to her case.

Dr. Bernard, who has publicly advocated for abortion rights, said she had an ethical obligation to educate the public about urgent matters of public health, especially questions about reproductive health — her area of expertise.

Dead State, Pastor at Christian college arrested for letting his ‘spiritual mentor’ sexually abuse young boys, Sky Palma, May 26, 2023. Police in Waco, Texas, arrested the former pastor at Baylor University on charges that he allowed a sex offender he called his “spiritual mentor” to sexually abuse two young relatives, the Waco Tribune-Herald reported.

Christopher Hundl, 38, was charged Tuesday with continuous sexual abuse of a child, which is a first-degree felony, and later released on $50,000 bond.

A statement from Baylor University earlier this month revealed that Hundl resigned from his position as minister for the Baylor chapter of Chi Alpha, a “worldwide Christian ministry sponsored by the Assembly of God Church,” according to the Herald.

baylor bears logoChi Alpha has been suspended from the university and is under investigation.

“Baylor University is aware of serious allegations of impropriety among leaders of the independent organization Chi Alpha,” the statement read. “Like all Chi Alpha college-based chapters, Baylor’s organization is led by the assigned Chi Alpha ministers and staff. These individuals are NOT Baylor employees.”

“We are deeply disturbed and grieved by these serious allegations against Chi Alpha’s leaders, and we will continue to examine Baylor’s affiliated student organization to ensure our students have a healthy and safe co-curricular environment.”

The sex offender in the case has not yet been arrested, according to the Tribune’s report (Graphic):

The warrant names the sex offender, who has not been arrested in this case. The Tribune-Herald is withholding his name at the request of Waco police. According to the warrant, Hundl brought the two children to the Houston home of the convicted sex offender several times between summer 2021 and March 2022. Hundl and the sex offender were in a sauna with the children, who were younger than 14 when the offense occurred, when the man instructed the children to masturbate in front of them, the warrant says. The warrant says similar abuse occurred at Hundl’s home in Waco while the sex offender was present. According to the warrant, the sex offender also abused the two children by touching them inappropriately while Hundl was present.

Other reports describe the victims as two boys, one of whom was 11 when the abuse occurred. The boy told investigators that Hundl and his sex offender accomplice told him not to tell anyone about the abuse.

Hundl reportedly said that the sex offender was like a “grandfather” to the children.

washington post logoWashington Post, In middle age, they realized they were trans: ‘A lightbulb went off’, Tara Bahrampour, May 28, 2023 (print ed.). Roughly a fifth of trans adults 45 and older have not told anyone they are trans, a Washington Post-KFF poll conducted late last year found.

Ray Gibson spent half a century living as a woman before realizing he might be a man.

Growing up in Omaha in the 1960s and ’70s as the child of the Hall of Fame pitcher Bob Gibson, he always felt something was off. At age 6, “I thought, ‘Gee, I’m the son my dad doesn’t know he has.’” When he got his period at age 13, he locked himself in the bathroom, screaming and crying.

“My mom came to the door — ‘What’s the matter? What’s the matter?’” he said. “I said, ‘I want a sex change.’ ... I’d never heard of such a thing. So I don’t even know where it came from. It came from my soul.”

For people with gender dysphoria, 20th-century America was a lonely place to grow up. Terms like “transgender” and “nonbinary” had not entered the common lexicon, and if transgender people appeared in popular culture at all, they were often portrayed as murderers, sex workers or homicide victims. There was no internet where people could seek out expertise or find community. The local library was the main source of information, and it often came up short.

Many came out as gay or lesbian, or hewed to a cisgender heterosexual presentation, but the sense of disharmony persisted. Only later in life, as awareness about transgender identity increased, did some recognize that what they were hearing from younger generations also fit them.

Americans who identify as trans today skew young. More than 4 in 10, 43 percent, are between 13 and 24, according to a 2022 report by the UCLA School of Law’s Williams Institute. Teenagers identify as trans at nearly triple the rate of all adults, and nearly five times the rate of people 65 and older. They are growing up at a time when trans role models abound, from classroom teachers to pop stars to Cabinet officials in Washington.

Their parents’ and grandparents’ generations experienced none of this. “You’ll hear of people who felt different and they thought they were the only one in the world,” said Aaron Tax, managing director of government affairs and policy advocacy at SAGE, an advocacy group for LGBTQ+ elders. “Must be a world of difference today, for people who have all kinds of access to trans stories or trans joy.”

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

 

epa general logo

ny times logoNew York Times, Opinion: The Supreme Court Is Crippling Environmental Protections. Where Is Congress? Jim Murphy (the director of legal advocacy for the National Wildlife Federation), May 30, 2023 (print ed.). After half a century of painstaking restoration under the Clean Water Act, streams and wetlands nationwide are once again at risk of contamination by pollution and outright destruction as a result of a ruling on Thursday by the Supreme Court.

The Environmental Protection Agency has long interpreted the Clean Water Act as protecting most of the nation’s wetlands from pollution. But now the court has significantly limited the reach of the law, concluding that it precludes the agency from regulating discharges of pollution into wetlands unless they have “a continuous surface connection” to bodies of water that, using “ordinary parlance,” the court described as streams, oceans, rivers and lakes.

At least half of the nation’s wetlands could lose protection under this ruling, which provides an even narrower definition of “protected waters” than the Trump administration had sought.

Justice Brett Kavanaugh, who filed a concurring opinion in the judgment, acknowledged its impact, writing that it would have “significant repercussions for water quality and flood control throughout the United States.”

It is the latest sign that many decision makers in Washington have lost touch with the increasingly fragile state of the natural systems that provide drinking water, flood protection and critical habitat for people and wildlife in every state. In March, the Senate joined the House in trying to roll back clean-water regulations established by the Biden administration, even though they were less comprehensive than Clean Water Act protections before President Donald Trump weakened them. (President Biden vetoed the action.) Congress had also long failed to clarify language in the Clean Water Act that caused confusion among judges and put the law in the Supreme Court’s cross hairs.

Now it is up to Congress to defend the vision of the Clean Water Act, which Senator Howard Baker, a Republican from Tennessee, articulated in 1972 in a debate on the Senate floor.

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climate change photo

 

Pandemics, Public Health, Privacy

ny times logoNew York Times, Covid Is Coming Back in China; Lockdowns Are Not, Chris Buckley, May 28, 2023 (print ed.). The authorities say that cases are up, and one doctor estimates that there could soon be 65 million cases a week. But China seems determined to move on.

China FlagIn December, China abruptly abandoned its draconian “Zero Covid” policies, battered by a surge of infections and rising public anger against lockdowns. Half a year on, Covid cases again are on the rise, but this time the nation appears to be determined to press on with normal life as the government focuses on reigniting economic growth.

Though other countries have long settled into such a pattern, it is a shift for China. Until late last year, its national leadership was still ready to lock down whole neighborhoods and districts, even cities, in a bid to stamp out what were sometimes just small clusters of cases.

The Chinese health authorities have reported a rise in Covid cases since April, especially from newer subvariants that are spreading across the world. Dr. Zhong Nanshan, a prominent doctor who was among the first to openly confirm in early 2020 that Covid could easily spread among people, estimated on Monday that by late June as many as 65 million people a week could become infected with the coronavirus across China. (That would be up from what he estimated at 40 million infections a week in late May. China no longer publishes regular official nationwide estimates of infections.)

By comparison, after “Zero Covid” controls were set aside in December, new infections reached 37 million a day in China at their peak, according to estimates cited by Bloomberg.

Even if, as Dr. Zhong acknowledged, the pace of rising infections is laden with uncertainty, a rebound in cases was always likely, and many in China appear steeled to living with a background hum of Covid infections, and sometimes Covid deaths.

ny times logoNew York Times, Hundreds of Thousands Lose Medicaid Coverage as Pandemic Protections End, Noah Weiland, May 27, 2023 (print ed.). Early data suggests that many recipients are losing their coverage for procedural reasons, even if they are still qualified for it.

Hundreds of thousands of low-income Americans have lost Medicaid coverage in recent weeks as part of a sprawling unwinding of a pandemic-era policy that prohibited states from removing people from the program.

Early data shows that many people lost coverage for procedural reasons, such as when Medicaid recipients did not return paperwork to verify their eligibility or could not be located. The large number of terminations on procedural grounds suggests that many people may be losing their coverage even though they are still qualified for it. Many of those who have been dropped have been children.

From the outset of the pandemic until this spring, states were barred from kicking people off Medicaid under a provision in a coronavirus relief package passed by Congress in 2020. The guarantee of continuous coverage spared people from regular eligibility checks during the public health crisis and caused enrollment in Medicaid to soar to record levels.

But the policy expired at the end of March, setting in motion a vast bureaucratic undertaking across the country to verify who remains eligible for coverage. In recent weeks, states have begun releasing data on who has lost coverage and why, offering a first glimpse of the punishing toll that the so-called unwinding is taking on some of the poorest and most vulnerable Americans.

ny times logoNew York Times, More Teenagers Coming to School High, N.Y.C. Teachers Say, Ashley Southall, May 27, 2023 (print ed.). Students and teachers said in interviews that some classrooms were in disarray as more and younger students were smoking at school.

Ever since Justin, a 15-year-old high school freshman, tried marijuana on his birthday two years ago, he has smoked almost every day, several times a day, he said.

“If I smoke a blunt, after that blunt I’m going to be chill,” he said on a recent morning at a corner deli near his school, the Bronx Design and Construction Academy. “I’m not going to be stressing about nothing at all.”

Another boy came by and flashed two glass tubes of smokable flower. More students were smoking across the street in a doorway and on a stoop. On another corner, a smoke shop frequented by children in backpacks and uniforms opened about half an hour before the first bell.

While it has long been common for some teens to smoke marijuana, teachers and students say that more and younger students are smoking throughout the day and at school.

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U.S. Media, Education, Sports, Arts, High Tech

ny times logoNew York Times, A.I. Poses ‘Risk of Extinction,’ Industry Leaders Warn, Kevin Roose, May 30, 2023. Leaders from OpenAI, Google Deepmind and other A.I. labs are set to issue a warning that future systems could be as deadly as pandemics and nuclear weapons.

A group of industry leaders is planning to warn on Tuesday that the artificial intelligence technology they are building may one day pose an existential threat to humanity and should be considered a societal risk on par with pandemics and nuclear wars.

“Mitigating the risk of extinction from A.I. should be a global priority alongside other societal-scale risks, such as pandemics and nuclear war,” reads a one-sentence statement expected to be released by the Center for AI Safety, a nonprofit organization. The open letter has been signed by more than 350 executives, researchers and engineers working in A.I.

The signatories included top executives from three of the leading A.I. companies: Sam Altman, chief executive of OpenAI; Demis Hassabis, chief executive of Google DeepMind; and Dario Amodei, chief executive of Anthropic.

Geoffrey Hinton and Yoshua Bengio, two of the three researchers who won a Turing Award for their pioneering work on neural networks and are often considered “godfathers” of the modern A.I. movement, signed the statement, as did other prominent researchers in the field (The third Turing Award winner, Yann LeCun, who leads Meta’s A.I. research efforts, had not signed as of Tuesday.)

The statement comes at a time of growing concern about the potential harms of artificial intelligence. Recent advancements in so-called large language models — the type of A.I. system used by ChatGPT and other chatbots — have raised fears that A.I. could soon be used at scale to spread misinformation and propaganda, or that it could eliminate millions of white-collar jobs.

Eventually, some believe, A.I. could become powerful enough that it could create societal-scale disruptions within a few years if nothing is done to slow it down, though researchers sometimes stop short of explaining how that would happen.

These fears are shared by numerous industry leaders, putting them in the unusual position of arguing that a technology they are building — and, in many cases, are furiously racing to build faster than their competitors — poses grave risks and should be regulated more tightly.

This month, Mr. Altman, Mr. Hassabis and Mr. Amodei met with President Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris to talk about A.I. regulation. In a Senate testimony after the meeting, Mr. Altman warned that the risks of advanced A.I. systems were serious enough to warrant government intervention and called for regulation of A.I. for its potential harms.

Dan Hendrycks, the executive director of the Center for AI Safety, said in an interview that the open letter represented a “coming-out” for some industry leaders who had expressed concerns — but only in private — about the risks of the technology they were developing.

“There’s a very common misconception, even in the A.I. community, that there only are a handful of doomers,” Mr. Hendrycks said. “But, in fact, many people privately would express concerns about these things.”

Some skeptics argue that A.I. technology is still too immature to pose an existential threat. When it comes to today’s A.I. systems, they worry more about short-term problems, such as biased and incorrect responses, than longer-term dangers.

But others have argued that A.I. is improving so rapidly that it has already surpassed human-level performance in some areas, and it will soon surpass it in others. They say the technology has showed signs of advanced capabilities and understanding, giving rise to fears that “artificial general intelligence,” or A.G.I., a type of artificial intelligence that can match or exceed human-level performance at a wide variety of tasks, may not be far-off.

In a blog post last week, Mr. Altman and two other OpenAI executives proposed several ways that powerful A.I. systems could be responsibly managed. They called for cooperation among the leading A.I. makers, more technical research into large language models and the formation of an international A.I. safety organization, similar to the International Atomic Energy Agency, which seeks to control the use of nuclear weapons.

Mr. Altman has also expressed support for rules that would require makers of large, cutting-edge A.I. models to register for a government-issued license.

In March, more than 1,000 technologists and researchers signed another open letter calling for a six-month pause on the development of the largest A.I. models, citing concerns about “an out-of-control race to develop and deploy ever more powerful digital minds.”

Politico, Fox News, backed by Trump White House lawyer, fights subpoena in leak lawsuit, Kyle Cheney and Josh Gerstein, May 31, 2023 (print ed.). The network is trying to protect a source who disclosed details of an FBI probe into a Chinese American scientist.

politico CustomA former Fox News reporter is fighting in court to scuttle a subpoena demanding that she reveal the source behind a series of stories that aired confidential details of a counterintelligence probe into a Chinese American scientist.

That scientist, Yanping Chen, is suing the FBI for damages, claiming that the leaked information was part of a campaign to damage her after federal prosecutors ended their six-year investigation of her without bringing charges. Chen, who operated a graduate education program based in Arlington, Virginia, also subpoenaed Fox and Catherine Herridge, now of CBS — to force her to disclose the source of several 2017 stories.

Notably, Fox News and Herridge are being represented by Patrick Philbin, a former top lawyer from Donald Trump’s White House. Philbin, who decried media leaks during Trump’s first impeachment trial, appeared in court Tuesday to help Herridge fend off the effort to expose her source.

The FBI initially suspected that Chen had lied on immigration forms about her work on the Chinese space program, and she was the subject of two search warrants and seizures of her devices. But she was informed in 2016 that she would not be charged with any wrongdoing.

Within a year, Herridge was reporting on key aspects of the probe, as well as on the divisions within the government about the decision not to charge Chen. Chen says the reports were followed by a sharp drop in enrollment and funding for her graduate program.

Herridge’s reporting included “snippets of her immigration forms, a summary of an FBI interview with her daughter, and personal photographs of her and her husband,” according to U.S. District Court Judge Christopher Cooper.

Chen sued the FBI, DOJ, Pentagon and Department of Homeland Security in 2018 seeking damages, an admission of wrongdoing from the government and prosecutions of any violations of the Privacy Act that may apply to her case. But after dozens of depositions failed to unmask the potential leaker, Chen turned her sights to Fox News and Herridge, which Chen’s attorneys say is a last resort.

The lawsuit has steadily advanced for five years despite generating little attention. Yet it represents the collision of a wide range of Washington interests and issues, carrying implications for how journalists’ First Amendment protections are balanced against the need to prevent leaks of sensitive government information that implicates privacy rights. Cooper noted in court Tuesday that while Congress passed the Privacy Act almost five decades ago, lawmakers have “not seen fit to pass a reporters’ shield law.”

“For better or worse,” the judge added.

Philbin, who works in the Washington office of the firm helmed by former White House counsel Pat Cipollone, sought to conduct Tuesday’s proceedings under seal, a nod to the voluminous details about the case that have been redacted from public view and the potential implications for the FBI’s counterintelligence operations. But Cooper declined, at first, to close the hearing to the public, instead urging Philbin to make broader legal arguments without delving into the sensitive details of the case. Cooper later sealed the hearing to permit the parties to delve into the sensitive details of the case.

During the public portion of the hearing, Philbin contended that Chen had failed to pursue all possible leads about the source of the leak before turning to a subpoena for Herridge. Chen’s inquiry centers around the existence of a PowerPoint document that contained details of the FBI’s probe that later wound up on Fox. Philbin said that while Chen narrowed down potential sources of the leak who “possessed” the PowerPoint to a handful of officials, she omitted a much larger number of people who had “access” to the file. That includes a counterintelligence “squad” of eight to 12 people who worked in an office where the PowerPoint was stored on a CD, he said.

Philbin’s comments prompted Justice Department senior litigation counsel Carol Federighi to interject, warning that he appeared to be veering into subjects meant to be kept from public view. Federighi intervened a second time when Philbin began to describe some binders that included pictures similar to information contained in the PowerPoint.

While journalists have won considerable protection in state courts and enjoy near-immunity from subpoenas by prosecutors in federal criminal cases due to DOJ regulations adopted by Attorney General Merrick Garland, Privacy Act lawsuits remain treacherous for members of the press.

In 2008, a judge handling a Privacy Act lawsuit brought by former government scientist Steven Hatfill ordered former USA Today reporter Toni Locy to pay escalating fines of up to $5,000 a day and attorneys’ fees for defying an order to identify her sources for stories about a federal investigation into Hatfill’s potential ties to deadly anthrax attacks in 2001.

Locy said she could not recall which sources provided specific information about Hatfill, but a judge rejected that.

While Locy’s appeal of that contempt order was pending, the U.S. government settled with Hatfill for $5.8 million, mooting the contempt fight.

Shortly after the settlement, the Justice Department informed Hatfill’s attorneys that investigators had ultimately concluded that Hatfill was not involved in the anthrax mailings.

Chen’s effort to seek damages comes just three months after the Biden administration shut down a China-focused anti-espionage program, known as the China Initiative, claiming it had created a false perception about Chinese Americans and U.S. residents from China.

Philbin has been a figure of intense interest in recent years for his presence in the White House during the crucial chaotic weeks at the end of Trump’s term, when Trump attempted to subvert the 2020 election and rebuffed calls to calm his supporters for hours as violence raged at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. Philbin has interviewed twice with prosecutors now working for special counsel Jack Smith. But he’s also been seen entering the federal courthouse for various civil matters that he and his firm are involved in.

Philbin had a harsh assessment about media leaks during Trump’s 2020 impeachment trial on charges that he abused his power and obstructed Congress over allegations that he pressured Ukraine’s president to launch a criminal probe of Joe Biden. At the time, Philbin assailed congressional Democrats for what he said was animus toward Trump, exemplified by leaks from closed-door depositions.

“The testimony that took place was selectively leaked to a compliant media to establish a false narrative about the president. If that sort of conduct had occurred in a real grand jury, that would have been a criminal violation.”

washington post logoWashington Post, These Christian home-schoolers were taught that public schools are evil. Then they enrolled their kids, Peter Jamison, May 30, 2023. They were taught that public schools are evil. Then a Virginia couple defied their families and enrolled their kids.

They said goodbye to Aimee outside her elementary school, watching nervously as she joined the other children streaming into a low brick building framed by the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains. Christina and Aaron Beall stood among many families resuming an emotional but familiar routine: the first day of full-time, in-person classes since public schools closed at the beginning of the pandemic.

But for the Bealls, that morning in late August 2021 carried a weight incomprehensible to the parents around them. Their 6-year-old daughter, wearing a sequined blue dress and a pink backpack that almost obscured her small body, hesitated as she reached the doors. Although Aaron had told her again and again how brave she was, he knew it would be years before she understood how much he meant it — understood that for her mother and father, the decision to send her to school was nothing less than a revolt.
Aaron and Christina Beall pose with their daughter, Aimee, then 6, on her first day at Round Hill Elementary School on Aug. 26, 2021. (Christina Beall)

Aaron and Christina had never attended school when they were children. Until a few days earlier, when Round Hill Elementary held a back-to-school open house, they had rarely set foot inside a school building. Both had been raised to believe that public schools were tools of a demonic social order, government “indoctrination camps” devoted to the propagation of lies and the subversion of Christian families.

At a time when home education was still a fringe phenomenon, the Bealls had grown up in the most powerful and ideologically committed faction of the modern home-schooling movement. That movement, led by deeply conservative Christians, saw home schooling as a way of life — a conscious rejection of contemporary ideas about biology, history, gender equality and the role of religion in American government.

Christina and Aaron were supposed to advance the banner of that movement, instilling its codes in their children through the same forms of corporal punishment once inflicted upon them. Yet instead, along with many others of their age and upbringing, they had walked away.

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Poet Amanda Gorman provided an iconic appeal to youthful idealism by a reading at the 2021 Inauguration of President Joe Biden (Pool photo by Patrick Semansky of the Associated Press). poolPoet Amanda Gorman provided an iconic appeal to youthful idealism by reading her work at the 2021 Inauguration of President Joe Biden (Pool photo by Patrick Semansky of the Associated Press).

 

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An 1865 photo of the graves of Union soldiers who were buried at the racecourse in Charleston, S.C., during the Civil War. (Library of Congress)An 1865 photo of the graves of Union soldiers who were buried at the racecourse in Charleston, S.C., during the Civil War. (Library of Congress)

washington post logoWashington Post, Retropolis: Black people may have started Memorial Day. Whites erased it from history, Donald Beaulieu, May 29, 2023. On May 1, 1865, thousands of newly freed Black people gathered in Charleston, S.C., for what may have been the nation’s first Memorial Day celebration. Attendees held a parade and put flowers on the graves of Union soldiers who had helped liberate them from slavery.

The event took place three weeks after the Civil War surrender of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee and two weeks after the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln. It was a remarkable moment in U.S. history — at the nexus of war and peace, destruction and reconstruction, servitude and emancipation.

But the day would not be remembered as the first Memorial Day. In fact, White Southerners made sure that for more than a century, the day wasn’t remembered at all.

It was “a kind of erasure from public memory,” said David Blight, a history professor at Yale University.

The contested Confederate roots of Memorial Day

In February 1865, Confederate soldiers withdrew from Charleston after the Union had bombarded it with offshore cannon fire for more than a year and began to cut off supply lines. The city surrendered to the Union army, leaving a massive population of freed formerly enslaved people.

Also left in the wake of the Confederate evacuation were the graves of more than 250 Union soldiers, buried without coffins behind the judge’s stand of the Washington Race Course, a Charleston horse track that had been converted into an outdoor prison for captured Northerners. The conditions were brutal, and most of those who had died succumbed to exposure or disease.

In April, about two dozen of Charleston’s freed men volunteered to disinter the bodies and rebury them in rows of marked graves, surrounded by a wooden, freshly whitewashed fence, according to newspaper accounts from the time.
The clubhouse at the Charleston racecourse, where Union officers were confined, in April 1865. (Library of Congress)

Then, on May 1, about 10,000 people — mostly formerly enslaved people — turned out for a memorial service that the freed people had organized, along with abolitionist and journalist James Redpath and some White missionaries and teachers from the North. Redpath described the day in the New-York Tribune as “such a procession of friends and mourners as South Carolina or the United States never saw before.”

The day’s events began around 9 a.m. with a parade led by about 2,800 Black schoolchildren, who had just been enrolled in new schools, bearing armfuls of flowers. They marched around the horse track and entered the cemetery gate under an arch with black-painted letters that read “Martyrs of the Race Course.” The schoolchildren proceeded through the cemetery and distributed the flowers on the gravesites.

ny times logoNew York Times, New Details in Debt Limit Deal: Where $136 Billion in Cuts Would Come From, Jim Tankersley and Alan Rappeport, May 29, 2023. The full legislative text of Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s agreement in principle with President Biden to suspend the nation’s borrowing limit revealed new and important details about the deal, which House lawmakers are expected to vote on this week.

The centerpiece of the agreement remains a two-year suspension of the debt ceiling, which caps the total amount of money the government is allowed to borrow. Suspending that cap, which is now set at $31.4 trillion, would allow the government to keep borrowing money and pay its bills on time — as long as Congress passes the agreement before June 5, when Treasury has said the United States will run out of cash.

In exchange for suspending the limit, Republicans demanded a range of policy concessions from Mr. Biden. Chief among them are limits on the growth of federal discretionary spending over the next two years. Mr. Biden also agreed to some new work requirements for certain recipients of food stamps and the Temporary Aid for Needy Families program.

Both sides agreed to modest efforts meant to accelerate the permitting of some energy projects — and, in a surprise move, a fast track to construction for a new natural gas pipeline from West Virginia to Virginia that has been championed by Republican lawmakers and a key centrist Democrat.

Among the components in the deal are two years of spending caps, additional work requirements for food stamps and cuts to I.R.S. funding.

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ny times logoNew York Times, Why the Debt Limit Spending Cuts Likely Won’t Shake the Economy, Jim Tankersley, May 29, 2023. With low unemployment and above-trend inflation, the economy is well positioned to absorb the budget cuts that President Biden and Republicans negotiated.

The last time the United States came perilously close to defaulting on its debt, a Democratic president and a Republican speaker of the House cut a deal to raise the nation’s borrowing limit and tightly restrain some federal spending growth for years to come. The deal averted default, but it hindered what was already a slow recovery from the Great Recession.

joe biden resized oThe debt deal that President Biden, right, and Speaker Kevin McCarthy, below left, have agreed to in principle is less restrictive than the one President Barack Obama and Speaker John Boehner cut in 2011, centered on just two years of cuts and caps in spending. The economy that will kevin mccarthyabsorb those cuts is in much better shape. As a result, economists say the agreement is unlikely to inflict the sort of lasting damage to the recovery that was caused by the 2011 debt ceiling deal — and, paradoxically, the newfound spending restraint might even help it.

“For months, I had worried about a major economic fallout from the negotiations, but the macro impact appears to be negligible at best,” said Ben Harris, a former deputy Treasury secretary for economic policy who left his post earlier this year.

“The most important impact is the stability that comes with having a deal,” Mr. Harris said. “Markets can function knowing that we don’t have a cataclysmic debt ceiling crisis looming.”

Mr. Biden expressed confidence earlier this month that any deal would not spark an economic downturn. That was in part because growth persisted over the past two years even as pandemic aid spending expired and total federal spending fell from elevated Covid levels, helping to reduce the annual deficit by $1.7 trillion last year.

Asked at a news conference at the Group of 7 summit in Japan this month if spending cuts in a budget deal would cause a recession, Mr. Biden replied: “I know they won’t. I know they won’t. Matter of fact, the fact that we were able to cut government spending by $1.7 trillion, that didn’t cause a recession. That caused growth.”

The agreement in principle still must pass the House and Senate, where it is facing opposition from the most liberal and conservative members of Congress. It goes well beyond spending limits, also including new work requirements for food stamps and other government aid and an effort to speed permitting for some energy projects.

ny times logoNew York Times, Analysis: In debt-limit negotiations, did President Biden find the reasonable middle or give away too much? Peter Baker, May 29, 2023 (print ed.). The deal to raise the debt ceiling bolsters President Biden’s argument that he is committed to bipartisanship, but it comes at the cost of rankling many in his own party.

House Republicans, the fiscal deal reached on Saturday to raise the debt ceiling while constraining federal spending bolsters President Biden’s argument that he is the one figure who can still do bipartisanship in a profoundly partisan era.

But it comes at the cost of rankling many in his own party who have little appetite for meeting Republicans in the middle and think the president cannot stop himself from giving away too much in an eternal and ephemeral quest for consensus. And it will now test his influence over fellow Democrats he will need to pass the deal in Congress.

The agreement in principle that he reached with Speaker Kevin McCarthy represents a case study in governing for Mr. Biden’s presidency, underscoring the fundamental tension of his leadership since the primaries in 2020 when he overcame progressive rivals to win the Democratic nomination. Mr. Biden believes in his bones in reaching across the aisle even at the expense of some of his own priorities.

He has shown that repeatedly since being inaugurated two and a half years ago even as skeptics doubted that cross-party accommodation was still possible. Most notably, he pushed through Congress a bipartisan public works program directing $1 trillion to building or fixing roads, bridges, airports, broadband and other infrastructure; legislation expanding treatment for veterans exposed to toxic burn pits; and an investment program to boost the nation’s semiconductor industry, all of which passed with Republican votes.

ny times logoNew York Times, With a debt limit deal in hand, President Biden and Speaker Kevin McCarthy turned to the task of selling it, Luke Broadwater and Chris Cameron, May 29, 2023 (print ed.). A day after striking a deal in principle with President Biden to raise the debt limit, Speaker Kevin McCarthy and his leadership team began an all-out sales pitch on Sunday to rally Republicans behind a compromise that was drawing intense resistance from the hard right.

U.S. House logoTo get the legislation through a fractious and closely divided Congress, Mr. McCarthy and top Democratic leaders must cobble together a coalition of Republicans and Democrats in the House and the Senate willing to back it. Members of the ultraconservative House Freedom Caucus have already declared war on the plan, which they say fails to impose meaningful spending cuts, and warned that they would seek to block it.

So after spending late nights and early mornings in recent days in feverish negotiations to strike the deal, proponents have turned their energies to ensuring it can pass in time to avert a default now projected on June 5.

“This is the most conservative spending package in my service in Congress, and this is my 10th term,” Representative Patrick T. McHenry, Republican of North Carolina and a lead member of Mr. McCarthy’s negotiating team, said at a news conference on Capitol Hill on Sunday morning.

Politico, Debt ceiling deal includes surprise approval of natural gas pipeline championed by Manchin, Josh Siegel, May 29, 2023 (print ed.). The controversial natural gas project has been a priority for West Virginia, but its approval will bring new criticism for the Biden administration.

politico CustomThe text of the debt ceiling bill released on Sunday would approve all the remaining permits to complete the stalled Mountain Valley Pipeline, delivering a big win for West Virginia Sens. Joe Manchin and Shelley Moore Capito.

joe biden black background resized serious fileBut the backing of the pipeline that would deliver gas from West Virginia into the Southeast is sure to set off bitter complaints from the environmental groups that have fought its construction for years and turned the project into a symbol of their struggle against fossil fuels.

Manchin hailed the bill’s language, saying finishing the pipeline would lower energy costs for the United States and West Virginia.

“I am proud to have fought for this critical project and to have secured the bipartisan support necessary to get it across the finish line,” he said in a statement.

The bill agreed by the White House and House Republicans must still be approved by both chambers of Congress, which is expected to happen in the coming week.

“After working with Speaker McCarthy and reiterating what completing the Mountain Valley Pipeline would mean for American jobs and domestic energy production, I am thrilled it is included in the debt ceiling package that avoids default,” Capito, a Republican, said in a statement. “Despite delay after delay, we continued to fight to get this critical natural gas pipeline up and running, and its inclusion in this deal is a significant victory for the future of West Virginia.”

The project has won support from the White House, which argues the controversial project is needed for U.S. energy security. Its approval comes after the approval of the Willow oil project in Alaska, which activists have said undercuts the Biden administration’s climate promises.

Including the project in the debt bill came as a surprise that wasn’t revealed by either negotiating side until the release of the bill text Sunday night.

The bill approves all outstanding permits for the pipeline, which has suffered court setbacks.

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ny times logoNew York Times, Trump Looks Like He Will Get the 2024 Crowd He Wants, Shane Goldmacher, Jonathan Swan and Maggie Haberman, May 29, 2023 (print ed.). Both Gov. Ron DeSantis, above right, and Senator Tim Scott entered the presidential race last week, with others to follow. For former President Trump, above left, the more the better.

Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida officially entered the presidential race last week, but he appears farther than ever from the one-on-one matchup that his allies believe he needs to wrest the nomination from former President Donald J. Trump.

Former Vice President Mike Pence is burrowing deeper into Iowa, crucial to his effort to dislodge the Republican front-runners, even before he has announced his bid. Former Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey is intensifying preparations for another campaign, with an expected focus on New Hampshire. And Republican donors and leadership on Capitol Hill are showing fresh interest in Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina, who kicked off his campaign last week. Even candidates who have barely been mentioned are suddenly expressing interest in 2024.

The rapidly ballooning field, combined with Mr. Trump’s seemingly unbreakable core of support, represents a grave threat to Mr. DeSantis, imperiling his ability to consolidate the non-Trump vote, and could mirror the dynamics that powered Mr. Trump’s takeover of the party in 2016.

It’s a matter of math: Each new entrant threatens to steal a small piece of Mr. DeSantis’s potential coalition — whether it be Mr. Pence with Iowa evangelicals or Mr. Scott with college-educated suburbanites. And these new candidates are unlikely to eat into Mr. Trump’s votes. The former president’s base — more than 30 percent of Republicans — remains strongly devoted to him.

ny times logoNew York Times, ‘It’s Time’: Ukraine’s Top Commander Says Counteroffensive Is Imminent, Marc Santora and Eric Schmitt, May 28, 2023 (print ed.). A blunt statement, accompanied by a video of troops preparing for battle, appeared designed to rally the nation and to spread anxiety among Russian forces.

Ukraine’s top military commander signaled on Saturday morning that the nation’s forces were ready to launch their long-anticipated counteroffensive following months of preparations, including recently stepped-up attacks on logistical targets as well as feints and disinformation intended to keep Russian forces on edge.

“It’s time to get back what’s ours,” Ukraine’s supreme military commander, Gen. Valeriy Zaluzhnyi, wrote in a statement.

The blunt statement, accompanied by a slickly produced video of Ukrainian troops preparing for battle and released on social media, appeared intended to rally a nation weary from 15 months of war and to deepen anxiety within the Russian ranks. But General Zaluzhnyi offered no indication of where and when Ukrainian forces might try to break Russia’s hold on occupied territory.

Other senior Ukrainian officials also suggested that the counteroffensive was imminent.

Oleksiy Danilov, the head of the Ukrainian National Security and Defense Council, told the BBC in an interview released on Saturday that Kyiv’s forces were “ready” and that a large-scale assault could come “tomorrow, the day after tomorrow or in a week.”

 

Turkey's Elections, Impact

 

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ny times logoNew York Times, Turkey Elections: President Erdogan Wins Re-Election in Turkey, Ben Hubbard and Safak Timur, May 29, 2023 (print ed.). President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Turkey’s paramount politician for 20 years, defeated the opposition candidate, Kemal Kilicdaroglu, according to unofficial results published by state media. The election was the biggest challenge of his political career.

Flag of TurkeyTurkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, above, who has vexed his Western allies while tightening his grip on power during 20 years as the NATO country’s paramount politician, won re-election on Sunday, according to unofficial results published by state media.

The state news agency Anadolu reported that Mr. Erdogan had 52.1 percent of the vote, compared with 47.9 percent for his challenger, the opposition candidate Kemal Kilicdaroglu, with almost all votes counted. runoff election, although neither the country's electoral commission nor the state-run media have announced a victor. Addressing supporters from atop a white bus outside of his home in Istanbul, Erdogan said, “We will be together until the grave.”

ny times logoNew York Times, Will Erdogan’s Victory Soften Turkey’s Opposition to Sweden in NATO? Steven Erlanger, May 29, 2023. Recep Tayyip Erdogan, re-elected as Turkey’s president, is expected to toughen up at home but seek better ties with Washington and the military alliance.

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey, invoking themes of Turkish nationalism and counterterrorism, has been the main obstacle toward Sweden joining the NATO alliance after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Flag of TurkeyHis fierce public opposition played well in his re-election campaign. So did his role as an indispensable power broker, vital to NATO but also as an intermediary, able to maintain good relations with both Russia and Ukraine.

Now safely re-elected on Sunday as president of Turkey, Mr. Erdogan is expected to project the same image, by increasing his tight grip on power at home while balancing between his allies inside NATO and his economic dependency on Russia.

But with renewed nationalist credentials, he could feel freer to mend ties with the United States, analysts suggest, and could approve the membership of Sweden into NATO, perhaps in time for the yearly summit of the alliance in July.

Acquiescing has its own benefits for Mr. Erdogan. Sweden’s entry into NATO may unlock the sale of American F-16s and kits to upgrade Turkey’s older models. Those sales have been blocked in Congress, where many legislators are angry with Mr. Erdogan for his ties to Russia, his purchase of the Russian S-400 antiaircraft system and his crackdown on dissent.

ny times logoNew York Times, Here are five takeaways from Turkey’s presidential election, Ben Hubbard, May 29, 2023. Crises including earthquakes and inflation did not stop the re-election of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. The vote was seen as free but not fair, as he used his power to tilt the playing field.

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s re-election grants him five more years to deepen his conservative imprint on Turkish society and to realize his ambition of kemal kılıçdaroğlu 2023increasing the country’s economic and geopolitical power.

Flag of TurkeyTurkey’s Supreme Election Council named Mr. Erdogan the victor after a runoff election on Sunday. He won 52.1 percent of the vote against the opposition candidate Kemal Kilicdaroglu, right, who had 47.9 percent with almost all votes counted, the council said.

The election was closely followed by Turkey’s NATO allies, including the United States, who have often seen Mr. Erdogan as frustrating partner because of his anti-Western rhetoric and close ties with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, which have grown since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

 

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The American Prospect, Opinion: X-DATE: As Deals Go, This Is One of Them, David Dayen, right, May 28-29, 2023. The second that Joe Biden agreed to negotiate with david dayen CustomHouse Republicans on the debt ceiling, the results were going to be bad. The people who benefit most from government action—the poor and the vulnerable—were going to be hurt, and those who benefit most from a weakened government—the rich and the powerful—were going to be aided. The only question was the degree.

With one potentially major exception, the relative harm and help was kept to a minimum in the final agreement. It will only be a little bit easier to commit wage theft, or to sell defective or poisoned products. It’ll only be a little harder to get rental assistance or tuition support. Only a few people will be freer to pollute the environment; only a few will find it more difficult to get food. The Internal Revenue Service will only be a little worse. A lot of things will stay the same. american prospect logoAlmost nothing will get any better.

That’s the broad strokes of a deal that the White House and House Republicans are selling to their respective bases right now. (House Republicans held a meeting immediately after the agreement was made last night; the White House isn’t holding anything for Democrats until this afternoon, after the bill text is supposed to be posted.) It will dictate federal spending on domestic discretionary programs for two years, and it will raise the debt ceiling for two years. After that, depending on the composition of Congress, we’ll all be here again. The stakes for the 2024 election just got even higher.

Imagine a world where we were a normal country with no debt ceiling, but everything else was exactly the same. Thanks to gerrymandering and the malpractice of the New York Democratic Party, Republicans still have the House, and the budget for the current fiscal year still expires on September 30. Republicans and Democrats would still have to negotiate that budget, and one likely outcome of that would be that negotiations fall apart, that there’s just no way to reconcile what both sides want. In that case, either the government shuts down or a continuing resolution is struck, which means that the government would operate at the current funding levels for a period of time. Maybe we’d live under a CR for the entire two years of this Congress.

That’s approximately what happened in this agreement. The funding levels for fiscal year 2024 on the non-defense discretionary side are at FY2023 levels. House Republicans are saying they clawed things back to FY2022, but a number of funding shifts—most prominently the return of tens of billions of dollars in unspent COVID aid—backfill the non-defense discretionary budget to get it to around FY2023. (The IRS money from last year’s Inflation Reduction Act also adds to this backfill, but while some reports still list that as a $10 billion fund shift, others put it as low as $1.9 billion, which is a little more than 2 percent of the total $80 billion outlay). This cap then rises by one percent in FY2025.

The goal here was to allow both sides to say contradictory things to their members. Republicans can say they achieved the target of the Limit, Save, Grow Act to limit discretionary spending to FY2022; Democrats can say they only froze spending at current levels. And both are sort of right.

Meanwhile, military spending, which is magic and has no impact on the federal budget, actually rises in FY2024 to the level in the Biden budget. (House Republicans wanted it even higher.) Veterans spending has similar privilege, and rises as well. Mandatory spending, like Social Security and Medicare, isn’t touched as well.

You’ll hear a lot about a spending “freeze,” but if you don’t increase spending at the rate of inflation, in real terms you’re cutting. Given that inflation will run around 4-5 percent this year and maybe 3 percent the next, if you do the math you’re talking about approximately a 5 percent cut to domestic discretionary programs over the next two years, maybe more depending on inflation’s persistence. (Republicans are claiming it’s a six-year deal, but after the first two years there are only non-binding appropriations targets. This is another way each side can say different things at once.)

The New York Times estimates that this will cut $650 billion in spending over ten years, but only if spending rises at the rate of inflation after the caps lift. That’s highly uncertain: a Democratic government could restore all the cuts, while a Republican government could cut further.

In macroeconomic terms, the near-term cuts will be offset by the increases to defense and veteran programs, plus the fact that the IRA’s energy tax credits, none of which were touched by this deal, are being used at about three times the rate of what was previously expected. Macro estimates so far are relatively negligible. What this deal really does is hurt the government’s capacity. Clean air and water, consumer product safety, labor laws, public lands, agricultural conservation—most of the stuff we think of as “the government” will be hit by this. “’Flat spending’ implies a further reduction in real government funding per person after a decade of Obama-Boehner austerity, followed by Trump’s assaults on the administrative state,” wrote Jeff Hauser of the Revolving Door Project.

These are just topline numbers in the deal. They have to be translated into appropriations bills. As I wrote on Friday, there is a mechanism if those appropriations don’t pass in time to snap in an automatic continuing resolution. That auto-CR would be at FY2023 levels, meaning lower levels for defense and veterans. That’s supposed to be the hammer that gets the appropriations bills done. But there’s still going to be tons of strife to enact these cuts, and a kind of opportunity for anyone who doesn’t think America needs to spend $886 billion on its military.

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Jessica Watkins, second from left, and Donovan Ray Crowl, center, both from Ohio, walk down the east front steps of the U.S. Capitol with other Oath Keepers members on Jan. 6, 2021 (Reuters photo by Jim Bourg).

Jessica Watkins, second from left, and Donovan Ray Crowl, center, both from Ohio, walk down the east front steps of the U.S. Capitol with other Oath Keepers members on Jan. 6, 2021 (Reuters photo by Jim Bourg).

Emptywheel, Analysis: Oaths Broken, Oath Keepers Bowed: Sentences for 2 more in marquee Jan. 6 conspiracy case, Brandi Buchman, May 28-29, 2023. 
Raw emotions positively dominated a federal courthouse in Washington, D.C. this week as the Justice Department secured significant sentences for two more Oath Keepers involved in a larger conspiracy to forcibly stop America’s transfer of power on Jan. 6, 2021.

jessica watkins mugOn the heels of an 18-year-sentence delivered to a defiant Elmer Stewart Rhodes, the leader of the far-right group, and a 12-year-sentence handed down to Kelly Meggs, Rhodes’ deputy on the 6th, U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta sentenced Oath Keeper Jessica Watkins, right, ken harrelson mugonce the founder of the Ohio Regular Militia, to 8.5 years and Kenneth Harrelson, below left, a ground team leader on the 6th, to four years.

Both were acquitted of the sedition charge in this case but they were found guilty of multiple felonies including serious obstruction charges. Sedition itself is rarely prosecuted in the United States and rarer still are these prosecutions successful since the bar to prove this sort of conspiracy is set so high.

This week marked a victory for the Justice Department, the rule of law, and the victims of Jan. 6 even if Donald Trump, the man who started it all, has yet to bear any real legal responsibility for his role in inciting an attack on the U.S. Capitol to stay in power.

That day may come. But in the meantime, the willing pawns in Trump’s betrayal of the U.S. Constitution and common decency alike will now begin to serve their time.

Underlining the severity of events, prosecutors initially sought an 18-year sentence for Watkins noting the jury’s conclusion that her true objective on Jan.6 was to storm the Capitol, use her body—and the bodies of her recruits—to violently obstruct the certification of the 2020 election, and intimidate Congress and impede police.

washington post logoWashington Post, More Oath Keepers convicted with Rhodes for Jan. 6 attack are sentenced, Spencer S. Hsu, May 27, 2023 (print ed.). Army veterans Jessica Watkins and Kenneth Harrelson brought weapons to Virginia before marching into the Capitol in 2021, but were acquitted of seditious conspiracy.

A self-styled militia leader and bar owner from Ohio and a former welder from Florida were sentenced to 8½ years and four years in prison Friday for joining Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes in disrupting Congress’s confirmation of Joe Biden’s 2020 presidential election victory in the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol attack.

Army veterans Jessica Watkins and Kenneth Harrelson were acquitted of seditious conspiracy but convicted on other felony counts in November at trial with Rhodes and his on-the-ground leader, Kelly Meggs. Rhodes and Meggs were convicted of seditious conspiracy and sentenced Thursday. Rhodes received 18 years in prison, the longest for any Jan. 6 defendant. Meggs was sentenced to 12 years.

On Friday, U.S. District Judge Amit P. Mehta told Watkins after a two-hour sentencing hearing: “Nobody would suggest you’re Stewart Rhodes; I don’t think you’re Kelly Meggs. But your role in those events is more than that of just a foot soldier.”

He added, “As someone who takes a greater role in a conspiracy, you bear a greater responsibility not just for your conduct but for the conduct of those you bring to it.”

Watkins, 40, of Woodstock, Ohio, recruited three other people and was recorded on Jan. 6 on a walkie-talkie-style app saying she was walking with a group of about 30 to 40 people to the Capitol and “sticking together and sticking to the plan,” before she eventually met up with a group led by Meggs. The group marched single-file up the east Capitol steps and joined a mob that entered the Columbus doors by force.

Harrelson, 42, a former Army sergeant from Titusville, Fla., received firearms training with Meggs in Florida and, according to prosecutors, served as “Meggs’ right-hand man” in setting up video meetings and relaying instructions to other Florida Oath Keepers about stashing weapons for a “Quick Reaction Force” if violence erupted. Harrelson recorded himself yelling “Treason!” at Capitol occupants as he entered with Meggs.

Outside of Rhodes and Meggs, Watkins received the longest sentence to date for any Jan. 6 defendant who has not been convicted of assaulting a police officer. But Harrelson received a fraction of his co-defendants’ time and close to the 45-month average sentence for 22 other Jan. 6 defendants who were convicted of obstructing Congress but not found guilty of conspiring with an organized group or of committing violence.

Mehta found that Watkins’s and Harrelson’s actions qualified for an enhanced terrorism sentencing penalty for offenses calculated to coerce the government, but the judge slashed years off the penalties sought by prosecutors. Mehta noted that Watkins, like Harrelson, had been acquitted of conspiring to use force to oppose government authority, and that she turned herself in and cooperated short of pleading guilty.

The judge added that of 2,000 to 3,000 communications exchanged by co-conspirators, he found only “a couple dozen” by Harrelson. That suggested lesser intent and explained why the jury also acquitted him of conspiring to obstruct Congress, while he was convicted of actually obstructing it, plotting to interfere with police and destroying evidence, the judge said.

“What distinguishes you from everyone else so far is that there not a single word on a Signal communication that anyone would consider extremist, radicalized, encouraging someone to engage in violence, or words like ‘civil war,’ ‘revolution,’ or thinking about death,” Mehta said. “You are not someone who bears the same responsibility or culpability as the others.”

Watkins was accused of merging her local Ohio armed group with the Oath Keepers in 2020. She became a recruiter and organizer in advance of the Capitol attack, bringing firearms and other weapons and storing them outside Washington.

Watkins texted others, telling them to prepare for violence to keep Trump in office, beginning on Nov. 9, 2020, six days after the election, and she spoke of getting recruits “fighting fit by innaugeration” and uniting Oath Keepers and other extremist groups. “Be prepared to fight hand to hand,” she wrote. “Now or never.”

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U.S. Courts, Crime, Guns, Immigration north dakota map

ny times logoNew York Times, A Small Town’s Tragedy, Distorted by Donald Trump’s Megaphone, Charles Homans and Ken Bensinger, May 29, 2023. When a teen’s killing in North Dakota became a right-wing talking point, the rush to outrage obscured a more complicated story.

There were no known witnesses when Shannon Brandt and Cayler Ellingson got into an argument in the blurry hours after last call at Buck’s n Doe’s Bar & Grill in September. And no one but Mr. Brandt could say with certainty what led him to run over Mr. Ellingson with his Ford Explorer, crushing him to death in a gravel alley.

But the people of McHenry, a town of 64 in sparsely populated Foster County, N.D., have gotten used to hearing from people who think they know.

They include former President Donald J. Trump, who denounced the killing of Mr. Ellingson, an 18-year-old recent high school graduate, at the hands of a “deranged Democrat maniac who was angry that Cayler was a Republican” in a Truth Social post. Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia described Mr. Brandt on Twitter as a “Democrat political terrorist” and cited the case as evidence that “Democrats want Republicans dead, and they’ve already started the killings.”

marjorii taylor greene gun

Mr. Trump and Ms. Greene, above, were among a chorus of Republican politicians — including several members of Congress and the attorney general of North Dakota — who rushed to condemn Mr. Brandt. They relied on a handful of early news stories that cited a state highway patrol officer’s report, which suggested Mr. Brandt killed Mr. Ellingson because he believed he was a “Republican extremist.”

That claim, made weeks before the midterm elections, ignited a brief national political firestorm. Republican politicians and right-wing media figures claimed that Mr. Brandt had been inspired by President Biden’s recent warnings about “extremism” in the Republican Party. They complained that news media coverage of political violence willfully ignored instances when the assailants were Democrats.

But the episode quickly became an example of another media phenomenon: the distortion of complex, painful events to fit an opportune political narrative.

Although evidence in the case suggests the two men argued about politics that night, law enforcement officials concluded quickly that the killing was not politically motivated. The prosecutor for Foster County who brought the charges never accused Mr. Brandt of running over Mr. Ellingson because of political beliefs.

Acquaintances and a family member could not recall Mr. Brandt, a 42-year-old welder with no history of party registration, expressing political views.

Late last month, the murder charge against Mr. Brandt was downgraded to manslaughter, which carries a sentence of up to 10 years in prison. He agreed on May 18 to plead guilty.

By averting a courtroom trial, the plea leaves many questions hanging over a still largely unexplained incident — and over a town that found itself swept abruptly into a national political cyclone and just as abruptly cast out.

ny times logoNew York Times, With Watchful Eyes, a Nationwide Network Tracks Antisemitic Threats, Campbell Robertson, May 29, 2023. The mass shooting at a synagogue in Pittsburgh in 2018 led to arguably the most ambitious effort ever undertaken to protect Jewish institutions in America.

In a dimly lit conference room on an upper floor of a Chicago mid-rise, an intricately detailed snapshot of American peril is being taken, minute by unsettling minute.

Reports from around the country — of gunshots, bomb threats, menacing antisemitic posts — flash across more than a dozen screens. A half-dozen analysts with backgrounds in the military or private intelligence are watching them, ready to alert any one of thousands of synagogues, community centers or day schools that appear to be at risk. Often, the analysts are the first to call.

This is the headquarters of the Secure Community Network, the closest thing to an official security agency for American Jewish institutions. There are other organizations that specialize in security for Jewish facilities, but none as broad as this group, which was created by the Jewish Federations of North America after 9/11. It has grown exponentially over the past five years, from a small office with a staff of five to a national organization with 75 employees stationed around the country.

What prompted its rapid expansion was the murder of 11 worshipers from three congregations by a hate-spouting gunman at the Tree of Life synagogue on Oct. 27, 2018, the deadliest antisemitic attack in American history.

The trial for the gunman, scheduled to begin on Tuesday at the federal courthouse in Pittsburgh, is taking place in a country that will be less shocked by any revelations than it might have been five years ago, given the prevalence now of mass shootings and incidents of antisemitism. The White House last week announced what it called the first-ever national strategy to counter antisemitism, involving multiple agencies and focusing on training and prevention.

But if Jews in America are less surprised by such incidents now, they have become, by grim necessity, far more vigilant.

washington post logoWashington Post, Judges rebuke Social Security for errors as disability denials stack up, Lisa Rein, May 27, 2023 (print ed.). Hurled from a road-paving machine, Michael Sheldon tumbled 50 feet down a Colorado slope and struck a mound of boulders headfirst on a summer day in 2006. After eight surgeries to his head, neck and spinal cord, his debilitating headaches, chronic pain and post-traumatic stress have made it impossible to return to his work preparing roads for new subdivisions.

social security administrationYet for more than a decade, the Social Security Administration repeatedly denied Sheldon’s full claim for disability benefits that would pay him $1,415 a month.

Even after three federal judges found significant errors with how his case was handled and sent it back to Social Security for new hearings, the agency continued to reject Sheldon, court documents show.

“They’ve done everything to prolong this to get me to quit,” he said after testifying in March at his fifth hearing. Now 59, he lives with his wife in a trailer in Cortez, Colo., and depends on food stamps and state benefits for the indigent. “I can’t replace the battery on a vehicle. Why has this taken 14 years?”

Like Sheldon, thousands of other disabled Americans battle for years for benefits, even after federal courts rule in their favor.

In the last two fiscal years, federal judges considering appeals for denied benefits found fault with almost 6 in every 10 cases and sent them back to administrative law judges at Social Security for new hearings — the highest rate of rejections in years, agency statistics show. Court remands are on pace to reach similar levels this year.

Federal judges have complained of legal errors, inaccurate assessments of whether claimants can work, failures to consider medical evidence and factual mistakes, according to court rulings and Social Security’s own data. The scathing opinions have come from district and appellate court judges across the political spectrum, from conservatives appointed by President Ronald Reagan to liberal appointees of President Barack Obama.

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U.S. Supreme Court Associate Justice Clarence Thomas, left, and his billionaire friend and benefactor Harlan Crow (file photos).

U.S. Supreme Court Associate Justice Clarence Thomas, left, and his billionaire friend and benefactor Harlan Crow (file photos).

 

U.S. Politics, Elections, Governance

ny times logoNew York Times, Feinstein, Back in the Senate, Relies Heavily on Staff to Function, Annie Karni, May 29, 2023 (print ed.). Senator Dianne Feinstein of California is surrounded by a large entourage of aides who tell her how and when to vote, and shield her from the public.

When Senator Dianne Feinstein entered a hearing room this month to reclaim her seat on the Senate Judiciary Committee after a monthslong absence, she was accompanied by a phalanx of aides.

Two staff members settled the 89-year-old California Democrat into a chair at the dais as the assembled senators greeted their ailing colleague with a round of applause. When Ms. Feinstein spoke — during a vote on one of several of President Biden’s judicial nominees whose approval had awaited her return — she appeared to read from a piece of paper handed to her by a female aide seated behind her.

“I ask to be recorded as voting in person on the three nominees considered earlier, Mr. Chairman, and I vote aye now,” she said.

The aide knelt next to her and whispered into her ear in between votes — popping up repeatedly from her seat to confer with the senator, at one point clearing away the paper Ms. Feinstein had read from and presenting her with a folder that appeared to contain background information about the nominees.

The scene was typical of Ms. Feinstein’s day-to-day existence on Capitol Hill, where she is surrounded by a retinue of staff members who serve not only the roles of typical congressional aides — advising on policy, keeping tabs on the schedule, drafting statements and speeches — but also as de facto companions to a senator whose age, frail health and memory issues make it difficult for her to function alone.

Their roles have come under more scrutiny as a number of Democrats and many of Ms. Feinstein’s constituents are increasingly concerned about her refusal to relinquish a post that she is not capable of fulfilling without heavy and constant reliance on her aides.

They push her wheelchair, remind her how and when she should vote and step in to explain what is happening when she grows confused. They stay with her in the cloak room just off the Senate floor, where Ms. Feinstein has taken to waiting her turn to vote, then appearing in the doorway to register her “aye” or “nay” from the outer edge of the chamber.

ny times logoNew York Times, Texas House Votes to Impeach Ken Paxton, Exposing G.O.P. Fissures, J. David Goodman and Nicholas Bogel-Burroughs, May 28, 2023 (print ed.). Mr. Paxton, the state attorney general who has become a conservative star, will be immediately removed from office, pending a trial in the Senate.

The Texas House of Representatives vote Saturday to impeach Ken Paxton, right, the state’s Republican attorney general, temporarily removing him from office over charges that he had used his elected position to benefit himself and a campaign donor.

ken paxton mugThe extraordinary vote on impeachment, which came after several hours of debate, was one of the few ever taken in the Texas Capitol and the first of a statewide office holder since 1917. It comes after a bipartisan House committee, led by Republicans, filed 20 articles of impeachment against Mr. Paxton this week, detailing actions that the panel unanimously decided made him unfit for office.

texas mapThe impeachment means Mr. Paxton will be temporarily removed from office pending a trial on the charges in the State Senate, where some of his closest allies, including his wife, will serve as jurors. The Senate proceedings could well be delayed until after the regular legislative session, which ends on Monday.

The final vote was 121 members in favor of impeachment and 23 against, with two abstaining. It went well beyond the 75 necessary for a majority.

Representative Andrew Murr, the Republican chair of the House investigating committee that recommended impeachment, closed by urging his colleagues to impeach.

“The evidence presented to you is compelling and is more than sufficient to justify going to trial,” he said, adding: “Send this to trial.”

Mr. Paxton, 60, who has denied any wrongdoing, has been a strong supporter of conservative legal causes and one of the chief antagonists of the Biden administration on a range of issues, including the Affordable Care Act and immigration on the southern border.

He was elected to a third term last year even after the alleged offenses were prominently raised during the campaign, including by Republicans who ran against him in the primary election. He has accused the more moderate Republican leadership of the House of acting in concert with Democrats to oust him.

A member of the House investigating committee, Charlie Geren, said during the proceedings that Mr. Paxton had been personally lobbying members to vote against the impeachment. “Several members of this House on the floor of this House,” he said, “received a telephone call from General Paxton personally threatening them with political consequences in their next election.”

The debate moved later to opponents of impeachment, led off by Representative John Smithee, a Republican, who said there was not enough evidence to take such drastic action.

“This House cannot legitimately, and in good faith, and under the rule of law, impeach General Paxton today on the record that it has before it,” he said.

Voting to impeach at this stage, Mr. Smithee said, would be “what I call the ‘hang them now and judge them later’ policy.”

Here are the latest developments:

Ken Paxton had managed to weather a series of accusations and a criminal indictment while in office in large part because he has been one of the most aggressive fighters for conservative legal causes.

Former President Donald J. Trump had called the proceedings against Mr. Paxton “very unfair” and urged Republicans to block impeachment efforts.

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washington post logoWashington Post, Boebert dismisses antisemitism push as effort to target conservatives, Meryl Kornfield, May 27, 2023 (print ed.). After White House announces initiative to combat hatred of Jews, GOP congresswoman says it’s a way to ‘go after conservatives.’

President Biden on Thursday released the country’s first national strategy for combating antisemitism, a landmark lauded by Jewish and anti-hate groups as progress toward addressing the increasing instances of violence and bias toward Jewish people in the United States.

lauren boebertBut Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.), right, saw the effort as an attack on those of her political persuasion. “When they say stuff like this, they mean they want to go after conservatives,” she tweeted. “Their tactics are straight out of the USSR’s playbook.”

djt maga hatHer comments quickly attracted criticism from detractors who accused her of conflating a straightforward campaign against antisemitism with an assault on the right — and, by implication, equating conservatives with antisemites.

“So you agree? You think you’re antisemitic?” Rep. Sara Jacobs (D-Calif.) tweeted in a popular meme format from the teen comedy “Mean Girls.”

In response to questions about her tweet, Boebert’s office provided a statement equating the anti-hate effort with censorship of free speech and adding that she does not condone antisemitism.

washington post logoWashington Post, Federal workers want to know what the debt ceiling fight means for them, Lisa Rein, May 28, 2023 (print ed.). With the threat of government default looming, the unions representing anxious federal workers have pressed the Biden administration for guidance on what a debt ceiling calamity might mean for their millions of members.

So far, the official answer has been consistent: We have nothing to tell you.

“‘We’re saying, ‘We don’t have a handle on this, and we need to get a handle on it,’” said Jefferson Friday, general counsel for the 100,000-member National Federation of Federal Employees, who was planning at a Zoom meeting Friday to bear down again on officials at the Office of Personnel Management. “They’re saying, ‘We don’t know anything.’ Or whatever they did know, they weren’t allowed to tell us.”

The 2.1 million employees who keep the vast federal government afloat find themselves in a precarious limbo as talks between the White House and House Republicans to raise the country’s borrowing limit approach a June 1 deadline, when the Treasury Department warns that the government might no longer be able to pay its bills. Bipartisan negotiations were proceeding Friday, but the White House and House Republicans hadn’t yet reached a final agreement to avert the crisis.

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More on Ukraine War

 

 

President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia received Patriarch Kirill, the leader of the Russian Orthodox Church, on Wednesday in Moscow (Photo by Mikhail Klimentyev of Sputnik via Associated Press).

President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia received Patriarch Kirill, the leader of the Russian Orthodox Church, on Wednesday in Moscow (Photo by Mikhail Klimentyev of Sputnik via Associated Press).

ny times logoNew York Times, Barely Noting the Ukraine War in Public, Putin Acts Like Time Is on His Side, Anton Troianovski and Paul Sonne, May 28, 2023 (print ed.). President Vladimir Putin of Russia looks like a commander in absentia, treating the war as unfortunate but distant and still betting on outlasting his foes.

Pro-Ukrainian fighters stormed across the border into southwestern Russia this past week, prompting two days of the heaviest fighting on Russian territory in 15 months of war. Yet President Vladimir V. Putin, in public, ignored the matter entirely.

He handed out medals, met the patriarch of the Russian Orthodox Church, hosted friendly foreign leaders and made televised small talk with a Russian judge about how Ukraine was not a real country.

In managing Russia’s biggest war in generations, Mr. Putin increasingly looks like a commander in chief in absentia: In public, he says next to nothing about the course of the war and betrays little concern about Russia’s setbacks. Instead, he is telegraphing more clearly than ever that his strategy is to wait out Ukraine and the West — and that he thinks he can win by exhausting his foes.

“There’s no need for any illusions,” said Natalia Zubarevich, an expert on Russian social and economic development at Moscow State University. Mr. Putin, she said, has laid the domestic groundwork to sustain the war for a “long, long, long, long, long” time.

But while Western analysts and officials believe that Mr. Putin’s Russia does have the potential to keep fighting, his military, economic and political maneuvering room has narrowed, presenting obstacles to prosecuting a lengthy war.

Even as Mr. Putin refers to the fighting as distant “tragic events,” the war keeps hitting home — with growing fissures in the military leadership, unease among the Russian elite and worrying signs for the economy as the West vows to further wean itself off Russian energy.

On the battlefield, Russia’s ability to go on the offensive has shriveled as ammunition has run low and the monthslong battle for the eastern Ukrainian city of Bakhmut took thousands of soldiers’ lives. Yevgeny V. Prigozhin, the leader of the Wagner mercenary group that led the assault on Bakhmut, said he was starting to pull his soldiers out of the city while releasing one profane tirade after another aimed at Russia’s Kremlin-allied elites.

To mount a major new offensive, Western officials and analysts say that Mr. Putin would need to find new sources of ammunition — and impose a politically risky, second military draft to replenish his depleted troops. Still, the U.S. director of national intelligence, Avril D. Haines, told Congress this month that the chances that Mr. Putin would make any concessions in talks this year were “low,” unless he were to feel a domestic political threat.

ny times logoNew York Times, Ukraine Sees New Virtue in Wind Power: It’s Harder to Destroy, Maria Varenikova, May 29, 2023. Bombarding the power grid has been a big part of Russia’s invasion, but officials say it’s harder for missiles to badly damage a wind farm than a power plant.

In 15 months of war, Russia has launched countless missiles and exploding drones at power plants, hydroelectric dams and substations, trying to black out as much of Ukraine as it can, as often as it can, in its campaign to pound the country into submission. The new Tyligulska wind farm stands only a few dozen miles from Russian artillery, but Ukrainians say it has a crucial advantage over most of the country’s grid.

A single, well-placed missile can damage a power plant severely enough to take it out of action, but Ukrainian officials say that doing the same to a set of windmills, each one hundreds of feet apart from any other, would require dozens of missiles. A wind farm can be temporarily disabled by striking a transformer substation or transmission lines, but these are much easier to repair than power plants.

“It is our response to Russians,” said Maksym Timchenko, the chief executive of DTEK Group, the company that built the turbines, in the southern Mykolaiv region, the first phase of what is planned as Eastern Europe’s largest wind farm. “It is the most profitable and, as we know now, most secure form of energy.”

washington post logoWashington Post, Kyiv readies for counteroffensive as commander vows to ‘take back what’s ours,’ Kelsey Ables, Adela Suliman and Nick Parke, May 28, 2023 (print ed.). Ukrainian officials continue to talk up a much-anticipated counteroffensive against Russia, with the commander in chief of Ukraine’s army, Gen. Valery Zaluzhny, on Saturday releasing an “informational support campaign” video venerating his military forces and promising that “the time has come to take back what’s ours.”

ukraine flagThe recent warm, dry weather in southern Ukraine has raised expectations that the spring counterattack could begin soon — or may already be underway. President Volodymyr Zelensky and others have described the looming campaign as a make-or-break chance to show Western backers, who have provided military aid and training, that Ukraine is capable of taking back its land from Russia.

Here’s the latest on the war and its effects around the globe.

  • Key developments
  • Ukraine’s counteroffensive could begin “tomorrow, the day after tomorrow or in a week,” another senior Ukrainian security official, Oleksiy Danilov, told the BBC in an interview Saturday, describing it as a “historic opportunity” that “we cannot lose.” An adviser to Zelensky, Mykhailo Podolyak, has cautioned that Ukraine would not necessarily make a formal announcement before an offensive. “This is not a ‘single event’ that will begin at a specific hour of a specific day with a solemn cutting of the red ribbon,” he tweeted.
  • Wagner troops are withdrawing from positions around the embattled city of Bakhmut, according to Britain’s defense ministry. The Saturday observation Russian Flagaligns with comments made by the group’s chief Yevgeniy Prigozhin that his troops are rebasing, to be replaced by regular Russian military forces. Ukrainian officials have also noted withdrawals from the outskirts of Bakhmut, which Russia took control of this month after a months-long battle. “Wagner forces will likely be used for further offensive operations in the Donbas following reconstituting its forces,” the intelligence update from the ministry added.
  • A Russian governor said two drones had caused an explosion, damaging the administrative building of an oil pipeline, early Saturday in the region of Pskov in northwestern Russia. Mikhail Vedernikov said on Telegram that the incident occurred near the village of Litvinovo; there were no casualties. The Washington Post could not independently verify his assertions. They follow reported attacks causing damage in Russian territory in recent weeks, for which Ukraine has denied any involvement.
  • President Biden criticized Russia’s plans to host tactical nuclear weapons in neighboring Belarus, saying his reaction to that was “extremely negative.” His comments on Friday came a day after Russia’s defense minister was in Minsk to sign the agreement with its ally. The European Union’s foreign policy chief, Josep Borrell, also condemned the deal, warning: “This is a step which will lead to further extremely dangerous escalation.”
  • Lawyers for U.S. reporter Evan Gershkovich appealed a three-month extension of his pretrial detention in Russia. Gershkovich was detained in March and accused of spying, which he; rights groups; and his employer, the Wall Street Journal, have denied. The United States considers him “wrongfully detained.”

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President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine in Hiroshima on Saturday (Ludovic Marin for Agence France-Presse via Getty Images).

President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine in Hiroshima on Saturday (Ludovic Marin for Agence France-Presse via Getty Images).

 

More Global News, Views

ny times logoNew York Times, Uganda’s President Signs Punitive Anti-Gay Bill Into Law, Abdi Latif Dahir, May 29, 2023. President Yoweri Museveni dismissed widespread criticism of the anti-gay measure, which includes life imprisonment for people convicted of same-sex relations.

The president of Uganda signed a punitive anti-gay bill on Monday that includes the death penalty, enshrining into law an intensifying crackdown against L.G.B.T.Q. people in the conservative East African nation and dismissing widespread calls not to impose one of the world’s most restrictive anti-gay measures.

The law, which was introduced in Parliament in March, calls for life imprisonment for anyone who engages in gay sex. Anyone who tries to have same-sex relations could be liable for up to a decade in prison.

The law also decrees the death penalty for anyone convicted of “aggravated homosexuality,” a term defined as acts of same-sex relations with children or disabled people, those carried out under threat or while someone is unconscious. The offense of “attempted aggravated homosexuality” carries a sentence of up to 14 years.

The legislation is a major blow to efforts by the United Nations, Western governments and civil society groups that had implored the president, Yoweri Museveni, not to sign it.

ny times logoNew York Times, A Russian Deserter’s Flight to Norway Presents a Fraught Dilemma, Anatoly Kurmanaev and Henrik Pryser Libell, May 29, 2023 (print ed.). Andrei Medvedev fought with Russia’s Wagner mercenaries in Ukraine, then requested asylum in Norway. The authorities there must now weigh his plea against solidarity with Ukraine.

Sipping a $12 beer in one of the world’s wealthiest capitals, Andrei Medvedev reflected on the question hanging over him since he left the battlefields of Ukraine: Is he a hero or a war criminal?

He claims to have deserted from Russia’s notorious Wagner mercenary force during the monumental battle for the Ukrainian city of Bakhmut, and later to have escaped his native Russia by running across a frozen Arctic river. Now in Norway, Mr. Medvedev, 26, is seeking asylum, while providing information on Wagner to Norwegian authorities.

Since arriving in the country in January, Mr. Medvedev has voluntarily attended about a dozen interviews with Norwegian police officers investigating war crimes in Ukraine, including his potential role in them. Mr. Medvedev has described killing Ukrainians in combat and witnessing summary executions of comrades accused of cowardice. He claims that he did not participate or witness war crimes such as killings of prisoners of war and civilians.

“Yes, I have killed, I saw comrades die. It was war,” he said in an interview at an Oslo bar. “I have nothing to hide.”

His unlikely journey has made Mr. Medvedev one of only a handful of publicly known Russian combatants to seek protection in Europe after participating in the invasion. His asylum request is now forcing Norway to decide a case that pits the country’s humanitarian ethos against an increasingly assertive national security policy and solidarity with Ukraine.

To his lawyer, the credible threat of revenge facing Mr. Medvedev if he were sent back home qualifies him for asylum. And some Norwegian politicians have said that encouraging soldiers like Mr. Medvedev to defect would weaken Russia’s army and hasten the end of the war.

But as Norway evaluates his claim, it is facing pressure from activists in Ukraine and Western Europe, who say giving safe haven in Europe to Russian fighters, especially mercenaries like Mr. Medvedev, fails to hold Russians accountable for the invasion. And the former fighter may have complicated his own request with bar fights and detentions in Norway, and by briefly posting a video on YouTube suggesting he wanted to return to Russia.

Wayne Madsen Report, Investigative Commentary: Canada also has a Russiagate problem, Wayne Madsen, May 25, 2023. Canada has an emerging “Russiagate” of wayne madsen may 29 2015 cropped Smallits own to deal with.

After revelations of Chinese influence in Canadian elections emerged, with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau ordering a $140,000 donation directed by the Chinese government to the Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation -- named for the prime minister’s father – the Trudeau government appointed former Governor-wayne madesen report logoGeneral David Johnston as a special rapporteur on foreign interference.

Johnston’s mandate was to investigate all facets of foreign interference in Canadian elections dealing not only with the attempt by Beijing to influence the government with its donation to the Trudeau Foundation but also China’s targeting of the Hong Kong family of Conservative MP Michael Chong after he spoke out against China’s treatment of the Uighurs in western China. Canada responded to the targeting of Chong’s family by expelling Chinese diplomat Zhao Wei for his involvement in applying pressure on Wong.

Although Johnston was able to meet with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, the titular leader of the Liberal Party in the House of Commons, and the leaders of the New Democratic Party and Bloc Quebecois, to discuss foreign interference in Canadian elections, the extreme right-wing Conservative Leader of the Opposition, Pierre Poilievre, refused to meet with Johnston.

Poilievre, who has been likened to Texas Senator Ted Cruz due to his acerbic personality, called Johnston’s special rapporteur position a “fake job.” Poilievre characterized Johnston as a “ski buddy, cottage neighbor, and family friend” of Prime Minister Trudeau.

Poilievre may have other reasons to have avoided talking to Johnston. An earlier independent report by former Deputy Justice Minister Morris Rosenberg, titled “Report on the assessment of the 2021 Critical Election Incident Public Protocol,” which was commissioned by the Privy Council Office, concluded that, in addition to China, Russia had attempted to interfere in elections in 2019 and 2021. Prior to the 2019 election, Trudeau warned: “We saw very clearly that countries like Russia are behind a lot of the divisive campaigns, a lot of the divisive social media, you know, spreads that have turned our politics even more divisive and more anger-filled than they have been in the past.”

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More On Probes, Suits Against Trump

ny times logoNew York Times, Mar-a-Lago Worker Provided Prosecutors New Details in Trump Documents Case, Alan Feuer and Maggie Haberman, May 27, 2023 (print ed.). A maintenance worker for the former president recounted helping to move boxes into a storage room a day before a Justice Department official came.

The day before a key meeting last year between a lawyer for former President Donald J. Trump and officials seeking the return of classified documents in Mr. Trump’s possession, a maintenance worker at the former president’s private club saw an aide moving boxes into a storage room, according to a person familiar with the matter.

The maintenance worker offered to help the aide — Walt Nauta, who was Mr. Trump’s valet in the White House — move the boxes and ended up lending him a hand. But the worker had no idea what was inside the boxes, the person familiar with the matter said. The maintenance worker has shared that account with federal prosecutors, the person said.

The worker’s account is potentially significant to prosecutors as they piece together details of how Mr. Trump handled sensitive documents he took with him from the White House upon leaving office and whether he obstructed efforts by the Justice Department and the National Archives to retrieve them.

Mr. Trump was found to have been keeping some of the documents in the storage room where Mr. Nauta and the maintenance worker were moving boxes on the day before the Justice Department’s top counterintelligence official, Jay Bratt, traveled to Mar-a-Lago last June to seek the return of any government materials being held by the former president.

The detail about the timing of Mr. Nauta’s interaction with the maintenance worker was reported earlier by The Washington Post. A lawyer for Mr. Nauta declined to comment. A lawyer for the maintenance worker would not publicly discuss the matter.

The New York Times reported this month that prosecutors had obtained cooperation from a witness who worked at Mar-a-Lago. Among other things, the witness provided investigators with a picture of the storage room.

The investigation, overseen by the special counsel, Jack Smith, has shown signs of entering its final phases, and this week lawyers for Mr. Trump — who is the current front-runner for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination — asked for a meeting to discuss the case with Attorney General Merrick B. Garland.

Meidas Touch Network, Commentary: Jack Smith’s SECRET WITNESS against Trump finally Revealed, Michael Popok, May 27, 2023. Michael Popok of Legal AF reports on breaking developments in the fast moving Jack Smith Mar-a-Lago criminal investigation of Trump, including new testimony and cooperation by an unnamed Mar-a-Lago maintenance worker who with photos and new facts shows that Trump orchestrated a scheme to hide classified documents from the FBI and DOJ.

Salon, Commentary: Trump and the Saudis: Is Jack Smith finally looking at this clear-cut corruption? Heather Digby Parton, May 26, 2023. Trump's links to the Saudi regime and its LIV Golf tour reek of obvious corruption. Maybe Jack Smith has noticed.

There's a lot of Trump legal news these days, what with the E. Jean Carroll verdict, the Manhattan hush money indictment, the news that Fulton County, Georgia, D.A. Fani Willis has put local authorities on notice to anticipate "something" coming in August, and a cascade of reporting on special counsel Jack Smith's investigation into the Mar-a-Lago classified documents case, with some suggestions evidence that will come to a conclusion very soon.

The possible Jan. 6 case against Donald Trump himself remains more obscure, but with the sentencing of Oath Keeper Stewart Rhodes to 18 years in prison for plotting the insurrection on Thursday, it's hard to see how Trump, who incited the riot, isn't equally implicated in what happened that day. But for some reason one obvious case has gotten very little media attention and, as far as we know, very little attention from investigators: Trump's cozy financial relationship with the Saudi-sponsored Public Investment Fund, the desert kingdom's massive sovereign wealth fund. (Its assets are estimated at more than $620 billion.)
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It's not at all surprising that the Republican House isn't looking into this. They're busy trying to find disappearing informants in the Hunter Biden laptop case and digging through the Biden family finances. Why the Democratic-led Senate hasn't bothered is another question. But it's obvious that Trump and his family are deeply financially involved with the Saudi government, and considering the fact that Trump is running for president yet again, it's shocking that nobody seems to care.

While all the other GOP presidential candidates were busy campaigning on Thursday, USA Today reported that Trump was kicking back at Trump National Golf Course in Virginia, which will soon host a tournament on the Saudi-backed LIV Golf tour — the third at a property owned by the former president just this year. (Two more will be scheduled at Trump properties in New Jersey and Florida.) Last year, Trump — in typically obtuse style — even scheduled a tournament at the New Jersey club on Sept. 11, drawing outrage from the families of 9/11 victims. Trump said he didn't know what they were talking about and defended Saudi Arabia, telling ESPN that "nobody has gotten to the bottom of 9/11."

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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.

 

More On U.S. Presidential Race

 

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ny times logoNew York Times, Ron DeSantis Plows Ahead With Campaign Tour After Digital Rollout Misfires, Nicholas Nehamas, Maggie Astor and Alan Blinder, May 26, 2023 (print ed.). Trying to regroup after a bumpy Twitter rollout, the Florida governor sought to make new headlines ahead of a trip to Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina.

Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida plunged into his first full day of presidential campaigning on Thursday after his sputtering Twitter rollout the night before, holding a series of interviews with friendly conservative commentators and announcing a series of in-person events in Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina next week.

republican elephant logoFor Mr. DeSantis, the immediate challenge appeared to be moving past the rough kickoff and appealing to a mainstream Republican audience, after a Twitter discussion with the billionaire Elon Musk that often strayed into online right-wing grievances and away from the issues voters say they care about most, like the economy.

Acknowledging that a “very small percentage” of Republican primary voters were on Twitter, Mr. DeSantis defended his decision to announce his campaign on the social media platform.

“We felt that there would be a lot of buzz about it,” he told the conservative radio host Erick Erickson on Thursday afternoon. “And I think that was probably the biggest story in the world yesterday. And so hopefully we’ll get some people interested in our campaign who may not have been otherwise.” 

ny times logoNew York Times, Opinion: How the Internet Shrank Musk and DeSantis, Ross Douthat, May 28, 2023 (print ed.). If you had told me several months ago, ross douthat newerimmediately after Elon Musk bought Twitter and Ron DeSantis celebrated a thumping re-election victory, that DeSantis would launch his presidential campaign in conversation with Musk, I would have thought, intriguing: The rightward-trending billionaire whose rockets and cars stand out in an economy dominated by apps and financial instruments meets the Republican politician whose real-world victories contrast with the virtual populism of Donald Trump.

The actual launch of DeSantis’s presidential campaign, in a “Twitter Spaces” event that crashed repeatedly and played to a smaller audience than he would have claimed just by showing up on Fox, instead offered the political version of the lesson that we’ve been taught repeatedly by Musk’s stewardship of Twitter: The internet can be a trap.

For the Tesla and SpaceX mogul, the trap was sprung because Musk wanted to attack the groupthink of liberal institutions, and seeing that groupthink manifest on his favorite social media site, he imagined that owning Twitter was the key to transforming public discourse.

But for all its influence, social media is still downstream of other institutions — universities, newspapers, television channels, movie studios, other internet platforms. Twitter is real life, but only through its relationship to other realities; it doesn’t have the capacity to be a hub of discourse, news gathering or entertainment on its own. And many of Musk’s difficulties as the Twitter C.E.O. have reflected a simple overestimation of social media’s inherent authority and influence.

Thus he’s tried to sell the privilege of verification, the famous “blue checks,” without recognizing that they were valued because of their connection to real-world institutions and lose value if they reflect a Twitter hierarchy alone. Or he’s encouraged his favored journalists to publish their scoops and essays on his site when it isn’t yet built out for that kind of publication. Or he’s encouraged media figures like Tucker Carlson and now politicians like DeSantis to run shows or do interviews on his platform, without having the infrastructure in place to make all that work.

It’s entirely possible that Musk can build out that infrastructure eventually, and make Twitter more capacious than it is today. But there isn’t some immediate social-media shortcut to the influence he’s seeking. If you want Twitter to be the world’s news hub, you probably need a Twitter newsroom. If you want Twitter to host presidential candidates, you probably need a Twitter channel that feels like a professional newscast. And while you’re trying to build those things, you need to be careful that the nature of social media doesn’t diminish you to the kind of caricatured role — troll instead of tycoon — that tempts everyone on Twitter.

Wayne Madsen Report, Investigative Commentary: Are we seeing another Opus Dei power behind a politician? Wayne Madsen, May 26, 2023. It matters not that wayne madsen may 29 2015 cropped Small2024 Republican presidential candidate and Florida governor Ron DeSantis has a Bachelor of Arts degree from Yale and a law degree from Harvard.

Notwithstanding those academic credentials, DeSantis has shown himself not only to be a textbook fascist but also an inept campaigner on a wayne madesen report logonational stage. As the DeSantis presidential campaign receives the spotlight of the media, one thing is becoming clear. The governor’s wife, Casey DeSantis, [left] someone who attempted to mimic First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy during her husband’s second gubernatorial casey desantis childreninauguration ceremony, reportedly holds views more extreme than those of the governor. Mrs. DeSantis is a former television anchor for the Golf Channel and WJXT in Jacksonville. She also appears to be the actual power behind DeSantis’s political rise.

Casey DeSantis is not the first spousal manipulator who has manipulated the puppet strings of a politician. Eva Peron exercised a tremendous amount of influence over her husband, Argentine dictator Juan Peron. So, too, did Elena Ceausescu over her husband, Romanian Communist strongman Nicolae Ceausescu.

The control that Mrs. DeSantis has over her husband is best described in terms of the movie "The Manchurian Candidate," in which Eleanor Iselin (played by Angela Lansbury) controls every facet of the presidential campaign of her husband, Senator John Iselin (played by John Gregory).

American politics has also experienced its share of spousal manipulators. It is known that far-right extremist Ginni Thomas has influenced the Supreme Court decisions of her husband, Associate Justice Clarence Thomas. Less well-known is Linda Poindexter, a former Episcopalian priest in the Diocese of Washington and the wife of former National Security Adviser and Iran-contra figure Admiral John Poindexter. In 2001, Mrs. Poindexter shocked the Episcopalian establishment in Washington by converting to Roman Catholicism. While Mrs. Thomas and Mrs. Poindexter have been strong influences over their husbands, they have something else in common. Both women are active in the right-wing Catholic sect – some would call it cult -- Opus Dei, founded by Josémaria Escriva [right] in Spain in 1928. Escriva, who was canonized in 2002 by Pope John Paul II, served as a religious and political adviser to Spanish Fascist dictator Francisco Franco.

Today, Opus Dei, derisively called “Octopus Dei” by its critics, has 90,000 members in over 70 countries. There are no publicly accessible Opus Dei official membership directories because secret sects maintain secret records.

What is publicly known is that Opus Dei is a hierarchical organization composed of Supernumeraries, Numerary Assistants, Associates, Priests, and Cooperators. Some Opus Dei members influential in the Republican Party have been revealed. They include Fox’s Laura Ingraham, CNBC’s Larry Kudlow (a former economic adviser in the Trump White House), former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, Trump White House counsel Pat Cipollone, and former Trump Attorney General William Barr. Opus Dei’s Washington headquarters is the Catholic Information Center, an outwardly-appearing bookstore located not far from the White House.

Considering the far-right views of Ron and Casey DeSantis, both Roman Catholics, it would not be surprising if they are both tied to Opus Dei.

washington post logoWashington Post, Nikki Haley let the Confederate flag fly until a massacre at a Black church forced her hand, Michael Kranish, May 28, 2023 (print ed.). She told Confederate groups that flag was about “heritage,” and her campaign said efforts to remove it from the State House grounds were “desperate and irresponsible.”

Amid her barrier-breaking first run for governor, Nikki Haley took time off the trail for an unusual event: A private meeting with two leaders of Confederate heritage groups.

The men listened during the 2010 conversation as the Republican candidate assured them that she shared their worldview. She said the Civil War was a fight between “tradition” and “change,” without mentioning the word slavery. She said she supported Confederate History Month as a parallel to Black History Month.

And, as the daughter of Indian immigrants, she suggested that her identity as a minority woman could help her take on the NAACP, which was leading a boycott of the state until the Confederate flag was taken off the State House grounds.

“I will work to talk to them about the heritage and how this is not something that is racist,” Haley said in a discussion captured on video.

Haley’s outreach to Confederate groups reflects a more complex backstory than she has previously acknowledged about her most famous act: Signing legislation five years later that removed the Confederate flag from the State House grounds in the wake of a racist massacre at a Black church in Charleston.

As Haley rose from governor to U.N. ambassador under President Donald Trump, she often portrayed the decision as the culmination of her work to move South Carolina beyond its history of secession, enslavement and segregation. The reason she didn’t try to take down the flag sooner, Haley claimed in her 2019 memoir, was because members of both parties had “pushed back” against the idea, adding that “even many African American Democrats were privately opposed to the idea of reopening the flag debate.”

Yet a Washington Post review of Haley’s actions in the five years before the massacre found that she repeatedly dismissed efforts to remove the flag, mollified Confederate heritage groups whose influence remained a powerful force, and did not hold substantive discussions with Black leaders who wanted to remove the flag. Months before the mass killing that changed her position, her reelection campaign had called a proposal by her Democratic opponent to remove the flag “desperate and irresponsible.”

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U.S. Abortion, Birth Control, #MeToo

ny times logoNew York Times, Indiana Reprimands Doctor Who Provided Abortion to 10-Year-Old Rape Victim, Ava Sasani, May 27, 2023 (print ed.). Dr. Caitlin Bernard violated the privacy of her young patient by discussing the girl’s case with a reporter, the state’s medical board ruled.

\An Indiana doctor who provided an abortion to a 10-year-old rape victim last year violated her young patient’s privacy by discussing the case with a reporter, the state’s medical board ruled Thursday night.

Dr. Caitlin Bernard, an Indianapolis obstetrician-gynecologist, catapulted into the national spotlight last year after she provided an abortion for an Ohio girl soon after the Supreme Court decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, which left states free to severely restrict or outlaw abortion.

The state’s medical board voted to issue Dr. Bernard a letter of reprimand and a fine of $3,000. But it decided against stiffer penalties, which could have included suspension or probation, instead deciding that Dr. Bernard is fit to return to her practice.

The board also cleared her of other allegations that she failed to appropriately report the girl’s rape to authorities.

The decision was the culmination of a yearlong legal pursuit of Dr. Bernard by the state’s attorney general, Todd Rokita, a Republican who opposes abortion.

The Ohio girl had traveled to Indiana for the procedure after her home state enacted a ban on most abortions after six weeks of pregnancy. Dr. Bernard told a reporter for the Indianapolis Star about the case during an abortion rights rally. She didn’t name the patient, but the case quickly became a flash point in the early, heated days of debate after the Supreme Court ruling, catching the attention of President Biden and turning conservative attention and ire toward Dr. Bernard.

“I don’t think she intended for this to go viral,” said Dr. John Strobel, the president of the board, calling Dr. Bernard a “good doctor.”

“But I do think we as physicians need to be more careful in this situation,” he said.

Mr. Rokita, who had filed the complaints against Dr. Bernard with the medical board, praised the outcome.

“This case was about patient privacy and the trust between the doctor and the patient that was broken,” Mr. Rokita said in a statement late Thursday. “What if it was your child or your patient or your sibling who was going through a sensitive medical crisis, and the doctor, who you thought was on your side, ran to the press for political reasons?”

Dr. Bernard has criticized Mr. Rokita for turning the case into a “political stunt.”

During the hearing, which stretched for more than 15 hours, ending just before midnight, Dr. Bernard said that her own comments did not reveal the patient’s protected health information. Rather, Dr. Bernard said, it was the fierce political battle that followed. Some conservatives doubted her story and drove a demand to confirm it. Eventually, the man accused of raping the girl appeared in court and was linked to her case.

Dr. Bernard, who has publicly advocated for abortion rights, said she had an ethical obligation to educate the public about urgent matters of public health, especially questions about reproductive health — her area of expertise.

Dead State, Pastor at Christian college arrested for letting his ‘spiritual mentor’ sexually abuse young boys, Sky Palma, May 26, 2023. Police in Waco, Texas, arrested the former pastor at Baylor University on charges that he allowed a sex offender he called his “spiritual mentor” to sexually abuse two young relatives, the Waco Tribune-Herald reported.

Christopher Hundl, 38, was charged Tuesday with continuous sexual abuse of a child, which is a first-degree felony, and later released on $50,000 bond.

A statement from Baylor University earlier this month revealed that Hundl resigned from his position as minister for the Baylor chapter of Chi Alpha, a “worldwide Christian ministry sponsored by the Assembly of God Church,” according to the Herald.

baylor bears logoChi Alpha has been suspended from the university and is under investigation.

“Baylor University is aware of serious allegations of impropriety among leaders of the independent organization Chi Alpha,” the statement read. “Like all Chi Alpha college-based chapters, Baylor’s organization is led by the assigned Chi Alpha ministers and staff. These individuals are NOT Baylor employees.”

“We are deeply disturbed and grieved by these serious allegations against Chi Alpha’s leaders, and we will continue to examine Baylor’s affiliated student organization to ensure our students have a healthy and safe co-curricular environment.”

The sex offender in the case has not yet been arrested, according to the Tribune’s report (Graphic):

The warrant names the sex offender, who has not been arrested in this case. The Tribune-Herald is withholding his name at the request of Waco police. According to the warrant, Hundl brought the two children to the Houston home of the convicted sex offender several times between summer 2021 and March 2022. Hundl and the sex offender were in a sauna with the children, who were younger than 14 when the offense occurred, when the man instructed the children to masturbate in front of them, the warrant says. The warrant says similar abuse occurred at Hundl’s home in Waco while the sex offender was present. According to the warrant, the sex offender also abused the two children by touching them inappropriately while Hundl was present.

Other reports describe the victims as two boys, one of whom was 11 when the abuse occurred. The boy told investigators that Hundl and his sex offender accomplice told him not to tell anyone about the abuse.

Hundl reportedly said that the sex offender was like a “grandfather” to the children.

washington post logoWashington Post, In middle age, they realized they were trans: ‘A lightbulb went off’, Tara Bahrampour, May 28, 2023 (print ed.). Roughly a fifth of trans adults 45 and older have not told anyone they are trans, a Washington Post-KFF poll conducted late last year found.

Ray Gibson spent half a century living as a woman before realizing he might be a man.

Growing up in Omaha in the 1960s and ’70s as the child of the Hall of Fame pitcher Bob Gibson, he always felt something was off. At age 6, “I thought, ‘Gee, I’m the son my dad doesn’t know he has.’” When he got his period at age 13, he locked himself in the bathroom, screaming and crying.

“My mom came to the door — ‘What’s the matter? What’s the matter?’” he said. “I said, ‘I want a sex change.’ ... I’d never heard of such a thing. So I don’t even know where it came from. It came from my soul.”

For people with gender dysphoria, 20th-century America was a lonely place to grow up. Terms like “transgender” and “nonbinary” had not entered the common lexicon, and if transgender people appeared in popular culture at all, they were often portrayed as murderers, sex workers or homicide victims. There was no internet where people could seek out expertise or find community. The local library was the main source of information, and it often came up short.

Many came out as gay or lesbian, or hewed to a cisgender heterosexual presentation, but the sense of disharmony persisted. Only later in life, as awareness about transgender identity increased, did some recognize that what they were hearing from younger generations also fit them.

Americans who identify as trans today skew young. More than 4 in 10, 43 percent, are between 13 and 24, according to a 2022 report by the UCLA School of Law’s Williams Institute. Teenagers identify as trans at nearly triple the rate of all adults, and nearly five times the rate of people 65 and older. They are growing up at a time when trans role models abound, from classroom teachers to pop stars to Cabinet officials in Washington.

Their parents’ and grandparents’ generations experienced none of this. “You’ll hear of people who felt different and they thought they were the only one in the world,” said Aaron Tax, managing director of government affairs and policy advocacy at SAGE, an advocacy group for LGBTQ+ elders. “Must be a world of difference today, for people who have all kinds of access to trans stories or trans joy.”

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

 

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ny times logoNew York Times, Opinion: The Supreme Court Is Crippling Environmental Protections. Where Is Congress? Jim Murphy (the director of legal advocacy for the National Wildlife Federation), May 29, 2023. After half a century of painstaking restoration under the Clean Water Act, streams and wetlands nationwide are once again at risk of contamination by pollution and outright destruction as a result of a ruling on Thursday by the Supreme Court.

The Environmental Protection Agency has long interpreted the Clean Water Act as protecting most of the nation’s wetlands from pollution. But now the court has significantly limited the reach of the law, concluding that it precludes the agency from regulating discharges of pollution into wetlands unless they have “a continuous surface connection” to bodies of water that, using “ordinary parlance,” the court described as streams, oceans, rivers and lakes.

At least half of the nation’s wetlands could lose protection under this ruling, which provides an even narrower definition of “protected waters” than the Trump administration had sought.

Justice Brett Kavanaugh, who filed a concurring opinion in the judgment, acknowledged its impact, writing that it would have “significant repercussions for water quality and flood control throughout the United States.”

It is the latest sign that many decision makers in Washington have lost touch with the increasingly fragile state of the natural systems that provide drinking water, flood protection and critical habitat for people and wildlife in every state. In March, the Senate joined the House in trying to roll back clean-water regulations established by the Biden administration, even though they were less comprehensive than Clean Water Act protections before President Donald Trump weakened them. (President Biden vetoed the action.) Congress had also long failed to clarify language in the Clean Water Act that caused confusion among judges and put the law in the Supreme Court’s cross hairs.

Now it is up to Congress to defend the vision of the Clean Water Act, which Senator Howard Baker, a Republican from Tennessee, articulated in 1972 in a debate on the Senate floor.

ny times logoNew York Times, You May Have Never Heard of Him, but He’s Remaking the Pollution Fight, Coral Davenport, May 29, 2023 (print ed.). Richard Revesz is changing the way the government calculates the cost and benefits of regulation, with far-reaching implications for climate change.

This spring the Biden administration proposed or implemented eight major environmental regulations, including the nation’s toughest climate rule, rolling out what experts say are the most ambitious limits on polluting industries by the government in a single season.

Piloting all of that is a man most Americans have never heard of, running an agency that is even less well known.

But Richard Revesz has begun to change the fundamental math that underpins federal regulations designed to protect human health and the environment. And those calculations could affect American life and the economy for years to come.

Mr. Revesz, 65, heads the obscure but powerful White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, which is effectively the gatekeeper and final word on all new federal regulations. It has been known as the place where new rules proposed by government agencies, particularly environmental standards, go to die — or at least to be weakened or delayed.

But Mr. Revesz, a climate law expert and former dean of the New York University School of Law, joined the Biden administration in January to flip the script. Each time a major regulatory proposal has landed on his desk, Mr. Revesz has used his authority to strengthen its legal analysis and make it more stringent.

What’s more, he has proposed a new method of calculating the cost of potential regulation that would bolster the legal and economic justifications for those rules to protect them against an expected onslaught of court fights.

With his halo of snowy curls and Spanish lilt — a vestige of his childhood in Argentina — Mr. Revesz is known as “Ricky” to everyone from his law students to his legal opponents. Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan has called him “a legend.” John Podesta, a senior climate adviser to Mr. Biden who also served in top roles in the Obama and Clinton administrations, considers Mr. Revesz his hero.

Conservatives see Mr. Revesz differently.

“He is the professor of gobbledygook!” said Elizabeth Murrill, the solicitor general of Louisiana, who plans to join Republican attorneys general from other states to challenge Mr. Biden’s climate regulations. “He is creating these numbers to try to justify destroying the fossil fuel industry and the petrochemical industry, to justify bankrupting people and destroying their lives. And they say it’s all justified because of the future, because they say they’re saving the planet.”

The climate regulations proposed by the Biden administration, together with $370 billion in clean energy funds from the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act, would catapult the United States to the forefront of the fight to constrain global warming.

 

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ny times logoNew York Times, A Breakthrough Deal to Keep the Colorado River From Going Dry, for Now, Christopher Flavelle, May 23, 2023 (print ed.). The agreement on cuts, aided by a wet winter and $1.2 billion in federal payments, expires at the end of 2026.

Arizona, California and Nevada have agreed to take less water from the drought-strained Colorado River (shown aboe, marked in red), a breakthrough agreement that, for now, keeps the river from falling so low that it would jeopardize water supplies for major Western cities like Phoenix and Los Angeles as well as for some of America’s most productive farmland.

colorado river in grand canyon pima point 2010 viewThe agreement, announced Monday, calls for the federal government to pay about $1.2 billion to irrigation districts, cities and Native American tribes in the three states if they temporarily use less water. The states have also agreed to make additional cuts beyond the ones tied to the federal payments to generate the total reductions needed to prevent the collapse of the river.

Taken together, those reductions would amount to about 13 percent of the total water use in the lower Colorado Basin — among the most aggressive ever experienced in the region, and likely to require significant water restrictions for residential and agriculture uses.

The Colorado River supplies drinking water to 40 million Americans in seven states as well as part of Mexico and irrigates 5.5 million acres of farmland. The electricity generated by dams on the river’s two main reservoirs, Lake Mead and Lake Powell, powers millions of homes and businesses.

But drought, population growth and climate change have dropped the river’s flows by one-third in recent years compared with historical averages, threatening to provoke a water and power catastrophe across the West.

California, Arizona and Nevada get their share of water from Lake Mead, which is formed by the Colorado River at the Hoover Dam and is controlled by the federal government. The Bureau of Reclamation, an agency within the Interior Department, determines how much water each of the three states receives. The other states that depend on the Colorado get water directly from the river and its tributaries.

“This is an important step forward toward our shared goal of forging a sustainable path for the basin that millions of people call home,” Camille Calimlim Touton, the Bureau of Reclamation commissioner, said in a statement.

The agreement struck over the weekend runs only through the end of 2026 and still needs to be formally adopted by the federal government. At that point, all seven states that rely on the river — which include Colorado, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming — could face a deeper reckoning, as its decline is likely to continue.

washington post logoWashington Post, Tragedy strikes a rural community torn by miles-long trains: ‘It’s heartbreaking,’ Andrea Salcedo, Luz Lazo and Lee Powell, May 28, 2023 (print ed.). Nationwide, longer and longer trains are obstructing rural intersections, preventing paramedics from getting to emergencies, including a baby who died after his mom waited and waited.

A man suffered a stroke but a stopped train blocked paramedics from reaching him for over an hour. A senior in a nearby retirement community missed his oncologist appointment because another train obstructed that same intersection. A fire crew could not get to a house engulfed in flames until another train eventually cleared the crossing.

For decades, those living along Glover Road in Leggett, Tex. — a rural community with fewer than 150 residents some 80 miles from Houston — wrote letters, sent emails and called authorities pleading that trains stop blocking the neighborhood’s sole point of entry and exit for hours. Some residents and a county judge sent letters addressed to the railroad company, warning of a “greater catastrophe,” including a toxic train disaster.

“Should there be a derailment … we would be dead ducks, having no evacuating route,” Pete Glover, the man whom the street is named after, wrote in a 1992 letter to the railway company. “If some home caught afire,” he added. there’d be “no way for firetrucks to serve them.”

To many in the community, their worst fears were realized in 2021, when baby K’Twon Franklin died. His mother, Monica Franklin, had found the three-month old unresponsive in her bed the morning of Sept. 30, and called 911.

Paramedics responded, but a Union Pacific train blocked their path on Glover Road, according to Franklin and a local police report. It took more than 30 minutes for them to carry K’Twon into an ambulance. Two days later, the baby died at a hospital in Houston. “Unfortunately, the delay has cost my child’s life,” Franklin, 34, told The Washington Post.

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Pandemics, Public Health, Privacy

ny times logoNew York Times, Covid Is Coming Back in China; Lockdowns Are Not, Chris Buckley, May 28, 2023 (print ed.). The authorities say that cases are up, and one doctor estimates that there could soon be 65 million cases a week. But China seems determined to move on.

China FlagIn December, China abruptly abandoned its draconian “Zero Covid” policies, battered by a surge of infections and rising public anger against lockdowns. Half a year on, Covid cases again are on the rise, but this time the nation appears to be determined to press on with normal life as the government focuses on reigniting economic growth.

Though other countries have long settled into such a pattern, it is a shift for China. Until late last year, its national leadership was still ready to lock down whole neighborhoods and districts, even cities, in a bid to stamp out what were sometimes just small clusters of cases.

The Chinese health authorities have reported a rise in Covid cases since April, especially from newer subvariants that are spreading across the world. Dr. Zhong Nanshan, a prominent doctor who was among the first to openly confirm in early 2020 that Covid could easily spread among people, estimated on Monday that by late June as many as 65 million people a week could become infected with the coronavirus across China. (That would be up from what he estimated at 40 million infections a week in late May. China no longer publishes regular official nationwide estimates of infections.)

By comparison, after “Zero Covid” controls were set aside in December, new infections reached 37 million a day in China at their peak, according to estimates cited by Bloomberg.

Even if, as Dr. Zhong acknowledged, the pace of rising infections is laden with uncertainty, a rebound in cases was always likely, and many in China appear steeled to living with a background hum of Covid infections, and sometimes Covid deaths.

ny times logoNew York Times, Hundreds of Thousands Lose Medicaid Coverage as Pandemic Protections End, Noah Weiland, May 27, 2023 (print ed.). Early data suggests that many recipients are losing their coverage for procedural reasons, even if they are still qualified for it.

Hundreds of thousands of low-income Americans have lost Medicaid coverage in recent weeks as part of a sprawling unwinding of a pandemic-era policy that prohibited states from removing people from the program.

Early data shows that many people lost coverage for procedural reasons, such as when Medicaid recipients did not return paperwork to verify their eligibility or could not be located. The large number of terminations on procedural grounds suggests that many people may be losing their coverage even though they are still qualified for it. Many of those who have been dropped have been children.

From the outset of the pandemic until this spring, states were barred from kicking people off Medicaid under a provision in a coronavirus relief package passed by Congress in 2020. The guarantee of continuous coverage spared people from regular eligibility checks during the public health crisis and caused enrollment in Medicaid to soar to record levels.

But the policy expired at the end of March, setting in motion a vast bureaucratic undertaking across the country to verify who remains eligible for coverage. In recent weeks, states have begun releasing data on who has lost coverage and why, offering a first glimpse of the punishing toll that the so-called unwinding is taking on some of the poorest and most vulnerable Americans.

ny times logoNew York Times, More Teenagers Coming to School High, N.Y.C. Teachers Say, Ashley Southall, May 27, 2023 (print ed.). Students and teachers said in interviews that some classrooms were in disarray as more and younger students were smoking at school.

Ever since Justin, a 15-year-old high school freshman, tried marijuana on his birthday two years ago, he has smoked almost every day, several times a day, he said.

“If I smoke a blunt, after that blunt I’m going to be chill,” he said on a recent morning at a corner deli near his school, the Bronx Design and Construction Academy. “I’m not going to be stressing about nothing at all.”

Another boy came by and flashed two glass tubes of smokable flower. More students were smoking across the street in a doorway and on a stoop. On another corner, a smoke shop frequented by children in backpacks and uniforms opened about half an hour before the first bell.

While it has long been common for some teens to smoke marijuana, teachers and students say that more and younger students are smoking throughout the day and at school.

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U.S. Media, Education, Sports, Arts, High Tech

Politico, EU’s Breton says Twitter ‘can’t hide’ after platform ditches disinformation code, Jordain Carney and Sarah Ferris, May 29, 2023 (print ed.). Fighting disinformation online will be a ‘legal obligation’ under new rules coming into force in August, EU commissioner says.

Twitter has abandoned the EU's code of practice on disinformation, Thierry Breton said late Friday, but Europe's internal markets commissioner insisted that "obligations remain" for the social networking giant.

"You can run but you can’t hide," Breton said in a tweet, after confirming that the platform owned by Elon Musk had left the bloc’s disinformation code, which other major social media platforms have pledged to support.

"Beyond voluntary commitments, fighting disinformation will be a legal obligation under DSA as of August 25," Breton said, referring to the Digital Services Act — new social media rules that include fines of up to 6 percent of a company's annual revenue.

"Our teams will be ready for enforcement," the commissioner said.

The code of practice on disinformation is a voluntary rulebook that includes obligations for platforms to track political advertising, stop the monetization of disinformation, and provide greater access to outsiders. Participation in the code is designed to help offset some of these companies' obligations within the separate and mandatory DSA.

Twitter is one of eight social media platforms that fall under the scope of the DSA. The others are Facebook, TikTok, YouTube, Instagram, LinkedIn, Pinterest and Snapchat.

Breton has publicly vowed that he would personally hold Musk to account for complying with the EU's content rules.

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Poet Amanda Gorman provided an iconic appeal to youthful idealism by a reading at the 2021 Inauguration of President Joe Biden (Pool photo by Patrick Semansky of the Associated Press). poolPoet Amanda Gorman provided an iconic appeal to youthful idealism by reading her work at the 2021 Inauguration of President Joe Biden (Pool photo by Patrick Semansky of the Associated Press).

 

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Jessica Watkins, second from left, and Donovan Ray Crowl, center, both from Ohio, walk down the east front steps of the U.S. Capitol with other Oath Keepers members on Jan. 6, 2021 (Reuters photo by Jim Bourg).

 

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ny times logoNew York Times, White House and G.O.P. Strike Debt Limit Deal to Avert Default, Jim Tankersley, Catie Edmondson and Luke Broadwater, May 28, 2023 (print ed.). With the government on track to reach its borrowing limit within days, negotiators sealed an agreement to raise the debt ceiling for two years while cutting and capping certain federal programs.

joe biden resized oPresident Biden and Speaker Kevin McCarthy on Saturday reached an agreement in principle to raise the debt limit for two years while cutting and capping some government spending over the same period, a breakthrough after a marathon set of crisis talks that has brought the nation within days of its first default in history.

kevin mccarthyCongressional passage of the plan before June 5, when the Treasury is projected to exhaust its ability to pay its obligations, is not assured, particularly in the House, which plans to consider it on Wednesday. Republicans hold a narrow majority in the chamber, and right-wing lawmakers who had demanded significantly larger budget cuts in exchange for lifting the borrowing limit were already in revolt.

But the compromise, which would effectively freeze federal spending that had been on track to grow, had the blessing of both the Democratic president and the Republican speaker, raising hopes that it could break the fiscal stalemate that has gripped Washington and the nation for weeks, threatening an economic crisis. The two spoke by phone on Saturday evening to resolve final sticking points.

U.S. House logoIn a nighttime news conference outside his Capitol office that lasted just one minute, Mr. McCarthy said the deal contained “historic reductions in spending, consequential reforms that will lift people out of poverty into the work force, rein in government overreach” and would add no new taxes. He declined to answer questions or provide specifics, but said he planned to release legislative text on Sunday, ahead of the Wednesday vote.
“We still have more work to do tonight to finish all the writing of it,” he said.

The plan was structured with the aim of enticing votes from both parties, though it has drawn the ire not only of conservative Republicans but also Democrats furious at being asked to vote for cuts they oppose with the threat of default looming.

Still, it gives Republicans the ability to say that they succeeded in reducing some federal spending — even as funding for the military and veterans’ programs would continue to grow — while allowing Democrats to say they spared most domestic programs from significant cuts.

The deal would raise the borrowing limit, which is currently $31.4 trillion, for two years — enough to get past the next presidential election.

ny times logoNew York Times, Analysis: In Pursuit of Consensus, Did Biden Find the Reasonable Middle? Peter Baker, May 28, 2023. The deal to raise the debt ceiling bolsters President Biden’s commitment to bipartisanship, but comes at the cost of rankling many in his party.

After weeks of tense wrangling between the White House and House Republicans, the fiscal deal reached on Saturday to raise the debt ceiling while constraining federal spending bolsters President Biden’s argument that he is the one figure who can still do bipartisanship in a profoundly partisan era.

But it comes at the cost of rankling many in his own party who have little appetite for meeting Republicans in the middle and think the president cannot stop himself from giving away too much in an eternal and ephemeral quest for consensus. And it will now test his influence over fellow Democrats he will need to pass the deal in Congress.

The agreement in principle that he reached with Speaker Kevin McCarthy represents a case study in governing for Mr. Biden’s presidency, underscoring the fundamental tension of his leadership since the primaries in 2020 when he overcame progressive rivals to win the Democratic nomination. Mr. Biden believes in his bones in reaching across the aisle even at the expense of some of his own priorities.

He has shown that repeatedly since being inaugurated two and a half years ago even as skeptics doubted that cross-party accommodation was still possible. Most notably, he pushed through Congress a bipartisan public works program directing $1 trillion to building or fixing roads, bridges, airports, broadband and other infrastructure; legislation expanding treatment for veterans exposed to toxic burn pits; and an investment program to boost the nation’s semiconductor industry, all of which passed with Republican votes.

ny times logoNew York Times, With a debt limit deal in hand, President Biden and Speaker Kevin McCarthy turned to the task of selling it, Luke Broadwater and Chris Cameron, May 28, 2023. A day after striking a deal in principle with President Biden to raise the debt limit, Speaker Kevin McCarthy and his leadership team began an all-out sales pitch on Sunday to rally Republicans behind a compromise that was drawing intense resistance from the hard right.

To get the legislation through a fractious and closely divided Congress, Mr. McCarthy and top Democratic leaders must cobble together a coalition of Republicans and Democrats in the House and the Senate willing to back it. Members of the ultraconservative House Freedom Caucus have already declared war on the plan, which they say fails to impose meaningful spending cuts, and warned that they would seek to block it.

So after spending late nights and early mornings in recent days in feverish negotiations to strike the deal, proponents have turned their energies to ensuring it can pass in time to avert a default now projected on June 5.

“This is the most conservative spending package in my service in Congress, and this is my 10th term,” Representative Patrick T. McHenry, Republican of North Carolina and a lead member of Mr. McCarthy’s negotiating team, said at a news conference on Capitol Hill on Sunday morning.

Politico, Debt ceiling deal includes surprise approval of natural gas pipeline championed by Manchin, Josh Siegel, May 28, 2023. The controversial natural gas project has been a priority for West Virginia, but its approval will bring new criticism for the Biden administration.

politico CustomThe text of the debt ceiling bill released on Sunday would approve all the remaining permits to complete the stalled Mountain Valley Pipeline, delivering a big win for West Virginia Sens. Joe Manchin and Shelley Moore Capito.

joe biden black background resized serious fileBut the backing of the pipeline that would deliver gas from West Virginia into the Southeast is sure to set off bitter complaints from the environmental groups that have fought its construction for years and turned the project into a symbol of their struggle against fossil fuels.

Manchin hailed the bill’s language, saying finishing the pipeline would lower energy costs for the United States and West Virginia.

“I am proud to have fought for this critical project and to have secured the bipartisan support necessary to get it across the finish line,” he said in a statement.

The bill agreed by the White House and House Republicans must still be approved by both chambers of Congress, which is expected to happen in the coming week.

“After working with Speaker McCarthy and reiterating what completing the Mountain Valley Pipeline would mean for American jobs and domestic energy production, I am thrilled it is included in the debt ceiling package that avoids default,” Capito, a Republican, said in a statement. “Despite delay after delay, we continued to fight to get this critical natural gas pipeline up and running, and its inclusion in this deal is a significant victory for the future of West Virginia.”

The project has won support from the White House, which argues the controversial project is needed for U.S. energy security. Its approval comes after the approval of the Willow oil project in Alaska, which activists have said undercuts the Biden administration’s climate promises.

Including the project in the debt bill came as a surprise that wasn’t revealed by either negotiating side until the release of the bill text Sunday night.

The bill approves all outstanding permits for the pipeline, which has suffered court setbacks.

ny times logoNew York Times, Trump Looks Like He Will Get the 2024 Crowd He Wants, Shane Goldmacher, Jonathan Swan and Maggie Haberman, May 28, 2023. Both Gov. Ron DeSantis and Senator Tim Scott entered the presidential race last week, with others to follow. For former President Trump, the more the better.

Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida officially entered the presidential race last week, but he appears farther than ever from the one-on-one matchup that his allies believe he needs to wrest the nomination from former President Donald J. Trump.

Former Vice President Mike Pence is burrowing deeper into Iowa, crucial to his effort to dislodge the Republican front-runners, even before he has announced his bid. Former Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey is intensifying preparations for another campaign, with an expected focus on New Hampshire. And Republican donors and leadership on Capitol Hill are showing fresh interest in Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina, who kicked off his campaign last week. Even candidates who have barely been mentioned are suddenly expressing interest in 2024.

The rapidly ballooning field, combined with Mr. Trump’s seemingly unbreakable core of support, represents a grave threat to Mr. DeSantis, imperiling his ability to consolidate the non-Trump vote, and could mirror the dynamics that powered Mr. Trump’s takeover of the party in 2016.

It’s a matter of math: Each new entrant threatens to steal a small piece of Mr. DeSantis’s potential coalition — whether it be Mr. Pence with Iowa evangelicals or Mr. Scott with college-educated suburbanites. And these new candidates are unlikely to eat into Mr. Trump’s votes. The former president’s base — more than 30 percent of Republicans — remains strongly devoted to him.

 

recep erdogan with flag

ny times logoNew York Times, Turkey Elections Live Updates: President Erdogan Wins Re-Election in Turkey, Ben Hubbard and Safak Timur, May 28, 2023. President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Turkey’s paramount politician for 20 years, defeated the opposition candidate, Kemal Kilicdaroglu, according to unofficial results published by state media. The election was the biggest challenge of his political career.

Flag of TurkeyTurkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, above, who has vexed his Western allies while tightening his grip on power during 20 years as the NATO country’s paramount politician, won re-election on Sunday, according to unofficial results published by state media.

The state news agency Anadolu reported that Mr. Erdogan had 52.1 percent of the vote, compared with 47.9 percent for his challenger, the opposition candidate Kemal Kilicdaroglu, with almost all votes counted. runoff election, although neither the country's electoral commission nor the state-run media have announced a victor. Addressing supporters from atop a white bus outside of his home in Istanbul, Erdogan said, “We will be together until the grave.”

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washington post logoWashington Post, U.S. leaders gamble with world’s most trusted asset in debt showdown, David J. Lynch, May 28, 2023 (print ed.). Episode could mean higher borrowing costs for government, companies and consumers.

Hundreds of banks, hedge funds and investment managers as soon as early June could begin holding multiple daily conference calls to handle the fallout from a possible U.S. debt default, activating a “break-glass-in-case-of-emergency” playbook that has never before been tried.

If the Treasury Department intends to miss a scheduled payment to bondholders, financial institutions would find out on a call the night before from representatives of the Federal Reserve division that manages the electronic trading of government securities.

The conference calls are part of a road map developed by the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association to help buyers and sellers of government securities deal with an interruption in normal market functioning because of computer failures, natural disasters, terrorism — or political battles over the nation’s finances.

SIFMA’s planning attempts to bring certainty to a high-stakes situation shrouded in unknowns. As the nation hurtles toward a default on its debt, no one knows precisely when the government will run out of money, what it will do when it does, or how investors will react.

What is known is bad enough.

Debt ceiling fallout puts U.S. credit rating in limbo

The nation’s leaders are gambling with the singular financial instrument that global markets use as the measuring stick against which all other assets are priced. Investors regard treasuries as the next best thing to cash. They use them as a safe place to park excess funds as well as a ready source of collateral for loans from the Federal Reserve and sophisticated financial trades with other institutions.

ny times logoNew York Times, ‘It’s Time’: Ukraine’s Top Commander Says Counteroffensive Is Imminent, Marc Santora and Eric Schmitt, May 28, 2023 (print ed.). A blunt statement, accompanied by a video of troops preparing for battle, appeared designed to rally the nation and to spread anxiety among Russian forces.

Ukraine’s top military commander signaled on Saturday morning that the nation’s forces were ready to launch their long-anticipated counteroffensive following months of preparations, including recently stepped-up attacks on logistical targets as well as feints and disinformation intended to keep Russian forces on edge.

“It’s time to get back what’s ours,” Ukraine’s supreme military commander, Gen. Valeriy Zaluzhnyi, wrote in a statement.

The blunt statement, accompanied by a slickly produced video of Ukrainian troops preparing for battle and released on social media, appeared intended to rally a nation weary from 15 months of war and to deepen anxiety within the Russian ranks. But General Zaluzhnyi offered no indication of where and when Ukrainian forces might try to break Russia’s hold on occupied territory.

Other senior Ukrainian officials also suggested that the counteroffensive was imminent.

Oleksiy Danilov, the head of the Ukrainian National Security and Defense Council, told the BBC in an interview released on Saturday that Kyiv’s forces were “ready” and that a large-scale assault could come “tomorrow, the day after tomorrow or in a week.”

 

President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia received Patriarch Kirill, the leader of the Russian Orthodox Church, on Wednesday in Moscow (Photo by Mikhail Klimentyev of Sputnik via Associated Press).

President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia received Patriarch Kirill, the leader of the Russian Orthodox Church, on Wednesday in Moscow (Photo by Mikhail Klimentyev of Sputnik via Associated Press).

ny times logoNew York Times, Barely Noting the Ukraine War in Public, Putin Acts Like Time Is on His Side, Anton Troianovski and Paul Sonne, May 28, 2023 (print ed.). President Vladimir Putin of Russia looks like a commander in absentia, treating the war as unfortunate but distant and still betting on outlasting his foes.

Pro-Ukrainian fighters stormed across the border into southwestern Russia this past week, prompting two days of the heaviest fighting on Russian territory in 15 months of war. Yet President Vladimir V. Putin, in public, ignored the matter entirely.

He handed out medals, met the patriarch of the Russian Orthodox Church, hosted friendly foreign leaders and made televised small talk with a Russian judge about how Ukraine was not a real country.

In managing Russia’s biggest war in generations, Mr. Putin increasingly looks like a commander in chief in absentia: In public, he says next to nothing about the course of the war and betrays little concern about Russia’s setbacks. Instead, he is telegraphing more clearly than ever that his strategy is to wait out Ukraine and the West — and that he thinks he can win by exhausting his foes.

“There’s no need for any illusions,” said Natalia Zubarevich, an expert on Russian social and economic development at Moscow State University. Mr. Putin, she said, has laid the domestic groundwork to sustain the war for a “long, long, long, long, long” time.

But while Western analysts and officials believe that Mr. Putin’s Russia does have the potential to keep fighting, his military, economic and political maneuvering room has narrowed, presenting obstacles to prosecuting a lengthy war.

Even as Mr. Putin refers to the fighting as distant “tragic events,” the war keeps hitting home — with growing fissures in the military leadership, unease among the Russian elite and worrying signs for the economy as the West vows to further wean itself off Russian energy.

On the battlefield, Russia’s ability to go on the offensive has shriveled as ammunition has run low and the monthslong battle for the eastern Ukrainian city of Bakhmut took thousands of soldiers’ lives. Yevgeny V. Prigozhin, the leader of the Wagner mercenary group that led the assault on Bakhmut, said he was starting to pull his soldiers out of the city while releasing one profane tirade after another aimed at Russia’s Kremlin-allied elites.

To mount a major new offensive, Western officials and analysts say that Mr. Putin would need to find new sources of ammunition — and impose a politically risky, second military draft to replenish his depleted troops. Still, the U.S. director of national intelligence, Avril D. Haines, told Congress this month that the chances that Mr. Putin would make any concessions in talks this year were “low,” unless he were to feel a domestic political threat.

ny times logoNew York Times, Covid Is Coming Back in China; Lockdowns Are Not, Chris Buckley, May 28, 2023 (print ed.). The authorities say that cases are up, and one doctor estimates that there could soon be 65 million cases a week. But China seems determined to move on.

China FlagIn December, China abruptly abandoned its draconian “Zero Covid” policies, battered by a surge of infections and rising public anger against lockdowns. Half a year on, Covid cases again are on the rise, but this time the nation appears to be determined to press on with normal life as the government focuses on reigniting economic growth.

Though other countries have long settled into such a pattern, it is a shift for China. Until late last year, its national leadership was still ready to lock down whole neighborhoods and districts, even cities, in a bid to stamp out what were sometimes just small clusters of cases.

The Chinese health authorities have reported a rise in Covid cases since April, especially from newer subvariants that are spreading across the world. Dr. Zhong Nanshan, a prominent doctor who was among the first to openly confirm in early 2020 that Covid could easily spread among people, estimated on Monday that by late June as many as 65 million people a week could become infected with the coronavirus across China. (That would be up from what he estimated at 40 million infections a week in late May. China no longer publishes regular official nationwide estimates of infections.)

By comparison, after “Zero Covid” controls were set aside in December, new infections reached 37 million a day in China at their peak, according to estimates cited by Bloomberg.

Even if, as Dr. Zhong acknowledged, the pace of rising infections is laden with uncertainty, a rebound in cases was always likely, and many in China appear steeled to living with a background hum of Covid infections, and sometimes Covid deaths.

ny times logoNew York Times, Texas House Votes to Impeach Ken Paxton, Exposing G.O.P. Fissures, J. David Goodman and Nicholas Bogel-Burroughs, May 28, 2023 (print ed.). Mr. Paxton, the state attorney general who has become a conservative star, will be immediately removed from office, pending a trial in the Senate.

The Texas House of Representatives vote Saturday to impeach Ken Paxton, right, the state’s Republican attorney general, temporarily removing him from office over charges that he had used his elected position to benefit himself and a campaign donor.

ken paxton mugThe extraordinary vote on impeachment, which came after several hours of debate, was one of the few ever taken in the Texas Capitol and the first of a statewide office holder since 1917. It comes after a bipartisan House committee, led by Republicans, filed 20 articles of impeachment against Mr. Paxton this week, detailing actions that the panel unanimously decided made him unfit for office.

texas mapThe impeachment means Mr. Paxton will be temporarily removed from office pending a trial on the charges in the State Senate, where some of his closest allies, including his wife, will serve as jurors. The Senate proceedings could well be delayed until after the regular legislative session, which ends on Monday.

The final vote was 121 members in favor of impeachment and 23 against, with two abstaining. It went well beyond the 75 necessary for a majority.

Representative Andrew Murr, the Republican chair of the House investigating committee that recommended impeachment, closed by urging his colleagues to impeach.

“The evidence presented to you is compelling and is more than sufficient to justify going to trial,” he said, adding: “Send this to trial.”

Mr. Paxton, 60, who has denied any wrongdoing, has been a strong supporter of conservative legal causes and one of the chief antagonists of the Biden administration on a range of issues, including the Affordable Care Act and immigration on the southern border.

He was elected to a third term last year even after the alleged offenses were prominently raised during the campaign, including by Republicans who ran against him in the primary election. He has accused the more moderate Republican leadership of the House of acting in concert with Democrats to oust him.

A member of the House investigating committee, Charlie Geren, said during the proceedings that Mr. Paxton had been personally lobbying members to vote against the impeachment. “Several members of this House on the floor of this House,” he said, “received a telephone call from General Paxton personally threatening them with political consequences in their next election.”

The debate moved later to opponents of impeachment, led off by Representative John Smithee, a Republican, who said there was not enough evidence to take such drastic action.

“This House cannot legitimately, and in good faith, and under the rule of law, impeach General Paxton today on the record that it has before it,” he said.

Voting to impeach at this stage, Mr. Smithee said, would be “what I call the ‘hang them now and judge them later’ policy.”

Here are the latest developments:

Ken Paxton had managed to weather a series of accusations and a criminal indictment while in office in large part because he has been one of the most aggressive fighters for conservative legal causes.

Former President Donald J. Trump had called the proceedings against Mr. Paxton “very unfair” and urged Republicans to block impeachment efforts.

Emptywheel, Analysis: Oaths Broken, Oath Keepers Bowed: Sentences for 2 more in marquee Jan. 6 conspiracy case, Brandi Buchman, May 28, 2023. 
Raw emotions positively dominated a federal courthouse in Washington, D.C. this week as the Justice Department secured significant sentences for two more Oath Keepers involved in a larger conspiracy to forcibly stop America’s transfer of power on Jan. 6, 2021.

jessica watkins mugOn the heels of an 18-year-sentence delivered to a defiant Elmer Stewart Rhodes, the leader of the far-right group, and a 12-year-sentence handed down to Kelly Meggs, Rhodes’ deputy on the 6th, U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta sentenced Oath Keeper Jessica Watkins, right, ken harrelson mugonce the founder of the Ohio Regular Militia, to 8.5 years and Kenneth Harrelson, below left, a ground team leader on the 6th, to four years.

Both were acquitted of the sedition charge in this case but they were found guilty of multiple felonies including serious obstruction charges. Sedition itself is rarely prosecuted in the United States and rarer still are these prosecutions successful since the bar to prove this sort of conspiracy is set so high.

This week marked a victory for the Justice Department, the rule of law, and the victims of Jan. 6 even if Donald Trump, the man who started it all, has yet to bear any real legal responsibility for his role in inciting an attack on the U.S. Capitol to stay in power.

That day may come. But in the meantime, the willing pawns in Trump’s betrayal of the U.S. Constitution and common decency alike will now begin to serve their time.

Underlining the severity of events, prosecutors initially sought an 18-year sentence for Watkins noting the jury’s conclusion that her true objective on Jan.6 was to storm the Capitol, use her body—and the bodies of her recruits—to violently obstruct the certification of the 2020 election, and intimidate Congress and impede police.

 

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The American Prospect, Opinion: X-DATE: As Deals Go, This Is One of Them, David Dayen, right, May 28, 2023. The second that Joe Biden agreed to negotiate with david dayen CustomHouse Republicans on the debt ceiling, the results were going to be bad. The people who benefit most from government action—the poor and the vulnerable—were going to be hurt, and those who benefit most from a weakened government—the rich and the powerful—were going to be aided. The only question was the degree.

With one potentially major exception, the relative harm and help was kept to a minimum in the final agreement. It will only be a little bit easier to commit wage theft, or to sell defective or poisoned products. It’ll only be a little harder to get rental assistance or tuition support. Only a few people will be freer to pollute the environment; only a few will find it more difficult to get food. The Internal Revenue Service will only be a little worse. A lot of things will stay the same. american prospect logoAlmost nothing will get any better.

That’s the broad strokes of a deal that the White House and House Republicans are selling to their respective bases right now. (House Republicans held a meeting immediately after the agreement was made last night; the White House isn’t holding anything for Democrats until this afternoon, after the bill text is supposed to be posted.) It will dictate federal spending on domestic discretionary programs for two years, and it will raise the debt ceiling for two years. After that, depending on the composition of Congress, we’ll all be here again. The stakes for the 2024 election just got even higher.

Imagine a world where we were a normal country with no debt ceiling, but everything else was exactly the same. Thanks to gerrymandering and the malpractice of the New York Democratic Party, Republicans still have the House, and the budget for the current fiscal year still expires on September 30. Republicans and Democrats would still have to negotiate that budget, and one likely outcome of that would be that negotiations fall apart, that there’s just no way to reconcile what both sides want. In that case, either the government shuts down or a continuing resolution is struck, which means that the government would operate at the current funding levels for a period of time. Maybe we’d live under a CR for the entire two years of this Congress.

That’s approximately what happened in this agreement. The funding levels for fiscal year 2024 on the non-defense discretionary side are at FY2023 levels. House Republicans are saying they clawed things back to FY2022, but a number of funding shifts—most prominently the return of tens of billions of dollars in unspent COVID aid—backfill the non-defense discretionary budget to get it to around FY2023. (The IRS money from last year’s Inflation Reduction Act also adds to this backfill, but while some reports still list that as a $10 billion fund shift, others put it as low as $1.9 billion, which is a little more than 2 percent of the total $80 billion outlay). This cap then rises by one percent in FY2025.

The goal here was to allow both sides to say contradictory things to their members. Republicans can say they achieved the target of the Limit, Save, Grow Act to limit discretionary spending to FY2022; Democrats can say they only froze spending at current levels. And both are sort of right.

Meanwhile, military spending, which is magic and has no impact on the federal budget, actually rises in FY2024 to the level in the Biden budget. (House Republicans wanted it even higher.) Veterans spending has similar privilege, and rises as well. Mandatory spending, like Social Security and Medicare, isn’t touched as well.

You’ll hear a lot about a spending “freeze,” but if you don’t increase spending at the rate of inflation, in real terms you’re cutting. Given that inflation will run around 4-5 percent this year and maybe 3 percent the next, if you do the math you’re talking about approximately a 5 percent cut to domestic discretionary programs over the next two years, maybe more depending on inflation’s persistence. (Republicans are claiming it’s a six-year deal, but after the first two years there are only non-binding appropriations targets. This is another way each side can say different things at once.)

The New York Times estimates that this will cut $650 billion in spending over ten years, but only if spending rises at the rate of inflation after the caps lift. That’s highly uncertain: a Democratic government could restore all the cuts, while a Republican government could cut further.

In macroeconomic terms, the near-term cuts will be offset by the increases to defense and veteran programs, plus the fact that the IRA’s energy tax credits, none of which were touched by this deal, are being used at about three times the rate of what was previously expected. Macro estimates so far are relatively negligible. What this deal really does is hurt the government’s capacity. Clean air and water, consumer product safety, labor laws, public lands, agricultural conservation—most of the stuff we think of as “the government” will be hit by this. “’Flat spending’ implies a further reduction in real government funding per person after a decade of Obama-Boehner austerity, followed by Trump’s assaults on the administrative state,” wrote Jeff Hauser of the Revolving Door Project.

These are just topline numbers in the deal. They have to be translated into appropriations bills. As I wrote on Friday, there is a mechanism if those appropriations don’t pass in time to snap in an automatic continuing resolution. That auto-CR would be at FY2023 levels, meaning lower levels for defense and veterans. That’s supposed to be the hammer that gets the appropriations bills done. But there’s still going to be tons of strife to enact these cuts, and a kind of opportunity for anyone who doesn’t think America needs to spend $886 billion on its military.

Palmer Report, Opinion: House Republicans have caved to President Biden in budget standoff, just like they were always going to, Bill Palmer, right, 11:29 pm EDT, May bill palmer27, 2023. President Biden reached a budget deal in principle this evening with House Republicans. The details haven’t all been hammered out, but the general framework reveals that Biden has gotten the majority of what he wanted. This means there won’t be a default. But then again, there was never going to be a default.

bill palmer report logo headerWhy didn’t Biden just invoke the 14th Amendment? Because it’s not a magic wand that can just unilaterally be waved. Any attempted invocation of the 14th Amendment would have triggered a lengthy court battle which would have dragged the whole thing out even longer. The 14th Amendment was only an undesirable last resort if House Republicans never did cave. But since they were always going to cave, the 14th Amendment was never going to be a part of this.

Why didn’t insurrectionist House Republicans hold out for a default? Because it wasn’t up to them. Too many House Republicans are in toss-up districts and would lose their seats over a default. There were never going to be 218 House Republicans willing to let a default happen.

But Kevin McCarthy could still have just refused to hold a vote. Why is he allowing this deal to happen? Because the House Republicans who wanted a deal would never have allowed him to not hold a vote. They could have ousted him if they wanted to. And that meant he had to give in to them.

Honestly, this stuff isn’t difficult to predict. Based on their 2024 reelection prospects, there weren’t going to be 218 House Republicans who would allow a default, so it wasn’t going to happen. That gave Biden most of the leverage, so he was going to get most of what he wanted. The end.

In order to accurately predict how this standoff would play out, all you really had to do was to tune out the hyperbolic nonsense coming from the media and the pundit class. There wasn’t going to be a default, no matter how many times MSNBC chased ratings by disingenuously suggesting there would be. The 14th Amendment wasn’t some magic wand, no matter how many Twitter pundits chased retweets by falsely portraying it that way.

Really, all you have to do is tune out that kind of nonsense, and politics becomes pretty simple. There’s a reason my predictions on this kind of thing nearly always end up being correct, and it’s not because I’m some genius. It’s simply that I’m immune to the false narratives that dominate MSNBC and social media. I don’t give those false narratives any weight just because they’re repeated over and over again. Understanding politics, and predicting outcomes, is mostly a function of knowing what empty noise to ignore.

kevin mccarthy hallway

Politico, Debt limit derails the rest of Congress’ must-pass agenda, Jordain Carney and Sarah Ferris, May 27, 2023. Drawn-out talks to avoid a catastrophic default are causing a temporary pileup on lawmakers’ other priorities, including spending bills, a trillion-dollar farm package and mammoth defense policy legislation.

politico CustomSpending packages. The farm bill. Defense legislation.

Congress’ knockdown fight over what was once its most mundane activity — raising the debt ceiling — is claiming an unintended victim: the rest of its must-pass agenda.

The negotiations between the Biden administration and House Republicans boil down to a handful of people. But Washington’s fixation on the slow-moving talks, combined with months of jockeying on both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue, has led to a legislative pileup.

“It’s very frustrating,” said Rep. Frank Lucas (R-Okla.), about some of the House’s delayed priorities. “But until you know how much money you have to work with,” he added, referring to potential spending cuts in a debt deal, “you can’t do these things.”

That’s not to say Congress has ground to a halt. There’s also committee-level work happening behind the scenes. But the calamitous consequences of debt default are so all-consuming that lawmakers’ other deadlines — each with potentially terrible effects of their own — seem far away, at least for the moment.

Many Republicans hope the saga will end in the coming days, with party leaders on both sides seeking to pass a deal before the default deadline on June 5. Yet some Republicans have wondered aloud if the U.S. can continue to stretch its borrowing limit even further, possibly past June 15 or even into the summer.

Drawn-out talks to avoid a catastrophic default are causing a temporary pileup on lawmakers' other priorities, including spending bills, a farm package and defense policy legislation, Jones Hayden, May 27, 2023.

 

World Crisis Radio, Commentary and Advocacy: House MAGA fanatics strive for US default and national bankruptcy to trigger world economic depression, weaken Biden, and enable Trump’s 2024 push for dictatorship! webster tarpley 2007Webster G. Tarpley, right, author and historian, May 27-28, 2023 (131:03 mins.). MAGA ideologues from Trump to Chip Roy demand cataclysmic default;

It is past time for Biden to announce a return to Constitutional government in the form of the Fourteenth Amendment, setting aside the illegal debt ceiling based on the vestigial 1917 Liberty Bond Act, which Congress intended to accelerate borrowing during the World War I emergency; The post-1974 federal budget law is its own ceiling and its own floor, telling the president exactly what to spend; If default occurs, GOP fantasies of paying bondholders and stiffing pensioners will be ruled out as a line item veto and by the anti-Nixon Impoundment Control Act, so no ”prioritization.”

The many misfortunes of Il Ducetto;

Right-wing anti-Putin Russian militias mount large-scale raid into Belgorod, signalling start of new edition of Russia’s Time of Troubles (1598-1613);
Warmer weather in southern Ukraine brings season for military operations;

Time for a drastic upvaluation of the Lincoln-era Radical Republican Thaddeus Stevens, the architect of the greenbacks, the Thirteenth Amendment, and the Fourteenth Amendment-which is the key to the current crisis;

The Succession series, a realistic portrait of the depraved oligarchs dominating a Hobbesian society during late globalization: An owl of Minerva for this moribund era, marred mainly by dialogue of relentless banality and obscenity;

In defense of Amanda Gorman and her inauguration ode, a fine American document of patriotism, optimism, and unity;

Ukraine and default are iambic, not trochaic! Breaking: Ukraine’s National Security & Defense Council Director Danilov tells BBC everything is ready for counterattack; says Wagner is redeploying.

ny times logoNew York Times, Inflation Inched Higher in April, Reflecting Challenge for the Fed, Madeleine Ngo, May 27, 2023 (print ed.). The Fed’s preferred gauge, the Personal Consumption Expenditures index, climbed 4.4 percent in April from a year earlier, a slight increase from March.

A measure of inflation most closely watched by Federal Reserve officials picked up in April, reflecting the difficult path ahead for economic policymakers as they weigh whether to raise interest rates again to bring down stubborn price increases.

The Personal Consumption Expenditures index climbed 4.4 percent in April from a year earlier. That was a slight increase from March, when prices climbed 4.2 percent on an annual basis. Still, prices are not climbing as fast they were in February, when the index rose 5.1 percent on an annual basis.

A “core” measure that tries to gauge underlying inflation trends by stripping out volatile food and energy prices rose 4.7 percent in the year through April, up slightly from 4.6 percent in March.

ny times logoNew York Times, Democrats Did Not Heed Yellen’s Debt Warnings, Leaving Her to Face Fallout, Alan Rappeport, May 28, 2023 (print ed.). Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen had urged her party last fall to raise the debt limit while it still had control of Congress.

janet yellen full portraitIn the days after November’s midterm elections, Treasury Secretary Janet L. Yellen, right, was feeling upbeat about the fact that Democrats had performed better than expected and maintained control of the Senate.

But as she traveled to the Group of 20 leaders summit in Indonesia that month, she said Republicans taking control of the House posed a new threat to the U.S. economy.

“I always worry about the debt ceiling,” Ms. Yellen told The New York Times in an interview on her flight from New Delhi to Bali, Indonesia, in which she urged Democrats to use their remaining time in control of Washington to lift the debt limit beyond the 2024 elections. “Any way that Congress can find to get it done, I’m all for.”

Democrats did not heed Ms. Yellen’s advice. Instead, the United States has spent most of this year inching toward the brink of default as Republicans refused to raise or suspend the nation’s $31.4 trillion borrowing limit without capping spending and rolling back parts of President Biden’s agenda.

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Pro-Trump Insurrectionists, Election Deniers, Durham Report

 

Jessica Watkins, second from left, and Donovan Ray Crowl, center, both from Ohio, walk down the east front steps of the U.S. Capitol with other Oath Keepers members on Jan. 6, 2021 (Reuters photo by Jim Bourg).

Jessica Watkins, second from left, and Donovan Ray Crowl, center, both from Ohio, walk down the east front steps of the U.S. Capitol with other Oath Keepers members on Jan. 6, 2021 (Reuters photo by Jim Bourg).

washington post logoWashington Post, More Oath Keepers convicted with Rhodes for Jan. 6 attack are sentenced, Spencer S. Hsu, May 27, 2023 (print ed.). Army veterans Jessica Watkins and Kenneth Harrelson brought weapons to Virginia before marching into the Capitol in 2021, but were acquitted of seditious conspiracy.

A self-styled militia leader and bar owner from Ohio and a former welder from Florida were sentenced to 8½ years and four years in prison Friday for joining Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes in disrupting Congress’s confirmation of Joe Biden’s 2020 presidential election victory in the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol attack.

Army veterans Jessica Watkins and Kenneth Harrelson were acquitted of seditious conspiracy but convicted on other felony counts in November at trial with Rhodes and his on-the-ground leader, Kelly Meggs. Rhodes and Meggs were convicted of seditious conspiracy and sentenced Thursday. Rhodes received 18 years in prison, the longest for any Jan. 6 defendant. Meggs was sentenced to 12 years.

On Friday, U.S. District Judge Amit P. Mehta told Watkins after a two-hour sentencing hearing: “Nobody would suggest you’re Stewart Rhodes; I don’t think you’re Kelly Meggs. But your role in those events is more than that of just a foot soldier.”

He added, “As someone who takes a greater role in a conspiracy, you bear a greater responsibility not just for your conduct but for the conduct of those you bring to it.”

Watkins, 40, of Woodstock, Ohio, recruited three other people and was recorded on Jan. 6 on a walkie-talkie-style app saying she was walking with a group of about 30 to 40 people to the Capitol and “sticking together and sticking to the plan,” before she eventually met up with a group led by Meggs. The group marched single-file up the east Capitol steps and joined a mob that entered the Columbus doors by force.

Harrelson, 42, a former Army sergeant from Titusville, Fla., received firearms training with Meggs in Florida and, according to prosecutors, served as “Meggs’ right-hand man” in setting up video meetings and relaying instructions to other Florida Oath Keepers about stashing weapons for a “Quick Reaction Force” if violence erupted. Harrelson recorded himself yelling “Treason!” at Capitol occupants as he entered with Meggs.

Outside of Rhodes and Meggs, Watkins received the longest sentence to date for any Jan. 6 defendant who has not been convicted of assaulting a police officer. But Harrelson received a fraction of his co-defendants’ time and close to the 45-month average sentence for 22 other Jan. 6 defendants who were convicted of obstructing Congress but not found guilty of conspiring with an organized group or of committing violence.

Mehta found that Watkins’s and Harrelson’s actions qualified for an enhanced terrorism sentencing penalty for offenses calculated to coerce the government, but the judge slashed years off the penalties sought by prosecutors. Mehta noted that Watkins, like Harrelson, had been acquitted of conspiring to use force to oppose government authority, and that she turned herself in and cooperated short of pleading guilty.

The judge added that of 2,000 to 3,000 communications exchanged by co-conspirators, he found only “a couple dozen” by Harrelson. That suggested lesser intent and explained why the jury also acquitted him of conspiring to obstruct Congress, while he was convicted of actually obstructing it, plotting to interfere with police and destroying evidence, the judge said.

“What distinguishes you from everyone else so far is that there not a single word on a Signal communication that anyone would consider extremist, radicalized, encouraging someone to engage in violence, or words like ‘civil war,’ ‘revolution,’ or thinking about death,” Mehta said. “You are not someone who bears the same responsibility or culpability as the others.”

Defense attorney Brad Geyer called Harrelson “a horse of a different color” and urged the judge to send his client to his family.

Watkins was accused of merging her local Ohio armed group with the Oath Keepers in 2020. She became a recruiter and organizer in advance of the Capitol attack, bringing firearms and other weapons and storing them outside Washington.

Watkins texted others, telling them to prepare for violence to keep Trump in office, beginning on Nov. 9, 2020, six days after the election, and she spoke of getting recruits “fighting fit by innaugeration” and uniting Oath Keepers and other extremist groups. “Be prepared to fight hand to hand,” she wrote. “Now or never.”

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stewart rhodes djt

 

Ethics Compaints Against U.S. Supreme Court, Senate, House

ny times logoNew York Times, Editorial Board: Who Can Rein In the Supreme Court? Editorial Board, May 27, 2023 (print ed.). The Supreme Court will soon issue rulings, on affirmative action, student debt relief, and the First Amendment and gay rights, that have the potential to affect the American public for generations.

And yet public approval of the court is at a historic low. This was true even before the seemingly endless stream of reports over the past few weeks about the justices’ lax ethics. Since a conservative supermajority took control of the court in 2020, it has blown through the guardrails courts are expected to observe — showing little respect for longstanding precedent, reaching out to decide bigger questions than it was asked to and relying on a secretive “shadow docket” to make hugely consequential rulings with no public explanation.

Even Republicans who are happy with the Supreme Court’s recent rulings are voicing their concerns. “What I would urge the court to do is take this moment to instill more public confidence,” Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina said during the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on ethics at the Supreme Court on May 2. “I think we’d all be better off if they did that.”

Mr. Graham is right: The nine justices — unelected and employed for life — are shielded from the usual mechanisms of democratic accountability, and so they depend on a high level of public trust like no other institution of American government. Their failure to take the steps necessary to restore that trust, steps that are entirely within their control, is undermining their legitimacy as one of the country’s most vital institutions.

Instead the justices are behaving as though the same laws they interpret for everyone else don’t apply to them. They’re not entirely wrong. In most other government jobs, people can be fired for disregarding laws or ethical obligations, but the justices can be confident that they will face no consequences. Federal laws that explicitly apply to them — involving, for example, financial disclosures and recusal standards — are not enforced, leaving the justices to self-police, and the highest court is not bound by a code of ethics as the lower federal courts are.

The “separation of powers” was never meant to allow each branch the license to act without any involvement by the others. Rather, the American system of government is expressly designed for each branch to check the power of the others. A president can veto a bill passed by Congress. The Supreme Court can strike down an executive order or federal law. And Congress can regulate the size, jurisdiction and other administrative aspects of the Supreme Court, including judicial ethics, as it has going back to the first Judiciary Act in 1789 — a law that passed, notably, by a Congress that included many of the framers of the Constitution itself.

In recent years, however, Congress has failed to live up to its coequal status in the federal government, avoiding even mild confrontation with the Supreme Court. During the Judiciary Committee hearing, Mr. Graham said he did not want to “micromanage” the court by forcing it to adopt an ethics code. But this hands-off approach has allowed the justices to decide for themselves what rules to follow and whether or not to explain their reasoning to the public.

There is recent precedent for bipartisan action regulating the court. Last year, Congress passed a law amending its 1978 ethics law to require the reporting, in an online database searchable by the public, of stock transfers over $1,000 by all federal judges, including the justices. Already, justices have filed reports under this law, suggesting that they accept Congress’s authority to legislate in this area.

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U.S. Supreme Court Associate Justice Clarence Thomas, left, and his billionaire friend and benefactor Harlan Crow (file photos).

U.S. Supreme Court Associate Justice Clarence Thomas, left, and his billionaire friend and benefactor Harlan Crow (file photos).

 

More On U.S. Courts, Crime, Guns, Immigration

washington post logoWashington Post, Judges rebuke Social Security for errors as disability denials stack up, Lisa Rein, May 27, 2023 (print ed.). Hurled from a road-paving machine, Michael Sheldon tumbled 50 feet down a Colorado slope and struck a mound of boulders headfirst on a summer day in 2006. After eight surgeries to his head, neck and spinal cord, his debilitating headaches, chronic pain and post-traumatic stress have made it impossible to return to his work preparing roads for new subdivisions.

social security administrationYet for more than a decade, the Social Security Administration repeatedly denied Sheldon’s full claim for disability benefits that would pay him $1,415 a month.

Even after three federal judges found significant errors with how his case was handled and sent it back to Social Security for new hearings, the agency continued to reject Sheldon, court documents show.

“They’ve done everything to prolong this to get me to quit,” he said after testifying in March at his fifth hearing. Now 59, he lives with his wife in a trailer in Cortez, Colo., and depends on food stamps and state benefits for the indigent. “I can’t replace the battery on a vehicle. Why has this taken 14 years?”

Like Sheldon, thousands of other disabled Americans battle for years for benefits, even after federal courts rule in their favor.

In the last two fiscal years, federal judges considering appeals for denied benefits found fault with almost 6 in every 10 cases and sent them back to administrative law judges at Social Security for new hearings — the highest rate of rejections in years, agency statistics show. Court remands are on pace to reach similar levels this year.

Federal judges have complained of legal errors, inaccurate assessments of whether claimants can work, failures to consider medical evidence and factual mistakes, according to court rulings and Social Security’s own data. The scathing opinions have come from district and appellate court judges across the political spectrum, from conservatives appointed by President Ronald Reagan to liberal appointees of President Barack Obama.

ny times logoNew York Times, This Little-Known Pandemic-Era Tax Credit Has Become a Magnet for Fraud, Alan Rappeport, May 27, 2023 (print ed.). The Employee Retention Credit spawned a cottage industry of firms claiming to help businesses gain access to stimulus funds, often in violation of rules.

In early February, federal prosecutors in Utah accused Zachary Bassett and Mason Warr of cheating the United States government out of millions of dollars. The accounting firm they operated had submitted more than 1,000 fraudulent tax forms to the Internal Revenue Service on behalf of businesses trying to claim pandemic-era stimulus funds, the prosecutors said.

irs logoCOS Accounting and Tax shut down later that month, leaving businesses and taxpayers that had paid the firm to help them claim federal money trying to figure out what had happened and why they were suddenly receiving audit notices from the I.R.S.

Amid the onset of the pandemic in 2020, as large swaths of the economy went into lockdown, Washington set up various programs to help keep businesses and their workers afloat. Among them was the Employee Retention Credit, a tax benefit that was created as part of the initial $2 trillion pandemic relief legislation. The program offered businesses thousands of dollars per employee if they could show that Covid-19 was hurting their bottom lines and that they were continuing to pay workers.

The money was intended to be a lifeline for struggling companies. Instead, it has become a magnet for fraud, creating a cottage industry of firms that market themselves as tax credit specialists who can help clients — even those who don’t actually qualify for the money — reap huge refunds from the I.R.S. Although the public health emergency is over, taxpayers can continue to apply for the tax credit until 2025. That has fueled a run for the money and the proliferation of financial service providers, who often charge hefty upfront fees or take cuts of around 25 percent of any tax refund.

The tax credit has become so popular that it is turning out to be far more costly than expected. In 2021, after Congress expanded eligibility for the credit, the Congressional Budget Office projected that it would cost the federal government about $85 billion over a decade — up from an earlier estimate of $55 billion. However, even that turned out to be an underestimation: the I.R.S. said it has already paid out $152 billion in refunds associated with the tax credit since it first became available and has a backlog of about 800,000 applications that it is trying to process.

The I.R.S. does not yet know how many of the approved refunds were based on fraudulent applications. But it has begun ramping up efforts to root out scams and focusing additional scrutiny on filings from firms that appear suspicious.

On Thursday, the I.R.S. issued a warning to businesses to be on the lookout for “scams” related to the tax credit, saying it was fueling a flood of “invalid” applications.

washington post logoWashington Post, FBI files reveal 1983 threat to kill Queen Elizabeth II during U.S. visit, Victoria Bisset, May 28, 2023 (print ed.). The FBI uncovered a potential threat to kill Queen Elizabeth II during the 1980s while she was visiting the United States, files released online by the agency show.

The queen and her husband, Prince Philip, visited the United States from February to March 1983, at a time when Northern Ireland was experiencing a long period of sectarian violence known as the Troubles.

According to the 102-page document on the FBI’s online vault, the threat came in a phone call from a man who claimed his daughter had been killed by a rubber bullet fired by British forces in Northern Ireland.

The man said he “was going to attempt to harm Queen Elizabeth” during her trip by dropping an object onto the royal yacht from San Francisco’s Golden Gate Bridge or in an attack when she visited Yosemite National Park, the report said.

The intelligence came via a police officer who frequented a pub popular with sympathizers of the paramilitary Irish Republican Army (IRA), which opposed British rule in Northern Ireland, the report added.

The report also noted that the U.S. Secret Service was planning to close the Golden Gate Bridge’s pedestrian walkway, but the document did not contain details of any arrests.

The files give an insight into the FBI’s efforts to manage risks arising from the monarch’s private and public visits to the United States from the 1970s onward, and they note that “several anonymous threatening telephone calls” about her were made to local police.

Many of the perceived threats the FBI assessed were related to the IRA, which killed the queen’s cousin Louis Mountbatten with a bomb planted on his fishing boat in Ireland in 1979.

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U.S. Politics, Elections, Governance

ny times logoNew York Times, Feinstein, Back in the Senate, Relies Heavily on Staff to Function, Annie Karni, May 28, 2023. Senator Dianne Feinstein of California is surrounded by a large entourage of aides who tell her how and when to vote, and shield her from the public.

When Senator Dianne Feinstein entered a hearing room this month to reclaim her seat on the Senate Judiciary Committee after a monthslong absence, she was accompanied by a phalanx of aides.

Two staff members settled the 89-year-old California Democrat into a chair at the dais as the assembled senators greeted their ailing colleague with a round of applause. When Ms. Feinstein spoke — during a vote on one of several of President Biden’s judicial nominees whose approval had awaited her return — she appeared to read from a piece of paper handed to her by a female aide seated behind her.

“I ask to be recorded as voting in person on the three nominees considered earlier, Mr. Chairman, and I vote aye now,” she said.

The aide knelt next to her and whispered into her ear in between votes — popping up repeatedly from her seat to confer with the senator, at one point clearing away the paper Ms. Feinstein had read from and presenting her with a folder that appeared to contain background information about the nominees.

The scene was typical of Ms. Feinstein’s day-to-day existence on Capitol Hill, where she is surrounded by a retinue of staff members who serve not only the roles of typical congressional aides — advising on policy, keeping tabs on the schedule, drafting statements and speeches — but also as de facto companions to a senator whose age, frail health and memory issues make it difficult for her to function alone.

Their roles have come under more scrutiny as a number of Democrats and many of Ms. Feinstein’s constituents are increasingly concerned about her refusal to relinquish a post that she is not capable of fulfilling without heavy and constant reliance on her aides.

They push her wheelchair, remind her how and when she should vote and step in to explain what is happening when she grows confused. They stay with her in the cloak room just off the Senate floor, where Ms. Feinstein has taken to waiting her turn to vote, then appearing in the doorway to register her “aye” or “nay” from the outer edge of the chamber.

 Democratic-Republican Campaign logos

washington post logoWashington Post, Boebert dismisses antisemitism push as effort to target conservatives, Meryl Kornfield, May 27, 2023 (print ed.). After White House announces initiative to combat hatred of Jews, GOP congresswoman says it’s a way to ‘go after conservatives.’

President Biden on Thursday released the country’s first national strategy for combating antisemitism, a landmark lauded by Jewish and anti-hate groups as progress toward addressing the increasing instances of violence and bias toward Jewish people in the United States.

lauren boebertBut Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.), right, saw the effort as an attack on those of her political persuasion. “When they say stuff like this, they mean they want to go after conservatives,” she tweeted. “Their tactics are straight out of the USSR’s playbook.”

djt maga hatHer comments quickly attracted criticism from detractors who accused her of conflating a straightforward campaign against antisemitism with an assault on the right — and, by implication, equating conservatives with antisemites.

“So you agree? You think you’re antisemitic?” Rep. Sara Jacobs (D-Calif.) tweeted in a popular meme format from the teen comedy “Mean Girls.”

In response to questions about her tweet, Boebert’s office provided a statement equating the anti-hate effort with censorship of free speech and adding that she does not condone antisemitism.

washington post logoWashington Post, Federal workers want to know what the debt ceiling fight means for them, Lisa Rein, May 28, 2023 (print ed.). With the threat of government default looming, the unions representing anxious federal workers have pressed the Biden administration for guidance on what a debt ceiling calamity might mean for their millions of members.

So far, the official answer has been consistent: We have nothing to tell you.

“‘We’re saying, ‘We don’t have a handle on this, and we need to get a handle on it,’” said Jefferson Friday, general counsel for the 100,000-member National Federation of Federal Employees, who was planning at a Zoom meeting Friday to bear down again on officials at the Office of Personnel Management. “They’re saying, ‘We don’t know anything.’ Or whatever they did know, they weren’t allowed to tell us.”

The 2.1 million employees who keep the vast federal government afloat find themselves in a precarious limbo as talks between the White House and House Republicans to raise the country’s borrowing limit approach a June 1 deadline, when the Treasury Department warns that the government might no longer be able to pay its bills. Bipartisan negotiations were proceeding Friday, but the White House and House Republicans hadn’t yet reached a final agreement to avert the crisis.

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More on Ukraine War

washington post logoWashington Post, Kyiv readies for counteroffensive as commander vows to ‘take back what’s ours,’ Kelsey Ables, Adela Suliman and Nick Parke, May 28, 2023 (print ed.). Ukrainian officials continue to talk up a much-anticipated counteroffensive against Russia, with the commander in chief of Ukraine’s army, Gen. Valery Zaluzhny, on Saturday releasing an “informational support campaign” video venerating his military forces and promising that “the time has come to take back what’s ours.”

ukraine flagThe recent warm, dry weather in southern Ukraine has raised expectations that the spring counterattack could begin soon — or may already be underway. President Volodymyr Zelensky and others have described the looming campaign as a make-or-break chance to show Western backers, who have provided military aid and training, that Ukraine is capable of taking back its land from Russia.

Here’s the latest on the war and its effects around the globe.

  • Key developments
  • Ukraine’s counteroffensive could begin “tomorrow, the day after tomorrow or in a week,” another senior Ukrainian security official, Oleksiy Danilov, told the BBC in an interview Saturday, describing it as a “historic opportunity” that “we cannot lose.” An adviser to Zelensky, Mykhailo Podolyak, has cautioned that Ukraine would not necessarily make a formal announcement before an offensive. “This is not a ‘single event’ that will begin at a specific hour of a specific day with a solemn cutting of the red ribbon,” he tweeted.
  • Wagner troops are withdrawing from positions around the embattled city of Bakhmut, according to Britain’s defense ministry. The Saturday observation Russian Flagaligns with comments made by the group’s chief Yevgeniy Prigozhin that his troops are rebasing, to be replaced by regular Russian military forces. Ukrainian officials have also noted withdrawals from the outskirts of Bakhmut, which Russia took control of this month after a months-long battle. “Wagner forces will likely be used for further offensive operations in the Donbas following reconstituting its forces,” the intelligence update from the ministry added.
  • A Russian governor said two drones had caused an explosion, damaging the administrative building of an oil pipeline, early Saturday in the region of Pskov in northwestern Russia. Mikhail Vedernikov said on Telegram that the incident occurred near the village of Litvinovo; there were no casualties. The Washington Post could not independently verify his assertions. They follow reported attacks causing damage in Russian territory in recent weeks, for which Ukraine has denied any involvement.
  • President Biden criticized Russia’s plans to host tactical nuclear weapons in neighboring Belarus, saying his reaction to that was “extremely negative.” His comments on Friday came a day after Russia’s defense minister was in Minsk to sign the agreement with its ally. The European Union’s foreign policy chief, Josep Borrell, also condemned the deal, warning: “This is a step which will lead to further extremely dangerous escalation.”
  • Lawyers for U.S. reporter Evan Gershkovich appealed a three-month extension of his pretrial detention in Russia. Gershkovich was detained in March and accused of spying, which he; rights groups; and his employer, the Wall Street Journal, have denied. The United States considers him “wrongfully detained.”

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President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine in Hiroshima on Saturday (Ludovic Marin for Agence France-Presse via Getty Images).

President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine in Hiroshima on Saturday (Ludovic Marin for Agence France-Presse via Getty Images).

 

More Global News, Views

ny times logoNew York Times, A Russian Deserter’s Flight to Norway Presents a Fraught Dilemma, Anatoly Kurmanaev and Henrik Pryser Libell, May 28, 2023. Andrei Medvedev fought with Russia’s Wagner mercenaries in Ukraine, then requested asylum in Norway. The authorities there must now weigh his plea against solidarity with Ukraine.

Sipping a $12 beer in one of the world’s wealthiest capitals, Andrei Medvedev reflected on the question hanging over him since he left the battlefields of Ukraine: Is he a hero or a war criminal?

He claims to have deserted from Russia’s notorious Wagner mercenary force during the monumental battle for the Ukrainian city of Bakhmut, and later to have escaped his native Russia by running across a frozen Arctic river. Now in Norway, Mr. Medvedev, 26, is seeking asylum, while providing information on Wagner to Norwegian authorities.

Since arriving in the country in January, Mr. Medvedev has voluntarily attended about a dozen interviews with Norwegian police officers investigating war crimes in Ukraine, including his potential role in them. Mr. Medvedev has described killing Ukrainians in combat and witnessing summary executions of comrades accused of cowardice. He claims that he did not participate or witness war crimes such as killings of prisoners of war and civilians.

“Yes, I have killed, I saw comrades die. It was war,” he said in an interview at an Oslo bar. “I have nothing to hide.”

His unlikely journey has made Mr. Medvedev one of only a handful of publicly known Russian combatants to seek protection in Europe after participating in the invasion. His asylum request is now forcing Norway to decide a case that pits the country’s humanitarian ethos against an increasingly assertive national security policy and solidarity with Ukraine.

To his lawyer, the credible threat of revenge facing Mr. Medvedev if he were sent back home qualifies him for asylum. And some Norwegian politicians have said that encouraging soldiers like Mr. Medvedev to defect would weaken Russia’s army and hasten the end of the war.

But as Norway evaluates his claim, it is facing pressure from activists in Ukraine and Western Europe, who say giving safe haven in Europe to Russian fighters, especially mercenaries like Mr. Medvedev, fails to hold Russians accountable for the invasion. And the former fighter may have complicated his own request with bar fights and detentions in Norway, and by briefly posting a video on YouTube suggesting he wanted to return to Russia.

Wayne Madsen Report, Investigative Commentary: Canada also has a Russiagate problem, Wayne Madsen, May 25, 2023. Canada has an emerging “Russiagate” of wayne madsen may 29 2015 cropped Smallits own to deal with.

After revelations of Chinese influence in Canadian elections emerged, with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau ordering a $140,000 donation directed by the Chinese government to the Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation -- named for the prime minister’s father – the Trudeau government appointed former Governor-wayne madesen report logoGeneral David Johnston as a special rapporteur on foreign interference.

Johnston’s mandate was to investigate all facets of foreign interference in Canadian elections dealing not only with the attempt by Beijing to influence the government with its donation to the Trudeau Foundation but also China’s targeting of the Hong Kong family of Conservative MP Michael Chong after he spoke out against China’s treatment of the Uighurs in western China. Canada responded to the targeting of Chong’s family by expelling Chinese diplomat Zhao Wei for his involvement in applying pressure on Wong.

Although Johnston was able to meet with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, the titular leader of the Liberal Party in the House of Commons, and the leaders of the New Democratic Party and Bloc Quebecois, to discuss foreign interference in Canadian elections, the extreme right-wing Conservative Leader of the Opposition, Pierre Poilievre, refused to meet with Johnston.

Poilievre, who has been likened to Texas Senator Ted Cruz due to his acerbic personality, called Johnston’s special rapporteur position a “fake job.” Poilievre characterized Johnston as a “ski buddy, cottage neighbor, and family friend” of Prime Minister Trudeau.

Poilievre may have other reasons to have avoided talking to Johnston. An earlier independent report by former Deputy Justice Minister Morris Rosenberg, titled “Report on the assessment of the 2021 Critical Election Incident Public Protocol,” which was commissioned by the Privy Council Office, concluded that, in addition to China, Russia had attempted to interfere in elections in 2019 and 2021. Prior to the 2019 election, Trudeau warned: “We saw very clearly that countries like Russia are behind a lot of the divisive campaigns, a lot of the divisive social media, you know, spreads that have turned our politics even more divisive and more anger-filled than they have been in the past.”

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More On Probes, Suits Against Trump

ny times logoNew York Times, Mar-a-Lago Worker Provided Prosecutors New Details in Trump Documents Case, Alan Feuer and Maggie Haberman, May 27, 2023 (print ed.). A maintenance worker for the former president recounted helping to move boxes into a storage room a day before a Justice Department official came.

The day before a key meeting last year between a lawyer for former President Donald J. Trump and officials seeking the return of classified documents in Mr. Trump’s possession, a maintenance worker at the former president’s private club saw an aide moving boxes into a storage room, according to a person familiar with the matter.

The maintenance worker offered to help the aide — Walt Nauta, who was Mr. Trump’s valet in the White House — move the boxes and ended up lending him a hand. But the worker had no idea what was inside the boxes, the person familiar with the matter said. The maintenance worker has shared that account with federal prosecutors, the person said.

The worker’s account is potentially significant to prosecutors as they piece together details of how Mr. Trump handled sensitive documents he took with him from the White House upon leaving office and whether he obstructed efforts by the Justice Department and the National Archives to retrieve them.

Mr. Trump was found to have been keeping some of the documents in the storage room where Mr. Nauta and the maintenance worker were moving boxes on the day before the Justice Department’s top counterintelligence official, Jay Bratt, traveled to Mar-a-Lago last June to seek the return of any government materials being held by the former president.

The detail about the timing of Mr. Nauta’s interaction with the maintenance worker was reported earlier by The Washington Post. A lawyer for Mr. Nauta declined to comment. A lawyer for the maintenance worker would not publicly discuss the matter.

The New York Times reported this month that prosecutors had obtained cooperation from a witness who worked at Mar-a-Lago. Among other things, the witness provided investigators with a picture of the storage room.

The investigation, overseen by the special counsel, Jack Smith, has shown signs of entering its final phases, and this week lawyers for Mr. Trump — who is the current front-runner for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination — asked for a meeting to discuss the case with Attorney General Merrick B. Garland.

Meidas Touch Network, Commentary: Jack Smith’s SECRET WITNESS against Trump finally Revealed, Michael Popok, May 27, 2023. Michael Popok of Legal AF reports on breaking developments in the fast moving Jack Smith Mar-a-Lago criminal investigation of Trump, including new testimony and cooperation by an unnamed Mar-a-Lago maintenance worker who with photos and new facts shows that Trump orchestrated a scheme to hide classified documents from the FBI and DOJ.

Salon, Commentary: Trump and the Saudis: Is Jack Smith finally looking at this clear-cut corruption? Heather Digby Parton, May 26, 2023. Trump's links to the Saudi regime and its LIV Golf tour reek of obvious corruption. Maybe Jack Smith has noticed.

There's a lot of Trump legal news these days, what with the E. Jean Carroll verdict, the Manhattan hush money indictment, the news that Fulton County, Georgia, D.A. Fani Willis has put local authorities on notice to anticipate "something" coming in August, and a cascade of reporting on special counsel Jack Smith's investigation into the Mar-a-Lago classified documents case, with some suggestions evidence that will come to a conclusion very soon.

The possible Jan. 6 case against Donald Trump himself remains more obscure, but with the sentencing of Oath Keeper Stewart Rhodes to 18 years in prison for plotting the insurrection on Thursday, it's hard to see how Trump, who incited the riot, isn't equally implicated in what happened that day. But for some reason one obvious case has gotten very little media attention and, as far as we know, very little attention from investigators: Trump's cozy financial relationship with the Saudi-sponsored Public Investment Fund, the desert kingdom's massive sovereign wealth fund. (Its assets are estimated at more than $620 billion.)
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It's not at all surprising that the Republican House isn't looking into this. They're busy trying to find disappearing informants in the Hunter Biden laptop case and digging through the Biden family finances. Why the Democratic-led Senate hasn't bothered is another question. But it's obvious that Trump and his family are deeply financially involved with the Saudi government, and considering the fact that Trump is running for president yet again, it's shocking that nobody seems to care.

While all the other GOP presidential candidates were busy campaigning on Thursday, USA Today reported that Trump was kicking back at Trump National Golf Course in Virginia, which will soon host a tournament on the Saudi-backed LIV Golf tour — the third at a property owned by the former president just this year. (Two more will be scheduled at Trump properties in New Jersey and Florida.) Last year, Trump — in typically obtuse style — even scheduled a tournament at the New Jersey club on Sept. 11, drawing outrage from the families of 9/11 victims. Trump said he didn't know what they were talking about and defended Saudi Arabia, telling ESPN that "nobody has gotten to the bottom of 9/11."

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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.

 

More On U.S. Presidential Race

 

ron desantis mouth open uncredited

ny times logoNew York Times, Ron DeSantis Plows Ahead With Campaign Tour After Digital Rollout Misfires, Nicholas Nehamas, Maggie Astor and Alan Blinder, May 26, 2023 (print ed.). Trying to regroup after a bumpy Twitter rollout, the Florida governor sought to make new headlines ahead of a trip to Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina.

Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida plunged into his first full day of presidential campaigning on Thursday after his sputtering Twitter rollout the night before, holding a series of interviews with friendly conservative commentators and announcing a series of in-person events in Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina next week.

republican elephant logoFor Mr. DeSantis, the immediate challenge appeared to be moving past the rough kickoff and appealing to a mainstream Republican audience, after a Twitter discussion with the billionaire Elon Musk that often strayed into online right-wing grievances and away from the issues voters say they care about most, like the economy.

Acknowledging that a “very small percentage” of Republican primary voters were on Twitter, Mr. DeSantis defended his decision to announce his campaign on the social media platform.

“We felt that there would be a lot of buzz about it,” he told the conservative radio host Erick Erickson on Thursday afternoon. “And I think that was probably the biggest story in the world yesterday. And so hopefully we’ll get some people interested in our campaign who may not have been otherwise.” 

ny times logoNew York Times, Opinion: How the Internet Shrank Musk and DeSantis, Ross Douthat, May 28, 2023 (print ed.). If you had told me several months ago, ross douthat newerimmediately after Elon Musk bought Twitter and Ron DeSantis celebrated a thumping re-election victory, that DeSantis would launch his presidential campaign in conversation with Musk, I would have thought, intriguing: The rightward-trending billionaire whose rockets and cars stand out in an economy dominated by apps and financial instruments meets the Republican politician whose real-world victories contrast with the virtual populism of Donald Trump.

The actual launch of DeSantis’s presidential campaign, in a “Twitter Spaces” event that crashed repeatedly and played to a smaller audience than he would have claimed just by showing up on Fox, instead offered the political version of the lesson that we’ve been taught repeatedly by Musk’s stewardship of Twitter: The internet can be a trap.

For the Tesla and SpaceX mogul, the trap was sprung because Musk wanted to attack the groupthink of liberal institutions, and seeing that groupthink manifest on his favorite social media site, he imagined that owning Twitter was the key to transforming public discourse.

But for all its influence, social media is still downstream of other institutions — universities, newspapers, television channels, movie studios, other internet platforms. Twitter is real life, but only through its relationship to other realities; it doesn’t have the capacity to be a hub of discourse, news gathering or entertainment on its own. And many of Musk’s difficulties as the Twitter C.E.O. have reflected a simple overestimation of social media’s inherent authority and influence.

Thus he’s tried to sell the privilege of verification, the famous “blue checks,” without recognizing that they were valued because of their connection to real-world institutions and lose value if they reflect a Twitter hierarchy alone. Or he’s encouraged his favored journalists to publish their scoops and essays on his site when it isn’t yet built out for that kind of publication. Or he’s encouraged media figures like Tucker Carlson and now politicians like DeSantis to run shows or do interviews on his platform, without having the infrastructure in place to make all that work.

It’s entirely possible that Musk can build out that infrastructure eventually, and make Twitter more capacious than it is today. But there isn’t some immediate social-media shortcut to the influence he’s seeking. If you want Twitter to be the world’s news hub, you probably need a Twitter newsroom. If you want Twitter to host presidential candidates, you probably need a Twitter channel that feels like a professional newscast. And while you’re trying to build those things, you need to be careful that the nature of social media doesn’t diminish you to the kind of caricatured role — troll instead of tycoon — that tempts everyone on Twitter.

Wayne Madsen Report, Investigative Commentary: Are we seeing another Opus Dei power behind a politician? Wayne Madsen, May 26, 2023. It matters not that wayne madsen may 29 2015 cropped Small2024 Republican presidential candidate and Florida governor Ron DeSantis has a Bachelor of Arts degree from Yale and a law degree from Harvard.

Notwithstanding those academic credentials, DeSantis has shown himself not only to be a textbook fascist but also an inept campaigner on a wayne madesen report logonational stage. As the DeSantis presidential campaign receives the spotlight of the media, one thing is becoming clear. The governor’s wife, Casey DeSantis, [left] someone who attempted to mimic First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy during her husband’s second gubernatorial casey desantis childreninauguration ceremony, reportedly holds views more extreme than those of the governor. Mrs. DeSantis is a former television anchor for the Golf Channel and WJXT in Jacksonville. She also appears to be the actual power behind DeSantis’s political rise.

Casey DeSantis is not the first spousal manipulator who has manipulated the puppet strings of a politician. Eva Peron exercised a tremendous amount of influence over her husband, Argentine dictator Juan Peron. So, too, did Elena Ceausescu over her husband, Romanian Communist strongman Nicolae Ceausescu.

The control that Mrs. DeSantis has over her husband is best described in terms of the movie "The Manchurian Candidate," in which Eleanor Iselin (played by Angela Lansbury) controls every facet of the presidential campaign of her husband, Senator John Iselin (played by John Gregory).

American politics has also experienced its share of spousal manipulators. It is known that far-right extremist Ginni Thomas has influenced the Supreme Court decisions of her husband, Associate Justice Clarence Thomas. Less well-known is Linda Poindexter, a former Episcopalian priest in the Diocese of Washington and the wife of former National Security Adviser and Iran-contra figure Admiral John Poindexter. In 2001, Mrs. Poindexter shocked the Episcopalian establishment in Washington by converting to Roman Catholicism. While Mrs. Thomas and Mrs. Poindexter have been strong influences over their husbands, they have something else in common. Both women are active in the right-wing Catholic sect – some would call it cult -- Opus Dei, founded by Josémaria Escriva [right] in Spain in 1928. Escriva, who was canonized in 2002 by Pope John Paul II, served as a religious and political adviser to Spanish Fascist dictator Francisco Franco.

Today, Opus Dei, derisively called “Octopus Dei” by its critics, has 90,000 members in over 70 countries. There are no publicly accessible Opus Dei official membership directories because secret sects maintain secret records.

What is publicly known is that Opus Dei is a hierarchical organization composed of Supernumeraries, Numerary Assistants, Associates, Priests, and Cooperators. Some Opus Dei members influential in the Republican Party have been revealed. They include Fox’s Laura Ingraham, CNBC’s Larry Kudlow (a former economic adviser in the Trump White House), former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, Trump White House counsel Pat Cipollone, and former Trump Attorney General William Barr. Opus Dei’s Washington headquarters is the Catholic Information Center, an outwardly-appearing bookstore located not far from the White House.

Considering the far-right views of Ron and Casey DeSantis, both Roman Catholics, it would not be surprising if they are both tied to Opus Dei.

washington post logoWashington Post, Nikki Haley let the Confederate flag fly until a massacre at a Black church forced her hand, Michael Kranish, May 28, 2023 (print ed.). She told Confederate groups that flag was about “heritage,” and her campaign said efforts to remove it from the State House grounds were “desperate and irresponsible.”

Amid her barrier-breaking first run for governor, Nikki Haley took time off the trail for an unusual event: A private meeting with two leaders of Confederate heritage groups.

The men listened during the 2010 conversation as the Republican candidate assured them that she shared their worldview. She said the Civil War was a fight between “tradition” and “change,” without mentioning the word slavery. She said she supported Confederate History Month as a parallel to Black History Month.

And, as the daughter of Indian immigrants, she suggested that her identity as a minority woman could help her take on the NAACP, which was leading a boycott of the state until the Confederate flag was taken off the State House grounds.

“I will work to talk to them about the heritage and how this is not something that is racist,” Haley said in a discussion captured on video.

Haley’s outreach to Confederate groups reflects a more complex backstory than she has previously acknowledged about her most famous act: Signing legislation five years later that removed the Confederate flag from the State House grounds in the wake of a racist massacre at a Black church in Charleston.

As Haley rose from governor to U.N. ambassador under President Donald Trump, she often portrayed the decision as the culmination of her work to move South Carolina beyond its history of secession, enslavement and segregation. The reason she didn’t try to take down the flag sooner, Haley claimed in her 2019 memoir, was because members of both parties had “pushed back” against the idea, adding that “even many African American Democrats were privately opposed to the idea of reopening the flag debate.”

Yet a Washington Post review of Haley’s actions in the five years before the massacre found that she repeatedly dismissed efforts to remove the flag, mollified Confederate heritage groups whose influence remained a powerful force, and did not hold substantive discussions with Black leaders who wanted to remove the flag. Months before the mass killing that changed her position, her reelection campaign had called a proposal by her Democratic opponent to remove the flag “desperate and irresponsible.”

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U.S. Abortion, Birth Control, #MeToo

ny times logoNew York Times, Indiana Reprimands Doctor Who Provided Abortion to 10-Year-Old Rape Victim, Ava Sasani, May 27, 2023 (print ed.). Dr. Caitlin Bernard violated the privacy of her young patient by discussing the girl’s case with a reporter, the state’s medical board ruled.

\An Indiana doctor who provided an abortion to a 10-year-old rape victim last year violated her young patient’s privacy by discussing the case with a reporter, the state’s medical board ruled Thursday night.

Dr. Caitlin Bernard, an Indianapolis obstetrician-gynecologist, catapulted into the national spotlight last year after she provided an abortion for an Ohio girl soon after the Supreme Court decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, which left states free to severely restrict or outlaw abortion.

The state’s medical board voted to issue Dr. Bernard a letter of reprimand and a fine of $3,000. But it decided against stiffer penalties, which could have included suspension or probation, instead deciding that Dr. Bernard is fit to return to her practice.

The board also cleared her of other allegations that she failed to appropriately report the girl’s rape to authorities.

The decision was the culmination of a yearlong legal pursuit of Dr. Bernard by the state’s attorney general, Todd Rokita, a Republican who opposes abortion.

The Ohio girl had traveled to Indiana for the procedure after her home state enacted a ban on most abortions after six weeks of pregnancy. Dr. Bernard told a reporter for the Indianapolis Star about the case during an abortion rights rally. She didn’t name the patient, but the case quickly became a flash point in the early, heated days of debate after the Supreme Court ruling, catching the attention of President Biden and turning conservative attention and ire toward Dr. Bernard.

“I don’t think she intended for this to go viral,” said Dr. John Strobel, the president of the board, calling Dr. Bernard a “good doctor.”

“But I do think we as physicians need to be more careful in this situation,” he said.

Mr. Rokita, who had filed the complaints against Dr. Bernard with the medical board, praised the outcome.

“This case was about patient privacy and the trust between the doctor and the patient that was broken,” Mr. Rokita said in a statement late Thursday. “What if it was your child or your patient or your sibling who was going through a sensitive medical crisis, and the doctor, who you thought was on your side, ran to the press for political reasons?”

Dr. Bernard has criticized Mr. Rokita for turning the case into a “political stunt.”

During the hearing, which stretched for more than 15 hours, ending just before midnight, Dr. Bernard said that her own comments did not reveal the patient’s protected health information. Rather, Dr. Bernard said, it was the fierce political battle that followed. Some conservatives doubted her story and drove a demand to confirm it. Eventually, the man accused of raping the girl appeared in court and was linked to her case.

Dr. Bernard, who has publicly advocated for abortion rights, said she had an ethical obligation to educate the public about urgent matters of public health, especially questions about reproductive health — her area of expertise.

Dead State, Pastor at Christian college arrested for letting his ‘spiritual mentor’ sexually abuse young boys, Sky Palma, May 26, 2023. Police in Waco, Texas, arrested the former pastor at Baylor University on charges that he allowed a sex offender he called his “spiritual mentor” to sexually abuse two young relatives, the Waco Tribune-Herald reported.

Christopher Hundl, 38, was charged Tuesday with continuous sexual abuse of a child, which is a first-degree felony, and later released on $50,000 bond.

A statement from Baylor University earlier this month revealed that Hundl resigned from his position as minister for the Baylor chapter of Chi Alpha, a “worldwide Christian ministry sponsored by the Assembly of God Church,” according to the Herald.

baylor bears logoChi Alpha has been suspended from the university and is under investigation.

“Baylor University is aware of serious allegations of impropriety among leaders of the independent organization Chi Alpha,” the statement read. “Like all Chi Alpha college-based chapters, Baylor’s organization is led by the assigned Chi Alpha ministers and staff. These individuals are NOT Baylor employees.”

“We are deeply disturbed and grieved by these serious allegations against Chi Alpha’s leaders, and we will continue to examine Baylor’s affiliated student organization to ensure our students have a healthy and safe co-curricular environment.”

The sex offender in the case has not yet been arrested, according to the Tribune’s report (Graphic):

The warrant names the sex offender, who has not been arrested in this case. The Tribune-Herald is withholding his name at the request of Waco police. According to the warrant, Hundl brought the two children to the Houston home of the convicted sex offender several times between summer 2021 and March 2022. Hundl and the sex offender were in a sauna with the children, who were younger than 14 when the offense occurred, when the man instructed the children to masturbate in front of them, the warrant says. The warrant says similar abuse occurred at Hundl’s home in Waco while the sex offender was present. According to the warrant, the sex offender also abused the two children by touching them inappropriately while Hundl was present.

Other reports describe the victims as two boys, one of whom was 11 when the abuse occurred. The boy told investigators that Hundl and his sex offender accomplice told him not to tell anyone about the abuse.

Hundl reportedly said that the sex offender was like a “grandfather” to the children.

washington post logoWashington Post, In middle age, they realized they were trans: ‘A lightbulb went off’, Tara Bahrampour, May 28, 2023 (print ed.). Roughly a fifth of trans adults 45 and older have not told anyone they are trans, a Washington Post-KFF poll conducted late last year found.

Ray Gibson spent half a century living as a woman before realizing he might be a man.

Growing up in Omaha in the 1960s and ’70s as the child of the Hall of Fame pitcher Bob Gibson, he always felt something was off. At age 6, “I thought, ‘Gee, I’m the son my dad doesn’t know he has.’” When he got his period at age 13, he locked himself in the bathroom, screaming and crying.

“My mom came to the door — ‘What’s the matter? What’s the matter?’” he said. “I said, ‘I want a sex change.’ ... I’d never heard of such a thing. So I don’t even know where it came from. It came from my soul.”

For people with gender dysphoria, 20th-century America was a lonely place to grow up. Terms like “transgender” and “nonbinary” had not entered the common lexicon, and if transgender people appeared in popular culture at all, they were often portrayed as murderers, sex workers or homicide victims. There was no internet where people could seek out expertise or find community. The local library was the main source of information, and it often came up short.

Many came out as gay or lesbian, or hewed to a cisgender heterosexual presentation, but the sense of disharmony persisted. Only later in life, as awareness about transgender identity increased, did some recognize that what they were hearing from younger generations also fit them.

Americans who identify as trans today skew young. More than 4 in 10, 43 percent, are between 13 and 24, according to a 2022 report by the UCLA School of Law’s Williams Institute. Teenagers identify as trans at nearly triple the rate of all adults, and nearly five times the rate of people 65 and older. They are growing up at a time when trans role models abound, from classroom teachers to pop stars to Cabinet officials in Washington.

Their parents’ and grandparents’ generations experienced none of this. “You’ll hear of people who felt different and they thought they were the only one in the world,” said Aaron Tax, managing director of government affairs and policy advocacy at SAGE, an advocacy group for LGBTQ+ elders. “Must be a world of difference today, for people who have all kinds of access to trans stories or trans joy.”

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

 

ny times logoNew York Times, You May Have Never Heard of Him, but He’s Remaking the Pollution Fight, Coral Davenport, May 28, 2023. Richard Revesz is changing the way the government calculates the cost and benefits of regulation, with far-reaching implications for climate change.

This spring the Biden administration proposed or implemented eight major environmental regulations, including the nation’s toughest climate rule, rolling out what experts say are the most ambitious limits on polluting industries by the government in a single season.

Piloting all of that is a man most Americans have never heard of, running an agency that is even less well known.

But Richard Revesz has begun to change the fundamental math that underpins federal regulations designed to protect human health and the environment. And those calculations could affect American life and the economy for years to come.

Mr. Revesz, 65, heads the obscure but powerful White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, which is effectively the gatekeeper and final word on all new federal regulations. It has been known as the place where new rules proposed by government agencies, particularly environmental standards, go to die — or at least to be weakened or delayed.

But Mr. Revesz, a climate law expert and former dean of the New York University School of Law, joined the Biden administration in January to flip the script. Each time a major regulatory proposal has landed on his desk, Mr. Revesz has used his authority to strengthen its legal analysis and make it more stringent.

What’s more, he has proposed a new method of calculating the cost of potential regulation that would bolster the legal and economic justifications for those rules to protect them against an expected onslaught of court fights.

With his halo of snowy curls and Spanish lilt — a vestige of his childhood in Argentina — Mr. Revesz is known as “Ricky” to everyone from his law students to his legal opponents. Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan has called him “a legend.” John Podesta, a senior climate adviser to Mr. Biden who also served in top roles in the Obama and Clinton administrations, considers Mr. Revesz his hero.

Conservatives see Mr. Revesz differently.

“He is the professor of gobbledygook!” said Elizabeth Murrill, the solicitor general of Louisiana, who plans to join Republican attorneys general from other states to challenge Mr. Biden’s climate regulations. “He is creating these numbers to try to justify destroying the fossil fuel industry and the petrochemical industry, to justify bankrupting people and destroying their lives. And they say it’s all justified because of the future, because they say they’re saving the planet.”

The climate regulations proposed by the Biden administration, together with $370 billion in clean energy funds from the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act, would catapult the United States to the forefront of the fight to constrain global warming.

 

colorado river w

ny times logoNew York Times, A Breakthrough Deal to Keep the Colorado River From Going Dry, for Now, Christopher Flavelle, May 23, 2023 (print ed.). The agreement on cuts, aided by a wet winter and $1.2 billion in federal payments, expires at the end of 2026.

Arizona, California and Nevada have agreed to take less water from the drought-strained Colorado River (shown aboe, marked in red), a breakthrough agreement that, for now, keeps the river from falling so low that it would jeopardize water supplies for major Western cities like Phoenix and Los Angeles as well as for some of America’s most productive farmland.

colorado river in grand canyon pima point 2010 viewThe agreement, announced Monday, calls for the federal government to pay about $1.2 billion to irrigation districts, cities and Native American tribes in the three states if they temporarily use less water. The states have also agreed to make additional cuts beyond the ones tied to the federal payments to generate the total reductions needed to prevent the collapse of the river.

Taken together, those reductions would amount to about 13 percent of the total water use in the lower Colorado Basin — among the most aggressive ever experienced in the region, and likely to require significant water restrictions for residential and agriculture uses.

The Colorado River supplies drinking water to 40 million Americans in seven states as well as part of Mexico and irrigates 5.5 million acres of farmland. The electricity generated by dams on the river’s two main reservoirs, Lake Mead and Lake Powell, powers millions of homes and businesses.

But drought, population growth and climate change have dropped the river’s flows by one-third in recent years compared with historical averages, threatening to provoke a water and power catastrophe across the West.

California, Arizona and Nevada get their share of water from Lake Mead, which is formed by the Colorado River at the Hoover Dam and is controlled by the federal government. The Bureau of Reclamation, an agency within the Interior Department, determines how much water each of the three states receives. The other states that depend on the Colorado get water directly from the river and its tributaries.

“This is an important step forward toward our shared goal of forging a sustainable path for the basin that millions of people call home,” Camille Calimlim Touton, the Bureau of Reclamation commissioner, said in a statement.

The agreement struck over the weekend runs only through the end of 2026 and still needs to be formally adopted by the federal government. At that point, all seven states that rely on the river — which include Colorado, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming — could face a deeper reckoning, as its decline is likely to continue.

washington post logoWashington Post, Tragedy strikes a rural community torn by miles-long trains: ‘It’s heartbreaking,’ Andrea Salcedo, Luz Lazo and Lee Powell, May 28, 2023 (print ed.). Nationwide, longer and longer trains are obstructing rural intersections, preventing paramedics from getting to emergencies, including a baby who died after his mom waited and waited.

A man suffered a stroke but a stopped train blocked paramedics from reaching him for over an hour. A senior in a nearby retirement community missed his oncologist appointment because another train obstructed that same intersection. A fire crew could not get to a house engulfed in flames until another train eventually cleared the crossing.

For decades, those living along Glover Road in Leggett, Tex. — a rural community with fewer than 150 residents some 80 miles from Houston — wrote letters, sent emails and called authorities pleading that trains stop blocking the neighborhood’s sole point of entry and exit for hours. Some residents and a county judge sent letters addressed to the railroad company, warning of a “greater catastrophe,” including a toxic train disaster.

“Should there be a derailment … we would be dead ducks, having no evacuating route,” Pete Glover, the man whom the street is named after, wrote in a 1992 letter to the railway company. “If some home caught afire,” he added. there’d be “no way for firetrucks to serve them.”

To many in the community, their worst fears were realized in 2021, when baby K’Twon Franklin died. His mother, Monica Franklin, had found the three-month old unresponsive in her bed the morning of Sept. 30, and called 911.

Paramedics responded, but a Union Pacific train blocked their path on Glover Road, according to Franklin and a local police report. It took more than 30 minutes for them to carry K’Twon into an ambulance. Two days later, the baby died at a hospital in Houston. “Unfortunately, the delay has cost my child’s life,” Franklin, 34, told The Washington Post.

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climate change photo

 

Pandemics, Public Health, Privacy

ny times logoNew York Times, Hundreds of Thousands Lose Medicaid Coverage as Pandemic Protections End, Noah Weiland, May 27, 2023 (print ed.). Early data suggests that many recipients are losing their coverage for procedural reasons, even if they are still qualified for it.

Hundreds of thousands of low-income Americans have lost Medicaid coverage in recent weeks as part of a sprawling unwinding of a pandemic-era policy that prohibited states from removing people from the program.

Early data shows that many people lost coverage for procedural reasons, such as when Medicaid recipients did not return paperwork to verify their eligibility or could not be located. The large number of terminations on procedural grounds suggests that many people may be losing their coverage even though they are still qualified for it. Many of those who have been dropped have been children.

From the outset of the pandemic until this spring, states were barred from kicking people off Medicaid under a provision in a coronavirus relief package passed by Congress in 2020. The guarantee of continuous coverage spared people from regular eligibility checks during the public health crisis and caused enrollment in Medicaid to soar to record levels.

But the policy expired at the end of March, setting in motion a vast bureaucratic undertaking across the country to verify who remains eligible for coverage. In recent weeks, states have begun releasing data on who has lost coverage and why, offering a first glimpse of the punishing toll that the so-called unwinding is taking on some of the poorest and most vulnerable Americans.

ny times logoNew York Times, More Teenagers Coming to School High, N.Y.C. Teachers Say, Ashley Southall, May 27, 2023 (print ed.). Students and teachers said in interviews that some classrooms were in disarray as more and younger students were smoking at school.

Ever since Justin, a 15-year-old high school freshman, tried marijuana on his birthday two years ago, he has smoked almost every day, several times a day, he said.

“If I smoke a blunt, after that blunt I’m going to be chill,” he said on a recent morning at a corner deli near his school, the Bronx Design and Construction Academy. “I’m not going to be stressing about nothing at all.”

Another boy came by and flashed two glass tubes of smokable flower. More students were smoking across the street in a doorway and on a stoop. On another corner, a smoke shop frequented by children in backpacks and uniforms opened about half an hour before the first bell.

While it has long been common for some teens to smoke marijuana, teachers and students say that more and younger students are smoking throughout the day and at school.

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U.S. Media, Education, Sports, Arts, High Tech

Politico, EU’s Breton says Twitter ‘can’t hide’ after platform ditches disinformation code, Jordain Carney and Sarah Ferris, May 27, 2023. Fighting disinformation online will be a ‘legal obligation’ under new rules coming into force in August, EU commissioner says.

Twitter has abandoned the EU's code of practice on disinformation, Thierry Breton said late Friday, but Europe's internal markets commissioner insisted that "obligations remain" for the social networking giant.

"You can run but you can’t hide," Breton said in a tweet, after confirming that the platform owned by Elon Musk had left the bloc’s disinformation code, which other major social media platforms have pledged to support.

"Beyond voluntary commitments, fighting disinformation will be a legal obligation under DSA as of August 25," Breton said, referring to the Digital Services Act — new social media rules that include fines of up to 6 percent of a company's annual revenue.

"Our teams will be ready for enforcement," the commissioner said.

The code of practice on disinformation is a voluntary rulebook that includes obligations for platforms to track political advertising, stop the monetization of disinformation, and provide greater access to outsiders. Participation in the code is designed to help offset some of these companies' obligations within the separate and mandatory DSA.

Twitter is one of eight social media platforms that fall under the scope of the DSA. The others are Facebook, TikTok, YouTube, Instagram, LinkedIn, Pinterest and Snapchat.

Breton has publicly vowed that he would personally hold Musk to account for complying with the EU's content rules.

 

Poet Amanda Gorman provided an iconic appeal to youthful idealism by a reading at the 2021 Inauguration of President Joe Biden (Pool photo by Patrick Semansky of the Associated Press). poolPoet Amanda Gorman provided an iconic appeal to youthful idealism by reading her work at the 2021 Inauguration of President Joe Biden (Pool photo by Patrick Semansky of the Associated Press).

washington post logoWashington Post, A Fla. school restricted Amanda Gorman’s book. Here’s what to know, Maham Javaid and Dan Rosenzweig-Ziff, May 25, 2023 (print ed.). One Florida parent thought a portion of Amanda Gorman’s poem, “The Hill We Climb,” contained “indirect hate messages.” As a wave of book challenges spreads across the country, poet Amanda Gorman said she felt “gutted” after learning that a Florida school restricted access to the poem she read at President Biden’s inauguration. The school district denied the book was banned or removed but acknowledged moving it so elementary school students had limited access to it.

The youngest inaugural poet in U.S. history said Tuesday that restrictions like the one placed on her book “The Hill We Climb,” which contains a single, 32-page poem, are on the rise. “We must fight back,” she said.

“So they ban my book from young readers, confuse me with [Oprah Winfrey], fail to specify what parts of my poetry they object to, refuse to read any reviews, and offer no alternatives,” Gorman said via Twitter in reaction to the complaint that challenged her book. Gorman declined to comment when reached through her spokesperson.

Here is what you need to know about the challenges Gorman’s book faces.

washington post logoWashington Post, Just 11 people filed most school book challenges last year, Hannah Natanson, May 24, 2023 (print ed.). Objections to sexual and LGBTQ content propelled a spike in book challenges in school libraries during the 2021-2022 school year.

Books about LGBTQ people are fast becoming the main target of a historic wave of school book challenges — and a large percentage of the complaints come from a minuscule number of hyperactive adults, a first-of-its-kind Washington Post analysis found.

A stated wish to shield children from sexual content is the main factor animating attempts to remove LGBTQ books, The Post found. The second-most common reason cited for pulling LGBTQ texts was an explicit desire to prevent children from reading about lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, nonbinary and queer lives.

The Post requested copies of all book challenges filed in the 2021-2022 school year with the 153 school districts that Tasslyn Magnusson, a researcher employed by free expression advocacy group PEN America, tracked as receiving formal requests to remove books last school year. In total, officials in more than 100 of those school systems, which are spread across 37 states, provided 1,065 complaints totaling 2,506 pages.

The Post analyzed the complaints to determine who was challenging the books, what kinds of books drew objections and why. Nearly half of filings — 43 percent — targeted titles with LGBTQ characters or themes, while 36 percent targeted titles featuring characters of color or dealing with issues of race and racism. The top reason people challenged books was “sexual” content; 61 percent of challenges referenced this concern.

  • Washington Post, School librarians face a new penalty in the banned-book wars: Prison

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ny times logoNew York Times, White House and G.O.P. Strike Debt Limit Deal to Avert Default, Jim Tankersley, Catie Edmondson and Luke Broadwater, May 27, 2023. With the government on track to reach its borrowing limit within days, negotiators sealed an agreement to raise the debt ceiling for two years while cutting and capping certain federal programs.

joe biden resized oPresident Biden and Speaker Kevin McCarthy on Saturday reached an agreement in principle to raise the debt limit for two years while cutting and capping some government spending over the same period, a breakthrough after a marathon set of crisis talks that has brought the nation within days of its first default in history.

kevin mccarthyCongressional passage of the plan before June 5, when the Treasury is projected to exhaust its ability to pay its obligations, is not assured, particularly in the House, which plans to consider it on Wednesday. Republicans hold a narrow majority in the chamber, and right-wing lawmakers who had demanded significantly larger budget cuts in exchange for lifting the borrowing limit were already in revolt.

But the compromise, which would effectively freeze federal spending that had been on track to grow, had the blessing of both the Democratic president and the Republican speaker, raising hopes that it could break the fiscal stalemate that has gripped Washington and the nation for weeks, threatening an economic crisis. The two spoke by phone on Saturday evening to resolve final sticking points.

In a nighttime news conference outside his Capitol office that lasted just one minute, Mr. McCarthy said the deal contained “historic reductions in spending, consequential reforms that will lift people out of poverty into the work force, rein in government overreach” and would add no new taxes. He declined to answer questions or provide specifics, but said he planned to release legislative text on Sunday, ahead of the Wednesday vote.
“We still have more work to do tonight to finish all the writing of it,” he said.

The plan was structured with the aim of enticing votes from both parties, though it has drawn the ire not only of conservative Republicans but also Democrats furious at being asked to vote for cuts they oppose with the threat of default looming.

Still, it gives Republicans the ability to say that they succeeded in reducing some federal spending — even as funding for the military and veterans’ programs would continue to grow — while allowing Democrats to say they spared most domestic programs from significant cuts.

The deal would raise the borrowing limit, which is currently $31.4 trillion, for two years — enough to get past the next presidential election.

kevin mccarthy hallway

washington post logoWashington Post, Debt ceiling negotiators race to cement deal before June 5 deadline, Jeff Stein, Paul Kane, Rachel Siegel and Tony Romm, May 27, 2023 (print ed.). President Biden and House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), ABOVE, report progress on a government spending deal to lift the debt ceiling, but as of Friday no agreement had been reached.

The U.S. government will run out of money to meet all its payment obligations on June 5, if Congress does not raise the debt ceiling, Treasury Secretary Janet L. Yellen told lawmakers on Friday, providing a more precise forecast to lawmakers trying to break an impasse.

Her new projections came as lawmakers struggled to strike a deal that would raise the nation’s borrowing limit and hold spending down, which Republicans have said is necessary to get their support to raise the borrowing limit.

Yellen had previously told Congress that the United States could run out of funds in early June but “as soon as” June 1. Treasury’s new estimate provides more specificity on when the government will exhaust its funds.

“We now estimate that Treasury will have insufficient resources to satisfy the government’s obligations if Congress has not raised or suspended the debt limit by June 5,” Yellen said in a letter.

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washington post logoWashington Post, U.S. leaders gamble with world’s most trusted asset in debt showdown, David J. Lynch, May 27, 2023. Episode could mean higher borrowing costs for government, companies and consumers.

Hundreds of banks, hedge funds and investment managers as soon as early June could begin holding multiple daily conference calls to handle the fallout from a possible U.S. debt default, activating a “break-glass-in-case-of-emergency” playbook that has never before been tried.

If the Treasury Department intends to miss a scheduled payment to bondholders, financial institutions would find out on a call the night before from representatives of the Federal Reserve division that manages the electronic trading of government securities.

The conference calls are part of a road map developed by the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association to help buyers and sellers of government securities deal with an interruption in normal market functioning because of computer failures, natural disasters, terrorism — or political battles over the nation’s finances.

SIFMA’s planning attempts to bring certainty to a high-stakes situation shrouded in unknowns. As the nation hurtles toward a default on its debt, no one knows precisely when the government will run out of money, what it will do when it does, or how investors will react.

What is known is bad enough.

Debt ceiling fallout puts U.S. credit rating in limbo

The nation’s leaders are gambling with the singular financial instrument that global markets use as the measuring stick against which all other assets are priced. Investors regard treasuries as the next best thing to cash. They use them as a safe place to park excess funds as well as a ready source of collateral for loans from the Federal Reserve and sophisticated financial trades with other institutions.

ny times logoNew York Times, ‘It’s Time’: Ukraine’s Top Commander Says Counteroffensive Is Imminent, Marc Santora and Eric Schmitt, May 27, 2023. A blunt statement, accompanied by a video of troops preparing for battle, appeared designed to rally the nation and to spread anxiety among Russian forces.

Ukraine’s top military commander signaled on Saturday morning that the nation’s forces were ready to launch their long-anticipated counteroffensive following months of preparations, including recently stepped-up attacks on logistical targets as well as feints and disinformation intended to keep Russian forces on edge.

“It’s time to get back what’s ours,” Ukraine’s supreme military commander, Gen. Valeriy Zaluzhnyi, wrote in a statement.

The blunt statement, accompanied by a slickly produced video of Ukrainian troops preparing for battle and released on social media, appeared intended to rally a nation weary from 15 months of war and to deepen anxiety within the Russian ranks. But General Zaluzhnyi offered no indication of where and when Ukrainian forces might try to break Russia’s hold on occupied territory.

Other senior Ukrainian officials also suggested that the counteroffensive was imminent.

Oleksiy Danilov, the head of the Ukrainian National Security and Defense Council, told the BBC in an interview released on Saturday that Kyiv’s forces were “ready” and that a large-scale assault could come “tomorrow, the day after tomorrow or in a week.”

 

President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia received Patriarch Kirill, the leader of the Russian Orthodox Church, on Wednesday in Moscow (Photo by Mikhail Klimentyev of Sputnik via Associated Press).

President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia received Patriarch Kirill, the leader of the Russian Orthodox Church, on Wednesday in Moscow (Photo by Mikhail Klimentyev of Sputnik via Associated Press).

ny times logoNew York Times, Barely Noting the Ukraine War in Public, Putin Acts Like Time Is on His Side, Anton Troianovski and Paul Sonne, May 27, 2023. President Vladimir Putin of Russia looks like a commander in absentia, treating the war as unfortunate but distant and still betting on outlasting his foes.

Pro-Ukrainian fighters stormed across the border into southwestern Russia this past week, prompting two days of the heaviest fighting on Russian territory in 15 months of war. Yet President Vladimir V. Putin, in public, ignored the matter entirely.

He handed out medals, met the patriarch of the Russian Orthodox Church, hosted friendly foreign leaders and made televised small talk with a Russian judge about how Ukraine was not a real country.

In managing Russia’s biggest war in generations, Mr. Putin increasingly looks like a commander in chief in absentia: In public, he says next to nothing about the course of the war and betrays little concern about Russia’s setbacks. Instead, he is telegraphing more clearly than ever that his strategy is to wait out Ukraine and the West — and that he thinks he can win by exhausting his foes.

“There’s no need for any illusions,” said Natalia Zubarevich, an expert on Russian social and economic development at Moscow State University. Mr. Putin, she said, has laid the domestic groundwork to sustain the war for a “long, long, long, long, long” time.

But while Western analysts and officials believe that Mr. Putin’s Russia does have the potential to keep fighting, his military, economic and political maneuvering room has narrowed, presenting obstacles to prosecuting a lengthy war.

Even as Mr. Putin refers to the fighting as distant “tragic events,” the war keeps hitting home — with growing fissures in the military leadership, unease among the Russian elite and worrying signs for the economy as the West vows to further wean itself off Russian energy.

On the battlefield, Russia’s ability to go on the offensive has shriveled as ammunition has run low and the monthslong battle for the eastern Ukrainian city of Bakhmut took thousands of soldiers’ lives. Yevgeny V. Prigozhin, the leader of the Wagner mercenary group that led the assault on Bakhmut, said he was starting to pull his soldiers out of the city while releasing one profane tirade after another aimed at Russia’s Kremlin-allied elites.

To mount a major new offensive, Western officials and analysts say that Mr. Putin would need to find new sources of ammunition — and impose a politically risky, second military draft to replenish his depleted troops. Still, the U.S. director of national intelligence, Avril D. Haines, told Congress this month that the chances that Mr. Putin would make any concessions in talks this year were “low,” unless he were to feel a domestic political threat.

ny times logoNew York Times, Covid Is Coming Back in China; Lockdowns Are Not, Chris Buckley, May 27, 2023. The authorities say that cases are up, and one doctor estimates that there could soon be 65 million cases a week. But China seems determined to move on.

China FlagIn December, China abruptly abandoned its draconian “Zero Covid” policies, battered by a surge of infections and rising public anger against lockdowns. Half a year on, Covid cases again are on the rise, but this time the nation appears to be determined to press on with normal life as the government focuses on reigniting economic growth.

Though other countries have long settled into such a pattern, it is a shift for China. Until late last year, its national leadership was still ready to lock down whole neighborhoods and districts, even cities, in a bid to stamp out what were sometimes just small clusters of cases.

The Chinese health authorities have reported a rise in Covid cases since April, especially from newer subvariants that are spreading across the world. Dr. Zhong Nanshan, a prominent doctor who was among the first to openly confirm in early 2020 that Covid could easily spread among people, estimated on Monday that by late June as many as 65 million people a week could become infected with the coronavirus across China. (That would be up from what he estimated at 40 million infections a week in late May. China no longer publishes regular official nationwide estimates of infections.)

By comparison, after “Zero Covid” controls were set aside in December, new infections reached 37 million a day in China at their peak, according to estimates cited by Bloomberg.

Even if, as Dr. Zhong acknowledged, the pace of rising infections is laden with uncertainty, a rebound in cases was always likely, and many in China appear steeled to living with a background hum of Covid infections, and sometimes Covid deaths.

ny times logoNew York Times, Supreme Court Limits E.P.A.’s Power to Address Water Pollution, Adam Liptak, May 26, 2023 (print ed.). The justices ruled that the Clean Water Act does not allow the Environmental Protection Agency to regulate discharges into some wetlands near bodies of water.

The Supreme Court on Thursday curtailed the Environmental Protection Agency’s authority to police water pollution, ruling that the Clean Water Act does not allow the agency to regulate discharges into some wetlands near bodies of water.

Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr., writing for five justices, held that the law covers only wetlands “with a continuous surface connection” to those waters.

The decision was a second major blow to the E.P.A.’s authority and to the power of administrative agencies generally. Last year, the court limited the E.P.A.’s power to address climate change under the Clean Air Act.

Experts in environmental law said the decision would sharply limit the E.P.A.’s authority to protect millions of acres of wetlands under the Clean Water Act, leaving them subject to pollution without penalty.

World Crisis Radio, Commentary and Advocacy: House MAGA fanatics strive for US default and national bankruptcy to trigger world economic depression, weaken Biden, and enable Trump’s 2024 push for dictatorship! webster tarpley 2007Webster G. Tarpley, right, author and historian, May 27, 2023 (131:03 mins.). MAGA ideologues from Trump to Chip Roy demand cataclysmic default;

It is past time for Biden to announce a return to Constitutional government in the form of the Fourteenth Amendment, setting aside the illegal debt ceiling based on the vestigial 1917 Liberty Bond Act, which Congress intended to accelerate borrowing during the World War I emergency; The post-1974 federal budget law is its own ceiling and its own floor, telling the president exactly what to spend; If default occurs, GOP fantasies of paying bondholders and stiffing pensioners will be ruled out as a line item veto and by the anti-Nixon Impoundment Control Act, so no ”prioritization.”

The many misfortunes of Il Ducetto;

Right-wing anti-Putin Russian militias mount large-scale raid into Belgorod, signalling start of new edition of Russia’s Time of Troubles (1598-1613);
Warmer weather in southern Ukraine brings season for military operations;

Time for a drastic upvaluation of the Lincoln-era Radical Republican Thaddeus Stevens, the architect of the greenbacks, the Thirteenth Amendment, and the Fourteenth Amendment-which is the key to the current crisis;

The Succession series, a realistic portrait of the depraved oligarchs dominating a Hobbesian society during late globalization: An owl of Minerva for this moribund era, marred mainly by dialogue of relentless banality and obscenity;

In defense of Amanda Gorman and her inauguration ode, a fine American document of patriotism, optimism, and unity;

Ukraine and default are iambic, not trochaic! Breaking: Ukraine’s National Security & Defense Council Director Danilov tells BBC everything is ready for counterattack; says Wagner is redeploying.

Meidas Touch Network, Commentary: Jack Smith’s SECRET WITNESS against Trump finally Revealed, Michael Popok, May 27, 2023. Michael Popok of Legal AF reports on breaking developments in the fast moving Jack Smith Mar-a-Lago criminal investigation of Trump, including new testimony and cooperation by an unnamed Mar-a-Lago maintenance worker who with photos and new facts shows that Trump orchestrated a scheme to hide classified documents from the FBI and DOJ.

ny times logoNew York Times, Texas House Votes to Impeach Ken Paxton, Exposing G.O.P. Fissures, J. David Goodman and Nicholas Bogel-Burroughs, May 27, 2023. Mr. Paxton, the state attorney general who has become a conservative star, will be immediately removed from office, pending a trial in the Senate.

The Texas House of Representatives vote Saturday to impeach Ken Paxton, right, the state’s Republican attorney general, temporarily removing him from office over charges that he had used his elected position to benefit himself and a campaign donor.

ken paxton mugThe extraordinary vote on impeachment, which came after several hours of debate, was one of the few ever taken in the Texas Capitol and the first of a statewide office holder since 1917. It comes after a bipartisan House committee, led by Republicans, filed 20 articles of impeachment against Mr. Paxton this week, detailing actions that the panel unanimously decided made him unfit for office.

texas mapThe impeachment means Mr. Paxton will be temporarily removed from office pending a trial on the charges in the State Senate, where some of his closest allies, including his wife, will serve as jurors. The Senate proceedings could well be delayed until after the regular legislative session, which ends on Monday.

The final vote was 121 members in favor of impeachment and 23 against, with two abstaining. It went well beyond the 75 necessary for a majority.

Representative Andrew Murr, the Republican chair of the House investigating committee that recommended impeachment, closed by urging his colleagues to impeach.

“The evidence presented to you is compelling and is more than sufficient to justify going to trial,” he said, adding: “Send this to trial.”

Mr. Paxton, 60, who has denied any wrongdoing, has been a strong supporter of conservative legal causes and one of the chief antagonists of the Biden administration on a range of issues, including the Affordable Care Act and immigration on the southern border.

He was elected to a third term last year even after the alleged offenses were prominently raised during the campaign, including by Republicans who ran against him in the primary election. He has accused the more moderate Republican leadership of the House of acting in concert with Democrats to oust him.

A member of the House investigating committee, Charlie Geren, said during the proceedings that Mr. Paxton had been personally lobbying members to vote against the impeachment. “Several members of this House on the floor of this House,” he said, “received a telephone call from General Paxton personally threatening them with political consequences in their next election.”

The debate moved later to opponents of impeachment, led off by Representative John Smithee, a Republican, who said there was not enough evidence to take such drastic action.

“This House cannot legitimately, and in good faith, and under the rule of law, impeach General Paxton today on the record that it has before it,” he said.

Voting to impeach at this stage, Mr. Smithee said, would be “what I call the ‘hang them now and judge them later’ policy.”

Here are the latest developments:

Ken Paxton had managed to weather a series of accusations and a criminal indictment while in office in large part because he has been one of the most aggressive fighters for conservative legal causes.

Former President Donald J. Trump had called the proceedings against Mr. Paxton “very unfair” and urged Republicans to block impeachment efforts.

Dead State, Pastor at Christian college arrested for letting his ‘spiritual mentor’ sexually abuse young boys, Sky Palma, May 26, 2023. Police in Waco, Texas, arrested the former pastor at Baylor University on charges that he allowed a sex offender he called his “spiritual mentor” to sexually abuse two young relatives, the Waco Tribune-Herald reported.

Christopher Hundl, 38, was charged Tuesday with continuous sexual abuse of a child, which is a first-degree felony, and later released on $50,000 bond.

A statement from Baylor University earlier this month revealed that Hundl resigned from his position as minister for the Baylor chapter of Chi Alpha, a “worldwide Christian ministry sponsored by the Assembly of God Church,” according to the Herald.

baylor bears logoChi Alpha has been suspended from the university and is under investigation.

“Baylor University is aware of serious allegations of impropriety among leaders of the independent organization Chi Alpha,” the statement read. “Like all Chi Alpha college-based chapters, Baylor’s organization is led by the assigned Chi Alpha ministers and staff. These individuals are NOT Baylor employees.”

“We are deeply disturbed and grieved by these serious allegations against Chi Alpha’s leaders, and we will continue to examine Baylor’s affiliated student organization to ensure our students have a healthy and safe co-curricular environment.”

The sex offender in the case has not yet been arrested, according to the Tribune’s report (Graphic):

The warrant names the sex offender, who has not been arrested in this case. The Tribune-Herald is withholding his name at the request of Waco police. According to the warrant, Hundl brought the two children to the Houston home of the convicted sex offender several times between summer 2021 and March 2022. Hundl and the sex offender were in a sauna with the children, who were younger than 14 when the offense occurred, when the man instructed the children to masturbate in front of them, the warrant says. The warrant says similar abuse occurred at Hundl’s home in Waco while the sex offender was present. According to the warrant, the sex offender also abused the two children by touching them inappropriately while Hundl was present.

Other reports describe the victims as two boys, one of whom was 11 when the abuse occurred. The boy told investigators that Hundl and his sex offender accomplice told him not to tell anyone about the abuse.

Hundl reportedly said that the sex offender was like a “grandfather” to the children.

More On U.S. Economy, Debt, Budget, Jobs, Banking, Crypto

Politico, Debt limit derails the rest of Congress’ must-pass agenda, Jordain Carney and Sarah Ferris, May 27, 2023. Drawn-out talks to avoid a catastrophic default are causing a temporary pileup on lawmakers’ other priorities, including spending bills, a trillion-dollar farm package and mammoth defense policy legislation.

politico CustomSpending packages. The farm bill. Defense legislation.

Congress’ knockdown fight over what was once its most mundane activity — raising the debt ceiling — is claiming an unintended victim: the rest of its must-pass agenda.

The negotiations between the Biden administration and House Republicans boil down to a handful of people. But Washington’s fixation on the slow-moving talks, combined with months of jockeying on both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue, has led to a legislative pileup.

“It’s very frustrating,” said Rep. Frank Lucas (R-Okla.), about some of the House’s delayed priorities. “But until you know how much money you have to work with,” he added, referring to potential spending cuts in a debt deal, “you can’t do these things.”

That’s not to say Congress has ground to a halt. There’s also committee-level work happening behind the scenes. But the calamitous consequences of debt default are so all-consuming that lawmakers’ other deadlines — each with potentially terrible effects of their own — seem far away, at least for the moment.

Many Republicans hope the saga will end in the coming days, with party leaders on both sides seeking to pass a deal before the default deadline on June 5. Yet some Republicans have wondered aloud if the U.S. can continue to stretch its borrowing limit even further, possibly past June 15 or even into the summer.

Drawn-out talks to avoid a catastrophic default are causing a temporary pileup on lawmakers' other priorities, including spending bills, a farm package and defense policy legislation, Jones Hayden, May 27, 2023.

ny times logoNew York Times, Inflation Inched Higher in April, Reflecting Challenge for the Fed, Madeleine Ngo, May 27, 2023 (print ed.). The Fed’s preferred gauge, the Personal Consumption Expenditures index, climbed 4.4 percent in April from a year earlier, a slight increase from March.

A measure of inflation most closely watched by Federal Reserve officials picked up in April, reflecting the difficult path ahead for economic policymakers as they weigh whether to raise interest rates again to bring down stubborn price increases.

The Personal Consumption Expenditures index climbed 4.4 percent in April from a year earlier. That was a slight increase from March, when prices climbed 4.2 percent on an annual basis. Still, prices are not climbing as fast they were in February, when the index rose 5.1 percent on an annual basis.

A “core” measure that tries to gauge underlying inflation trends by stripping out volatile food and energy prices rose 4.7 percent in the year through April, up slightly from 4.6 percent in March.

ny times logoNew York Times, Democrats Did Not Heed Yellen’s Debt Warnings, Leaving Her to Face Fallout, Alan Rappeport, May 27, 2023. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen had urged her party last fall to raise the debt limit while it still had control of Congress.

janet yellen full portraitIn the days after November’s midterm elections, Treasury Secretary Janet L. Yellen, right, was feeling upbeat about the fact that Democrats had performed better than expected and maintained control of the Senate.

But as she traveled to the Group of 20 leaders summit in Indonesia that month, she said Republicans taking control of the House posed a new threat to the U.S. economy.

“I always worry about the debt ceiling,” Ms. Yellen told The New York Times in an interview on her flight from New Delhi to Bali, Indonesia, in which she urged Democrats to use their remaining time in control of Washington to lift the debt limit beyond the 2024 elections. “Any way that Congress can find to get it done, I’m all for.”

Democrats did not heed Ms. Yellen’s advice. Instead, the United States has spent most of this year inching toward the brink of default as Republicans refused to raise or suspend the nation’s $31.4 trillion borrowing limit without capping spending and rolling back parts of President Biden’s agenda.

ny times logoNew York Times, Despite High-Level Guarantees, Time Is Running Out to Avoid a Default, Carl Hulse, May 27, 2023 (print ed.). With a deadline looming, there is much to be done to prevent the default that leaders of both parties said would never happen.

Senator Mitch McConnell had a message for Americans growing increasingly worried that the economy is going to crash if the federal debt ceiling is not raised: Just chill.

“Look, I think everybody needs to relax,” Mr. McConnell, the Kentucky Republican and minority leader with deep experience in debt limit showdowns, told reporters back home earlier this week. “Regardless of what may be said about the talks on a day-to-day basis, the president and the speaker will reach an agreement. It will ultimately pass on a bipartisan vote in both the House and the Senate. The country will not default.”

That may be a case of easier said than done. While Mr. McConnell, President Biden and Speaker Kevin McCarthy have repeatedly assured Americans that there will be no default, that guarantee is looking a little shakier with little more than a week to go before the U.S. Treasury is projected to run out of cash to pay its obligations.

Even if negotiators agree to a deal soon — an outcome that appeared within reach but still had not materialized as talks continued on Friday — there is still much to be done, not the least of which is winning approval in the House and Senate. That outcome is nowhere near certain given rising uneasiness — and some outright opposition — on both the right and left. At this point, no one can be absolutely certain that the United States won’t tumble over the default cliff, even if no one involved wants that to happen. Time is short.

Politico, Debt talks head into weekend with no deal as Yellen adjusts default deadline, Jordain Carney, Daniella Diaz and Rachael Bade, May 26, 2023. Republican and White House negotiators seem to have reached consensus on a number of issues, but work requirements for safety net programs and permitting reform remain major sticking points.

Capitol Hill entered Friday with wishful thinking that there could be a debt deal. But it looks like the long weekend will commence without one.

politico CustomStill, lawmakers got lucky in another way Friday: Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen announced in a new letter to Speaker Kevin McCarthy, right, and other kevin mccarthycongressional leaders that latest estimates show the real default deadline is June 5. That gives negotiators a bit more time, since she had previously warned default could come as soon as June 1.

U.S. House logoRepublican negotiators had entered McCarthy’s office earlier Friday saying no in-person meetings with their White House counterparts are on the books, though they added they are in “constant” communication via calls and other electronic communications. Those GOP lawmakers weren’t sounding particularly optimistic that a deal was imminent.

Asked Friday morning if he thought they could close out talks by the end of the day, Rep. Patrick McHenry (R-N.C.), one of the GOP negotiators, threw up his arms in a shrug.

“Here we are night after night after night. And the pressure is more. And the consequences are greater. We recognize that. We know this and the White House surely recognizes this,” he said.

Conservative Republicans were also passing around a list, which a Republican familiar with the matter said came from leadership, that detailed where the two sides have apparently found agreement. That includes: An agreement to lift the debt limit through 2024, a procedure in place to incentivize Congress to pass all 12 spending bills and a plan to claw back unspent Covid money.

But a second Republican familiar with the talks warned on Thursday night that negotiators have not reached a deal on top-line spending numbers or how long the debt ceiling extension would be. They cautioned that there can’t be an agreement on other details until those get fully ironed out.

ny times logoNew York Times, Opinion: Debt: The Bad, the Weak and the Ugly, Paul Krugman, right, May 26, 2023 (print ed.). The prospect that the U.S. government will default on paul krugmanits payments because Republicans refuse to raise the debt ceiling is now real and imminent. In fact, bonds issued by some corporations are yielding less than Treasuries, indicating that investors now consider, say, Microsoft a more reliable debtor than the federal government.

As disaster looms, it’s important to keep in mind that Republicans are the villains here: They’re the ones engaged in extortion.

The reason I say this is that progressives are feeling a lot of rage against the Biden administration for refusing to take action to avoid this crisis. And at least some people in or close to the administration seem more dedicated to rejecting proposed ways out of the trap than they are to solving the problem. There’s a definite Stockholm syndrome vibe, in which the hostages seem angrier at their would-be rescuers than they are at their kidnappers.

So I hope that the administration will take what I say now as what it is — an attempt to be helpful.

There are at least three ways the administration could, in principle, bypass the debt ceiling. The objections to these options purport to be technocratic or legal, or both, but when you dig a bit you realize that they’re really political.

The first possible strategy is simply to ignore the debt limit, declaring it unconstitutional. The 14th Amendment, which says that the validity of U.S. debt “shall not be questioned,” has been getting a lot of attention. But more broadly, the debt ceiling impasse has put the administration in a position where it must break some laws — either the laws that specify federal spending or the law limiting government borrowing. In such a position, the president must choose which laws to obey; why should the debt ceiling take priority?

I’m not a lawyer, but I don’t find the case against the constitutional option persuasive. Some have said default wouldn’t violate the 14th Amendment, because the debt would still be valid — we just wouldn’t be honoring it. It’s also been argued that the merits of the case are largely irrelevant because of the Supreme Court’s partisanship. So it isn’t really about the law — it’s about the politics.

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Pro-Trump Insurrectionists, Election Deniers, Durham Report

 

Jessica Watkins, second from left, and Donovan Ray Crowl, center, both from Ohio, walk down the east front steps of the U.S. Capitol with other Oath Keepers members on Jan. 6, 2021 (Reuters photo by Jim Bourg).

Jessica Watkins, second from left, and Donovan Ray Crowl, center, both from Ohio, walk down the east front steps of the U.S. Capitol with other Oath Keepers members on Jan. 6, 2021 (Reuters photo by Jim Bourg).

washington post logoWashington Post, More Oath Keepers convicted with Rhodes for Jan. 6 attack are sentenced, Spencer S. Hsu, May 27, 2023 (print ed.). Army veterans Jessica Watkins and Kenneth Harrelson brought weapons to Virginia before marching into the Capitol in 2021, but were acquitted of seditious conspiracy.

A self-styled militia leader and bar owner from Ohio and a former welder from Florida were sentenced to 8½ years and four years in prison Friday for joining Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes in disrupting Congress’s confirmation of Joe Biden’s 2020 presidential election victory in the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol attack.

Army veterans Jessica Watkins and Kenneth Harrelson were acquitted of seditious conspiracy but convicted on other felony counts in November at trial with Rhodes and his on-the-ground leader, Kelly Meggs. Rhodes and Meggs were convicted of seditious conspiracy and sentenced Thursday. Rhodes received 18 years in prison, the longest for any Jan. 6 defendant. Meggs was sentenced to 12 years.

On Friday, U.S. District Judge Amit P. Mehta told Watkins after a two-hour sentencing hearing: “Nobody would suggest you’re Stewart Rhodes; I don’t think you’re Kelly Meggs. But your role in those events is more than that of just a foot soldier.”

He added, “As someone who takes a greater role in a conspiracy, you bear a greater responsibility not just for your conduct but for the conduct of those you bring to it.”

Watkins, 40, of Woodstock, Ohio, recruited three other people and was recorded on Jan. 6 on a walkie-talkie-style app saying she was walking with a group of about 30 to 40 people to the Capitol and “sticking together and sticking to the plan,” before she eventually met up with a group led by Meggs. The group marched single-file up the east Capitol steps and joined a mob that entered the Columbus doors by force.

Harrelson, 42, a former Army sergeant from Titusville, Fla., received firearms training with Meggs in Florida and, according to prosecutors, served as “Meggs’ right-hand man” in setting up video meetings and relaying instructions to other Florida Oath Keepers about stashing weapons for a “Quick Reaction Force” if violence erupted. Harrelson recorded himself yelling “Treason!” at Capitol occupants as he entered with Meggs.

Outside of Rhodes and Meggs, Watkins received the longest sentence to date for any Jan. 6 defendant who has not been convicted of assaulting a police officer. But Harrelson received a fraction of his co-defendants’ time and close to the 45-month average sentence for 22 other Jan. 6 defendants who were convicted of obstructing Congress but not found guilty of conspiring with an organized group or of committing violence.

Mehta found that Watkins’s and Harrelson’s actions qualified for an enhanced terrorism sentencing penalty for offenses calculated to coerce the government, but the judge slashed years off the penalties sought by prosecutors. Mehta noted that Watkins, like Harrelson, had been acquitted of conspiring to use force to oppose government authority, and that she turned herself in and cooperated short of pleading guilty.

The judge added that of 2,000 to 3,000 communications exchanged by co-conspirators, he found only “a couple dozen” by Harrelson. That suggested lesser intent and explained why the jury also acquitted him of conspiring to obstruct Congress, while he was convicted of actually obstructing it, plotting to interfere with police and destroying evidence, the judge said.

“What distinguishes you from everyone else so far is that there not a single word on a Signal communication that anyone would consider extremist, radicalized, encouraging someone to engage in violence, or words like ‘civil war,’ ‘revolution,’ or thinking about death,” Mehta said. “You are not someone who bears the same responsibility or culpability as the others.”

Defense attorney Brad Geyer called Harrelson “a horse of a different color” and urged the judge to send his client to his family.

Watkins was accused of merging her local Ohio armed group with the Oath Keepers in 2020. She became a recruiter and organizer in advance of the Capitol attack, bringing firearms and other weapons and storing them outside Washington.

Watkins texted others, telling them to prepare for violence to keep Trump in office, beginning on Nov. 9, 2020, six days after the election, and she spoke of getting recruits “fighting fit by innaugeration” and uniting Oath Keepers and other extremist groups. “Be prepared to fight hand to hand,” she wrote. “Now or never.”

 

stewart rhodes djt

ny times logoNew York Times, Oath Keepers Leader Is Sentenced to 18 Years in Jan. 6 Sedition Case, Alan Feuer, May 26, 2023 (print ed.). The sentence for Stewart Rhodes was the longest so far in the federal investigation of the attack and the first issued to a defendant convicted of sedition.

Stewart Rhodes, the leader of the far-right Oath Keepers militia, was sentenced on Thursday to 18 years in prison for his conviction on seditious conspiracy charges for the role he played in helping to mobilize the pro-Trump attack on the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

The sentence, handed down in Federal District Court in Washington, was the most severe penalty so far in the more than 1,000 criminal cases stemming from the Capitol attack — and the first to be increased for fitting the legal definition of terrorism.

It was also the first to have been given to any of the 10 members of the Oath Keepers and another far-right group, the Proud Boys, who were convicted of sedition in connection with the events of Jan. 6.

For Mr. Rhodes, 58, the sentence was the end of a tumultuous and unusual career that included Army service, a stint on Capitol Hill and a law degree from Yale. His role as the Oath Keepers’ founder and leader thrust him into the spotlight and will now send him to prison for what is likely to be the better part of his remaining days.

At a dramatic, nearly four-hour hearing, Judge Amit P. Mehta chided Mr. Rhodes for seeking for years through his leadership of the Oath Keepers to have American democracy “devolve into violence.”

“You, sir,” Judge Mehta went on, directly addressing the defendant, “present an ongoing threat and a peril to this country, to the Republic and the very fabric of our democracy.”

As the hearing opened, prosecutors urged Judge Mehta to sentence Mr. Rhodes to 25 years in prison, arguing that accountability was needed for the violence at the Capitol and that American democracy was on the line.

Kathryn L. Rakoczy, one of the lead prosecutors in the case, told Judge Mehta that Mr. Rhodes had been calling for attacks against the government for more than a decade and that his role in the Jan. 6 attack was part of a longstanding pattern.

The Oath Keepers leader, Ms. Rakoczy said, exploited his talents and influence to goad his followers into rejecting the results of the 2020 election and ultimately mobilized them into storming the Capitol in two separate military-style “stacks” in a violent effort to keep President Donald J. Trump in office.

“It is conduct that threatened — and continues to threaten — the rule of law in the United States,” she said.

Ms. Rakoczy also noted that Mr. Rhodes had shown no remorse for undermining the lawful transition of power and continued to advocate political violence. Just four days ago, she said, Mr. Rhodes gave an interview from jail, repeating the lie that the election had been marred by fraud and asserting that the government was “coming after those on the political right.”

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Richard “Bigo” Barnett in Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s office on Jan. 6, 2021. Mr. Barnett was sentenced to more than four years in prison on Wednesday Saul Loeb/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Richard “Bigo” Barnett in Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s office on Jan. 6, 2021. Mr. Barnett was sentenced to more than four years in prison on Wednesday, May 24, 2023 (Agence France-Presse photo Saul Loeb via Getty Images). 

 

Ethic Compaints Against U.S. Supreme Court, Senate, House

ny times logoNew York Times, Editorial Board: Who Can Rein In the Supreme Court? Editorial Board, May 27, 2023 (print ed.). The Supreme Court will soon issue rulings, on affirmative action, student debt relief, and the First Amendment and gay rights, that have the potential to affect the American public for generations.

And yet public approval of the court is at a historic low. This was true even before the seemingly endless stream of reports over the past few weeks about the justices’ lax ethics. Since a conservative supermajority took control of the court in 2020, it has blown through the guardrails courts are expected to observe — showing little respect for longstanding precedent, reaching out to decide bigger questions than it was asked to and relying on a secretive “shadow docket” to make hugely consequential rulings with no public explanation.

Even Republicans who are happy with the Supreme Court’s recent rulings are voicing their concerns. “What I would urge the court to do is take this moment to instill more public confidence,” Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina said during the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on ethics at the Supreme Court on May 2. “I think we’d all be better off if they did that.”

Mr. Graham is right: The nine justices — unelected and employed for life — are shielded from the usual mechanisms of democratic accountability, and so they depend on a high level of public trust like no other institution of American government. Their failure to take the steps necessary to restore that trust, steps that are entirely within their control, is undermining their legitimacy as one of the country’s most vital institutions.

Instead the justices are behaving as though the same laws they interpret for everyone else don’t apply to them. They’re not entirely wrong. In most other government jobs, people can be fired for disregarding laws or ethical obligations, but the justices can be confident that they will face no consequences. Federal laws that explicitly apply to them — involving, for example, financial disclosures and recusal standards — are not enforced, leaving the justices to self-police, and the highest court is not bound by a code of ethics as the lower federal courts are.

The “separation of powers” was never meant to allow each branch the license to act without any involvement by the others. Rather, the American system of government is expressly designed for each branch to check the power of the others. A president can veto a bill passed by Congress. The Supreme Court can strike down an executive order or federal law. And Congress can regulate the size, jurisdiction and other administrative aspects of the Supreme Court, including judicial ethics, as it has going back to the first Judiciary Act in 1789 — a law that passed, notably, by a Congress that included many of the framers of the Constitution itself.

In recent years, however, Congress has failed to live up to its coequal status in the federal government, avoiding even mild confrontation with the Supreme Court. During the Judiciary Committee hearing, Mr. Graham said he did not want to “micromanage” the court by forcing it to adopt an ethics code. But this hands-off approach has allowed the justices to decide for themselves what rules to follow and whether or not to explain their reasoning to the public.

There is recent precedent for bipartisan action regulating the court. Last year, Congress passed a law amending its 1978 ethics law to require the reporting, in an online database searchable by the public, of stock transfers over $1,000 by all federal judges, including the justices. Already, justices have filed reports under this law, suggesting that they accept Congress’s authority to legislate in this area.

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U.S. Supreme Court Associate Justice Clarence Thomas, left, and his billionaire friend and benefactor Harlan Crow (file photos).

U.S. Supreme Court Associate Justice Clarence Thomas, left, and his billionaire friend and benefactor Harlan Crow (file photos).

 

More On U.S. Courts, Crime, Guns, Immigration

washington post logoWashington Post, Judges rebuke Social Security for errors as disability denials stack up, Lisa Rein, May 27, 2023 (print ed.). Hurled from a road-paving machine, Michael Sheldon tumbled 50 feet down a Colorado slope and struck a mound of boulders headfirst on a summer day in 2006. After eight surgeries to his head, neck and spinal cord, his debilitating headaches, chronic pain and post-traumatic stress have made it impossible to return to his work preparing roads for new subdivisions.

social security administrationYet for more than a decade, the Social Security Administration repeatedly denied Sheldon’s full claim for disability benefits that would pay him $1,415 a month.

Even after three federal judges found significant errors with how his case was handled and sent it back to Social Security for new hearings, the agency continued to reject Sheldon, court documents show.

“They’ve done everything to prolong this to get me to quit,” he said after testifying in March at his fifth hearing. Now 59, he lives with his wife in a trailer in Cortez, Colo., and depends on food stamps and state benefits for the indigent. “I can’t replace the battery on a vehicle. Why has this taken 14 years?”

Like Sheldon, thousands of other disabled Americans battle for years for benefits, even after federal courts rule in their favor.

In the last two fiscal years, federal judges considering appeals for denied benefits found fault with almost 6 in every 10 cases and sent them back to administrative law judges at Social Security for new hearings — the highest rate of rejections in years, agency statistics show. Court remands are on pace to reach similar levels this year.

Federal judges have complained of legal errors, inaccurate assessments of whether claimants can work, failures to consider medical evidence and factual mistakes, according to court rulings and Social Security’s own data. The scathing opinions have come from district and appellate court judges across the political spectrum, from conservatives appointed by President Ronald Reagan to liberal appointees of President Barack Obama.

ny times logoNew York Times, This Little-Known Pandemic-Era Tax Credit Has Become a Magnet for Fraud, Alan Rappeport, May 27, 2023 (print ed.). The Employee Retention Credit spawned a cottage industry of firms claiming to help businesses gain access to stimulus funds, often in violation of rules.

In early February, federal prosecutors in Utah accused Zachary Bassett and Mason Warr of cheating the United States government out of millions of dollars. The accounting firm they operated had submitted more than 1,000 fraudulent tax forms to the Internal Revenue Service on behalf of businesses trying to claim pandemic-era stimulus funds, the prosecutors said.

irs logoCOS Accounting and Tax shut down later that month, leaving businesses and taxpayers that had paid the firm to help them claim federal money trying to figure out what had happened and why they were suddenly receiving audit notices from the I.R.S.

Amid the onset of the pandemic in 2020, as large swaths of the economy went into lockdown, Washington set up various programs to help keep businesses and their workers afloat. Among them was the Employee Retention Credit, a tax benefit that was created as part of the initial $2 trillion pandemic relief legislation. The program offered businesses thousands of dollars per employee if they could show that Covid-19 was hurting their bottom lines and that they were continuing to pay workers.

The money was intended to be a lifeline for struggling companies. Instead, it has become a magnet for fraud, creating a cottage industry of firms that market themselves as tax credit specialists who can help clients — even those who don’t actually qualify for the money — reap huge refunds from the I.R.S. Although the public health emergency is over, taxpayers can continue to apply for the tax credit until 2025. That has fueled a run for the money and the proliferation of financial service providers, who often charge hefty upfront fees or take cuts of around 25 percent of any tax refund.

The tax credit has become so popular that it is turning out to be far more costly than expected. In 2021, after Congress expanded eligibility for the credit, the Congressional Budget Office projected that it would cost the federal government about $85 billion over a decade — up from an earlier estimate of $55 billion. However, even that turned out to be an underestimation: the I.R.S. said it has already paid out $152 billion in refunds associated with the tax credit since it first became available and has a backlog of about 800,000 applications that it is trying to process.

The I.R.S. does not yet know how many of the approved refunds were based on fraudulent applications. But it has begun ramping up efforts to root out scams and focusing additional scrutiny on filings from firms that appear suspicious.

On Thursday, the I.R.S. issued a warning to businesses to be on the lookout for “scams” related to the tax credit, saying it was fueling a flood of “invalid” applications.

washington post logoWashington Post, FBI files reveal 1983 threat to kill Queen Elizabeth II during U.S. visit, Victoria Bisset, May 27, 2023. The FBI uncovered a potential threat to kill Queen Elizabeth II during the 1980s while she was visiting the United States, files released online by the agency show.

The queen and her husband, Prince Philip, visited the United States from February to March 1983, at a time when Northern Ireland was experiencing a long period of sectarian violence known as the Troubles.

According to the 102-page document on the FBI’s online vault, the threat came in a phone call from a man who claimed his daughter had been killed by a rubber bullet fired by British forces in Northern Ireland.

The man said he “was going to attempt to harm Queen Elizabeth” during her trip by dropping an object onto the royal yacht from San Francisco’s Golden Gate Bridge or in an attack when she visited Yosemite National Park, the report said.

The intelligence came via a police officer who frequented a pub popular with sympathizers of the paramilitary Irish Republican Army (IRA), which opposed British rule in Northern Ireland, the report added.

The report also noted that the U.S. Secret Service was planning to close the Golden Gate Bridge’s pedestrian walkway, but the document did not contain details of any arrests.

The files give an insight into the FBI’s efforts to manage risks arising from the monarch’s private and public visits to the United States from the 1970s onward, and they note that “several anonymous threatening telephone calls” about her were made to local police.

Many of the perceived threats the FBI assessed were related to the IRA, which killed the queen’s cousin Louis Mountbatten with a bomb planted on his fishing boat in Ireland in 1979.

washington post logoWashington Post, Va. businessman admits $7.6 million covid scam, Salvador Rizzo, May 27, 2023. Much of the money was lost in cryptocurrency ventures, prosecutors said. 

A Manassas, Va., business executive admitted Friday that he and others bilked more than $7.6 million from coronavirus relief programs and that he spent much of the money on home mortgage payments, tuition for his children, cars and cryptocurrency investments.

Bennie Earl Magee, 54, pleaded guilty in Alexandria federal court to wire fraud affecting a financial institution. An associate who described Magee as his mentor, Michael Gilcher, 45, of Bealeton, pleaded guilty Friday to a charge that he conspired to make false statements on loan applications, as well as wire fraud, bank fraud and money laundering.

Magee submitted falsified documents in loan applications that inflated revenue and claimed dozens of nonexistent employees on behalf of 17 businesses. The scam drained millions of dollars from the key coronavirus relief programs established by Congress during the height of the pandemic — nearly $6.8 million from the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) and $854,000 from the Covid Economic Injury Disaster Loan Program (EIDL), according to a statement of facts filed in court Friday.

ny times logoNew York Times, Is It Legal to Sleep Outside in New York? Yes and No, Andy Newman, May 27, 2023 (print ed.). A “Homeless Bill of Rights” aiming to clarify whether people can camp outdoors could become law. But the rules are far from clear.

The five words tucked into a bill listing the rights of homeless people in New York City seem straightforward enough:

“The right to sleep outside.”

The bill is sitting on the desk of Mayor Eric Adams. If it becomes law, it would seem to answer a question that has become a point of contention in big cities trying to cope with rising homelessness, including New York, where Mr. Adams’s administration takes down dozens of urban campsites each week: Do homeless people really have a right to sleep outside here?

The bill’s sponsor, Public Advocate Jumaane Williams, said that his “Homeless Bill of Rights” does not create any new rights; it just compiles existing ones in one easy-to-find place. He said that while there are rules against sleeping in certain places or in ways that create obstructions, sleeping outside on public property, in and of itself, is legal in New York City simply because there is no law against it.

The bill breezed through the City Council last month by a vote of 47-0, including all six of the Council’s Republican members.

But the question of whether, and when, and where, sleeping outside in New York is legal turns out to be a complicated one — and one that gets to the heart of Mr. Adams’s efforts to restore order in what he says has become a disorderly city. The question also took on new significance this week when the city, its shelter system overwhelmed by migrants, went to court to seek a waiver from a decades-old requirement that it offer a shelter bed to everyone who wants one.

Mr. Adams had 30 days to take action on the bill. If he does not approve or veto it by Saturday, it automatically becomes law.

On any given night, several thousand people bed down in New York City’s streets and subways, but the city has a relatively small street homelessness problem compared with many cities in the Western United States that have extensive tent cities and shantytowns.

A 2018 decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, which covers nine Western states, effectively bars cities from enforcing camping bans if they do not have enough shelter beds available for everyone who needs them. Cities including Portland, Ore., and Culver City, Calif., are trying to address the crisis by opening municipally run campsites while restricting camping elsewhere. Los Angeles has outlawed tents within 500 feet of schools and banned lying down or storing belongings in places that block the sidewalk.

In New York City, there are many rules on the books that have been used to restrict sleeping rough.

One is a piece of sanitation code that makes it unlawful to leave “any box, barrel, bale or merchandise or other movable property” or to erect “any shed, building or other obstruction” on “any public place.”

The rule was created to address “the ever increasing number of abandoned cars in the City of New York” and “punish those persons who abandon and/or remove component parts of motor vehicles on public streets.” But a federal judge in 2000 upheld the city’s right to apply it to homeless people sleeping in cardboard boxes.

In city parks, it is illegal to “engage in camping, or erect or maintain a tent, shelter or camp” without a permit, or to be in a park at all between 1 a.m. and 6 a.m. unless posted rules state otherwise.

And on the property of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, both underground and in outdoor elevated subway stations, it is a form of banned disorderly conduct to “sleep or doze” in any manner that “may interfere” with the comfort of passengers. Nor may subway riders “lie down or place feet on the seat of a train, bus or platform bench or occupy more than one seat” or “place bags or personal items on seats” in ways that “impede the comfort of other passengers.”

Beth Haroules, a lawyer for the New York Civil Liberties Union, said that someone who did not violate any of those rules — say, someone who set a sleeping bag in an out-of-the-way spot under a highway overpass and did not put up any kind of shelter — was legally in the clear, at least in theory.

“Assuming that you’re not creating any obstruction in that public space, there is no bar against your being there and sleeping there,” she said.

But mayors have interpreted the rules against obstructing public spaces broadly, Ms. Haroules said. Mr. Adams has continued his predecessor Bill de Blasio’s policy of conducting frequent “sweeps” of sleeping spots, in which sanitation workers dismantle camps and trash people’s belongings.

Last year, the city conducted over 5,000 such sweeps — averaging more than a dozen a day, according to city statistics obtained by the Safety Net Project of the Urban Justice Center. Usually, the people who are swept set up camp again elsewhere.

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U.S. Politics, Elections, Governance

 Democratic-Republican Campaign logos

washington post logoWashington Post, Boebert dismisses antisemitism push as effort to target conservatives, Meryl Kornfield, May 27, 2023 (print ed.). After White House announces initiative to combat hatred of Jews, GOP congresswoman says it’s a way to ‘go after conservatives.’

President Biden on Thursday released the country’s first national strategy for combating antisemitism, a landmark lauded by Jewish and anti-hate groups as progress toward addressing the increasing instances of violence and bias toward Jewish people in the United States.

lauren boebertBut Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.), right, saw the effort as an attack on those of her political persuasion. “When they say stuff like this, they mean they want to go after conservatives,” she tweeted. “Their tactics are straight out of the USSR’s playbook.”

djt maga hatHer comments quickly attracted criticism from detractors who accused her of conflating a straightforward campaign against antisemitism with an assault on the right — and, by implication, equating conservatives with antisemites.

“So you agree? You think you’re antisemitic?” Rep. Sara Jacobs (D-Calif.) tweeted in a popular meme format from the teen comedy “Mean Girls.”

In response to questions about her tweet, Boebert’s office provided a statement equating the anti-hate effort with censorship of free speech and adding that she does not condone antisemitism.

washington post logoWashington Post, Federal workers want to know what the debt ceiling fight means for them, Lisa Rein, May 27, 2023. With the threat of government default looming, the unions representing anxious federal workers have pressed the Biden administration for guidance on what a debt ceiling calamity might mean for their millions of members.

So far, the official answer has been consistent: We have nothing to tell you.

“‘We’re saying, ‘We don’t have a handle on this, and we need to get a handle on it,’” said Jefferson Friday, general counsel for the 100,000-member National Federation of Federal Employees, who was planning at a Zoom meeting Friday to bear down again on officials at the Office of Personnel Management. “They’re saying, ‘We don’t know anything.’ Or whatever they did know, they weren’t allowed to tell us.”

The 2.1 million employees who keep the vast federal government afloat find themselves in a precarious limbo as talks between the White House and House Republicans to raise the country’s borrowing limit approach a June 1 deadline, when the Treasury Department warns that the government might no longer be able to pay its bills. Bipartisan negotiations were proceeding Friday, but the White House and House Republicans hadn’t yet reached a final agreement to avert the crisis.

washington post logoWashington Post, Texas House to vote Saturday on impeachment of Attorney General Ken Paxton, Molly Hennessy-Fiske, May 27, 2023. The Texas House plans to vote Saturday on whether to impeach Attorney General Ken Paxton, presaging a potential state Senate trial that could lead to the ouster of one of the fiercest opponents of the Biden administration and an architect of conservative Texas policies adopted by other red states.

A Republican-led House investigating committee this week unanimously recommended impeaching Paxton (R) on 20 articles, including bribery, unfitness for office and abuse of public trust. The committee said it began investigating Paxton in March, after he requested $3.3 million in taxpayer funds to end a lawsuit by former staffers who accused him of retaliation.

A memo released Friday by the office of House Speaker Dade Phelan (R), and written by the House committee that investigated Paxton, noted that “we cannot over-emphasize the fact that, but for Paxton’s own request for a taxpayer-funded settlement over his wrongful conduct, Paxton would not be facing impeachment by the House.”

washington post logoWashington Post, Republicans deploy new playbook for abortion bans, citing political backlash, Rachel Roubein, Caroline Kitchener and Colby Itkowitz, May 21, 2023 (print ed.). GOP lawmakers in North Carolina and Nebraska are casting new 12-week bans as “mainstream,” while Democrats say they are “cruel and extreme.”

Nebraska antiabortion groups and GOP lawmakers were stunned. In late April, their effort to ban most abortions was tanked by an unlikely person: 80-year-old Sen. Merv Riepe, a longtime Republican.

Instead, on Friday, Nebraska’s conservative legislature voted to ban abortions at 12 weeks of pregnancy — a threshold that significantly narrows the window for legal abortions but still allows the vast majority to occur.

A few days earlier, North Carolina Republicans used their legislative supermajority to enact a similar 12-week ban, calling it a “mainstream” approach that would be more broadly accepted than the stricter bans many conservatives had sought to pass. And in neighboring South Carolina, state Sen. Katrina Shealy (R) told The Washington Post that she and the other female GOP senators who blocked a near-total ban are planning to push for a 12-week ban on most abortions when the state Senate takes up a bill next week restricting abortion after roughly six weeks of pregnancy.

“We can’t live at the extremes,” North Carolina Sen. Amy Galey (R) said in an interview. “As a country, we can find a way to take a difficult issue and resolve it without a huge amount of acrimony and viciousness.”

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More on Ukraine War

washington post logoWashington Post, Ukraine live briefing: Kyiv readies for counteroffensive as commander vows to ‘take back what’s ours,’ Kelsey Ables, Adela Suliman and Nick Parke, May 27, 2023. Ukrainian officials continue to talk up a much-anticipated counteroffensive against Russia, with the commander in chief of Ukraine’s army, Gen. Valery Zaluzhny, on Saturday releasing an “informational support campaign” video venerating his military forces and promising that “the time has come to take back what’s ours.”

The recent warm, dry weather in southern Ukraine has raised expectations that the spring counterattack could begin soon — or may already be underway. President Volodymyr Zelensky and others have described the looming campaign as a make-or-break chance to show Western backers, who have provided military aid and training, that Ukraine is capable of taking back its land from Russia.

Here’s the latest on the war and its effects around the globe.

  • Key developments
  • Ukraine’s counteroffensive could begin “tomorrow, the day after tomorrow or in a week,” another senior Ukrainian security official, Oleksiy Danilov, told the BBC in an interview Saturday, describing it as a “historic opportunity” that “we cannot lose.” An adviser to Zelensky, Mykhailo Podolyak, has cautioned that Ukraine would not necessarily make a formal announcement before an offensive. “This is not a ‘single event’ that will begin at a specific hour of a specific day with a solemn cutting of the red ribbon,” he tweeted.
  • Wagner troops are withdrawing from positions around the embattled city of Bakhmut, according to Britain’s defense ministry. The Saturday observation aligns with comments made by the group’s chief Yevgeniy Prigozhin that his troops are rebasing, to be replaced by regular Russian military forces. Ukrainian officials have also noted withdrawals from the outskirts of Bakhmut, which Russia took control of this month after a months-long battle. “Wagner forces will likely be used for further offensive operations in the Donbas following reconstituting its forces,” the intelligence update from the ministry added.
  • A Russian governor said two drones had caused an explosion, damaging the administrative building of an oil pipeline, early Saturday in the region of Pskov in northwestern Russia. Mikhail Vedernikov said on Telegram that the incident occurred near the village of Litvinovo; there were no casualties. The Washington Post could not independently verify his assertions. They follow reported attacks causing damage in Russian territory in recent weeks, for which Ukraine has denied any involvement.
  • President Biden criticized Russia’s plans to host tactical nuclear weapons in neighboring Belarus, saying his reaction to that was “extremely negative.” His comments on Friday came a day after Russia’s defense minister was in Minsk to sign the agreement with its ally. The European Union’s foreign policy chief, Josep Borrell, also condemned the deal, warning: “This is a step which will lead to further extremely dangerous escalation.”
  • Lawyers for U.S. reporter Evan Gershkovich appealed a three-month extension of his pretrial detention in Russia. Gershkovich was detained in March and accused of spying, which he; rights groups; and his employer, the Wall Street Journal, have denied. The United States considers him “wrongfully detained.”

ny times logoNew York Times, As Russia Pummels Ukraine, Soviet-Era Bombs Elude Kyiv’s Modern Defenses, Jeffrey Gettleman and Eric Schmitt, May 26, 2023 (print ed.). Ukrainian and U.S. officials say Russian planes are dropping older bombs, some modified to glide long distances, which are almost impossible to shoot down.

ukraine flagMaryna Ivanova, a young woman living in a riverside village in southern Ukraine, had an uneasy feeling when her fiancé and brother left for work one morning in early May. They were headed to a nearby island in the Dnipro River, the watery front line between Russian and Ukrainian forces, and the area was getting heavily shelled.

Russian FlagStanding at her stove, making pork and potato soup, Ms. Ivanova heard — and felt — an enormous blast, much more frightening, she said, than the explosions that have become routine.

“It felt like something was dropped right on us,” she said.

A few minutes later, she heard shouting outside and ran down to the dock. A boat pulled up. Inside lay her brother, soaked in blood. Slumped next to him was her fiancé with part of his face blown off. Both were dead.

She fell to her knees.

“I couldn’t believe what I was seeing,” she said.

The strike was not a mortar, a tank round or a projectile fired by long-range artillery, according to Ukrainian officials who investigated the incident. It was, they said, an 1,100-pound modified bomb dropped from a distant Russian warplane, the latest destructive twist in a war that is only intensifying.

As Kyiv gears up for a much-anticipated counteroffensive, Ukrainian officials, independent analysts and American military officials say the Russians are increasing their use of Soviet-era bombs. Although they have limitations, the weapons, they said, are proving harder to shoot down than the fastest, most modern missiles that the Ukrainians have become adept at intercepting.

So much of this war is being fought with long-range munitions, from artillery shells to ballistic missiles. In the past few weeks, the Russians have launched wave after wave of missiles and exploding drones at Ukrainian cities, and Ukraine has shot down just about all of them.

But the aircraft bombs are different. They don’t have propulsion systems like cruise missiles or stay in the air nearly as long as drones. The bombs are aloft for only 70 seconds or less and are much more difficult for Ukraine’s air defenses to track. They are little dots on radar screens that soon disappear after being dropped, Ukrainian officials said, and then they slam into villages.

“This is the evolution of the air war,” said Lt. Colonel Denys Smazhnyi of the Ukrainian Air Force. “They first tried cruise missiles, and we shot them down. Then they tried drones, and we shot those down. They are constantly looking for a solution to strike us, and we are looking for one to intercept them.”

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President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine in Hiroshima on Saturday (Ludovic Marin for Agence France-Presse via Getty Images).

President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine in Hiroshima on Saturday (Ludovic Marin for Agence France-Presse via Getty Images).

 

More Global News, Views

 recep erdogan with flag

ny times logoNew York Times, Turkey’s Runoff Election: On Erdogan Campaign Trail, Invoking God, Reciting Poetry and Bashing Foes, Ben Hubbard and Gulsin Harman,May 27, 2023 (print ed.). President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has rock star appeal at his rallies, promising to cement Turkey as a global power if he is re-elected in Sunday’s runoff vote.

Flag of TurkeyHis campaign addresses begin softly, drawing the audience in. A devout Muslim, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan frequently says he seeks to please not just the Turkish people, but also God. Playing to the crowds, he sings folk songs, recites lines from local poets or drapes the sash of the local soccer team over his shoulders.

He sometimes wades into the throngs of supporters for photos or greets children, who kiss his hands. Then he takes the podium to speak, dressed in a suit or a plaid sports coat.

To the cheers and whistles of hundreds of transportation workers at a campaign rally last week, he laid out why they should keep him in power in a runoff on Sunday. He boasted that he had improved the country’s roads and bridges, raised wages and offered tax breaks to small businesses.

He also vowed to keep fighting forces that he deemed enemies of the nation, including gay rights activists, to make Turkey “stronger in the world.” And he bashed the leaders of the opposition who are seeking to unseat him, accusing them of having entered “dark rooms to sit and bargain” with terrorists because they won the support of Turkey’s main pro-Kurdish party.

Wayne Madsen Report, Investigative Commentary: Canada also has a Russiagate problem, Wayne Madsen, May 25, 2023. Canada has an emerging “Russiagate” of wayne madsen may 29 2015 cropped Smallits own to deal with.

After revelations of Chinese influence in Canadian elections emerged, with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau ordering a $140,000 donation directed by the Chinese government to the Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation -- named for the prime minister’s father – the Trudeau government appointed former Governor-wayne madesen report logoGeneral David Johnston as a special rapporteur on foreign interference.

Johnston’s mandate was to investigate all facets of foreign interference in Canadian elections dealing not only with the attempt by Beijing to influence the government with its donation to the Trudeau Foundation but also China’s targeting of the Hong Kong family of Conservative MP Michael Chong after he spoke out against China’s treatment of the Uighurs in western China. Canada responded to the targeting of Chong’s family by expelling Chinese diplomat Zhao Wei for his involvement in applying pressure on Wong.

Although Johnston was able to meet with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, the titular leader of the Liberal Party in the House of Commons, and the leaders of the New Democratic Party and Bloc Quebecois, to discuss foreign interference in Canadian elections, the extreme right-wing Conservative Leader of the Opposition, Pierre Poilievre, refused to meet with Johnston.

Poilievre, who has been likened to Texas Senator Ted Cruz due to his acerbic personality, called Johnston’s special rapporteur position a “fake job.” Poilievre characterized Johnston as a “ski buddy, cottage neighbor, and family friend” of Prime Minister Trudeau.

Poilievre may have other reasons to have avoided talking to Johnston. An earlier independent report by former Deputy Justice Minister Morris Rosenberg, titled “Report on the assessment of the 2021 Critical Election Incident Public Protocol,” which was commissioned by the Privy Council Office, concluded that, in addition to China, Russia had attempted to interfere in elections in 2019 and 2021. Prior to the 2019 election, Trudeau warned: “We saw very clearly that countries like Russia are behind a lot of the divisive campaigns, a lot of the divisive social media, you know, spreads that have turned our politics even more divisive and more anger-filled than they have been in the past.”

washington post logoWashington Post, Israeli agents conducted targeted killings in civilian area, killing a child, Imogen Piper, Meg Kelly and Louisa Loveluck, May 27, 2023 (print ed.). A 3D reconstruction by The Washington Post captures the increasingly deadly tactics used by Israeli forces during raids in the occupied West Bank.

The traffic was barely moving on March 16 in central Jenin, an unusually busy Thursday afternoon in the West Bank. With the holy month of Ramadan just days away, restaurants were full and shoppers wove between cars as they hustled from store to store.

A father pushed a stroller past a silver sedan. Inside the car, Israeli undercover agents were in place, waiting to carry out an operation against two Palestinian militants who were walking nearby. Omar Awadin, age 14, pedaled by on his bicycle, having just completed his last errand of the day.

Moments later, four plainclothes security forces burst from a second silver sedan nearby in pursuit of the militants and opened fire.

Such scenes are increasingly common in the West Bank, where more than 3 million Palestinians live under Israeli military occupation and a new generation of militants has risen to prominence. Israel says raids like this one are vital to disrupting terrorist networks and protecting its citizens from attack; Palestinian officials say they are war crimes that should be referred to the International Criminal Court.

washington post logoWashington Post, Passenger arrested for opening plane door mid-flight over South Korea, Joe Snell, May 27, 2023 (print ed.). In footage that appeared to have been captured by a passenger, wind could be seen whipping into the plane’s cabin, battering passengers.

A passenger caused chaos on an Asiana Airlines flight over South Korea on Friday by opening a door, injuring at least 12 people, who were treated for breathing problems.

The plane was traveling from the southern island of Jeju to the city of Daegu, about an hour away, and was minutes from landing at Daegu International Airport when the incident unfolded. The plane landed safely in Daegu, authorities told the Associated Press.

Police detained a 33-year-old man suspected of throwing the door open, South Korea’s Yonhap News Agency reported. Police said the man confessed to opening the door but would not say why he did it.

South Korea’s Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport said in a statement that any person who breaches the Aviation Security Act — actions that include passengers operating doors, exits or equipment inside an aircraft — could be prosecuted and sentenced to up to 10 years in prison.

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More On Probes, Suits Against Trump

ny times logoNew York Times, Mar-a-Lago Worker Provided Prosecutors New Details in Trump Documents Case, Alan Feuer and Maggie Haberman, May 27, 2023 (print ed.). A maintenance worker for the former president recounted helping to move boxes into a storage room a day before a Justice Department official came.

The day before a key meeting last year between a lawyer for former President Donald J. Trump and officials seeking the return of classified documents in Mr. Trump’s possession, a maintenance worker at the former president’s private club saw an aide moving boxes into a storage room, according to a person familiar with the matter.

The maintenance worker offered to help the aide — Walt Nauta, who was Mr. Trump’s valet in the White House — move the boxes and ended up lending him a hand. But the worker had no idea what was inside the boxes, the person familiar with the matter said. The maintenance worker has shared that account with federal prosecutors, the person said.

The worker’s account is potentially significant to prosecutors as they piece together details of how Mr. Trump handled sensitive documents he took with him from the White House upon leaving office and whether he obstructed efforts by the Justice Department and the National Archives to retrieve them.

Mr. Trump was found to have been keeping some of the documents in the storage room where Mr. Nauta and the maintenance worker were moving boxes on the day before the Justice Department’s top counterintelligence official, Jay Bratt, traveled to Mar-a-Lago last June to seek the return of any government materials being held by the former president.

The detail about the timing of Mr. Nauta’s interaction with the maintenance worker was reported earlier by The Washington Post. A lawyer for Mr. Nauta declined to comment. A lawyer for the maintenance worker would not publicly discuss the matter.

The New York Times reported this month that prosecutors had obtained cooperation from a witness who worked at Mar-a-Lago. Among other things, the witness provided investigators with a picture of the storage room.

The investigation, overseen by the special counsel, Jack Smith, has shown signs of entering its final phases, and this week lawyers for Mr. Trump — who is the current front-runner for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination — asked for a meeting to discuss the case with Attorney General Merrick B. Garland.

Salon, Commentary: Trump and the Saudis: Is Jack Smith finally looking at this clear-cut corruption? Heather Digby Parton, May 26, 2023. Trump's links to the Saudi regime and its LIV Golf tour reek of obvious corruption. Maybe Jack Smith has noticed.

There's a lot of Trump legal news these days, what with the E. Jean Carroll verdict, the Manhattan hush money indictment, the news that Fulton County, Georgia, D.A. Fani Willis has put local authorities on notice to anticipate "something" coming in August, and a cascade of reporting on special counsel Jack Smith's investigation into the Mar-a-Lago classified documents case, with some suggestions evidence that will come to a conclusion very soon.

The possible Jan. 6 case against Donald Trump himself remains more obscure, but with the sentencing of Oath Keeper Stewart Rhodes to 18 years in prison for plotting the insurrection on Thursday, it's hard to see how Trump, who incited the riot, isn't equally implicated in what happened that day. But for some reason one obvious case has gotten very little media attention and, as far as we know, very little attention from investigators: Trump's cozy financial relationship with the Saudi-sponsored Public Investment Fund, the desert kingdom's massive sovereign wealth fund. (Its assets are estimated at more than $620 billion.)
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It's not at all surprising that the Republican House isn't looking into this. They're busy trying to find disappearing informants in the Hunter Biden laptop case and digging through the Biden family finances. Why the Democratic-led Senate hasn't bothered is another question. But it's obvious that Trump and his family are deeply financially involved with the Saudi government, and considering the fact that Trump is running for president yet again, it's shocking that nobody seems to care.

While all the other GOP presidential candidates were busy campaigning on Thursday, USA Today reported that Trump was kicking back at Trump National Golf Course in Virginia, which will soon host a tournament on the Saudi-backed LIV Golf tour — the third at a property owned by the former president just this year. (Two more will be scheduled at Trump properties in New Jersey and Florida.) Last year, Trump — in typically obtuse style — even scheduled a tournament at the New Jersey club on Sept. 11, drawing outrage from the families of 9/11 victims. Trump said he didn't know what they were talking about and defended Saudi Arabia, telling ESPN that "nobody has gotten to the bottom of 9/11."

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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.

 

More On U.S. Presidential Race

 

ron desantis mouth open uncredited

ny times logoNew York Times, Ron DeSantis Plows Ahead With Campaign Tour After Digital Rollout Misfires, Nicholas Nehamas, Maggie Astor and Alan Blinder, May 26, 2023 (print ed.). Trying to regroup after a bumpy Twitter rollout, the Florida governor sought to make new headlines ahead of a trip to Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina.

Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida plunged into his first full day of presidential campaigning on Thursday after his sputtering Twitter rollout the night before, holding a series of interviews with friendly conservative commentators and announcing a series of in-person events in Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina next week.

republican elephant logoFor Mr. DeSantis, the immediate challenge appeared to be moving past the rough kickoff and appealing to a mainstream Republican audience, after a Twitter discussion with the billionaire Elon Musk that often strayed into online right-wing grievances and away from the issues voters say they care about most, like the economy.

Acknowledging that a “very small percentage” of Republican primary voters were on Twitter, Mr. DeSantis defended his decision to announce his campaign on the social media platform.

“We felt that there would be a lot of buzz about it,” he told the conservative radio host Erick Erickson on Thursday afternoon. “And I think that was probably the biggest story in the world yesterday. And so hopefully we’ll get some people interested in our campaign who may not have been otherwise.” 

ny times logoNew York Times, Opinion: How the Internet Shrank Musk and DeSantis, Ross Douthat, May 27, 2023.  If you had told me several months ago, immediately after Elon Musk bought Twitter and Ron DeSantis celebrated a thumping re-election victory, that DeSantis would launch his presidential campaign in conversation with Musk, I would have thought, intriguing: The rightward-trending billionaire whose rockets and cars stand out in an economy dominated by apps and financial instruments meets the Republican politician whose real-world victories contrast with the virtual populism of Donald Trump.

The actual launch of DeSantis’s presidential campaign, in a “Twitter Spaces” event that crashed repeatedly and played to a smaller audience than he would have claimed just by showing up on Fox, instead offered the political version of the lesson that we’ve been taught repeatedly by Musk’s stewardship of Twitter: The internet can be a trap.

For the Tesla and SpaceX mogul, the trap was sprung because Musk wanted to attack the groupthink of liberal institutions, and seeing that groupthink manifest on his favorite social media site, he imagined that owning Twitter was the key to transforming public discourse.

But for all its influence, social media is still downstream of other institutions — universities, newspapers, television channels, movie studios, other internet platforms. Twitter is real life, but only through its relationship to other realities; it doesn’t have the capacity to be a hub of discourse, news gathering or entertainment on its own. And many of Musk’s difficulties as the Twitter C.E.O. have reflected a simple overestimation of social media’s inherent authority and influence.

Thus he’s tried to sell the privilege of verification, the famous “blue checks,” without recognizing that they were valued because of their connection to real-world institutions and lose value if they reflect a Twitter hierarchy alone. Or he’s encouraged his favored journalists to publish their scoops and essays on his site when it isn’t yet built out for that kind of publication. Or he’s encouraged media figures like Tucker Carlson and now politicians like DeSantis to run shows or do interviews on his platform, without having the infrastructure in place to make all that work.

It’s entirely possible that Musk can build out that infrastructure eventually, and make Twitter more capacious than it is today. But there isn’t some immediate social-media shortcut to the influence he’s seeking. If you want Twitter to be the world’s news hub, you probably need a Twitter newsroom. If you want Twitter to host presidential candidates, you probably need a Twitter channel that feels like a professional newscast. And while you’re trying to build those things, you need to be careful that the nature of social media doesn’t diminish you to the kind of caricatured role — troll instead of tycoon — that tempts everyone on Twitter.

Wayne Madsen Report, Investigative Commentary: Are we seeing another Opus Dei power behind a politician? Wayne Madsen, May 26, 2023. It matters not that wayne madsen may 29 2015 cropped Small2024 Republican presidential candidate and Florida governor Ron DeSantis has a Bachelor of Arts degree from Yale and a law degree from Harvard.

Notwithstanding those academic credentials, DeSantis has shown himself not only to be a textbook fascist but also an inept campaigner on a wayne madesen report logonational stage. As the DeSantis presidential campaign receives the spotlight of the media, one thing is becoming clear. The governor’s wife, Casey DeSantis, [left] someone who attempted to mimic First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy during her husband’s second gubernatorial casey desantis childreninauguration ceremony, reportedly holds views more extreme than those of the governor. Mrs. DeSantis is a former television anchor for the Golf Channel and WJXT in Jacksonville. She also appears to be the actual power behind DeSantis’s political rise.

Casey DeSantis is not the first spousal manipulator who has manipulated the puppet strings of a politician. Eva Peron exercised a tremendous amount of influence over her husband, Argentine dictator Juan Peron. So, too, did Elena Ceausescu over her husband, Romanian Communist strongman Nicolae Ceausescu.

The control that Mrs. DeSantis has over her husband is best described in terms of the movie "The Manchurian Candidate," in which Eleanor Iselin (played by Angela Lansbury) controls every facet of the presidential campaign of her husband, Senator John Iselin (played by John Gregory).

American politics has also experienced its share of spousal manipulators. It is known that far-right extremist Ginni Thomas has influenced the Supreme Court decisions of her husband, Associate Justice Clarence Thomas. Less well-known is Linda Poindexter, a former Episcopalian priest in the Diocese of Washington and the wife of former National Security Adviser and Iran-contra figure Admiral John Poindexter. In 2001, Mrs. Poindexter shocked the Episcopalian establishment in Washington by converting to Roman Catholicism. While Mrs. Thomas and Mrs. Poindexter have been strong influences over their husbands, they have something else in common. Both women are active in the right-wing Catholic sect – some would call it cult -- Opus Dei, founded by Josémaria Escriva [right] in Spain in 1928. Escriva, who was canonized in 2002 by Pope John Paul II, served as a religious and political adviser to Spanish Fascist dictator Francisco Franco.

Today, Opus Dei, derisively called “Octopus Dei” by its critics, has 90,000 members in over 70 countries. There are no publicly accessible Opus Dei official membership directories because secret sects maintain secret records.

What is publicly known is that Opus Dei is a hierarchical organization composed of Supernumeraries, Numerary Assistants, Associates, Priests, and Cooperators. Some Opus Dei members influential in the Republican Party have been revealed. They include Fox’s Laura Ingraham, CNBC’s Larry Kudlow (a former economic adviser in the Trump White House), former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, Trump White House counsel Pat Cipollone, and former Trump Attorney General William Barr. Opus Dei’s Washington headquarters is the Catholic Information Center, an outwardly-appearing bookstore located not far from the White House.

Considering the far-right views of Ron and Casey DeSantis, both Roman Catholics, it would not be surprising if they are both tied to Opus Dei.

washington post logoWashington Post, Nikki Haley let the Confederate flag fly until a massacre at a Black church forced her hand, Michael Kranish, May 27, 2023. She told Confederate groups that flag was about “heritage,” and her campaign said efforts to remove it from the State House grounds were “desperate and irresponsible.”

Amid her barrier-breaking first run for governor, Nikki Haley took time off the trail for an unusual event: A private meeting with two leaders of Confederate heritage groups.

The men listened during the 2010 conversation as the Republican candidate assured them that she shared their worldview. She said the Civil War was a fight between “tradition” and “change,” without mentioning the word slavery. She said she supported Confederate History Month as a parallel to Black History Month.

And, as the daughter of Indian immigrants, she suggested that her identity as a minority woman could help her take on the NAACP, which was leading a boycott of the state until the Confederate flag was taken off the State House grounds.

“I will work to talk to them about the heritage and how this is not something that is racist,” Haley said in a discussion captured on video.

Haley’s outreach to Confederate groups reflects a more complex backstory than she has previously acknowledged about her most famous act: Signing legislation five years later that removed the Confederate flag from the State House grounds in the wake of a racist massacre at a Black church in Charleston.

As Haley rose from governor to U.N. ambassador under President Donald Trump, she often portrayed the decision as the culmination of her work to move South Carolina beyond its history of secession, enslavement and segregation. The reason she didn’t try to take down the flag sooner, Haley claimed in her 2019 memoir, was because members of both parties had “pushed back” against the idea, adding that “even many African American Democrats were privately opposed to the idea of reopening the flag debate.”

Yet a Washington Post review of Haley’s actions in the five years before the massacre found that she repeatedly dismissed efforts to remove the flag, mollified Confederate heritage groups whose influence remained a powerful force, and did not hold substantive discussions with Black leaders who wanted to remove the flag. Months before the mass killing that changed her position, her reelection campaign had called a proposal by her Democratic opponent to remove the flag “desperate and irresponsible.”

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U.S. Abortion, Birth Control, #MeToo

ny times logoNew York Times, Indiana Reprimands Doctor Who Provided Abortion to 10-Year-Old Rape Victim, Ava Sasani, May 27, 2023 (print ed.). Dr. Caitlin Bernard violated the privacy of her young patient by discussing the girl’s case with a reporter, the state’s medical board ruled.

\An Indiana doctor who provided an abortion to a 10-year-old rape victim last year violated her young patient’s privacy by discussing the case with a reporter, the state’s medical board ruled Thursday night.

Dr. Caitlin Bernard, an Indianapolis obstetrician-gynecologist, catapulted into the national spotlight last year after she provided an abortion for an Ohio girl soon after the Supreme Court decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, which left states free to severely restrict or outlaw abortion.

The state’s medical board voted to issue Dr. Bernard a letter of reprimand and a fine of $3,000. But it decided against stiffer penalties, which could have included suspension or probation, instead deciding that Dr. Bernard is fit to return to her practice.

The board also cleared her of other allegations that she failed to appropriately report the girl’s rape to authorities.

The decision was the culmination of a yearlong legal pursuit of Dr. Bernard by the state’s attorney general, Todd Rokita, a Republican who opposes abortion.

The Ohio girl had traveled to Indiana for the procedure after her home state enacted a ban on most abortions after six weeks of pregnancy. Dr. Bernard told a reporter for the Indianapolis Star about the case during an abortion rights rally. She didn’t name the patient, but the case quickly became a flash point in the early, heated days of debate after the Supreme Court ruling, catching the attention of President Biden and turning conservative attention and ire toward Dr. Bernard.

“I don’t think she intended for this to go viral,” said Dr. John Strobel, the president of the board, calling Dr. Bernard a “good doctor.”

“But I do think we as physicians need to be more careful in this situation,” he said.

Mr. Rokita, who had filed the complaints against Dr. Bernard with the medical board, praised the outcome.

“This case was about patient privacy and the trust between the doctor and the patient that was broken,” Mr. Rokita said in a statement late Thursday. “What if it was your child or your patient or your sibling who was going through a sensitive medical crisis, and the doctor, who you thought was on your side, ran to the press for political reasons?”

Dr. Bernard has criticized Mr. Rokita for turning the case into a “political stunt.”

During the hearing, which stretched for more than 15 hours, ending just before midnight, Dr. Bernard said that her own comments did not reveal the patient’s protected health information. Rather, Dr. Bernard said, it was the fierce political battle that followed. Some conservatives doubted her story and drove a demand to confirm it. Eventually, the man accused of raping the girl appeared in court and was linked to her case.

Dr. Bernard, who has publicly advocated for abortion rights, said she had an ethical obligation to educate the public about urgent matters of public health, especially questions about reproductive health — her area of expertise.

washington post logoWashington Post, In middle age, they realized they were trans: ‘A lightbulb went off’, Tara Bahrampour, May 27, 2023. Roughly a fifth of trans adults 45 and older have not told anyone they are trans, a Washington Post-KFF poll conducted late last year found.

Ray Gibson spent half a century living as a woman before realizing he might be a man.

Growing up in Omaha in the 1960s and ’70s as the child of the Hall of Fame pitcher Bob Gibson, he always felt something was off. At age 6, “I thought, ‘Gee, I’m the son my dad doesn’t know he has.’” When he got his period at age 13, he locked himself in the bathroom, screaming and crying.

“My mom came to the door — ‘What’s the matter? What’s the matter?’” he said. “I said, ‘I want a sex change.’ ... I’d never heard of such a thing. So I don’t even know where it came from. It came from my soul.”

For people with gender dysphoria, 20th-century America was a lonely place to grow up. Terms like “transgender” and “nonbinary” had not entered the common lexicon, and if transgender people appeared in popular culture at all, they were often portrayed as murderers, sex workers or homicide victims. There was no internet where people could seek out expertise or find community. The local library was the main source of information, and it often came up short.

Many came out as gay or lesbian, or hewed to a cisgender heterosexual presentation, but the sense of disharmony persisted. Only later in life, as awareness about transgender identity increased, did some recognize that what they were hearing from younger generations also fit them.

Americans who identify as trans today skew young. More than 4 in 10, 43 percent, are between 13 and 24, according to a 2022 report by the UCLA School of Law’s Williams Institute. Teenagers identify as trans at nearly triple the rate of all adults, and nearly five times the rate of people 65 and older. They are growing up at a time when trans role models abound, from classroom teachers to pop stars to Cabinet officials in Washington.

Their parents’ and grandparents’ generations experienced none of this. “You’ll hear of people who felt different and they thought they were the only one in the world,” said Aaron Tax, managing director of government affairs and policy advocacy at SAGE, an advocacy group for LGBTQ+ elders. “Must be a world of difference today, for people who have all kinds of access to trans stories or trans joy.”

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

 

colorado river w

ny times logoNew York Times, A Breakthrough Deal to Keep the Colorado River From Going Dry, for Now, Christopher Flavelle, May 23, 2023 (print ed.). The agreement on cuts, aided by a wet winter and $1.2 billion in federal payments, expires at the end of 2026.

Arizona, California and Nevada have agreed to take less water from the drought-strained Colorado River (shown aboe, marked in red), a breakthrough agreement that, for now, keeps the river from falling so low that it would jeopardize water supplies for major Western cities like Phoenix and Los Angeles as well as for some of America’s most productive farmland.

colorado river in grand canyon pima point 2010 viewThe agreement, announced Monday, calls for the federal government to pay about $1.2 billion to irrigation districts, cities and Native American tribes in the three states if they temporarily use less water. The states have also agreed to make additional cuts beyond the ones tied to the federal payments to generate the total reductions needed to prevent the collapse of the river.

Taken together, those reductions would amount to about 13 percent of the total water use in the lower Colorado Basin — among the most aggressive ever experienced in the region, and likely to require significant water restrictions for residential and agriculture uses.

The Colorado River supplies drinking water to 40 million Americans in seven states as well as part of Mexico and irrigates 5.5 million acres of farmland. The electricity generated by dams on the river’s two main reservoirs, Lake Mead and Lake Powell, powers millions of homes and businesses.

But drought, population growth and climate change have dropped the river’s flows by one-third in recent years compared with historical averages, threatening to provoke a water and power catastrophe across the West.

California, Arizona and Nevada get their share of water from Lake Mead, which is formed by the Colorado River at the Hoover Dam and is controlled by the federal government. The Bureau of Reclamation, an agency within the Interior Department, determines how much water each of the three states receives. The other states that depend on the Colorado get water directly from the river and its tributaries.

“This is an important step forward toward our shared goal of forging a sustainable path for the basin that millions of people call home,” Camille Calimlim Touton, the Bureau of Reclamation commissioner, said in a statement.

The agreement struck over the weekend runs only through the end of 2026 and still needs to be formally adopted by the federal government. At that point, all seven states that rely on the river — which include Colorado, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming — could face a deeper reckoning, as its decline is likely to continue.

washington post logoWashington Post, Tragedy strikes a rural community torn by miles-long trains: ‘It’s heartbreaking,’ Andrea Salcedo, Luz Lazo and Lee Powell, May 27, 2023.  Nationwide, longer and longer trains are obstructing rural intersections, preventing paramedics from getting to emergencies, including a baby who died after his mom waited and waited.

A man suffered a stroke but a stopped train blocked paramedics from reaching him for over an hour. A senior in a nearby retirement community missed his oncologist appointment because another train obstructed that same intersection. A fire crew could not get to a house engulfed in flames until another train eventually cleared the crossing.

For decades, those living along Glover Road in Leggett, Tex. — a rural community with fewer than 150 residents some 80 miles from Houston — wrote letters, sent emails and called authorities pleading that trains stop blocking the neighborhood’s sole point of entry and exit for hours. Some residents and a county judge sent letters addressed to the railroad company, warning of a “greater catastrophe,” including a toxic train disaster.

“Should there be a derailment … we would be dead ducks, having no evacuating route,” Pete Glover, the man whom the street is named after, wrote in a 1992 letter to the railway company. “If some home caught afire,” he added. there’d be “no way for firetrucks to serve them.”

To many in the community, their worst fears were realized in 2021, when baby K’Twon Franklin died. His mother, Monica Franklin, had found the three-month old unresponsive in her bed the morning of Sept. 30, and called 911.

Paramedics responded, but a Union Pacific train blocked their path on Glover Road, according to Franklin and a local police report. It took more than 30 minutes for them to carry K’Twon into an ambulance. Two days later, the baby died at a hospital in Houston. “Unfortunately, the delay has cost my child’s life,” Franklin, 34, told The Washington Post.

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climate change photo

 

Pandemics, Public Health, Privacy

ny times logoNew York Times, Hundreds of Thousands Lose Medicaid Coverage as Pandemic Protections End, Noah Weiland, May 27, 2023 (print ed.). Early data suggests that many recipients are losing their coverage for procedural reasons, even if they are still qualified for it.

Hundreds of thousands of low-income Americans have lost Medicaid coverage in recent weeks as part of a sprawling unwinding of a pandemic-era policy that prohibited states from removing people from the program.

Early data shows that many people lost coverage for procedural reasons, such as when Medicaid recipients did not return paperwork to verify their eligibility or could not be located. The large number of terminations on procedural grounds suggests that many people may be losing their coverage even though they are still qualified for it. Many of those who have been dropped have been children.

From the outset of the pandemic until this spring, states were barred from kicking people off Medicaid under a provision in a coronavirus relief package passed by Congress in 2020. The guarantee of continuous coverage spared people from regular eligibility checks during the public health crisis and caused enrollment in Medicaid to soar to record levels.

But the policy expired at the end of March, setting in motion a vast bureaucratic undertaking across the country to verify who remains eligible for coverage. In recent weeks, states have begun releasing data on who has lost coverage and why, offering a first glimpse of the punishing toll that the so-called unwinding is taking on some of the poorest and most vulnerable Americans.

ny times logoNew York Times, More Teenagers Coming to School High, N.Y.C. Teachers Say, Ashley Southall, May 27, 2023 (print ed.). Students and teachers said in interviews that some classrooms were in disarray as more and younger students were smoking at school.

Ever since Justin, a 15-year-old high school freshman, tried marijuana on his birthday two years ago, he has smoked almost every day, several times a day, he said.

“If I smoke a blunt, after that blunt I’m going to be chill,” he said on a recent morning at a corner deli near his school, the Bronx Design and Construction Academy. “I’m not going to be stressing about nothing at all.”

Another boy came by and flashed two glass tubes of smokable flower. More students were smoking across the street in a doorway and on a stoop. On another corner, a smoke shop frequented by children in backpacks and uniforms opened about half an hour before the first bell.

While it has long been common for some teens to smoke marijuana, teachers and students say that more and younger students are smoking throughout the day and at school.

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U.S. Media, Education, Sports, Arts, High Tech

Politico, EU’s Breton says Twitter ‘can’t hide’ after platform ditches disinformation code, Jordain Carney and Sarah Ferris, May 27, 2023. Fighting disinformation online will be a ‘legal obligation’ under new rules coming into force in August, EU commissioner says.

Twitter has abandoned the EU's code of practice on disinformation, Thierry Breton said late Friday, but Europe's internal markets commissioner insisted that "obligations remain" for the social networking giant.

"You can run but you can’t hide," Breton said in a tweet, after confirming that the platform owned by Elon Musk had left the bloc’s disinformation code, which other major social media platforms have pledged to support.

"Beyond voluntary commitments, fighting disinformation will be a legal obligation under DSA as of August 25," Breton said, referring to the Digital Services Act — new social media rules that include fines of up to 6 percent of a company's annual revenue.

"Our teams will be ready for enforcement," the commissioner said.

The code of practice on disinformation is a voluntary rulebook that includes obligations for platforms to track political advertising, stop the monetization of disinformation, and provide greater access to outsiders. Participation in the code is designed to help offset some of these companies' obligations within the separate and mandatory DSA.

Twitter is one of eight social media platforms that fall under the scope of the DSA. The others are Facebook, TikTok, YouTube, Instagram, LinkedIn, Pinterest and Snapchat.

Breton has publicly vowed that he would personally hold Musk to account for complying with the EU's content rules.

 

 

Poet Amanda Gorman provided an iconic appeal to youthful idealism by a reading at the 2021 Inauguration of President Joe Biden (Pool photo by Patrick Semansky of the Associated Press). poolPoet Amanda Gorman provided an iconic appeal to youthful idealism by reading her work at the 2021 Inauguration of President Joe Biden (Pool photo by Patrick Semansky of the Associated Press).

washington post logoWashington Post, A Fla. school restricted Amanda Gorman’s book. Here’s what to know, Maham Javaid and Dan Rosenzweig-Ziff, May 25, 2023 (print ed.). One Florida parent thought a portion of Amanda Gorman’s poem, “The Hill We Climb,” contained “indirect hate messages.” As a wave of book challenges spreads across the country, poet Amanda Gorman said she felt “gutted” after learning that a Florida school restricted access to the poem she read at President Biden’s inauguration. The school district denied the book was banned or removed but acknowledged moving it so elementary school students had limited access to it.

The youngest inaugural poet in U.S. history said Tuesday that restrictions like the one placed on her book “The Hill We Climb,” which contains a single, 32-page poem, are on the rise. “We must fight back,” she said.

“So they ban my book from young readers, confuse me with [Oprah Winfrey], fail to specify what parts of my poetry they object to, refuse to read any reviews, and offer no alternatives,” Gorman said via Twitter in reaction to the complaint that challenged her book. Gorman declined to comment when reached through her spokesperson.

Here is what you need to know about the challenges Gorman’s book faces.

washington post logoWashington Post, Just 11 people filed most school book challenges last year, Hannah Natanson, May 24, 2023 (print ed.). Objections to sexual and LGBTQ content propelled a spike in book challenges in school libraries during the 2021-2022 school year.

Books about LGBTQ people are fast becoming the main target of a historic wave of school book challenges — and a large percentage of the complaints come from a minuscule number of hyperactive adults, a first-of-its-kind Washington Post analysis found.

A stated wish to shield children from sexual content is the main factor animating attempts to remove LGBTQ books, The Post found. The second-most common reason cited for pulling LGBTQ texts was an explicit desire to prevent children from reading about lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, nonbinary and queer lives.

The Post requested copies of all book challenges filed in the 2021-2022 school year with the 153 school districts that Tasslyn Magnusson, a researcher employed by free expression advocacy group PEN America, tracked as receiving formal requests to remove books last school year. In total, officials in more than 100 of those school systems, which are spread across 37 states, provided 1,065 complaints totaling 2,506 pages.

The Post analyzed the complaints to determine who was challenging the books, what kinds of books drew objections and why. Nearly half of filings — 43 percent — targeted titles with LGBTQ characters or themes, while 36 percent targeted titles featuring characters of color or dealing with issues of race and racism. The top reason people challenged books was “sexual” content; 61 percent of challenges referenced this concern.

  • Washington Post, School librarians face a new penalty in the banned-book wars: Prison

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ny times logoNew York Times, Oath Keepers Leader Is Sentenced to 18 Years in Jan. 6 Sedition Case, Alan Feuer, May 26, 2023 (print ed.). The sentence for Stewart Rhodes was the longest so far in the federal investigation of the attack and the first issued to a defendant convicted of sedition.

Stewart Rhodes, the leader of the far-right Oath Keepers militia, was sentenced on Thursday to 18 years in prison for his conviction on seditious conspiracy charges for the role he played in helping to mobilize the pro-Trump attack on the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

The sentence, handed down in Federal District Court in Washington, was the most severe penalty so far in the more than 1,000 criminal cases stemming from the Capitol attack — and the first to be increased for fitting the legal definition of terrorism.

It was also the first to have been given to any of the 10 members of the Oath Keepers and another far-right group, the Proud Boys, who were convicted of sedition in connection with the events of Jan. 6. (More details below).

ny times logoNew York Times, White House and G.O.P. Close In on Deal to Raise Debt Limit, Jim Tankersley and Catie Edmondson, May 26, 2023 (print ed.). Negotiators were discussing a plan that would allow Republicans to point to spending reductions and Democrats to say they had protected against large cuts.

joe biden resized oTop White House officials and Republican lawmakers were closing in Thursday on a deal that would raise the debt limit for two years while imposing strict caps on discretionary spending not related to the military or veterans for the same period. Officials were racing to cement an agreement in time to avert a federal default that is projected in just one week.

The deal taking shape would allow Republicans to say that they were reducing some federal spending — even as spending on the military and veterans’ programs would continue to grow — and allow Democrats to say they had spared most domestic programs from significant cuts.

Negotiators from both sides were talking into the evening and beginning to draft legislative text, though some details remained in flux.

kevin mccarthy“We’ve been talking to the White House all day, we’ve been going back and forth, and it’s not easy,” Speaker Kevin McCarthy, right, told reporters as he left the Capitol on Thursday evening, declining to divulge what was under discussion. “It takes a while to make it happen, and we are working hard to make it happen.”

Politico, Debt talks head into weekend with no deal as Yellen adjusts default deadline, Jordain Carney, Daniella Diaz and Rachael Bade, May 26, 2023. Republican and White House negotiators seem to have reached consensus on a number of issues, but work requirements for safety net programs and permitting reform remain major sticking points.

Capitol Hill entered Friday with wishful thinking that there could be a debt deal. But it looks like the long weekend will commence without one.

politico CustomStill, lawmakers got lucky in another way Friday: Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen announced in a new letter to Speaker Kevin McCarthy and other congressional leaders that latest estimates show the real default deadline is June 5. That gives negotiators a bit more time, since she had previously warned default could come as soon as June 1.

Republican negotiators had entered McCarthy’s office earlier Friday saying no in-person meetings with their White House counterparts are on the books, though they added they are in “constant” communication via calls and other electronic communications. Those GOP lawmakers weren’t sounding particularly optimistic that a deal was imminent.

Asked Friday morning if he thought they could close out talks by the end of the day, Rep. Patrick McHenry (R-N.C.), one of the GOP negotiators, threw up his arms in a shrug.

“Here we are night after night after night. And the pressure is more. And the consequences are greater. We recognize that. We know this and the White House surely recognizes this,” he said.

Conservative Republicans were also passing around a list, which a Republican familiar with the matter said came from leadership, that detailed where the two sides have apparently found agreement. That includes: An agreement to lift the debt limit through 2024, a procedure in place to incentivize Congress to pass all 12 spending bills and a plan to claw back unspent Covid money.

But a second Republican familiar with the talks warned on Thursday night that negotiators have not reached a deal on top-line spending numbers or how long the debt ceiling extension would be. They cautioned that there can’t be an agreement on other details until those get fully ironed out.

Politico, Biden will not invoke 14th Amendment, deputy Treasury secretary says, Matt Berg, May 26, 2023. President Joe Biden will not invoke the 14th Amendment in the debt ceiling fight, Deputy Treasury Secretary Wally Adeyemo said.

politico Custom“I think the president and secretary are clear that that will not solve our problems now. So, yes, that is a no,” Adeyemo said on CNN Friday morning when asked about the issue.

treasury logoWhite House officials have said they don’t see the 14th Amendment — which says the “validity of the public debt” cannot be questioned — as a viable means of circumventing debt ceiling negotiations. Biden himself has said that he sees a bipartisan deal as the only option to the current standoff, casting doubt on the 14th Amendment as workable in public remarks.
Biden open to invoking 14th Amendment to avoid debt default

Adeyemo’s remarks are the most concrete indication yet that Biden does not plan to use the amendment to solve the nation’s debt ceiling issue. The U.S. risks economic calamity if a debt deal isn’t reached.

“The 14th Amendment can’t solve our challenges now. Ultimately, the only thing that can do that is Congress doing what it’s done 78 other times — raising the debt limit,” the deputy treasury secretary said. “We don’t have a plan B that allows us to meet the commitments that we’ve made to our creditors, to our seniors, to our veterans, to the American people.”

Politico, House GOP floats blocking FBI’s new HQ, Jordain Carney, May 26, 2023. “The whole discussion about a new headquarters should be put off to another time and place,” said Rep. Michael Cloud.

politico CustomHouse Republicans have privately discussed blocking a new FBI headquarters by hitting the project’s funding — a potential escalation in the party’s increasingly antagonistic relationship with the bureau.

It’s far from clear that such a move would unite House Republicans, much less pass muster with the Senate or White House. But as Republicans increasingly view the FBI with suspicion over investigations into Donald Trump and other political issues — and look for ways to cut spending — the party’s appropriators are under pressure to use spending bills to place new limits on the bureau, with the new headquarters being an early target.

FBI logoThree Republicans tasked with writing the funding bills acknowledged it has come up in conversations, though they stressed that talks were still in early stages. GOP members are also well aware it could put them in the middle of a heated FBI HQ standoff between Maryland and Virginia, the contenders for the location of the new building that was an 11th-hour hold up to a mammoth funding deal just months ago.

“The FBI right now has some serious, serious issues that need to be addressed. … The whole discussion about a new headquarters should be put off to another time and place,” said Rep. Michael Cloud (R-Texas), a member of the Appropriations Committee, characterizing himself as “very much” interested in using the government funding bills to block a new headquarters.
Trump calls FBI, DOJ ‘vicious monsters’ at Pennsylvania rally

One of those GOP appropriators, who requested anonymity to speak frankly, confirmed “there is an interest” among Republicans on the Appropriations Committee to block the new FBI site. The lawmaker added the idea of clawing back previously allocated funding is a harder lift but has also “entered the conversation.”

ny times logoNew York Times, Republicans Report Progress in Debt Limit Talks as Negotiations Continue, Catie Edmondson, May 26, 2023 (print ed.). Negotiators reconvened on Thursday, as hard-right Republicans and some Democrats expressed concerns about the shape of an emerging compromise.Negotiators reconvened on Thursday after working through the night to strike a deal, as hard-right Republicans and some Democrats expressed concerns about the shape of an emerging compromise.

U.S. House logoRepublican congressional leaders said Thursday they were making progress toward a deal with President Biden to raise the debt ceiling while cutting spending, cautioning that an agreement that was still being hammered out would inevitably disappoint lawmakers in both parties.

Speaker Kevin McCarthy told reporters at the Capitol that bargainers had worked “well past midnight” and resumed negotiations later on Thursday morning, trying to find a resolution to avert a default on the nation’s debt before the projected June 1 deadline. He said that there were still “outstanding issues” and that he had directed his negotiators to work “24/7” until there was a deal.

“I don’t think everybody is going to be happy at the end of the day,” Mr. McCarthy said, nodding to mounting concerns among some hard-right Republicans that their party was making too many concessions in the talks. “That’s not how this system works.”

Democrats, too, were growing anxious that Mr. Biden would go too far in accepting Republican demands, including spending reductions and tougher work requirements on public benefit programs. They were huddling at noon in the Capitol to discuss the state of the negotiations.

ny times logoNew York Times, Supreme Court Limits E.P.A.’s Power to Address Water Pollution, Adam Liptak, May 26, 2023 (print ed.). The justices ruled that the Clean Water Act does not allow the Environmental Protection Agency to regulate discharges into some wetlands near bodies of water.

The Supreme Court on Thursday curtailed the Environmental Protection Agency’s authority to police water pollution, ruling that the Clean Water Act does not allow the agency to regulate discharges into some wetlands near bodies of water.

Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr., writing for five justices, held that the law covers only wetlands “with a continuous surface connection” to those waters.

The decision was a second major blow to the E.P.A.’s authority and to the power of administrative agencies generally. Last year, the court limited the E.P.A.’s power to address climate change under the Clean Air Act.

Experts in environmental law said the decision would sharply limit the E.P.A.’s authority to protect millions of acres of wetlands under the Clean Water Act, leaving them subject to pollution without penalty.

 

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ny times logoNew York Times, Inflation Inched Higher in April, Reflecting Challenge for the Fed, Madeleine Ngo May 26, 2023. The Fed’s preferred gauge, the Personal Consumption Expenditures index, climbed 4.4 percent in April from a year earlier, a slight increase from March.

A measure of inflation most closely watched by Federal Reserve officials picked up in April, reflecting the difficult path ahead for economic policymakers as they weigh whether to raise interest rates again to bring down stubborn price increases.

The Personal Consumption Expenditures index climbed 4.4 percent in April from a year earlier. That was a slight increase from March, when prices climbed 4.2 percent on an annual basis. Still, prices are not climbing as fast they were in February, when the index rose 5.1 percent on an annual basis.

A “core” measure that tries to gauge underlying inflation trends by stripping out volatile food and energy prices rose 4.7 percent in the year through April, up slightly from 4.6 percent in March.

ny times logoNew York Times, Opinion: Debt: The Bad, the Weak and the Ugly, Paul Krugman, May 26, 2023 (print ed.). The prospect that the U.S. government will default on its payments because Republicans refuse to raise the debt ceiling is now real and imminent. In fact, bonds issued by some corporations are yielding less than Treasuries, indicating that investors now consider, say, Microsoft a more reliable debtor than the federal government.

As disaster looms, it’s important to keep in mind that Republicans are the villains here: They’re the ones engaged in extortion.

The reason I say this is that progressives are feeling a lot of rage against the Biden administration for refusing to take action to avoid this crisis. And at least some people in or close to the administration seem more dedicated to rejecting proposed ways out of the trap than they are to solving the problem. There’s a definite Stockholm syndrome vibe, in which the hostages seem angrier at their would-be rescuers than they are at their kidnappers.

So I hope that the administration will take what I say now as what it is — an attempt to be helpful.

There are at least three ways the administration could, in principle, bypass the debt ceiling. The objections to these options purport to be technocratic or legal, or both, but when you dig a bit you realize that they’re really political.

The first possible strategy is simply to ignore the debt limit, declaring it unconstitutional. The 14th Amendment, which says that the validity of U.S. debt “shall not be questioned,” has been getting a lot of attention. But more broadly, the debt ceiling impasse has put the administration in a position where it must break some laws — either the laws that specify federal spending or the law limiting government borrowing. In such a position, the president must choose which laws to obey; why should the debt ceiling take priority?

I’m not a lawyer, but I don’t find the case against the constitutional option persuasive. Some have said default wouldn’t violate the 14th Amendment, because the debt would still be valid — we just wouldn’t be honoring it. It’s also been argued that the merits of the case are largely irrelevant because of the Supreme Court’s partisanship. So it isn’t really about the law — it’s about the politics.

 washington post logoWashington Post, Democrats’ worry grows over White House approach to debt talks, Leigh Ann Caldwell, Marianna Sotomayor, Paul Kane and Tyler Pager, May 25, 2023 (print ed.). House Democrats say they want more visibility in what is being discussed and more aggressive pushback from President Biden against Republicans.House Democratic lawmakers are voicing frustration over President Biden’s approach to negotiating a debt ceiling deal with Republicans, worrying that their priorities are not being championed aggressively enough and that Biden hasn’t more forcefully pushed back publicly against Republican demands.

U.S. House logoIn a previously unreported interaction, Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-Tex.), who has served in the House for almost 30 years, encouraged Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) during Democrats’ weekly caucus meeting Tuesday to ask the president to immediately address the nation, detailing how Republicans are toying with the economy and explaining that a default would catastrophically affect their lives.

Jeffries acknowledged Jackson Lee’s request and assured lawmakers that he and his leadership team would take a more aggressive approach to messaging while the White House adheres to a strategy of keeping negotiations behind closed doors. Jeffries has not yet raised the request with the president, according to a person familiar with the situation, who, like others who spoke to The Washington Post, did so on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive conversations. But White House officials and leadership staff have remained in contact in recent days.

“It’s my expectation that if Republicans continue to play games with the American economy, threaten default, and drive us into a very dangerous situation, that we’ll begin to hear from the administration, if not the president himself,” Jeffries said in a news conference Wednesday afternoon.

House Democrats across ideological factions are frustrated at what they say is a lack of communication by the White House at a time when they should be preparing to defend their party’s president, who has frequently commented on his willingness to find compromise in hopes of striking a deal. Democrats have publicly and privately said the president isn’t responding forcefully enough to Republicans’ framing of the negotiations, and that their lack of insight into the process could jeopardize Democrats’ ability to whip votes in support once a bipartisan deal eventually hits the House floor.

The approach is a stark contrast to that of House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) and his lieutenants, who have held court with the press at length, multiple times per day, effectively shaping a narrative and — at least publicly — the parameters of the negotiations.

 

washington post logoWashington Post, Conservatives revolt as negotiators try to finish debt ceiling deal, Jeff Stein, Rachel Siegel, Paul Kane and Tony Romm, May 26, 2023. Even if congressional Republicans and the White House reach an agreement to avert catastrophic default soon, they need time to put it into action.

Conservative lawmakers have begun mounting a campaign against the emerging deal on the debt ceiling between President Biden and House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), as objections from the right threaten to undermine an agreement even before its contents are publicly released.

On Thursday and Friday, in response to reports about the details of the agreement, leading conservative lawmakers and budget experts raised strong objections, arguing McCarthy had failed to extract sufficient concessions from the Biden administration in exchange for raising the debt ceiling. McCarthy pushed back in remarks to reporters on Friday, saying the criticisms were being leveled by people unaware of the substance of the deal.

With days left before the government could face a calamitous default, negotiators are closing in on an agreement that would raise the debt ceiling by two years — a key priority of the Biden administration — while also essentially freezing government spending on domestic programs and slightly increasing funding for the military and veterans affairs, three people familiar with the matter said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to reflect private deliberations. Although the deal is expected to include key GOP priorities, such as partially clawing back new funding for the Internal Revenue Service, a growing chorus of conservatives has balked at how little the deal appears to cut government spending overall — especially because it would also give up their party’s leverage on the debt ceiling until after the 2024 presidential election.

washington post logoWashington Post, Opinion: Biden’s unemployment rates are historic — and almost worthless for 2024, David Byler, May 25, 2023 (print ed.). President Biden’s unemployment rates are more than just great; they’re historic. But Democrats can’t rely on a strong job market to give Biden a second term. The unemployment rate — despite being one of the economy’s key vital signs — just doesn’t predict election results well.

joe biden twitterThat’s not to negate how far the job market has come. When Biden took office in January 2021, the unemployment rate was 6.3 percent. Now it’s 3.4 percent, tied for the lowest figure since 1969. Even more impressive is the 4.7 percent rate for Black Americans: Not only is this the lowest rate in recorded history, but it also represents the smallest-ever gap between Black and White workers (whose unemployment rate stands at 3.1).

Here’s the problem: Unemployment numbers tell us basically nothing about whether the party in power can retain the White House, especially this far out from Election Day. Here’s the raw data:

ny times logoNew York Times, The Good News on Unemployment for Black Americans, Paul Krugman, right, May 24, 2023 (print ed). In a recent article that stressed America’s paul krugmanimpressive recovery from the Covid economic slump, I compared current conditions with those in late 1988, when George H.W. Bush won an electoral landslide in part because of the perception that the economy was in great shape. As I noted, inflation at the time was roughly what it is now, while the unemployment rate was about two points higher.

What I didn’t point out was that unemployment was especially high among disadvantaged groups, especially Black Americans. And one of the relatively unsung bright points of the U.S. economy in recent years has been a reduction in Black unemployment.

Here’s the history of unemployment among Black men since the Bureau of Labor Statistics began collecting that data.

ny times logoNew York Times, McCarthy, Bracing for Defections, Eyes a Fraught Path to a Debt Limit Deal, Catie Edmondson and Luke Broadwater, May 24, 2023 (print ed). With right-wing Republicans all but certain to oppose any compromise, Speaker Kevin McCarthy has a narrow path to push one through the closely divided House.

Speaker Kevin McCarthy is attempting a difficult balancing act as he tries to extract spending concessions from President Biden in exchange for raising the debt joe biden resized oceiling: cobbling together a deal that can win the votes of a majority of Republicans without alienating the critical mass of Democrats he would need to push it through the House.

Hard-right Republicans have fueled the debt-limit standoff by demanding deep spending cuts as the price of averting a default, and they are all but certain to oppose any compromise. That means that Mr. McCarthy, a California Republican, would need the support of a solid bloc of Democrats in the closely divided chamber.

The political reality is weighing on both Republicans and Democrats in the debt-limit talks, which continued Tuesday on Capitol Hill with no sign of imminent kevin mccarthyresolution. Mr. McCarthy, left, and Mr. Biden are weighing compromises that would likely result in losing the votes of both the hard left and right flanks in Congress, meaning they would need to assemble a coalition of Republicans and centrist Democrats to back any final deal to avert a default.

The strategy carries steep political risks for Mr. McCarthy, who won his post earlier this year after a bruising 15 rounds of votes in part by promising to elevate the voices of his most conservative lawmakers — and agreeing to a snap vote to oust him at any time. He can afford to lose conservatives’ votes on the debt ceiling, but if he strikes a deal that angers them too much, he could be out of his job.

ny times logoNew York Times, Default on U.S. Debt Risks Denting Nation’s Credit Rating, Joe Rennison, May 25, 2023 (print ed.). If the government misses an interest payment, even by a few hours, its creditworthiness will suffer, possibly for a long time.

If the U.S. government defaults on its debt even for just a few hours next week, it could have long-lasting consequences for the nation’s future. Three major ratings companies — S&P Global Ratings, Moody’s and Fitch Ratings — play a big role in how damaging those consequences can be.

Because the financial fallout of a default would be severe, the agencies expect lawmakers to come to an agreement before the government runs out of cash to pay its bills, which could happen as early as next month. But if the government ends up missing a debt payment, all three companies have vowed to lower the rating of the United States as a borrower, and they may be reluctant to restore it to its previous level, even if a deal is reached soon after the default.

The United States has never deliberately reneged on its debt in the modern era, but even a brief default would alter the perception of debt-ceiling brinkmanship as political theater and turn it into a real risk to the creditworthiness of the government, Moody’s has warned.

“Our view is that we would need to reflect that permanently in the rating,” said William Foster, the lead analyst for the United States at the rating agency. The agency has said that if the Treasury Department misses one interest payment, its credit rating would be lowered by a notch. For the United States to regain its previous top rating, according to Mr. Foster, lawmakers would have to significantly alter the debt limit or remove it entirely.

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