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 2

Top Headlines

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U.S. National Security, Foreign Policy

 

U.S. Supreme Court Ethics Scandals

 

More on U.S. Courts, Crime, Immigration

 

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

 

Ukraine War

 

Global News, Views

 

Trump Cases, Claims, Allies, Insurrectionists

 

More On 2024 U.S. Presidential Race

 

More On U.S. Politics, Elections, Governance

 

U.S. Abortion Laws, #MeToo

 

U.S. Culture Wars: Schools, Disney, LGBT

 

Environment, Transportation, Energy, Space, Disasters, Climate

Pandemics, Public Health, Privacy

 

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

 

Top Stories

 

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washington post logoWashington Post, U.S. could default ‘as early as June 1’ if debt limit is not raised, Treasury warns, Tony Romm, May 2, 2023 (print ed.). A letter to Congress from Treasury Secretary Janet L. Yellen comes as House Republican leaders demand that President Biden begin negotiations over raising the debt ceiling.

The U.S. government could default “as early as June 1” unless Congress raises or suspends the debt ceiling, according to the Treasury Department, which implored lawmakers again on Monday to act swiftly to avert a fiscal crisis.

The new estimate followed less than a week after House Republicans delivered on their pledge to try to leverage the looming deadline to secure spending cuts, defying President Biden and officially touching off a political stalemate that could tip the fragile economy into another recession.

In a letter to lawmakers, Treasury Secretary Janet L. Yellen said the agency may be “unable to continue to satisfy all of the government’s obligations by early June, and potentially as early as June 1,” stressing the estimate is imprecise because of the variability of federal tax receipts.

Since January, the Biden administration has taken special budgetary maneuvers to avoid breaching the debt ceiling, the statutory limit on how much the U.S. government may borrow to pay its existing bills. Only Congress can lift or pause the legal cap, which currently is set at roughly $31 trillion.

Repeatedly, Republicans raised the debt ceiling under President Donald Trump without including fiscal reforms, yet party lawmakers — now in control of the House in a time of divided government — have refused to afford the same support to Biden. Instead, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) has conditioned GOP support on their ability to achieve a lengthy list of policy demands.

 New York Times, Is the Debt Limit Constitutional? Biden Aides Are Debating It, Jim Tankersley, May 2, 2023. As the government heads toward a possible default on its debt, officials are entertaining an option that previous administrations had deemed unthinkable.

A standoff between House Republicans and President Biden over raising the nation’s borrowing limit has administration officials debating what to do if the government runs out of cash to pay its bills, including one option that previous administrations had deemed unthinkable.

That option is effectively a constitutional challenge to the debt limit. Under the theory, the government would be required by the 14th Amendment to continue issuing new debt to pay bondholders, Social Security recipients, government employees and others, even if Congress fails to lift the limit before the so-called X-date.

That theory rests on the 14th Amendment 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 contend that language overrides the statutory borrowing limit, which currently caps federal debt at $31.4 trillion and requires congressional approval to raise or lift.

Top economic and legal officials at the White House, the Treasury Department and the Justice Department have made that theory a subject of intense and unresolved debate in recent months, according to several people familiar with the discussions.

It is unclear whether President Biden would support such a move, which would have serious ramifications for the economy and almost undoubtedly elicit legal challenges from Republicans. Continuing to issue debt in that situation would avoid an immediate disruption in consumer demand by maintaining government payments, but borrowing costs are likely to soar, at least temporarily.

Still, the debate is taking on new urgency as the United States inches closer to default. Treasury Secretary Janet L. Yellen warned on Monday that the government could run out of cash as soon as June 1 if the borrowing cap is not lifted.

Mr. Biden is set to meet with Speaker Kevin McCarthy of California at the White House on May 9 to discuss fiscal policy, along with other top congressional leaders from both parties. The president’s invitation was spurred by the accelerated warning of the arrival of the X-date.

But it remains unclear what type of compromise may be reached in time to avoid a default. House Republicans have refused to raise or suspend the debt ceiling unless Mr. Biden accepts spending cuts, fossil fuel supports and a repeal of Democratic climate policies, contained in a bill that narrowly cleared the chamber last week.

ny times logoNew York Times, Democrats who were planning a strategy to force a debt ceiling increase began taking steps to deploy their secret weapon, Carl Hulse, May 2, 2023. House Democratic leaders who have been quietly planning a strategy to force a debt ceiling increase to avert default began taking steps on Tuesday to deploy their secret weapon.

The only clue to the gambit was in the title of the otherwise obscure hodgepodge of a bill: “The Breaking the Gridlock Act.”

But the 45-page legislation, introduced without fanfare in January by a little-known Democrat, Representative Mark DeSaulnier of California, is part of a confidential, previously unreported, strategy Democrats have been plotting for months to quietly smooth the way for action by Congress to avert a devastating federal default if debt ceiling talks remain deadlocked.

With the possibility of a default now projected as soon as June 1, Democrats on Tuesday began taking steps to deploy the secret weapon they have been holding in reserve. They started the process of trying to force a debt-limit increase bill to the floor through a so-called discharge petition that could bypass Republican leaders who have refused to raise the ceiling unless President Biden agrees to spending cuts and policy changes.

“House Democrats are working to make sure we have all options at our disposal to avoid a default,” Representative Hakeem Jeffries, Democrat of New York and the minority leader, wrote in a letter he sent to colleagues on Tuesday. “The filing of a debt ceiling measure to be brought up on the discharge calendar preserves an important option. It is now time for MAGA Republicans to act in a bipartisan manner to pay America’s bills without extreme conditions.”

An emergency rule Democrats introduced on Tuesday, during a pro forma session held while the House is in recess, would start the clock on a process that would allow them to begin collecting signatures as soon as May 16 on such a petition, which can force action on a bill if a majority of members sign on. The open-ended rule would provide a vehicle to bring Mr. DeSaulnier’s bill to the floor and amend it with a Democratic proposal — which has yet to be written — to resolve the debt limit crisis.

washington post logoWashington Post, With debt bill adopted, far-right House Republicans ready for fiscal war, Tony Romm and Marianna Sotomayor, May 1, 2023 (print ed.). The House Freedom Caucus pushed Speaker Kevin McCarthy for sharp spending cuts — and some members still want more.

In early March, a powerful group of far-right House Republicans issued its demands over the debt ceiling, signaling it would “consider” supporting an increase if Congress gutted federal spending and revoked many of President Biden’s top priorities.

djt maga hatOne month later, the bloc helped pass a GOP bill that accomplishes nearly every one of their original policy aims — and now some of those conservatives say it’s just the beginning.

For the roughly three dozen lawmakers in the House Freedom Caucus, the fight over the nation’s fiscal health has doubled as an affirmation of their rapid political ascent. With government divided — and Republicans only in possession of a narrow, delicate advantage in the chamber — the bloc has evolved from an irascible minority faction into a controlling legislative force.

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washington post logoWashington Post, Senate to hold hearings to highlight ‘reckless’ House GOP debt limit bill, John Wagner, May 2, 2023 (print ed.). The Democratic-led Senate will hold hearings starting this week on legislation narrowly passed by the Republican-led House that would condition raising the debt limit on adopting steep spending cuts and rolling back several of President Biden’s priorities, Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) said Monday.

senate democrats logoIn a letter to colleagues, Schumer said the aim of the hearings, to begin Thursday, will be “to expose the true impact of this reckless legislation on everyday Americans.”

The hearings will be the first concrete action the Senate has taken after weeks of verbal jabs directed at House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) and his leadership team, who are engaged in a standoff with the White House over the debt ceiling — the legal limit on how much money the country can borrow to pay its bills. President Biden is insisting Congress pass a bill raising the limit with no conditions, as it did three times during the administration of his Republican predecessor.

Separately Monday, Biden is planning to use an event marking National Small Business Week to highlight the negative effect that he says the House Republican plan could have on federal programs aiding small businesses.

Schumer wrote that House passage of the McCarthy-backed bill “offers two choices: either default on the debt or default on America, forcing steep cuts to law enforcement, veterans, families, teachers.”

 

Former President Donald Trump is shown in a photo collage with columnist E. Jean Carroll, who accused him of raping her three decades ago, with her civil suit scheduled for trial this spring in New York City.

Former President Donald Trump is shown in a photo collage with columnist E. Jean Carroll, who accused him of raping her three decades ago, with her civil suit on  trial in New York City.

ny times logoNew York Times, Day 4 of the Trump Rape Case: Carroll’s Cross-Examination Is Complete, Lola Fadulu, Kate Christobek and Benjamin Weiser, May 1, 2023.E. Jean Carroll, the writer who has sued former President Donald J. Trump, accusing him of rape, completed three days on the witness stand Monday in a civil trial in Manhattan federal court, with a lawyer for Mr. Trump continuing to try to show up inconsistencies in her testimony.

The stage was set for Ms. Carroll’s lawyers to call additional witnesses to bolster her case.

Monday was the second of two days of cross-examination of Ms. Carroll by lawyer Joseph Tacopina about her allegation that the ex-president raped her in a dressing room in a Manhattan department store in the mid-1990s.

Mr. Trump, who has avoided coming to court, has denied all wrongdoing. On Monday morning, the former president’s lawyers filed an unsuccessful motion for a mistrial, arguing that the court had made “pervasive unfair and prejudicial rulings.”

The Accusation: Ms. Carroll says she visited Bergdorf Goodman one evening in the mid-1990s. As she was leaving through a revolving door, Mr. Trump entered and recognized her, the suit says, and persuaded her to help him shop for a gift for a female friend. She has accused the former president of going on to attack her in a dressing room in the lingerie department.

ny times logoNew York Times, As Signs Point to Counteroffensive, Russia and Ukraine Step Up Attacks, Marc Santora, May 2, 2023 (print ed.). Russian forces were reportedly moving into defensive positions, as Ukraine’s defense chief said the military was “reaching the finish line” for a major push.

Signs of an imminent Ukrainian counteroffensive mounted on Monday with stepped-up military strikes by both sides, Russian forces moving into defensive positions and even an unexplained explosion that knocked a supply train off its tracks across the border in Russia.

ukraine flagUkraine’s defense minister, Oleksii Reznikov, said in an appearance on national television that the military was “reaching the finish line” in preparations to launch a counteroffensive and that commanders would decide “how, where and when.”

The day began with Russia launching broad aerial assaults across Ukraine, its second wide-ranging attack in four days.

In Pavlograd, a city in central Ukraine, dozens of buildings were damaged, including schools and homes, local officials said, and missile strikes set off a massive fire that lit up the night sky. In Kyiv and elsewhere, explosions echoed across the pre-dawn landscape as air defenses shot down what the Ukrainian military said was 15 of 18 Russian cruise missiles.

ny times logoNew York Times, More Than 100,000 Have Fled Sudan to Neighboring Countries, Abdi Latif Dahir, May 2, 2023. The U.N. predicted that the figure would rise to more than 800,000 by year’s end, in addition to more than 300,000 people internally displaced already.

More than 100,000 people have fled Sudan for neighboring countries and more than 300,000 have been internally displaced, according to figures released by United Nations agencies on Tuesday, as the fighting between rival generals threatened to undermine regional stability and tear apart Africa’s third-largest nation.

The United Nations refugee agency also warned that more than 800,000 people could try to escape the conflict in Sudan by the end of this year to the seven nations bordering the northeastern African country — many of them already reeling from a multitude of their own economic, political and refugee crises.

abdel fattah abdelrahman burhan 2019The clashes between the Sudanese Army, led by Gen. Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, right, and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces, led by Lt. Gen. Mohamed Hamdan, have only intensified despite calls for a cease-fire. More than 450 people have died and more than 4,000 have been injured, according to the World Health Organization.

On Tuesday morning, residents in parts of the capital, Khartoum, reported intense clashes and heavy shelling throughout the night. Many residents of the capital are without electricity and worried about dwindling food and water. Given the deteriorating situation, the United Nations said it was preparing for a mass exodus from Sudan, a nation of more than 45 million people that was already facing dire humanitarian crises before the latest fighting.

“We hope it doesn’t come to that,” Filippo Grandi, the high commissioner for the U.N. refugee agency, said in a statement, “but if violence doesn’t stop, we will see more people forced to flee Sudan seeking safety.”

 

U.S. National Security, Foreign Policy

 

 President Biden and his advisers have been focusing on cultivating President Ferdinand R. Marcos Jr. of the Philippines as a regional ally (New York Times photo by Doug Mills).

President Biden and his advisers have been focusing on cultivating President Ferdinand R. Marcos Jr. of the Philippines as a regional ally (New York Times photo by Doug Mills).

ny times logoNew York Times, President Biden Meets Marcos in Washington Amid Tensions With China, Katie Rogers, May 2, 2023 (print ed.). The visit by President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. of the Philippines is meant to send a message to China amid conflict over Taiwan and the South China Sea.

President Biden met with President Ferdinand R. Marcos Jr. of the Philippines at the White House on Monday, a visit meant to send a message to China that the Filipino leader planned to deepen his country’s relationship with the United States.

philippines flagMr. Marcos’s trip comes days after the U.S. and Philippine militaries held joint exercises aimed at curbing China’s influence in the South China Sea and strengthening the United States’ ability to defend Taiwan if China invades. The exercises were part of a rapid and intensifying effort between the two countries: In February, the Pentagon announced that the U.S. military would expand its presence in the Philippines, and this spring, four new military sites were announced.

China Flag“We are facing new challenges, and I couldn’t think of a better partner to have than you,” Mr. Biden told Mr. Marcos in the Oval Office on Monday. The president listed initiatives that the two countries would work together on, including climate change and clean energy. Mr. Biden also announced trade and investment missions to the Philippines to encourage private-sector investments in the country.

But Mr. Biden emphasized that the main point of the visit, as far as American officials were concerned, was to shore up Filipino security and military capabilities.

“The United States also remains ironclad in our commitment to the defense of the Philippines, including the South China Sea, and we will continue to support the Philippines’ military modernization,” Mr. Biden said.

Understand U.S.-Philippine Relations

A Complex Alliance: The United States and the Philippines have long had a close — though at times unsteady — relationship. Here’s what to know.
Biden-Marcos Meeting: President Biden met President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. of the Philippines at the White House on May 1, a visit meant to send a message to China as tensions rise.

Countering Beijing: Driven by worry about Chinese aggression, Marcos has been moving closer to the United States, a shift that has made the Philippines the linchpin of Biden’s strategy in the Asia-Pacific region.

The strategic importance of the Philippines is a matter of proximity. Its northernmost island of Itbayat is less than 100 miles from Taiwan. An increased U.S. military presence could allow for a quick troop response in a war with China. For the United States, Mr. Marcos is an eager but untested partner.

Mr. Biden and his advisers have been focusing on cultivating Mr. Marcos — who goes by Bongbong and is the son and namesake of the former dictator Ferdinand E. Marcos — as a regional ally since his inauguration last year. Mr. Marcos is eager to repair the ties between his government and the United States, which frayed under former President Rodrigo Duterte’s leadership, particularly amid his brutal antidrug campaign. Mr. Marcos won election last year by forging an alliance with Mr. Duterte’s daughter Sara Duterte.

ny times logoNew York Times, A Brutal Sex Trade Built for American Soldiers, Choe Sang-Hun, Photographs by Jean ChungMay 2, 2023 (print ed.). When Cho Soon-ok was 17 in 1977, three men kidnapped and sold her to a pimp in Dongducheon, a town north of Seoul.

She was about to begin high school, but instead of pursuing her dream of becoming a ballerina, she was forced to spend the next five years under the constant watch of her pimp, going to a nearby club for sex work. Her customers: American soldiers.

South Korea FlagThe euphemism “comfort women” typically describes Korean and other Asian women forced into sexual slavery by the Japanese during World War II. But the sexual exploitation of another group of women continued in South Korea long after Japan’s colonial rule ended in 1945 — and it was facilitated by their own government.

There were “special comfort women units” for South Korean soldiers, and “comfort stations” for American-led U.N. troops during the Korean War. In the postwar years, many of these women worked in gijichon, or “camp towns,” built around American military bases.

Last September, 100 such women won a landmark victory when the South Korean Supreme Court ordered compensation for the sexual trauma they endured. It found the government guilty of “justifying and encouraging” prostitution in camp towns to help South Korea maintain its military alliance with the United States and earn American dollars.

It also blamed the government for the “systematic and violent” way it detained the women and forced them to receive treatment for sexually transmitted diseases.

In interviews with The New York Times, six former South Korean camp town women described how their government used them for political and economic gain before abandoning them. Encouraged by the court rulings — which relied on recently unsealed official documents — the victims now aim to take their case to the United States.

washington post logoWashington Post, McCarthy invites Netanyahu to visit Congress, skip the White House, Steve Hendrix, May 2, 2023 (print ed.). House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, on a visit to Israel, has placed himself in the middle of a widening rift between President Biden and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, criticizing the White House for not hosting the premier and suggesting he come address the Congress instead.

kevin mccarthyMcCarthy (R-Calif.), right, who arrived over the weekend with a bipartisan delegation of House members at a time of tense political standoffs in both countries, sought to make common cause with Netanyahu over their shared frustrations with the president.

“It’s been too long,” McCarthy said in an interview with the daily Israel Hayom. “If that doesn’t happen, I’ll invite the prime minister to come meet with the House. He’s a dear friend.” Netanyahu’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment on McCarthy’s suggestion.

Biden-Netanyahu spat bursts into full view

Biden has said he had no immediate plans to offer the traditional visit of a new Israeli prime minister to the Oval Office — Netanyahu returned to power four months ago — a seeming rebuke for his new government’s controversial push to gain greater control over the country’s Supreme Court. In Washington, Biden and McCarthy are jockeying over the fight to increase the government’s debt limit, with the president refusing to negotiate spending cuts demanded by House Republicans.

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President Barack Obama in the White House Situation Room discussing the mission against Osama bin Laden on May 1, 2011. (Official White House photo by Pete Souza)

 

More On U.S. Supreme Court Ethics Scandals

 

 

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

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

This week's new official portrait of the U.S. Supreme Court

washington post logoWashington Post, Congress can impose a code of conduct on Supreme Court, experts say at hearing, Ann E. Marimow and Robert Barnes, May 2, 2023.  Questions over disclosures and potential conflicts have weakened public approval of the justices, prompting new scrutiny.

A Senate hearing on Supreme Court ethics began on a partisan note Tuesday, with Democrats saying they must impose a specific code of conduct for the justices because the court will not do so, and Republicans accusing them of an “unseemly” effort to tar a conservative court.

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Richard J. Durbin (D-Ill.) said a cascade of recent revelations about unreported lavish travel and real estate deals would be unacceptable for an alderman, much less those members of the federal judiciary. But the court “won’t even acknowledge it’s a problem,” Durbin said. “Because the court will not act, Congress must.”

Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) responded that the focus on Supreme Court ethics is nothing more than an “unseemly effort by the Democratic left” to raise questions about the legitimacy of the court as it has become more conservative. “This is not going to work,” he said.

Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. last week turned down an invitation to testify from Durbin (D-Ill.), instead providing a nonbinding “Statement on Ethics Principles and Practices” signed by all nine justices. Roberts suggested his presence at the hearing would threaten the constitutional separation of powers and noted that chief justices have attended such hearings only rarely, and only to address “mundane” topics. None of the justices attended the committee hearing.

Democrats criticized the memo as an insufficient, recycled statement in response to growing ethics concerns and sinking levels of public confidence in the high court. Leading Republican lawmakers, however, have dismissed the recent scrutiny of the justices as an effort to undermine the conservative supermajority that has quickly moved the court to the right.

As the hearing began, two prominent constitutional experts — conservative former federal judge J. Michael Luttig and Harvard legal scholar Laurence Tribe — told the committee in prepared testimony that Congress has the power to impose a code of conduct for Supreme Court justices, but cannot order the high court to come up with rules on its own.

Supreme Court justices discussed, but did not agree on, code of conduct

Federal ethics law requires top officials from all three branches of government, including Supreme Court justices, to file annual financial disclosure forms listing outside income and investments. Lower court judges are also bound by a separate judicial code of conduct that requires judges to avoid “the appearance of impropriety in all activities” and includes a process to investigate allegations of misconduct.

 

Retired U.S. Court of Appeals Judge J. Michael Luttig, shown testifying before the U.S. House Jan. 6 Committee on June 16, 2022.

Retired U.S. Court of Appeals Judge J. Michael Luttig, shown testifying before the U.S. House Jan. 6 Committee on June 16, 2022.

ny times logoNew York Times, Prominent Retired Judge Calls for Ethics Rules for Supreme Court Justices, Abbie VanSickle, May 2, 2023. In testimony released before a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing, the retired conservative judge J. Michael Luttig called for new ethics rules for Supreme Court justices.

A prominent conservative former federal judge joined a chorus of legal experts from across the political spectrum on Tuesday in calling on Congress to enact new ethical standards for Supreme Court justices, after a series of revelations about the justices’ undisclosed gifts, luxury travel and property deals.

The statement by Judge J. Michael Luttig, a retired appeals court judge revered by some conservatives, came as the Democratic-led Senate Judiciary Committee prepared to hold a hearing on Supreme Court ethics. Pressure has mounted among progressives for a stricter code of conduct for the justices, the nation’s highest judges, who are appointed to lifetime terms and are bound by few disclosure requirements.

Congress “indisputably has the power under the Constitution” to “enact laws prescribing the ethical standards applicable to the nonjudicial conduct and activities of the Supreme Court of the United States,” Judge Luttig said in a written statement presented to the Judiciary Committee.

The judge, who served on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit and was close to being nominated for the Supreme Court, was among several legal experts across the political spectrum who released testimony before a hearing scheduled for Tuesday in which they supported strengthening ethical rules at the court.

“It is time for Congress to accept its responsibility to establish an enforceable code of ethics for the Supreme Court, the only agency of our government without it,” Senator Richard J. Durbin, Democrat of Illinois and the committee’s chairman, said in a statement released in the days before the hearing.

 

The arrangement in which Leonard Leo met his top donor through the Federalist Society suggests closer ties between the society and Leo’s activist network than previously known (Associated Press photo by Carolyn Kaster).

The arrangement in which Leonard Leo met his top donor through the Federalist Society suggests closer ties between the society and Leo’s activist network than previously known (Associated Press photo by Carolyn Kaster).

Politico, Investigation: Leonard Leo used Federalist Society contact to obtain $1.6 billion donation, Heidi Przybyla, May 2, 2023. The society’s close ties to Leo’s network raise questions about its nonpartisan, non-political status.

politico CustomLeonard Leo, who helped to choose judicial nominees for former President Donald Trump, obtained a historic $1.6 billion gift for his conservative legal network via an introduction through the Federalist Society, whose tax status forbids political activism.

Leo first met Barre Seid, the now 91-year-old manufacturing magnate turned donor, through an introduction arranged by Eugene Meyer, the longtime director of the Federalist Society. At the time, Leo was the society’s executive vice president, and he is currently its co-chair. Meyer envisioned Seid as a contributor to the society, according to a person familiar with the introduction. Instead, Leo cultivated Seid as a funder of his own dark money network. The result was a $1.6 billion gift announced last year — which is believed to be the largest political donation ever.

The unusual arrangement in which Leo met his top donor through the prestigious Federalist Society — which describes itself as a nonpartisan educational organization — suggests closer ties between the society and Leo’s activist network than previously known. Leo has used the dark money network to donate millions of dollars to the society and to pay at least $1.54 million to one Federalist Society employee and $775,000 to an entity run by another, according to federal disclosure forms.

Interviews with people familiar with the internal workings of the Federalist Society, including two board members, paint a picture of a symbiotic relationship in which Leo uses his connection to the vast network of scholars in the society to earn credibility with donors, who then contribute to dark money operations that engage in the kind of partisanship the society officially eschews.

Leo’s political activism and his use of donor money to enhance his own wealth have prompted increasing tensions between him and his fellow co-chair, Northwestern University Law Professor Steven Calabresi, and Meyer, who has been executive director or president for more than 30 years, according to three people familiar with the society. But they said Leo’s ties to the conservative donor base fans fears that a rift would leave the society struggling for funds, while members also worry that any breach in the facade of the conservative legal movement would only empower the liberals that all sides disdain.

 

 

samuel alito horizontal headshot

washington post logoWashington Post, Opinion: The aggrieved Justice Alito points fingers but offers no proof, Ruth Marcus, right, May 2, 2023. Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. just wants ruth marcusyou to know: The leaker didn’t come from the conservative wing of the court. He’s not saying who slipped his draft opinion in the abortion case to Politico, though he has “a pretty good idea” about the leaker’s identity. But he can tell us that the culprit wanted to save Roe v. Wade, not overrule it.

Maybe Alito’s correct, though there are reasons to doubt the certitude he expressed in an astonishing interview with the opinion side of the Wall Street Journal. And maybe “astonishing” isn’t the right word; Alito has shown himself to be thin-skinned and injudicious before.

It’s not as if the Journal interview, with editor James Taranto and Washington lawyer David B. Rivkin Jr., showed us an unknown side of a justice who has been on the court since 2006. “Aggrieved” and “bitter” — and without good reason for either, given that his side is winning — are standard Alito adjectives.

But the Journal interview crosses a line, even for Alito. “I personally have a pretty good idea who is responsible, but that’s different from the level of proof that is needed to name somebody,” Alito told Taranto and Rivkin. Alito didn’t name names but freely assigned motive. “It was part of an effort to prevent the Dobbs draft … from becoming the decision of the court,” he said. “And that’s how it was used for those six weeks by people on the outside — as part of the campaign to try to intimidate the court.”

Nice work, because this is the kind of inchoate smear that is impossible to defend against. Alito offered no proof but in the course of doing so almost inevitably implicated liberal justices or one of their clerks. Imagine if one of the liberal justices gave an analogous interview to a liberal publication, saying she had “a pretty good idea” about who let slip the draft opinion in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization. Conservatives would be enraged, and rightly so.

“That’s infuriating to me,” Alito said of the notion that the leak came from Team Conservative. “Look, this made us targets of assassination. Would I do that to myself? Would the five of us have done that to ourselves? It’s quite implausible.”

 

Ultra-right dark money fund-raiser Leonard Leo, center, a major provider of funding for the Federalist Society and other influencers on judicial appointments and decision-making (New York Times photo by T.J. Kirkpatrick).Ultra-right dark money fund-raiser Leonard Leo, center, a major provider of funding for the Federalist Society and other influencers on judicial appointments and decision-making (New York Times photo by T.J. Kirkpatrick).

ny times logoNew York Times, Investigation: How Scalia Law School Became a Key Friend of the Supreme Court, Steve Eder and Jo Becker, May 1, 2023 (print ed.). George Mason University’s law school cultivated ties to justices, with generous pay and unusual perks. In turn, it gained prestige, donations and influence.

In the fall of 2017, an administrator at George Mason University’s law school circulated a confidential memo about a prospective hire.

gmu scalia law logoJust months earlier, Neil M. Gorsuch, below left, a federal appeals court judge from Colorado, had won confirmation to the Supreme Court seat left vacant by the death of Antonin Scalia, the conservative icon for whom the school was named. For President Donald J. Trump, bringing neil gorsuch headshotJudge Gorsuch to Washington was the first step toward fulfilling a campaign promise to cement the high court unassailably on the right. For the leaders of the law school, bringing the new justice to teach at Scalia Law was a way to advance their own parallel ambition.

“Establishing and building a strong relationship with Justice Gorsuch during his first full term on the bench could be a game-changing opportunity for Scalia Law, as it looks to accelerate its already meteoric rise to the top rank of law schools in the United States,” read the memo, contained in one of thousands of internal university emails obtained by The New York Times.

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

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

By the winter of 2019, the law school faculty would include not just Justice Gorsuch but also two other members of the court, Justices Clarence Thomas, below right, and clarence thomas HRBrett M. Kavanaugh — all deployed as strategic assets in a campaign to make Scalia Law, a public school in the Virginia suburbs of Washington, a Yale or Harvard of conservative legal scholarship and influence.

The law school had long stood out for its rightward leanings and ties to conservative benefactors. Its renaming after Justice Scalia in 2016 was the result of a $30 million gift brokered by Leonard Leo, prime architect of a grand project then gathering force to transform the federal judiciary and further the legal imperatives of the right. An ascendant law school at George Mason would be part of that plan.

Since the rebranding, the law school has developed an unusually expansive relationship with the justices of the high court — welcoming them as teachers but also as lecturers and special guests at school events. Scalia Law, in turn, has marketed that closeness with the justices as a unique draw to prospective students and donors.

The Supreme Court assiduously seeks to keep its inner workings, and the justices’ lives, shielded from view, even as recent revelations and ethical questions have brought calls for greater transparency. Yet what emerges from the trove of documents is a glimpse behind the Supreme Court curtain, revealing one particular version of the favored treatment the justices often receive from those seeking to get closer to them.

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Chief Justice of the United States John Roberts arrives before President Joe Biden delivers the State of the Union address to a joint session of Congress at the Capitol, Feb. 7, 2023, in Washington. Roberts has declined a request from the Senate Judiciary Committee to testify at a hearing on ethical standards at the court, instead providing the panel with a statement of ethics reaffirmed by the court's justices. (AP pool photo by Jacquelyn Martin.)

Chief Justice of the United States John Roberts arrives before President Joe Biden delivers the State of the Union address to a joint session of Congress at the Capitol, Feb. 7, 2023, in Washington. Roberts has declined a request from the Senate Judiciary Committee to testify at a hearing on ethical standards at the court, instead providing the panel with a statement of ethics reaffirmed by the court’s justices. (AP pool photo by Jacquelyn Martin.)

 

More On U.S. Courts, Crime, Immigration

 

 

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ny times logoNew York Times, Fugitive in Texas Was Deported Several Times, Officials Say, Jesus Jiménez, May 2, 2023 (print ed.). Officials are offering up to $80,000 for information leading to the capture of a Mexican national who authorities say murdered five neighbors.

Immigration officials revealed on Monday that a fugitive Mexican national accused of killing five neighbors over the weekend had previously been deported four times. Even as he remained at large and the target of an extensive manhunt, the case seemed sure to reignite the bitter national debates over immigration policy and gun control.

francisco oropesabo mugIt began Friday evening with a type of noise complaint not uncommon in rural Texas. The authorities said that the suspect, Francisco Oropesa, was shooting a gun in his yard in Cleveland, Texas, when a neighbor, Wilson Garcia, approached him and asked him to stop so that his baby could sleep.

Mr. Oropesa, 38, right, responded by getting an AR-15 rifle from his house and walking over to Mr. Garcia’s home about 11:30 p.m., where he killed Mr. Garcia’s 8-year-old son, wife and three other people, the authorities said.

Two women who were killed were shielding a 6-week-old boy and a 3-year-old girl. The gunman then chased Mr. Garcia, who escaped through a window and ran.

FBI logoAn official with United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement said on Monday that an immigration judge had ordered I.C.E. to deport Mr. Oropesa to Mexico in March 2009. Mr. Oropesa illegally returned to the United States, and he was caught and removed several more times by I.C.E. in September 2009, January 2012 and July 2016, the official said.

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It was unclear what had led to his initial deportation order, but the immigration official said that Mr. Oropesa was later convicted in Montgomery County, Texas, texas mapfor driving while intoxicated in January 2012 and sentenced to jail.

Even while the F.B.I. and several Texas law enforcement agencies sought the fugitive, attention turned quickly to the immigration status of the suspect and his victims.

Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas, a frequent critic of federal policy, said on Sunday that the suspect was in the country illegally but on Monday walked back part of his initial comments that the victims were “five illegal immigrants.”

ny times logoNew York Times, 7 Found Dead in Oklahoma Amid Search for Missing Teens, Ava Sasani, May 2, 2023 (print ed.). Seven bodies were found on a piece of property in rural Oklahoma on Monday afternoon during a search for two teenage girls who had been reported missing and were said to have been seen with a convicted sex offender, according to officials with the Okmulgee County Sheriff’s Office.

None of the seven victims were identified, and the authorities would not say whether they included the missing girls, Ivy Webster, 14, and Brittany Brewer, 16.

But Sheriff Eddy Rice said that the authorities had called off the search for Ivy and Brittany after the bodies were found at the property, near Henryetta, the county seat, and just south of Tulsa. “We believe to have found everything that we were seeking this morning,” Sheriff Rice said.

The sheriff said he could not provide any details about the seven deaths, but said the case was being investigated as a homicide.

The Oklahoma Highway Patrol issued a missing-persons alert earlier on Monday saying it was believed that the girls had last been seen about 1:30 a.m. in Henryetta in a white Chevrolet pickup with Jesse L. McFadden.

Mr. McFadden, 39, is a registered sex offender and rapist who was scheduled to go on trial on Monday in Muskogee County on several charges, including child pornography and soliciting sexual conduct or communication with a minor using technology.

A bench warrant was issued after Mr. McFadden failed to appear in court on Monday morning.

Ivy spent Saturday at a friend’s house and was reported missing after she failed to return home on Sunday evening, according to a Facebook post from the Sheriff’s Office.New York Times, Facial Recognition Powers ‘Automated Apartheid’ in Israel, Report Says, May 2, 2023 (print ed.). The Israeli government is using computer vision to monitor Palestinian travel across checkpoints, according to the report.

washington post logoWashington Post, DeSantis expands Florida death penalty law, defying U.S. Supreme Court, Tim Craig, May 2, 2023 (print ed.). Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) expanded Florida’s death penalty law on Monday, signing a measure making it a capital crime to rape a child under the age of 12, a law that could set up a future U.S. Supreme Court case.

Vowing Florida “stands for the protection of children,” DeSantis signed the law during a campaign-style event in Titusville, touting his record on issues involving “law and order.”

The measure, which overwhelmingly passed the Florida legislature last month with bipartisan support, gives state prosecutors the option of seeking the death penalty if an adult is found guilty of the sexual battery of a child.

The law will still go into effect even though it is unconstitutional. In 2008, the U.S. Supreme Court issued a 5 to 4 decision that struck down a Louisiana law that allowed a child rapist to be sentenced to death, barring states from executing child sex predators unless they also murdered their victims.

A coalition of social workers and defense attorneys supported the court’s decision then, arguing child sex abuse victims may be less willing to speak up if their assailant was vulnerable to being put to death. They also argued child rapists would be more inclined to kill their victims if they knew they faced capital punishment for their crimes, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.

DeSantis is expected to seek the 2024 GOP nomination for president and has used Florida’s ongoing legislative session to define his agenda for the state and the nation. He has argued that the Supreme Court erred in its decision because it failed to take into account the trauma that child sex victims and their families endure.

DeSantis said Monday that Florida is prepared to defend its law and place it back before the nation’s highest court for consideration.

washington post logoWashington Post, The first arrests from DeSantis’s election police take extensive toll, Lori Rozsa, May 2, 2023 (print ed.). One by one, many of the initial 20 arrests made by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’s Office of Election Crimes and Security have stumbled in court.

One by one, many of the initial 20 arrests announced by the Office of Election Crimes and Security have stumbled in court. Six cases have been dismissed. Five other defendants accepted plea deals that resulted in no jail time. Only one case has gone to trial, resulting in a split verdict. The others are pending.

In its first nine months, the new unit made just four other arrests, according to a report the agency released earlier this year. Critics say the low numbers point to the overall strength of Florida’s electoral system and a lack of sufficient evidence to pursue further charges. Nonetheless, as he gears up for a possible presidential run, DeSantis is moving to give the office more teeth, asking the legislature to nearly triple the division’s annual budget from $1.2 million to $3.1 million. The Republican governor also pushed through a bill ensuring the statewide prosecutor has jurisdiction over election crime cases — an attempt to resolve an issue several judges have raised in dismissing cases.

Voting rights advocates and defense attorneys say the expansion of the statewide prosecutor’s role to include elections enforcement is alarming. The office was created in 1986, and its portfolio typically includes offenses like extortion, racketeering and computer pornography involving two or more judicial circuits. The statewide prosecutor is appointed by the attorney general, Ashley Moody, a political ally of DeSantis, and also submits an annual report to the governor.

washington post logoWashington Post, 6 million D.C. traffic tickets are unpaid. The worst drivers avoid consequences for years, Luz Lazo and Emily Davies, May 2, 2023. A fatal crash on Rock Creek Parkway in March highlighted the threat that dangerous drivers pose.

Hundreds of motorists in D.C. have been repeatedly caught speeding and running red lights, racking up thousands of dollars in fines they do not pay, according to public records that demonstrate the city’s inability to bring high-risk drivers to account.

More than 2,100 vehicles have at least 40 outstanding tickets, according to data from the D.C. Department of Motor Vehicles, and about 1,200 cars are linked to fines exceeding $20,000 over the past five years. Topping the list of offenders is a car with Maryland tags that has 339 outstanding tickets worth $186,000 in fines and penalties.

In all, more than 6.2 million traffic tickets totaling nearly $1.3 billion in fines and penalties have not been paid to D.C. since Jan. 1, 2000.

A March crash that killed three people on Rock Creek Parkway highlighted the threat that dangerous drivers, and particularly those with repeated offenses, pose to other road users. D.C. officials say fines — mostly issued by traffic cameras — are the city’s top enforcement tool, but despite a robust automated traffic enforcement system that issues fines of up to $500 for speeding, a Washington Post analysis of DMV data found that thousands of drivers simply ignore the tickets.

washington post logoWashington Post, Analysis:  A week after Tucker Carlson’s exit, McCarthy goes big for Ukraine, Aaron Blake, May 2, 2023. This might not be a total coincidence. One of the best things that could have happened to waning U.S. support for Ukraine was Tucker Carlson being pulled off Fox News’s airwaves last week.

Carlson was maybe the most prominent and influential critic of U.S. aid, but he was also an extreme and conspiratorial one. He said he was actually rooting for Russia, he suggested Vladimir Putin wasn’t that bad a guy, he baselessly claimed the U.S. military was fighting alongside Ukrainians, and he used an apparently altered document to make his case.

kevin mccarthyBut up there with that development might be what House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), right, just said on Monday. And it seems entirely possible that these two things are related.

During a visit to Israel, McCarthy made his strongest comments to date in favor of standing by Ukraine, after speaking dispassionately about the matter in the past and warning that a GOP-controlled House might pull back on the purse strings.

Relevant Recent Headlines

 

Shown here is an aerial photo of the U.S.-operated Guantánamo prison camp located in Cuba against the wishes of its government along with a book cover showing faces of some of its prisoners through the decades. Many of them were accused of terror-related conspiracies and they do not for the most part possess the basic fair trial and other civil rights of prisoners held in U.S. civilian jails and prisons.

Shown here is an aerial photo of the U.S.-operated Guantánamo prison camp located in Cuba against the wishes of its government along with a book cover below showing faces of some of its prisoners through the decades. Many of them were accused of terror-related conspiracies and they do not for the most part possess the basic fair trial and other civil rights of prisoners held in U.S. civilian jails and prisons.

 

U.S. Economy, Debt, Budget, Jobs

 

fdic logo federal deposit insurance corp

 ny times logoNew York Times, First Republic Bank Is Seized by Regulators and Sold to JPMorgan Chase, Maureen Farrell, Lauren Hirsch and Jeanna Smialek, May 2, 2023 (print ed.). The deal, which will allow 84 First Republic branches to reopen as JPMorgan branches on Monday, was a dramatic move aimed at curbing a two-month banking crisis.

Regulators seized control of First Republic Bank and sold it to JPMorgan Chase on Monday, a dramatic move aimed at curbing a two-month banking crisis that has rattled the financial system.

First Republic Bank logoFirst Republic, whose assets were battered by the rise in interest rates, had struggled to stay alive after two other lenders collapsed last month, spooking depositors and investors.

First Republic was taken over by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation and immediately sold to JPMorgan. The deal was announced hours before U.S. markets are set to open, and after a scramble by officials over the weekend.

Later on Monday, 84 First Republic branches in eight states will reopen as JPMorgan branches.

JPMorgan will “assume all of the deposits and substantially all of the assets of First Republic Bank,” the F.D.I.C. said in a statement. The regulator estimated that its insurance fund would have to pay out about $13 billion to cover First Republic’s losses. JPMorgan also said that the F.D.I.C. would provide it with $50 billion in financing.

“Our government invited us and others to step up, and we did,” said Jamie Dimon, JPMorgan’s chief executive. He said the transaction was intended “to minimize costs to the Deposit Insurance Fund.”

The acquisition makes JPMorgan, already the nation’s largest bank, even bigger and could draw political scrutiny from progressive Democrats in Washington.

First Republic failed despite having received a $30 billion lifeline from 11 of the country’s largest banks in March. JPMorgan said the $30 billion would be repaid after the deal closes. Overall, First Republic will go down in history as the second largest U.S. bank by assets to collapse after Washington Mutual, which failed during the financial crisis of 2008.

The government’s takeover and sale of First Republic comes seven weeks after the government took control of Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank, whose failures sent a shock wave through the industry and raised fears that other regional banks were at risk of similar runs on deposits.

Many banking experts said First Republic’s travails were a delayed reaction to the turmoil in March rather than the opening of a new phase in the crisis. Investors and industry executives are optimistic that no other midsize or large lenders are at risk of imminent failure. As First Republic’s stock plunged anew last week, other bank stocks barely budged.

ny times logoNew York Times, Trickling Tax Revenue Complicates Debt Limit Talks, Alan Rappeport, May 2, 2023 (print ed.). The Treasury Department’s ability to delay a default, the so-called X-date, hinges on how fast the money is coming in. There are worrying signs.

irs logoA vote by House Republicans last week to lift the nation’s debt limit in exchange for deep spending cuts was the first step in what is likely to be a protracted battle over raising or suspending the borrowing cap to avoid defaulting on United States debt.

But while Republicans and President Biden and his fellow Democrats are gearing up for a fight, a key question is beginning to sow unease in Washington and on Wall Street: How much time is there to strike a deal?

The United States technically hit its $31.4 trillion debt limit in January, forcing the Treasury Department to employ accounting maneuvers known as extraordinary measures to allow the government to keep paying its bills, including payments to bondholders who own government debt. Treasury Secretary Janet L. Yellen said at the time that her powers to delay a default — in which the United States fails to make its payments on time — could be exhausted by early June. She cautioned, however, that the estimate came with considerable uncertainty.

With June now just a few weeks away, uncertainty around the timing of when the United States will run out of cash — what’s known as the X-date — remains, and determining the true deadline could have huge consequences for the country.

washington post logoWashington Post, Analysis: Defaulting on the national debt is much closer than anyone realizes, Paul Kane, May 1, 2023 (print ed.). House Republicans and Senate Democrats cannot even agree whether they need to negotiate on the debt limit.

Washington is lurching dangerously close to a self-induced financial calamity. It’s so bad no one even agrees whether they should negotiate on raising the government’s borrowing authority.

Consider the positions held by two lower-profile lawmakers who derive great influence from being advisers to and close friends of the most powerful players in this standoff.

Rep. Garret Graves (R-La.), deputized by House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) to negotiate a debt plan, jokingly compared President Biden to a British monarch refusing to meet with Parliament. “We sent a telegram to Buckingham Palace to let them know that they’re not in charge anymore,” Graves said Friday, two days after his deal narrowly passed the House with only GOP votes.

“We actually have a Congress, we have a people’s House that they have to negotiate with,” he said.

Negotiate? No chance, according to Sen. Christopher A. Coons (D-Del.), a close Biden ally.

“The question here is, should we default and should we reward holding the threat of default as a hostage? No, and no. It’s not real complicated,” Coons said in an interview Thursday.

Graves believes that McCarthy has done his job by winning approval for a bill that would lift the debt limit into next year while also imposing nearly $5 trillion in reduced spending. Coons dismissed that “gauzy, broad but unspecific” House proposal as merely an attempt at holding the full faith and credit of the U.S. Treasury hostage.

Like other Democrats, Coons is willing to haggle over federal spending levels in the annual process for funding federal agencies in the House and Senate Appropriations committees. But that negotiation can only begin once Republicans agree to separately raise the debt limit without any strings attached.

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Ukraine War

washington post logoWashington Post, Ukraine live briefing: 100,000 Russian troops killed or wounded since December, U.S. says, Andrew Jeong and Jennifer Hassan, May 2, 2023. More than 20,000 Russian troops have been killed and 80,000 have been wounded in Ukraine since December, the U.S. National Security Council said. The numbers are based on “intelligence that we were able to corroborate over a period of some time,” said NSC spokesman John Kirby. He declined to discuss Ukrainian casualties.

ukraine flagAt least three people were killed in the latest Russian missile attacks in Ukraine early Monday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said. Forty other people were injured. The dead included a 14-year-old boy, Zelensky said.

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

 

washington post logoWashington Post, Kyiv targeted by missiles; explosions in Russia derail train, damage power line, Rachel Pannett and Annabelle Timsit, May 2, 2023 (print ed.). Russia targeted Kyiv and other Ukrainian cities with a “massive” wave of missiles overnight, Ukrainian officials said. The assault on the capital lasted several hours early Monday, but no casualties were reported, as local authorities said air defenses worked to intercept most of the missiles. Russia’s Defense Ministry claimed that it carried out strikes against facilities that produce ammunition and weapons for Ukrainian troops. Ukraine said residential areas were hit.

The attack followed a weekend drone strike by Ukrainian forces on an oil depot in Russian-occupied Crimea, as Ukraine prepares for an anticipated counteroffensive.

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vladlen tatarsky telegram reuters

 Washington Post, The rise and violent demise of pro-Russian war blogger Vladlen Tatarsky, Francesca Ebel

 

Global News

ny times logoNew York Times, Palestinian Detainee Dies in Israeli Prison After Hunger Strike, Raja Abdulrahim, May 2, 2023. Khader Adnan, a Palestinian prisoner who had been on a hunger strike in an Israeli prison for 87 days to protest his detention, died early Tuesday, according to his lawyer and Palestinian and Israeli officials.

Israel FlagIt was Mr. Adnan, 44, who helped usher in the practice of individual hunger strikes by Palestinian prisoners, conducting a 66-day strike in 2011 that inspired others to use it as a means of protesting Israel’s incarceration of Palestinians, especially the practice of administrative detention.

This time, Mr. Adnan had been on a hunger strike since his arrest on Feb. 5. In recent days, Israeli doctors had warned that his death was “imminent” and called for him to be transferred to a hospital.

Israel had accused Mr. Adnan of being affiliated with Islamic Jihad, an armed Palestinian resistance group, and he was arrested on suspicion of membership in a terrorist organization, support for terrorism and incitement.

Khader Adnan had led a hunger-strike movement among Palestinians to protest their detentions by Israel.

ny times logoNew York Times, Iranian Insider and British Spy: How a Double Life Ended on the Gallows, Farnaz Fassihi and Ronen Bergman, May 1, 2023. On Jan. 11, the execution in Iran of a former deputy defense minister named Alireza Akbari on espionage charges brought to light something that had been hidden for 15 years: Mr. Akbari was the British mole.

Mr. Akbari had long lived a double life. To the public, he was a religious zealot and political hawk, a senior military commander of the Revolutionary Guards and a deputy defense minister who later moved to London and went into the private sector but never lost the trust of Iran’s leaders. But in 2004, according to the officials, he began sharing Iran’s nuclear secrets with British intelligence.

Farnaz Fassihi and Ronen Bergman interviewed American, British, Israeli, German and Iranian current and former intelligence and national security officials and senior diplomats for this article.

 

sudan sudanese flag on the map of africa

ny times logoNew York Times, After Shelling and Shortages, Sudan’s Health Care Faces Total Collapse, Lynsey Chutel, May 2, 2023 (print ed.). The medical professionals who remain face meager supplies and harrowing conditions, even setting up field hospitals in living rooms amid the fighting.

With the battle for control of Sudan entering its third week, health care services are rapidly unraveling in the nation’s capital, Khartoum, a grim consequence of the brutal fighting that has raised fears the conflict could devolve into a wider humanitarian crisis.

The total collapse of the health care system could be days away, the Sudan Doctors’ Trade Union warned.

Hospitals have been shelled, and two-thirds of those in Khartoum have closed, according to the World Health Organization. More than a dozen health care workers have been killed, officials say. Beyond that, “hidden victims” are dying of illness and disease as basic medical services have become scarce, said Dr. Abdullah Atia, secretary general of the doctors’ union.

“We receive a lot of calls every day: ‘Where shall I go?’” he said. “These are the questions we are not able to answer.”

The fighting that erupted April 15 between a paramilitary group called the Rapid Support Forces and the Sudanese Army — both led by warring generals — has left more than 500 people dead and thousands of others hurt, the W.H.O. says, throwing Africa’s third-largest nation into chaos as one declared cease-fire after another has collapsed.

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Trump Cases, Allies, Insurrectionists

ny times logoNew York Times, Trump’s Lawyers Fight Bragg’s Effort to Limit Access to Evidence, Jonah E. Bromwich and William K. Rashbaum, May 2, 2023 (print ed.). Manhattan prosecutors had asked a judge to bar Donald Trump from discussing certain evidence publicly or on social media.

Lawyers for Donald J. Trump on Monday pushed back against an effort by the Manhattan district attorney’s office to limit the former president’s ability to publicly discuss evidence in the criminal case against him.

The district attorney’s office last week asked the judge in the case to restrict Mr. Trump’s access to some case material. The office requested that the former president be barred from reviewing the material without his lawyers present, and more broadly from publicizing the prosecution’s evidence on social media or through other channels.

In a court filing, Mr. Trump’s lawyers called the prosecutors’ request “extreme.” They argued that any restrictions placed on Mr. Trump should apply to prosecutors as well, and said that barring the former president from discussing evidence would violate his First Amendment rights.

“President Trump is the leading Republican candidate for president of the United States,” the filing said. “To state the obvious, there will continue to be significant public commentary about this case and his candidacy, to which he has a right and a need to respond, both for his own sake and for the benefit of the voting public.”

 

Former advice columnist E. Jean Carroll, center, at federal court with her lawyer Roberta Kaplan, left, on April 25 in New York (Former advice columnist E. Jean Carroll leaves federal court with her lawyer Roberta Kaplan on April 27 in New York (Associated Press photo by Seth Wineg).

Former advice columnist E. Jean Carroll, center, at federal court with her lawyer Roberta Kaplan, left, on April 25 in New York City (Associated Press photo by Seth Wineg).

washington post logoWashington Post, E. Jean Carroll takes the stand again in rape trial, Shayna Jacobs, Kim Bellware, Azi Paybarah and Mark Berman, May 2, 2023 (print ed.).  E. Jean Carroll questioned on Bergdorf Goodman visits, joke about sex with Trump.

E. Jean Carroll, who has accused Donald Trump of raping her in the mid-1990s, testified on cross-examination Monday in her lawsuit about why she did not file a police report about the alleged assault.

Carroll, 79, who wrote an advice column for many years, said, “I am a member of the silent generation … Women like me were taught and trained to keep our chins up and to not complain.” Carroll testified last week that Trump’s attack caused a decades-long trauma in her life. Trump has denied her allegations and called her a liar. Trump attorney Joe Tacopina has repeatedly questioned Carroll about her conduct during and since that alleged assault.

 

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More On 2024 U.S. Presidential Race

 ny times logoNew York Times, Independents Saw Urgency in Ousting Trump. Will They Rally to Re-elect Biden? Trip Gabriel, May 2, 2023 (print ed.). In Arizona, where independents are a crucial voting bloc, there might not be the same sense of urgency for a rematch between President Biden and Donald Trump.

Democratic-Republican Campaign logosAlthough Donald J. Trump has been out of office more than two years, receding as an all-consuming figure to many Americans, to Margot Copeland, a political independent, he looms as overwhelmingly as ever. She would just as urgently oppose Mr. Trump in a 2024 rematch with President Biden as she did the last time.

“I’ll get to the polls and get everybody out to the polls too,” said Ms. Copeland, a 67-year-old retiree who said she was aghast at the possible return to office of the 45th president. “It’s very important that Trump does not get back in.”

At the same time, Andrew Dickey, also a political independent who supported Mr. Biden in 2020, said he was disappointed with the current president’s record, arizona mapparticularly his failure to wipe out student debt. (The Supreme Court is considering Mr. Biden’s debt forgiveness program, but appeared skeptical during a hearing.) Mr. Dickey, a chef, owes $20,000 for his culinary training.

“I think I would possibly vote third party,” Mr. Dickey, 35, said of a Trump-Biden rematch. “There’s been a lot of things said on Biden’s end that haven’t been met. It was the normal smoke screen of the Democrats promising all this stuff, and then nothing.”

In Maricopa County in Arizona, the most crucial county in one of the most important states on the 2024 electoral map, voters like Ms. Copeland and Mr. Dickey illustrate the electoral upside — and potential pitfalls — for Mr. Biden as he begins his bid for a second term, which he announced last week.

The prospect of a Trump-Biden rematch in 2024 is Democrats’ greatest get-out-the-vote advantage. But the yearning by some past Biden voters for an alternative, including a third-party candidate, poses a threat to the president.

Mr. Biden’s extremely narrow win in Arizona in 2020 was driven by independent voters, a bloc he flipped and carried by 11 percentage points, after Mr. Trump won independents in 2016 by three points, according to exit polls.

In Maricopa County, which includes Phoenix and accounts for 60 percent of Arizona’s votes, independents outnumber registered Democrats and Republicans.

 

Former Trump National Security Advisor Michael Flynn, anti-vax activists Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., Charlene Bollinger, and longtime Trump ally and advisor Roger Stone, left to right, backstage at a July 2021 Reawaken America event. The photo was posted but later removed by Bollinger, who has appeared with Kennedy at multiple events. She and her husband sponsored an anti-vaccine, pro-Trump rally near the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. Bollinger celebrated the attack and her husband tried to enter the Capitol. Kennedy later appeared in a video for their Super PAC. Kennedy has repeatedly invoked Nazis and the Holocaust when talking about measures aimed at mitigating the spread of COVID-19, such as mask requirements and vaccine mandates. Kennedy, who has announced a presidential campaign for 2024, has at times invoked his family’s legacy in his anti-vaccine work, including sometimes using images of President Kennedy.

Former Trump National Security Advisor Michael Flynn, anti-vax activists Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., Charlene Bollinger, and longtime Trump ally and advisor Roger Stone, left to right, backstage at a July 2021 Reawaken America event. The photo was posted but later removed by Bollinger, who has appeared with Kennedy at multiple events. She and her husband sponsored an anti-vaccine, pro-Trump rally near the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. Bollinger celebrated the attack and her husband tried to enter the Capitol. Kennedy later appeared in a video for their Super PAC. Kennedy has repeatedly invoked Nazis and the Holocaust when talking about measures aimed at mitigating the spread of COVID-19, such as mask requirements and vaccine mandates. Kennedy, who has announced a presidential campaign for 2024, has at times invoked his family’s legacy in his anti-vaccine work, including sometimes using images of President Kennedy.


Going Deep with Russ Baker, Investigative Commentary: How Robert F. Kennedy Jr., His Presidential Candidacy and Vaccine Views, Help Trump, Russ Baker, right, russ bakerbest-selling author, media critic and founder of the investigative project WhoWhatWhy, April 29-30, 2023. Will Roger Stone’s Trump-Kennedy “dream ticket” come true?

whowhatwhy logoI have mixed feelings about Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the recently announced challenger to President Biden for the 2024 Democratic nomination. But not evenly mixed feelings.

On the positive side, he is one of the very few members of the Kennedy family willing to risk saying what others in the family will not: Key people in charge of investigating the deaths of his uncle and father, John and Robert, consistently failed to pursue meaningful leads that contradicted the official story.

Bobby Jr.’s willingness to endure a broad range of risks for talking about that topic impressed me, and led me to look at what else he has said, including his bracing critique of the military-intelligence-industrial complex.

Unfortunately, the good news ends there. It’s one thing to recognize real conspiracies and another to embrace all kinds of disinformation in keeping with his preconceived ideas, which are not supported by fact.

Which takes us to RFK Jr.’s views on public health.

His outspoken positions and continuous leadership of the anti-vaccination movement are a huge blot on his overall record. Because it’s such a striking and profound departure from evidence-based logic, I think it instantly disqualifies him as a presidential candidate.

In upcoming columns, I’ll take a look at the claims Kennedy has publicized regarding vaccines.

This country faces too many complex challenges and perils to turn the presidency over to someone who lacks good judgment on a subject as important as this. He shouldn’t be president, and even his spoiler role is a bad and terribly dangerous idea — given the overall stakes.

None other than the villainous Steve Bannon, a longtime Trump adviser, spent months trying to convince RFK Jr. to run. Bannon is expert at generating chaos, and he’s found the perfect vehicle.

Meanwhile, Roger Stone has proposed a “dream ticket” — Trump and Kennedy, together. Yes, this is actually happening. It doesn’t take a lot of imagination to see where this is headed. It’s obviously not good for the country, not good for humanity. Now is the time to speak up to head off potential disaster.

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U.S. Politics, Elections, Governance

washington post logoWashington Post, Opinion: Small-dollar donors didn’t save democracy. They made it worse, David Byler, May 1, 2023. Small-dollar donors were supposed to save democracy. Reformers had hoped that grass-roots political fundraising — connected by the internet and united against corruption — would become a formidable force to counter the money that wealthy individuals funnel to candidates.

Democratic-Republican Campaign logosOnly half of that would become true. Small-dollar donors are indeed powerful today — but they have made politics worse, not better.

This has manifested in different ways depending on the party. For Republicans, small-dollar donors have bankrolled bomb-throwers who treat Congress like the Thunderdome. For Democrats, they have wasted hundreds of millions of dollars on ridiculous, fantasy-driven campaigns. And even when they flood a race with cash, they do little to lessen the influence of big donors.

Let’s start with Republicans, for whom the problem is more troubling. Grass-root donors in the party have rewarded anti-establishment firebrands and conspiracy theorists who specialize in televised political stunts. Just take a look at the top recipients of small donations:

Democratic small-dollar donors present a different problem. While many of them strategically give to candidates in close, high-stakes races, too frequently they waste unthinkable sums of money trying to force high-profile Republicans out of safe seats.

Amy McGrath is the perfect case study. The Kentucky Democrat had almost no chance of beating Senate GOP leader Mitch McConnell in deep-red Kentucky. Yet small-dollar donors sent her more than $56 million. Together, McGrath, Jaime Harrison of South Carolina, Val Demings of Florida and Tim Ryan of Ohio wasted almost $200 million small dollars on races that were at best long shots and in many cases were outright unwinnable. Add in the likes of Marcus Flowers, who raised $16 million running against Marjorie Taylor Greene, and other Democratic candidates, and that total rises even higher.

ny times logoNew York Times Magazine, Kyrsten Sinema’s Party of One, Robert Draper, May 1, 2023. What the Arizona senator’s breakup with the Democrats means for American politics. “I would never in my life crack under pressure,” the recently declared independent says. “Why would they think I’m going to do it?”

Kyrsten Sinema was standing a few yards from the border wall with four Republican members of Congress. The men were staring balefully at a row of nearby portable toilets, wondering aloud if they could hold out for a proper bathroom on the way back to the airport. Sinema assured Representatives David Valadao of California and Tony Gonzales of Texas that they need not worry on her account.

“If you know anything about me,” she said, gesturing vaguely out into the desert, “you know that I’ll go anywhere.” The two men, who were just getting to know the Arizona senator, laughed. “I mean,” Sinema added as she pointed back to the porta-potties, “I come from humble beginnings. That there is some fancy [expletive].”

Sinema — who four months earlier left the Democratic Party and declared herself an independent — had orchestrated this April visit for two reasons, one explicit and the other hinted at. The four men joining her at the border had been “carefully curated” by Sinema, she told me the day before. Tillis had partnered with her on important legislation in the past, and they were now collaborating on what they hoped would be the first major border-and-immigration-reform bill to become law in a generation. Sinema targeted Ciscomani, Gonzales and Valadao, all of whom served on the powerful House Appropriations Committee, as potential recruits for this effort.

Like two other recent legislative accomplishments that Sinema had a major hand in crafting — the 2021 infrastructure bill and the 2022 gun-safety initiative — the Sinema-Tillis plan is decidedly half a loaf, for which Sinema offers no apologies. “The people who want no bread if they can’t get the entire loaf of bread,” she told me, “are people who’ve never been hungry.”

But even if less than a full meal, the plan would still be consequential — increasing funds and equipment for the Border Patrol, reforming the asylum process, addressing backlogs of employment-based visas and providing a path to citizenship for about two million young American residents (the so-called Dreamers) — and its passage would be an even more improbable achievement than finding common ground on guns last year. “Guns is a high-wire act,” Senator Chris Murphy, a Connecticut Democrat who worked with Sinema on the 2022 law and is now doing the same on immigration, told me. “Immigration is a high-wire act while holding active sticks of dynamite.”

If Arizona progressives have their way, Sinema will be ousted for repeated apostasies, from protecting the filibuster — the means by which, according to traditional Senate rules, a minority can block a vote that a frustrated majority would otherwise be able to move forward — to siding with private-equity donors. If Sinema has hers, Arizona voters across the political spectrum will reward her displays of discerning bipartisanship in an age of mindless party loyalty. It could also be the case that Sinema and her likely Democratic rival, Representative Ruben Gallego, will do sufficient damage to each other to ensure that the winner is a Republican, perhaps losing the Senate majority in the process.

But additional implications come into play should Sinema prevail as an independent. “These are very different times,” Tillis told me, “and from the polls I’ve seen, an increasing number of voters are saying, ‘I’m not buying what the far left and far right are selling.’ Now, whether that sentiment transfers to an electoral map is still unclear. But if voters really are saying, ‘Give me a viable alternative,’ then Sinema has a pretty solid argument to make.”

Politico, Cardin not running for reelection, opening blue-state Senate seat, Burgess Everett and Ally Mutnick, May 1, 2023. The Maryland senator’s vacancy will jolt both the state’s Democratic congressional delegation and political apparatus.

politico CustomMaryland Sen. Ben Cardin will not seek reelection in 2024, he announced on Monday, creating a wide-open race to succeed him and altering the Senate.

U.S. Sen. Ben Cardin (shown in a 2015 photo).Cardin U.S. Sen. Ben Cardin (shown in a 2015 photo) has served in the Senate for three terms, providing a generally reliable vote for Democrats but also willing to cut bipartisan deals when needed. He explained his philosophy in a statement on Monday: “I am an optimist but also a realist.”

“I was taught that it’s okay to compromise — don’t ever compromise your principles — but find a path to get things done. Inspire trust in those around you. Keep your word and, again, listen,” Cardin said.

The genial Marylander had been been contemplating his plans for months as Democrats eyed his seat. The 79-year-old Cardin is a fixture in Maryland politics, serving first in the statehouse, then the House and then in the Senate since 2007.

He’s the third Senate Democrat to announce they won’t run for reelection, joining Sens. Debbie Stabenow (D-Mich.) and Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.). Of those three states, only Michigan is considered competitive.

Cardin’s announcement will almost certainly jolt the Old Line State’s congressional delegation and political apparatus. Democrats from all corners will consider running for a safe seat that’s also within driving distance of the Capitol — as plum a gig as you’ll find in politics.

  • Politico, AOC is ‘not planning’ to run for Senate in 2024, May 1, 2023.

washington post logoWashington Post, DeSantis’s board votes to sue Disney, says company lacks innovation, Lori Rozsa, May 1, 2023. The new board said it had to respond after Disney filed a lawsuit accusing state officials of punishing the company over its stance on a controversial law.

The new board overseeing the Walt Disney Co.’s Central Florida theme park property on Monday voted to sue the company, countering a federal lawsuit filed five days ago by Disney against the governing body and Gov. Ron DeSantis.

It’s the latest move in the year-long feud between Disney, the state’s largest employer, and DeSantis (R), a battle that many say is spinning out of control.

Martin Garcia, chairman of the Central Florida Tourism Oversight District, said he and his fellow board members had to respond to Disney’s legal action.

“Since Disney sued us. … We have no choice now but to respond,” Garcia said.

Disney’s suit was filed last week in federal court in Tallahassee. Garcia said his board’s suit would be filed in a state court in Central Florida.

“We’ll seek justice in our own backyard,” he said.

Disney communications staff did not return a request for comment.

Speaking at a separate event Monday, DeSantis said the board’s actions are based on contract law that should be decided in a state court, not a federal court.

He also reiterated his belief that because he won reelection by a landslide in November on a platform that included fighting against “woke corporations,” he has a popular mandate to take action against Disney.

“But at the end of the day, it’s a question about good governance,” DeSantis said.

washington post logoWashington Post, Opinion: How Trump made it cool for Republicans to hate their own party, Paul Waldman, right, May 1, 2023. Running for president with well-paul waldmanplaced criticisms of your own party is a tried-and-true campaign strategy, a way to appeal to moderates and independents while posing as an independent thinker not beholden to anyone. But this used to be done with subtlety and care, more through implied contrasts than direct confrontation.

That was before Donald Trump came along. As the 2024 GOP presidential primary gets going, it’s becoming clear that Trump has remade presidential politics in an underappreciated way: He has made it practically a requirement that GOP candidates campaign on open hostility toward their own party.

Recently, Trump declared that his victorious 2016 presidential campaign rescued the Republican Party from “freaks, neocons, globalists, open-borders zealots and fools.” These days, that has become standard-issue Trump rhetoric. But weirdly enough, other 2024 GOP hopefuls are now following suit.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has gone the furthest in chasing Trump down this road. In his campaign book, he writes that “old-guard corporate Republicanism is not up to the task at hand.” DeSantis recently said during a speech, “We reject the culture of losing that has infected the Republican Party in recent years.”

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President Joe Biden speaks during the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner at the Washington Hilton in Washington, Saturday, April 29, 2023. (Associated Press Photo by Carolyn Kaster).

President Joe Biden speaks during the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner at the Washington Hilton in Washington, Saturday, April 29, 2023. (Associated Press Photo by Carolyn Kaster).

 

U.S. Abortion Laws, #MeToo, Public Health

washington post logoWashington Post, Democratic AGs are using the courts to win on abortion, gun control, Scott Wilson, May 1, 2023 (print ed.). Democratic state attorneys general are finding successes that eluded them for years.

For Bob Ferguson, the Democratic attorney general of Washington state, the seventh time proved to be the charm.

For six years, Ferguson pushed a ban on assault-style weapons in Washington’s legislature. Each year, the proposal failed to make it out of committee — until this one. In April, the legislature passed the bill and Gov. Jay Inslee (D) signed it into law.

Ferguson said the “tragic drumbeat” of mass shootings played a role in boosting public support for the measure. And the Democratic base has become younger and more liberal since he first proposed the ban, he said.

“The political aspect of it has been turned on its head,” Ferguson said. “The voters in Washington now want to ban assault weapons, they want to ban high-capacity magazines. That change definitely occurred.”

Ferguson is one of several Democratic attorneys general moving aggressively on key social policy issues to blunt Republican initiatives across the country designed to loosen gun restrictions, outlaw abortion and curtail the rights of transgender residents.

  • Washington Post, LeRoy Carhart, abortion doctor whose battles reached Supreme Court, dies at 81, Brian Murphy, May 1, 2023.

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 Future U.S. District Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk, a Trump Republican nominee, during his Senate confirmation hearing (Pool photo by Reuters).

Future U.S. District Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk, a Trump Republican nominee, during his Senate confirmation hearing (Pool photo by Reuters).

 

U.S. Culture Wars: Media, Schools, Disney, LGBT

 

ron desantis hands out

ny times logoNew York Times, Opinion: Disney v. DeSantis: How Strong Is the Company’s Lawsuit? David French, right, May 1, 2023 (print ed.). To understand why Gov. Ron DeSantis of david french croppedFlorida, above, should lose in his quest to punish Disney for the high crime of publicly disagreeing with Ron DeSantis, it is first necessary to talk about tow trucks. Specifically, it’s necessary to discuss a case about tow trucks and the First Amendment and how it answers a key question: If the government offers some person or entity a benefit, can it also take it away?

The tow truck story begins in the early 1990s in Northlake, Ill. For decades the city had maintained a list of tow truck companies available for use by the Police Department. The list worked simply enough — when the police needed towing services, they simply went down the list before each tow, with the next towing company receiving the next call. While towing companies didn’t have a right to be on the list, once placed on it, the city’s policy was to remove companies only “for cause.”

In 1993, John Gratzianna, the owner of O’Hare Truck Service, declined to support the campaign of the incumbent mayor of Northlake, backing his opponent instead. The mayor then removed Gratzianna’s company from the towing list, and Gratzianna sued.

The case was one of many to raise the constitutional question of when the government is allowed to take away benefits it was never obligated to provide. Let’s take, for example, public employment. Being hired for a government job isn’t a right. It’s a privilege.

But if the government isn’t obligated to hire me, does that mean it can fire me for any reason? Absolutely not. Anti-discrimination laws and constitutional principles prevent it from firing me or punishing me because of my race, sex or religion, for example. And even if I’m a public employee, the First Amendment is going to prevent the government from punishing me when I speak as a private citizen on matters of public concern.

America’s federal, state and local governments control immense resources. Total government spending is over $9 trillion annually, and those are just direct expenditures. The government also controls the ability to enact tax breaks and other financial incentives for individuals and businesses. And while there are good arguments against governments providing economic inducements and incentives to private corporations, those inducements and incentives cannot then depend on an implied requirement that the corporations agree with the government on matters of public policy. Otherwise, governments could use the power of the purse to create a two-tiered society, granting and withholding government largess on the basis of political agreement.

disney logoMake no mistake, the Florida government’s actions against Disney were directly motivated by the company’s disagreement with a policy pushed by DeSantis. Disney’s legal complaint, filed in federal court in the Northern District of Florida, is chock-full of evidence that the governor and other Florida officials targeted the company for one overriding reason: It put out a statement objecting to House Bill 1557, the Parental Rights in Education Act, which sharply restricted instruction on sexual orientation and gender identity in Florida public schools.

ron desantis oStatements from Governor DeSantis and other Republican state officials are remarkably brazen. DeSantis said he thought Disney’s mild opposition — it mainly consisted of a public statement and a phone call from the former Disney C.E.O. Bob Chapek to DeSantis, moves that a number of L.G.B.T. activists considered inadequate — “crossed the line,” and he promised to “make sure we’re fighting back.” He accused Disney of “pledging a frontal assault on a duly enacted law of the State of Florida.”

But those statements were just the tip of the iceberg.

The motivations could not be clearer: The State of Florida is targeting Disney because of the company’s constitutionally protected expression. Or, as Representative Randy Fine, a Republican, stated: “You got me on one thing — this bill does target one company. It targets the Walt Disney Company.”

John Gratzianna and O’Hare Truck Service are far from the only plaintiffs to win a First Amendment retaliation case at the Supreme Court. Prohibitions against government retaliation for protected speech are as clearly established as virtually any constitutional doctrine in American law. But what O’Hare does show us as clearly as any modern Supreme Court case is the idea that denying government benefits is a form of government control, and when it’s done for the express purpose of punishing an exercise of constitutionally protected speech, it violates the Constitution of the United States.

 washington post logoWashington Post, Disney sues DeSantis, says it was ‘left with no other choice,’ Aaron Gregg and Lori Rozsa, April 27, 2023 (print ed.). The entertainment giant’s lawsuit alleges Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has waged a “relentless campaign to weaponize government power against Disney.”

Walt Disney Co. is suing Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R), right, over what it calls a “relentless campaign to weaponize government power” — a major escalation of the year-long clash between the entertainment giant and conservative governor.

The lawsuit filed Wednesday in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Florida came the same day the governor’s handpicked board declared a Disney-friendly deal null and void. Disney and DeSantis’s office have been tussling privately for the past year, but the frequency and intensity of their sparring has intensified dramatically in recent days.

The standoff, which could have major political and economic consequences, began in early 2022 when Disney leaders criticized a controversial education bill advanced by DeSantis and other Florida Republicans. Disney’s resorts in Florida are some of the state’s prime attractions, but DeSantis expressed outrage that the company dare criticize the education bill, and he began attacking the company, saying it had received preferential treatment for too long.

mark walkerThe case has been assigned to Chief U.S. District Judge Mark Walker, right, of Florida’s northern federal district court.

DeSantis, whom many consider a top presidential contender, has repeatedly turned to the state’s Republican-controlled legislature to help him rein in Disney. The first effort came in a special session in April 2022, when lawmakers dissolved the special taxing district created in 1967 to help the company develop and control its vast property near Orlando.

But that move quickly caused concerns about what would happen with Disney’s tax and debt burden. Local government officials called it “a $1 billion debt bomb” and said they could have been forced to raise taxes on property owners to pay for what Disney’s district used to fund, such as roads and other services.

DeSantis ordered another special session in February to address that issue by keeping the tax district, but replacing the board selected by Disney — called the Reedy Creek Improvement District — with a new panel. DeSantis chose the five new board members and called the agency the Central Florida Tourism Oversight Board. When the new board held its first meeting in March, members said they discovered that the outgoing Disney board had handed over most of their power to Disney. That’s what they voted to overturn on Wednesday.

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

 

climate change photo

ny times logoNew York Times, Gov. Jay Inslee of Washington, Climate Champion, Won’t Seek Re-Election, Reid J. Epstein, May 2, 2023 (print ed.). Gov. Jay Inslee of Washington State, the nation’s longest-serving current governor and one of the Democratic Party’s leading climate defenders, will not seek a fourth term in office next year, he announced on Monday.

jay inslee o Custom“Serving the people as governor of Washington State has been my greatest honor,” he said. “During a decade of dynamic change, we’ve made Washington a beacon for progress for the nation. I’m ready to pass the torch.”

Mr. Inslee, 72, right, who before becoming governor was elected to Congress eight times, ran for his party’s 2020 presidential nomination on a platform of sharply reducing the country’s reliance on fossil fuels. He dropped out of the race in August 2019 when it became clear he would not meet the Democratic National Committee’s threshold to appear in presidential debates.

ny times logoNew York Times, Interview: Jay Inslee Sees Greener Pastures Ahead, Reid J. Epstein, May 2, 2023. Jay Inslee has been in elected office so long that he served in Congress during the tail end of the George H.W. Bush administration.

On Monday Mr. Inslee, 72, announced that he would not seek a fourth term as Washington State’s governor, ending a nearly 30-year career in elected office. He went to Congress as a centrist Democrat and evolved into a fierce critic of the Iraq war and later of President Donald J. Trump. He will leave the State Capitol after the 2024 elections as one of America’s leading climate hawks.

Mr. Inslee ran for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination by arguing that the country would have to radically reshape its relationship with fossil fuels and promote renewable energy. While Mr. Inslee’s candidacy never caught fire, his goals later became the blueprint for the climate spending in the Inflation Reduction Act, which President Biden signed into law last year.

When I interviewed Mr. Inslee in 2017, he said the only other job he would want was to be the quarterback of his hometown Seattle Seahawks. When I reminded him of this as we spoke Monday afternoon, he replied, “Now I want to be the next goalie for the Seattle Kraken,” the city’s hockey team. The conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

After nearly 30 years in elected office, Washington’s governor plans to shift his focus to climate solutions and clean energy, underscoring the need for “a sense of optimism and confidence.”

ny times logoNew York Times, Six Dead After Dust Storm Causes Crashes on Interstate 55 in Illinois, Livia Albeck-Ripka, Updated May 2, 2023. At least 72 vehicles were involved in pileup crashes after a dust storm swept through central Illinois, forcing the closure of the highway.

Six people were killed and at least 37 others injured in crashes on Monday when a rare dust storm swept through nearby farms and onto a highway in a rural section of Illinois, causing “zero visibility” conditions, the Illinois State Police said.

The crashes, on a two-mile stretch of Interstate 55 in central Illinois, took place on both sides of the highway just before 11 a.m., the police said in a statement. The crashes involved passenger cars and commercial vehicles, including two tractor-trailers that caught fire.

The police later said that 72 vehicles had been involved in the accidents, and that the six deaths had all occurred in the northbound lanes.

The accident happened near Farmersville, Ill., south of Springfield and west of Indianapolis. The highway in that area remained closed in both directions as of early Tuesday morning.

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Pandemics, Public Health, Privacy

washington post logoWashington Post, Moderna’s billionaire CEO reaped nearly $400 million last year. He also got a raise, Daniel Gilbert, May 1, 2023 (print ed.). Vaccine-maker Moderna is facing pushback over its executive pay practices, while its chief executives says he is donating proceeds of his windfall to charity.

moderna logoStéphane Bancel, below left, chief executive of Moderna, had a good year in 2022, exercising stock options that netted him nearly $393 million. The company decided his pay wasn’t good enough.

stéphane bancelThe Cambridge, Mass.-based biotech, known for its lifesaving coronavirus vaccine, raised his salary last year by 50 percent to $1.5 million and increased his target cash bonus, according to a March securities filing. Bancel, 50, says he is donating the proceeds of covad 19 photo.jpg Custom 2stock sales to charity. He owns stock worth at least $2.8 billion and, as of the end of last year, had additional stock-based compensation valued at $1.7 billion.

Moderna emerged from the pandemic as a standout corporate winner, as its vaccine supercharged its stock price and made billionaires of some.

washington post logoWashington Post, Nearly 400,000 Virginians risk losing Medicaid, starting Monday, Jenna Portnoy, May 1, 2023 (print ed.). An estimated 140,000 Virginia children will no longer be covered by Medicaid as pandemic-era protections expire.

Starting in May, Virginia will begin the year-long purging of an estimated 400,000 residents from Medicaid rolls as pandemic-era protections unwind, sending people caught in a temporary safety net scrambling to find health care.

The end of a federal vow to hold harmless people on public insurance whose eligibility changed during the coronavirus emergency has states and the District of Columbia scrambling, too, to determine if record-high numbers of Medicaid recipients still qualify.

The tedious process, known as “Medicaid unwinding,” will disproportionately impact children, and Latino and Black residents, federal studies show, many of the same groups the government identified as particularly vulnerable to job loss and other economic impacts of covid.

The start of Medicaid disenrollments comes as the federal government put an end to a boost in payments for the tens of millions of Americans who receive food stamps, and as benefits like free coronavirus vaccines and tests associated with the public health emergency set to expire May 11 remain in limbo.

ny times logoNew York Times, What It Will Take for Africa to Get Close to Vaccine Independence, Stephanie Nolen, April 25, 2023. Leaders on the continent have vowed that if there is another pandemic, they won’t be shut out of the vaccine market.

Just 3 percent of all Covid-19 vaccine doses delivered in 2021 went to Africa, home to a fifth of the world’s population, according to the World Health Organization. In the vast debacle of global vaccine inequity, it was Africa that was left furthest behind as the pandemic raged, and that had the least leverage to negotiate contracts.

African leaders vowed to make sure that never happened again. High-income nations and philanthropic groups promised to help fund the effort to make vaccine access more equitable. There was a flurry of announcements of new partnerships and investments: plans to modernize the handful of existing pharmaceutical manufacturing operations in Africa; plans to build new ones; plans to send shipping containers from Europe with pop-up facilities to produce the new mRNA vaccines; plans for an mRNA production incubator that would dispense open-source technology around the continent.

Now, some of the hype has subsided, and there are some signs of real progress. But it’s also become evident just how big the hurdles are.

There aren’t many shortcuts in the decades-long process of developing a sophisticated biotechnology industry that can make a routine vaccine for export, let alone develop a shot to protect against a new pathogen.

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U.S. Cable News Firings

tucker carlson fox horizontal

ny times logoNew York Times, Guest Essay: Fox News Gambled, but Tucker Can Still Take Down the House, Jason Zengerle, April 30, 2023 (print ed.). Mr. Zengerle, a contributing writer for The New York Times Magazine, is working on a book about Tucker Carlson.

The cable host has left Fox News. But his dark and outsize influence on the conservative movement — and on American politics — is hardly over.

For the quarter-century-plus that the Fox News Channel has been coming into America’s living rooms, it has operated according to a cardinal tenet: No one at the cable network is bigger than Fox News itself. It’s a lesson Glenn Beck, Megyn Kelly and Bill O’Reilly all learned the hard way after they left Fox and saw their fame and influence (if not their fortunes) evaporate. Once the biggest names in cable news, they now spend their days wandering in the wilderness of podcasts and third-tier streaming platforms. Even Roger Ailes, Fox News’s original architect and the man who devised — and then ruthlessly enforced — the no-one-bigger-than rule, discovered that he was expendable when Rupert Murdoch pushed him out as Fox’s chairman and chief executive in 2016 amid sexual harassment allegations. Mr. Ailes soon disappeared to a mansion in Florida and, less than a year later, died in exile from the media world he’d once commanded.

When Fox News abruptly fired Tucker Carlson, the network’s most popular prime-time host and the most powerful person in conservative media, many savvy press critics predicted the same fate for him: professional oblivion. Mr. Carlson had himself once replaced Ms. Kelly, and later Mr. O’Reilly, and each time he climbed to a new, better slot in the Fox News lineup he garnered bigger and bigger ratings. Now, according to the conventional wisdom, some new up-and-comer would inherit Mr. Carlson’s audience and replace him as the king (or queen) of conservative media. “The ‘talent’ at the Fox News Channel has never been the star,” Politico’s Jack Shafer wrote earlier this week. “Fox itself, which convenes the audience, is the star.”

But there’s good reason to believe Mr. Carlson will be the exception that proves the rule. For one thing, unlike previous stars who have left Fox News, Mr. Carlson departed when he was still at the height of his power, making his firing all the more sudden and shocking. Three days before his sacking, he gave the keynote address at the Heritage Foundation’s 50th anniversary gala. Two weeks before that, he browbeat Texas’ Republican governor to issue a pardon to a man who had been convicted of murdering a Black Lives Matter protester in Austin.

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More On Media, Education, Arts, High Tech

ny times logoNew York Times, ‘The Godfather of A.I.’ Leaves Google and Warns of Danger Ahead, Cade Metz, May 2, 2023 (print ed.). “It is hard to see how you can prevent the bad actors from using it for bad things,” said Geoffrey Hinton, who has worked on A.I.-related technology for 50 years.

Geoffrey Hinton was an artificial intelligence pioneer. In 2012, Dr. Hinton and two of his graduate students at the University of Toronto created technology that became the intellectual foundation for the A.I. systems that the tech industry’s biggest companies believe is a key to their future.

google logo customOn Monday, however, he officially joined a growing chorus of critics who say those companies are racing toward danger with their aggressive campaign to create products based on generative artificial intelligence, the technology that powers popular chatbots like ChatGPT.

Dr. Hinton said he has quit his job at Google, where he has worked for more than a decade and became one of the most respected voices in the field, so he can freely speak out about the risks of A.I. A part of him, he said, now regrets his life’s work.

“I console myself with the normal excuse: If I hadn’t done it, somebody else would have,” Dr. Hinton said during a lengthy interview last week in the dining room of his home in Toronto, a short walk from where he and his students made their breakthrough.

ny times logoNew York Times, Vice Is Said to Be Headed for Bankruptcy, Lauren Hirsch and Benjamin Mullin, May 2, 2023 (print ed.). The company, which was once valued at $5.7 billion, has been struggling to find a buyer this year.

Vice, the brash digital-media disrupter that charmed giants like Disney and Fox into investing before a stunning crash-landing, is preparing to file for bankruptcy, according to two people with knowledge of its operations.

The filing could come in the coming weeks, according to three people familiar with the matter who weren’t authorized to discuss the potential bankruptcy on the record.

The company has been looking for a buyer, and still might find one, to avoid declaring bankruptcy. More than five companies have expressed interest in acquiring Vice, according to a person briefed on the discussions. The chances of that, however, are growing increasingly slim, said one of the people with knowledge of the potential bankruptcy.

A bankruptcy filing would be a bleak coda to the tumultuous story of Vice, a new-media interloper that sought to supplant the media establishment before persuading it to invest hundreds of millions of dollars. In 2017, after a funding round from the private-equity firm TPG, Vice was worth $5.7 billion. But today, by most accounts, it’s worth a tiny fraction of that.

In the event of a bankruptcy, Vice’s largest debtholder, Fortress Investment Group, could end up controlling the company, said one of the people. Vice would continue operating normally and run an auction to sell the company over a 45-day period, with Fortress in pole position as the most likely acquirer.

Unlike Vice’s other investors, which have included Disney and Fox, Fortress holds senior debt, which means it gets paid out first in the event of a sale. Disney, which has already written down its investments, is not getting a return, the person said.

ny times logoNew York Times, Hollywood Writers Will Go on Strike, Halting Production, John Koblin and Brooks Barnes, May 2, 2023 (print ed.). The dispute, which pits 11,500 television and screenwriters against the major studios, has shattered 15 years of labor peace in the entertainment business.

Hollywood’s 15 years of labor peace was shattered Tuesday, as movie and television writers went on strike, bringing many productions to a halt and dealing a blow to an industry that has been rocked in recent years by the pandemic and sweeping technological shifts.

  • New York Times, In the book “Traffic,” the journalist Ben Smith chronicles how “going viral” became a thing, May 2, 2023 (print ed.).

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U.S. Supreme Court Ethics Scandals

 

Ultra-right dark money fund-raiser Leonard Leo, center, a major provider of funding for the Federalist Society and other influencers on judicial appointments and decision-making (New York Times photo by T.J. Kirkpatrick).

 

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washington post logoWashington Post, U.S. could default ‘as early as June 1’ if debt limit is not raised, Treasury warns, Tony Romm, May 1, 2023. A letter to Congress from Treasury Secretary Janet L. Yellen comes as House Republican leaders demand that President Biden begin negotiations over raising the debt ceiling.

The U.S. government could default “as early as June 1” unless Congress raises or suspends the debt ceiling, according to the Treasury Department, which implored lawmakers again on Monday to act swiftly to avert a fiscal crisis.

The new estimate followed less than a week after House Republicans delivered on their pledge to try to leverage the looming deadline to secure spending cuts, defying President Biden and officially touching off a political stalemate that could tip the fragile economy into another recession.

In a letter to lawmakers, Treasury Secretary Janet L. Yellen said the agency may be “unable to continue to satisfy all of the government’s obligations by early June, and potentially as early as June 1,” stressing the estimate is imprecise because of the variability of federal tax receipts.

Since January, the Biden administration has taken special budgetary maneuvers to avoid breaching the debt ceiling, the statutory limit on how much the U.S. government may borrow to pay its existing bills. Only Congress can lift or pause the legal cap, which currently is set at roughly $31 trillion.

Repeatedly, Republicans raised the debt ceiling under President Donald Trump without including fiscal reforms, yet party lawmakers — now in control of the House in a time of divided government — have refused to afford the same support to Biden. Instead, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) has conditioned GOP support on their ability to achieve a lengthy list of policy demands.

washington post logoWashington Post, With debt bill adopted, far-right House Republicans ready for fiscal war, Tony Romm and Marianna Sotomayor, May 1, 2023 (print ed.). The House Freedom Caucus pushed Speaker Kevin McCarthy for sharp spending cuts — and some members still want more.

In early March, a powerful group of far-right House Republicans issued its demands over the debt ceiling, signaling it would “consider” supporting an increase if Congress gutted federal spending and revoked many of President Biden’s top priorities.

djt maga hatOne month later, the bloc helped pass a GOP bill that accomplishes nearly every one of their original policy aims — and now some of those conservatives say it’s just the beginning.

For the roughly three dozen lawmakers in the House Freedom Caucus, the fight over the nation’s fiscal health has doubled as an affirmation of their rapid political ascent. With government divided — and Republicans only in possession of a narrow, delicate advantage in the chamber — the bloc has evolved from an irascible minority faction into a controlling legislative force.

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washington post logoWashington Post, Senate to hold hearings to highlight ‘reckless’ House GOP debt limit bill, John Wagner, May 1, 2023. The Democratic-led Senate will hold hearings starting this week on legislation narrowly passed by the Republican-led House that would condition raising the debt limit on adopting steep spending cuts and rolling back several of President Biden’s priorities, Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) said Monday.

senate democrats logoIn a letter to colleagues, Schumer said the aim of the hearings, to begin Thursday, will be “to expose the true impact of this reckless legislation on everyday Americans.”

The hearings will be the first concrete action the Senate has taken after weeks of verbal jabs directed at House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) and his leadership team, who are engaged in a standoff with the White House over the debt ceiling — the legal limit on how much money the country can borrow to pay its bills. President Biden is insisting Congress pass a bill raising the limit with no conditions, as it did three times during the administration of his Republican predecessor.

Separately Monday, Biden is planning to use an event marking National Small Business Week to highlight the negative effect that he says the House Republican plan could have on federal programs aiding small businesses.

Schumer wrote that House passage of the McCarthy-backed bill “offers two choices: either default on the debt or default on America, forcing steep cuts to law enforcement, veterans, families, teachers.”

washington post logoWashington Post, Senate to hold hearings to highlight ‘reckless’ House GOP debt limit bill, John Wagner, May 1, 2023. The Democratic-led Senate will hold hearings starting this week on legislation narrowly passed by the Republican-led House that would condition raising the debt limit on adopting steep spending cuts and rolling back several of President Biden’s priorities, Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) said Monday.

In a letter to colleagues, Schumer said the aim of the hearings, to begin Thursday, will be “to expose the true impact of this reckless legislation on everyday Americans.”

The hearings will be the first concrete action the Senate has taken after weeks of verbal jabs directed at House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) and his leadership team, who are engaged in a standoff with the White House over the debt ceiling — the legal limit on how much money the country can borrow to pay its bills. President Biden is insisting Congress pass a bill raising the limit with no conditions, as it did three times during the administration of his Republican predecessor.

Separately Monday, Biden is planning to use an event marking National Small Business Week to highlight the negative effect that he says the House Republican plan could have on federal programs aiding small businesses.

Schumer wrote that House passage of the McCarthy-backed bill “offers two choices: either default on the debt or default on America, forcing steep cuts to law enforcement, veterans, families, teachers.”

ny times logoNew York Times, Independents Saw Urgency in Ousting Trump. Will They Rally to Re-elect Biden? Trip Gabriel, May 1, 2023. In Arizona, where independents are a crucial voting bloc, there might not be the same sense of urgency for a rematch between President Biden and Donald Trump.

Democratic-Republican Campaign logosAlthough Donald J. Trump has been out of office more than two years, receding as an all-consuming figure to many Americans, to Margot Copeland, a political independent, he looms as overwhelmingly as ever. She would just as urgently oppose Mr. Trump in a 2024 rematch with President Biden as she did the last time.

“I’ll get to the polls and get everybody out to the polls too,” said Ms. Copeland, a 67-year-old retiree who said she was aghast at the possible return to office of the 45th president. “It’s very important that Trump does not get back in.”

At the same time, Andrew Dickey, also a political independent who supported Mr. Biden in 2020, said he was disappointed with the current president’s record, arizona mapparticularly his failure to wipe out student debt. (The Supreme Court is considering Mr. Biden’s debt forgiveness program, but appeared skeptical during a hearing.) Mr. Dickey, a chef, owes $20,000 for his culinary training.

“I think I would possibly vote third party,” Mr. Dickey, 35, said of a Trump-Biden rematch. “There’s been a lot of things said on Biden’s end that haven’t been met. It was the normal smoke screen of the Democrats promising all this stuff, and then nothing.”

In Maricopa County in Arizona, the most crucial county in one of the most important states on the 2024 electoral map, voters like Ms. Copeland and Mr. Dickey illustrate the electoral upside — and potential pitfalls — for Mr. Biden as he begins his bid for a second term, which he announced last week.

The prospect of a Trump-Biden rematch in 2024 is Democrats’ greatest get-out-the-vote advantage. But the yearning by some past Biden voters for an alternative, including a third-party candidate, poses a threat to the president.

Mr. Biden’s extremely narrow win in Arizona in 2020 was driven by independent voters, a bloc he flipped and carried by 11 percentage points, after Mr. Trump won independents in 2016 by three points, according to exit polls.

In Maricopa County, which includes Phoenix and accounts for 60 percent of Arizona’s votes, independents outnumber registered Democrats and Republicans.

 

Former President Donald Trump is shown in a photo collage with columnist E. Jean Carroll, who accused him of raping her three decades ago, with her civil suit scheduled for trial this spring in New York City.

Former President Donald Trump is shown in a photo collage with columnist E. Jean Carroll, who accused him of raping her three decades ago, with her civil suit scheduled for trial beginning with jury selection on April 25 in New York City.

ny times logoNew York Times, Rape Case Places Trump in Legal Jeopardy. Politically, He’s Thriving, Jonah E. Bromwich, Benjamin Weiser and Lola Fadulu, May 1, 2023 (print ed.). Former President Trump’s new campaign is rolling on unimpeded under the spotlights. In courtrooms, he faces more serious threats.

During E. Jean Carroll’s first day on the witness stand, her lawyer asked what had brought her to a federal courtroom in Manhattan.

“I am here because Donald Trump raped me and when I wrote about it, he said it didn’t happen,” Ms. Carroll replied. “He lied and shattered my reputation, and I am here to try to get my life back.”

A day later, Mr. Trump, who has denied the attack and called Ms. Carroll a liar, campaigned in New Hampshire, joking to a crowd about his changing nicknames for Hillary Clinton and President Biden. He did not mention Ms. Carroll’s testimony, or the civil trial going on 250 miles away. But he remarked cheerfully on a poll released that day, which showed him far and away leading the 2024 Republican primary field.

Since Mr. Trump was indicted last month in a criminal case brought by the Manhattan district attorney’s office, his legal travails and his third presidential campaign have played out on a split screen. The courtroom dramas have taken place without news cameras present, even as the race has returned Mr. Trump to the spotlight that briefly dimmed after he left the Oval Office.

Ms. Carroll’s harrowing testimony, a visceral demonstration of Mr. Trump’s legal peril, has emphasized the surreal nature of the divide. Mr. Trump is the front-runner for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination. But he has also been indicted on 34 felony false records charges, and in Ms. Carroll’s case faces a nine-person jury that will determine whether he committed rape decades ago. And then there are the other investigations: for election interference, mishandling sensitive documents and his role in the attack on the U.S. Capitol.

“To see a former and potential future president of the United States confront all these legal issues at once is bizarre,” said Jennifer Horn, a former chairwoman of the New Hampshire Republican Party and a vocal opponent of Mr. Trump. “But what’s really disturbing about it is that he’s the front-runner for a major political party in this country. And you can’t just blame that on him. You have to blame that on the leaders of the party and their primary base.”

The past week brought the former president a steady stream of setbacks. Ms. Carroll gave detailed and graphic testimony about the encounter with Mr. Trump. The judge in the case sought to limit Mr. Trump’s posts on social media, as did the Manhattan district attorney’s office in its own case. And former Vice President Mike Pence testified before a grand jury hearing evidence about Mr. Trump’s attempts to overturn the results of the 2020 election.

washington post logoWashington Post, Live Updates: E. Jean Carroll takes the stand again in rape trial, Shayna Jacobs, Kim Bellware, Azi Paybarah and Mark Berman, May 1, 2023.   E. Jean Carroll questioned on Bergdorf Goodman visits, joke about sex with Trump.

E. Jean Carroll, who has accused Donald Trump of raping her in the mid-1990s, testified on cross-examination Monday in her lawsuit about why she did not file a police report about the alleged assault.

Carroll, 79, who wrote an advice column for many years, said, “I am a member of the silent generation … Women like me were taught and trained to keep our chins up and to not complain.” Carroll testified last week that Trump’s attack caused a decades-long trauma in her life. Trump has denied her allegations and called her a liar. Trump attorney Joe Tacopina has repeatedly questioned Carroll about her conduct during and since that alleged assault.

President Joe Biden speaks during the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner at the Washington Hilton in Washington, Saturday, April 29, 2023. (Associated Press Photo by Carolyn Kaster).

President Joe Biden speaks during the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner at the Washington Hilton in Washington, Saturday, April 29, 2023. (Associated Press Photo by Carolyn Kaster).

ny times logoNew York Times, President Biden praised the “absolute courage” of Evan Gershkovich, the American journalist detained in Russia, Matthew Mpoke Bigg, May 1, 2023 (print ed.). At the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner, the president said his administration was “working every day” to secure the release of Evan Gershkovich.

President Biden has called for the release of Evan Gershkovich, right, an American Wall Street Journal reporter imprisoned in Russia, praising his courage and saying the United States was working tirelessly to bring him home.

evan gershkovitzMr. Gershkovich was detained in Russia last month and accused of espionage, a charge that his employer and the United States emphatically reject. The State Department this month designated the journalist as “wrongfully detained,” signifying that the U.S. government sees him as the equivalent of a political hostage.

In a speech at the annual White House Association Correspondents’ dinner on Saturday, Mr. Biden spoke of Mr. Gershkovich’s “absolute courage” and said everyone at the event stood with the reporter.

“We’re working every day to secure his release, looking at opportunities and tools to bring him home. We keep the faith,” Mr. Biden said told the audience. “Our message is this: Journalism is not a crime.”

Mr. Gershkovich’s case represents the most significant attack on international journalists in Russia since the Kremlin launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February last year. It is also the first time that a Western journalist in Russia has been charged with espionage since the end of the Cold War.

In his speech on Saturday, Mr. Biden asserted the importance of a free press worldwide and also spoke of Austin Tice, a freelance journalist who disappeared in Syria in August 2012, soon after the country’s civil war began. It is believed that, since then, he has been held captive by the government of President Bashar al-Assad.

“Evan and Austin should be released immediately along with every other American held hostage or wrongfully detained abroad,” Mr. Biden said. Debra and Marc Tice, the parents of Mr. Tice, wrote an opinion article, published in The Washington Post last August, in which they urged Mr. Biden to step up diplomatic efforts to free him.

 

U.S. President Joe Biden smiles during the White House Correspondents' Association dinner at the Washington Hilton in Washington, DC, April 29, 2023 (AFP photo by Saul Loeb via Getty Images).

 U.S. President Joe Biden smiles during the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner at the Washington Hilton in Washington, DC, April 29, 2023 (AFP photo by Saul Loeb via Getty Images).

  • Washington Post, A light evening with Dark Brandon, Paul Farhi, Scott Wilson, May 1, 2023 (print ed.). President Biden, who has frustrated some reporters with his lack of press conferences, showed up with jokes (and some serious remarks) to the White House corrndents’ dinner.
  • Meidas Touch Network, Opinion:  Biden STUNS Crowd with HILARIOUS GOP Takedown LIVE, Ben Meiselas, April 30, 2023. MeidasTouch host Ben Meiselas delivers this recap of President Joe Biden’s speech at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner.

ny times logoNew York Times, Biden Gets a Chance to Mock Fox News, and Gleefully Takes It, Peter Baker and Katie Robertson, May 1, 2023 (print ed.).  At the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner, President Biden also teased CNN and made light of his age.

Whatever news gods decided that the cable television stars Tucker Carlson and Don Lemon should be fired the same week that President Biden was scheduled to give a funny speech ribbing the news media certainly were generous in providing fresh material. And Mr. Biden took advantage on Saturday night as he gleefully mocked some of his favorite foils.

fox news logo SmallIn his annual appearance at the black-tie White House Correspondents’ Association dinner, the one night a year that a president is expected to play a stand-up comic, Mr. Biden made the most of the opportunity with some timely skewering of those who usually skewer him — most notably Fox News, which fired Mr. Carlson on Monday just days after settling a defamation lawsuit for $787.5 million.

“Last year, your favorite Fox News reporters were able to attend” the dinner “because they were fully vaccinated and boosted,” Mr. Biden said, in a nod to his coronavirus response strategy. “This year, with that $787 million settlement, they’re here because they couldn’t say no to a free meal.”

“And hell, I’d call Fox honest, fair and truthful,” he told the crowd gathered in a cavernous ballroom in Washington as well as a national television audience watching at home. “But then I could be sued for defamation.” When some groaned, he quipped, “It ain’t nothing compared to what they do to me.”

 

sudan sudanese flag on the map of africa

ny times logoNew York Times, After Shelling and Shortages, Sudan’s Health Care Faces Total Collapse, Lynsey Chutel, Updated May 1, 2023. The medical professionals who remain face meager supplies and harrowing conditions, even setting up field hospitals in living rooms amid the fighting.

With the battle for control of Sudan entering its third week, health care services are rapidly unraveling in the nation’s capital, Khartoum, a grim consequence of the brutal fighting that has raised fears the conflict could devolve into a wider humanitarian crisis.

The total collapse of the health care system could be days away, the Sudan Doctors’ Trade Union warned.

Hospitals have been shelled, and two-thirds of those in Khartoum have closed, according to the World Health Organization. More than a dozen health care workers have been killed, officials say. Beyond that, “hidden victims” are dying of illness and disease as basic medical services have become scarce, said Dr. Abdullah Atia, secretary general of the doctors’ union.

“We receive a lot of calls every day: ‘Where shall I go?’” he said. “These are the questions we are not able to answer.”

The fighting that erupted April 15 between a paramilitary group called the Rapid Support Forces and the Sudanese Army — both led by warring generals — has left more than 500 people dead and thousands of others hurt, the W.H.O. says, throwing Africa’s third-largest nation into chaos as one declared cease-fire after another has collapsed.

 

More On U.S. Supreme Court Ethics Scandals

 

Ultra-right dark money fund-raiser Leonard Leo, center, a major provider of funding for the Federalist Society and other influencers on judicial appointments and decision-making (New York Times photo by T.J. Kirkpatrick).Ultra-right dark money fund-raiser Leonard Leo, center, a major provider of funding for the Federalist Society and other influencers on judicial appointments and decision-making (New York Times photo by T.J. Kirkpatrick).

ny times logoNew York Times, Investigation: How Scalia Law School Became a Key Friend of the Supreme Court, Steve Eder and Jo Becker, May 1, 2023 (print ed.). George Mason University’s law school cultivated ties to justices, with generous pay and unusual perks. In turn, it gained prestige, donations and influence.

In the fall of 2017, an administrator at George Mason University’s law school circulated a confidential memo about a prospective hire.

gmu scalia law logoJust months earlier, Neil M. Gorsuch, below left, a federal appeals court judge from Colorado, had won confirmation to the Supreme Court seat left vacant by the death of Antonin Scalia, the conservative icon for whom the school was named. For President Donald J. Trump, bringing neil gorsuch headshotJudge Gorsuch to Washington was the first step toward fulfilling a campaign promise to cement the high court unassailably on the right. For the leaders of the law school, bringing the new justice to teach at Scalia Law was a way to advance their own parallel ambition.

“Establishing and building a strong relationship with Justice Gorsuch during his first full term on the bench could be a game-changing opportunity for Scalia Law, as it looks to accelerate its already meteoric rise to the top rank of law schools in the United States,” read the memo, contained in one of thousands of internal university emails obtained by The New York Times.

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

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

By the winter of 2019, the law school faculty would include not just Justice Gorsuch but also two other members of the court, Justices Clarence Thomas, below right, and clarence thomas HRBrett M. Kavanaugh — all deployed as strategic assets in a campaign to make Scalia Law, a public school in the Virginia suburbs of Washington, a Yale or Harvard of conservative legal scholarship and influence.

The law school had long stood out for its rightward leanings and ties to conservative benefactors. Its renaming after Justice Scalia in 2016 was the result of a $30 million gift brokered by Leonard Leo, prime architect of a grand project then gathering force to transform the federal judiciary and further the legal imperatives of the right. An ascendant law school at George Mason would be part of that plan.

Since the rebranding, the law school has developed an unusually expansive relationship with the justices of the high court — welcoming them as teachers but also as lecturers and special guests at school events. Scalia Law, in turn, has marketed that closeness with the justices as a unique draw to prospective students and donors.

The Supreme Court assiduously seeks to keep its inner workings, and the justices’ lives, shielded from view, even as recent revelations and ethical questions have brought calls for greater transparency. Yet what emerges from the trove of documents is a glimpse behind the Supreme Court curtain, revealing one particular version of the favored treatment the justices often receive from those seeking to get closer to them.

Relevant Recent Headlines

 

Chief Justice of the United States John Roberts arrives before President Joe Biden delivers the State of the Union address to a joint session of Congress at the Capitol, Feb. 7, 2023, in Washington. Roberts has declined a request from the Senate Judiciary Committee to testify at a hearing on ethical standards at the court, instead providing the panel with a statement of ethics reaffirmed by the court's justices. (AP pool photo by Jacquelyn Martin.)

Chief Justice of the United States John Roberts arrives before President Joe Biden delivers the State of the Union address to a joint session of Congress at the Capitol, Feb. 7, 2023, in Washington. Roberts has declined a request from the Senate Judiciary Committee to testify at a hearing on ethical standards at the court, instead providing the panel with a statement of ethics reaffirmed by the court’s justices. (AP pool photo by Jacquelyn Martin.)

 

More On U.S. Courts, Crime, Immigration

 

 

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ny times logoNew York Times, A Troubled Year at Whole Foods Reflects San Francisco’s Woes, Thomas Fuller and Sharon LaFraniere, May 1, 2023 (print ed.). Whole Foods Market opened in 2022 on the hope that a neighborhood would be revived. It closed 13 months later.

Last year, with pandemic lockdowns in the rearview mirror, Whole Foods Market made a bet on a gritty San Francisco neighborhood. The high-end supermarket chain opened a giant flagship store in a part of the city that is home to both tech companies like Twitter and open-air drug dealing.

whole foods logoBut the store was soon confronted head-on with many of the problems plaguing the area. People threatened employees with guns, knives and sticks. They flung food, screamed, fought and tried to defecate on the floor, according to records of 568 emergency calls over 13 months, many depicting scenes of mayhem.

“Male w/machete is back,” the report on one 911 call states. “Another security guard was just assaulted,” another says. A man with a four-inch knife attacked several security guards, then sprayed store employees with foam from a fire extinguisher, according to a third.

In September, a 30-year-old man died in the bathroom from an overdose of fentanyl, a highly potent opioid, and methamphetamine.

When Whole Foods announced in mid-April that it was closing the store, citing the safety of its employees, many in San Francisco saw it as a representation of some of the city’s most intractable problems: property crimes like shoplifting and car break-ins, an entrenched network of dealers selling fentanyl and other illicit drugs and people suffering from untreated mental illness wandering the streets.

The closure also seemed to be the latest indicator of San Francisco’s faltering economic prospects, providing more grist for an ongoing debate over where the city is headed after tying its fate to the tech industry. The Whole Foods was supposed to cater to tech workers and other professionals, part of a long-term redevelopment plan downtown. But the store fell victim to a grinding decline in the city’s center that began with the pandemic and could continue for years as companies vacate offices because of remote work.

washington post logoWashington Post, Computer system used to hunt fugitives is still down 10 weeks after hack, Devlin Barrett, May 1, 2023. A secretive technology arm that the U.S. Marshals Service uses to find suspects has struggled to get back up and running.

A key law enforcement computer network has been down for 10 weeks, the victim of a ransomware attack that has frustrated efforts by senior officials to get the system back up and running — raising concerns about how to secure critical crime-fighting operations.
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While the initial breach of a computer system within the U.S. Marshals was previously known, the precise details of what that system did and how long it has remained down have not been previously reported.

The computer network was operated by the Marshals’ Technical Operations Group (TOG), a secretive arm within the agency that uses technically sophisticated law enforcement methods to track criminal suspects through their cellphones, emails and web usage. Its techniques are kept secret to prolong their usefulness, and exactly what members of the unit do and how they do it is a mystery even to some of their fellow Marshals personnel.

washington post logoWashington Post, The first arrests from DeSantis’s election police take extensive toll, Lori Rozsa, May 1, 2023. One by one, many of the initial 20 arrests made by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’s Office of Election Crimes and Security have stumbled in court.

One by one, many of the initial 20 arrests announced by the Office of Election Crimes and Security have stumbled in court. Six cases have been dismissed. Five other defendants accepted plea deals that resulted in no jail time. Only one case has gone to trial, resulting in a split verdict. The others are pending.

In its first nine months, the new unit made just four other arrests, according to a report the agency released earlier this year. Critics say the low numbers point to the overall strength of Florida’s electoral system and a lack of sufficient evidence to pursue further charges. Nonetheless, as he gears up for a possible presidential run, DeSantis is moving to give the office more teeth, asking the legislature to nearly triple the division’s annual budget from $1.2 million to $3.1 million. The Republican governor also pushed through a bill ensuring the statewide prosecutor has jurisdiction over election crime cases — an attempt to resolve an issue several judges have raised in dismissing cases.

Voting rights advocates and defense attorneys say the expansion of the statewide prosecutor’s role to include elections enforcement is alarming. The office was created in 1986, and its portfolio typically includes offenses like extortion, racketeering and computer pornography involving two or more judicial circuits. The statewide prosecutor is appointed by the attorney general, Ashley Moody, a political ally of DeSantis, and also submits an annual report to the governor.

 

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ny times logoNew York Times, Dragnet Continues for Man Sought in Fatal Shooting of 5 in Texas, Maria Jimenez Moya, Livia Albeck-Ripka and Eduardo Medina, Updated May 1, 2023. As survivors and the community came together at a vigil, hundreds of law enforcement officers were searching for Francisco Oropesa.

As a man who lost his wife and son in a shooting rampage in Texas wept so loudly that his sobs were audible over a choir singing “Amazing Grace” at a vigil on Sunday evening, the suspect remained at large.

francisco oropezaThe suspect, Francisco Oropesa, left, who is accused of killing five people, had been shooting his gun in his yard in Cleveland, Texas, on Friday evening when his neighbor Wilson Garcia approached him and asked him to stop so that his baby could sleep.

Instead, the authorities said, Mr. Oropesa, 38, retrieved an AR-15 rifle from his house and walked over to Mr. Garcia’s home, where he killed his 8-year-old son, wife and three other people.

texas map“I have no words to describe what happened,” Mr. Garcia said in Spanish at the vigil, where dozens of people surrounded him and the other survivors of the shooting, joining them in prayer. “We are alive but there is no life,” he said. “I was able to escape by a miracle.”
Earlier on Sunday, law enforcement officials conceded that they did not know the suspect’s whereabouts, adding that they considered him to be a threat.

“We do not know where he is,” James Smith, the special agent in charge of the F.B.I. in the Houston area, told reporters at a news conference. “We do not have any tips right now as to where he may be. Right now, we have zero leads.”

The authorities said that more than 200 officers, including state troopers, were looking for Mr. Oropesa. They have offered an $80,000 reward for information leading to his capture.

Politico, The splashy corruption trial insiders fear may not yield a drop, Shia Kapos, May 1, 2023 (print ed.). There’s an air of hope and resignation about the federal trial involving one of the illinois mapnation’s biggest electric utilities and one of Illinois’ best-known political figures.

politico CustomA federal corruption trial involving one of the nation’s biggest electric utilities and one of Illinois’ most well-known political figures feels like it should end with consequences — even in a city famous for elected officials behaving badly.

The nearly seven weeks of testimony have centered on the “ComEd Four” — former Commonwealth Edison CEO Anne Pramaggiore and three lobbyists, including a confidante of the longtime House speaker, accused of a bribery scheme to influence energy legislation.

Justice Department log circularThere’s an awkward air of hope and resignation about the trial and whether it feeds into the state’s long-held reputation for corruption. And while elected officials and political insiders anxiously await a verdict due any day now, many are already frustrated that this case might end the same way as all the others: Someone goes to prison and someone pays a fine but the gears of the same old Illinois machine just keeps turning.

“I’m fearful that it will have zero impact,” outgoing Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot, who sought stricter ethics rules during her administration, said in an interview.

“You have people taking the stand and talking about fixing this and taking jobs and doing no work. It’s horrifying,” she said. “And every single person who testifies, every piece of evidence, every wiretapped call, I think, erodes people’s trust in core democratic institutions.”

There is some sense that if Illinois can’t crack down on corruption, there’s still an element of accountability.

“The trial matters because it will make people think twice about engaging in this kind of behavior if they know the feds are watching,” said Alisa Kaplan, executive director of Reform for Illinois, a nonpartisan good-government organization.

But this is the state that produced several infamous examples of wrongdoing: Former Democratic Gov. Rod Blagojevich (convicted for trying to sell a Senate seat) … and former Republican Gov. George Ryan (convicted of accepting gifts and vacations from friends in exchange for government contracts) … and Rita Crundwell (a comptroller convicted of absconding with nearly $54 million of her city’s money) and has seen many Chicago City Council members indicted or implicated.

The Four are accused of a bribery plot where the utility arranged jobs for allies of former House Speaker Michael Madigan, who faces a separate trial next year on racketeering and bribery charges, without them having to do actual work. In return, the utility sought passage of 2011 “Smart Grid” legislation and a 2016 measure that rescued two financially struggling nuclear power plants from shutting down, according to federal prosecutors.

washington post logoWashington Post, Why are Americans shooting strangers and neighbors? ‘It all goes back to fear,’ Danielle Paquette, John D. Harden and Scott Clement, May 1, 2023 (print ed.). Across the country this month, at least four men have opened fire on someone who’d stumbled upon their space, resulting in one death, two injuries and a car pocked with bullet holes.

The apparent acts of snap-aggression have reinvigorated the debate around the prevalence of “stand your ground” laws in the United States and a pressing question: Why are people so quick to pull the trigger on strangers?

Relevant Recent Headlines

 

Shown here is an aerial photo of the U.S.-operated Guantánamo prison camp located in Cuba against the wishes of its government along with a book cover showing faces of some of its prisoners through the decades. Many of them were accused of terror-related conspiracies and they do not for the most part possess the basic fair trial and other civil rights of prisoners held in U.S. civilian jails and prisons.

Shown here is an aerial photo of the U.S.-operated Guantánamo prison camp located in Cuba against the wishes of its government along with a book cover below showing faces of some of its prisoners through the decades. Many of them were accused of terror-related conspiracies and they do not for the most part possess the basic fair trial and other civil rights of prisoners held in U.S. civilian jails and prisons.

 

U.S. Economy, Debt, Budget, Jobs

 

fdic logo federal deposit insurance corp

 ny times logoNew York Times, First Republic Bank Is Seized by Regulators and Sold to JPMorgan Chase, Maureen Farrell, Lauren Hirsch and Jeanna Smialek, May 1, 2023. The deal, which will allow 84 First Republic branches to reopen as JPMorgan branches on Monday, was a dramatic move aimed at curbing a two-month banking crisis.

Regulators seized control of First Republic Bank and sold it to JPMorgan Chase on Monday, a dramatic move aimed at curbing a two-month banking crisis that has rattled the financial system.

First Republic Bank logoFirst Republic, whose assets were battered by the rise in interest rates, had struggled to stay alive after two other lenders collapsed last month, spooking depositors and investors.

First Republic was taken over by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation and immediately sold to JPMorgan. The deal was announced hours before U.S. markets are set to open, and after a scramble by officials over the weekend.

Later on Monday, 84 First Republic branches in eight states will reopen as JPMorgan branches.

JPMorgan will “assume all of the deposits and substantially all of the assets of First Republic Bank,” the F.D.I.C. said in a statement. The regulator estimated that its insurance fund would have to pay out about $13 billion to cover First Republic’s losses. JPMorgan also said that the F.D.I.C. would provide it with $50 billion in financing.

“Our government invited us and others to step up, and we did,” said Jamie Dimon, JPMorgan’s chief executive. He said the transaction was intended “to minimize costs to the Deposit Insurance Fund.”

The acquisition makes JPMorgan, already the nation’s largest bank, even bigger and could draw political scrutiny from progressive Democrats in Washington.

First Republic failed despite having received a $30 billion lifeline from 11 of the country’s largest banks in March. JPMorgan said the $30 billion would be repaid after the deal closes. Overall, First Republic will go down in history as the second largest U.S. bank by assets to collapse after Washington Mutual, which failed during the financial crisis of 2008.

The government’s takeover and sale of First Republic comes seven weeks after the government took control of Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank, whose failures sent a shock wave through the industry and raised fears that other regional banks were at risk of similar runs on deposits.

Many banking experts said First Republic’s travails were a delayed reaction to the turmoil in March rather than the opening of a new phase in the crisis. Investors and industry executives are optimistic that no other midsize or large lenders are at risk of imminent failure. As First Republic’s stock plunged anew last week, other bank stocks barely budged.

ny times logoNew York Times, Trickling Tax Revenue Complicates Debt Limit Talks, Alan Rappeport, May 1, 2023. The Treasury Department’s ability to delay a default, the so-called X-date, hinges on how fast the money is coming in. There are worrying signs.

irs logoA vote by House Republicans last week to lift the nation’s debt limit in exchange for deep spending cuts was the first step in what is likely to be a protracted battle over raising or suspending the borrowing cap to avoid defaulting on United States debt.

But while Republicans and President Biden and his fellow Democrats are gearing up for a fight, a key question is beginning to sow unease in Washington and on Wall Street: How much time is there to strike a deal?

The United States technically hit its $31.4 trillion debt limit in January, forcing the Treasury Department to employ accounting maneuvers known as extraordinary measures to allow the government to keep paying its bills, including payments to bondholders who own government debt. Treasury Secretary Janet L. Yellen said at the time that her powers to delay a default — in which the United States fails to make its payments on time — could be exhausted by early June. She cautioned, however, that the estimate came with considerable uncertainty.

With June now just a few weeks away, uncertainty around the timing of when the United States will run out of cash — what’s known as the X-date — remains, and determining the true deadline could have huge consequences for the country.

washington post logoWashington Post, Analysis: Defaulting on the national debt is much closer than anyone realizes, Paul Kane, May 1, 2023 (print ed.). House Republicans and Senate Democrats cannot even agree whether they need to negotiate on the debt limit.

Washington is lurching dangerously close to a self-induced financial calamity. It’s so bad no one even agrees whether they should negotiate on raising the government’s borrowing authority.

Consider the positions held by two lower-profile lawmakers who derive great influence from being advisers to and close friends of the most powerful players in this standoff.

Rep. Garret Graves (R-La.), deputized by House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) to negotiate a debt plan, jokingly compared President Biden to a British monarch refusing to meet with Parliament. “We sent a telegram to Buckingham Palace to let them know that they’re not in charge anymore,” Graves said Friday, two days after his deal narrowly passed the House with only GOP votes.

“We actually have a Congress, we have a people’s House that they have to negotiate with,” he said.

Negotiate? No chance, according to Sen. Christopher A. Coons (D-Del.), a close Biden ally.

“The question here is, should we default and should we reward holding the threat of default as a hostage? No, and no. It’s not real complicated,” Coons said in an interview Thursday.

Graves believes that McCarthy has done his job by winning approval for a bill that would lift the debt limit into next year while also imposing nearly $5 trillion in reduced spending. Coons dismissed that “gauzy, broad but unspecific” House proposal as merely an attempt at holding the full faith and credit of the U.S. Treasury hostage.

Like other Democrats, Coons is willing to haggle over federal spending levels in the annual process for funding federal agencies in the House and Senate Appropriations committees. But that negotiation can only begin once Republicans agree to separately raise the debt limit without any strings attached.

Related News:

 

Ukraine War

 

vladlen tatarsky telegram reuters

washington post logoWashington Post, The rise and violent demise of pro-Russian war blogger Vladlen Tatarsky, Francesca Ebel, May 1, 2023 (print ed.). Vladlen Tatarsky, a convicted criminal turned popular pro-Russian blogger who published warmongering diatribes, was promoting his upcoming book to a gathering of his fans at a hip burger joint in St. Petersburg. A portrait of Tatarsky (shown above in a file photo by Reuters) surrounded by firearms in the shape of angel wings lit up the room.

The event, on a Sunday afternoon earlier this month, offered a window into how wartime fervor has gripped Russia, turning hawkish military bloggers into minor celebrities — in Tatarsky’s case with more than a half-million followers on the Telegram messaging platform.

From her seat in the back, a young woman with long auburn hair stepped forward with a gift, video of the event showed. In a wooden box was a gilded bust of Tatarsky portrayed as a coal miner — a tribute to his native Donbas, the Ukrainian coal-mining region that Russia has long been trying to capture. The audience murmured in approval.

“What a handsome fellow,” Tatarsky said, visibly pleased. Then, the statuette exploded — killing him instantly, wounding at least 40 others, and leaving the cafe a charred ruin of mangled chairs and upturned tables.

The assassination of Tatarsky, a former pro-Russian separatist fighter in Ukraine whose real name was Maxim Fomin and who once described Ukrainians as “mentally ill Russians,” has highlighted the unusual and increasingly important role of Russia’s pro-war military bloggers and so-called Z channels.

Since Russia’s invasion, such channels have served as a raw alternative to the usual Kremlin propaganda, whipping up support for the war, but also leveling harsh, unvarnished criticism at Russia’s military leadership.

Whether he was killed by Ukraine or its proxies to send a warning to other pro-Russian propagandists, or because of inscrutable Russian infighting, his death demonstrated how once-fringe figures are now at the very center of Russia’s disinformation sphere, fanning the flames of a conflict that has killed tens of thousands and displaced millions.

washington post logoWashington Post, Live briefing War in Ukraine: Kyiv targeted by missiles; explosions in Russia derail train, damage power line, Rachel Pannett and Annabelle Timsit, May 1, 2023. Kyiv targeted by missiles; explosions in Russia derail train, damage power line.

ukraine flagRussia targeted Kyiv and other Ukrainian cities with a “massive” wave of missiles overnight, Ukrainian officials said. The assault on the capital lasted several hours early Monday, but no casualties were reported, as local authorities said air defenses worked to intercept most of the missiles. Russia’s Defense Ministry claimed that it carried out strikes against facilities that produce ammunition and weapons for Ukrainian troops. Ukraine said residential areas were hit.

The attack followed a weekend drone strike by Ukrainian forces on an oil depot in Russian-occupied Crimea, as Ukraine prepares for an anticipated counteroffensive.

ny times logoNew York Times, Russia Launches Another Aerial Assault as Fighting Intensifies, Marc Santora and Malachy Browne, May 1, 2023. Air defenses shot down Russian Flagmost Russian cruise missiles launched early Monday, as Ukraine stepped up efforts to strike Russian targets behind the front lines. Air defenses shot down most Russian cruise missiles launched early Monday, as Ukrainian forces stepped up efforts to strike Russian targets behind the front lines.

Here’s what we’re covering:

  • Both sides report attacks before an expected Ukrainian counteroffensive.
  • An explosion derails a freight train in a Russian border area, the local governor says.
  • Battlefield Update: Ukraine makes limited gains in Bakhmut, a senior commander says.
  • Ukraine’s human rights chief tells civilians in occupied areas to get Russian passports ‘to survive.’
  • Defending press freedom, an eye on China and more on Ukraine’s grain: What to watch for this week.
  • In Ukraine’s trenches, soldiers gear up for a counteroffensive.
  • An attack in central Ukraine is one of Russia’s deadliest against civilians this year.

washington post logoWashington Post, Russia blames Ukraine for drone attack on Crimea fuel depot, Rachel Pannett, Annabelle Timsit and Nick Parker, May 1, 2023 (print ed.).  Russia accused Ukraine of carrying out Saturday’s drone attack on a fuel depot in Crimea, the peninsula illegally annexed by the Kremlin in 2014. Ukraine hasn’t claimed responsibility for the strike, which comes as Kyiv is preparing for a long-anticipated spring counteroffensive to retake territory seized by Moscow.

“The enemy … wanted to take Sevastopol by surprise, as usual on the sly, staging an attack in the morning,” the port city’s Kremlin-appointed governor, Mikhail Razvozhaev, wrote on Telegram, without providing evidence for his claim. He said that one drone reached the fuel depot — a second drone was destroyed by servicemen on surveillance duty — and that the fire it caused was extinguished. No casualties were reported.

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

Key developments

  • A Ukrainian military intelligence official described the Crimean incident as “God’s punishment” for a Russian strike on an apartment building Friday that killed many civilians. Andriy Yusov said the Saturday attack destroyed more than 10 fuel tanks housing some 40,000 tons of oil intended for Russia’s Black Sea Fleet.
  • Four people were killed by strikes in the Russian region of Bryansk, regional governor Alexander Bogomaz said in a Telegram post. Bogomaz blamed Ukraine for the strikes against the village of Suzemka, which he said also injured two people. Ukrainian officials did not publicly comment, and The Washington Post could not independently verify Bogomaz’s claim. The region of Bryansk borders Belarus to the west and Ukraine to the south.
  • President Biden said he is “working like hell” to bring home Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich, whom Russian authorities detained and accused of espionage. Biden in his remarks at the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner promised Gershkovich’s family, present in the audience, to work to secure the journalist’s release from prison in Moscow, where the State Department says he is being wrongfully detained. “Evan went to report in Russia to shed light on the darkness that you all escaped from years ago. Absolute courage,” Biden said. “We all stand with you.”
  • The Russian Defense Ministry has appointed a new military logistics leader, ostensibly ousting the general known as the “butcher of Mariupol.” Col. Gen. Aleksey Kuzmenkov is the new deputy defense minister in charge of combat service support, the ministry announced Sunday. It did not address where Col. Gen. Mikhail Mizintsev, who had held the post since September, may be moved. Ukrainian officials and activists accused Mizintsev of orchestrating a brutal siege that killed thousands of civilians and razed residential buildings in Mariupol last year.

Battleground updates

  • Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said six children were among at least 23 people killed in the Russian strike on a residential apartment building Friday in Uman, a city in central Ukraine far from the front lines. “May their memory be bright,” he said in his nightly address.
  • Wagner Group founder Yevgeniy Prigozhin reportedly threatened to withdraw his mercenaries from the besieged city of Bakhmut, which Kyiv and Moscow have been fighting over for months. In an interview with a Russian war blogger posted on Telegram, Prigozhin said his fighters will need to “withdraw in an organized manner or stay and die.” Analysts at the Washington-based Institute for the Study of War (ISW) think tank said his remarks are probably intended to secure more ammunition from the Kremlin. Prigozhin also predicted that Kyiv will launch its counteroffensive by mid-May.
  • One person was killed and another injured in Saturday strikes against the southeastern Ukrainian city of Kherson, authorities there said Sunday. Russian forces shelled the city twice and settlements around the region 27 times, the authorities said. Kherson is one of four Ukrainian regions that Russia illegally claimed to have annexed last year, even though its forces do not control the entire territory.
  • Since the fall, Russian commanders have used “increasingly draconian initiatives to improve discipline” among their forces, Britain’s Defense Ministry said Sunday. This includes detaining soldiers who break the rules in “improvised cells consisting of holes in the ground covered with a metal grille,” called “Zindans,” the ministry said. This stricter stance on even misdemeanors marks a change in approach, as “in the early months of the war, many Russian commanders took a relatively light touch in enforcing discipline, allowing those who refused to soldier to quietly return home,” it added.
  • “The likelihood of further missile and airstrikes across Ukraine remains quite high,” the General Staff of Ukraine’s Armed Forces said as fighting continues, particularly in the Donetsk region of eastern Ukraine. This includes Bakhmut, where Russian forces continued Saturday to launch offensive operations, it said. ISW analysts wrote that “Russian forces made limited gains in Bakhmut on April 29” in the southwestern and northwestern parts of the city.

Global impact

  • Russia threatened to retaliate against Poland after Warsaw authorities took over a building used as a school by the children of Russian diplomats. Warsaw Mayor Rafal Trzaskowski said that the building belongs to the city and that the move to repossess it is based on an order from Polish courts and follows a years-long dispute with Moscow. Russia’s Foreign Ministry called it “a blatant violation of the Vienna Convention of 1961” and warned of a “harsh reaction and consequences for the Polish authorities and Poland’s interests in Russia.”
  • Former German chancellor Angela Merkel defended her approach to Russia and Ukraine in an onstage interview with the German newspaper Die Zeit. Merkel led Germany from 2005 to 2021 and has been criticized for deepening her country’s ties with Russia during that time. In the interview, she stood by her efforts to push for an agreement between Russia and Ukraine in 2014 over the Donbas region. She said diplomacy was necessary and should be considered to end the war.
  • Pope Francis ended a three-day trip to Hungary by calling for doors to be opened to migrants and those in need. Francis used his trip to call for more European unity to end the war in Ukraine and help Ukrainian refugees. In his homily, delivered for Mass in Kossuth Lajos Square, the pope said, “Be open and inclusive, then, and in this way, help Hungary to grow in fraternity, which is the path of peace.” Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban has continued to trade with Russia, held up Sweden’s bid to join NATO and prevented Ukraine’s allies from sending lethal weapons through Hungarian territory.
  • Former U.S. House speaker Nancy Pelosi said she and members of a U.S. delegation who visited Ukraine a few months after Russia’s invasion “thought we could die” during the trip. “It was very, it was dangerous,” Pelosi told the Associated Press in an interview. Pelosi also said she “would have hoped” that the war “would have been over by now” and said that Ukraine must emerge victorious for the sake of democracy. “We must win. We must bring this to a positive conclusion — for the people of Ukraine and for our country,” she told the AP.

ny times logoNew York Times, They Refused to Fight for Russia. The Law Did Not Treat Them Kindly, Neil MacFarquhar, May 1, 2023 (print ed.). Since Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine, hundreds of Russian men have faced criminal charges for avoiding battle. It has not stopped others from doing the same.

An officer in the Federal Guard Service, which is responsible for protecting President Vladimir V. Putin, decided last fall to avoid fighting in Ukraine by sneaking across the southern border into Kazakhstan.

Russian FlagThe officer, Maj. Mikhail Zhilin, disguised himself as a mushroom picker, wearing camouflage and carrying a couple of small bottles of cognac so that he could douse himself and then act drunk and disoriented if he encountered the Russian border patrol.

In the dark, the lean, fit major navigated across the forested frontier without incident, but he was arrested on the other side.

“Freedom is not given to people that easily,” he told his wife, Ekaterina Zhilina, months later, after Kazakhstan rejected his bid for political asylum and handed him back to Russia to face trial for desertion.

“He had these romantic notions when he first began his military-academic studies,” Ms. Zhilina said in a recent interview, describing perceptions drawn from Russian literature about the honor and pride inherent in defending your homeland. “But everything soured when the war started.”

Major Zhilin is among the hundreds of Russian men who faced criminal charges for becoming war refuseniks since Moscow’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine last year. Some dodge the draft, while those already serving desert or refuse orders to redeploy on the bloody, chaotic battlefields of Ukraine.

Relevant Recent Headlines

 

Global News

ny times logoNew York Times, Iranian Insider and British Spy: How a Double Life Ended on the Gallows, Farnaz Fassihi and Ronen Bergman, May 1, 2023. On Jan. 11, the execution in Iran of a former deputy defense minister named Alireza Akbari on espionage charges brought to light something that had been hidden for 15 years: Mr. Akbari was the British mole.

Mr. Akbari had long lived a double life. To the public, he was a religious zealot and political hawk, a senior military commander of the Revolutionary Guards and a deputy defense minister who later moved to London and went into the private sector but never lost the trust of Iran’s leaders. But in 2004, according to the officials, he began sharing Iran’s nuclear secrets with British intelligence.

Farnaz Fassihi and Ronen Bergman interviewed American, British, Israeli, German and Iranian current and former intelligence and national security officials and senior diplomats for this article.

 

paraguay flag map

ny times logoNew York Times, Paraguay Voters Elect Conservative Economist as President, Jack Nicas and Laurence Blair, May 1, 2023 (print ed.). The election of Santiago Peña keeps the right-wing Colorado Party in control of Paraguay, which it has run for all but five of the past 76 years.

Paraguayans elected Santiago Peña, a 44-year-old conservative economist, as their new president on Sunday, keeping the South American nation in the control of the right-wing Colorado Party that has run the country for all but five of the past 76 years.

The result means that Paraguay, a landlocked nation of seven million people, has resisted the leftward shift across Latin America in recent years. Instead, Paraguayans delivered victory to a right-wing candidate who made vague promises to add jobs, lower energy prices and clear drug addicts from the street.

Mr. Peña had 43 percent of the vote with 99 percent of the ballots counted, defeating two challengers who split the opposition vote.

His election could complicate Paraguay’s relationship with the United States, a close ally.

Mr. Peña is a political protégé of a former Paraguayan president, Horacio Cartes, who is one of its richest men and the president of the Colorado Party. In January, the American Treasury Department imposed sanctions on Mr. Cartes over accusations that he had doled out millions of dollars in bribes to pave his way to power and that he had built ties to the Islamist militant group Hezbollah.

washington post logoWashington Post, U.S. evacuation convoy reaches Sudanese port city, State Dept. says, Karen DeYoung, Adela Suliman, Katharine Houreld and Rachel Chason, April 30, 2023 (print ed.). An evacuation convoy organized by the U.S. government and carrying American citizens and other foreign nationals reached the Sudanese port city of Port Sudan on Saturday, the State Department said.

sudan sudanese flag on the map of africaThe caravan included more than a dozen local buses and evacuated 300 U.S. citizens from the capital, Khartoum, under the protection of armed drones, according to a U.S. official who spoke on the condition of anonymity. The official was not authorized to discuss the situation on the record.

The State Department said Saturday that it was assisting U.S. citizens and others who are eligible with “onward travel to Jeddah, Saudi Arabia.”

“This builds on the work the U.S. government has done this week to facilitate the departure of our diplomats by military assisted departure, and hundreds of other American citizens by land convoys, flights on partner air craft, and sea,” State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said in a statement.

Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin also approved a request for assistance from the State Department “to support the safe departure of U.S. citizens and their immediate family members via overland,” deputy Pentagon press secretary Sabrina Singh said on Saturday.

The Pentagon “deployed U.S. intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance assets to support air and land evacuation routes,” she said in a statement. “Our focus has been and remains to help as many U.S. citizens depart as safely as possible.”

Conflict in Sudan, Africa’s third-most populous nation, erupted earlier this month between the Sudanese army, which is loyal to Gen. Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), whose leader is Gen. Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, also known as Hemedti.

Britain has evacuated 1,573 people since Tuesday from an airfield north of Khartoum, most of them British nationals. Germany and France have evacuated another 1,700 people by air. At least 3,000 more from various countries have been evacuated by sea from Port Sudan to Jeddah in Saudi Arabia, Saudi authorities said.

ny times logoNew York Times, Many in U.K. Greet King Charles’s Coronation With a ‘Take It or Leave It’ Shrug, Mark Landler, May 1, 2023 (print ed.). The king’s image may be blanketing Britain, but some are more focused on a cost-of-living crisis than on celebrating a dysfunctional royal family.

When King Charles III is crowned on Saturday, he will undergo a ritual so rare in modern British history that it last occurred 70 years ago, roughly the wait between sightings of Halley’s comet. And yet the coronation has yet to capture the imagination of a Britain preoccupied by other concerns.

United Kingdom flagImages of the new king — in chocolate, in Legos and in wax — are popping up in bakeries, toy stores and at Madame Tussauds wax museum. Ancient relics of coronation, like the Scottish stone of destiny, are being delivered to Westminster Abbey for the ceremony. Charles and his queen consort, Camilla, are rehearsing every step of the service in a specially staged room at Buckingham Palace.

But in a recent poll of 3,070 adults in Britain by the market research firm YouGov, 64 percent of respondents said they had little or no interest in the coronation. Only a third said they were strongly or fairly interested in it. Among those aged 18 to 24, the number voicing little or no interest rose to 75 percent.

“Love for the royal family has sort of declined,” said Jason Abdalla, 24, an information technology worker outside a pub last Friday in the exclusive Mayfair neighborhood of London. “It feels like appreciating the monarchy is an older, more mature thing. I mean, my parents are into it. They love the royal family. It’s ‘take it or leave it,’ for me.”

washington post logoWashington Post, In coronation twist, King Charles to pledge to protect ‘all faiths,’ William Booth, May 1, 2023 (print ed.). The upcoming coronation of Charles III, which will attract a global audience, will not be the “woke” mash-up some conservatives feared but will be unprecedented in its inclusivity.

The new king wants to present himself not only as the “Defender of the Faith,” meaning the Church of England, but all faiths, here and across the realm.
Are you on Telegram? Subscribe to our channel for the latest updates on Russia’s war in Ukraine.

In a remarkable twist, at the urging of Charles, the coronation will acknowledge that Britain is no longer an exclusively Christian country, but is in fact a multifaith nation, including many who believe in no deity at all.

Details of the coronation service were released on Saturday by the Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, and contain many moments that seek to embrace the 21st-century realities of both Britain and the far-flung nations of the Commonwealth.

Recent Relevant Headlines

 

Trump Cases, Allies, Insurrectionists

 

 

Former advice columnist E. Jean Carroll, center, at federal court with her lawyer Roberta Kaplan, left, on April 25 in New York (Former advice columnist E. Jean Carroll leaves federal court with her lawyer Roberta Kaplan on April 27 in New York (Associated Press photo by Seth Wineg).

Former advice columnist E. Jean Carroll, center, at federal court with her lawyer Roberta Kaplan, left, on April 25 in New York City (Associated Press photo by Seth Wineg).

washington post logoWashington Post, Opinion: E. Jean Carroll might deliver the first significant hit to Trump, Jennifer Rubin, right, April 30, 2023. With just three days completed of jennifer rubin new headshotjournalist E. Jean Carroll’s civil suit against former president Donald Trump for assault and defamation, it is risky to predict a verdict. Just as with a Supreme Court oral argument, it is difficult to read how arguments and testimony are being received in the courtroom.

But if this were a contest between lawyers, it would be a knockout, possibly on day one. (Maybe before the first day, when Trump counsel Joe Tacopina lost for the second time a motion to exclude the testimony of witness Natasha Stoynoff, who alleges Trump once pinned her to the wall and forcibly kissed her.)

Tuesday, Trump, who has repeatedly denied the accusations against him, as expected didn’t have the nerve to show up at federal court in Manhattan. (At the close of the day, Judge Lewis Kaplan scolded Tacopina for failing to state definitively whether Trump would testify.) Despite his refusal to appear, Carroll’s lawyers can read his deposition into the record. Moreover, his non-appearance tells the jury Trump doesn’t respect the court or them enough to show up.

The next problem for Trump: No juror who underwent voir dire had ever attended a Trump rally, followed Truth Social, believed medical evidence of rape was necessary or thought the passage of time made an allegation of sexual assault less believable. The prospective jurors were of different races, educational levels and jobs. No MAGA-hat wearers or Proud Boys in the bunch. (Among the nine, many said they watch mainstream news outlets — another bad sign for Trump.)

Carroll had her team, and Trump had his — all male. (You have to wonder if they couldn’t find a woman to defend him or whether they are straight-up playing for the votes of any misogynists among the six men on the panel.)

Carroll’s opening argument was delivered by one of the judge’s former clerks, Shawn Crowley. (This team is very cleverly establishing its credibility with the judge.) She effectively took jurors through the alleged rape incident. MSNBC analyst Lisa Rubin (no relation) tweeted that Crowley was most compelling when “convincingly weaving together the stories of Carroll and the two other accusers, Jessica Leeds and Natasha Stoynoff, into ‘three women, one pattern,’ all of which tracks Trump’s own statement on the ‘Access Hollywood’ tape.”

In his opening remarks, Tacopina was belligerent and insulting. He called Carroll a liar out to make money. He repeated Trump’s denial that he had raped Carroll. He called her suit “an assault on justice.” He said he would call no witnesses of his own. (So why not tell the judge that Trump isn’t showing up?) He was coarse, obnoxious and disrespectful — a perfect mouthpiece for his client.

Day two brought more misery for the Trump team. It began with Kaplan rapping Trump’s lawyers for a rant Trump posted on Truth Social, accusing Carroll (again) of making up the charges. Kaplan told Trump’s lawyers this might open “a new source of potential liability.”

Later in the day, the judge again warned Trump’s lawyers that they had better talk to their client, this time regarding an Eric Trump tweet about Carroll’s lawsuit. The judge intimated that other courts and statutes (e.g., intimidation is a crime in New York) could come into play.

“I’m here because Donald Trump raped me and when I wrote about it, he said it didn’t happen,” Carroll began her testimony. “He lied and shattered my reputation, and I’m here to try to get my life back.” She then took the jury through the alleged rape and explained in an altogether credible way how sexual assault victims don’t come forward because they feel responsible and ashamed — or fear their attacker. The Post reported, “Carroll described explicitly how he also forced sex on her in the dressing room before she successfully kneed him away from her so she could flee the room.” She added that her decision to go into the dressing room with him “still haunts her, choking up as she explained. She said she did not file a police report in part because she blamed herself.”

She also feared (correctly) that Trump and a fleet of lawyers would publicly attack her. Her description of the reputational harm done when Trump called her a liar was gut-wrenching. “The violence and the dirt and the seedy language and the people describing what they think I did and why nobody in the world would touch me because of my enormous ugliness … they sort of swamped the heartfelt letters I received,” she said.

At the end of a long, emotionally draining day, a tearful Carroll said, “I got my day in court finally and it’s everything to me.”

Cross-examination of Carroll began Thursday. Tacopina was probably not the right guy to handle this. Gruff, belittling and heavy-handed, he scored few if any hits and frequently drew rebukes from the judge. Carroll freely admitted her memory holes and tersely pushed back on his insinuations that she was in this for the money. In some sense, her inability to recall specifics such as the date and day of the week made her account even more credible.

The more Tacopina harangued and argued with her, the more he seemed to prove her point: She had feared coming forward all these years because of the bullying and insults she knew she would endure.

The trial will resume Monday. Carroll has taken the worst Trump’s lawyers can throw at her. She remains the poised, credible and somewhat sad, fragile figure she was when the trial began.

 

Truth Social whistleblower Will Wilkerson (Washington Post photo by Cornell Watson). Truth Social whistleblower Will Wilkerson (Washington Post photo by Cornell Watson).

 washington post logoWashington Post, He blew the whistle on Trump’s Truth Social. Now he works at Starbucks, Drew Harwell, April 30, 2023 (print ed.).  “It’s an honest day’s work,” he says about the $16-an-hour job, the only work he’s found since he was fired from the Trump Media platform he helped found.

About six months ago, Will Wilkerson (was the executive vice president of operations for former president Donald Trump’s media business, a co-founder of Trump’s Truth Social website and a holder of stock options that might have one day made him a millionaire.

truth social logoToday, he is a certified barista trainer at a Starbucks inside a Harris Teeter grocery store, where he works 5:30 a.m. shifts in a green apron and slip-resistant shoes, making Frappuccinos for $16 an hour.

“It’s an honest day’s work,” he says, sitting near the flower kiosk of the supermarket in a North Carolina suburb, which he asked not be named due to fears of harassment. “I love what I do.”

Wilkerson, 38, has become one of the biggest threats to the Trump company’s future: a federally protected whistleblower whose attorneys say has provided 150,000 emails, contracts and other internal documents to the Securities and Exchange Commission and investigators in Florida and New York.

Wilkerson last year publicly accused Trump Media and Technology Group of violating securities laws, telling The Washington Post he could not stay silent while the company’s executives gave what he viewed as misleading information to investors, many of whom are small-time shareholders loyal to the Trump brand.

The company fired him shortly after, saying he had “concocted psychodramas” but not responding to the specifics of his claims. This month, the company’s chief executive, the former Republican congressman Devin Nunes, sued Wilkerson for defamation in a Florida circuit court, claiming he had been subjected to “anxiety,” “insecurity,” “mental anguish” and “emotional distress” as a result of Wilkerson’s comments.

 

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

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

ny times logoNew York Times, Prosecutors are investigating whether Donald Trump and his allies used false claims of election fraud to solicit donations, Maggie Haberman, Alan Feuer and Jonathan Swan, April 29, 2023 (print ed.). The Justice Department has been gathering evidence about whether the former president and his allies solicited donations with claims of election fraud they knew to be false.

Justice Department log circularAs they investigate former President Donald J. Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election, federal prosecutors have also been drilling down on whether Mr. Trump and a range of political aides knew that he had lost the race but still raised money off claims that they were fighting widespread fraud in the vote results, according to three people familiar with the matter.

Led by the special counsel Jack Smith, prosecutors are trying to determine whether Mr. Trump and his aides violated federal wire fraud statutes as they raised as much as $250 million through a political action committee by saying they needed the money to fight to reverse election fraud even though they had been told repeatedly that there was no evidence to back up those fraud claims.

The prosecutors are looking at the inner workings of the committee, Save America PAC, and at the Trump campaign’s efforts to prove its baseless case that Mr. Trump had been cheated out of victory.

washington post logoWashington Post, E. Jean Carroll takes stand again after testifying Trump raped her, Kim Bellware, Shayna Jacobs and Mark Berman, April 28, 2023 (print ed.). E. Jean Carroll is on the witness stand again Thursday in her civil lawsuit against former president Donald Trump. Carroll, a writer, has accused Trump of raping her in the mid-1990s. Trump has denied Carroll’s allegation, which she first made public in 2019, and called her a liar. Carroll testified Wednesday for about 3½ hours, e jean carroll cover new york magazinespeaking in graphic detail about how she says Trump assaulted her.

E. Jean Carroll has said that after Trump assaulted her in the mid-1990s, she told two friends and then chose to stay silent for more than two decades, fearful of what would happen if she spoke out.

Carroll made her accusations public in 2019. Testifying on Wednesday, Carroll said she has regretted her choice since then. By the time she accused Trump, he was in the White House, commanded enormous attention and had a throng of devoted supporters.

 

 

Members of former U.S. President Donald Trump's legal team, including (L-R) Susan Necheles, Todd Blanche and Joe Tacopina depart Trump Tower en route to a court appearance on April 04, 2023 in New York City (Photo by John Moore via Getty Images).

Members of former U.S. President Donald Trump’s legal team, including (L-R) Susan Necheles, Todd Blanche and Joe Tacopina depart Trump Tower en route to a court appearance on April 04, 2023 in New York City (Photo by John Moore via Getty Images).

Raw Story, Trump lawyer Tacopina fell ‘into a trap’ during E. Jean Carroll cross-examination: legal expert, Tom Boggioni, April 29, 2023. Appearing on MSNBC’s “The Katie Phang Show” on Saturday morning, former U.S. Attorney Joyce Vance claimed that the E. Jean Carroll rape and defamation trial is not going well for Donald Trump and that his attorney, Joe Tacopina is not helping matters.

raw story logo squareSpeaking with the host, Vance said that the former president’s attorney stepped into a familiar “trap” when questioning a sexual assualt victim and it likely did not play well with the jury.

Asked by host Phang where the case is headed, Vance explained, “Well, the problem that defense lawyers have on cross-examination in a case like this, Katie, is that even though it’s not a criminal rape prosecution, the civil case nears the same sorts of issues.”

“The defense lawyer has to do two things: he’s got to make the victim’s story not credible in the eyes of the jury and there is got to be some effort to diminish the victim’s credibility,” she continued. “Frankly, from what we’ve been able to see, of course, there are no cameras in the courtroom, but we’re reading the printouts of what’s going on.”

“He doesn’t really seem to touch Carroll,” she suggested. “She’s a very determined, a very fierce witness. Her story is consistent, and there is no real inroads he makes there.”

“He falls into this other trap that the defense lawyers have to be wary of in a sexual assault case,” she added. “By going on the attack against Carroll he runs the risk of making her credibility stronger, of putting the jury on her side and willing to listen to her testimony. That looks to be how the trial is going at this moment.”

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More On 2024 U.S. Presidential Race

 

Former Trump National Security Advisor Michael Flynn, anti-vax activists Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., Charlene Bollinger, and longtime Trump ally and advisor Roger Stone, left to right, backstage at a July 2021 Reawaken America event. The photo was posted but later removed by Bollinger, who has appeared with Kennedy at multiple events. She and her husband sponsored an anti-vaccine, pro-Trump rally near the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. Bollinger celebrated the attack and her husband tried to enter the Capitol. Kennedy later appeared in a video for their Super PAC. Kennedy has repeatedly invoked Nazis and the Holocaust when talking about measures aimed at mitigating the spread of COVID-19, such as mask requirements and vaccine mandates. Kennedy, who has announced a presidential campaign for 2024, has at times invoked his family’s legacy in his anti-vaccine work, including sometimes using images of President Kennedy.

Former Trump National Security Advisor Michael Flynn, anti-vax activists Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., Charlene Bollinger, and longtime Trump ally and advisor Roger Stone, left to right, backstage at a July 2021 Reawaken America event. The photo was posted but later removed by Bollinger, who has appeared with Kennedy at multiple events. She and her husband sponsored an anti-vaccine, pro-Trump rally near the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. Bollinger celebrated the attack and her husband tried to enter the Capitol. Kennedy later appeared in a video for their Super PAC. Kennedy has repeatedly invoked Nazis and the Holocaust when talking about measures aimed at mitigating the spread of COVID-19, such as mask requirements and vaccine mandates. Kennedy, who has announced a presidential campaign for 2024, has at times invoked his family’s legacy in his anti-vaccine work, including sometimes using images of President Kennedy.


Going Deep with Russ Baker, Investigative Commentary: How Robert F. Kennedy Jr., His Presidential Candidacy and Vaccine Views, Help Trump, Russ Baker, right, russ bakerbest-selling author, media critic and founder of the investigative project WhoWhatWhy, April 29-30, 2023. Will Roger Stone’s Trump-Kennedy “dream ticket” come true?

whowhatwhy logoI have mixed feelings about Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the recently announced challenger to President Biden for the 2024 Democratic nomination. But not evenly mixed feelings.

On the positive side, he is one of the very few members of the Kennedy family willing to risk saying what others in the family will not: Key people in charge of investigating the deaths of his uncle and father, John and Robert, consistently failed to pursue meaningful leads that contradicted the official story.

Bobby Jr.’s willingness to endure a broad range of risks for talking about that topic impressed me, and led me to look at what else he has said, including his bracing critique of the military-intelligence-industrial complex.

Unfortunately, the good news ends there. It’s one thing to recognize real conspiracies and another to embrace all kinds of disinformation in keeping with his preconceived ideas, which are not supported by fact.

Which takes us to RFK Jr.’s views on public health.

His outspoken positions and continuous leadership of the anti-vaccination movement are a huge blot on his overall record. Because it’s such a striking and profound departure from evidence-based logic, I think it instantly disqualifies him as a presidential candidate.

In upcoming columns, I’ll take a look at the claims Kennedy has publicized regarding vaccines.

This country faces too many complex challenges and perils to turn the presidency over to someone who lacks good judgment on a subject as important as this. He shouldn’t be president, and even his spoiler role is a bad and terribly dangerous idea — given the overall stakes.

None other than the villainous Steve Bannon, a longtime Trump adviser, spent months trying to convince RFK Jr. to run. Bannon is expert at generating chaos, and he’s found the perfect vehicle.

Meanwhile, Roger Stone has proposed a “dream ticket” — Trump and Kennedy, together. Yes, this is actually happening. It doesn’t take a lot of imagination to see where this is headed. It’s obviously not good for the country, not good for humanity. Now is the time to speak up to head off potential disaster.

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U.S. Politics, Elections, Governance

washington post logoWashington Post, Opinion: Small-dollar donors didn’t save democracy. They made it worse, David Byler, May 1, 2023. Small-dollar donors were supposed to save democracy. Reformers had hoped that grass-roots political fundraising — connected by the internet and united against corruption — would become a formidable force to counter the money that wealthy individuals funnel to candidates.

Democratic-Republican Campaign logosOnly half of that would become true. Small-dollar donors are indeed powerful today — but they have made politics worse, not better.

This has manifested in different ways depending on the party. For Republicans, small-dollar donors have bankrolled bomb-throwers who treat Congress like the Thunderdome. For Democrats, they have wasted hundreds of millions of dollars on ridiculous, fantasy-driven campaigns. And even when they flood a race with cash, they do little to lessen the influence of big donors.

Let’s start with Republicans, for whom the problem is more troubling. Grass-root donors in the party have rewarded anti-establishment firebrands and conspiracy theorists who specialize in televised political stunts. Just take a look at the top recipients of small donations:

Democratic small-dollar donors present a different problem. While many of them strategically give to candidates in close, high-stakes races, too frequently they waste unthinkable sums of money trying to force high-profile Republicans out of safe seats.

Amy McGrath is the perfect case study. The Kentucky Democrat had almost no chance of beating Senate GOP leader Mitch McConnell in deep-red Kentucky. Yet small-dollar donors sent her more than $56 million. Together, McGrath, Jaime Harrison of South Carolina, Val Demings of Florida and Tim Ryan of Ohio wasted almost $200 million small dollars on races that were at best long shots and in many cases were outright unwinnable. Add in the likes of Marcus Flowers, who raised $16 million running against Marjorie Taylor Greene, and other Democratic candidates, and that total rises even higher.

ny times logoNew York Times Magazine, Kyrsten Sinema’s Party of One, Robert Draper, May 1, 2023. What the Arizona senator’s breakup with the Democrats means for American politics. “I would never in my life crack under pressure,” the recently declared independent says. “Why would they think I’m going to do it?”

Kyrsten Sinema was standing a few yards from the border wall with four Republican members of Congress. The men were staring balefully at a row of nearby portable toilets, wondering aloud if they could hold out for a proper bathroom on the way back to the airport. Sinema assured Representatives David Valadao of California and Tony Gonzales of Texas that they need not worry on her account.

“If you know anything about me,” she said, gesturing vaguely out into the desert, “you know that I’ll go anywhere.” The two men, who were just getting to know the Arizona senator, laughed. “I mean,” Sinema added as she pointed back to the porta-potties, “I come from humble beginnings. That there is some fancy [expletive].”

Sinema — who four months earlier left the Democratic Party and declared herself an independent — had orchestrated this April visit for two reasons, one explicit and the other hinted at. The four men joining her at the border had been “carefully curated” by Sinema, she told me the day before. Tillis had partnered with her on important legislation in the past, and they were now collaborating on what they hoped would be the first major border-and-immigration-reform bill to become law in a generation. Sinema targeted Ciscomani, Gonzales and Valadao, all of whom served on the powerful House Appropriations Committee, as potential recruits for this effort.

Like two other recent legislative accomplishments that Sinema had a major hand in crafting — the 2021 infrastructure bill and the 2022 gun-safety initiative — the Sinema-Tillis plan is decidedly half a loaf, for which Sinema offers no apologies. “The people who want no bread if they can’t get the entire loaf of bread,” she told me, “are people who’ve never been hungry.”

But even if less than a full meal, the plan would still be consequential — increasing funds and equipment for the Border Patrol, reforming the asylum process, addressing backlogs of employment-based visas and providing a path to citizenship for about two million young American residents (the so-called Dreamers) — and its passage would be an even more improbable achievement than finding common ground on guns last year. “Guns is a high-wire act,” Senator Chris Murphy, a Connecticut Democrat who worked with Sinema on the 2022 law and is now doing the same on immigration, told me. “Immigration is a high-wire act while holding active sticks of dynamite.”

If Arizona progressives have their way, Sinema will be ousted for repeated apostasies, from protecting the filibuster — the means by which, according to traditional Senate rules, a minority can block a vote that a frustrated majority would otherwise be able to move forward — to siding with private-equity donors. If Sinema has hers, Arizona voters across the political spectrum will reward her displays of discerning bipartisanship in an age of mindless party loyalty. It could also be the case that Sinema and her likely Democratic rival, Representative Ruben Gallego, will do sufficient damage to each other to ensure that the winner is a Republican, perhaps losing the Senate majority in the process.

But additional implications come into play should Sinema prevail as an independent. “These are very different times,” Tillis told me, “and from the polls I’ve seen, an increasing number of voters are saying, ‘I’m not buying what the far left and far right are selling.’ Now, whether that sentiment transfers to an electoral map is still unclear. But if voters really are saying, ‘Give me a viable alternative,’ then Sinema has a pretty solid argument to make.”

Politico, Cardin not running for reelection, opening blue-state Senate seat, Burgess Everett and Ally Mutnick, May 1, 2023. The Maryland senator’s vacancy will jolt both the state’s Democratic congressional delegation and political apparatus.

politico CustomMaryland Sen. Ben Cardin will not seek reelection in 2024, he announced on Monday, creating a wide-open race to succeed him and altering the Senate.

Cardin has served in the Senate for three terms, providing a generally reliable vote for Democrats but also willing to cut bipartisan deals when needed. He explained his philosophy in a statement on Monday: “I am an optimist but also a realist.”

“I was taught that it’s okay to compromise — don’t ever compromise your principles — but find a path to get things done. Inspire trust in those around you. Keep your word and, again, listen,” Cardin said.

The genial Marylander had been been contemplating his plans for months as Democrats eyed his seat. The 79-year-old Cardin is a fixture in Maryland politics, serving first in the statehouse, then the House and then in the Senate since 2007.

He’s the third Senate Democrat to announce they won’t run for reelection, joining Sens. Debbie Stabenow (D-Mich.) and Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.). Of those three states, only Michigan is considered competitive.

Cardin’s announcement will almost certainly jolt the Old Line State’s congressional delegation and political apparatus. Democrats from all corners will consider running for a safe seat that’s also within driving distance of the Capitol — as plum a gig as you’ll find in politics.

  • Politico, AOC is ‘not planning’ to run for Senate in 2024, Holly Otterbein and Brittany Gibson, May 1, 2023. For months, Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand faced nagging questions about whether she’d be primaried from her left when she was up for reelection next year. The chatter grew so loud that party insiders wondered if she’d run at all. But since the New York Democrat formally announced her reelection bid in January, she appears to be clearing the field.

washington post logoWashington Post, DeSantis’s board votes to sue Disney, says company lacks innovation, Lori Rozsa, May 1, 2023. The new board said it had to respond after Disney filed a lawsuit accusing state officials of punishing the company over its stance on a controversial law.

The new board overseeing the Walt Disney Co.’s Central Florida theme park property on Monday voted to sue the company, countering a federal lawsuit filed five days ago by Disney against the governing body and Gov. Ron DeSantis.

It’s the latest move in the year-long feud between Disney, the state’s largest employer, and DeSantis (R), a battle that many say is spinning out of control.

Martin Garcia, chairman of the Central Florida Tourism Oversight District, said he and his fellow board members had to respond to Disney’s legal action.

“Since Disney sued us. … We have no choice now but to respond,” Garcia said.

Disney’s suit was filed last week in federal court in Tallahassee. Garcia said his board’s suit would be filed in a state court in Central Florida.

“We’ll seek justice in our own backyard,” he said.

Disney communications staff did not return a request for comment.

Speaking at a separate event Monday, DeSantis said the board’s actions are based on contract law that should be decided in a state court, not a federal court.

He also reiterated his belief that because he won reelection by a landslide in November on a platform that included fighting against “woke corporations,” he has a popular mandate to take action against Disney.

“But at the end of the day, it’s a question about good governance,” DeSantis said.

 

washington post logoWashington Post, Opinion: How Trump made it cool for Republicans to hate their own party, Paul Waldman, right, May 1, 2023. Running for president with well-paul waldmanplaced criticisms of your own party is a tried-and-true campaign strategy, a way to appeal to moderates and independents while posing as an independent thinker not beholden to anyone. But this used to be done with subtlety and care, more through implied contrasts than direct confrontation.

That was before Donald Trump came along. As the 2024 GOP presidential primary gets going, it’s becoming clear that Trump has remade presidential politics in an underappreciated way: He has made it practically a requirement that GOP candidates campaign on open hostility toward their own party.

Recently, Trump declared that his victorious 2016 presidential campaign rescued the Republican Party from “freaks, neocons, globalists, open-borders zealots and fools.” These days, that has become standard-issue Trump rhetoric. But weirdly enough, other 2024 GOP hopefuls are now following suit.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has gone the furthest in chasing Trump down this road. In his campaign book, he writes that “old-guard corporate Republicanism is not up to the task at hand.” DeSantis recently said during a speech, “We reject the culture of losing that has infected the Republican Party in recent years.”

washington post logoWashington Post, Uncle Sam lost $247 billion to improper payments in 2022, auditors say, Joe Davidson, April 30, 2023 (print ed.). Sometimes, Uncle Sam can be generous to a fault. In fiscal 2022, he dished out $200 billion in overpayments related to various government programs that racked up a total of $247 billion in improper disbursements, according to the chief federal watchdog auditing agency. And that does not count everything.

“The $247 billion total does not include estimates for certain risks-susceptible programs, such as the Department of Labor’s Pandemic Unemployment Assistance program and the Department of Agriculture’s Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program,” according to a new report from the Government Accountability Office (GAO). The temporary Labor Department program was established during the pandemic to cover some people not eligible for regular unemployment insurance, which had its own payment problems.

Surprisingly, that astronomical number represents an improvement from the previous fiscal year, when improper payments, which include all those that cannot be properly accounted for, totaled $281 billion. That was the most ever recorded since the law began mandating the reporting in fiscal 2003, when $35 billion in improper payments seemed like a lot.

ny times logoNew York Times, George Santos, Instead of Shrinking From the Spotlight, Steps Into It, Nicholas Fandos, May 1, 2023 (print ed.).  Representative George Santos seems to be testing whether his notoriety will translate into a form of celebrity, if not eventual acceptance.

djt maga hatFour months after his whole concocted biography unraveled — one Wall Street job and collegiate volleyball championship at a time — Mr. Santos remains a pariah. Colleagues refuse to work with him, dooming his legislative priorities. His local party has vowed to defeat him. And a slew of law enforcement and ethics investigators are combing through his life and campaign finances.

But rather than shrinking from the attention, the 34-year-old congressman is stepping ever more definitely toward the spotlight. Mr. Santos seems eager to test whether he can make the journey from laughingstock to legitimacy by aligning himself with former President Donald J. Trump — or at least signaling that he’s in on the joke.

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U.S. National Security, Foreign Policy

 

 

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washington post logoWashington Post, Philippine president’s White House visit reflects sharp upturn in ties, Ellen Nakashima, May 1, 2023. Ferdinand Marcos Jr. to meet with President Biden as the U.S. and the Philippines react to Chinese aggression. Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. is meeting with President Biden at the White House on Monday, kicking off a week’s worth of high-level engagements that mark a sharp turnaround in a relationship that has emerged from the deep freeze in a surprisingly short time.

philippines flagIn less than a year, Marcos, the son of the late dictator deposed in 1986, has noticeably warmed to Washington and agreed to allow the U.S. military not just to maintain a presence on Philippine bases but gain access to four new sites. The move is aimed at helping the Philippines better defend its own waters and become a more capable partner in deterring China in the South China Sea.

His predecessor, Rodrigo Duterte, by contrast, had pledged to distance Manila from Washington and align more closely with Beijing, threatened to end an agreement that gave legal protections to the U.S. military in the country, and snubbed President Donald Trump’s offer to visit the White House. By the end of his presidency last year, Duterte’s dalliance with Beijing having failed to produce results, he was edging back toward Washington.

Biden courts son of Philippine dictator he once opposed

Since becoming president in July, Marcos has witnessed Beijing’s increasingly coercive actions in the region, from ongoing harassment of Philippine fishermen in their territorial waters to the use of lasers to temporarily blind a Philippine coast guard crew. Last week, a Chinese coast guard vessel cut off a Philippine vessel and nearly caused a collision.

washington post logoWashington Post, Key nations sit out U.S. standoff with Russia, China, leaks show, Missy Ryan, April 30, 2023 (print ed.). Documents illustrate how emerging nations’ bid to duck the great power showdown have put Biden’s global agenda at risk.

washington post logoWashington Post, McCarthy invites Netanyahu to visit Congress, skip the White House, Steve Hendrix, May 1, 2023. House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, on a visit to Israel, has placed himself in the middle of a widening rift between President Biden and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, criticizing the White House for not hosting the premier and suggesting he come address the Congress instead.

kevin mccarthyMcCarthy (R-Calif.), right, who arrived over the weekend with a bipartisan delegation of House members at a time of tense political standoffs in both countries, sought to make common cause with Netanyahu over their shared frustrations with the president.

“It’s been too long,” McCarthy said in an interview with the daily Israel Hayom. “If that doesn’t happen, I’ll invite the prime minister to come meet with the House. He’s a dear friend.” Netanyahu’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment on McCarthy’s suggestion.

Biden-Netanyahu spat bursts into full view

Biden has said he had no immediate plans to offer the traditional visit of a new Israeli prime minister to the Oval Office — Netanyahu returned to power four months ago — a seeming rebuke for his new government’s controversial push to gain greater control over the country’s Supreme Court. In Washington, Biden and McCarthy are jockeying over the fight to increase the government’s debt limit, with the president refusing to negotiate spending cuts demanded by House Republicans.

 

This image made from video provided by WCVB-TV, shows Jack Teixeira, in T-shirt and shorts, being taken into custody by armed tactical agents on Thursday, April 13, 2023, in Dighton, Mass. A judge is expected to hear arguments Thursday, April 27, over whether Teixeira, accused of leaking highly classified military documents about the Ukraine war and other issues, should remain in jail while he awaits trial. (WCVB-TV via AP, File)

This image made from video provided by WCVB-TV, shows Jack Teixeira, in T-shirt and shorts, being taken into custody by armed tactical agents on Thursday, April 13, 2023, in Dighton, Mass. A judge is expected to hear arguments Thursday, April 27, over whether Teixeira, accused of leaking highly classified military documents about the Ukraine war and other issues, should remain in jail while he awaits trial. (WCVB-TV via AP, File)

ny times logo New York Times, Airman in Leaks Case Worked on a Global Network Essential to Drone Missions, John Ismay, May 1, 2023 (print ed.). Airman Jack Teixeira’s unit is part of a vast system that carries video and data from spy satellites and drone missions worldwide.

On an Air National Guard base in Cape Cod, Mass., more than 1,200 military service members and civilians maintain one of the largest support systems for Pentagon drone missions around the world.

One of the workers was Airman First Class Jack Teixeira, the 21-year-old accused of posting top-secret military reports online.

Why such a young junior-ranking service member on Cape Cod had access to sensitive intelligence, including battlefield updates on the war in Ukraine, has to do with the massive expansion in military drone operations in the post-9/11 wars that was made possible by better satellite communication networks. It is also the result of a dramatic reorganization in the Air National Guard nearly two decades ago that left small, far-flung air bases in need of new responsibilities. The one on Cape Cod and many others became intelligence outfits.

His arrest and subsequent Justice Department disclosures shined a light on a little-known Air Force mission that began in the 1990s and grew rapidly, eventually spreading to the base on Cape Cod. Called the Distributed Common Ground System, it is a vast computer network that handles the immense amounts of data generated by surveillance drones, spy satellites and other sensors — information that intelligence analysts pore through and pass along to troops on the ground.

 

President Barack Obama in the White House Situation Room discussing the mission against Osama bin Laden on May 1, 2011. (Official White House photo by Pete Souza)

President Barack Obama in the White House Situation Room discussing the mission against Osama bin Laden on May 1, 2011. (Official White House photo by Pete Souza)

washington post logoWashington Post, Newly released Obama White House photos capture the day bin Laden was killed, Nate Jones, May 1, 2023 (print ed.). The Washington Post obtained newly released photos taken by official White House photographers of key moments inside the White House during the 2011 raid on Osama bin Laden’s compound.

A cache of newly released government photographs reveals key moments inside the White House during the 2011 raid on Osama bin Laden’s compound, including images of top officials shaking hands after learning that bin Laden had been killed and President Barack Obama calling other world leaders to break the news. Through a Freedom of Information Act request to the Obama Presidential Library, The Washington Post obtained more than 900 photos taken by official White House photographers on May 1, 2011. Below is a selection of 23 photographs and the moments they captured as recounted in Barack Obama’s memoir A Promised Land and an oral history by Garrett M. Graff published in Politico.

On April 29, 2011, Obama authorized the raid on the complex in Abbottabad, Pakistan. Intelligence reports had indicated that it was the likely location for bin Laden, the al-Qaeda founder who masterminded the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks in the United States that killed more than 3,000 people. Because of weather forecasts and the lack of moonlight, intelligence officials set the date as Sunday, May 1. The president then left Washington for a planned trip, including a brief tour of tornado damage in Tuscaloosa, Ala. He flew back to Washington and attended the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner, where he cracked jokes mocking Donald Trump.

On May 1, the White House canceled all public tours — including some for celebrities who had traveled to D.C. for the correspondents’ dinner. According to then-Deputy Director of the CIA Mike Morell, any meeting about the raid was logged in the White House calendar as a “Mickey Mouse meeting” to avoid scrutiny. Cameras in the room had been turned off or covered. Obama played nine holes of golf that morning, as he routinely did on Sundays.

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U.S. Abortion Laws, #MeToo, Public Health

washington post logoWashington Post, Democratic AGs are using the courts to win on abortion, gun control, Scott Wilson, May 1, 2023 (print ed.). Democratic state attorneys general are finding successes that eluded them for years.

For Bob Ferguson, the Democratic attorney general of Washington state, the seventh time proved to be the charm.

For six years, Ferguson pushed a ban on assault-style weapons in Washington’s legislature. Each year, the proposal failed to make it out of committee — until this one. In April, the legislature passed the bill and Gov. Jay Inslee (D) signed it into law.

Ferguson said the “tragic drumbeat” of mass shootings played a role in boosting public support for the measure. And the Democratic base has become younger and more liberal since he first proposed the ban, he said.

“The political aspect of it has been turned on its head,” Ferguson said. “The voters in Washington now want to ban assault weapons, they want to ban high-capacity magazines. That change definitely occurred.”

Ferguson is one of several Democratic attorneys general moving aggressively on key social policy issues to blunt Republican initiatives across the country designed to loosen gun restrictions, outlaw abortion and curtail the rights of transgender residents.

  • Washington Post, LeRoy Carhart, abortion doctor whose battles reached Supreme Court, dies at 81, Brian Murphy, May 1, 2023.

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 Future U.S. District Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk, a Trump Republican nominee, during his Senate confirmation hearing (Pool photo by Reuters).

Future U.S. District Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk, a Trump Republican nominee, during his Senate confirmation hearing (Pool photo by Reuters).

 

U.S. Culture Wars: Media, Schools, Disney, LGBT

 

ron desantis hands out

ny times logoNew York Times, Opinion: Disney v. DeSantis: How Strong Is the Company’s Lawsuit? David French, right, May 1, 2023 (print ed.). To understand why Gov. Ron DeSantis of david french croppedFlorida, above, should lose in his quest to punish Disney for the high crime of publicly disagreeing with Ron DeSantis, it is first necessary to talk about tow trucks. Specifically, it’s necessary to discuss a case about tow trucks and the First Amendment and how it answers a key question: If the government offers some person or entity a benefit, can it also take it away?

The tow truck story begins in the early 1990s in Northlake, Ill. For decades the city had maintained a list of tow truck companies available for use by the Police Department. The list worked simply enough — when the police needed towing services, they simply went down the list before each tow, with the next towing company receiving the next call. While towing companies didn’t have a right to be on the list, once placed on it, the city’s policy was to remove companies only “for cause.”

In 1993, John Gratzianna, the owner of O’Hare Truck Service, declined to support the campaign of the incumbent mayor of Northlake, backing his opponent instead. The mayor then removed Gratzianna’s company from the towing list, and Gratzianna sued.

The case was one of many to raise the constitutional question of when the government is allowed to take away benefits it was never obligated to provide. Let’s take, for example, public employment. Being hired for a government job isn’t a right. It’s a privilege.

But if the government isn’t obligated to hire me, does that mean it can fire me for any reason? Absolutely not. Anti-discrimination laws and constitutional principles prevent it from firing me or punishing me because of my race, sex or religion, for example. And even if I’m a public employee, the First Amendment is going to prevent the government from punishing me when I speak as a private citizen on matters of public concern.

America’s federal, state and local governments control immense resources. Total government spending is over $9 trillion annually, and those are just direct expenditures. The government also controls the ability to enact tax breaks and other financial incentives for individuals and businesses. And while there are good arguments against governments providing economic inducements and incentives to private corporations, those inducements and incentives cannot then depend on an implied requirement that the corporations agree with the government on matters of public policy. Otherwise, governments could use the power of the purse to create a two-tiered society, granting and withholding government largess on the basis of political agreement.

disney logoMake no mistake, the Florida government’s actions against Disney were directly motivated by the company’s disagreement with a policy pushed by DeSantis. Disney’s legal complaint, filed in federal court in the Northern District of Florida, is chock-full of evidence that the governor and other Florida officials targeted the company for one overriding reason: It put out a statement objecting to House Bill 1557, the Parental Rights in Education Act, which sharply restricted instruction on sexual orientation and gender identity in Florida public schools.

ron desantis oStatements from Governor DeSantis and other Republican state officials are remarkably brazen. DeSantis said he thought Disney’s mild opposition — it mainly consisted of a public statement and a phone call from the former Disney C.E.O. Bob Chapek to DeSantis, moves that a number of L.G.B.T. activists considered inadequate — “crossed the line,” and he promised to “make sure we’re fighting back.” He accused Disney of “pledging a frontal assault on a duly enacted law of the State of Florida.”

But those statements were just the tip of the iceberg.

The motivations could not be clearer: The State of Florida is targeting Disney because of the company’s constitutionally protected expression. Or, as Representative Randy Fine, a Republican, stated: “You got me on one thing — this bill does target one company. It targets the Walt Disney Company.”

John Gratzianna and O’Hare Truck Service are far from the only plaintiffs to win a First Amendment retaliation case at the Supreme Court. Prohibitions against government retaliation for protected speech are as clearly established as virtually any constitutional doctrine in American law. But what O’Hare does show us as clearly as any modern Supreme Court case is the idea that denying government benefits is a form of government control, and when it’s done for the express purpose of punishing an exercise of constitutionally protected speech, it violates the Constitution of the United States.

 washington post logoWashington Post, Disney sues DeSantis, says it was ‘left with no other choice,’ Aaron Gregg and Lori Rozsa, April 27, 2023 (print ed.). The entertainment giant’s lawsuit alleges Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has waged a “relentless campaign to weaponize government power against Disney.”

Walt Disney Co. is suing Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R), right, over what it calls a “relentless campaign to weaponize government power” — a major escalation of the year-long clash between the entertainment giant and conservative governor.

The lawsuit filed Wednesday in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Florida came the same day the governor’s handpicked board declared a Disney-friendly deal null and void. Disney and DeSantis’s office have been tussling privately for the past year, but the frequency and intensity of their sparring has intensified dramatically in recent days.

The standoff, which could have major political and economic consequences, began in early 2022 when Disney leaders criticized a controversial education bill advanced by DeSantis and other Florida Republicans. Disney’s resorts in Florida are some of the state’s prime attractions, but DeSantis expressed outrage that the company dare criticize the education bill, and he began attacking the company, saying it had received preferential treatment for too long.

mark walkerThe case has been assigned to Chief U.S. District Judge Mark Walker, right, of Florida’s northern federal district court.

DeSantis, whom many consider a top presidential contender, has repeatedly turned to the state’s Republican-controlled legislature to help him rein in Disney. The first effort came in a special session in April 2022, when lawmakers dissolved the special taxing district created in 1967 to help the company develop and control its vast property near Orlando.

But that move quickly caused concerns about what would happen with Disney’s tax and debt burden. Local government officials called it “a $1 billion debt bomb” and said they could have been forced to raise taxes on property owners to pay for what Disney’s district used to fund, such as roads and other services.

DeSantis ordered another special session in February to address that issue by keeping the tax district, but replacing the board selected by Disney — called the Reedy Creek Improvement District — with a new panel. DeSantis chose the five new board members and called the agency the Central Florida Tourism Oversight Board. When the new board held its first meeting in March, members said they discovered that the outgoing Disney board had handed over most of their power to Disney. That’s what they voted to overturn on Wednesday.

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

 

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washington post logoWashington Post, Near-record California heat is melting snow and triggering flooding, Dan Stillman and Diana Leonard, April 30, 2023 (print ed.). Flood warnings affect Yosemite National Park and portions of central California as a record-setting snowpack melts.

The heat is on in California. Temperatures reached the 90s in many valley locations Thursday and are forecast to do so again Friday and Saturday, challenging record highs in Sacramento, Redding, Red Bluff, Stockton and Modesto, among other cities.

As temperatures hover 15 to 20 degrees above normal across much of the state, flooding is possible into early next week as mountain snow melts and rivers rise. After an onslaught of atmospheric rivers and other storms since December, the state snowpack is 260 percent of normal and still not far off its record-setting peak one month ago.

Flood watches are in effect through Monday morning for much of the Sierra Nevada, including the Lake Tahoe area, due to the likelihood of strong snowmelt near and below 8,000 feet. The concern is not just for flooding, but also for those who might be enticed to cool off in the water.

washington post logoWashington Post, Clean Cars, Hidden Toll: On frontier of new ‘gold rush,’ quest for coveted EV metals yields misery, Rachel Chason, Photos by Chloe Sharrock, May 1, 2023. The soaring demand for electric vehicles is fueling dramatic changes in Guinea, home to the world’s largest bauxite reserves.

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Pandemics, Public Health, Privacy

washington post logoWashington Post, Moderna’s billionaire CEO reaped nearly $400 million last year. He also got a raise, Daniel Gilbert, May 1, 2023 (print ed.). Vaccine-maker Moderna is facing pushback over its executive pay practices, while its chief executives says he is donating proceeds of his windfall to charity.

moderna logoStéphane Bancel, below left, chief executive of Moderna, had a good year in 2022, exercising stock options that netted him nearly $393 million. The company decided his pay wasn’t good enough.

stéphane bancelThe Cambridge, Mass.-based biotech, known for its lifesaving coronavirus vaccine, raised his salary last year by 50 percent to $1.5 million and increased his target cash bonus, according to a March securities filing. Bancel, 50, says he is donating the proceeds of covad 19 photo.jpg Custom 2stock sales to charity. He owns stock worth at least $2.8 billion and, as of the end of last year, had additional stock-based compensation valued at $1.7 billion.

Moderna emerged from the pandemic as a standout corporate winner, as its vaccine supercharged its stock price and made billionaires of some.

washington post logoWashington Post, Nearly 400,000 Virginians risk losing Medicaid, starting Monday, Jenna Portnoy, May 1, 2023 (print ed.). An estimated 140,000 Virginia children will no longer be covered by Medicaid as pandemic-era protections expire.

Starting in May, Virginia will begin the year-long purging of an estimated 400,000 residents from Medicaid rolls as pandemic-era protections unwind, sending people caught in a temporary safety net scrambling to find health care.

The end of a federal vow to hold harmless people on public insurance whose eligibility changed during the coronavirus emergency has states and the District of Columbia scrambling, too, to determine if record-high numbers of Medicaid recipients still qualify.

The tedious process, known as “Medicaid unwinding,” will disproportionately impact children, and Latino and Black residents, federal studies show, many of the same groups the government identified as particularly vulnerable to job loss and other economic impacts of covid.

The start of Medicaid disenrollments comes as the federal government put an end to a boost in payments for the tens of millions of Americans who receive food stamps, and as benefits like free coronavirus vaccines and tests associated with the public health emergency set to expire May 11 remain in limbo.

ny times logoNew York Times, What It Will Take for Africa to Get Close to Vaccine Independence, Stephanie Nolen, April 25, 2023. Leaders on the continent have vowed that if there is another pandemic, they won’t be shut out of the vaccine market.

Just 3 percent of all Covid-19 vaccine doses delivered in 2021 went to Africa, home to a fifth of the world’s population, according to the World Health Organization. In the vast debacle of global vaccine inequity, it was Africa that was left furthest behind as the pandemic raged, and that had the least leverage to negotiate contracts.

African leaders vowed to make sure that never happened again. High-income nations and philanthropic groups promised to help fund the effort to make vaccine access more equitable. There was a flurry of announcements of new partnerships and investments: plans to modernize the handful of existing pharmaceutical manufacturing operations in Africa; plans to build new ones; plans to send shipping containers from Europe with pop-up facilities to produce the new mRNA vaccines; plans for an mRNA production incubator that would dispense open-source technology around the continent.

Now, some of the hype has subsided, and there are some signs of real progress. But it’s also become evident just how big the hurdles are.

There aren’t many shortcuts in the decades-long process of developing a sophisticated biotechnology industry that can make a routine vaccine for export, let alone develop a shot to protect against a new pathogen.

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U.S. Cable News Firings

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ny times logoNew York Times, Guest Essay: Fox News Gambled, but Tucker Can Still Take Down the House, Jason Zengerle, April 30, 2023 (print ed.). Mr. Zengerle, a contributing writer for The New York Times Magazine, is working on a book about Tucker Carlson.

The cable host has left Fox News. But his dark and outsize influence on the conservative movement — and on American politics — is hardly over.

For the quarter-century-plus that the Fox News Channel has been coming into America’s living rooms, it has operated according to a cardinal tenet: No one at the cable network is bigger than Fox News itself. It’s a lesson Glenn Beck, Megyn Kelly and Bill O’Reilly all learned the hard way after they left Fox and saw their fame and influence (if not their fortunes) evaporate. Once the biggest names in cable news, they now spend their days wandering in the wilderness of podcasts and third-tier streaming platforms. Even Roger Ailes, Fox News’s original architect and the man who devised — and then ruthlessly enforced — the no-one-bigger-than rule, discovered that he was expendable when Rupert Murdoch pushed him out as Fox’s chairman and chief executive in 2016 amid sexual harassment allegations. Mr. Ailes soon disappeared to a mansion in Florida and, less than a year later, died in exile from the media world he’d once commanded.

When Fox News abruptly fired Tucker Carlson, the network’s most popular prime-time host and the most powerful person in conservative media, many savvy press critics predicted the same fate for him: professional oblivion. Mr. Carlson had himself once replaced Ms. Kelly, and later Mr. O’Reilly, and each time he climbed to a new, better slot in the Fox News lineup he garnered bigger and bigger ratings. Now, according to the conventional wisdom, some new up-and-comer would inherit Mr. Carlson’s audience and replace him as the king (or queen) of conservative media. “The ‘talent’ at the Fox News Channel has never been the star,” Politico’s Jack Shafer wrote earlier this week. “Fox itself, which convenes the audience, is the star.”

But there’s good reason to believe Mr. Carlson will be the exception that proves the rule. For one thing, unlike previous stars who have left Fox News, Mr. Carlson departed when he was still at the height of his power, making his firing all the more sudden and shocking. Three days before his sacking, he gave the keynote address at the Heritage Foundation’s 50th anniversary gala. Two weeks before that, he browbeat Texas’ Republican governor to issue a pardon to a man who had been convicted of murdering a Black Lives Matter protester in Austin.

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More On Media, Education, Arts, High Tech

washington post logoWashington Post, Mark Zuckerberg survived years of scandal, but a pivot to VR might break things, Naomi Nix, May 1, 2023 (print ed.). The Facebook founder has shepherded Meta through public crisis, but amid layoffs, insiders say he has lost his vision and the trust of his workforce.

mark zuckerberg G8 summit deauville wMark Zuckerberg sounded nervous.

The Meta CEO, left, had just announced that his company would slash thousands of jobs last month, on top of 11,000 layoffs in November.

meta logoDuring an hour-long town hall meeting from the company’s Menlo Park headquarters in California, the decimated workforce peppered Zuckerberg with questions — including why they should have confidence in his leadership.

“That’s a completely fair question,” Zuckerberg responded without his usual bluster, according to a recording of the meeting obtained by The Washington Post.

It was a sobering admission for the CEO, who popularized the phrase “move fast and break things” to describe how he made a scrappy start-up into a towering $116 billion symbol of Silicon Valley success. Zuckerberg has shepherded Meta through years of public turbulence, offering employees confident defiance and facebook logothe security that, despite some missteps, their CEO always bet on the correct future.

But now, roiled by economic tumult, waves of layoffs that will slash some 21,000 workers and a costly investment in the virtual reality “metaverse” that shows no immediate signs of paying off, many inside Meta say Zuckerberg has lost his vision — and the trust of his workforce. Instead, he is steering the company into an unprecedented morale crisis, according to interviews with more than two dozen current and former employees who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of retribution.

washington post logoWashington Post, The dirty little secret of White House news conferences, Paul Farhi, April 28, 2023 (print ed.). President Biden was photographed holding a notecard Wednesday, revealing the stage managing behind many political media events.

President Biden offered such a long and nuanced response to the first question he got at Wednesday’s White House news conference that it almost seemed he knew in advance what the reporter would ask.

As it turns out, he more or less did.

A photo of Biden holding a notecard during the presser may have inadvertently revealed one of the dirty little secrets of presidential news conferences: They’re less spontaneous and freewheeling than they appear to be, with a fair amount of stage managing behind them.

The card in Biden’s hand, titled “Question # 1,” clearly directs the president to call on a Los Angeles Times reporter, Courtney Subramanian. The card has Subramanian’s name (including a pronunciation guide for her surname), her affiliation and even a headshot.

More important, photos taken by an Agence France-Presse photographer show what Subramanian was likely to ask about. Under the heading “Foreign Policy/Semiconductor Manufacturing,” the card reads, “How are YOU squaring YOUR domestic priorities — like reshoring semiconductors manufacturing — with alliance-based foreign policy?”

For many years, White House press office employees have routinely polled reporters about their priorities and interests in advance of news meetings to anticipate what their boss might be asked while on the podium. The practice is also common in news conferences with Cabinet secretaries, such as the secretary of defense and secretary of state.

“Every White House press office will try to go around and take the temperature” of reporters, said a veteran White House reporter, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because his employer had not authorized him to comment. “They want to look smart in preparing their boss for what we’ll throw at him.”

Press staffers as far back as the George W. Bush administration did so, he said. Presidents have tended to call on the reporters his aides have directed him to, he said. President Donald Trump was the most likely to go off script and take questions from anyone, though Trump also made a habit of calling on reporters from outlets he knew were supportive of him.

 

nora roberts hideway

washington post logoWashington Post, Opinion: Florida’s book-ban frenzy targets Nora Roberts, and she’s not happy, Greg Sargent and Paul Waldman, April 29, 2023. Tiffany Justice, co-founder of the right-wing book-purging organization Moms for Liberty, offered a righteous-sounding answer when asked this past weekend on “CBS Sunday Morning” what sort of book she wants to see remain in schools.

“Books that don’t have pornography in them,” she piously declared. “Let’s just put the bar really, really low. Books that don’t have incest, pedophilia, rape.”

That’s hard to square with what just happened in Martin County, Fla. The school district there recently decided to yank from its high school library circulation eight novels by Nora Roberts, shown above with the cover of one of her more than 220 books, that are not “pornography” at all — largely prompted by objections from a single woman who also happens to be a Moms for Liberty activist.

“All of it is shocking,” Roberts told us. “If you don’t want your teenager reading this book, that’s your right as a mom — and good luck with that. But you don’t have the right to say nobody’s kid can read this book.”

This signals a new trend: Book banners are increasingly going after a wide variety of titles, including romance novels, under the guise of targeting “pornography.” That term is a very flexible one — deliberately so, it appears — and it is sweeping ever more broadly to include books that can’t be described as such in any reasonable sense.

Martin County is where 20 Jodi Picoult novels were recently pulled from school library shelves. This, too, was largely because of objections from that same Moms for Liberty activist, Julie Marshall, head of the group’s local chapter.

washington post logoWashington Post, Twitter founder Jack Dorsey says Musk wasn’t an ideal leader after all, Faiz Siddiqui and Will Oremus, April 29, 2023. The former CEO issued his strongest criticism yet of Musk’s takeover of the social media site.

jack dorsey small twitterFormer Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, right, issued his sharpest criticism yet of Elon Musk’s leadership of Twitter on Friday, saying Musk has not proved to be the platform’s ideal steward — and should have walked away from buying the site.

The criticisms and explanations came in a series of reply posts Friday night on the fledgling social network Bluesky, a potential Twitter rival that Dorsey helped to start. The remarks illustrate how Musk’s erratic leadership has disillusioned a one-time friend and powerful ally, reflecting a growing backlash against a tumultuous tenure that has sent advertisers fleeing and users searching for alternatives.

Dorsey said he thought Musk, the Tesla CEO who serves in the same role at Twitter today, should have paid $1 billion to back out of the deal to acquire the social media platform. The comments are a stark reversal from Dorsey’s strong endorsement of Musk’s takeover, when he wrote a year ago that if Twitter had to be a company at all, “Elon is the singular solution I trust.”

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April 2023 News

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