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Russia plans free trade zone on disputed islands near Japan–report
Reuters
July 26, 2021 8:46 AM BST Last Updated 2 hours ago
https://newsinfo.inquirer.net/1464623/russia-plans-free-trade-zone-on-disputed-islands-near-japan-report
TOKYO — Russia plans to set up a special economic zone with no customs and a reduced set of taxes on a disputed chain of islands near Japan, Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin was quoted as saying on Monday by Russia’s RIA and Interfax news agencies.
A territorial row over the islands, which the Soviets seized at the end of World War Two, has prevented the two countries from signing a formal peace treaty. Japan calls the islands the Northern Territories and Russia calls them the Kurils.
Mishustin visited the islands on Monday, prompting a top Tokyo government spokesman to say Japan would protest to Russia over the visit.
Mishustin said he would discuss an “unprecedented” set of economic measures aimed at the islands’ development with President Vladimir Putin.
“This would be interesting… for Japan as well which could create jobs and work with you if it is interested,” he said, addressing local businessmen, according to a RIA report.
https://newsinfo.inquirer.net/1464623/russia-plans-free-trade-zone-on-disputed-islands-near-japan-report
Mixed AstraZeneca-Pfizer shot boosts COVID antibody level - study
By Sangmi Cha
JULY 26, 20219:01 AMUPDATED AN HOUR AGO
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-southkorea-study/mixed-astrazeneca-pfizer-shot-boosts-covid-antibody-level-study-idUSKBN2EW0OF
SEOUL (Reuters) - A mixed vaccination of first AstraZeneca and then a Pfizer COVID-19 shot boosted neutralizing antibody levels by six times compared with two AstraZeneca doses, a study from South Korea showed.
The study involved 499 medical workers - 100 receiving mixed doses, 200 taking two doses of the Pfizer/BioNTech shot and the remainder getting two AstraZeneca shots.
All showed neutralizing antibodies, which prevent the virus from entering cells and replicating, and the result of the mixed schedule of vaccines showed similar amounts of neutralizing antibodies found from the group that received two Pfizer shots.
A British study last month showed similar results - an AstraZeneca shot followed by Pfizer produced the best T-cell responses, and a higher antibody response than Pfizer followed by AstraZeneca.
The data provides further support for the decision of several countries to offer alternatives to AstraZeneca as a second shot after the vaccine was linked to rare blood clots.
The South Korean study also analysed neutralizing activity against major variants of concern, the Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency (KDCA) said.
None of the groups demonstrated reduced neutralising activity against the Alpha variant, first identified in Britain, but the neutralization titre decreased by 2.5 to 6 fold against Beta, Gamma and Delta, first detected in South Africa, Brazil and India respectively.
Reporting by Sangmi Cha; Editing by Miyoung Kim and Nick Macfie
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-southkorea-study/mixed-astrazeneca-pfizer-shot-boosts-covid-antibody-level-study-idUSKBN2EW0OF
Mehdi Hasan @mehdirhasan I pressed @USEnvoyIran on reports Trump assassinated Iran's top general to appease GOP senators ahead of his impeachment trial. Isn't that outrageous, I asked?
“It just invited more trouble rather than de-escalating tensions," Malley told me.
Watch:
I pressed @USEnvoyIran on reports Trump assassinated Iran's top general to appease GOP senators ahead of his impeachment trial. Isn't that outrageous, I asked?
— Mehdi Hasan (@mehdirhasan) July 26, 2021
“It just invited more trouble rather than de-escalating tensions," Malley told me.
Watch:pic.twitter.com/MMcuKPElYa
I pressed @USEnvoyIran on reports Trump assassinated Iran's top general to appease GOP senators ahead of his impeachment trial. Isn't that outrageous, I asked?
— Mehdi Hasan (@mehdirhasan) July 26, 2021
“It just invited more trouble rather than de-escalating tensions," Malley told me.
Watch:pic.twitter.com/MMcuKPElYa
Nancy Pelosi primes Capitol attack panel to take hard line on Trump
The Republican leadership’s decision to boycott the inquiry leaves the ex-president without defenders on the committee
Hugo Lowell in Washington
Mon 26 Jul 2021 02.00 EDT
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/jul/26/nancy-pelosi-capitol-attack-panel-trump
The House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, is readying the committee that will on Tuesday begin its investigation into the attack on the Capitol to press ahead with an aggressive inquiry into Donald Trump, as she seeks to exploit Republicans’ refusal to participate that could leave the former US president unguarded.
The move by the top Democrat in the House last week to block Jim Banks and Jim Jordan – vociferous allies of the former president – from serving on the House select committee, prompted the House minority leader, Kevin McCarthy, to boycott the inquiry, pulling his three other Republican picks from the panel.
But Pelosi won strong support from Democrats for her vetoes and told her lieutenants that she may have emerged with the upper hand ahead of the select committee’s first hearing.
“We have the duty, to the constitution and the country, to find the truth of the 6 January insurrection and to ensure that such an assault on our Democracy cannot again happen,” Pelosi said of the investigation in a letter to Democrats.
The speaker has suggested to top Democrats in recent days that McCarthy’s reflexive move to boycott the panel leaves Trump without any defenders in the high-profile investigation into the 6 January insurrection, according to a source familiar with the matter.
Pelosi chose some of the former president’s most critical opponents when she made her appointments to the select committee, installing both lead House impeachment managers from Trump’s two impeachments as well as the Republican dissident Liz Cheney, who was ousted from party leadership in May for repudiating Trump.
But the absence of any Republican picks on the select committee means that when the investigation pivots from examining security failures to the role Trump played on 6 January, the inquiry will be conducted solely by his political foes, emboldening Pelosi to seek an aggressive inquiry, the source said.
It was not immediately clear how Pelosi might proceed with the select committee. But Democrats have agitated for weeks for her to take a hard line against Republicans after they doomed a 9/11-style bipartisan commission into the Capitol attack.
Democrats close to Pelosi say she remains furious at how Republicans have sought to downplay the brutal violence of the insurrection, which informed her decision to not give Banks and Jordan a platform from which to twist or minimize the select committee’s findings.
But the speaker’s relationship with Republicans deteriorated to a new low, after McCarthy shouted down the phone at her when she informed him of her decision to veto Banks and Jordan, the source said.
Republicans have seized on Pelosi’s intervention against Banks and Jordan, as well as her close involvement with the panel, to portray the inquiry as a partisan exercise to gain political advantage ahead of the 2022 midterm elections.
McCarthy lashed out anew a day after he was denied his two top picks for the select committee, and pledged to carry out a Republican-only investigation that would focus on how Pelosi should have done more to protect the Capitol.
But Democrats said Pelosi was more than justified in upending congressional norms in refusing to appoint Banks and Jordan, both of whom amplified Trump’s lies about a stolen election and objected to certifying Joe Biden’s election win.
“We want people who are going to have allegiance to the oath of office that they took, not an allegiance to one person. And they’ve clearly pledged their allegiance to the former president,” said Democrat Pete Aguilar, a member of the select committee.
Several Democrats said they were particularly disturbed by a CNN report that an alleged Capitol rioter, Anthony Aguero, accompanied Banks on a trip sponsored by the Republican Study Committee to the southern border and, at times, served as an interpreter.
They also said that Pelosi came to the conclusion that Banks could not be trusted to serve as the top Republican appointee on the panel after he issued a statement that he wanted to investigate the role of the Biden administration in the insurrection.
Democrats expressed deep reservations as well about Jordan, the top Republican on the House judiciary committee, after he disparaged the select committee and accused Pelosi of being responsible for a diminished security presence at the Capitol.
The speaker does not herself oversee security at the Capitol, which is the responsibility of the US Capitol police board and the House and Senate sergeants-at-arms. Both sergeants-at-arms at the time of the attack were hired by Republican congressional leaders.
A bipartisan Senate report released last month detailed multiple security failings on the parts of the US Capitol police and the sergeants-at-arms. It did not blame Pelosi or her then opposite number in the Senate, Mitch McConnell.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/jul/26/nancy-pelosi-capitol-attack-panel-trump
Fauci says health officials considering mask guidance revision for vaccinated
LA county and St Louis, Missouri, reinstated indoor mask
Florida urged to ramp up vaccinations amid ‘alarming’ case rise
Amanda Holpuch in New York
@holpuch
Sun 25 Jul 2021 12.06 EDT
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/jul/25/fauci-covid-mask-guidance-vaccinated-booster-shots
Anthony Fauci, the White House chief medical adviser, said on Sunday top US health officials were discussing whether to revise mask guidance for Americans vaccinated against Covid-19.
“This is under active consideration,” Fauci told CNN’s State of the Union, though he also emphasized that local governments can issue their own rules under current guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
Los Angeles county and St Louis, Missouri, have reinstated indoor mask requirements and other cities are weighing whether to do the same.
After a significant drop in Covid-19 cases because of the national vaccine campaign, infections are rising in all 50 states and Washington DC. The increases are highest in states with large groups of unvaccinated people. More than 610,000 have died from Covid-19 in the US.
At a White House briefing on Thursday the surgeon general, Vivek Murthy, said 97% of hospital admissions and 99.5% of Covid deaths were occurring among unvaccinated people.
More than 162.7 million Americans are vaccinated – or 49% of the population, according to the CDC.
Fauci said local leaders, particularly in areas with low rates of vaccination, needed to lead outreach efforts to get people vaccinated.
He highlighted recent work by two prominent Republicans who have repeatedly criticized him: a Louisiana representative, Steve Scalise, and the governor of Florida, Ron DeSantis.
“??I was very heartened to hear people like Steve Scalise come out and say, ‘Hey, we’ve got to get vaccinated,’” Fauci said. “Even Governor DeSantis right now in Florida is saying the same thing. We’ve got to get more people who relate well to the individuals who are not getting vaccinated to get out there and encourage them to get vaccinated.”
Among those reporting they definitely won’t get vaccinated, 23% are Republican, 16% are independent and 2% are Democrats, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation vaccine monitor.
DeSantis sells merchandise which mocks masks and Fauci, but cases in Florida are the highest they have been since January.
“These vaccines are saving lives,” DeSantis said last week.
Scalise, the House Republican whip, was vaccinated last week and told the New Orleans Times-Picayune he had waited because he thought he had some immunity from an earlier Covid-19 infection. But the rise of the Delta variant appeared to sway him.
“When you talk to people who run hospitals, in New Orleans or other states, 90% of people in hospital with Delta variant have not been vaccinated,” he said. “That’s another signal the vaccine works.”
Fauci said the administration was reviewing whether some vaccinated people may require booster shots. Vulnerable people such as organ transplant and cancer patients were “likely” to be recommended for booster shots, he said.
From Missouri, a local mayor told CBS’s Face the Nation some prominent local figures were still speaking out against the vaccine.
“We continue to have to push back against negative messaging,” said Quinton Lucas, mayor of Kansas City.
Lucas said the focus in Kansas City was on getting people vaccinated and that his city did not currently have plans to re-introduce mask requirements, though it was something he had considered.
“I think every mayor in a major city in America is wondering if it is time to return to mandates,” Lucas said.
Jerome Adams, the US surgeon general under Donald Trump, told CBS the CDC should change guidance to vaccinate and mask in places with lower vaccination rates, an argument he also made in an editorial for the Washington Post.
Adams wrote that he initially agreed with the CDC’s guidance in May that vaccinated people no longer needed to wear masks, hoping it would encourage vaccinations.
“In hindsight, it’s clear that the message many Americans heard was that, vaccinated or not, masks were gone for good,” Adams wrote.
On CBS, Adams compared the situation to when public health officials last year told people to not use N95 masks because they needed to be reserved for medical professionals.
In hindsight, he said, he wished that guidance had been less definitive because many interpreted it as a signal that masks didn’t work.
“We need to learn from what happened in the past,” Adams said.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/jul/25/fauci-covid-mask-guidance-vaccinated-booster-shots
Sen. Rand Paul Told To 'Get F**ked' During Virtual Town Hall
Kentuckian Alexis Toon explained on her TikTok that she was invited to the town hall Q&A "so I took the opportunity and ran with it."
By Sebastian Murdock, HuffPost US
POLITICS
24/07/2021 18:21 BST
https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/senator-rand-paul-virtual-town-hall_n_60fc3e47e4b05ff8cfc8d5bc?ri18n=true
A Kentucky resident gave Republican Sen. Rand Paul a piece of her mind during a virtual town hall event.
“Hi, senator, I am a proud Kentucky citizen, and I just wanted to tell you to get f**ked,” Alexis Toon told the senator during the event.
Toon posted video of the encounter to her TikTok on Friday, saying that “for some unknown reason they called and asked if I’d like to join the town hall Q&A
Ron Filipkowski @RonFilipkowski
You know, these TikTok pranksters are really out of control. Rand Paul is a United States Senator! Does he really deserve this kind of disrespect?
VIDEO
You know, these TikTok pranksters are really out of control. Rand Paul is a United States Senator! Does he really deserve this kind of disrespect? pic.twitter.com/1HvVmiFsrX
— Ron Filipkowski (@RonFilipkowski) July 23, 2021
You know, these TikTok pranksters are really out of control. Rand Paul is a United States Senator! Does he really deserve this kind of disrespect? pic.twitter.com/1HvVmiFsrX
— Ron Filipkowski (@RonFilipkowski) July 23, 2021
That’s big news. Please hold those who attacked our democracy accountable.
Aaron Levin @aaronlevin52804
Replying to
@RepKinzingerThat’s
5:11 PM · Jul 25, 2021·Twitter for iPhone
https://twitter.com/aaronlevin52804/status/1419329550740246528
Adam Kinzinger @RepKinzinger Today, I was asked to serve on the bipartisan January 6th Select Committee and I humbly accepted. When duty calls, I will always answer. https://bit.ly/3zy5TcP
5:10 PM · Jul 25, 2021·Twitter Web App
THREAD
Today, I was asked to serve on the bipartisan January 6th Select Committee and I humbly accepted. When duty calls, I will always answer. https://t.co/MszEBc0V7I pic.twitter.com/flIdSfYzZV
— Adam Kinzinger (@RepKinzinger) July 25, 2021
Adam Kinzinger @RepKinzinger Today, I was asked to serve on the bipartisan January 6th Select Committee and I humbly accepted. When duty calls, I will always answer. https://bit.ly/3zy5TcP
5:10 PM · Jul 25, 2021·Twitter Web App
THREAD
Today, I was asked to serve on the bipartisan January 6th Select Committee and I humbly accepted. When duty calls, I will always answer. https://t.co/MszEBc0V7I pic.twitter.com/flIdSfYzZV
— Adam Kinzinger (@RepKinzinger) July 25, 2021
AP FACT CHECK: Trump is relentless in election fabrications
By JONATHAN J. COOPER and CALVIN WOODWARD
today
https://apnews.com/article/joe-biden-government-and-politics-elections-ap-fact-check-election-2020-b3905c30c8bb585e20850da3c3f022e8
PHOENIX (AP) — In mid-May, partisan investigators hired by Arizona state lawmakers backed off their allegation that the state’s most populous county had destroyed its 2020 election database. Confronted with proof that the data still existed, they admitted everything was there.
Two months later, the tale lives on. At an event Saturday, former President Donald Trump presented the debunked allegation as a key piece of evidence that the state’s electoral votes were stolen from him in 2020.
It was one of a number of fabricated and familiar stories Trump told the crowd in his relentless effort to deny the well-established legitimacy of his defeat at the hands of President Joe Biden.
Over nearly two hours, Trump revisited his touchstones of grievance, leveling allegations of fraud that election officials and judges have systematically refuted or brushed aside. It was Trump’s most explicit effort to insert himself into the widely discredited Arizona audit as he tries to increase the pressure on other states to embark on similar efforts.
He spoke of untold thousands of dead people voting — no such phenomenon surfaced in postelection audits. He alleged 168,000 Arizona ballots were fraudulent — there is no support for that.
A look at his remarks in Phoenix:
TRUMP: “Unbelievably, the auditors have testified that the master database for the election management system, I’m sorry to tell you, has been deleted.... Meaning the main database for all of the election-related data in Maricopa for 2020 has been illegally erased. It’s been erased.”
THE FACTS: Wholly false. The database was never deleted.
At first, auditors hired by Republican state senators sympathetic to Trump reported that a database directory was deleted from an election management server. The official Twitter account tied to the audit said the deletion amounted to “spoliation of evidence.”
The Republican-dominated Maricopa County Board of Supervisors responded by calling the auditors incompetent and threatening to file a defamation lawsuit. Board Chairman Jack Sellers said the auditors “can’t find the files because they don’t know what they’re doing.” Maricopa County Recorder Stephen Richer, a Republican who took over the elections office after defeating a Democrat, called the allegation “unhinged.”
The next day, Ben Cotton, founder of a digital forensics firm working on the audit, confirmed he had recovered all of the files. “I have the information I need,” he acknowledged, and the auditors deleted their tweet.
___
TRUMP: “There were 18,000 people who voted in Arizona in 2020 who were then purged from the rolls immediately after the election.”
THE FACTS: This didn’t happen. His insinuation that people were stricken from the rolls because they voted for him is baseless.
Actually, 13,320 voters were removed from the rolls in the two months after the election, not 18,000 right away, and there were routine reasons why.
Voting rolls are updated constantly as people move, die, get convicted of felonies or have their voting rights revoked because of incapacitation. Trump was repeating a claim made by Doug Logan, CEO of Cyber Ninjas, the inexperienced firm leading the state Senate Republicans’ audit of the 2020 election.
Maricopa County officials said their analysis of the data shows 7,916 voters were removed from the rolls because they moved out of the county or died between Nov. 3, which was Election Day, and Jan. 2. An additional 5,404 people were removed for other reasons, including felony convictions, incapacitation or the voters’ own request to cancel their registration.
The county has about 2.6 million registered voters.
Overall, Biden won Arizona by 10,457 votes out of 3.4 million cast. That’s vastly more than the number of votes where fraud is truly suspected.
County election officials only identified 182 cases where voting problems were clear enough that they referred them to investigators for further review, according to an Associated Press investigation. So far, only four cases have led to charges. No one has been convicted. No person’s vote was found to have been counted twice.
___
Woodward reported from Washington. Associated Press writers David Klepper in Providence, Rhode Island, and Jill Colvin in Washington contributed to this report.
___
EDITOR’S NOTE — A look at the veracity of claims by political figures.
___
Find AP Fact Checks at http://apnews.com/APFactCheck
Follow @APFactCheck on Twitter: https://twitter.com/APFactCheck
https://apnews.com/article/joe-biden-government-and-politics-elections-ap-fact-check-election-2020-b3905c30c8bb585e20850da3c3f022e8
Republicans Protest Lack of Rioters on January 6th Commission
By Andy Borowitz
The New Yorker
July 22, 2021
https://www.newyorker.com/humor/borowitz-report/republicans-protest-lack-of-rioters-on-january-6th-commission
WASHINGTON (The Borowitz Report)—Casting a dark cloud over the select committee investigating the January 6th insurrection, congressional Republicans protested, in no uncertain terms, the panel’s “utter lack of rioters.”
Leading the charge was House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, who called the commission “little more than a gussied-up festival of anti-riot propaganda.”
“Nancy Pelosi’s handpicked Democratic panel members all have one thing in common: none of them took part in the riot,” McCarthy said. “Without an equal number of rioters on the panel, we’ll never get to hear both sides of this thing.”
McCarthy said that he had drawn up a list of potential rioters to serve on the commission, including the “QAnon Shaman,” Jake Angeli.
“I’ve spoken to the Shaman, and he’s up for it,” McCarthy said. “He just got his fur pelts dry-cleaned.”
The House Minority Leader warned Pelosi against proceeding with the commission if it had no rioter representation. “It could have a chilling effect on all future riots,” he said.
https://www.newyorker.com/humor/borowitz-report/republicans-protest-lack-of-rioters-on-january-6th-commission
Palmer Report @PalmerReport Donald Trump spent a portion of his speech tonight talking about LeBron James becoming a transgender woman. It’s clear why Trump’s handlers rarely let him out in public anymore. What was left of his mind is gone.
4:52 AM · Jul 25, 2021·Twitter for iPhone
THREAD
Donald Trump spent a portion of his speech tonight talking about LeBron James becoming a transgender woman. It’s clear why Trump’s handlers rarely let him out in public anymore. What was left of his mind is gone.
— Palmer Report (@PalmerReport) July 25, 2021
Tech Insider @TechInsider 25m This farm in Kenya uses insects to break down waste
VIDEO
This farm in Kenya uses insects to break down waste pic.twitter.com/H1r5WLSuxc
— Insider Tech (@TechInsider) July 24, 2021
This farm in Kenya uses insects to break down waste pic.twitter.com/H1r5WLSuxc
— Insider Tech (@TechInsider) July 24, 2021
Houston Man Arrested For Whipping Police Officers At U.S. Capitol Insurrection, FBI Says
Andrew Quentin Taake is the ninth Houston-area arrest in the wake of the riot.
LUCIO VASQUEZ | POSTED ONJULY 23, 2021, 6:21 PM (LAST UPDATED: JULY 23, 2021, https://www.houstonpublicmedia.org/articles/news/criminal-justice/2021/07/23/404065/houston-man-arrested-for-whipping-officers-at-u-s-capitol-insurrection-fbi-says/6:57 PM)
Houstonian Andrew Quentin Taake, 32, allegedly assaulted police officers during the Jan. 6 Capitol insurrection.
A ninth Houstonian was arrested Friday after allegedly whipping and pepper spraying police officers during the Jan. 6 U.S. Capitol insurrection.
Authorities say Andrew Quentin Taake, 32, flew to Washington D.C. on January 5 to participate in a rally. One day later, he allegedly joined pro-Trump extremists and stormed the U.S. Capitol.
As he attempted to force his way inside, Taake allegedly pepper sprayed multiple officers who had formed a barricade out of bike racks. About 30 minutes later, Taake reemerged from the crowd of rioters and allegedly began striking officers with what appeared to be a whip-like weapon, according to court documents.
The FBI says the alleged assaults were captured by body-worn cameras. Additionally, surveillance video appears to show Taake wandering inside the Capitol building while holding the whip-like weapon in his hand.
MORE | Here Are The Texans Facing Charges In The Wake Of The U.S. Capitol Siege
Days after the attack, an unnamed tipster told federal investigators that Taake had shared details about his participation in the riot via a dating app called Bumble, according to court documents.
The tipster shared screenshots of their conversation, along with photos that Taake had sent of himself — including a photo that Taake claimed was taken “about 30 minutes after being sprayed.”
“Safe to say I was the very first person to be sprayed that day,” Taake wrote.
Using location data provided by the dating app, the tipster shared a screenshot of Taake’s general location on Jan. 6, placing him in Alexandria, Virginia — a town near the U.S. Capitol, according to the sworn affidavit. Investigators say they also found the location of Taake’s cellphone, which was located inside or near the Capitol building during the attack.
In May, authorities positively identified Taake after showing photos of him to a FedEx delivery driver who had just dropped off a package at Taake’s doorstep.
Taake is now facing federal charges, such as assaulting, resisting or impeding certain officers, obstruction of an official proceeding, knowingly entering a restricted building, and disorderly and disruptive conduct in a restricted building. Taake made his initial court appearance in the Southern District of Texas on Friday.
There are now at least 53 Texans facing charges in connection to the riot — that number includes nine Houston-area residents.
https://www.houstonpublicmedia.org/articles/news/criminal-justice/2021/07/23/404065/houston-man-arrested-for-whipping-officers-at-u-s-capitol-insurrection-fbi-says/
At the recent CPAC, attendees celebrated the failure of Biden's goal to vaccinate 70% of adults. Now top Republicans have U-turned, urging people to get their jab.
BETHANY DAWSONJUL 24, 2021, 21:58 IST
https://www.businessinsider.in/politics/world/news/at-the-recent-cpac-attendees-celebrated-the-failure-of-bidens-goal-to-vaccinate-70-of-adults-now-top-republicans-have-u-turned-urging-people-to-get-their-jab-/articleshow/84711323.cms
* A number of high-profile Republicans are now urging people to get the COVID-19 vaccine
* Deaths from COVID-19 in the US are largely attributed to the unvaccinated population
* Alabama Senator Tommy Tuberville has said the jabs are "effective, safe, and don't cost you a dime."
High-profile Republicans are switching from a previous vaccine hesitant stance and now urging Americans to get their COVID-19 vaccines, as soon as possible.
Only two weeks ago at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in Dallas, attendees cheered and clapped that Biden had not been able to"sucker" people and had missed his goal of vaccinating 70% of adults. Vaccine hesitancy on the right had metastasized into outright hostility.
But the mood music has changed again as the Delta variant rips through the red states where low vaccination rates are filling hospital ICU's at an alarming rate.
On Thursday, Gov. Kay Ivey of Alabama, who for much of the coronavirus pandemic resisted public-health measures, criticized her state's unvaccinated population.
"I don't know, you tell me," she said when asked what it would take to get more people vaccinated. "Folks supposed to have common sense. But it's time to start blaming the unvaccinated folks, not the regular folks. It's the unvaccinated folks that are letting us down."
Alabama has the fourth-lowest vaccination rate nationwide, according to a New York Times tracker.
Ivey followed a slew of Republican big-hitters to call for a greater vaccination urgency. Senate Minority leader Mitch McConnell led this movement, urging people on Tuesday, to ignore the "demonstrably bad advice" which spreads mistrust of the vaccines, and said, "If there is anybody out there willing to listen: Get vaccinated."
Alabama Senator Tommy Tuberville is another high-profile Republican exhibiting a change in tune. He took to Twitter July 21 to say that the vaccines are "effective, safe, and don't cost you a dime."
Joining the Republican U-turn, House Minority Whip Steve Scalise (R-La.) - who had previously attempted to block Senate funding for the COVID-19 vaccine in tandem with his anti-vaxx stance - received his dose of the vaccine, telling people they should get theirs and that it is "safe and effective."
He added: "When you talk to people who run hospitals, in New Orleans or other states, 90% of people in hospitals with Delta variant have not been vaccinated. That's another signal the vaccine works," The Times-Picayune reported.
President Biden and the head of the CDC, have called the current state of COVID-19 in the USA the "pandemic of the unvaccinated."
Three strongly GOP states account for 40% of Covid cases - Florida, Missouri, and Texas - announced White House pandemic response coordinator Jeff Zients at a press briefing on July 21.
Rob Wilson, former GOP strategist and founder of the Lincoln Project, said on Twitter that he believes this change in tone is a polling strategy - the result of a realization that it may not be politically palpable to reject the vaccine whilst COVID-19 deaths and cases surge.
So far, less than half of the US population has had their COVID-19 vaccine, with 63,818 new cases recorded across the country on July 22 alone.
https://www.businessinsider.in/politics/world/news/at-the-recent-cpac-attendees-celebrated-the-failure-of-bidens-goal-to-vaccinate-70-of-adults-now-top-republicans-have-u-turned-urging-people-to-get-their-jab-/articleshow/84711323.cms
New Capitol Police Chief Manger takes charge amid turmoil at department
He’s assuming the top position at a time when much of the leadership team does not have the confidence of rank-and-file officers.
By NICHOLAS WU and KATHERINE TULLY-MCMANUS
07/23/2021 04:19 PM EDT
https://www.politico.com/news/2021/07/23/new-us-capitol-police-chief-500679
Capitol Police Chief Thomas Manger took the helm of the strained Capitol Police department Friday, pledging to improve retention amid an exodus of personnel after a tragic year.
He’s taking on a huge challenge, amid officer complaints about mental health, staff retention and safety. And his first day on the job, the new chief has not yet spoken to the union representing the thousands of rank-and-file officers who protect the Capitol.
In a brief phone interview with POLITICO, Manger said he had “not had a chance to talk to the union chairman yet,” though he looked forward to doing so.
Union chairman Gus Papathanasiou confirmed the two have not yet spoken.
He’s assuming the top position at a time when rank-and-file officers don't have much confidence in the leadership team, which has faced scalding criticism in the wake of the Jan. 6 attack from the USCP Inspector General, an outside analysis from Lt. Gen. Russel Honore and a Senate investigation. Two Capitol Police officers are set to testify next week before a House select committee about their experiences during the insurrection, which will likely mention leadership failures.
Capitol Police union officials say the force is quickly approaching a crisis both of bruised morale and dwindling numbers, as officers look to leave and a significant wave are soon eligible for retirement.
Manger will have to stem the tide of officers looking for the exit and also shape the department into a force that attracts new recruits.
“Retention strategies will be a big part of my efforts here to make sure that we can keep the good cops that are here, as well as add additional staffing if we're able to get more positions,” Manger said.
Three Capitol Police officers have died this year, marking one of the hardest stretches the department has faced in its history.
Many officers, even those who came through the first half of 2021 without physical injuries, are struggling with their mental health, and lawmakers and union leaders say the department needs to take mental health considerations seriously going forward.
Acting USCP Chief Yogananda Pittman and six other top officials received votes of no confidence from the department union in February regarding their ability to lead the force after the Jan. 6 insurrection. At least one, Chad Thomas, has since left the force.
Manger complimented Pittman on her six months leading the department in the midst of a crisis and her implementation of the scores of recommendations made by the many investigations and evaluations of the department in recent months.
“I'd certainly be pleased to have her remain on my leadership team,” Manger said.
His department also faces a potential cash crunch heading into next month. Facing increased overtime costs from responding to the worst attack on the Capitol since the War of 1812, the force may run out of money to pay officers’ salaries in August, though it might be able to take measures to reprogram existing funds to pay officers.
Manger hasn’t yet had a chance to dive into the USCP ledgers, but he projected confidence that the department would figure out how to handle the expected funding cliff in upcoming weeks.
“I'm confident that we'll work our way through this,” he said, when asked if the department would have to furlough officers if Congress doesn’t act to provide additional funding.
Top appropriators in the Senate are still working on an emergency spending bill that they hope can avert a devastating funding gap that they’ve warned could result in furloughs of officers. The department has already delayed the purchase of critical protective equipment, including ballistic helmets, respirators and "hard gear" used during civil disturbances.
Eighty officers were seriously injured during the insurrection, according to the Capitol Police union. Not all officers had the equipment they needed when rioters attacked the Capitol on Jan. 6, or the equipment was old and damaged.
The department has also delayed training sessions and wellness programs meant to address mental health following the Jan. 6 attack and the deadly vehicle attack on the Capitol in April.
A deal to relieve the department's financial stresses could come as soon as next week, according to Sen. Richard Shelby of Alabama, the top Republican on the Senate Appropriations Committee.
Manger is a veteran of Washington, D.C.-area police departments and has served in law enforcement for over 40 years. He spent 15 years as the police chief of Montgomery County, Md., and was also the police chief of Fairfax County, Va. After retiring from the Montgomery County department, Manger lobbied Congress on everything from drone legislation to gun control on behalf of the Major Cities Chiefs Association, a group representing police chiefs and sheriffs, though he ceased the work in May 2020.
He’s no stranger to politics. In a 2016 interview with Bethesda Magazine, he said he’d been inspired by the Washington Post’s coverage of the Watergate scandal to try to right injustices in the world. At the time, his father worked for then-Vice President Spiro Agnew, who later resigned from the position under allegations of corruption.
The Capitol Police have long been a notoriously opaque and secretive agency. They held no press conferences in the months following the Jan. 6 attack until an officer died during a car attack at the Capitol at the beginning of April.
When asked if he’d hold briefings with the press, Manger said “if there's something to talk about, yeah.”
The new chief says he is committed to keeping the public informed, a pledge that other USCP chiefs have made, but not necessarily kept. He pointed to his record in Maryland and Virginia as evidence that the department under his leadership could be more open.
“I do think that chiefs have a responsibility to let the public know what we're doing and why we're doing things,” said Manger. “And so I don't see myself changing in terms of my relationship with, with the press.”
https://www.politico.com/news/2021/07/23/new-us-capitol-police-chief-500679
David Fahrenthold @Fahrenthold We reported this last week, but here it is in black and white: formally, the Trump Organization is now controlled by a single person, Donald Trump Jr.
9:50 PM · Jul 23, 2021·Twitter Web App
THREAD
We reported this last week, but here it is in black and white: formally, the Trump Organization is now controlled by a single person, Donald Trump Jr. pic.twitter.com/ZaGDOigUYM
— David Fahrenthold (@Fahrenthold) July 23, 2021
Josh Campbell @joshscampbell·14h The new Capitol Police chief tells me he disagrees with those referring to the January 6th insurrection as "a normal tourist visit" or a "love-fest."
Asked if he's concerned about a repeat attacked fueled by election lies: "I'd be a fool to not be concerned about that."
VIDEO - https://twitter.com/i/status/1418720391124725766
12:51 AM · Jul 24, 2021·SnapStream TV Search
THREAD
https://twitter.com/joshscampbell/status/1418720391124725766
Unlikely partners Pelosi and Cheney team up for Jan. 6 probe
By LISA MASCARO
today
https://apnews.com/article/joe-biden-government-and-politics-b74ede7511c6b4ee949a24757264e38e
WASHINGTON (AP) — When Nancy Pelosi raised a glass to Liz Cheney, it was the most unlikely of toasts.
Democratic lawmakers and the Republican congresswoman were gathered in the House speaker’s office as the group prepared for the first session of the committee investigating the Jan. 6 insurrection at the Capitol.
Pelosi spoke of the “solemn responsibility” before them and raised her water glass to Cheney, a daughter of the former vice president and the sole Republican in the room.
“Let us salute Liz for her courage,” she said, according to a person familiar with the gathering who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the private meeting.
Politics often creates unlikely alliances, the odd-couple arrangements between would-be foes who drop their differences to engage on a common cause.
But the emerging partnership between Pelosi and Cheney is remarkable, if not astonishing, as the longtime political adversaries join forces to investigate what happened the day former President Donald Trump’s supporters stormed the Capitol.
Rarely has there been a meeting of the minds like this — two of the strongest women on Capitol Hill, partisans at opposite ends of the political divide — bonding over a shared belief that the truth about the insurrection should come out and those responsible held accountable. They believe no less than the functioning of America’s democracy is on the line.
“Nothing draws politicians together like a shared enemy,” said John Pitney, a former Republican staffer and professor of politics at Claremont McKenna College.
The committee will hold its first hearing next week, and the stakes of the Pelosi-Cheney alliance have never been higher. The panel will hear testimony from police officers who battled the Trump supporters that day at the Capitol. The officers have portrayed the hours-long siege as hardly a gathering of peaceful demonstrators, as some Republicans claim, but rather a violent mob trying to stop Congress from certifying Joe Biden’s election.
wback from the ranks and serious primary challenges for her reelectioAs their new partnership unfolds, the risks and rewards have an uneven flow. Pelosi benefits more politically from drawing Cheney to her side, giving the committee’s investigation the big-name bipartisan stamp it needs to avoid being viewed as a strictly political exercise.
For Cheney, who has already been booted from GOP leadership over her criticism of Trump, the political dangers are far greater. She was one of 10 House Republicans who voted to impeach Trump over the insurrection, and her willingness to speak out against his top ally, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, now leaves her isolated on Capitol Hill. She is facing blon back home.
“I’m horrified,” said Sen. Cynthia Lummis, a fellow Wyoming Republican, about Cheney’s actions.
Cheney, though, shows no signs of backing down on what she views as an existential fight not only for the party she and her family helped build, but also for the soul of the nation itself.
“The American people deserve to know what happened,” she said this week.
Standing on the steps of the Capitol, Cheney lambasted the rhetoric coming from McCarthy as “disgraceful” and supported Pelosi’s decision to block two of his appointees to the panel because of their alliance with Trump.
McCarthy has suggested Cheney might be closer now to Pelosi than her own party, and he withdrew all Republican participation in the committee.
Pelosi and Cheney are hardly fast friends.
Despite their long resumes in American politics, they never really talked to each other before this moment.
Pelosi won her first term as speaker during the George W. Bush administration, largely attacking the White House over the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the hawkish defense posture of then-Vice President Dick Cheney.
Liz Cheney took office in 2017 defending her father’s legacy, speaking boldly at one of her first news conferences in support of the enhanced interrogation technique of waterboarding that was decried as torture under his watch. During Trump’s first impeachment, she lacerated Pelosi’s intentions in speeches.
While both are political royalty, Pelosi and Cheney have operated in parallel political universes for much of their careers. A generation apart, they bring different styles to the job — Pelosi, the San Francisco liberal, Cheney, the Wyoming conservative. About the only thing they have in common is that both are mothers of five.
Yet when Pelosi called Cheney the morning after the vote to establish the Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the Capitol, both seemed to instantly grasp the historical gravity of the moment.
Pelosi thanked Cheney for her patriotism and invited her to join the panel — a stunning moment, the Democratic speaker appointing a Republican to a spot.
Cheney quickly accepted, responding that she was honored to serve, according to another person familiar with the conversation who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the private talks.
Behind closed doors, those involved in the committee’s work see in Cheney a serious and constructive member, hardly a Republican figurehead but a determined partner to what she has said must be a “sober” investigation. It was Cheney who elevated the idea of having former Republican Rep. Denver Riggleman of Virginia serve as an adviser to the committee, which is under consideration, one of the people said.
Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., the chair of the Jan. 6 panel, said while he and others didn’t know Cheney well, he found her to be “just like every other member that I have a relationship with. And I think that’s good. I just wish we had more of that kind of relationship in this institution. We’d be better off.”
For Cheney and Pelosi, the commission and its findings are likely to be defining aspects of their careers.
Pelosi led the House to twice impeach Trump and is determined to hold him accountable for his actions on Jan. 6 as she wraps what could be her final years as speaker.
Seven people died in the siege and its aftermath, including Trump supporter Ashli Babbitt, who was shot by police as she climbed through a broken window trying to access the House chamber. Three other Trump supporters in the mob died of natural causes. Police officer Brian Sicknick, who had battled the rioters, died the next day. Two other officers took their own lives.
Cheney, who warned her party in an op-ed that “history is watching” in this moment, vows to seek a fourth term but has an uncertain political future.
According to a new poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research, 60% of Americans say it’s very or extremely important that investigations continue to examine what happened during the Jan. 6 breach of the U.S. Capitol.
The poll, conducted July 15-19, showed 51% of Americans say they have an unfavorable opinion of Pelosi, though among Democrats it’s more favorable. For Cheney, the results show her more positively rated by Democrats than Republicans. Among Democrats, 47% say they have a favorable view of Cheney and 20% an unfavorable view, while among Republicans, 21% have a favorable view and 46% have an unfavorable one.
Pitney, the professor who worked for the elder Cheney decades ago in House leadership but left the Republican Party during the Trump era, said the Pelosi and Cheney bond will be one for history.
“It’s like one of those 1950s science-fiction movies where everyone unites over the alien invader,” he said. Pelosi and Cheney have “a legitimate shared interest in getting to the bottom of the insurrection.”
___
Associated Press writers Mary Clare Jalonick, Alan Fram, Emily Swanson and Hannah Fingerhut contributed to this report.
https://apnews.com/article/joe-biden-government-and-politics-b74ede7511c6b4ee949a24757264e38e
Rep. Luria’s pro-Navy, centrist identity may get Jan. 6 test
By WILL WEISSERT
today
https://apnews.com/article/joe-biden-government-and-politics-capitol-siege-navy-cead205203b284a27184b83a99620dbe
NORFOLK, Va. (AP) — When members of Congress head home to connect with their constituents, some hit tractor pulls. Others might stop by mom-and-pop stores. For Democratic Rep. Elaine Luria, whose Virginia district includes the world’s largest naval base, a recent swing included boarding an amphibious assault ship for a NATO ceremony and a speech by the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
“The congresswoman right here in front of me asks tough questions all the time, pins my ears against the wall on many, many topics,” Gen. Mark Milley told a recent audience of dignitaries aboard the USS Kearsarge, a reference to Luria’s grilling him on military readiness during committee meetings.
Luria’s next round of tough queries will concern a topic that is potentially even more sensitive for the military: why veterans were disproportionately involved in the Jan. 6 insurrection. A 20-year naval veteran and nuclear-trained surface warfare officer who commanded 400 crewmembers in the Persian Gulf, Luria is joining House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s special committee to investigate the mob attack on the U.S. Capitol.
“I bring some additional perspective,” Luria, 45, said in an interview from Naval Station Norfolk, where the Kearsarge and about 75 other ships are docked. She may end up being the lone member with military experience on the panel after most Republicans said they’d boycott following Pelosi’s objecting to the appointment of two GOP lawmakers, including a Navy veteran.
Luria noted the high number of online misinformation campaigns that targeted veterans and said many participants have since spoken about how politically and socially marginalized they felt.
“As long as we have a very large group of people in this country who feel like the only way for their voice to be heard is to show up and be violent, then there’s a risk of this happening again,” Luria said.
According to George Washington University’s Program on Extremism, 55 of the 547 people charged federally in connection with the insurrection, or 10%, have military experience — compared with a bit less than 7% of the population at large who are veterans. One of the most serious cases involves members of the Oath Keepers, an extremist group that recruits current and former members of the military and law enforcement, as well as first responders.
The attack has begun a military reckoning. The House Veterans Affairs Committee, on which Luria heads a subcommittee, has investigated recruitment of current and former military personnel by extremists. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin took the unusual step of ordering a militarywide “stand down” to allow troops time to discuss extremism that could be growing within their ranks.
“I think the military is a bureaucratic behemoth, so anything that happens, they’re not going to turn on a dime,” said Carolyn Gallaher, a professor of international service at American University in Washington who studies right-wing paramilitaries. “There are definitely people trying to do something. It’s going to depend on how powerful they are and how well they’re going to be able to get the levers of the military bureaucracy to do what they want to do.”
A deeper investigation of Jan. 6's events would seem a natural fit for Luria, whose district has 40% of its economy tied directly or indirectly to the Navy or the Defense Department. But the assignment could carry serious political risks for Luria’s chief congressional identity besides champion of all things Navy and national security — that of a centrist who has worked to bolster her bipartisan credentials and policy pursuits across the ideological spectrum.
“I think of myself as really moderate. I spent 20 years in the Navy. Didn’t think much about political party. I voted for the guy in ’16 who I ran against in ’18,” said Luria, referring to Republican Scott Taylor, a former Navy SEAL whose seat she won two cycles ago, then held in a 2020 rematch.
Many Republicans are dismissing the Jan. 6 committee as a political ploy, meaning the Democrats involved will face pressure to promote larger objectives pushed by their party’s leadership.
That may make staying moderate tough and mark a departure for Luria, who passed several pieces of legislation under former President Donald Trump, including providing tax relief to Gold Star families. But she also helped lead 2019 calls from House Democrats with national security backgrounds for an inquiry that helped Trump’s first impeachment come to fruition.
Luria is a cosponsor of progressive-championed efforts to raise the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour. She also has been outspokenly pro-Israel, even as her party’s left wing has criticized that country over the recent conflict in Gaza.
And she was the only House Democrat to oppose repealing Congress’ 2002 authorization for use of military force in Iraq. Luria says she opposes a repeal of a similar authorization for military force in Afghanistan, saying there hasn’t been enough discussion on what Congress should replace them with. She argues that is dangerous given the ongoing threat of foreign terrorism.
Proud House moderates are rare in an age where redistricting has reduced the number of seats whose territories aren’t hyper-ideological in favor of one party or the other. Luria’s 2nd Congressional District ranks No. 217 on the nonpartisan Cook Political Report’s partisan voting index, making it the median between the most-Republican and most-Democratic House seats in the nation — effectively the country’s swingiest swing district.
Including Virginia’s most populous city, Virginia Beach, as well as the rural Eastern Shore, Luria’s district voted for Trump in 2016 but shifted blue last November, as Joe Biden became the first Democratic presidential candidate since 1964 to carry Virginia Beach.
Luria nonetheless may face a tough reelection test as Democrats cling to their six-seat House majority. Taylor, the former congressman who lost to Luria, said such a long military career gives her ideological cover.
“If you’re a veteran and you’re a Democrat, you might be given a little more the benefit of the doubt. Like, you’re not going to be super far left,” Taylor said. “Never mind how you vote.”
During a Virginia Beach town hall hours after the Milley event, Luria was asked about the possibility the Capitol insurrection was a dry run for a larger attack. She cited the Jan. 6 committee, saying, “This is too important not to do anything.”
“I think we need to do this in an unbiased and nonpartisan way,” Luria said.
Luria has likened being on the Jan. 6 committee to her serving on an aircraft carrier launching simultaneous airstrikes on foreign terrorist targets in Iraq and Afghanistan, noting that then, “I didn’t turn to the sailor next to me operating a nuclear reactor and say: ‘Are you a Democrat? Are you a Republican?’”
She concedes that won’t stop critics from making her participation a potential line of 2022 attack, but shrugs off the possibility as common in today’s Congress.
“You can’t, like, help a preschool plant a tree,” she joked, “and not have somebody criticize it.”
https://apnews.com/article/joe-biden-government-and-politics-capitol-siege-navy-cead205203b284a27184b83a99620dbe
As Herschel Walker eyes Senate run, a turbulent past emerges
By BRIAN SLODYSKO, BILL BARROW and JAKE BLEIBERG
yesterday
https://apnews.com/article/lifestyle-sports-nfl-college-football-coronavirus-pandemic-5e2875eec11e93f9a3bf1fc859137ff8
ATLANTA (AP) — At first glance, Herschel Walker has a coveted political profile for a potential Senate candidate in Georgia.
He was a football hero at the University of Georgia before his long NFL career. He’s a business owner whose chicken products are distributed across the U.S. And he’s a Black conservative with backing from former President Donald Trump, a longtime friend.
But an Associated Press review of hundreds of pages of public records tied to Walker’s business ventures and his divorce, including many not previously reported, sheds new light on a turbulent personal history that could dog his Senate bid. The documents detail accusations that Walker repeatedly threatened his ex-wife’s life, exaggerated claims of financial success and alarmed business associates with unpredictable behavior.
Walker, now 59, has at times been open about his long struggle with mental illness, writing at length in a 2008 book about being diagnosed with dissociative identity disorder, once known as multiple personality disorder. But it’s unclear how he would discuss these events as a candidate.
Walker did not respond to requests for comment. Multiple emails went unanswered, although his executive assistant confirmed they were received. AP also sent emails and left a message with his long-time attorney, who did not respond.
The Georgia seat is a top target for Republicans as they try to take control of the U.S. Senate in next year’s midterm elections. Walker’s potential bid is a wildcard. He might easily win the GOP primary with Trump’s help, setting up a general election fight against Democrat Raphael Warnock, who became Georgia’s first Black senator after a special election in January. But Republican leaders in Washington and Georgia are concerned that Walker’s history might haunt his campaign.
Walker “certainly could bring a lot of things to the table,” Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp, a Republican, said in a recent interview. “But as others have mentioned, there’s also a lot of questions out there.”
Walker has yet to announce his intentions, but he has been consulting with political advisers in Georgia. A native of tiny Wrightsville, between Atlanta and Savannah, the former Dallas Cowboys star retired after the 1997 season and now resides in Texas. In a video posted to Twitter last month, he revs the engine of a sports car and says, “I’m getting ready, and we can run with the big dogs,” before revealing a Georgia license plate.
The Twitter tease intensified buzz about the potential for a celebrity candidate. But it also helped surface details about Walker’s troubled past, many first disclosed by Walker himself in his 2008 book, “Breaking Free.”
His account details years of struggles and an eventual diagnosis in 2001. Walker describes himself dealing with as many as a dozen personalities — or “alters” — that he had constructed as a defense against bullying he suffered as a stuttering, overweight child.
In an AP interview at the time, Walker emphasized his purpose was to help others with similar disorders. “People say, ‘Herschel is just trying to write something to make money,’” he said. “I say, ‘Guys, why would I write something like this to make money?’”
The National Alliance on Mental Illness describes dissociative identity disorder as “alternating between multiple identities,” leaving a person with “gaps in memory of everyday events.” It notes men with the disorder “exhibit more violent behavior rather than amnesia.”
In his book, Walker acknowledges violent urges. He writes that he played Russian roulette and recounts sitting at his kitchen table in 1991 pointing a gun, loaded with a single bullet, at his head. “I wasn’t suicidal,” Walker explained, but “just looked at mortality as the ultimate challenge.”
The book is framed as a turnaround story. He describes it as cathartic and casts himself as someone on the path to “integration” because of therapy and his Christian faith.
A watershed moment, he writes, came in February 2001, when he drove around suburban Dallas, hunting for a man who he said was avoiding his calls after being days late delivering a car Walker had purchased.
“The logical side of me knew that what I was thinking of doing to this man — murdering him for messing up my schedule — wasn’t a viable alternative,” Walker wrote. “But another side of me was so angry that all I could think was how satisfying it would feel to step out of the car, pull out the gun, slip off the safety, and squeeze the trigger.”
Ultimately, Walker wrote, he had a change of heart after seeing a “SMILE. JESUS LOVES YOU” bumper sticker on the man’s car-hauling truck. He decided to seek professional help.
“I’d been running for most of life, from what only I really knew but seldom talked about. It was time to stop running and face some harsh realities,” he wrote.
Walker’s threatening behavior continued well after the 2001 revelation, according to court records obtained by AP that have not previously been reported.
Four years later, in December 2005, Cindy Grossman, Walker’s ex-wife, secured a protective order against him, alleging violent and controlling behavior.
Grossman has said she was long a victim of Walker’s impulses. When his book was released, she told ABC News that at one point during their marriage, her husband pointed a pistol at her head and said, “I’m going to blow your f’ing brains out.” She filed for divorce in 2001, citing “physically abusive and extremely threatening behavior.”
In seeking protection from a judge in Dallas County, Grossman filed an affidavit from her sister, which described Walker as unwilling to accept that his former wife had begun dating another man.
Grossman told the court she got calls during that period from her sister and father, both of whom had been contacted by Walker. He told family members that he would kill her and her new boyfriend, according to Maria Tsettos, Cindy Grossman’s sister.
In an affidavit, Tsettos claimed Walker once called looking for his ex-wife while she was out with her boyfriend. Tsettos took the call and said Walker became “very threatening” when told of Grossman’s whereabouts. In Tsettos’ recollection, Walker “stated unequivocally that he was going to shoot my sister Cindy and her boyfriend in the head.”
On another occasion, Tsettos said she talked to Walker “at length” after he’d reached out to her online. He “expressed to me that he was frustrated with (Cindy) and that he felt like he had ‘had enough’ and that he wanted to ‘blow their f------ heads off,’” she recalled of the Dec. 9, 2005, exchange.
Two days later he called again and told Tsettos that he possessed a gun and planned that day to act on his threats, which he repeated in graphic language, she said.
Later that day, Walker confronted his ex-wife outside a mall when she was picking up their son from a party, according to her petition for a protective order.
In her account, she said Walker “slowly drove by in his vehicle, pointed his finger at (her) and traced (her) with his finger as he drove.”
When officers in Irving, Texas, contacted Walker, he denied that he’d me the threats, according to a police report the AP obtained through a public recadords request. But the sister’s account was concerning enough to police that they took for “safe keeping” a gun Walker had on the floor of his car, the report states.
A judge agreed, finding “good cause” to issue a protective order. He also barred Walker from possessing guns for a period of time.
Grossman, her divorce lawyer and Tsettos did not respond to multiple requests for comment from the AP.
Walker’s unpredictable behavior has carried into his chicken business, now known as Renaissance Man Food Services, according to court filings. His book itself was a shock.
The primary distributor of his products considered severing their relationship after Walker’s book came out. Kristin Caffey, then a poultry manager for the food distributor Sysco, said the revelations in the book, as well as Walker’s effort to publicize it, created “havoc” for the company.
“We weren’t aware that it was coming out, and we were blindsided,” Caffey, who worked directly with Walker, said in a 2019 deposition. “We had all kinds of people calling in about it, and we didn’t have answers to it,” she added, saying, “it was problematic for us being engaged with him at the time.”
Ultimately, the company chose to stick with Walker after the negative publicity died down, Caffey said.
More recently, Walker has made outsize claims about his business record. In repeated media interviews, Walker claimed his company employed hundreds of people, included a chicken processing division in Arkansas and grossed $70 million to $80 million annually in sales.
However, when the company applied for a federal Paycheck Protection Program loan last year, it reported just eight employees. (It received about $182,000 in COVID-19 aid.)
In a recent court case, Walker gave far more modest revenue figures, indicating that the company averaged about $1.5 million a year in profit from 2008 to 2017. Meanwhile, Walker’s business associates testified in the same case that he doesn’t own chicken processing plants, as he claims. Instead, they described him as a licensing partner who lends his name to the enterprise — not unlike the kind of deals his friend Donald Trump has used to expand his brand for decades.
A wrongful termination lawsuit filed in 2018 by a friend and former manager of Walker’s company created an extensive record of Walker’s leadership. Although a judge ruled against the employee, John Staples, emails, documents and depositions in the case present Walker as a temperamental and unreliable business partner.
Walker persistently complained that his business partners were trying to cheat him out of money, the documents say. And they indicate he repeatedly fought with his associates over his focus on branching into frozen waffles, which he believed would be a future moneymaker for the company.
In 2017, an executive for the company that supplied chicken to Walker sent a concerned email, inquiring about $7,200 in expenses he said Walker had incorrectly tried to bill the company from his efforts to secure the waffle deal. The executive, now Simmons Foods Chief Operating Officer and President David Jackson, also cited “concerning comments” he’d heard that “raise questions about how the business is being operated.” The email does not detail the comments that raised alarms.
Staples did not respond to requests for comment. Jackson’s office did not make him available for comment, and a message left with a spokesperson for Simmons Foods was not returned.
In a deposition, Walker dismissed Staples as a “puppy.”
“I’m a big dog. I don’t play with puppies,” Walker said.
Since then, another business venture tied to Walker could also face trouble.
Last month, a Texas bank sued Walker and another business partner over an unpaid $200,000 debt secured to help finance a pizza restaurant. According to court filings, Walker personally guaranteed the loan.
Walker has not yet filed his response to the suit.
___
Slodysko reported from Washington; Bleiberg reported from Dallas.
https://apnews.com/article/lifestyle-sports-nfl-college-football-coronavirus-pandemic-5e2875eec11e93f9a3bf1fc859137ff8
One of the Most Prolific Ransomware Viruses Can Now Be Unlocked Easily
ANDREW HEINZMAN
@andrew_andrew__
JUL 23, 2021, 12:28 PM EDT | 1 min read
https://www.reviewgeek.com/93021/one-of-the-most-prolific-ransomware-viruses-can-now-be-unlocked-easily/
Kaseya, an IT management software firm, says that it’s obtained the REvil universal decryption key through a “trusted third party.” This should help Kaseya recover data from a July 4th REvil ransomware attack that affected over 1,500 businesses.
REvil is one of several ransomware groups operating out of Eastern Europe. It carried out a supply chain ransomware attack on Kaseya by exploiting a vulnerability in the company’s VSA product—a platform that Kaseya uses to distribute software to its customers. Kaseya claims that it was days away from patching this vulnerability when the hack occurred.
In the end, REvil’s ransomware affected 60 of Kaseya’s customers and over 1,500 downstream networks. The ransomware group demanded $70 million in exchange for a universal decrypter tool, though til this point, Kaseya has avoided such a deal.
So how did Kaseya get the REvil universal decryption key? It’s possible, though unlikely, that the IT firm forked over $70 million to the REvil group. A more plausible explanation is that REvil or a third party, possibly the White House or Kremlin, handed the key to Kaseya for free.
Of course, this is just speculation. But several of REvil’s dark web sites disappeared last week following a phone call between President Biden and Vladimir Putin. In a press conference on Friday, July 9th, the president claimed that he “made it very clear to [Putin] that the United States expects, when a ransomware operation is coming from their soil even though it’s not, not, sponsored by the state, that we expect them to act.”
The president also confirmed that there would be consequences for future attacks, and that the U.S. is justified in targeting servers that host ransomware operations.
Regardless of how Kaseya got its hands on the REvil decrypter, the software firm can now unlock data that businesses lost in the July 4th ransomware attack (and other REvil attacks). Hopefully, this breakthrough will reduce the number of ransomware attacks that occur in the future.
Source: The Guardian via ZDNet
https://www.reviewgeek.com/93021/one-of-the-most-prolific-ransomware-viruses-can-now-be-unlocked-easily/
Training video in alleged kidnapping plot of Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer released
By Chuck Goudie and Barb Markoff, Christine Tressel and Ross Weidner
Thursday, July 22, 2021 8:10PM
https://abc7chicago.com/michigan-governor-gretchen-whitmer-kidnapping-plot-militia/10904641/
Video obtained by the I-Team shows men in live assault weapons training, allegedly preparing for a violent assault on the Michigan governor's summer home.
VIDEO
CHICAGO (WLS) -- New video obtained tonight by the ABC7 I-Team shows accused Michigan militiamen in live-fire training, according to federal prosecutors. Prosecutors have charged the men in an alleged scheme to kidnap and possibly kill Michigan governor Gretchen Whitmer.
Front and center in the alleged plot to kidnap Gov. Whitmer at gunpoint was a man named Barry Croft, who is seen carrying one flag of the Boogaloo Bois, a far-right anti-government movement. Croft is in photos and on video obtained by the I-Team that prosecutors say shows him and other in live assault weapons training-preparing for a violent assault on the Michigan governor's summer home.
Prosecutors say the video was taken during a militia live-fire exercise in southern Wisconsin. According to the case's latest court filing, federal agents had enlisted twelve confidential informants to provide information about Barry Croft and other members of the Wolverine Watchmen, a militia group that allegedly had a plan in place last year to kidnap and potentially kill the Michigan governor.
RELATED: Disturbing new details in alleged plot to kidnap Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer
https://abc7chicago.com/disturbing-new-details-in-alleged-plot-to-kidnap-michigan-governor/8079861/
The 14 men charged in a plot to kidnap Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer had far more violent plans than just a kidnapping according to federal and state authorities.
Digital messages allegedly involving Croft, also provided today to the I-Team, refer to a bridge near the governor's vacation home that authorities say the militiamen scouted, photographed and planned to blow up during their commando attack. All of this information was presented at Croft's detention hearing last January but public release was held up by defense concerns that these images would poison a prospective jury pool.
"It's a legitimate claim because it's true, it can make it more difficult to pick a fair jury, but the reality of it is it's rarely enough to, to require a transfer of venue from whatever location the trial would be pending into somewhere else," said Former Chicago federal prosecutor Gil Soffer. Soffer, ABC7's legal analyst, tonight says these live fire training videos may make it more difficult to defend Croft and the others; but the real damage could come from a dozen informants.
RELATED: 13 charged in plot to kidnap Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer: FBI
https://abc7chicago.com/gretchen-whitmer-michigan-governor-wolverine-watchmen-gov/6867073/
"You might see a number of that high in a sprawling narcotics conspiracy that stretches from coast to coast and beyond. That's a pretty high number in a case like this it really reflects I think how deeply the government has been diving into this investigation to try to make these cases," Soffer told the I-Team.
Before the FBI launched such a deep investigation, the Wolverine Watchmen were not even considered a violent threat according to attorneys for the defendants. In the latest defense filing tonight they say the group was not engaged in illegal conduct of any sort. An attorney for Croft didn't respond to an I-Team request for comment but told our ABC-Detroit station that they "are looking forward to presenting all of the facts to a jury this fall."
https://abc7chicago.com/michigan-governor-gretchen-whitmer-kidnapping-plot-militia/10904641/
Why America Isn’t Getting the Jan. 6 Investigation It Needs
Reaching any kind of national consensus about what happened that day now feels like as much of a fantasy as any false-flag conspiracy theory.
By Lisa Lerer
July 24, 2021, 5:00 a.m. ET
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/24/us/politics/capitol-riot-investigation.html
Unlike some of my colleagues, I wasn’t in the Capitol on Jan. 6, huddling in the hallways as a violent mob rampaged through the building.
Instead, like many of you, I was transfixed by the horrifying images on my television. In the days and months that followed, more disturbing footage would come out — videos of beatings and rioting, photographs of broken glass and blood. Since then, 20 people have pleaded guilty to charges related to their involvement in that deadly day.
What happened on Jan. 6 is no mystery; we all saw it on our screens. And yet more than six months later, we don’t all see it the same way.
“It was the media that went out and pushed this whole narrative about ‘this was an insurrection’ and ‘this was just way too out of hand’ and ‘these are not patriots,’” said Maura, who spoke in a recent focus group of Trump supporters from Arizona. Calling it a largely “peaceful” day, she said: “Nothing could be further from the truth. It was just a bunch of people who were overexuberant.”
“One hundred percent orchestrated by antifa and the left; one hundred percent,” said Annette, another Trump supporter. “There were a lot of people who went down for the right reasons, but not the ones who caused the riots. Not the ones who caused violence.”
Jeff saw an even more nefarious plot: “It goes a lot deeper than antifa,” he said. “I think it goes to George Soros and all the people in government that are bought and part of the deep state. They were trying to set up a false-flag event.”
“I don’t even really think about it much,” Kurt said. “It wasn’t an insurrection. Washington, D.C., on Jan. 6 was a protest.”
I agreed to identify these Trump supporters in Arizona by only their first names so I could listen in to the focus group. It was moderated by Sarah Longwell for the Republican Accountability Project, which conducted voter interviews throughout the Trump administration.
Polling shows that these attitudes are widely shared throughout the Republican Party. Less than four in 10 people who voted for Donald J. Trump in 2020 said they strongly disapproved of the actions taken by people who forced their way into the Capitol, compared with 60 percent of all Americans, according to new polling released this past week by CBS News. Narrow majorities of Trump voters said they would describe the attack as an example of “patriotism” or “defending freedom.” A larger share of Americans called it an effort to overthrow the government, an attempt to overturn the election or an insurrection.
Some of this sentiment reflects how conservative media has covered — or, perhaps, not covered — the siege. The events of Jan. 6 have been mentioned about four times as often on CNN and MSNBC as on Fox News, according to an analysis of television news clips. And it certainly reflects how dominant partisanship has become in our politics.
But these beliefs also show how difficult it will be for Speaker Nancy Pelosi to persuade large parts of the country that her select committee is conducting a truthful and nonpartisan investigation into the Jan. 6 riot. Republicans in Congress can opt out of participating in a bipartisan investigation into one of the most shocking events in the history of American politics with little fear of backlash from their base. In fact, many of their voters don’t want to hear much about the Jan. 6 attack at all.
Others are clearly looking for their leaders to defend rioters’ actions that day. That’s partly why Ms. Pelosi rejected two of Representative Kevin McCarthy’s picks for the committee, prompting Mr. McCarthy, the minority leader, to pull all of his Republican nominations from the panel.
Those two selections, Representatives Jim Banks of Indiana and Jim Jordan of Ohio, had openly expressed hostility to the mission of the committee and trafficked in revisionist history about the siege, and they may be material witnesses to the events leading up to that day.
Would keeping Mr. Jordan and Mr. Banks on the committee have helped build credibility for the effort among Republican voters? That seems unlikely, given that both had already broadcast their intention to undermine the effort.
Ms. Pelosi can still argue that her panel is bipartisan. It will include Representative Liz Cheney, a Wyoming Republican, and reports suggest that she could add Representative Adam Kinzinger of Illinois, also a Republican. Both lawmakers are reviled by their party’s base for attacking Mr. Trump’s effort to overturn the election and are unlikely to be seen as credible messengers by many Republicans.
Mr. McCarthy, meanwhile, has vowed to conduct his own investigation.
So after months of negotiation, the end result is likely to be two panels, one led by Democrats and the other by Republicans. It’s a situation that encapsulates our divided political moment: Whatever the process, the testimony or the findings, the results of either committee are unlikely to be trusted by voters from the opposing party. And reaching any kind of national consensus about what happened on that awful day feels like as much of a fantasy as any false-flag conspiracy theory.
A deeply fractured America may be getting the investigations into the Jan. 6 attack that it deserves. But they’re certainly not the ones the country needs.
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/24/us/politics/capitol-riot-investigation.html
Prof. Christina Pagel @chrischirp See also this study in macaques with covid showing all developed what are called Lewy bodies associated with Parkinson's.
1918 flu also associated with Parkinson's years later.
We are risking *a lot* by ignoring mass infection.
Study: SARS-CoV-2 infection causes brain inflammation and Lewy bodies in the macaque model. Lewy bodies observed in brains of ALL rhesus macaques after asymptomatic infection
— Joanna Teglund🕊️🍉Human life is sacred😷 (@JoannaTeglund) July 20, 2021
⚠️warning for potential long-term neurological effects after SARS-CoV-2 infectionhttps://t.co/EmUtO5oFNO pic.twitter.com/F35AkixEhV
LONG COVID THREAD:
— Prof. Christina Pagel (@chrischirp) July 23, 2021
The people running the BBC Horizon "Great British Intelligence Test" challenge on over 80,000 people took the opportunity to see if they could detect any differences by whether people had had covid or not...
See also this study in macaques with covid showing all developed what are called Lewy bodies associated with Parkinson's.
— Prof. Christina Pagel (@chrischirp) July 24, 2021
1918 flu also associated with Parkinson's years later.
We are risking *a lot* by ignoring mass infection.https://t.co/FIFFLsOvru https://t.co/TftL0c5ibW
Cognitive deficits in people who have recovered from COVID-19
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/eclinm/article/PIIS2589-5370(21)00324-2/fulltext#seccesectitle0013
Abstract
Background
There is growing concern about possible cognitive consequences of COVID-19, with reports of ‘Long COVID’ symptoms persisting into the chronic phase and case studies revealing neurological problems in severely affected patients. However, there is little information regarding the nature and broader prevalence of cognitive problems post-infection or across the full spread of disease severity.
Methods
We sought to confirm whether there was an association between cross-sectional cognitive performance data from 81,337 participants who between January and December 2020 undertook a clinically validated web-optimized assessment as part of the Great British Intelligence Test, and questionnaire items capturing self-report of suspected and confirmed COVID-19 infection and respiratory symptoms.
Findings
People who had recovered from COVID-19, including those no longer reporting symptoms, exhibited significant cognitive deficits versus controls when controlling for age, gender, education level, income, racial-ethnic group, pre-existing medical disorders, tiredness, depression and anxiety. The deficits were of substantial effect size for people who had been hospitalised (N = 192), but also for non-hospitalised cases who had biological confirmation of COVID-19 infection (N = 326). Analysing markers of premorbid intelligence did not support these differences being present prior to infection. Finer grained analysis of performance across sub-tests supported the hypothesis that COVID-19 has a multi-domain impact on human cognition.
Interpretation
Interpretation. These results accord with reports of ‘Long Covid’ cognitive symptoms that persist into the early-chronic phase. They should act as a clarion call for further research with longitudinal and neuroimaging cohorts to plot recovery trajectories and identify the biological basis of cognitive deficits in SARS-COV-2 survivors.
Funding
Funding. AH is supported by the UK Dementia Research Institute Care Research and Technology Centre and Biomedical Research Centre at Imperial College London. WT is supported by the EPSRC Centre for Doctoral Training in Neurotechnology. SRC is funded by a Wellcome Trust Clinical Fellowship 110,049/Z/15/Z. JMB is supported by Medical Research Council (MR/N013700/1). MAM, SCRW and PJH are, in part, supported by the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) Biomedical Research Centre at South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust and King's College London
Keywords
COVID-19
Long covid
Cognition
Deficits
Online assessment
Attention
Memory
Reasoning
Planning
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/eclinm/article/PIIS2589-5370(21)00324-2/fulltext#seccesectitle0013
Carole Cadwalladr @carolecadwalla ·58m Tweeted this last night, tweeting it again. Incredibly disturbing new Lancet paper on post-Covid cognitive deficits. Seen across board but for those hospitalised = ‘worse than stroke’. We are in midst of population-wide experiment in which (many of us) are unwilling participants
Prof. Christina Pagel
@chrischirp
· 12h
LONG COVID THREAD:
The people running the BBC Horizon "Great British Intelligence Test" challenge on over 80,000 people took the opportunity to see if they could detect any differences by whether people had had covid or not...
LONG COVID THREAD:
— Prof. Christina Pagel (@chrischirp) July 23, 2021
The people running the BBC Horizon "Great British Intelligence Test" challenge on over 80,000 people took the opportunity to see if they could detect any differences by whether people had had covid or not...
Tweeted this last night, tweeting it again. Incredibly disturbing new Lancet paper on post-Covid cognitive deficits. Seen across board but for those hospitalised = ‘worse than stroke’. We are in midst of population-wide experiment in which (many of us) are unwilling participants https://t.co/oeHChHaqQ3
— Carole Cadwalladr (@carolecadwalla) July 24, 2021
Scott MacFarlane @MacFarlaneNews Former US Army Sgt. Landon Copeland is charged with assaulting police at Capitol on Jan 6
From his jailhouse, we spoke about the case by phone.... he has theories ===>
VIDEO
Former US Army Sgt. Landon Copeland is charged with assaulting police at Capitol on Jan 6
— Scott MacFarlane (@MacFarlaneNews) July 23, 2021
From his jailhouse, we spoke about the case by phone.... he has theories ===> pic.twitter.com/qdfkecHoMM
Former US Army Sgt. Landon Copeland is charged with assaulting police at Capitol on Jan 6
— Scott MacFarlane (@MacFarlaneNews) July 23, 2021
From his jailhouse, we spoke about the case by phone.... he has theories ===> pic.twitter.com/qdfkecHoMM
Jeremy Duda @jeremyduda Bennett leaked that a partial recount of the number of ballots tracked with the county’s total. Cyber Ninjas came up with a different number than the county, and if they’re wrong it’ll raise serious doubts about the results of their months-long recount.
Senate liaison Ken Bennett blocked from entering Arizona election audit as tension with contractors boils over
MARY JO PITZL , JEN FIFIELD | Arizona Republic
9 hours ago
https://eu.azcentral.com/story/news/politics/arizona/2021/07/23/ken-bennett-senate-liaison-blocked-arizona-election-audit/8058494002/
2:53 AM · Jul 24, 2021·Twitter for iPhone
THREAD
Bennett leaked that a partial recount of the number of ballots tracked with the county’s total. Cyber Ninjas came up with a different number than the county, and if they’re wrong it’ll raise serious doubts about the results of their months-long recount. https://t.co/NYl4kQeO0I
— Jeremy Duda (@jeremyduda) July 24, 2021
‘The air is toxic’: how an idyllic California lake became a nightmare
The shrinking Salton Sea was once a tourist destination. Now it’s home to dangerous algal blooms, endless dust and noxious air
by Maanvi Singh in Calipatria and Salton City
Sat 24 Jul 2021 01.00 EDT
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/jul/23/salton-sea-california-lake-dust-drought-climate
Just to be safe, Noemí Vázquez keeps inhalers in almost every room of her house. She stashes them in her kitchen cupboard, a couple in her purse, one in the bathroom, and, of course, by her bedside.
And then there’s the large, black Puma knapsack where she keeps her nebulizer, several inhalers, and the montelukast pills she takes to treat her wheezing. Her four-year-old granddaughter has her own asthma kit – a neon pink and purple Trolls-themed lunch box that holds a small, child-sized nebulizer and a few inhalers. “She’s smart! She knows: this is her bag,” Vázquez said.
Asthma and allergies are a part of life here in Imperial county, California. A way of life, even, in a region shrouded by a grey-beige dust that haunts Vázquez’ days and nightmares. A few years ago, when the air was particularly thick, she awoke in the night unable to speak or breathe. Her skin was purple. “If my husband wasn’t sleeping next to me that night, I would have passed away,” she said. “I think about all those people who don’t have anyone sleeping next to them. About the kids who don’t know how to talk yet.”
Here, in California’s far south-east, there’s no escaping the noxious air. The haze that hovers over Imperial is a peculiar blend – incorporating pesticide plumes, exhaust fumes, factory emissions, and something curious: vaporized dust rising from the nearby Salton Sea.
The glimmering blue basin that stretches across the desert is either starkly beautiful or grotesque – depending on whom you ask. Formed more than a century ago by a breached canal, the Salton Sea is many things. It is California’s largest lake, an ecological oasis, a former mecca for famous vacationers, and a muddy sink for agricultural runoff. For decades, it has been shrinking, exposing a powdery arsenic-, selenium- and DDT-laced shoreline that wafts into the atmosphere.
Near the sea, hospitalization rates for children with asthma are double the state average, and one in five kids have the condition. Many of the mostly Mexican American farm workers and outdoor laborers who live and work in Imperial, one of the state’s poorest counties, breathe in a dangerous mix of Salton Sea dust and pesticide on a daily basis as well. In Calipatria, Brawley and Westmorland and other towns around the lake, adult asthma rates are among the highest in the state.
It can be a punishing place to live, said Amor García, 31, who moved to the area four years ago. “No one warned us it would be so bad for our health,” she said. On muggy mid-summer days, temperatures here creep up to 120F and the desert streams with a brown vapor. The hot, grimy air clings to hair and creeps under fingernails. The sea steams up a sulfurous stench.
García worries that in the coming years, if nothing is done to address the pollution crisis, the area will become almost unlivable. An unprecedented drought amplified by the climate crisis and growing demand for water in southern California are both hastening the Salton Sea’s decline. Researchers predict that the sea could lose nearly three quarters of its volume by 2030. By some estimates, the declining water level could expose an additional 1000,000 acres of playa.
“All that dust that gets exposed would mean even more breathing problems and more allergies and asthma for the people who live here,” said Shohreh Farzan, an environmental epidemiologist at the University of Southern California who has been analyzing how the dust around the Salton Sea is affecting children.
A resort for celebrities and presidents
The Salton Sea was formed in 1905 when the Colorado River breached an irrigation canal and filled up an ancient basin in the desert, creating an oasis for migratory shorebirds and, by the middle of the 20th century, for celebrities and dignitaries. Developers dotted the shores with palm trees and built up luxury resorts around its perimeter, and the area became a destination for Frank Sinatra, Bing Crosby and the Beach Boys. President Dwight Eisenhower used to come by the golf course.
...
MUCH MORE
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/jul/23/salton-sea-california-lake-dust-drought-climate
Officials who are US allies among targets of NSO malware, says WhatsApp chief
Will Cathcart claims government officials around the world among 1,400 WhatsApp users targeted in 2019
Stephanie Kirchgaessner in Washington
@skirchy
Sat 24 Jul 2021 05.00 EDT
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2021/jul/24/officials-who-are-us-allies-among-targets-of-nso-malware-says-whatsapp-chief?utm_term=Autofeed&CMP=twt_b-gdnnews&utm_medium=Social&utm_source=Twitter#Echobox=1627118915
Senior government officials around the world – including individuals in high national security positions who are “allies of the US” – were targeted by governments with NSO Group spyware in a 2019 attack against 1,400 WhatsApp users, according to the messaging app’s chief executive.
Will Cathcart disclosed the new details about individuals who were targeted in the attack after revelations this week by the Pegasus project, a collaboration of 17 media organisations which investigated NSO, the Israeli company that sells its powerful surveillance software to government clients around the world.
Cathcart said that he saw parallels between the attack against WhatsApp users in 2019 – which is now the subject of a lawsuit brought by WhatsApp against NSO – and reports about a massive data leak that are at the centre of the Pegasus project.
Quick Guide
What is in the Pegasus project data?
Show
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The leak contained tens of thousands of phone numbers of individuals who are believed to have been selected as candidates for possible surveillance by clients of NSO, including heads of state such as the French president, Emmanuel Macron, government ministers, diplomats, activists, journalists, human rights defenders, and lawyers.
It includes some people whose phones showed infection or traces of NSO’s Pegasus spyware, according to examinations of a sample of the devices conducted by Amnesty International’s security lab.
“The reporting matches what we saw in the attack we defeated two years ago, it is very consistent with what we were loud about then,” Cathcart said in an interview with the Guardian. In addition to the “senior government officials”, WhatsApp found that journalists and human rights activists were targeted in the 2019 attack against its users. Many of the targets in the WhatsApp case, he said, had “no business being under surveillance in any way, shape, or form”.
“This should be a wake up call for security on the internet … mobile phones are either safe for everyone or they are not safe for everyone.”
When NSO’s Pegasus spyware infects a phone, government clients who use it can gain access to an individual’s phone conversations, messages, photos and location, as well as turn the phone into a portable listening device by manipulating its recorder.
The leak contains a list of more than 50,000 phone numbers that, it is believed, have been identified as those of people of interest by clients of NSO since 2016.
The appearance of a number on the leaked list that was accessed by the Pegasus project does not mean it was subject to an attempted or successful hack. NSO said Macron was not a “target” of any of its customers, meaning the company denies there was any attempted or successful Pegasus infection of his phone.
NSO has also said the data has “no relevance” to the company, and has rejected the reporting by the Pegasus project as “full of wrong assumptions and uncorroborated theories”. It denied that the leaked data represented those targeted for surveillance by the Pegasus software. NSO has called the 50,000 number exaggerated and said it was too large to represent individuals targeted by Pegasus.
But Cathcart questioned NSO’s claim that the figure was in itself “exaggerated”, saying that WhatsApp had recorded an attack against 1,400 users over a two-week period in 2019.
“That tells us that over a longer period of time, over a multi-year period of time, the numbers of people being attacked are very high,” he said. “That’s why we felt it was so important to raise the concern around this.”
When WhatsApp says it believes its users were “targeted”, it means the company has evidence that an NSO server attempted to install malware on a user’s device.
NSO has declined to give specific details about its customers and the people they target. However, a source has claimed the average number of annual targets per customer was 112.
When WhatsApp announced two years ago that users had been targeted by the NSO malware, it said it had found that about 100 of 1,400 targets were members of civil society – journalists, human rights defenders and activists. The users were targeted through a WhatsApp vulnerability that was later fixed.
Cathcart said he had discussed the 2019 attacks against WhatsApp users with governments all around the world. He praised recent moves by Microsoft and others in the technology industry who are speaking out about the dangers of malware, and called on Apple – whose phones are vulnerable to malware infections – to adopt their approach.
“I hope that Apple will start taking that approach too. Be loud, join in. It’s not enough to say, most of our users don’t need to worry about this. It’s not enough to say ‘oh this is only thousands or tens of thousands of victims’,” he said.
“If this is affecting journalists all around the world, this is affecting human rights defenders all around the world, that affects us all. And if anyone’s phone is not secured that means everyone’s phone is not secure.”
He also called on governments to help create accountability for spyware makers.
“NSO Group claims that a large number of governments are buying their software, that means those governments, even if their use of it is more controlled, those governments are funding this. Should they stop? Should there be a discussion about which governments were paying for this software?”
WhatsApp launched its lawsuit against NSO in late 2019, claiming that the Israeli company was responsible for sending malware to WhatsApp users phones. A judge in the case pointed out that the underlying facts in the case – that malicious code owned by NSO was sent through WhatsApp’s service – did not appear to be disputed. Instead, the lawsuit has revolved around whether NSO’s “sovereign customers” were to blame, or the company itself.
NSO has argued that it ought to be immune to the suit because its clients are foreign governments. It has said its clients are contractually obliged to use Pegasus to target criminals and that it investigates allegations of abuse. It said it has no insight into how government clients use the spyware or who they target, unless the company requests an investigation into allegations of wrongdoing.
An NSO spokesperson said: “We are doing our best to help creating a safer world. Does Mr Cathcart have other alternatives that enable law enforcement and intelligence agencies to legally detect and prevent malicious acts of pedophiles, terrorists and criminals using end-to-end encryption platforms? If so, we would be happy to hear.”
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2021/jul/24/officials-who-are-us-allies-among-targets-of-nso-malware-says-whatsapp-chief?utm_term=Autofeed&CMP=twt_b-gdnnews&utm_medium=Social&utm_source=Twitter#Echobox=1627118915
Have Trump voters come down with a serious case of Snowflake Syndrome?
Opinion by Greg Sargent
Columnist
Yesterday at 10:22 a.m. EDT
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/07/23/have-trump-voters-come-down-with-serious-case-snowflake-syndrome/
To hear some pundits and Republicans tell it, millions of people across the country who voted for Donald Trump are suffering from an affliction that you might call “Snowflake Syndrome.”
On numerous fronts in our politics — from voting rights to covid-19 to the legacy of Jan. 6 — we’re being told these voters are afflicted with a deeply fragile belief system that must be carefully ministered to and humored to an extraordinary degree.
We must pass voting restrictions everywhere to assuage these voters’ “belief” that the 2020 election was highly dubious or fraudulent. We must not argue too aggressively for coronavirus vaccines, lest they feel shamed and retreat into their anti-vax epistemological shells.
And we must allow Republicans to appoint some of the most deranged promoters of the stolen election myth to a committee examining the insurrection so they’ll feel like its findings are credible.
To be clear, showing empathy with voters on the other side is of course something we should generally strive for. And there are surely ways to appeal to voters with doubts about 2020 or vaccines that are more constructive than others.
But in many ways, this story line is deeply insulting to those voters themselves and is being abused for all manner of bad-faith purposes. Several new developments underscore this perfectly.
Trickery in Texas
In Texas, Republican state legislators are pushing a new bill to require an audit of the 2020 results, one conducted by a third party appointed by top Republicans.
But tellingly, as The Post reports, the audit would be required only for the largest counties — virtually all of which backed President Biden.
This is being justified by the notion that Republican voters no longer “believe in their election system,” as its chief sponsor, Republican state Rep. Steve Toth, put it.
But why audit just in larger counties? Behold this remarkable answer:
- While Toth said he would support a statewide effort, he also argued the undertaking would be too expensive and time-consuming. Asked if he would consider including some smaller counties, Toth replied, “What’s the point? I mean, all the small counties are red.”
Republican voters don’t lack confidence in the system in counties they won; they lack it only in counties populated by a lot of Democratic voters. So let’s focus on auditing those!
This represents a particularly egregious abuse of the “GOP voters lack confidence” malarkey, but it’s everywhere. It’s used to justify sham audits in Arizona and in Georgia, and voter suppression in many other states.
To be sure, one can envision worthwhile compromises that combine expanded voting protections with a form of national voter ID. And it’s plausible the latter could inspire some confidence among Republican voters not wholly captive to Trump’s lies about 2020.
But broadly speaking, this “confidence” story line is bad-faith nonsense: It’s being widely abused to keep alive the myth of the stolen election and to justify an unprecedented wave of efforts to disenfranchise the opposition’s voters. It is not designed to build confidence in our elections, but to further undermine it, for illicit purposes.
Vaccine hesitancy
Meanwhile, as tens of millions of Americans remain unvaccinated and covid-19 surges in unvaccinated regions, some GOP lawmakers are getting a bit more vocal in urging vaccinations.
But many are also floating a destructive Snowflake Syndrome story line as well: the notion that vaccine hesitancy in red states is a reaction to how Democrats are talking about vaccines, a claim freighted with all manner of ridiculous hyperbole.
To wit: Some Republicans insist Trump voters will not shed vaccine hesitancy until Democrats give Trump more credit for originally launching the vaccine program.
Others posit, as one GOP senator did, that every time Anthony S. Fauci, the government’s top epidemiologist, urges vaccinations, “10,000 more people say I’m never going to take the vaccine.” Still others insist the hesitant are alienated by President Biden’s “language” about taking vaccines “door to door.”
But even if true, this would be due largely to Republican and right-wing absurdities — the ridiculous, over-the-top attacks on Fauci, and the lying about administration “Needle Nazis” and vaccines being a slippery slope to Bible confiscation.
The point, however, is that all this messaging risks being counterproductive. Whether by accident or design, it continues to communicate that the hesitant cannot trust the federal government on vaccines.
It is surely true, as some argue, that the hesitant have complicated motives beyond thraldom to QAnon-grade conspiracy theories and Fox News-inspired Fauci derangement. Perhaps cautious rhetorical and communications strategies can more effectively reach them.
But it’s also true that bad-faith actors are abusing these story lines for nefarious purposes. And as Aaron Sibarium suggests, it would do the hesitant a favor to candidly tell them calls for vaccination are not a threat to freedom in any way. You don’t often hear Republicans saying this, however.
Enough with Snowflake Syndrome already
It’s fine and good to insist on and search for ways to be empathetic and more communicative with the other side. But we need a limiting principle here. This requires forthrightly grappling with the true motives of these bad actors, and with the constraints on how far good-faith persuasion can get in a right-wing information environment that they are polluting daily.
Many Republicans are airing concerns about “voter confidence” to justify further efforts to suppress votes and undermine that confidence. Many demanding understanding of vaccine hesitancy are working to inculcate further vaccine distrust.
And those calling for Trump-sympathetic GOP lawmakers on the Jan. 6 committee hope to corrupt the investigation with bad-faith lies, not to ensure that Trump voters have faith in its findings.
So enough with the bogus Snowflake Syndrome narratives already. It’s a tired act — not to mention a transparently disingenuous and even dangerous one.
Opinion by Greg Sargent
Greg Sargent writes The Plum Line blog. He joined The Post in 2010, after stints at Talking Points Memo, New York Magazine and the New York Observer. Twitter
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/07/23/have-trump-voters-come-down-with-serious-case-snowflake-syndrome/
Trump ally Tom Barrack set to be released on $250 million bond
Wealthy investor is charged with secretly acting as foreign agent for United Arab Emirates
By JOSH GERSTEIN
07/23/2021 02:59 PM EDT
https://www.politico.com/news/2021/07/23/trump-ally-barrack-released-500663
Tom Barrack, a wealthy private-equity investor and Trump 2017 inaugural chair who now faces criminal charges of secretly acting as a foreign agent in the U.S. for the United Arab Emirates, was set to be released on bail Friday after prosecutors and his defense reached an agreement for him to pledge $250 million to secure his future appearance.
The deal spares Barrack — who was arrested Tuesday in the Los Angeles area — from the prospect of spending the weekend in jail and of being transferred in government custody to Brooklyn, N.Y., where the indictment in the case was brought.
An attorney for Barrack, Matt Herrington, said both sides worked intensely on the bail package in order to head off the possibility of Barrack remaining in jail.
“We have moved great mountains to ensure that Mr. Barrack is able to get out before the weekend so he can get to New York and appear for his arraignment on Monday,” Herrington said during a video hearing before L.A.-based U.S. Magistrate Judge Patricia Donahue.
Herrington and an another defense attorney for Barrack, Ronak Desai, joined the hearing from a vehicle outside the West Valley Detention Center in San Bernardino, Calif., where their client was being held.
Prosecutors did not detail the reasons for the unusually large bail package Friday, but during a hearing earlier this week said Barrack presents an unusual risk of flight due to his wealth —estimated at $1 billion by Forbes Magazine — and his extensive foreign ties.
Barrack, 74, is accused of using his high-level contacts in the Trump administration to influence Middle East policy at the direction of UAE officials, of providing them with inside information about U.S. plans and of changing speeches or other public statements by Trump to make them more favorable to UAE and one of its allies, Saudi Arabia. The formal charges against Barrack are failing to register as a foreign agent, conspiracy, obstruction of justice and four counts of making false statements to the FBI.
The indictment is vague about how or if Barrack was remunerated for his efforts, but communications referenced in the case discussed various investment opportunities. His private investment firm, Colony Capital, has reportedly received about $1.5 billion in investment from UAE and Saudi funds.
As part of the bail arrangement, the judge ordered Barrack to have no contact with UAE or Saudi officials, be under an overnight curfew and be subject to GPS location monitoring.
Barrack stepped down as Colony Capital's CEO last year and as executive chair of the firm in April. However, Colony Capital's Chief Investment Officer Jonathan Grunzweig agreed to pledge his home as part of the bail package, as did Barrack's ex-wife Rachelle andhis son Thomas Barrack III.
Barrack already posted $5 million in cash, his attorneys said. The judge said some or all of the remainder of the $250 million would come from Barrack's shares in another investment firm, Digital Bridge Holdings.
Earlier Friday, the same judge also agreed to release on bail an assistant to Barrack also charged in the case, Nathan Grimes. Grimes' bond was set at $5 million.
A businessman from UAE who allegedly served as an intermediary for Barrack and Grimes with officials there, Rashid Al-Malik, was also charged in the case. Prosecutors say he left the U.S. in 2019, three days after being questioned by the FBI. Federal officials quickly got an arrest warrant for Al-Malik but he has not returned to the U.S.
https://www.politico.com/news/2021/07/23/trump-ally-barrack-released-500663
Ex-Trump adviser Barrack set for bail hearing Friday
BY LEXI LONAS - 07/23/21 07:50 AM EDT
https://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/564486-ex-trump-adviser-barrack-set-for-bail-hearing-friday
A onetime campaign adviser to former President Trump is set to go back to court on Friday for a bail hearing.
Thomas Barrack will appear in front of a federal magistrate judge in Los Angeles to determine if he will receive bail after he was charged with multiple counts for allegedly working as an undisclosed foreign lobbyist on behalf of the United Arab Emirates, Bloomberg reported.
After his arrest Tuesday, prosecutors told the judge that Barrack was a flight risk and should not receive bail.
The prosecutors said he is “an extremely wealthy and powerful individual with substantial ties to Lebanon, the UAE, and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia” who could leave on on his private plane.
They said Barrack has “deep and longstanding ties to countries that do not have extradition treaties with the United States.”
Barrack was part of Trump’s 2016 campaign and later pushed for policies that would benefit the UAE. At one point, Barrack talked to Trump about appointing himself as an ambassador to the country.
Rashid Sultan Rashid Al Malik Alshahhi and Matthew Grimes, friends of Barrack, were also accused of undisclosed foreign lobbying.
Barrack and Grimes have both been arrested, while Alshahhi remains to be found.
"The defendants repeatedly capitalized on Barrack’s friendships and access to a candidate who was eventually elected President, high-ranking campaign and government officials, and the American media to advance the policy goals of a foreign government without disclosing their true allegiances,” Mark Lesko, the acting head of the Justice Department’s national security division, said in a statement.
TAGS DONALD TRUMP TRUMP ADVISER ARREST
https://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/564486-ex-trump-adviser-barrack-set-for-bail-hearing-friday
A Foreign Agent in Trump’s Inner Circle?
By Michelle Goldberg
Opinion Columnist
July 23, 2021, 5:00 a.m. ET
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/23/opinion/trump-tom-barrack-corruption.html?smtyp=cur&smid=tw-nytopinion
Once upon a time, it would have been huge news if the chairman of the former president’s inaugural committee was indicted on charges of acting as an agent of a foreign power.
Donald Trump’s presidency, however, has left us with scandal inflation. At this point many of the leading figures from his 2016 campaign have been either indicted or convicted, even if they were later pardoned. The C.F.O. of Trump’s company was charged with tax fraud less a month ago.
So when the billionaire real estate investor Tom Barrack, one of Trump’s biggest fund-raisers, was arrested on Tuesday and charged with acting as an unregistered agent of the United Arab Emirates along with other felonies, it might have seemed like a dog-bites-man story. Barrack was once described by longtime Trump strategist Roger Stone — a felon, naturally — as the ex-president’s best friend. If you knew nothing else about Barrack but that, you might have guessed he’d end up in handcuffs.
Nevertheless, Barrack’s arrest is important. Trump’s dealings with the Emirates and Saudi Arabia deserve to be investigated as thoroughly as his administration’s relationship with Russia. So far that hasn’t happened. When Robert Mueller, the former special counsel, testified before Congress, Adam Schiff, chair of the House Intelligence Committee, said to him, “We did not bother to ask whether financial inducements from any Gulf nations were influencing U.S. policy, since it is outside the four corners of your report, and so we must find out.” But we have not found out.
A Barrack trial, if the case goes that far, is unlikely to answer all the outstanding questions about how Gulf money shaped Trump policy. But it could answer some.
Let’s recall that Russia was not the only nation to send emissaries to Trump Tower during the presidential campaign offering election help. The bipartisan Senate Intelligence Committee Report on Russian election interference discusses an August 2016 Trump Tower meeting whose attendees included Donald Trump Jr., George Nader, then an adviser to Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed, the Emirates’ de facto ruler, and Joel Zamel, owner of an Israeli private intelligence company, Psy-Group. (Nader is currently in prison for child sex trafficking and possession of child pornography.)
“Zamel asked Trump Jr. whether Psy-Group’s conducting a social media campaign paid for by Nader would present a conflict for the Trump campaign,” said the Senate report. “According to Zamel, Trump Jr. indicated that this would not present a conflict.”
Zamel told the Senate Committee that his company never actually performed such work. “Nonetheless, as described below, Zamel engaged in work on behalf of Nader, for which he was paid in excess of $1 million,” said the report. Zamel claimed the payment was for a postelection social media analysis, all copies of which were ostensibly deleted.
If the allegations in the Barrack indictment are true, it means that while an adviser to the Emirates was offering the Trump campaign election help, an Emirati agent was also shaping Trump’s foreign policy, even inserting the country’s preferred language into one of the candidate’s speeches. Prosecutors say that Barrack told a high-level figure they call “Emirati Official 2” that he had staffed the Trump campaign. (It was Barrack who recommended Paul Manafort, later to be convicted of multiple felonies, to Trump.) When an Emirati official asked Barrack if he had information about senior Trump appointees, Barrack allegedly replied, “I do” and said they should talk by phone. He is said to have traveled to the Emirates to strategize with its leadership about what they wanted from the administration during its first 100 days, first six months, first year and first term.
In the early months of the Trump administration, prosecutors say another alleged Emirati agent named Rashid Sultan Rashid Al Malik Alshahhi — also indicted on Tuesday — texted Barrack: “Our ppl wants u to help. They were hoping you can officially run the agendas.” According to the indictment, Barrack replied, “I will!” Later, Barrack reportedly called Alshahhi “the secret weapon to get Abu Dhabi’s plan initiated” by Trump.
At the time, several Arab countries, including the Emirates, were blockading Qatar. Even as the Pentagon and the State Department attempted to remain neutral in the crisis, Trump sent tweets that appeared to support the blockade and even take credit for it.
Throughout his presidency, Trump could scarcely have been a more accommodating ally to the Emirates and to Saudi Arabia, whose crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, was a protégé of Prince Mohammed bin Zayed. Trump’s first foreign trip was to Saudi Arabia. He tore up the Iran deal, hated by Gulf Arab leaders. Of Trump’s 10 presidential vetoes, five dealt with issues of concern to the Emirates and Saudi Arabia. More significantly, he overrode Congress’s attempt to end American military involvement in Yemen, where Saudi Arabia and the Emirates were fighting on one side of a brutal civil war. According to Bob Woodward’s book “Rage,” Trump boasted that he “saved” the Saudi crown prince after the murder of Saudi dissident Jamal Khashoggi elicited widespread outrage.
There is no reason to attribute all of Trump’s solicitude to Barrack. Trump likes and admires gaudy dictators and has his own financial interests in the Emirates. Barrack introduced Jared Kushner to some of his Gulf associates, but Kushner had his own reasons for pursuing alliances with them, particularly his push to get more Muslim countries to normalize relations with Israel. Still, if a member of Trump’s inner circle turns out to have been an Emirati agent, that’s a big deal. It’s a reminder of all we still don’t know about what went into the foreign policy of the most corrupt presidency in American history.
In June 2018, The Times reported that Barrack’s company “has raised more than $7 billion in investments since Mr. Trump won the nomination,” about a quarter from either the Emirates or Saudi Arabia. Barrack stepped down from his executive role at that company in March, but just last week he told Bloomberg Television that Emiratis would be among his investors in a new venture involving “mega resorts” and “the hospitality industry as it relates to wellness, as it relates to health.” Americans deserve to know if Barrack essentially sold his investors influence over the foreign policy of the United States. The market for Trump scandal may be glutted, but when it comes to the role of foreign money in the last administration, there’s no shortage of mysteries.
Michelle Goldberg has been an Opinion columnist since 2017. She is the author of several books about politics, religion and women’s rights, and was part of a team that won a Pulitzer Prize for public service in 2018 for reporting on workplace sexual harassment issues. @michelleinbklyn
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/23/opinion/trump-tom-barrack-corruption.html?smtyp=cur&smid=tw-nytopinion
The Brett Kavanaugh scandal just got even uglier
Ron Leshnower | 8:00 pm EDT July 22, 2021
https://www.palmerreport.com/analysis/the-brett-kavanaugh-scandal-just-got-even-uglier/40356/
Donald Trump’s recently revealed rant about Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh triggered renewed interest in how Kavanaugh escaped any meaningful vetting at his Senate confirmation hearing. Now, an alarming letter to Democratic senators from the F.B.I. raises even more questions about what happened.
According to Landslide: The Final Days of the Trump Presidency by Michael Wolff, an exasperated Trump exclaimed, “Where would he be without me? I saved his life,” referring to Kavanaugh. “He wouldn’t even be in a law firm. Who would have had him? Nobody. Totally disgraced. Only I saved him.” What did Trump learn about Kavanaugh to make him say this?
We now have more insight, and the answer seems to be quite a bit. Nearly two years after Sens. Sheldon Whitehouse and Chris Coons asked the F.B.I. about how it reviewed Kavanaugh’s background, Assistant Director Jill C. Tyson wrote back. In the letter, dated June 30 and disclosed today by Whitehouse, Tyson did not say whether the F.B.I. ever pursued any of the most “relevant” of the 4,500 tips it received into Kavanaugh’s background.
However, Tyson indicated that these potentially critical tips were simply passed along to Trump White House lawyers, who could then handle them as they pleased. (Picture staffers lifting up a MAGA rug for lawyers to sweep the tips neatly underneath.) As Whitehouse pointed out, the Trump White House Counsel’s Office “was the very office that had constrained and directed the limited investigation” into Kavanaugh in the first place.
In an interview with the New York Times, Whitehouse described the sham process as a “fake tip line that never got properly reviewed, that was presumably not even conducted in good faith.” In a series of tweets today, Whitehouse also pointed out that it’s “[n]o wonder so many witnesses were so frustrated when they tried to bring evidence forward” and that individuals like Dr. Blasey Ford were denied a “sincere and thorough investigation.”
Last night, Whitehouse and Coons, along with five other Democratic senators on the Judiciary Committee — Sens. Dick Durbin, Patrick Leahy, Richard Blumenthal, Mazie Hirono, and Cory Booker — wrote to F.B.I. Director Chris Wray to demand details about this shady arrangement. The truth about Kavanaugh and his sham investigation must come out. As Whitehouse summed things up quite perfectly: “Everyone deserves real answers, not cover-ups.”
https://www.palmerreport.com/analysis/the-brett-kavanaugh-scandal-just-got-even-uglier/40356/
So much for there being no Trump criminal probes in the Department of Justice
Bill Palmer | 9:00 pm EDT July 22, 2021
https://www.palmerreport.com/analysis/so-much-for-there-being-no-trump-criminal-probes-in-the-department-of-justice/40344/
Throughout 2021, the general agreement among most of the media and pundit class has been that the Department of Justice has decided not to pursue any Trump-related criminal probes. It’s never taken much to poke factual holes in this narrative, but now it’s falling apart entirely.
It’s been odd these past few months watching so many folks insist that the DOJ is doing “nothing” with regard to Trump-related criminal scandals, even as the FBI has raided the homes of Rudy Giuliani and Victoria Toensing for their roles in the Trump-Ukraine scandal. Those raids weren’t “nothing.” They were a clear indicator that the DOJ had resumed these kinds of probes, now that Trump and Barr weren’t in place to suppress them anymore.
Of course skeptics still argued that perhaps the Giuliani raid was somehow all just for show, and that no Trump-related federal criminal indictments would ever end up emerging. Then came yesterday, when the Feds indicted Tom Barrack – best known for his financial connections to Trump and the Middle East – for allegedly being an operative of a Middle Eastern government. Then came the news from CNN last night that the Barrack case was indeed crafted during the Trump era, and that the DOJ had to wait until Trump and his people were out of power before bringing it.
So now we have confirmation that since Merrick Garland took control of the DOJ a few months ago, the DOJ has reactivated long running criminal probes into Giuliani, Toensing, and Barrack for their Trump-related crimes – with Barrack now having reached the indictment stage, while Giuliani and Toensing are in the post-raid court appointed special master stage.
These are just the three Trump-related DOJ criminal probes that we know about. Keep in mind that the public didn’t even learn these particular probes had been reactivated until they reached the indictment and/or raid stage. So how many more Trump-related criminal probes does the DOJ have going that haven’t yet become public because they haven’t yet reached the indictment/raid stage? It’s a fair bet the answer is larger than “zero.”
We’ve said throughout 2021 that if the DOJ is going to bring a federal criminal case against Donald Trump himself, then the DOJ is first going to do what it always does: it’s going to indict the people around and under him, and attempt to flip them. The Feds don’t bring criminal cases until they’re certain they can get a conviction. To guarantee a conviction against Trump, they’ll need cooperating witnesses.
So if the DOJ is going to end up making a run at Trump, what we’re seeing play out now is precisely how it would build the case against him. We still don’t have any way of knowing if a DOJ case against Trump will end up being brought. But there’s certainly no evidence to suggest that there won’t be such a case. And at the least, we can stop listening to this nonsense about the DOJ not bringing any Trump-related criminal cases. There are now multiple such cases confirmed and playing out in front of us.
https://www.palmerreport.com/analysis/so-much-for-there-being-no-trump-criminal-probes-in-the-department-of-justice/40344/
Inside Trump's intense search for a Cheney challenger
The ex-president's team has been interviewing Republicans running against Rep. Liz Cheney. Two of them have interviews with Trump up next.
By ALEX ISENSTADT and ALLY MUTNICK
Politico 07/23/2021 04:30 AM EDT
https://www.politico.com/news/2021/07/23/trump-cheney-challenger-500599
Former President Donald Trump’s top political advisers have been holding quiet talks over the last several months with the primary challengers looking to take down his most prominent Republican nemesis: Wyoming Rep. Liz Cheney.
During phone calls and Zoom chats, the Trump advisers have pressed the candidates on their fundraising capabilities, their policy positions and the overall strength of their campaign organizations. The goal: to determine whether they have what it takes to unseat Cheney, the influential daughter of a former vice president, who served as the No. 3 House Republican until colleagues ousted her in the spring.
The talks will escalate next week, when Trump meets with two challengers at his Bedminster, N.J., golf club: state Rep. Chuck Gray and attorney Darin Smith. Trump’s son, Don, Jr., who earlier this year visited Wyoming to speak out against Cheney for supporting his father’s impeachment, is expected to be present at the meetings.
Trump is expected to sit down with other candidates before deciding whom to endorse, though advisers say that Gray and Smith have emerged as the two clear frontrunners. To prevent Cheney from winning renomination with just a plurality of the vote, they also say, Trump needs to back the strongest candidate and then elbow out others in the crowded field.
The behind-the-scenes talks underscore the high stakes confronting Trump, who has made unseating Cheney a priority since she blamed him for inciting the Jan. 6 Capitol riot and voted to impeach him. The outcome of the contest — and Trump’s ability to shape it — will be a key measure of Trump’s post-presidential dominance over the Republican Party.
“The Wyoming race is the highest priority of the cycle. It’s a must-win for President Trump. I hope he fully understands that because it’s an undeniable fact,” said Christopher Ekstrom, a major GOP donor overseeing a super PAC that’s expected to get involved in the effort to unseat Cheney.
Shortly after the January impeachment vote, the former president’s advisers began reaching out to the state Republican Party chair, Frank Eathorne, and state legislators to take their temperature on Wyoming’s political landscape. They were also in touch with the anti-tax Club for Growth, a pro-Trump group that is opposing Cheney.
Trump allies, including Donald Trump, Jr. and Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz, traveled to the state to campaign against Cheney. Former Trump White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows also went to Wyoming to get on-the-ground intel and meet with potential primary challengers.
The Trump team sounded out a potential early challenger in state Treasurer Curt Meier. But Meier said he wasn’t interested and instead recommended Gray, a state legislator and former radio show host who is staunchly supportive of the former president. In late January, Trump pollster John McLaughlin commissioned a 500-person survey through the former president's political action committee, which asked respondents their opinion of Gray and whether they would support him or Cheney in a primary matchup. The poll also tested the strength of another candidate, state Sen. Anthony Bouchard.
Other Trump advisers also weighed in on how to design the 53-question survey. The race has been a topic of conversation on regularly scheduled Monday conference calls where Trump lieutenants discuss different campaigns and the overall political landscape.
Trump has been in touch with Club for Growth President David McIntosh, who has briefed Trump on his organization’s interviews with the candidates and urged him to hold off on making an endorsement until he’s certain he’s found the right person. The Club — which polled the race earlier this in May and this week began working on another survey — is expected to spend millions of dollars in the contest.
“Trump’s analysis is correct that we need to get it down to a two-person race, and at that point, the challenger is likely to win, based on the polling we’ve done,” McIntosh said in an interview.
McIntosh’s organization, which has dispatched staffers to Wyoming and this week began airing TV ads hammering Cheney, has yet to make an endorsement in the race. McIntosh said “the ideal is that the Trump and the Club are aligned” in supporting a challenger.
Donald Trump, Jr. has taken a particular interest in the primary. The younger Trump, an avid outdoorsman, has spent time in the state and was friends with Foster Friess, a Wyoming-based GOP megadonor who died in May.
In the end, though, Trump advisers say it will be the former president who makes the final call on who gets the endorsement.
Cheney — who infuriated Trump backers anew this week by opposing the House GOP’s effort to install a pair of Trump loyalists on the committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol — has shrugged off the former president’s involvement.
“If they think that they are going to come into Wyoming and make the argument that the people of Wyoming should vote for someone who is loyal to Donald Trump over somebody who is loyal to the Constitution, I welcome that debate,” Cheney said during a May appearance on NBC’s “Today Show.”
Trump supporters say they are confident Cheney can be beaten, pointing to polling showing her deeply vulnerable in a state Trump won by more than 40 percentage points. The January survey by Trump's political committee showed only 28 percent expressing a favorable view of Cheney; the figure was barely any better — 29 percent — in an April Club for Growth poll. Cheney's campaign has yet to release its own survey findings.
But defeating Cheney won't necessarily be easy. The congresswoman has stockpiled more than $2.8 million, more than eight times as much as Gray, the candidate with the second-biggest campaign account. Cheney is also expected to have the support of a super PAC run by allies of Illinois Rep. Adam Kinzinger, a fellow Republican impeachment backer.
Republicans also note that Cheney's father, former vice president and ex-Wyoming congressman Dick Cheney, remains well-liked in the state.
But if Cheney does survive the August 2022 primary, those involved in the race say, it would most likely be because she took advantage of a split vote. The congresswoman has already drawn more than a half-dozen challengers, and Wyoming Republicans report that it’s possible that others could yet join them.
Trump allies acknowledge that in addition to endorsing a candidate, he may need to urge others to leave the race. It is a role Trump has played before: In 2018, he persuaded Nevada Republican Danny Tarkanian, who was waging a primary challenge to then-GOP Sen. Dean Heller, to instead run for a House seat.
“The key will be for the America First constituency to galvanize behind one candidate. If she is opposed by multiple Trump candidates they will simply divide the vote,” letting Cheney “win against a divided field,” said Roger Stone, a former Trump political adviser.
Underscoring the urgency, Donald Trump, Jr. earlier this year threw his support behind legislation that would change Wyoming election law to make it harder for Cheney to win against a splintered field. The proposal would have implemented a runoff if no primary candidate received a majority of support in the first round of voting, thereby forcing Cheney into a one-on-one matchup against a Trump ally.
The legislature, however, voted down the bill in March. Since then, some state lawmakers have pursued other election law changes that would hinder Cheney’s prospects.
One of Trump supporters’ biggest worries is that they lack a challenger formidable enough for the job. One of the earliest entrants, Bouchard, has seen his stock tumble after admitting to impregnating a 14-year-old girl when he was 18. Bouchard revealed to Fox News Tuesday that he was not among the candidates Trump would be meeting with at Bedminster next week. And no statewide officeholders have jumped in, despite hopes that Meier or Secretary of State Ed Buchanan would run.
Smith is touting his Wyoming roots, among other assets, while Gray is casting himself as the most conservative choice. But their personal loyalty to Trump, rather than more traditional campaign pitches, may prove more pivotal in the race for his endorsement.
Smith has been airing ads lavishing praise on the ex-president and has even promoted his attendance at Trump’s Jan. 6 “Stop the Steal” rally. (Smith has noted, however, that he did not go inside the Capitol or take part in the assault.) Gray is also airing a spot that features Trump and touts a recent trip he took to Arizona to show support for a review of the 2020 elections there.
"I visited Maricopa County to defend the very important audit," Gray said in an interview, noting he was "the only candidate who has done that."
While neither would acknowledge any upcoming meeting with Trump, they hinted they would each be willing to exit the race if he wasn’t the former president’s choice.
"We've got to be willing to put the country over ourselves,” Smith said. “There's no way ever that I'll be the reason that Cheney goes back to Congress."
https://www.politico.com/news/2021/07/23/trump-cheney-challenger-500599
Exclusive-'QAnon Shaman' in Plea Negotiations After Mental Health Diagnosis -Lawyer
By Reuters
July 23, 2021, at 6:06 a.m.
By Sarah N. Lynch
https://www.usnews.com/news/top-news/articles/2021-07-23/exclusive-qanon-shaman-in-plea-negotiations-after-mental-health-diagnosis-lawyer
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The participant in the Jan. 6 U.S. Capitol riots nicknamed the "QAnon Shaman" is negotiating a possible plea deal with prosecutors, after prison psychologists found he suffers from a variety of mental illnesses, his attorney said.
In an interview, defense lawyer Albert Watkins said that officials at the federal Bureau of Prisons, or BOP, have diagnosed his client Jacob Chansley with transient schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, depression and anxiety.
The BOP's findings, which have not yet been made public, suggest Chansley's mental condition deteriorated due to the stress of being held in solitary confinement at a jail in Alexandria, Virginia, Watkins said.
"As he spent more time in solitary confinement ... the decline in his acuity was noticeable, even to an untrained eye," Watkins said in an interview on Thursday.
He said Chansley's 2006 mental health records from his time in the U.S. Navy show a similar diagnosis to the BOP's.
A spokesman for the U.S. Attorney's office declined to comment on the case.
Chansley is one of the most recognizable of the hundreds of Donald Trump supporters who stormed the Capitol after the then-president in a fiery speech falsely claimed that his November election defeat was the result of fraud.
Chansley, of Arizona, was photographed inside the Capitol wearing a horned headdress, shirtless and heavily tattooed. He is a supporter of the QAnon conspiracy theory that casts Trump as a savior figure and elite Democrats as a cabal of Satanist pedophiles and cannibals.
He faces charges including civil disorder and obstructing an official proceeding.
Watkins did not say what Chansley was considering pleading guilty to, but defendants negotiating plea deals typically seek to plead to a less serious charge to reduce their potential prison sentences.
Watkins said authorities will need to determine how Chansley can get access to the treatment he needs to "actively participate in his own defense." Pleading guilty to a charge negates the need for a trial, but defendants still have to be declared mentally competent to do so.
Watkins said the BOP's evaluation of his client did not declare Chansley to be mentally incompetent, and he does not expect Chansley to be ordered to undergo what is known as competency restoration treatment.
'CHOCOLATE SOUP MESS'
Watkins said his client has expressed some delusions including "believing that he was indeed related directly to Jesus and Buddha."
"What we've done is we've taken a guy who is unarmed, harmless, peaceful ... with a pre-existing mental vulnerability of significance, and we've rendered him a chocolate soup mess," Watkins said.
Federal prosecutors have arrested more than 535 people on charges of taking part in the violence, which saw rioters battle police, smash windows and send members of Congress and then-Vice President Mike Pence running for safety.
About 20 defendants so far have pleaded guilty to federal charges in connection with the attack, according to a government tally.
Chansley is jailed as he awaits trial, after prosecutors convinced a federal judge he remains a danger if released.
U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth in May ordered him to undergo a competency evaluation.
As of July 5, he was one of 188 men and women undergoing an initial mental health evaluation to determine if they are competent to stand trial, according to BOP data.
The BOP in 2017 was faulted by the Justice Department's inspector general for its use of special housing units to confine inmates with mental illness, and the BOP agreed to place limits on the amount of time inmates remain in restrictive housing and to ensure they have meaningful human contact.
But the COVID-19 pandemic led the BOP to step up its use of solitary housing units as a way to quarantine inmates to contain the spread of the virus.
A BOP spokeswoman said that inmates are sometimes held alone in a cell, but they are not cut off from human contact or services.
"While we do have a need to place individuals in a single cell for various reasons, such as medical isolation, they have access to staff and programming," she said.
These COVID-19 restrictions, Watkins said, is what led the BOP to place Chansley in solitary confinement.
Seeking a competency evaluation for a federal inmate can be a slippery slope for defense attorneys.
On the one hand, incompetent defendants cannot be prosecuted if they cannot understand the charges or assist in their defense.
However, if a judge declares there is a preponderance of evidence to show a defendant is incompetent to stand trial, then the defendant is jailed because federal law requires inmates undergoing competency restoration treatment to be committed to a federal prison hospital.
There are only three federal prison hospitals offering restoration treatment for male inmates, and the average wait time for a bed this year for men has been 84 days, according to BOP data.
(Reporting by Sarah N. Lynch; Editing by Scott Malone and Grant McCool)
https://www.usnews.com/news/top-news/articles/2021-07-23/exclusive-qanon-shaman-in-plea-negotiations-after-mental-health-diagnosis-lawyer
Two of the GOP's most prominent big tech critics previously sought work with Google: 'I dodged a bullet.'
Martin Coulter 12 minutes ago
https://www.businessinsider.com/google-mike-davis-garrett-vantry-antitrust-2021-7?r=US&IR=T
* Two of the GOP's fiercest Big Tech critics sought to work with Google in 2019, Politico reports.
* Mike Davis and Garrett Ventry reportedly offered to mend the firm's relationship with conservatives.
* Google has faced allegations of anti-conservative bias from a number of GOP lawmakers.
Two of the GOP's most vocal big tech critics reportedly sought to work with Google in 2019, offering to improve the company's relationship with Republicans.
Mike Davis is the founder of the Internet Accountability Project, which calls for lawmakers to "rein in Big Tech before it's too late." In his role at the IAP, Davis regularly attacks "Big Tech monopolists" online, recently calling for the likes of Google, Amazon, and Facebook to be broken up. He previously oversaw the nominations of federal judges and White House appointees under the Trump administration.
Garrett Ventry currently works as chief of staff for Rep. Ken Buck, who has been dubbed the "new face of Republican antitrust." Ventry regularly shares articles detailing his boss's plans to take on the tech giants, and recently tweeted a quote from a New York Post story suggesting Big Tech firms were "getting away with murder."
While both men have since become much more vocal in their criticism of Big Tech companies, Politico reports the pair privately sought a deal with Google in 2019, offering to improve its image among Republicans.
Citing three anonymous sources, Politico reported Davis and Ventry offered to help Google "mend its relationship with conservatives" in a May 2019 meeting.
At the time, prominent Republican lawmakers such as Ted Cruz, Josh Hawley, and President Trump were accusing Google of maintaining an anti-conservative bias on its platform, stifling free speech. Trump went as far as to tweet sweeping allegations of bias directly at Google CEO Sundar Pichai.
Just a few weeks after Davis and Ventry met with Google insiders, the Department of Justice announced a major antitrust probe in to the company.
Speaking to Politico, Davis acknowledged the meeting had taken place, said Google was just one among the many "law firms, lobby shops, corporations and other entities" he met with after leaving the Senate Judiciary Committee.
Less than six months after the meeting with Google, Davis launched the IAP. A report from Bloomberg last year revealed that Oracle, a rival of Google, was one of its backers.
"It didn't go anywhere. And that was back before we knew how bad Google really was. Thank God I didn't work with Google," he said. "I dodged a bullet." Ventry declined to comment.
Davis also said he had been educated over the course of months about "how bad" Google was for small businesses and the conservatives, according to the report. The pair also reportedly offered to act as communicators on behalf of Google among the Republican party.
Insider approached Google for comment.
https://www.businessinsider.com/google-mike-davis-garrett-vantry-antitrust-2021-7?r=US&IR=T