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Inside the ‘shadow reality world’ promoting the lie that the presidential election was stolen
Wealthy allies of former president Donald Trump have spent millions on films, rallies and other efforts to tout falsehoods about the 2020 vote.
By Rosalind S. Helderman, Emma Brown, Tom Hamburgerb and Josh Dawsey
June 24, 2021 at 3:46 p.m. GMT+1
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2021/06/24/inside-shadow-reality-world-promoting-lie-that-presidential-election-was-stolen/
The slickly produced movie trailer, set to ominous music, cuts from scenes of the 2020 election to clips of allies of former president Donald Trump describing a vast conspiracy to steal the White House.
“The Deep Rig,” a film financed by former Overstock.com chief executive Patrick Byrne for $750,000, is set to be released online this weekend — the latest production by a loosely affiliated network of figures who have harnessed right-wing media outlets, podcasts and the social media platform Telegram to promote the falsehood that the 2020 election was rigged.
The baseless assertion, backed by millions of dollars from wealthy individuals, is reverberating across this alternative media ecosphere five months after Trump and many of his backers were pushed off Facebook and Twitter for spreading disinformation that inspired a mob to attack the U.S. Capitol. While largely unnoticed by Americans who have accepted the fact of President Biden’s victory, the deluge of content has captured the attention of many who think the election was rigged, a belief that is an animating force inside the Republican Party.
In this world, ballot reviews like a Republican-commissioned recount now underway in Arizona are about to begin in other key swing states. Conspiracy theories that grow more dizzyingly complex by the day will soon be proven, showing that China or other foreign powers secretly flipped votes for Biden. Trump will be restored as president in months.
These falsehoods are now seeping into civic life, spurring citizens in multiple states to demand that local officials review the 2020 results.
Kim Wyman, the Republican secretary of state in Washington, said her staff contended with the latest barrage of email and calls just last week. “It told us something had transpired online,” she said, adding: “You can’t disprove the negatives that are being thrown out that are absolutely based on nothing.”
The echo chamber is being sustained by figures such as Byrne, who says he has spent more than $5.5 million to examine election fraud since November, and Mike Lindell, the chief executive of MyPillow, who regularly speaks with Trump and says he has plowed $16 million into the effort. Other untold sums have been donated by ordinary Americans to nonprofit groups that say they are focused on “election integrity” and tout what has been dubbed the “big lie” about the 2020 election.
Their claims have been popularized by a steady stream of attention from far-right media outlets, including a daily podcast hosted by former White House chief strategist Stephen K. Bannon. And they are being reinforced by Trump, through a flurry of statements issued by his PAC, and at rallies around the country, including one hosted by Lindell this month in Wisconsin that featured a live video appearance by the former president.
“They have their own version of YouTube, their own message groups. They have their own whole set of publications. … You have to wonder what percent of America is even aware of this shadow reality world,” said Harri Hursti, a cyber and elections expert who in recent days has devoted his Twitter feed to debunking a stream of falsehoods about a local ballot audit in New Hampshire. “Not only is it organized, but you have to think: How much money is needed to keep it going?”
Byrne characterized the forthcoming “Deep Rig” movie as a weapon in an “information war.”
“Those who don’t understand why this movie is important do not really understand the battlespace in which we fight,” he wrote in response to skeptics on Telegram.
The constant stream of purported evidence being cited by pro-Trump allies helps keep true believers engaged, according to University of Washington associate professor Kate Starbird. Recent polls show that more than 6 in 10 Republicans think Biden won as the result of fraud, a figure that has held steady months after Election Day.
“My worry as a researcher is that this is going to continue to be a prevailing belief system about how democracy works, and that people … will continue to have doubt and grow skeptical of the validity of the elections that we have,” said Starbird, who studied the spread of disinformation after the November election.
‘An overall questioning of election integrity’
Trump won a comfortable 56 percent of the vote in Houghton County, Mich., a rural area on the northern edge of the state’s Upper Peninsula, bordering Lake Superior.
But then a film produced by Lindell called “Absolute Proof” that aired on the pro-Trump One America News cable television network in February falsely claimed that 1,143 of the roughly 18,500 presidential votes cast in Houghton County had been switched for Biden via remote manipulation — part of what the film asserted was a broad plot to hack the election.
What happened next was a vivid demonstration of the influence of those promoting the “big lie.”
Although there had been no indication of any problems with the county’s voting systems, the board of commissioners began facing pressure from local residents to launch a new audit of the 2020 vote.
In a May 19 letter to Republican state Sen. Ed McBroom, who chairs a legislative oversight committee investigating the election, county Administrator Ben Larson wrote the board “has continued to receive requests to have this matter looked at … since the Lindell documentary aired.”
“This claim has led to an overall questioning of election integrity,” Larson added.
In response, McBroom appeared by Zoom at a commissioners’ meeting earlier this month, attempting to puncture Lindell’s theories. “We are finding zero evidence to support that,” he said. “What keeps on being postulated is something that is just not possible.”
Nevertheless, as the meeting ended, a member of the audience spoke up. Would the commissioners still consider a local audit, he asked, if members of the public funded it through donations? A board member responded that although legislative input was likely to be needed, the board might consider the idea.
Houghton is one of several Michigan counties where residents continue to push for ballot reviews, citing Lindell’s claims.
“I don’t know if the November 2020 election will ever be gone,” said Houghton County Clerk Jennifer Kelly, who said she has offered to allow commissioners to examine voting machines to demonstrate they are not connected to the Internet, as Lindell has claimed, to no avail.
On Wednesday, a state Senate committee chaired by McBroom released the results of a seven-month-long investigation of Michigan’s election results, which included testimony from 90 witnesses. The report concluded there was “no evidence of widespread or systematic fraud” and warned of “those who have pushed demonstrably false theories for their own personal gain.”
Lindell, who touts his improbable journey from crack addict to wealthy pillow entrepreneur, emerged immediately after the election as a leading disseminator of false allegations about the vote. He funded a bus tour in November and December to spread his theories, appearing frequently on pro-Trump cable networks. In January, days before Biden’s inauguration, he was photographed entering the White House with a document that referred to “martial law if necessary.” Twitter has permanently suspended him for amplifying misinformation.
Lindell’s claims have been repeatedly rejected by independent experts and investigators and by Democratic and Republican election officials in multiple states. He faces a $1.3 billion defamation suit by Dominion Voting Systems, a company that manufactures the machines at the heart of his allegations, and he was barred from attending a recent meeting of the Republican Governors Association after he vowed to confront officials there with his false claims.
But none of that has quieted him. Lindell believes that the evidence he and his experts have collected is overwhelming and will convince any reasonable person who takes the time to review it. He said in an interview that he persists “so there’s no more of this craziness going on in our country.”
He waves away those who dispute his claims, saying critics are not sufficiently knowledgeable about the data he has obtained. “The people you have asked haven’t a clue,” he told The Washington Post in a text message.
Lindell says “white hat hackers” slipped him vague information on Jan. 9 that he claims proves the election was manipulated. “People were in the twilight zone about what happened,” he said. “And then what a Godsend: people had this evidence.”
On June 3, he released a new film online called “Absolute 9-0,” which argues that soon-to-be-revealed information will be so compelling that the Supreme Court will be forced to unanimously reinstate Trump as president.
Of the $16 million that Lindell said he has spent so far, he said $10 million has gone into Frank, an online video and social network channel that got off to a glitchy start in April but that Lindell predicted would “put both Twitter and YouTube out of business.”
“I will spend every dime I have, if I have to, to get the truth out because I love this country,” he told The Post. Lindell acknowledged that he has established a legal defense fund so that “all those people who say they want to help” can put their money somewhere, but added, “I’m not looking for any money.”
He is now on a “big lie” speaking circuit of sorts, appearing at rallies and public festivals sponsored by Frank and other similar entities in swing states such as Michigan and Wisconsin. He says he will hold a major rally in July in Pennsylvania to push for an audit there. And, he says, he is planning a three-day national seminar to reveal his findings later this summer, one he hopes will be covered live by major news organizations.
Lindell said that he speaks to Trump every few weeks. “He is so much interested in Maricopa, in all the audits going on in the states,” Lindell said, referring to the recount of presidential election ballots in Maricopa County, Arizona’s largest jurisdiction.
Trump advisers confirmed that he is in regular contact with Lindell. The former president likes that Lindell is “out there fighting for him, throwing bombs and keeping hope alive,” according to a person close to him, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe private conversations.
Earlier this month, Trump appeared by video at a Frank-sponsored rally in New Richmond, Wis., that drew thousands to a riverside fairground where they listened to speakers excoriate the integrity of the election. Amid the booths for ice cream, hot dogs and face-painting was one for Lindell’s company MyPillow.
“The election was rigged,” the former president told the crowd. “The election was rigged like never before.”
Lori Brown, 52, whose children were volunteering at the event, said she believes the 2020 election was stolen. “I say that a little cautiously,” said Brown, who lives in Somerset, Wis. “I’m not a conspiracy theorist. I’m not a crazy, as a lot of us are called. But I definitely am a conservative Christian and believe in standing up for our rights as Americans.”
The crowd was full of devotees decked out in Trump gear who said they had converted their media habits away from mainstream sources — including Fox News — ditching YouTube for Rumble, an alternative video site that has become popular with conservatives, and trading in Twitter for Telegram.
“We all love Mike Lindell,” said Marianne Norris, who drove six hours to the event from the western suburbs of Chicago.
She said she follows Frank, as well as One America News and sometimes Newsmax, and watched all four of Lindell’s films about the 2020 election, including the most recent, “Absolute 9-0.”
“That one will just blow your mind,” she said. “There’s nothing subjective. It’s based on irrefutable data by high levels — they call them, computer hackers.”
Experts who have reviewed the material have called it technical nonsense, featuring anonymous self-proclaimed computer experts who claim that spreadsheets of indecipherable numbers that scroll quickly on the screen prove their hacking theory — but do not detail how. (Lindell said the footage is intended as an illustration and that the data itself will be revealed later.)
“It’s the utmost hogwash,” said Hursti, a computer programmer who has worked to make voting machines more secure. “But it doesn’t have to make sense — for some people, that makes it more believable.”
‘Stay tuned’
On June 2, Byrne — the producer of “The Deep Rig” movie — posted a note to his 126,000 followers on the social media app Telegram revealing that Lindell would soon be filing a new lawsuit.
The suit, Byrne promised, would put forward fresh evidence of fraud in the election — part of an intentional strategy, he told followers, to keep them hopeful and engaged.
“Mike Lindell and I agreed a month ago that I would keep you folks in a state of informed anticipation, and as information gets released I would amplify and provide color,” he wrote. “So I have tried to do that, letting people know that they should not give up hope, the things were in progress, but without overstating or giving too much away.”
After the November election, dozens of judges — appointed by both Republicans and Democrats — rejected legal suits around the country claiming fraud had tainted the vote.
But Byrne and his allies note that some courts did not engage the substance of the fraud claims. And they point to what they say are suspicious patterns — such as spikes for Biden as ballots were being tallied in key states. Elections experts say such patterns can be easily explained, but Byrne called such dismissals “facile bromides” that are not reassuring to him or millions of other Americans.
“Let’s just open the boxes and find out,” Byrne said, adding that there should be more ballot reviews like the one in Arizona.
Even more pivotal evidence is just around the corner, he has promised.
In text messages to The Post, the former Overstock.com CEO pledged “all the cyber evidence we need to prove the entire matter” is “literally sitting right next to me right now in a case as I lay on my futon in my safe house answering this question.”
Told on June 9 that The Post would be interested in seeing that evidence, Byrne replied: “Stay tuned.”
In response to a follow-up inquiry from a reporter on June 21, Byrne said that it would be “included in a lawsuit that is being prepared by someone else,” and that some of it had already been incorporated in an exhibit filed as part of the suit Lindell filed against Dominion earlier this month, which argues the company has tried to silence his election claims through its defamation claims.
Byrne, a self-described libertarian who says he did not vote for Trump, nevertheless became a key player in challenging the legitimacy of the election before Trump left office. Joined by former national security adviser Michael Flynn and pro-Trump attorney Sidney Powell, he attended a raucous Dec. 18 meeting at the White House, where the group tried to persuade Trump to appoint Powell as special counsel to investigate voting machines in key counties across the country, as The Post previously reported.
Since Trump left office, Byrne has recounted that meeting and his views about the election in blog posts and a book published by his company Deep Capture. Byrne, who describes himself as a journalist, provides a steady stream of commentary on Telegram and has become a regular guest on far-right podcasts and streaming video shows.
Byrne said he believes the 2020 election was a “soft coup” and part of a project by the political “far left” to bring fascism to America.
Some of Byrne’s blog content on the website Locals.com is available only to “members” who pay a fee of $5 per month or $55 per year. He now has more than 28,000 members, which translates into payments of more than $125,000 per month or $1.5 million per year, minus the website’s 10 percent fee. Byrne says he believes he has earned about $250,000 so far from his book and subscriptions through the site.
The movie trailer for “The Deep Rig” features figures who are familiar to those who believe that the presidency was stolen, including Flynn and his brother Joseph. It also spotlights two lawyers who filed suits challenging the election results and some people described as cybersecurity experts whose voices were distorted to shield their identities.
Other figures who make appearances include retired Army Col. Phil Waldron, who told state legislators about purported evidence of vote manipulation during hearings in various states in December, and Jovan Hutton Pulitzer, an inventor and treasure hunter who has devised what he says is a way to identify counterfeit ballots by examining the paper on which they are printed. A spokesman for the Arizona audit has said that Pulitzer has served as a consultant for that effort, which has involved UV lights and microscopes to scrutinize the paper on which the ballots were printed.
“It’s not over, and we have not lost,” Pulitzer declares in the trailer.
Byrne told The Post by text that he plans to release the movie on Saturday via a paid live-stream event. “Entrepreneurial Patriots” will pay a licensing fee for the right to show the film in venues ranging from living rooms to bars and churches to rented theaters, he said — and they, in turn, will be able to charge as much or as little as they want for tickets.
“As far as the distribution goes, we architected a system that cannot be canceled by the fascists,” Byrne wrote.
Tickets are also being sold for $25 apiece on a website associated with the movie for a formal in-person premiere event. It will be held in Phoenix on Saturday — around the same time the Republican-backed review of Arizona ballots is scheduled to conclude at a former basketball arena nearby.
A key touchstone
Officially, the recount in Maricopa County is not about overturning Biden’s narrow win in the state. Senate President Karen Fann (R), who commissioned the review that began in late April, has said it is aimed at identifying weaknesses in the state’s elections system.
The process has been widely pilloried by election experts as sloppy, insecure and biased.
But across the “big lie” ecosphere, the Arizona audit has become a key touchstone — a development that has persuaded many Trump supporters that there will soon be a reassessment of the election results across the country.
Bannon’s daily “War Room” podcast — an increasingly important stopping point for Republicans who want to lay claim to Trump’s base — keeps an image from the live stream of events at Arizona Veterans Memorial Coliseum in Phoenix in the corner of the screen throughout its daily broadcast.
“Every day it’s going to continue — as we pound through Georgia, as we pound through Arizona. We’re going to start pounding through Pennsylvania,” Bannon said as he opened Tuesday’s show, arguing that the continued focus on the election and the origins of the coronavirus have dented Biden’s approval ratings in a way that will hamper his ability to enact his agenda. “We can stop the program by focusing on 3 November. … Get to the bottom of 3 November.”
The Arizona state Senate earmarked $150,000 to pay for the audit, but organizers have said that figure is a fraction of the full cost of the operation. So private donors are helping finance the effort through nonprofit groups that have promoted false claims about the 2020 election.
Chief among them is the America Project, which Byrne said he and Michael Flynn co-founded and now employs Flynn as a paid “special adviser.” Byrne told The Post that the nonprofit group raised $1.2 million for the recount and that he gave another $500,000 directly to the audit effort.
“I don’t have the money to stop this by myself. This is going to take tens of millions of dollars, this whole effort, maybe hundreds of millions,” he wrote on his Locals.com channel.
Byrne said any money left over after Arizona will be used to fund audits elsewhere. But because the group is not required to disclose information about its donors or spending, his assertions are impossible to corroborate.
Also raising money for the Arizona audit is Voices and Votes, a nonprofit group founded by OAN hosts Chanel Rion and Christina Bobb, whose network has been intensely covering and promoting the recount.
The group raised $250,000 within days of launching in April, Bobb has said. It secured donations from supporters such as L. Lin Wood, an attorney who pursued unsuccessful election challenges last year and said in an interview that his nonprofit #FightBack donated $50,000 to Voices and Votes for the Arizona endeavor.
In an email to The Post, Bobb declined to say how much the group has raised altogether, but she said it has largely received small-dollar donations. “There are thousands and thousands of Americans across the country that want to contribute,” she wrote.
The OAN host has used her on-air appearances to appeal for money to fund visits to Arizona by Trump-allied lawmakers and candidates from other states, who have pledged to pursue similar efforts back home.
Bobb, an attorney, has said she volunteered as part of the Trump legal team after the November election. She is now in regular contact with the former president, speaking to him by telephone to update him on progress in Arizona, according to people familiar with their conversations.
Bobb declined to comment on her conversations with Trump, telling The Post via email, “I defer to President Trump regarding any phone calls he may or may not have, and how he would characterize our relationship.”
Aides say Trump no longer confers with Powell, the conservative lawyer who made a string of increasingly wild accusations about election fraud after the election. Like Lindell, she is fighting a $1.3 billion defamation lawsuit filed by Dominion Voting Systems after she claimed the company intentionally rigged its machines to sway the outcome of the election.
Powell, who did not respond to requests for comment, has asked a judge to dismiss Dominion’s suit, arguing she was engaged in protected political speech.
She has continued to make unsubstantiated claims about the election; at a convention of QAnon supporters in Dallas late last month, Powell said Trump should be reinstated as president.
“It’s going to have to be dealt with it,” she told the audience. “It should be that he can simply be reinstated, that a new inauguration date is set and Biden is told to move out of the White House.”
And Trump has relentlessly promoted the idea that the 2020 results could be overturned. “If the election was determined to be a fraud — and it’s looking more and more like that is the case — I mean, people are going to have to make a determination as to what’s going to happen,” he told host David Brody on Tuesday on Real America’s Voice, an online outlet that also airs Bannon’s show.
Through his PAC — which raised millions in response to fundraising appeals to fight the election results — Trump has repeatedly issued statements claiming that reviews of ballots cast last fall will expose fraud. Fundraising pitches about the 2020 vote tend to do particularly well in drawing small-dollar donations, people familiar with the operation said. His allies, such as former White House spokesman Hogan Gidley and former Trump campaign lawyer Jenna Ellis, have also launched their own groups that plan to focus on election and voting issues. Several advisers said Trump is annoyed by the proliferation of groups he has not sanctioned that are raising money off his rhetoric.
Organizers of the Arizona audit have said they will conclude work at the Arizona Veterans Memorial Coliseum this week. Ken Bennett, a former Arizona secretary of state serving as the audit’s spokesman, has said no interim results will be released until data is analyzed and a final report is published, probably in August.
A recent video from Bennett outlining the timeline and posted to Telegram was greeted with a flurry of concern by Trump allies. “They already have enough evidence to invalidate their election certification. Release that evidence now!” responded one person. “Losing hope,” wrote another.
Trump supporters have nevertheless breathlessly shared rumors about what the Arizona auditors might conclude. Bobb has told OAN viewers that large numbers of county ballots are “missing.” On Twitter, she explained: “If there is anything less than 2.1 million ballots in the AZ Audit, it was a fraudulent election and must be de-certified.” (Bennett called the idea of hundreds of thousands of missing ballots “crazy.”)
Flynn too has promised “bombshell” evidence out of Arizona later this month.
“The entire freedom-loving world is watching Maricopa County,” he said on the right-wing show “FlashPoint” on June 8. The findings there, he said, “are just going to shock everybody.”
Amy Gardner, Amy B Wang, Alice Crites and Scott Clement in Washington and Sheila Regan in New Richmond, Wis., contributed to this report.
By Rosalind Helderman, Emma Brown, Tom Hamburger and Josh Dawsey
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2021/06/24/inside-shadow-reality-world-promoting-lie-that-presidential-election-was-stolen/
'Boorish and alarming' behavior lands Niskayuna man in jail until trial in Jan. 6 riot
U.S. Magistrate Judge Daniel Stewart rules Brandon Fellows' conduct, which allegedly included calls to a probation officer's mother and "concerning statements" to officials, prompted decision to keep him in custody
Robert Gavin
June 24, 2021 Updated: June 24, 2021 2:44 p.m.
https://www.timesunion.com/news/article/Judge-orders-Niskayuna-man-jailed-to-await-trial-16271253.php
ALBANY — A 27-year-old Niskayuna man who took part in the Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol will be jailed until his trial for “boorish and alarming” conduct since his arrest, a judge has ruled.
Brandon Fellows, who was arrested last week after he called the mother of a U.S, probation officer in Massachusetts, also has made a series of "concerning statements" to federal probation officers in Albany, U.S. Magistrate Judge Daniel Stewart wrote in ordering the defendant's detention on Wednesday.
“I can’t wait for these bullies to have what they are dishing out come back to them,” Fellows, a 2012 Niskayuna High School graduate, told the probation officers, the judge's decision noted. “The way they are treating me is like that of a terrorist. My own home country . . . they should try different tactics . . . this kind of treatment would tempt people most people to be radicalized. I’m not saying that’s me.”
Fellows' other statements to probation officers included “discussion of his sexual performance abilities; description of his genital size; expression of displeasure that he is required to reside with his mother,” the judge wrote.
Stewart said Fellows wanted to return to his former abode in a converted school bus, saying: “I want my f-----g bus.”
More significantly, the judge stated in his decision, was Fellows’ lashing out at the very federal government that has charged him with felony and misdemeanor offenses.
Federal prosecutors have repeatedly asked judges to jail Fellows as he awaits trial. Stewart held off making a decision last week when Fellows appeared before him for his latest arrest: the call to a probation officer's mother, an alleged violation of his conditions of release.
Prosecutors said Fellows canceled a mental health appointment on June 14, telling the probation officer he was not feeling well. When the officer asked Fellows if he could work, Fellows asked her: "Have you checked your hormones?”
A supervisory probation official directed Fellows to report to the probation officer. Soon after, they learned that a person had called the probation officer’s mother in Massachusetts and asked twice if it was the correct number for the officer. Caller identification revealed the caller’s number to be Fellows.
Assistant Federal Public Defender Timothy Austin told the judge that his client had a faulty phone and no access to his list of contacts, which led Fellows to do a Google search that led to the discovery of the officer's mother's number. He asked that Fellows be allowed to be free.
Stewart said he he did not buy Fellows' explanation.
"Mr. Fellows’ probation officer perceived this attempt to contact her family member as representing a course of intimidation and was consistent with his general noncompliance while on release," the judge stated. "The court does not view this statement in isolation because ... the defendant has made numerous inappropriate statements to his probation officer, which include sexually explicit statements and large doses of profanity."
The judge referenced a prior occasion, before Fellows' arrest in January, when Fellows was facing a case in Guilderland Town Court and listed the office number of the judge's wife as his number.
"Successful supervision requires cooperation and compliance of the defendant," Stewart state. "Mr. Fellows has not provided that, and his conduct to date has been both boorish and alarming. Probation officers in this district, and others, are professionals, but there is certainly a limit to the type of conduct those officers should be subjected to. Based upon the information provided by the government, it appears a limit has been reached in this case."
Fellows was arrested in mid-January, after he posted images of himself on social media inside and outside the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6. Fellows was among the supporters of former President Donald Trump who stormed the Capitol in an effort to stop the certification of President-elect Joseph Biden's victory.
Fellows was photographed on a police motorcycle — wearing a fake orange beard and "USA" jacket — outside the U.S. Capitol. While in the Capitol, Fellows put his feet up on the desk of U.S. Sen. Jeff Merkley of Oregon.
"We took the Capitol and it was glorious," Fellows said in one post.
Fellows smirked throughout his initial court appearance before Stewart. The judge allowed Fellows to to remain free under certain conditions, which were altered when Fellows was later charged in Washington, D.C., where his case is being tried.
On Feb. 6, a federal grand jury in the nation's capital indicted Fellows on charges of obstruction of an official proceeding, a felony; entering and remaining in a restricted building or grounds when the vice president and vice president-elect were temporarily visiting; disorderly and destructive conduct in a restricted building or grounds when the vice president and vice president-elect were temporarily visiting; entering and remaining in certain rooms in the Capitol building; and disorderly conduct in a Capitol building.
Robert Gavin covers state and federal courts, criminal justice issues and legal affairs for the Times Union. Contact him at rgavin@timesunion.com or 518-434-2403.
https://www.timesunion.com/news/article/Judge-orders-Niskayuna-man-jailed-to-await-trial-16271253.php
Michael Cohen Reveals When And How Trump Will Flip On His Own Family To Avoid Jail
Trump’s former attorney said they could all be getting “some orange jumpsuits” soon.
By Ed Mazza
20/05/2021 05:48 BST | Updated 20/05/2021 11:19 BST
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/michael-cohen-donald-trump-jail_n_60a5d0afe4b0d45b7524e279
Michael Cohen, former personal attorney and “fixer” to Donald Trump, delivered a blunt warning Wednesday to the former president’s closest associates and even his own family.
“I think Donald Trump is going to flip on all of them,” he warned, “including his children.”
Cohen spoke on MSNBC one day after it was revealed that the Trump Organization is now the subject of a criminal investigation by the New York attorney general.
“I really believe that Donald Trump cares for only himself, and he realizes that his goose is cooked,” Cohen said.
And that means he’ll start looking for others to blame, he said.
First, he said, Trump will blame Trump Organization Chief Financial Officer Allen Weisselberg and others involved in his finances.
“It wasn’t me. It was Allen. It was my accountant. It was the appraiser,” Cohen said, mimicking a potential Trump argument. “It’s never Donald. See, this is the problem. It’s never, ever Donald Trump. It’s always somebody else.”
And when investigators start raising questions about Trump’s tax returns, he’s going to blame those closest to him.
“He’s going to turn on his accountant and point the finger,” Cohen predicted. “He’s going to say, ‘Don Jr. handled that, Ivanka handled that. Melania. Don’t take me. Take Melania.’ He’s going to tell them to take everyone except for himself. That’s just the kind of guy he is.”
Cohen worked for Trump for years until turning on him in 2018 and cooperating with investigators. He pleaded guilty to lying to Congress and campaign finance violations for arranging the hush-money payments from Trump to porn star Stormy Daniels and former Playboy model Karen McDougal.
Cohen was sentenced to three years in prison but was released into home confinement last year due to the coronavirus pandemic.
On Wednesday, he said some of the information he provided including taped conversations with Trump shows how closely the former president directed everything around him and his organization.
And that, he said, could land the Trump family in prison.
“I do have to say that my credibility, I believe, is going to end up getting Donald, Don Jr., Ivanka, Jared, Eric, Weisselberg, his kids, some orange jumpsuits,” he said.
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/michael-cohen-donald-trump-jail_n_60a5d0afe4b0d45b7524e279
U.S. to Move Afghans Who Aided Troops to Third Countries
The move is meant to place interpreters and others who worked with departing American forces somewhere safe until visas for them to enter the United States are processed.
By Helene Cooper and Eric Schmitt
June 24, 2021, 5:00 a.m. ET
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/24/us/politics/afghan-interpreters-visas.html?smid=tw-share
WASHINGTON — The Biden administration is preparing to relocate thousands of Afghan interpreters, drivers and others who worked with American forces to other countries in an effort to keep them safe while they apply for entry to the United States, senior administration officials said.
With the American military in the final phases of withdrawing from Afghanistan after 20 years of war, the White House has come under heavy pressure from lawmakers and military officials to protect Afghan allies from revenge attacks by the Taliban and speed up the lengthy and complex process of providing them special immigrant visas.
On Wednesday, administration officials started notifying lawmakers that they will soon begin what could be a wholesale move of tens of thousands of Afghans. Officials said the Afghans would be moved out of Afghanistan to third countries to await the processing of their visa requests to move to the United States.
The officials declined to say where the Afghans would wait, and it is not clear whether third countries have agreed to take them. The opportunity to move will be given to people who have already begun the application process.
More than 18,000 Afghans who have worked as interpreters, drivers, engineers, security guards, fixers and embassy clerks for the United States during the war have been trapped in bureaucratic limbo after applying for special immigrant visas, available to people who face threats because of work for the U.S. government.
Those applicants have 53,000 family members, officials said.
A senior administration official said that under the plan, family members of applicants would also be moved out of Afghanistan to a third country to await visa processing. Transportation out of Afghanistan will not come with any assurance that a visa to the United States will be granted. It was unclear whether people who somehow do not qualify would be sent back to Afghanistan or left in a third country.
The officials spoke on grounds of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk publicly about the decision.
The decision comes as President Biden prepares to meet on Friday with President Ashraf Ghani of Afghanistan amid a worsening security situation in the country.
Aides said Mr. Biden would press Mr. Ghani on the need for unity among the country’s leaders, urging them to stop fighting among themselves when the country is in crisis and government forces are at risk of losing control of the nation to the Taliban.
They said he would assure Mr. Ghani of continued financial support from the United States to the Afghan government and people, including a $266 million humanitarian assistance package and $3.3 billion in security assistance, as well as significant aid to help combat the coronavirus pandemic with vaccines, testing kits and personal protective equipment.
Officials said the administration has been working to streamline the visa process for Afghans who worked with U.S. forces, and has added people to handle the applications.
Pressure on the administration to act swiftly on the Afghans’ behalf has grown steadily in recent weeks in both the House and the Senate. Lawmakers pressed Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III and Gen. Mark A. Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, at a Pentagon budget hearing on Wednesday.
“These brave Afghan partners, these Afghan and American heroes, people who we asked to risk their lives not just for Afghanistan, but for America because we had their backs, their future is in your hands,” said Representative Seth Moulton, Democrat of Massachusetts and a former Marine officer.
“This much is certain,” Mr. Moulton said during the hearing of the House Armed Services Committee. “The Taliban will kill them if they can. And they will rape and murder their wives and kids first, if they can.”
Mr. Austin appeared to hint at the plans. “I am confident that at some point, we’ll begin to evacuate some of those people soon,” he said.
General Milley said the military was ready to begin moving Afghans who had applied for the special visas. “I consider it a moral imperative to take care of those that have served along our side,” he said. “We are prepared to execute whatever we are directed.”
Chronic delays and logjams have plagued the special immigrant visa program for more than a decade. Democrats have accused former President Donald J. Trump of exacerbating the problem by starving the program of resources and staffing.
The coronavirus pandemic did not help matters; a surge in cases at the embassy in Kabul shut down in-person interviews and vetting.
A State Department report in January cited “limited staffing” and “local safety conditions directly related to the Covid-19 pandemic” as “severely” affecting the visa application process.
In recent weeks, Democrats and Republicans in Congress have introduced bills to speed up the process and waive certain requirements, such as mandating applicants to undergo costly medical examinations. And in December, as part of a huge catchall spending bill, Congress raised the total cap for the visa program by 4,000, to 26,500.
The Biden administration has also come under pressure from several nonprofit groups and advocates for refugees to do more.
About 70 organizations recently wrote a letter to Mr. Biden urging his administration to “immediately implement plans to evacuate vulnerable U.S.-affiliated Afghans” — a step the White House is now taking.
Helene Cooper is a Pentagon correspondent. She was previously an editor, diplomatic correspondent and White House correspondent, and was part of the team awarded the 2015 Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting, for its coverage of the Ebola epidemic. @helenecooper
Eric Schmitt is a senior writer who has traveled the world covering terrorism and national security. He was also the Pentagon correspondent. A member of the Times staff since 1983, he has shared three Pulitzer Prizes. @EricSchmittNYT
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/24/us/politics/afghan-interpreters-visas.html?smid=tw-share
Researchers say they developed blood test predictor of vaccine efficacy
Ludwig Burger
Reuters Staff
Published Thursday, June 24, 2021 11:35AM EDT
https://www.ctvnews.ca/health/coronavirus/researchers-say-they-developed-blood-test-predictor-of-vaccine-efficacy-1.5483927
FRANKFURT -- Researchers at Oxford University said on Thursday they have developed a method to predict the efficacy of new COVID-19 vaccines based on a blood test, potentially offering a short-cut around massive clinical trials that are increasingly difficult to conduct.
The researchers looked at the concentration of a range of virus-fighting antibodies in the blood of trial participants after they had received the vaccine developed by AstraZeneca and Oxford University, now known as Vaxzevria.
By looking at which of those trial volunteers later contracted symptomatic COVID-19 and which did not, the researchers came up with a model they hope will predict how powerful other vaccines will be, based on those blood readings.
"The data can be used to extrapolate efficacy estimates for new vaccines where large efficacy trials cannot be conducted," they said in their paper, which was posted online on Thursday and submitted for peer-review for future publication in a scientific journal.
The Oxford researchers cautioned more work was needed to validate their model for many of the highly contagious new virus variants of concern.
They noted that they did not look into the so-called cellular immune response, a major weapon of the human body against infections alongside antibodies, but more difficult to measure.
"There is an urgent need to increase supply of vaccines for the world, but development and approval of new vaccines takes many months. We hope that the use of correlates by developers and regulators could speed up the process," said Andrew Pollard, Director of the Oxford Vaccine Group and lead investigator on the Oxford Vaccine Trial.
Researchers and regulators around the globe are working on such benchmarks – known as a correlates of protection or surrogate endpoints - which may allow laggards in the vaccine development race to provide evidence of efficacy without having to conduct trials with tens of thousands of volunteers.
Those mass trials have so far relied on participants to contract the disease in their normal lives to provide vaccine efficacy results. That becomes more of a challenge where vaccination coverage is already high and the virus is not circulating widely.
The traditional clinical trials also require many participants to get a placebo as a comparison to those who receive the experimental vaccine, posing an ethical dilemma where approved shots are available.
(Reporting by Ludwig Burger Editing by Bill Berkrot)
https://www.ctvnews.ca/health/coronavirus/researchers-say-they-developed-blood-test-predictor-of-vaccine-efficacy-1.5483927
The most brutal debunking of Trump’s fraud claims yet — from Republicans
By Aaron Blake Senior reporter June 24, 2021 at 4:38 p.m. GMT+1
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2021/06/24/most-brutal-debunking-trumps-fraud-claims-yet-republicans/
The Republican Party’s response to former president Donald Trump and his allies’ wild, baseless claims of voter fraud has been anything but courageous. It’s been entirely clear most reputable members of the GOP are uncomfortable responding, often instead lodging watered-down or adjacent claims. Some Republicans have spoken out but generally only when forced to pick a side — such as when their state became the focus of Trump’s lies.
But when the rubber has met the road, GOP lawmakers have routinely landed on one side: against Trump’s claims.
Perhaps the starkest example of that came Wednesday, from a Republican-led state Senate committee in Michigan. A report from the Oversight Committee makes little mention of Trump, instead focusing on claims made by allies or general conspiracy theories about the vote count in Michigan. But the committee was brutal in statements on those claims, just about all of which can be traced to Trump in one way or another.
The sum total is a broad, unsparing repudiation of Trump’s fraud claims in Michigan.
Let’s recap some of the key findings on the voter fraud theories pushed by the former president, Rudolph W. Giuliani and other Trump allies.
1. Antrim County switched votes
Among the many theories about what happened in Michigan, the idea that votes were switched from Trump to Joe Biden in Antrim County might have been the most pervasive. As recently as last month, Trump called the ongoing litigation over the issue “the major Michigan Election Fraud case.” He added: “The number of votes is MASSIVE and determinative. This will prove true in numerous other States.”
What the report says: The report devotes its starkest language to debunking this theory — and strongly rebukes the likes of Trump by extension.
“The strongest conclusion comes in regard to Antrim County,” the committee’s Republican chairman, state Sen. Ed McBroom, says in an opening letter. “All compelling theories that sprang forth from the rumors surrounding Antrim County are diminished so significantly as for it to be a complete waste of time to consider them further.”
The report goes on to suggest a group that has pushed the theory, the Allied Security Operations Group (ASOG), cherry-picked data to create a misleading picture. It even goes so far as to suggest the Michigan attorney general should investigate those “who have been utilizing misleading and false information about Antrim County to raise money or publicity for their own ends.”
And the coup de grace: “The Committee finds those promoting Antrim County as the prime evidence of a nationwide conspiracy to steal the election place all other statements and actions they make in a position of zero credibility.”
Among those to whom this accusation of “zero credibility” would logically now apply: Trump. That last quote is a near-exact summary of Trump’s claim that what happened in Antrim County was emblematic of what occurred in “numerous other States.” Trump also made this point in his speech just before the Jan. 6 Capitol riot, saying, “In one Michigan county alone, 6,000 votes were switched from Trump to Biden, and the same systems are used in the majority of states in our country.”
2. More votes than voters
This is one of the few instances in which the report actually directly calls out the Trump team for promoting baseless theories.
The basic idea is that there were a bunch of counties in Michigan in which there were more votes than actual voters. “In Michigan and Wisconsin, we have over-votes in numerous precincts of 150 percent, 200 percent and 300 percent,” Giuliani said. Lawyer Sidney Powell added that it was “up to 350 percent in some places.”
What the report says: This ridiculous theory was debunked almost immediately, including in this space, but it persevered. And the report in a footnote calls out Giuliani directly.
“The ‘more votes than voters’ theory, repeated by President Trump’s attorney, Rudolph Giuliani, was based on an affidavit from the ASOG co-founder that cites several Michigan counties where there were allegedly more votes than registered voters,” the report says. “However, the affidavit cited several townships in Minnesota, not Michigan. Even if the document referenced the right state, the claims regarding the Minnesota townships still were not accurate, according to data from the Minnesota Secretary of State.”
3. Blank ballots and troops voting for Biden
Trump and his team regularly cited the idea that there was something suspicious both about (a) blank ballots that were seen in Michigan — particularly in Detroit-based Wayne County — and (b) that election watchers saw military ballots that were somehow only for Biden.
“Four witnesses have testified under penalty of perjury that after officials in Detroit announced the last votes had been counted, tens of thousands of additional ballots arrived without required envelopes,” Trump said. “Every single one was for a Democrat.”
What the report says: It dispatches with this — and the witnesses cited by Trump — quickly:
The presence of blank ballots also provides significant confusion, despite being necessary for the duplication of military ballots and damaged absentee voter ballots. It is noteworthy that attempting to utilize these ballots for any significant level of fraud would require perfectly matching precincts to voters, manipulating poll books with fake dates for requests and receipts of the ballots, voter’s signatures, and the clerk’s signature and time stamp.
One witness testified that none of the military ballots at her table being duplicated were for President Trump. However, upon questioning, the witness recounted she only witnessed a few dozen ballots. This is a very reasonable outcome given the overall performance of the candidates in these precincts and the amount witnessed, which is not statistically significant.
4. Dead people voting
“Over 13 ballots were cast by nonresidents, and an estimated 17,000 ballots were cast by dead people,” Trump said Jan. 4 while talking about Michigan. “Some dead people, by the way, also requested an application. It’s true. Those are the ones that really bother me.”
In a Jan. 2 call with Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger (R), Trump added: “They had, as an example, in Michigan, a tremendous number of dead people that voted. I think it was … 18,000, or some unbelievably high number.”
What the report says: “Unbelievably high” is right, in that the report found essentially none.
“The Committee was also provided a list of over 200 individuals in Wayne County who were believed to be deceased yet had cast a ballot,” it says. “A thorough review of individuals on that list showed only two instances where an individual appeared to have voted but was deceased.”
But even those weren’t fraud.
It says one instance involved a man who shared a name with his deceased 118-year-old father, and that it was explained by a “clerical error.” The second was a 92-year-old woman who died four days before the election but had submitted her absentee ballot before her death.
What’s more, the report indicates an extremely solid effort to prevent the counting of the latter types of vote.
“Notably, research showed the secretary of state and clerks were able to discover and remove approximately 3,500 absentee ballots submitted by voters while they were alive but died before Election Day, which is a commendable accomplishment,” the report says.
5. Something fishy in Wayne County
Trump and his team regularly pointed to large urban areas in key states as supposed evidence of fraud. They cited huge, late-night dumps of ballot counts that they claimed were suspicious because they were overwhelmingly for Biden. (Never mind that both absentee and in-person votes in urban areas went quite understandably heavy for Biden.) They also suggested there was something inexplicable about how many people voted in Detroit and how strongly it went for Biden.
“In Detroit, turnout was 139 percent of registered voters,” Trump said Jan. 6. “Think of that: So you had 139 percent of the people in Detroit voting.”
Trump at another point echoed ridiculous claims made by allies that somehow Biden did better than Hillary Clinton in urban areas only in key states — but not other urban areas. “Biden did poorly in big cities … except those of Detroit (more votes than people!), Philadelphia, Atlanta and Milwaukee, which he had to win,” Trump tweeted. “Not surprisingly, they are all located in the most important swing states, and are long known for being politically corrupt!”
What the report says: Poppycock:
Comparing historical results casts serious doubt over any claims of widespread impropriety in the Michigan 2020 election. In fact, turnout in 2020 increased less in Wayne county (11.4%) than in the rest of the state (15.4%) and President Trump won a greater percentage of votes there than he did in 2016 (30.27% vs 29.3%).
Additionally, the data suggests that there was no anomalous number of votes cast solely for the President, either in Wayne County or statewide.
By Aaron Blake
Aaron Blake is senior political reporter, writing for The Fix. A Minnesota native, he has also written about politics for the Minneapolis Star Tribune and The Hill newspaper. Twitter
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2021/06/24/most-brutal-debunking-trumps-fraud-claims-yet-republicans/
NY AG James @NewYorkStateAG We busted two major drug and firearms trafficking rings that have been operating in and around the Capital Region.
47 people were indicted for their roles in flooding these communities with heroin, cocaine, and oxycodone, and for illegal possession of firearms.
6:17 PM · Jun 24, 2021·Twitter for iPhone
THREAD
We busted two major drug and firearms trafficking rings that have been operating in and around the Capital Region.
— NY AG James (@NewYorkStateAG) June 24, 2021
47 people were indicted for their roles in flooding these communities with heroin, cocaine, and oxycodone, and for illegal possession of firearms. pic.twitter.com/VavpjgC2TK
Craig Mauger @CraigDMauger And there it is: Ex-President Trump is going after Republican Michigan Sens. Ed McBroom and Mike Shirkey.
5:50 PM · Jun 24, 2021·Twitter Web App
THREAD
And there it is:
— Craig Mauger (@CraigDMauger) June 24, 2021
Ex-President Trump is going after Republican Michigan Sens. Ed McBroom and Mike Shirkey. pic.twitter.com/iRPXpTOKRM
The Recount @therecount · 55s President Biden emerges after meeting with a bipartisan group of lawmakers about an infrastructure deal:
“We made serious compromises on both ends … We’ll see what happens in the reconciliation bill and the budget process.”
VIDEO
President Biden emerges after meeting with a bipartisan group of lawmakers about an infrastructure deal:
— The Recount (@therecount) June 24, 2021
“We made serious compromises on both ends … We’ll see what happens in the reconciliation bill and the budget process.” pic.twitter.com/IfhaTKeWKr
President Biden emerges after meeting with a bipartisan group of lawmakers about an infrastructure deal:
— The Recount (@therecount) June 24, 2021
“We made serious compromises on both ends … We’ll see what happens in the reconciliation bill and the budget process.” pic.twitter.com/IfhaTKeWKr
Yamiche Alcindor @Yamiche President Biden speaking at the WH says on infrastructure: “We have a deal…We made serious compromises on both ends.”
President Biden speaking at the WH says on infrastructure: “We have a deal…We made serious compromises on both ends.” pic.twitter.com/zaXtKZPqTt
— Yamiche Alcindor (@Yamiche) June 24, 2021
For the reasons that follow, we conclude that there is uncontroverted evidence that respondent communicated demonstrably false and misleading statements to courts, lawmakers and the public at large in his capacity as lawyer for former President Donald J. Trump and the Trump campaign in connection with Trump’s failed effort at reelection in 2020. These false statements were made to improperly bolster respondent’s narrative that due to widespread voter fraud, victory in the 2020 United States presidential election was stolen from his client. We conclude that respondent’s conduct immediately threatens the public interest and warrants interim suspension from the practice of law, pending further proceedings before the Attorney Grievance Committee (sometimes AGC or Committee).
Read the full opinion here.
https://www.democracydocket.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/45/2021/06/Matter-of-Giuliani-2021-00506-PC-2.pdf
Giuliani Suspended from New York Bar for Promoting Election Lies
June 24, 2021
https://www.democracydocket.com/2021/06/giuliani-suspended-from-new-york-bar-for-promoting-election-lies/
WASHINGTON, D.C.—Rudy Giuliani is suspended from practicing law in the state of New York due to his false and misleading legal statements made during the 2020 general election, a disciplinary committee decided Thursday. The lawyer represented former president Donald Trump and was a key player in spreading unsubstantiated claims of voter fraud and promoting the idea that the election was “stolen” from the former president.
The committee found that “there is uncontroverted evidence that [Giuliani] communicated demonstrably false and misleading statements to courts, lawmakers and the public at large in his capacity as lawyer for former President Donald J. Trump and the Trump campaign in connection with Trump’s failed effort at reelection in 2020” and concluded that his conduct “immediately threatens the public interest and warrants interim suspension from the practice of law.” The committee rejected all of Giuliani’s defenses, finding that his commitment to spreading falsehoods — often said in his capacity as an attorney — is particularly damaging to the public’s trust in government and “tarnishes the reputation of the entire legal profession and its mandate to act as a trusted and essential part of the machinery of justice.”
Read the full opinion here.
https://www.democracydocket.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/45/2021/06/Matter-of-Giuliani-2021-00506-PC-2.pdf
###
https://www.democracydocket.com/2021/06/giuliani-suspended-from-new-york-bar-for-promoting-election-lies/
Court Suspends Giuliani’s Law License, Citing Trump Election Lies
The former mayor of New York, who was once the top federal prosecutor in Manhattan, is now barred from practicing law in the state.
By Nicole Hong and Ben Protess
June 24, 2021, 11:27 a.m. ET
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/24/nyregion/giuliani-law-license-suspended-trump.html
A New York appellate court suspended Rudolph W. Giuliani’s law license on Thursday after a disciplinary panel found that he made “demonstrably false and misleading” statements about the 2020 election as Donald J. Trump’s personal lawyer.
The court wrote in a 33-page decision that Mr. Giuliani’s conduct threatened “the public interest and warrants interim suspension from the practice of law.”
Mr. Giuliani helped lead Mr. Trump’s legal challenge to the election results, arguing without merit that the vote had been rife with fraud and that voting machines had been rigged.
“We conclude that there is uncontroverted evidence that respondent communicated demonstrably false and misleading statements to courts, lawmakers and the public at large in his capacity as lawyer for former President Donald J. Trump and the Trump campaign in connection with Trump’s failed effort at re-election in 2020,” the decision read.
Mr. Giuliani now faces disciplinary proceedings and can fight the suspension. But the court said in its decision that Mr. Giuliani’s actions had posed “an immediate threat” to the public and that it was likely he would face “permanent sanctions” after the proceedings conclude.
Mr. Giuliani’s lawyers, John Leventhal and Barry Kamins, said in a statement that they were disappointed that the panel took action before holding a hearing on the allegations.
“This is unprecedented as we believe that our client does not pose a present danger to the public interest,” they said. “We believe that once the issues are fully explored at a hearing, Mr. Giuliani will be reinstated as a valued member of the legal profession that he has served so well in his many capacities for so many years.”
The suspension marked another stunning chapter in the rise and fall of Mr. Giuliani’s long legal and political career. He rose to national prominence when, as New York City mayor, as he steered the city through the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
More recently, Mr. Giuliani’s dealings in Ukraine before the election designed to damage President Biden’s campaign have been under criminal investigation by federal prosecutors in Manhattan, working for the same office that he once led. In April, F.B.I. agents seized Mr. Giuliani’s cellphones and computers, an extraordinary action to take against a lawyer for a former president.
Prosecutors have been investigating whether Mr. Giuliani illegally lobbied the Trump administration in 2019 on behalf of Ukrainian officials and oligarchs, who were assisting Mr. Giuliani’s efforts to dig up dirt in Ukraine on Mr. Biden and his son. Mr. Giuliani has denied any wrongdoing.
William K. Rashbaum contributed to this report.
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/24/nyregion/giuliani-law-license-suspended-trump.html
Inside the extraordinary effort to save Trump from covid-19
His illness was more severe than the White House acknowledged at the time. Advisers thought it would alter his response to the pandemic. They were wrong.
By Damian Paletta and Yasmeen Abutaleb
June 24, 2021 at 1:13 p.m. GMT+1
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2021/06/24/nightmare-scenario-book-excerpt/
This article is adapted from “Nightmare Scenario: Inside the Trump Administration’s Response to the Pandemic That Changed History,” which will be published June 29 by HarperCollins.
Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar’s phone rang with an urgent request: Could he help someone at the White House obtain an experimental coronavirus treatment, known as a monoclonal antibody?
If Azar could get the drug, what would the White House need to do to make that happen? Azar thought for a moment. It was Oct. 1, 2020, and the drug was still in clinical trials. The Food and Drug Administration would have to make a “compassionate use” exception for its use since it was not yet available to the public. Only about 10 people so far had used it outside of those trials. Azar said of course he would help.
Azar wasn’t told who the drug was for but would later connect the dots. The patient was one of President Donald Trump’s closest advisers: Hope Hicks.
A short time later, FDA Commissioner Stephen Hahn received a request from a top White House official for a separate case, this time with even greater urgency: Could he get the FDA to sign off on a compassionate-use authorization for a monoclonal antibody right away? There is a standard process that doctors use to apply to the FDA for unapproved drugs on behalf of patients dealing with life-threatening illnesses who have exhausted all other options, and agency scientists review it. The difference was that most people don’t call the commissioner directly.
The White House wanted Hahn to say yes within hours. Hahn, who still did not know who the application was for, consulted career officials. The FDA needs to go by the book, the officials insisted. Hahn relayed the message back to the White House. They kept pressing him to effectively cut corners. No, we can’t do that, Hahn told them several times. We’re talking about someone’s life. We have to actually examine the application to make sure we’re doing it safely.
When Hahn later learned the effort was on behalf of the president, he was stunned. For God’s sake, he thought, it’s the president who’s sick, and you want us to bend the rules? Trump was in the highest-risk category for severe disease from covid-19 — at 74, he rarely exercised and was considered medically obese. He was the type of patient with whom you would want to take every possible precaution. As it did with all compassionate-use applications, the FDA made a decision within 24 hours. Agency officials scrambled to figure out which company’s monoclonal antibody would be most appropriate given the clinical information they had, and selected the one from Regeneron, known simply as Regen-Cov.
A five-day stretch in October 2020 — from the moment White House officials began an extraordinary effort to get Trump lifesaving drugs to the day the president returned to the White House from the hospital — marked a dramatic turning point in the nation’s flailing coronavirus response. Trump’s brush with severe illness and the prospect of death caught the White House so unprepared that they had not even briefed Vice President Mike Pence’s team on a plan to swear him in if Trump became incapacitated.
For months, the president had taunted and dodged the virus, flouting safety protocols by holding big rallies and packing the White House with maskless guests. But just one month before the election, the virus that had already killed more than 200,000 Americans had sickened the most powerful person on the planet.
Trump’s medical advisers hoped his bout with the coronavirus, which was far more serious than acknowledged at the time, would inspire him to take the virus seriously. Perhaps now, they thought, he would encourage Americans to wear masks and put his health and medical officials front and center in the response. Instead, Trump emerged from the experience triumphant and ever more defiant. He urged people not to be afraid of the virus or let it dominate their lives, disregarding that he had had access to health care and treatments unavailable to other Americans.
It was, several advisers said, the last chance to turn the response around. And once the opportunity passed, it was the point of no return.
An ill president
The week leading up to Trump’s infection was frenzied, even by his standards. On Saturday, Sept. 26, he had hosted a party with scores of maskless attendees to announce Amy Coney Barrett as his pick for Supreme Court justice. The celebrations had continued indoors, where most people remained maskless. By that time, the virus was surging again, but Trump’s contempt for face coverings had turned into unofficial White House policy. He actually asked aides who wore them in his presence to take them off. If someone was going to do a news conference with him, he made clear that he or she was not to wear a mask by his side.
The day after the Supreme Court celebration, Trump had also hosted military families at the White House. At Trump’s insistence, few were wearing masks, but they were packed in a little too tight for his comfort. He wasn’t worried about others getting sick, but he did fret about his own vulnerability and complained to his staff afterward. Why were they letting people get so close to him? Meeting with the Gold Star families was sad and moving, he said, but added, “If these guys had covid, I’m going to get it because they were all over me.” He told his staff that they needed to do a better job of protecting him.
Two days after that, he flew to Cleveland for the first presidential debate against his Democratic challenger, Joe Biden. Trump was erratic that whole evening, and he seemed to deteriorate as the night went on. The pundits’ verdicts were brutal.
Almost 48 hours later, Trump became terribly ill. Hours after his tweet announcing he and first lady Melania Trump had coronavirus infections, the president began a rapid spiral downward. His fever spiked, and his blood oxygen level fell below 94 percent, at one point dipping into the 80s. Sean Conley, the White House physician, attended the president at his bedside. Trump was given oxygen in an effort to stabilize him.
The doctors gave Trump an eight-gram dose of two monoclonal antibodies through an intravenous tube. That experimental treatment was what had required the FDA’s sign-off. He was also given a first dose of the antiviral drug remdesivir, also by IV. That drug was authorized for use but still hard to get for many patients because it was in short supply.
Typically, doctors space out treatments to measure a patient’s response. Some drugs, such as monoclonal antibodies, are most effective if they’re administered early in the course of an infection. Others, such as remdesivir, are most effective when they’re given later, after a patient has become critically ill. But Trump’s doctors threw everything they could at the virus all at once. His condition appeared to stabilize somewhat as the day wore on, but his doctors, still fearing he might need to go on a ventilator, decided to move him to the hospital. It was too risky at that point to stay at the White House.
Many White House officials and even his closest aides were kept in the dark about his condition. But after they woke up to the news — many of them were asleep when Trump tweeted at nearly 1 a.m. on Friday that he had the virus — Cabinet officials and aides lined up at the White House to get tested. A large number had met with him the previous week to brief him about various issues or had traveled with him to the debate.
It was unclear even to Trump’s closest aides just how sick he was. Was he mildly ill, as he and Conley were saying, or was he sicker than they all knew? Trump was supposed to join a call with nursing home representatives later that day as part of his official calendar. Officials had been scheduled to do it in person from the White House, but that morning they were informed the call would be done remotely. Trump’s aides insisted that he would still be on it.
As one aide waited in line for a coronavirus test, she saw Conley sprint out of his office with a panicked look. That’s strange, the aide thought. An hour or two later, officials were informed that Pence would be joining the nursing homes call. Trump couldn’t make it.
‘Like a miracle’
Trump’s condition worsened early Saturday. His blood oxygen level dropped to 93 percent, and he was given the powerful steroid dexamethasone, which is usually administered if someone is extremely ill (the normal blood oxygen level is between 95 and 100 percent). The drug was believed to improve survival in coronavirus patients receiving supplemental oxygen. The president was on a dizzying array of emergency medicines by now — all at once.
Throughout Trump’s time in the hospital, his doctors consulted with the medical experts on the White House coronavirus task force whom the president had long ago discarded. They talked to Hahn, National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Director Anthony S. Fauci and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Robert Redfield, seeking input about his treatment.
Trump and his aides had ignored numerous warnings from the task force doctors that they were putting themselves and everyone in the West Wing at risk by their cavalier behavior. Over the past eight months, Trump had come dangerously close to the virus a number of times. Those repeated escapes had made the White House more careless, constantly tempting fate. Deborah Birx, the White House coronavirus task force coordinator, and Redfield wrote to top aides after every White House outbreak, warning them that 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue was not safe. Birx took her concerns to Pence directly. This is dangerous, she told him. If White House staff can’t or won’t wear masks, they need to be more than 10 feet away from one another. This is just too risky.
Their warnings had gone unheeded, and now some would pay a price. Trump hadn’t wanted to go to the hospital, but his aides had spelled out the choice: He could go to the hospital Friday, while he could still walk on his own, or he could wait until later, when the cameras could capture him in a wheelchair or gurney. There would be no hiding his condition then.
At least two of those who were briefed on Trump’s medical condition that weekend said he was gravely ill and feared that he wouldn’t make it out of Walter Reed. People close to Trump’s chief of staff, Mark Meadows, said he was consumed with fear that Trump might die.
It was unclear if one of the medications, or their combination, helped, but by Saturday afternoon Trump’s condition began improving. One of the people familiar with Trump’s medical information was convinced the monoclonal antibodies were responsible for the president’s quick recovery.
Throughout the day Saturday, Oct. 3, the restless Trump made a series of phone calls to gauge how his hospitalization was being received by the public. In all likelihood, the steroid he was taking had given him a burst of energy, though no one knew how long it would last. Perhaps buoyed by that, Trump continued to post on Twitter from the hospital, anxious to convey that he was upright and busy. At one point Trump even called Fauci to discuss his condition and share his personal assessment of the monoclonal antibodies he had received. He said it was miraculous how quickly they made him feel much better.
“This is like a miracle,” Trump told his campaign adviser Jason Miller in another one of his calls from the hospital. “I’m not going to lie. I wasn’t feeling that great.”
Waiting for a sign
Redfield spent the weekend Trump was sick praying. He prayed the president would recover. He prayed that he would emerge from the experience with a newfound appreciation for the seriousness of the threat. And he prayed that Trump would tell Americans they should listen to public health advisers before it was too late. The virus had begun a violent resurgence. Redfield, Fauci, Birx and others felt they had limited time to persuade people to behave differently if they were going to avoid a massive wave of death.
There were few signs that weekend that Trump would have a change of heart. It had already been a battle to get him to agree to go to Walter Reed in the first place. Now, he was badgering Conley and others to let him go home early. Redfield heard Trump was insisting on being discharged and called Conley on the phone. The president can’t go home this early, Redfield advised the doctor. He was a high-risk patient, and there were no guarantees that he wouldn’t backslide or experience some complication. (Many covid-19 patients seemed to be on an upswing and then quickly deteriorated.) Trump needed to stay in the hospital until that risk had passed. Conley agreed but said the president had made up his mind and couldn’t be convinced otherwise.
If they couldn’t keep him in the hospital, the advisers hoped that Trump would at least emerge from Walter Reed a changed man. Some even began mentally preparing to finally speak their minds. It would surely be the inflection point, they all thought. There’s nothing like a near-death experience to serve as a wake-up call. It was, at the end of the day, a national security failure. The president had not been protected. If this fiasco wasn’t the turning point, what would be?
Just as the country had been watching a few days before, many people tuned in again as Trump took Marine One back to the White House’s South Lawn on Monday night. They saw him step out in a navy suit, white shirt and blue-striped tie, with a medical mask on his face. He walked along the grass before climbing the steps to the Truman Balcony.
But Trump didn’t go inside. It was a moment of political theater too good to pass up — as suffused with triumph as his trip Friday had been humbling. He turned from the center of the balcony and looked back toward Marine One and the television cameras. It was clear that he was breathing heavily from the long walk and the climb up the flight of stairs.
Redfield was watching on television from home. He was praying as Trump went up the steps. Praying that he would reach the Truman Balcony and show some humility. That he would remind people that anyone could be susceptible to the coronavirus — even the president, the first lady and their son. That he would tell them how they could protect themselves and their loved ones.
But Trump didn’t waver. Facing the cameras from the balcony, he used his right hand to unhook the mask loop from his right ear, then raised his left hand to pull the mask off his face. He was heavily made up, his face more orange tinted than in the photos from the hospital. The helicopter’s rotors were still spinning. He put the mask into his right pocket, as if he was discarding it once and for all, then raised both hands in a thumbs-up. He was still probably contagious, standing there for all the world to see. He made a military salute as the helicopter departed the South Lawn, and then strode into the White House, passing staffers on his way and failing to protect them from the virus particles emitted from his nose and mouth.
Right then, Redfield knew it was over. Trump showed in that moment that he hadn’t changed at all. The pandemic response wasn’t going to change, either.
By Damian Paletta
Damian Paletta is the Post's economics editor. Before taking this role, he covered White House economic policy from 2017 until 2019. Twitter
By Yasmeen Abutaleb
Yasmeen Abutaleb joined The Washington Post in 2019 as a national reporter covering health policy, with a focus on the Department of Health and Human Services, health policy on Capitol Hill and health care in politics. She previously covered health care for Reuters, with a focus on the Affordable Care Act, federal health programs and drug pricing. Twitter
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2021/06/24/nightmare-scenario-book-excerpt/
751 unmarked graves found at former residential school for Indigenous children in Canada
By Amanda Coletta and Michael E. Miller
June 24, 2021 at 4:15 p.m. GMT+1
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2021/06/23/canada-cowessess-residential-school-graves/
TORONTO — A First Nation in Canada says it has found 751 unmarked graves at the site of a former residential school in the prairie province of Saskatchewan, at least the second such discovery here in less than a month as the country again confronts one of the darkest chapters of its history.
The Cowessess First Nation made the “horrific and shocking discovery” at the site of the former Marieval Indian Residential School in the southeastern part of the province, according to a statement released Wednesday by the Federation of Sovereign Indigenous Nations, which represents 74 First Nations in Saskatchewan.
The announcement comes less than a month after the Tk’emlúps te Secwe?pemc First Nation said a ground-penetrating radar specialist had uncovered evidence of unmarked graves containing the remains of 215 Indigenous children on the grounds of a former residential school in Kamloops, British Columbia.
In the days following the announcement that graves had been discovered at the site of the former Kamloops Indian Residential School, Indigenous leaders and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said there probably would be more discoveries as other such sites were searched.
The announcement from Saskatchewan was met with expressions of sadness and outrage.
“The news that hundreds of unmarked graves have been found in Cowessess First Nation is absolutely tragic, but not surprising,” tweeted Perry Bellegarde, the national chief of the Assembly of First Nations. “I urge all Canadians to stand with First Nations in this extremely difficult and emotional time.”
Nearly 150,000 Indigenous children were sent to the government-funded and church-run boarding schools, which were set up in the 19th century to assimilate them and operated until the late 1990s. Many children were forcibly separated from their families to be placed in the schools.
Canada’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission said in a 2015 report that many of the students were subjected to physical and sexual abuse at the schools, which barred them from practicing their traditions and speaking their languages. It said the schools carried out “cultural genocide” and effectively institutionalized child neglect.
The commission identified more than 3,000 students who died at the schools, a rate that was far higher than for non-Indigenous school-aged children. That number has since grown. Officials say the total number of children who died or went missing at the schools might never be known.
Children often died of diseases that spread rapidly in unsanitary living conditions, in accidents and in fires, the commission said. Some disappeared while trying to escape. To save money, authorities often buried the bodies on or near school sites, rather than send them back to their families.
The Cowessess First Nation had long suspected there were many unmarked graves at the site, which is about 87 miles east of Regina, the capital of Saskatchewan.
Pope Francis won’t apologize for abusive church-run schools in Canada, and lawmakers aren’t happy
The Marieval Indian Residential School was founded in the 1890s by Catholic missionaries. The federal government began funding the school in 1901 and took over its administration in 1969 before turning it over to the Cowessess First Nation in 1987. It closed in the 1990s.
The First Nation received a federal grant to bring in an underground radar detection team from a local educational institute. The planning for the project began two years ago, but it was delayed until a few weeks ago by the coronavirus pandemic, Cowessess First Nation Chief Cadmus Delorme told the Regina Leader-Post last month.
“The pain is real, the pain is there and the pain hasn’t gone away,” Delorme told the newspaper. “As we heal, every Cowessess citizen has a family member in that gravesite. To know there’s some unmarked, it continues the pain.”
The First Nation planned to identify all the remains and build a monument to honor the dead, he said.
The findings have rekindled appeals for accountability, particularly from the Catholic entities that ran most of the schools. Officials say some of them have not turned over records that might help identify missing children or locate the graves.
The findings have also fueled calls for monuments to the Canadian leaders who set up the residential school system to be removed from public view.
The Vatican has come under pressure from residential school survivors and from Trudeau to make an official apology for the Catholic Church’s role in the residential school system. Trudeau made a personal appeal to Pope Francis in 2017, but the pontiff has stopped short of an apology. The leaders of the United and Anglican Churches in Canada, which also operated schools, have apologized.
300 Comments
By Amanda Coletta
Amanda Coletta is a reporter based in Toronto who covers Canada for The Washington Post. She previously worked in London, first at the Economist and then the Wall Street Journal. Twitter
By Michael E. Miller
Michael E. Miller is a reporter on the local enterprise team. He joined The Washington Post in 2015 and has also reported from Afghanistan. Twitter
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2021/06/23/canada-cowessess-residential-school-graves/
Pelosi announces a select committee will investigate the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol by a pro-Trump mob
By Felicia Sonmez and Karoun Demirjian
June 24, 2021 at 4:09 p.m. GMT+1
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/pelosi-announces-a-select-committee-will-investigate-the-jan-6-attack-on-the-capitol-by-a-pro-trump-mob/2021/06/24/55497282-d4f5-11eb-ae54-515e2f63d37d_story.html
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) announced Thursday that House Democrats will form a select committee to investigate the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol by a pro-Trump mob, one month after Senate Republicans blocked an effort to form an independent, bipartisan commission.
“This morning, with great solemnity and sadness, I’m announcing that the House will be establishing a select committee on the Jan. 6 insurrection,” Pelosi said at a news conference Thursday morning.
Senate Republicans last month blocked the creation of an independent commission, despite 35 House Republicans having already endorsed the effort. That commission would have been modeled after a similar panel formed in the aftermath of the 9/11 terrorist attacks and charged with producing an objective account of what fueled the day’s violence.
About 10,000 people laid siege to the Capitol on Jan. 6, and nearly 800 of them broke into the Capitol building.
The events of the day resulted in five deaths, and nearly 140 officers were assaulted during the attack, as they faced rioters armed with ax handles, bats, metal batons, wooden poles, hockey sticks and other weapons, authorities said.
On Wednesday, a 49-year-old Indiana woman became the first person sentenced in the Jan. 6 riot. Anna Morgan-Lloyd pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor count of demonstrating inside the Capitol; she was sentenced to three years of probation and must also perform 40 hours of community service and pay $500 in restitution.
In recent weeks, a smattering of House and Senate panels have been looking into the events of Jan. 6, holding public hearings with law enforcement and military officials and, in one case, even publishing a comprehensive report examining why authorities were unable to control the pro-Trump crowd.
The select committee — which will require a majority vote in the Democratic-led House to be formed — is a signal that Pelosi wants to centralize those investigations in one body that will be equipped with subpoena power and tasked with publishing its findings.
But a select committee is all but guaranteed to be a more partisan forum than an independent commission would have been — meaning the parties may come no closer to a consensus about why Jan. 6 happened and who is to blame for it at the end of the probe than they are at the present moment.
In 2012, the then-GOP-led House established a select committee to look into the ambush that led to the deaths of four Americans at the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya. But the investigation soon descended into a tool to lob attacks at former secretary of state Hillary Clinton for using a private email server to conduct official business — a storyline that dogged her throughout her failed 2016 presidential bid against Donald Trump.
During that campaign cycle, Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), then the House’s second-highest ranking Republican, bragged that the special committee had helped hamstring Clinton’s candidacy. McCarthy is now the House minority leader, and he opposed the proposal for an independent commission on the Jan. 6 attack.
In the time since, the parties have only dug in more deeply behind partisan lines on questions regarding the president’s guilt, or even when it comes to funding improvements to Capitol security that might prevent a similar attack from happening again. A bill to direct $1.9 billion new security ventures — and paying past debts to the National Guard and others who responded to the riot — is still waiting for Senate action after barely scraping by in the House, on a 213-to-212 vote last month.
By Felicia Sonmez
Felicia Sonmez is a national political reporter covering breaking news from the White House, Congress and the campaign trail. She was previously based in Beijing, where she worked for Agence France-Presse and The Wall Street Journal. Twitter
By Karoun Demirjian
Karoun Demirjian is a national security reporter covering Capitol Hill, where she focuses on defense, foreign affairs, intelligence and policy matters concerning the Justice Department. She was previously a correspondent based in The Post's bureau in Moscow. Twitter
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/pelosi-announces-a-select-committee-will-investigate-the-jan-6-attack-on-the-capitol-by-a-pro-trump-mob/2021/06/24/55497282-d4f5-11eb-ae54-515e2f63d37d_story.html
Kyle Griffin @kylegriffin1 Reuters: U.S. HOUSE SPEAKER PELOSI ANNOUNCES CREATION OF NEW HOUSE COMMITTEE TO PROBE JAN. 6 ATTACK ON U.S. CAPITOL
4:10 PM · Jun 24, 2021·Twitter Web App
Reuters: U.S. HOUSE SPEAKER PELOSI ANNOUNCES CREATION OF NEW HOUSE COMMITTEE TO PROBE JAN. 6 ATTACK ON U.S. CAPITOL
— Kyle Griffin (@kylegriffin1) June 24, 2021
Dirty laundry in space? NASA, Tide tackle cleaning challenge
By MARCIA DUNN
June 22, 2021
https://apnews.com/article/laundry-wash-clothes-space-station-nasa-5a7f2795150f7dce81581cfb82cdd1f7
In this Nov. 22, 2009 photo made available by NASA, astronaut Leland Melvin, STS-129 mission specialist, exercises in the Unity module of the International Space Station while the space shuttle Atlantis is docked with the station. Space station astronauts exercise two hours every day to counter the muscle- and bone-withering effects of weightlessness, quickly leaving their workout clothes sweaty, smelly and stiff. Their T-shirts, shorts and socks end up so foul that they run through a pair every week, according to Melvin, a former NASA astronaut and NFL player. (NASA via AP)
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) — How do astronauts do laundry in space? They don’t.
They wear their underwear, gym clothes and everything else until they can’t take the filth and stink anymore, then junk them.
NASA wants to change that — if not at the International Space Station, then the moon and Mars — and stop throwing away tons of dirty clothes every year, stuffing them in the trash to burn up in the atmosphere aboard discarded cargo ships. So it’s teamed up with Procter & Gamble Co. to figure out how best to clean astronauts’ clothes in space so they can be reused for months or even years, just like on Earth.
The Cincinnati company announced Tuesday that it will send a pair of Tide detergent and stain removal experiments to the space station later this year and next, all part of the galactic battle against soiled and sweaty clothes.
It’s no small problem, especially as the U.S. and other countries look to establish bases on the moon and Mars.
Rocket cargo space is tight and expensive, according to NASA, so why waste it on new outfits if their clothes could be kept looking and smelling fresh? When you figure an astronaut needs 150 pounds (68 kilograms) of clothes in space per year, that quickly adds up, especially on a three-year Mars mission, said Mark Sivik, a chemist specializing in fabric and home care technology for P&G.
There’s also the health — and ick — factors.
Space station astronauts exercise two hours every day to counter the muscle- and bone-withering effects of weightlessness, quickly leaving their workout clothes sweaty, smelly and stiff. Their T-shirts, shorts and socks end up so foul that they run through a pair every week, according to Leland Melvin, a former NASA astronaut and NFL player.
“After that, they’re deemed toxic,” said Melvin, who’s serving as a spokesman for the project. “They like have a life of their own. They’re so stiff from all that sweat.”
While NASA and the other space station partners have looked into special antimicrobial clothes to prolong wear, it’s not a long-term solution.
In its initial experiment, P&G will send up detergent custom-made for space in December so scientists can see how the enzymes and other ingredients react to six months of weightlessness. Then next May, stain-removal pens and wipes will be delivered for testing by astronauts.
At the same time, P&G is developing a washer-dryer combo that could operate on the moon or even Mars, using minimal amounts of water and detergent. Such a machine could also prove useful in arid regions here on Earth.
One of the many design challenges: The laundry water would need to be reclaimed for drinking and cooking, just like urine and sweat are currently recycled aboard the space station.
“The best solutions come from the most diverse teams,” Melvin said, “and how more diverse can you be than Tide and NASA?”
___
The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science Education. The AP is solely responsible for all content.
https://apnews.com/article/laundry-wash-clothes-space-station-nasa-5a7f2795150f7dce81581cfb82cdd1f7
In pandemic, drug overdose deaths soar among Black Americans
CLAIRE GALOFARO
today
https://apnews.com/article/george-floyd-michael-brown-pandemics-coronavirus-pandemic-race-and-ethnicity-ea94f4021018bfc7bc88e7b494c8665e
ST. LOUIS (AP) — She screamed and cried, banged on the dashboard, begging her husband to drive faster, faster, faster toward her brother lying face-down on his bedroom floor.
Craig Elazer had struggled all his life with anxiety so bad his whole body would shake. But because he was Black, he was seen as unruly, she said, not as a person who needed help. Elazer, 56, had started taking drugs to numb his nerves before he was old enough to drive a car.
Now his sister, Michelle Branch, was speeding toward his apartment in an impoverished, predominantly Black neighborhood in north St. Louis. His family had dreaded the day he would die of an overdose for so long that his mother had paid for his funeral in monthly installments.
It was September, and as the COVID-19 pandemic intensified America’s opioid addiction crisis in nearly every corner of the country, many Black neighborhoods like this one suffered most acutely. The portrait of the opioid epidemic has long been painted as a rural white affliction, but the demographics have been shifting for years as deaths surged among Black Americans. The pandemic hastened the trend by further flooding the streets with fentanyl, a potent synthetic opioid, in communities with scant resources to deal with addiction.
In the city of St. Louis, deaths among Black people increased last year at three times the rate of white people, skyrocketing more than 33%. Black men in Missouri are now four times more likely than a white person to die of an overdose.
Dr. Kanika Turner, a local physician leading the charge to contain the crisis, describes the soaring death rate as a civil rights issue as pressing and profound as any other. The communities now being hit hardest are those already devastated by the war on drugs that demonized Black drug users, tore families apart and hollowed out neighborhoods by sending Black men to prison instead of treatment, she said. Even today, Black people in the United States are more likely to be in jail for drug crimes and less likely to access treatment.
Last year, George Floyd died in Minneapolis under a police officer’s knee. He had fentanyl in his system and some of the officer’s defenders tried to blame the drugs for his death. The world exploded in rage.
“That incident on top of the pandemic rocked the boat and shook all of us. It ripped the Band-Aid off a wound that has always been there,” said Turner, who grew in the same neighborhoods where Elazer lived, beset by addiction, poverty and one of the highest murder rates in America. “We’re undoing history of damage, history of trauma, history of racism.”
– VIDEO: Overdoses soar for St. Louis Black men amid COVID
Pastors are now marching into the city jail to train inmates how to survive once they get outside. They host mobile treatment centers in their parking lots. They make an appeal to their congregations: Do not numb the pain of violence and racism with drugs. Don’t let the next funeral be for you.
Branch for decades begged God to deliver her brother from addiction. She would lie awake at night imagining him dead in a ditch or dark alley, with nothing in the world but the clothes on his back.
She was hysterical by the time she arrived at his apartment.
The cousin who found him said he was sorry; Elazer had been alone and dead for hours. They tried to convince her not to go inside, but she wanted to see him.
As Branch looked down at his body, she felt calm come over her.
“Society failed him,” she said. “And I had a sense that he’d finally been set free.”
...
MUCH MORE
https://apnews.com/article/george-floyd-michael-brown-pandemics-coronavirus-pandemic-race-and-ethnicity-ea94f4021018bfc7bc88e7b494c8665e
Amazon isn't alone in reportedly destroying unsold goods. Nike, Burberry, H&M and others have also come under fire for torching their own products.
Aleeya Mayo Jun 22, 2021, 9:55 PM
https://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-destroying-unsold-goods-report-other-nike-burberry-fashion-2021-6?international=true&r=US&IR=T
Amazon reportedly destroyed 130,000 unsold and returned items in a single week.
Burberry, Urban Outfitters, H&M, Nike, and Victoria's Secret have also come under fire for the practice.
The fashion industry makes up 10% of humanity's carbon emissions.
Amazon is not the only company that has been reportedly destroying unsold goods.
Amazon came under fire this week after a former employee told ITV, a British news channel, that employees at a warehouse in Scotland were instructed to destroy 130,000 unsold and returned items in just one week — totalling more than a million items per year.
But Amazon is far from the only offender.
Brands including Burberry, Urban Outfitters, H&M, Nike, JCPenney, Michael Kors, Eddie Bauer, and Victoria's Secret have all been accused of doing the same, according to various reports in recent years.
Burberry came clean about burning clothes and said it "used specialist incinerators that harness energy from the process." The destroyed goods totaled about $37 million, compared to Burberry's revenue of $3.8 billion that year.
"Burberry has insisted it's recycling the clothing into energy, except the energy that is recouped from burning clothing doesn't come anywhere near the energy that was used to create the garments," Timo Rissanen, an associate dean at Parsons School of Design and a professor of fashion design and sustainability told Vox in a 2018 interview.
The amount of garments that people have been buying annually has been steadily increasing since the early 2000's. Insider previously reported that the fashion industry makes up "10% of humanity's carbon emissions, dries up water sources, and pollutes river streams."
Chanel and Louis Vuitton have also participated in the burning of merchandise. Richemont, the Swiss company behind brands like Cartier and Montblanc, said in 2018 it had destroyed more than $500 million worth of watches to keep them out of the hands of resellers.
In response to ITV's reporting, an Amazon spokesperson told Insider that no clothes were sent to landfills, but "as a last resort," some may be sent to "energy recovery."
"We're working hard to drive the number of times this happens down to zero," Amazon said.
https://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-destroying-unsold-goods-report-other-nike-burberry-fashion-2021-6?international=true&r=US&IR=T
Edward Hardy @EdwardTHardy Chairman of the Joint Chiefs General Mark Milley has had enough of Matt Gaetz's nonsense
VIDEO https://twitter.com/i/status/1407786787511042049
8:45 PM · Jun 23, 2021·TweetDeck
THREAD
https://twitter.com/EdwardTHardy/status/1407786787511042049
Blasine Astolat @BlasineA · 14h Replying to @EdwardTHardy - Milley graduated from Princeton University with a Bachelor of Arts degree in politics, a Master of Arts degree in int'l relations from Columbia Univ and another Master of Arts in national security and strategic studies from the Naval War College.
Matt Gaetz has a Venmo account.
NW Range Rat @SteveWithrowPNW · 15h Replying to @EdwardTHardy
That look you have when you been owned
Will Sommer @willsommer There's a real fascist vibe to this One America News personality calming calling for the execution of potentially tens of thousands of Americans over fake voter fraud claims.
VIDEO
There's a real fascist vibe to this One America News personality calming calling for the execution of potentially tens of thousands of Americans over fake voter fraud claims. pic.twitter.com/wm4E0qVJaf
— Will Sommer (@willsommer) June 24, 2021
There's a real fascist vibe to this One America News personality calming calling for the execution of potentially tens of thousands of Americans over fake voter fraud claims. pic.twitter.com/wm4E0qVJaf
— Will Sommer (@willsommer) June 24, 2021
House investigates possible shadow operation in Trump justice department
Judiciary committee want to know if officials violated policies in issuing secret subpoenas against congressional Democrats
Hugo Lowell in Washington
Thu 24 Jun 2021 01.00 EDT
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/jun/24/house-democrats-justice-department-shadow-operation-investigation
Top Democrats in the House are investigating whether Trump justice department officials ran an unlawful shadow operation to target political enemies of the former president to hunt down leaks of classified information, according to a source familiar with the matter.
The House judiciary committee chairman, Jerry Nadler, is centering his investigation on the apparent violation of internal policies by the justice department, when it issued subpoenas against Democrats Adam Schiff and Eric Swalwell in 2018.
The use of subpoenas to secretly seize data from the two Democrats on the House intelligence committee – and fierce critics of Donald Trump – would ordinarily require authorization from the highest levels of the justice department and notably, the attorney general.
But with the former Trump attorneys general Bill Barr and Jeff Sessions denying any knowledge of the subpoenas, Democrats are focused on whether rogue officials abused the vast power of the federal government to target Trump’s perceived political opponents, the source said.
That kind of shadow operation – reminiscent of the shadow foreign policy in Ukraine that led to Trump’s first impeachment – would be significant because it could render the subpoenas unlawful, the source said.
And if the subpoenas were issued without proper authorization from the attorney general level, it could also leave the officials involved in the effort open to prosecution for false operating with the imprimatur of law enforcement.
The sharpening contours of the House judiciary committee’s investigation into the Trump justice department reflects Democrats’ determination to uncover potential politicization at the department.
Current and former justice department officials have described the subpoenas as part of a fact-gathering effort that ensnared Schiff and Swalwell because they had been in contact with congressional aides suspected of leaking classified information.
As the justice department investigated leaks, they obtained records of House intelligence committee staffers, as well as the records of their contacts. Schiff and Swalwell were not the target of the investigation, the Wall Street Journal reported.
But Democrats are also concerned about the denials from Barr and Sessions and are set to look at whether they made publicly misleading representations to obfuscate the extent of their involvement.
The two former attorneys general appeared to issue very carefully worded denials, the source said, which raised the prospect that they may have been at least aware of the leak inquiries into Schiff and Swalwell.
Barr said in an interview with Politico that while he was attorney general, he was “not aware of any congressman’s records being sought in a leak case”, while Sessions also told associates he was never briefed on the subpoenas.
In examining the denials, Democrats could demand testimony from Barr and Sessions, as well as other Trump justice department officials. Nadler told the Guardian he would also consider deposing the former deputy attorney general Rod Rosenstein.
But the committee is not expected to issue subpoenas for their testimony for some time, in large part because Democrats and counsel on the committee are not yet certain what information they need to compel.
The committee took its first step in trying to establish what testimony it needed for its investigation last week, when Nadler sent a lengthy document request to the attorney general, Merrick Garland, and demanded a briefing before 25 June.
Democrats on the House judiciary committee are not likely to receive a briefing until next month, the source said. But the House inquiry is sure to be the most potent investigation into the data seizure after Republicans vowed to stymie a parallel inquiry in the Senate.
Although justice department investigations into leaks of classified information are routine, the use of subpoenas to seize data belonging to the accounts of sitting members of Congress with gag orders to keep their existence secret remain near-unprecedented.
Justice department investigators gained access to, among others, the records of Schiff, then the top Democrat on the House intelligence committee and now its chairman, Swalwell and the family members of lawmakers and aides.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/jun/24/house-democrats-justice-department-shadow-operation-investigation
U.S. District Judge Royce C. Lamberth castigated Republican lawmakers on Wednesday for downplaying the violence of the mob that stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, saying in handing down the first sentence to a charged defendant that those who break the law must pay a penalty.
“I’m especially troubled by the accounts of some members of Congress that January 6 was just a day of tourists walking through the Capitol,” he said. “I don’t know what planet they were on. ... This was not a peaceful demonstration. It was not an accident that it turned violent; it was intended to halt the very functioning of our government.”
In sentencing regretful Capitol protester, federal judge rebukes Republicans
By Spencer S. Hsu and Rachel Weiner
June 23, 2021 at 9:05 p.m. GMT+1
https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/legal-issues/captiol-riot-first-sentence/2021/06/23/8b2825d8-d39c-11eb-ae54-515e2f63d37d_story.html
U.S. District Judge Royce C. Lamberth castigated Republican lawmakers on Wednesday for downplaying the violence of the mob that stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, saying in handing down the first sentence to a charged defendant that those who break the law must pay a penalty.
“I’m especially troubled by the accounts of some members of Congress that January 6 was just a day of tourists walking through the Capitol,” he said. “I don’t know what planet they were on. ... This was not a peaceful demonstration. It was not an accident that it turned violent; it was intended to halt the very functioning of our government.”
The 49-year-old Indiana woman before him, who had just pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor count of demonstrating inside the Capitol, did not disagree.
Although the day after the riot Anna Morgan-Lloyd described Jan. 6 as “the most exciting day of my life,” in court she expressed regret and contrition.
“I went there to support ... President Trump peacefully,” she said. “I’m ashamed that it became a savage display of violence that day. ... It was never my intent to be a part of something that’s so disgraceful to our American people and so disgraceful to our country. I just want to apologize.”
Lamberth credited Morgan-Lloyd for her early cooperation and admission of guilt, expressing frustration with both defendants and observers who argue that the riot was merely a political protest. He sentenced her to three years of probation.
Referring to the words of Rep. Andrew S. Clyde (R-Ga.), who last month suggested that many inside the Capitol following the pro-Trump mob’s attack on the building looked like they were on a “normal tourist visit,” the judge said that video introduced in court “will show the attempts of some congressmen to rewrite history ... is utter nonsense.”
Referring to Morgan-Lloyd’s own statement, he noted, “You saw it for yourself and you were horrified.”
The judge also took time to dismiss “conspiracy theories” about FBI informants and address claims that the Capitol defendants are being treated more harshly than Black Lives Matter protesters. He said he couldn’t speak to what happens in state courts, but that Attorney General Merrick Garland has “promised the law will be applied equally ... whatever the complexion of the demonstrator is.”
He noted that Martin Luther King Jr., although he was never violent, prepared to go to jail when he protested against violence.
“Some of my defendants in some of these other cases think there’s no consequence to this, and there is a consequence,” Lamberth said. “I don’t want to create the impression that probation is the automatic outcome here, because it’s not going to be.”
Lamberth is a respected figure in the federal judiciary who was previously the presiding judge on the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court and served a second term chairing a judiciary panel on inter-circuit assignments. Appointed by President Ronald Reagan in 1987, he is a former federal and U.S. Army prosecutor who is known to be a tough sentencer.
He warned Morgan-Lloyd that if she violates her terms of release in any way, she will go to jail — in his court, “probation comes once in a lifetime.” She must also perform 40 hours of community service and pay $500 in restitution.
Her defense attorney H. Heather Shaner went to great lengths to show that Morgan-Lloyd deserved leniency. She had her client read books and watch movies about discrimination and share her thoughts with the judge.
“I’ve lived a sheltered life and truly haven’t experienced life the way many have,” Morgan-Lloyd wrote. “At first it didn’t dawn on me, but later I realized that if every person like me, who wasn’t violent, was removed from that crowd, the ones who were violent may have lost the nerve to do what they did.”
In court, Shaner said Morgan-Lloyd now subscribes to the History Channel and, without prompting, had watched a recent documentary about the 1921 race riot in Tulsa.
“I’ve learned that even though we live in a wonderful country things still need to improve,” Morgan-Lloyd wrote in one report. “People of all colors should feel as safe as I do to walk down the street.”
Prosecutors did not ask for incarceration, noting that Morgan-Lloyd already spent an “eye-opening” two days in jail.
“To be clear, what the Defendant initially described as ‘the most exciting day of [her] life’ was, in fact, a tragic day for our nation — a day of riotous violence, collective destruction, and criminal conduct by a frenzied and lawless mob,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Joshua S. Rothstein said in court. “However ... [Morgan-Lloyd’s] seeming prior bravado ... appears to have been tempered by a realization of the consequences of her actions.”
Rothstein called probation appropriate because Morgan-Lloyd had no known ties to extremist groups, did not plan to enter the Capitol, stayed inside one hallway for only about 10 minutes and did not commit any violence or destruction while there. She also cooperated with law enforcement and quickly accepted responsibility, the prosecutor said.
A former waitress and General Electric employee whose job was moved offshore, Morgan-Lloyd was born in rural Indiana and married her teenage crush when both were adults and he was going through a difficult divorce, defense attorney Shaner said.
Morgan-Lloyd said in court papers that she graduated from community college, worked for a medical device maker, is a mother to two stepdaughters and helps care for five grandchildren.
Raised a Democrat, she supported Trump for president beginning in 2016.
“My husband and I both found it hard to believe because we didn’t like him at all before. But he was standing up for what we believe in. We couldn’t argue with it,” Morgan-Lloyd wrote. “We felt that when [Democrats] worked against him they worked against me, my family and my community.”
She said she and her friends came to Washington to “show that a lot of American people support Trump,” and that she did not intend to do more than walk to the Capitol.
“When a 74 year old woman, we met that day, went up, we followed to keep her safe. I made the decision to go up and I’m responsible for that. No one made me go, I wasn’t forced. When she entered the building, we went in to find her. Once again I could have chosen to stay outside,” she wrote.
The government sentencing recommendation of 36 months of probation is greater than a 12-month term of supervision that would follow a maximum six-month prison term for someone convicted of parading, picketing or demonstrating in the Capitol. Most first-time misdemeanor offenders do not receive prison time.
Prosecutors have been offering first-time offenders charged only with misdemeanors at the Capitol — roughly half the total — the option of pleading guilty to a single count, paying $500 in restitution and meeting with investigators.
Two defendants have pleaded guilty to more serious felony offenses. Jon Ryan Schaffer, 53, described in court documents as a founding member of the Oath Keepers, is cooperating with prosecutors in hopes of trimming a roughly four-year recommended prison term for obstructing an official proceeding of Congress and trespassing in the Capitol while armed.
Tampa crane operator Paul Allard Hodgkins, 38, faces a 15- to 21-month recommended sentencing range after pleading guilty to felony obstruction of Congress.
Lamberth’s remarks were reinforced by other judges Wednesday, including U.S. District Judge Timothy J. Kelly, a 2017 Trump appointee.
By Spencer Hsu
Spencer S. Hsu is an investigative reporter, two-time Pulitzer finalist and national Emmy Award nominee. Hsu has covered homeland security, immigration, Virginia politics and Congress. Twitter
Image without a caption
By Rachel Weiner
Rachel Weiner tries to cover Alexandria's federal court from a small windowless room with no cellphone access. She sometimes ventures outside to write about crime in Alexandria and Arlington. Twitter
https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/legal-issues/captiol-riot-first-sentence/2021/06/23/8b2825d8-d39c-11eb-ae54-515e2f63d37d_story.html
Cindy McCain to be nominated as ambassador to U.N. food and agriculture programs
By Tyler Pager
June 23, 2021 at 9:48 p.m. GMT+1
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2021/06/23/cindy-mccain-nomination/
President Biden announced Wednesday that he will nominate Cindy McCain, the widow of Sen. John McCain (Ariz.), for an ambassadorship to the United Nations’ food and agriculture programs.
If confirmed, Cindy McCain, who crossed party lines to endorse Biden in the general election, will head to Rome as the envoy to the United Nations Agencies for Food and Agriculture, which encompasses three U.N. agencies.
Biden also tapped Claire Cronin, a state representative in Massachusetts, to serve as ambassador to Ireland, a significant posting in the Biden administration given the president’s Irish heritage. Cronin is the majority leader in the Massachusetts House of Representatives, and she is the first woman to hold that role.
Biden often talks about his Irish roots, whether sharing stories about his ancestors’ journey to the United States in coffin ships or professing his love for Irish poets.
“Everything between Ireland and the United States runs deep,” Biden said while hosting a virtual visit with Ireland’s prime minister on St. Patrick’s Day this year. “Our joys, our sorrows, our passion, our drive, our unrelenting optimism and hope.”
Biden will also nominate former Delaware governor Jack Markell as ambassador to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, and Michael Carpenter, managing director of the Penn Biden Center, as the ambassador to the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe. Carpenter also worked as foreign policy adviser for Biden when he was vice president.
Many other high-profile political ambassadors will probably be announced in the coming weeks and months, but many of the nominees are still in the vetting and financial disclosure processes. The rollout of political ambassadors has been slowed in part because of diversity concerns, people familiar with the process say. Many of the president’s longtime friends and donors are White men, and the administration is working to ensure that the ambassadors reflect gender and racial diversity.
The four nominees are part of the second group of Biden’s political ambassadors. Last week, the president announced his first slate, which included Thomas R. Nides for Israel, Ken Salazar for Mexico and C.B. “Sully” Sullenberger III for an aviation posting. The majority of the approximately 190 postings, however, are filled by career State Department employees, and Biden has already nominated ambassadors for those posts.
By Tyler Pager
Tyler Pager is a White House reporter at The Washington Post. He joined the paper in 2021 after covering the White House at Politico and the 2020 presidential campaign at Bloomberg News. Twitter
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2021/06/23/cindy-mccain-nomination/
The LEGO Group reveals first prototype LEGO® brick made from recycled plastic
23 June 2021
https://www.lego.com/en-dk/aboutus/news/2021/june/prototype-lego-brick-recycled-plastic
Rep. Matt Gaetz Tweets, Deletes Call to Defund FBI, the Agency Investigating Him
OOPSIE TWEETIE
Blake Montgomery
Reporter/Editor
Published Jun. 23, 2021 7:56PM ET
https://www.thedailybeast.com/rep-matt-gaetz-tweets-deletes-call-to-defund-fbi-the-agency-investigating-him-for-sex-trafficking?via=newsletter&source=CSPMedition
Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) wrote a critique of a progressive slogan Wednesday that may have come off differently than he intended, given that the Florida congressman is under federal investigation for alleged sex trafficking. He wrote, “If Democrats want to defund the police, they should start with the FBI.” Gaetz deleted the tweet after just one minute. A spokesperson for Gaetz confirmed the tweet, telling Vice, “Rep. Gaetz felt it appropriate to remove a jocular tweet taken from a speech some time ago.” The Justice Department has been investigating Gaetz for more than a year, and a longtime associate of Gaetz, Joel Greenberg, has alleged that the Republican paid for sex with a minor.
Read it at Vice
https://www.vice.com/en/article/88nm4p/matt-gaetz-deleted-tweet-fbi
https://www.thedailybeast.com/rep-matt-gaetz-tweets-deletes-call-to-defund-fbi-the-agency-investigating-him-for-sex-trafficking?via=newsletter&source=CSPMedition
Oath Keeper Will Cooperate With Feds—and Testify Against His Jan. 6 Co-Conspirators
FLIPPING
Pilar Melendez
National Reporter
Published Jun. 23, 2021 2:43PM ET
https://www.thedailybeast.com/oath-keeper-graydon-young-pleads-guilty-to-capitol-riot-charges?via=newsletter&source=CSPMedition
An Oath Keeper accused of conspiring with other members of the paramilitary group for months to storm the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6 has agreed to cooperate with the feds and testify against his co-conspirators at trial. Graydon Young, a 54-year-old Florida resident, pleaded guilty on Wednesday to charges of conspiracy and obstruction of an official proceeding. As part of his plea agreement, Young has “agreed to provide testimony before grand jury and trial,” participate in interviews with law enforcement and waive his right to counsel. He also agreed to pay $2,000 in restitution.
During a Wednesday hearing, U.S. District Judge Amir Mehta noted that Young now faces a maximum sentence of 78 months in prison for his offending, though he noted that a sentence could be reduced once prosecutors analyze the usefulness of his cooperation. The feds alleged Young was among a group of 16 who conspired together to attack the Capitol. He is the second member of the Oath Keepers to plead guilty for their role in the siege but the first member charged with conspiracy to cop to their crimes.
https://www.thedailybeast.com/oath-keeper-graydon-young-pleads-guilty-to-capitol-riot-charges?via=newsletter&source=CSPMedition
First look: WaPo Trump book's secret title revealed
Mike Allen, author of AM
Updated 18 hours ago - Politics & Policy
https://www.axios.com/phil-rucker-carol-leonnig-trump-book-wapo-63513af3-0715-4e9c-87e0-c56246208a11.html
Cover: Penguin Press
The Washington Post's Carol Leonnig and Philip Rucker will be out July 20 with " I Alone Can Fix It: Donald J. Trump’s Catastrophic Final Year," Penguin Press announced.
Breaking: Axios has learned that The Wall Street Journal's Michael Bender is moving " Frankly, We Did Win the Election" up to July 20, matching Leonnig-Rucker, from his earlier pub date of Aug. 10.
Why it matters: With the swelter of Trump books that begins this summer, authors have been keeping their publishing plans secret. Leonnig and Rucker's publishing date puts them a week ahead of the juggernaut Michael Wolff, whose " Landslide" is scheduled for July 27.
Leonnig and Rucker, both Pulitzer winners, are authors of a No. 1 bestseller on Trump, " A Very Stable Genius." Leonnig wrote the current bestseller " Zero Fail: The Rise and Fall of the Secret Service."
For the new book, the two interviewed Trump at Mar-a-Lago.The book also goes deep on post-election/Jan. 6.The publisher says "I Alone Can Fix It'" uses Trump and those around him — doctors, generals, advisers, family members — to capture "a forensic account of the most devastating year in a presidency like no other."
"Their sources were in the room as time and time again Trump put his personal gain ahead of the good of the country," Penguin Press says."These witnesses to history tell the story of him longing to deploy the military to the streets of American cities to crush the protest movement in the wake of the killing of George Floyd, all to bolster his image of strength ahead of the election. ... This is a story of a nation sabotaged — economically, medically, and politically."
https://www.axios.com/phil-rucker-carol-leonnig-trump-book-wapo-63513af3-0715-4e9c-87e0-c56246208a11.html
John McAfee: antivirus entrepreneur found dead in Spanish prison
McAfee’s extradition to the US on tax charges had been approved hours earlier
Sam Jones in Madrid, Kari Paul in San Francisco and agencies
Wed 23 Jun 2021 18.39 EDT
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/jun/23/john-mcafee-dead-spain-prison-extradition
The antivirus software entrepreneur John McAfee has been found dead in his cell in Spain from an apparent suicide, hours after the country’s highest court approved his extradition to the United States, where he was wanted on tax-related criminal charges that carry a prison sentence of up to 30 years.
Catalan’s regional police force, the Mossos d’Esquadra, confirmed a report in El País that McAfee, 75, had been found dead in the Brians 2 prison near Barcelona, late on Wednesday.
In a statement, the Catalan justice department said that prison officers and medics had tried to save the life of a 75-year-old man but had been unsuccessful.
“Judicial staff have been dispatched to the prison and are investigating the causes of death,” the statement said, adding: “Everything points to death by suicide.”
McAfee’s lawyer told the Reuters news agency on Wednesday evening that McAfee had apparently hanged himself in his prison cell.
Tax offenses
McAfee, the creator of the McAfee virus software, was arrested last October at Barcelona’s international airport as he was about to board a flight to Istanbul.
The arrest of the entrepreneur came a day after authorities had made public a US indictment stemming from alleged tax offenses. Tennessee prosecutors had charged McAfee with evading taxes after failing to report income made from promoting cryptocurrencies while he did consultancy work, as well as income from speaking engagements and selling the rights to his life story for a documentary.
On Wednesday, Spain’s highest court had approved McAfee’s extradition to the United States, although the decision could be appealed and the extradition would have had to be approved by the Spanish cabinet.
“The court agrees to grant the extradition of John David McAfee as requested by the American judicial authorities for the crimes referred to in the tax offense indictments for years 2016 to 2018,” read the 16-page ruling.
Erratic behavior
Since making a fortune in the 1980s with the software that still bears his name, McAfee had engaged in increasingly erratic behavior, most recently as a self-styled cryptocurrency guru claiming to make $2,000 a day.
His namesake company ultimately became a household entity in antivirus security, but tried to distance itself from its controversial founder after he resigned in 1994.
McAfee was purchased by the computer chip maker Intel in 2010 for $7.7bn and was folded into Intel’s larger cybersecurity division. The rebranding was short-lived, and Intel in 2016 spun out the cybersecurity unit into a new company called McAfee.
McAfee’s personal life often drew as much interest as his professional achievements. He twice made long-shot runs for the US presidency and was a participant in Libertarian party presidential debates in 2016. He dabbled in yoga, ultra-light aircraft and producing herbal medications.
He frequently touted conspiracy theories on social media, and became the subject of frenzied media scrutiny following the unsolved 2012 murder of a neighbor in Belize.
When the police found him living with a 17-year-old girl and discovered a large arsenal of weapons in his home in the Central American country, McAfee disappeared on a month-long flight that drew breathless media coverage. McAfee said he knew nothing about the murder, but was worried he might have been the attacker’s intended target.
The dead neighbor’s family later filed a wrongful death suit against McAfee and last year a court in Florida ruled against him, ordering him to pay the family more than $25m.
In 2015, McAfee was arrested in the US for driving under the influence and possession of a gun while under the influence.
In July 2019, he was released from detention in the Dominican Republic after he and five others were suspected of traveling on a yacht carrying high-calibre weapons, ammunition and military-style gear, officials in the Caribbean island said at the time.
In March, he was charged in a Manhattan federal court over a pump and dump scheme involving cryptocurrencies he was promoting to his large social media following.
In a hearing held via video link earlier this month in Spain, McAfee had argued that the charges against him were politically motivated and said he would spend the rest of his life in prison if he was returned to the US.
In an interview with British newspaper the Independent, McAfee said his experience of being in a Spanish prison was a “fascinating adventure” and he planned never to return to the US.
His main point of contact outside the prison, McAfee said, was his wife, Janice. The last post from his Twitter account was a retweet of a Father’s Day message from her.
“These eight months John has spent in prison in Spain have been especially hard on his overall health both mentally and physically, as well as financially, but he is undeterred from continuing to speak truth to power,” it said.
Conspiracy theorists have already seized on McAfee’s death, editing his Wikipedia page to state he was murdered. McAfee’s apparent suicide comes after he shared tweets about the poor conditions in prison, stating “there is much sorrow in prison, disguised as hostility”.
Hours after his death, a post featuring the letter Q was shared to McAfee’s Instagram account. The image is probably a reference to QAnon – the baseless conspiracy theory that there exists a secret world order of satanic pedophiles being battled in secret by Donald Trump.
In the US, the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline is at 800-273-8255 and online chat is also available. You can also text HOME to 741741 to connect with a crisis text line counselor. In the UK and Ireland, Samaritans can be contacted on 116 123 or email jo@samaritans.org or jo@samaritans.ie. In Australia, the crisis support service Lifeline is 13 11 14. Other international helplines can be found at www.befrienders.org
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/jun/23/john-mcafee-dead-spain-prison-extradition
Unvaccinated Missourians fuel COVID: ‘We will be the canary’
By HEATHER HOLLINGSWORTH
33 minutes ago
https://apnews.com/article/mo-state-wire-michael-brown-coronavirus-pandemic-health-89fa995c59397228d8d56e1ab45890ab
KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP) — As the U.S. emerges from the COVID-19 crisis, Missouri is becoming a cautionary tale for the rest of the country: It is seeing an alarming rise in cases because of a combination of the fast-spreading delta variant and stubborn resistance among many people to getting vaccinated.
Intensive care beds are filling up with surprisingly young, unvaccinated patients, and staff members are getting burned out fighting a battle that was supposed to be in its final throes.
The hope among some health leaders is that the rest of the U.S. might at least learn something from Missouri’s plight.
“If people elsewhere in the country are looking to us and saying, ‘No thanks’ and they are getting vaccinated, that is good,” said Erik Frederick, chief administrative officer at Mercy Hospital Springfield, which has been inundated with COVID-19 patients as the variant first identified in India rips through the largely non-immunized community. “We will be the canary.”
The state now leads the nation with the highest rate of new COVID-19 infections, and the surge is happening largely in a politically conservative farming region in the northern part of the state and in the southwestern corner, which includes Springfield and Branson, the country music mecca in the Ozark Mountains where big crowds are gathering again at the city’s theaters and other attractions.
While over 53% of all Americans have received at least one shot, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, most southern and northern Missouri counties are well short of 40%. One county is at just 13%.
Cases remain below their winter highs in southwestern Missouri, but the trajectory is steeper than in previous surges, Frederick said. As of Tuesday, 153 COVID-19 patients were hospitalized at Mercy and another Springfield hospital, Cox Health, up from 31 just over a month ago, county figures show.
These patients are also younger than earlier in the pandemic — 60% to 65% of those in the ICU over the weekend at Mercy were under 40, according to Frederick, who noted that younger adults are much less likely to be vaccinated — and some are pregnant.
He is hiring traveling nurses and respiratory therapists to help out his fatigued staff as the rest of the country tries to leave the pandemic behind.
“I feel like last year at this time it was health care heroes and everybody was celebrating and bringing food to the hospital and doing prayer vigils and stuff, and now everyone is like, ‘The lake is open. Let’s go.’ We are still here doing this,” he said.
There are also warning signs across the state line: Arkansas on Tuesday reported its biggest one-day jump in cases in more than three months. The state also has low vaccination rates.
Lagging rates — especially among young adults — are becoming an increasing source of concern elsewhere around the country, as is the delta variant.
The mutant version now accounts more than 20% of new COVID-19 infections in the U.S., doubling in just two weeks, the CDC said Tuesday. It is responsible for half of new cases across a swath that includes Missouri, Iowa, Kansas, Nebraska, Colorado, Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota, Utah and Wyoming.
“The delta variant is currently the greatest threat in the U.S. to our attempt to eliminate COVID-19,” said Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation’s top infectious disease expert. He said there is a “real danger” of local surges like the one in Missouri in places with deep vaccine resistance.
To help counter the threat, administration officials are stepping up efforts to vaccinate Americans ages 18 to 26, who have proved least likely to get the shot when it’s available to them.
Elsewhere around the world, Britain, with an even higher vaccination rate than the U.S., has postponed the lifting of remaining restrictions on socializing in England because of the rapid spread of the variant. Israel, another vaccination success story, is reacting by tightening rules on travelers.
In Missouri, Republican Gov. Mike Parson has taken the position that it is better to ask people to take “personal responsibility” than to enact restrictions.
Missouri never had a mask mandate, and Parson signed a law last week placing limits on public health restrictions and barring governments from requiring proof of vaccination to use public facilities and transportation.
Missouri Health Department spokeswoman Lisa Cox said the agency is encouraging people to get vaccinated, but confessed: “This is the Show-Me State and Missourians are skeptical.”
Frederick said some people in the heavily Republican state are resistant because they feel as if Democrats are pushing the vaccine.
“I keep telling people, while we are busy fighting with each other, this thing is picking us off one by one,” he said. “It takes no sides. It has no political affiliation. It is not red. It is not blue. It is a virus. And if we don’t protect ourselves, we are going to do a lot of damage to our community.”
Steve Edwards, CEO of Cox Health, lamented in a tweet that while a number of major news organizations have contacted the hospital about the rise in cases, Fox News was not among them.
“Fox,” he tweeted, “is the most popular cable news in our area — you can help educate on Delta, vaccines and can save lives.”
Lisa Meeks, 49, of Springfield, is among those who haven’t been vaccinated. She said that she is a Christian and that God gave her a strong immune system.
“As of right now, nobody knows anything long term or short term about these vaccines because they are brand new,” she said, despite months of real-world evidence that the vaccines are highly safe and effective. “And so people are now basically the lab rats.”
An offer of free beer from Mother’s Brewing Co. in Springfield for those who get vaccinated drew a disappointing 20 to 50 people to each of the first three clinics.
“We keep trying,” said Jeff Schrag, owner and founder of Mother’s Brewing. “It is a game of inches.”
As immunizations slow, the delta variant has become the predominant form of the virus in the region. Aaron Schekorra, a spokesman for the Springfield-Greene County Health Department, said it makes up 93% of the random sample of cases that the county is sending for analysis, up from 70% three weeks ago.
He said that unvaccinated people gathering for graduation celebrations and Memorial Day festivities also fueled the spread of the virus. The events came just as the community lifted its mask mandate.
“My concern,” he said, “would be that this is a preview of what is to come in other parts of the country that don’t have higher vaccination rates.”
https://apnews.com/article/mo-state-wire-michael-brown-coronavirus-pandemic-health-89fa995c59397228d8d56e1ab45890ab
Jim Bakker, his church settle lawsuit over COVID-19 claims
By JIM SALTER
an hour ago
https://apnews.com/article/jim-bakker-michael-brown-lawsuits-coronavirus-pandemic-arts-and-entertainment-b8ef1bc92d3a6527f717693dbdb4b619?utm_medium=AP&utm_source=Twitter&utm_campaign=SocialFlow
O’FALLON, Mo. (AP) — Jim Bakker and his southwestern Missouri church will pay restitution of $156,000 to settle a lawsuit that accuses the TV pastor of falsely claiming that a health supplement could cure the coronavirus.
Missouri court records show that a settlement agreement was filed Tuesday. It calls for refunds to people who paid money or gave contributions to obtain a product known as Silver Solution in the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The settlement also prohibits Bakker and Morningside Church Productions Inc. from advertising or selling Silver Solution “to diagnose, prevent, mitigate, treat or cure any disease or illness.” Bakker, in the agreement, does not admit wrongdoing.
Republican Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt sued Bakker and Morningside in March 2020. Schmitt sought an injunction ordering Bakker to stop selling Silver Solution as a treatment for COVID-19 on his streaming TV program, The Jim Bakker Show. The lawsuit said Bakker and a guest made the cure claim during 11 episodes in February and March of 2020.
Schmitt said in a news release on Wednesday that Bakker has already made restitution to many consumers, and must pay back another $90,000 to others.
The hour-long Jim Bakker Show is filmed in southwestern Missouri. The consent agreement notes that during the program, Silver Solution was offered to those who agreed to contribute $80 to $125.
Bakker’s attorney, former Democratic Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon, had previously claimed that Bakker was being unfairly targeted “by those who want to crush his ministry and force his Christian television program off the air.” Nixon, who served two terms as governor from 2009 to 2017 and is now a partner at the Dowd Bennett law firm in St. Louis, said Bakker did not claim that Silver Solution was a cure for COVID-19.
The lawsuit cited a discussion on the program on Feb. 12, 2020, in which Bakker spoke with Sherrill Sellman, referring to her as a “naturopathic doctor” and a “natural health expert.”
“This influenza that is now circling the globe, you’re saying that Silver Solution would be effective?” Bakker asks. Sellman, according to the lawsuit, replies: “Well, let’s say it hasn’t been tested on this strain of the coronavirus, but it has been tested on other strains of the coronavirus and has been able to eliminate it within 12 hours.”
“Yeah,” Bakker says.
“Totally eliminate it, kills it. Deactivates it,” Sellman replies, according to the lawsuit.
An email sent to Nixon Wednesday was not immediately returned.
Also in March 2020, U.S. regulators warned Bakker’s company and six others to stop selling items using what the government called false claims that they could treat the coronavirus or keep people from catching it. Letters sent jointly by the Food and Drug Administration and the Federal Trade Commission warned the companies that their products for treating COVID-19 were fraudulent, “pose significant risks to patient health and violate federal law.”
Nixon said Bakker immediately complied with orders to stop offering Silver Solution on his show and ministry website after receiving the warning letters from the FDA and FTC.
Meanwhile, Arkansas’ attorney general filed a lawsuit similar to Missouri’s in June 2020. That case is still pending.
https://apnews.com/article/jim-bakker-michael-brown-lawsuits-coronavirus-pandemic-arts-and-entertainment-b8ef1bc92d3a6527f717693dbdb4b619?utm_medium=AP&utm_source=Twitter&utm_campaign=SocialFlow
States across the country are dropping barriers to voting, widening a stark geographic divide in ballot access
By Elise Viebeck
June 23, 2021 at 11:00 a.m. GMT+1
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/voting-rights-expansion-states/2021/06/22/1699a6b0-cf87-11eb-8014-2f3926ca24d9_story.html
More than half of U.S. states have lowered some barriers to voting since the 2020 election, making permanent practices that helped produce record voter turnout during the coronavirus pandemic — a striking countertrend to the passage of new restrictions in key Republican-controlled states this year.
The newly enacted laws in states from Vermont to California expand access to the voting process on a number of fronts, such as offering more early and mail voting options, protecting mail ballots from being improperly rejected and making it easier to register to vote.
Some states restored voting rights to people with past felony convictions or expanded options for voters with disabilities, both long-standing priorities among advocates. And in Virginia, a new law requires localities to receive preapproval or feedback on voting changes as a shield against racial discrimination, a first for states after the Supreme Court struck down a key part of the federal Voting Rights Act in 2013.
The push to make voting easier around the country comes even as Republicans have embraced voting restrictions in GOP-controlled states such as Georgia, Florida and Iowa. Some states have passed laws that make some elements of voting easier and others harder, leading to mixed effects.
But the overall result is a deepening divide in ballot access depending on where voters live — one shaped by how lawmakers have reacted to both the pandemic and former president Donald Trump’s false claims that the 2020 election was tainted by massive fraud.
“There’s a fault line that’s developing between states working to strengthen our democracy and states actively restricting it,” said Liz Avore, vice president for law and policy with the nonpartisan Voting Rights Lab, which tracks developments in state election law and analyzed this year’s legislative action in a report last week. “It is stark when you look at the map … That division is really remarkable.”
The trend is not limited to blue states, though they have led the charge. Indiana and Kentucky made several significant changes this year, including expanding the availability of ballot drop-off locations and establishing processes for voters to correct certain errors that would otherwise invalidate their mail ballots. At least four red states created systems for voters to track their ballots through the mail. Louisiana eliminated hurdles for people with past felony convictions as they register to vote. Montana made voting more accessible for people with disabilities, even as it ended same-day voter registration.
Kentucky Secretary of State Michael Adams, a Republican who fought for his state’s policy changes, said the GOP needs to “stop being scared of voters.”
“Let them vote, and go out and make the case,” he said in an interview, adding: “I want Republicans to succeed. I think it’s an unforced error to shoot themselves in the foot in these states by shrinking access. You don’t need to do that.”
Seventy-one new laws easing voting rules are poised to benefit 63 million eligible voters across 28 states, or about one-quarter of the U.S. voting population, according to the Voting Rights Lab report, which tracked policy changes as of June 13.
Thirty-one new laws in 18 states create more barriers to the ballot box, affecting 36 million eligible voters, or 15 percent of the voting population, the report stated.
Legislative debates over restrictions are ongoing in key states such as Texas and Pennsylvania, leaving open the possibility that new limitations affecting millions more voters will still be enacted before the end of the year.
The uncertainty is heightened by a standoff on Capitol Hill over Democratic-backed legislation to protect voting rights. On Tuesday, Senate Republicans blocked a test vote that would have cleared the way to start debate on the bill, known as the For the People Act, which Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) vowed to fight.
“States are stepping up in the absence of or while waiting for congressional action,” said Eliza Sweren-Becker, voting rights and elections counsel at the nonpartisan Brennan Center for Justice, adding: “Some of this is really a call to action to Washington.”
Absent federal standards, voters’ experiences will vary widely from state to state in details large and small — from the length of lines on Election Day to the process for registering to vote or casting a mail ballot. Starting this year, the contrast is poised to become more dramatic as the wave of new election laws begins to take effect.
“Voting rights really shouldn’t be impacted by boundary lines that are drawn arbitrarily for states,” said Gov. Steve Sisolak (D) of Nevada, which enacted universal mail voting this year. “It should be the same for everybody. … It shouldn’t be dependent on who is in power and who is not and who is passing the laws.”
Legacy of the pandemic
The new laws that ease the voting process build on emergency actions taken to protect voters during the pandemic, when public health measures barred many people from leaving home or gathering in public places.
Before 2020, only five states automatically sent mail ballots to all voters, a figure that jumped to nine — plus the District of Columbia — for November’s general election. Roughly three dozen states offered no-excuse absentee voting or proactively mailed absentee ballot applications to voters, leading to a spike in the number of Americans who cast ballots by mail.
Under laws passed this year, Vermont and Nevada will mail ballots to active voters for general elections and all elections, respectively. Maryland has created a permanent absentee voter list, which allows voters to sign up to receive mail ballots for every election, and Connecticut and New York are moving toward amending their state constitutions to allow voters to cast mail ballots without an excuse.
So far, nearly two dozen states have taken steps to improve the process of mail voting — agreeing to pay for return postage for ballots, expand the use of drop boxes or give election administrators more time to process returned mail ballots before Election Day, for example.
These moves reflect the popularity of the more flexible voting options during the pandemic and election administrators’ success in implementing them securely for November’s contests.
“We started getting input pretty early from our residents, saying, ‘This is great — why can’t we do this all the time?’” Sisolak said in an interview.
In 2020, active voters in the state received ballots in the mail for both the June primary and the general election. Sisolak noted that Nevada Secretary of State Barbara Cegavske, a Republican, found no evidence to support GOP claims of widespread voter fraud in the state.
“You’re always going to get the naysayers and the haters that are going to complain about the process, but it proved very effective and very secure so I’m happy about it,” he said. The majority-Democratic state legislature approved the new system with Republicans unified in opposition.
Assembly Minority Leader Robin Titus (R) argued the measure would “further degrade the fragile civic trust” held by Nevadans.
“Whether it was one fraudulent vote or a thousand, it does not matter if the trust in the system has been severely questioned,” Titus said in remarks on the floor before the final vote, according to the Las Vegas Review-Journal. “And I am concerned that this bill just furthers that distrust of the system.”
Trump has repeatedly and falsely attacked universal mail voting as insecure, a view that has gained traction in some — but not all — parts of the GOP.
In Vermont, the state’s new universal ballot-mailing program was signed into law this month by Republican Gov. Phil Scott after receiving broad support across the political spectrum in the state legislature. It included a process to fix voter errors on mail ballots, which was not previously available in the state.
After the state mailed ballots to active registered voters during the 2020 general election, GOP legislators were “pleasantly surprised that it worked so well,” said Secretary of State Jim Condos (D). He said that one former skeptic contacted him after the election to “tell me that he had his doubts about vote-by-mail, but he actually thinks it helped him get more voters.”
“Here in Vermont, we have the decency to reach across the aisle and work amongst our legislators and our governor to reach good language,” Condos said. “This is the largest [expansion] of Vermont voter access in decades, and we’re really, really pleased.”
Bipartisan agreement was also critical in Kentucky, where Adams lobbied for a wide-ranging bill to create an early voting period, allow the use of drop boxes and add a process to remedy certain errors on mail ballots, among other elements. (The final law also allows counties to combine precincts and establish centralized “voting centers,” a provision that some critics say could limit voter access at times.)
During the 2020 general election, the state allowed anyone concerned about contracting covid-19 to request an absentee ballot, installed drop boxes for returning mail ballots and offered a three-week early voting period.
“Even before the election was fully over, I was already inclined to make that and other things fully permanent. I asked my staff: ‘Y’all think I need to have my head examined? Because I think we should try to keep this,’ ” Adams said.
Building consensus for the bill was not easy, he added. Adams said he relied on several points to make the case to fellow Republicans: that rural voters had embraced mail ballots, offering a potential upside for the GOP; that offering early in-person voting could reduce the risk of vote-buying schemes on Election Day; and that the earliest American presidential elections took place over the course of several days, making his proposal historically authentic.
The bipartisan measure was signed into law by Gov. Andy Beshear, a Democrat, in April.
“It wasn’t a Republican bill or Democrat bill. This was put together by election officials … That’s a big difference from what you’re seeing everywhere else in the country,” Adams said.
He took issue with fellow Republicans who have sought to restrict voting access around the country, calling it bad for voters and bad for the GOP.
“They keep committing these unforced errors,” he said, offering the example of trying to restrict the use of drop boxes. “It’s absolutely appropriate to enhance security, but you can’t have a blind spot on access.”
Adams said a Georgia bill that would have banned early voting on Sundays, when many Black people have traditionally cast ballots in the state, was “racially insensitive.” The proposal drew a flurry of criticism and was not included in the final legislation. A similar Sunday morning voting ban was proposed by Texas Republicans as part of a bill that did not advance because Democratic lawmakers staged a walkout.
“Even if they are smart enough not to pass a bad policy like that, the optics reflect badly on all of us,” Adams said.
Blue state action
Election officials have repeatedly pointed to November’s record voter turnout as evidence that the pandemic-era rules should remain in place. More than 159 million people voted, the highest turnout in a century.
Chris Piper, the commissioner of elections in Virginia, praised the expansion of mail voting there in 2020 as a “godsend.”
“The proof is in the pudding,” he said, noting that turnout among registered voters was the highest it had been in close to 30 years. “It’s pretty significant.”
Since then, the state has passed a bevy of election reforms, including a first-of-its kind state voting rights act, which requires localities to receive public feedback or get approval for voting changes from the attorney general’s office as a safeguard against racial discrimination.
Republicans opposed the measure, with some arguing it would unfairly burden local governments.
Some blue states are using momentum from the 2020 cycle to replace what critics said were outdated voting restrictions. In the Northeast, several traditionally Democratic states maintained limits on early and mail voting that were loosened during the pandemic and are now receiving fresh scrutiny.
In New York, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo (D) has enacted four new election laws this year and is expected to sign at least eight more, as Democratic legislators double-down on efforts they began in 2019 to improve voter experience in the state.
“I like to say we’re taking ourselves from among the worst in the nation to among the first in the nation,” said deputy Senate Majority Leader Michael Gianaris, a Democrat who represents western Queens. “We’re tackling all the big initiatives that a lot of other states have been using for a while,” such as expanded early voting and automatic voter registration.
Recently, the New York legislature passed bills to increase the number of early voting sites and to mandate that returned mail votes are processed earlier. Both seek to address areas of election administration where New York has been criticized — for long lines to vote and long waits for election results.
“We feel a special obligation to continue down this road given that we’re noticing other parts of the country moving in the opposite direction,” Gianaris said. “ … It shouldn’t have to be said, but the more eligible voters vote, the better it is for our democracy. The idea that not everyone agrees with that is shocking.”
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By Elise Viebeck
Elise Viebeck is a political enterprise and investigations reporter. She joined The Washington Post in 2015. Twitter
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/voting-rights-expansion-states/2021/06/22/1699a6b0-cf87-11eb-8014-2f3926ca24d9_story.html
Australia plots biological warfare to eradicate rampaging ‘mouse plague’
Officials plan to use poison and develop gene technology to sterilise rodents
The mouse population has been turbocharged by a bumper harvest and favourable weather conditions © AP
Jamie Smyth in Sydney JUNE 4 2021
https://www.ft.com/content/549064bc-49fd-4e22-b8d7-2681e988911e
Australia is home to some of the world’s most fearsome creatures. But none is more destructive than the humble house mouse, a plague of which is rampaging across vast swaths of farmland and terrorising countryfolk.
Farmers in New South Wales, the worst affected state, warned the furry critters could cost them A$1bn ($765m) in lost crops and poison baits this season. Residents in rural towns have been fighting a six-month battle against the army of wild house mice, which has gnawed through wiring on home appliances, polluted water supplies and even bitten patients in hospital beds.
Scientists said the plague was bolstered by favourable weather conditions after years of drought and the nation’s second biggest grain harvest on record.
State authorities have proposed “napalming” the mice by allowing farmers to use the poison bromadiolone against the mice, which has ignited a furious debate over its environmental impact.
A mouse control package worth A$50m unveiled this week includes plans to develop “gene drive” technology to sterilise mice, a feral species that arrived in Australia on the First Fleet.
“The mice are everywhere. They bit through the wires on our dishwasher a few weeks ago and caused a flood,” said Xavier Martin, a grain farmer who lives near Gunnedah, a town in north-east New South Wales. “And even while we are talking now I can hear them scurrying around the roof and walls.”
He said the plague was threatening his winter crops as well as the mental health of farmers, who have absorbed the devastating impact of drought, bushfires, floods and Covid-19 in recent years.
Martin, who is vice-president of the NSW farmers’ lobby group, said he opposed using bromadiolone because of concerns it could kill wildlife that eat the dead mice through secondary poisoning.
However, the NSW government has sought “urgent approval” from the Australian Pesticides and Veterinary Medicines Authority to enable farmers to use bromadiolone, a poison that kills by preventing blood clotting.
“It’ll be the equivalent of napalming mice across rural NSW,” said Adam Marshall, NSW agriculture minister.
Dramatic footage showing mice overrunning grain stores, fields and houses has elevated the political stakes for the state government. Not only does the mouse plague have costly financial implications for farmers but it also threatens public health.
“No one ever forgets living through a mouse plague,” said Steve Henry, an expert in mice at Australia’s scientific research agency Csiro. “They get in your house, in every cupboard, in your bed and in your pantry — literally everywhere you go.”
Mouse urine could spread serious diseases to humans, including leptospirosis and lymphocytic choriomeningitus, which could cause similar symptoms to meningitis, he added.
For Terry and Nicole Klante, cereal farmers who live near Dubbo in New South Wales, the risk of their children and staff catching disease is a concern.
“Everything in our workshops has literally been touched by mice so we have to keep reiterating to staff to wash their hands because the potential for getting ill is on everything we touch,” said Nicole.
Despite trapping and killing thousands of mice every day more keep coming, she said.
Mice reproduce quickly. A single pair of mice can create 500 pups in a breeding season, which usually lasts from summer to autumn, said Henry.
Predicting how long a mouse plague will last is difficult because it can end abruptly as a result of disease, food shortages and cannibalism.
“When they run out of food the mice start to turn on the sick and weak, they prey on baby mice and the population crashes away really quickly,” said Henry.
https://www.ft.com/content/549064bc-49fd-4e22-b8d7-2681e988911e
Australia mouse plague: ‘Napalm’ will not be used to tackle rodents over wider wildlife concerns
Use of controversial poison rejected by government over concerns other species could be at risk
Harry Cockburn
Environment Correspondent
14 minutes ago
https://www.independent.co.uk/climate-change/news/australia-mouse-plague-napalm-fish-b1871421.html
Despite fears Australia’s months-long mouse plague has already caused over $1bn in losses, deploying poison dubbed “napalm for mice” is not a solution, a government agency has said.
Last month the New South Wales government made an urgent application to use the controversial poison bromadiolone in the continuing battle against the millions of mice causing widespread agricultural devastation, and impacting people in the state.
But the application has been rejected by the Australian Pesticides and Veterinary Medicines Authority (APVMA), which it said was due to safety and environmental concerns.
The array of poisons already used to eradicate the biblical tides of mice – an invasive species in Australia – have already harmed native species, including birds such as galahs and pigeons, as well as fish.
The use of more powerful poisons has raised concerns over the build up of toxins in the food chain, which could impact humans.
NSW Agriculture Minister Adam Marshall said the state government had sought approval for the controversial poison as part of a $50m effort to help rid farmers of the mice.
“It’ll be the equivalent of napalming mice across rural NSW,” he said last month.
Responding to the APVMA’s ruling, Mr Marshall said he was “disappointed”, but would respect the decision.
APVMA chief executive Lisa Croft said. “Before the APVMA is able to approve any application, we must be certain that it is safe, that it will work, and that it will not prevent our farmers from selling their produce overseas,"
“The APVMA’s primary concern is environmental safety, particularly in relation to animals that eat mice.
“Although the APVMA intends to refuse this particular application, we have approved six other emergency applications to give farmers extra mouse control options,” she said, according to the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.
The mouse explosion, which started nine months ago, has been driven by a long dry run of years followed by spells of wet weather which have provided ample food for them, fuelling their fast reproductive cycle.
This week the mice caused the evacuation of 420 prisoners from a jail in New South Wales, after thousands of mice chewed through ceilings and wiring, cutting out electricity and causing appalling smells after their dead bodies began rotting in wall cavities.
Mice have only been in Australia for around 250 years – brought by British ships – but have since gone on to multiply and multiply due to the lack of natural predators and an enormous boom in farming during the 20th century.
https://www.independent.co.uk/climate-change/news/australia-mouse-plague-napalm-fish-b1871421.html
Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner distance themselves from the former President and his constant complaints
By Kate Bennett and Gabby Orr, CNN
Updated 8:50 AM ET, Wed June 23, 2021
https://edition.cnn.com/2021/06/23/politics/donald-trump-ivanka-trump-jared-kushner/
(CNN) With each passing day away from Washington, former President Donald Trump's grievances continue unabated. And those complaints appear to be driving away two of the people who were closest to him during his White House tenure: his daughter Ivanka Trump and son-in-law, Jared Kushner.
Sometimes the former President complains for several hours about the "stolen" 2020 election. Other times, his frustrations emerge in fits and starts -- more likely when he is discussing his hopeful return to national politics. And while he often has a rotating audience of cheering listeners, the gap between Trump and his daughter and son-in-law grows wider by the week, according to 12 former Trump White House officials, former administration officials, family friends, acquaintances and members of Trump's team who spoke with CNN about changes to the former President's current inner circle.
A large part of the reason for the separation is Trump's constant harping on the past and his inability to move on. The former President has also started to question the role that Kushner -- one of the few people who were able to stay close to Trump throughout his two presidential campaigns and White House tenure -- has played in his presidential legacy.
Ivanka Trump has also struggled to undo the entanglements caused by the years at her father's side in the White House, as she seeks a less complicated life for her family, according to two acquaintances. They described her as having to walk a fine line between embracing her father and distancing herself from his election lies.
Having spent much of the last five-and-a-half years in close proximity to him, Ivanka Trump and Kushner were rarely seen with him in the months leading up to the former President's seasonal shift from living at Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, Florida, to living in a cottage at his private golf club in Bedminster, New Jersey.
"They weren't around for the usual spring and summer events at Mar-a-Lago," says one clubgoer and family friend, noting the absence of Trump's elder daughter and the couple's three young children.
Simultaneously, the disappearance of Kushner -- once the ringleader of Trump's policy operations -- was also apparent. A person familiar with Kushner says there were visits from the Kushner/Trump family to Mar-a-Lago before Trump's move North, but they were sparse, averaging once every three to four weeks. The physical distance between them was not far: after leaving Washington, Kushner and Ivanka Trump moved to a Miami high-rise to await the construction of their mansion on a nearby private island.
Kushner's presence, physically and virtually, has become increasingly rare as it became clear that his father-in-law remained preoccupied with the 2020 election, according to one person familiar with the situation.
"He was kind of like a parent who sticks around less and less each morning while they're transitioning their kid to day care," this person said.
Kushner moves to the side
It wasn't the distance that kept Kushner away, say those who know his thinking -- it was the desire to be far from Trump's constant stream of contempt, and the chorus of voices cheering him on.
"Trump always has an array of characters around him," says a person who worked in the administration.
Around mid-March, some of Trump's most trusted advisers began urging him to bring someone onto his team who could oversee daily operations and help organize his candidate meetings, fundraising requests and endorsement vetting process.
"I don't think it's accurate to say he needed a new Jared, because Jared was always more of a policy guy inside the White House, but there was definitely a sense that some part of the puzzle was missing and it was contributing to a lot of internal confusion and chaos," said a former White House official.
Eventually, Trump brought on Susie Wiles, a Florida-based consultant who had earned his trust and was a familiar face to others on his payroll. But the frequency of Wiles' appearances, as well as her overall involvement, has also decreased since Trump relocated to Bedminster for the summer, according to one of the people involved with his operation.
Another consistent presence is that of Donald Trump Jr, whose penchant for politics has grown in the years since his father entered the political scene and who has become an increasingly trusted adviser to the former real estate mogul.
Kushner is not helping Trump cook up plans for a rally later this month, nor is he intensely involved with the former President's endorsement decisions or frequent public statements, which, sans a social media presence, come via news releases from Trump's leadership PAC, Save America -- again, something Kushner has veered away from.
Without input from his elder daughter and her husband, Trump is isolated from their influence, though the person close to Kushner does note he "still speaks on the phone" to the former President.
Now Trump finds himself more often in the company of an ever-changing circle of advisers. Trump allies say he is once again interacting with characters who should require supervision -- noting that he has been in frequent touch with One America News anchor Christina Bobb, a prolific proponent of far-fetched theories about the 2020 election, in addition to MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell, who has encouraged Trump to keep challenging the 2020 election results in several states.
A member of Trump's team tells CNN the former President has "always had siloed relationships" with various people and that even in the White House -- with Kushner ostensibly down the hall -- Trump could frequently be "running his own play." This person notes Trump's cadre of recent influencers is akin to his unconventional way of eliciting opinion.
"There are other circles around him, yes," says this person, who doesn't argue there are questionable characters in the ear of the former President, "but that doesn't mean he doesn't also have very reasonable and buttoned-up people there as well."
The person close to Kushner adds that the group off whom Trump bounces his most off-the-wall and questionable theories is, while conspiratorial in nature, not completely out of the realm of a host of "regulars" with whom he has held court over the years.
"The stakes [now] are also less than they were when he was in the White House," says the source.
Eroded trust
Trump has privately started to question Kushner's contributions to his legacy. One person who spoke with the former President in the last two weeks recounted a conversation in which Trump complained about Kushner inking a book deal that he thinks his son-in-law will use to take credit for some of his achievements.
Another source confirms there is jealousy from Trump about Kushner's book, which a Kushner associate says was a "seven-figure deal" with Broadside Books, the conservative branch of mega-publisher HarperCollins. Trump, who has lately been helping with several journalists' in-the-works books about his presidency, has yet to announce a deal of his own.
"He's always been suspicious of Jared," this person said, noting that Trump has previously discounted Kushner's role in some of the key policies he enacted as president, including Middle East peace deals and criminal justice revisions.
Two people familiar with conversations Trump has had since his arrival in May at Bedminster say he questioned whether Kushner "accomplish[ed] peace in the Middle East after all" after tensions between Israel and Hamas erupted into a violent series of airstrikes last month.
"It is not a secret President Trump doesn't like when he thinks other people are getting attention for something he feels he has facilitated," says another former Trump White House official. "There's a sweet spot between saying nothing about work you did and saying too much that everyone has to find -- or else he gets triggered."
A person who works with Trump now disputes that the former President has been vocal about disloyalty to Kushner, noting that several of the authors who have interviewed the former President for their books have asked directly whether Trump blames Kushner for his election loss.
"Every time, he's answered definitively, 'no,' on the record," says the person.
Those close to Kushner laugh off the idea of an estrangement, saying Trump is provocative at times because that is who he is. They note Kushner is long used to the occasional Trump backlash, and it doesn't bother him.
"He knows Trump acknowledges his successes," says the person close to Kushner.
Still, the Kushner intimates make no bones about the fact that the couple disagrees with the former President's current pursuits. It's clear that the close advisory relationship is no more.
The distance Kushner and Ivanka Trump have put between their current life and the former President has also helped, but that gap that is soon to close.
Road trip
For the last week, Kushner, Ivanka Trump and their children have been on a summer road trip, from Miami to, eventually, Bedminster. It's the sort of summer activity millions of American families partake in, but the Kushner clan has made stop-offs along the way with a who's who of Trump's former administration.
Over the weekend, they were in Kiawah, South Carolina, staying with former US Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley, who has made no secret of her desire to run for president but remains estranged from Trump's inner circle after publicly criticizing his response to the 2020 election. The Kushners and the Haleys were spotted on a double date at a popular local restaurant. Haley said in April that she would not make a run for the White House in 2024 if Trump decides he will run -- or she would at least discuss that scenario with him.
"That's something that we'll have a conversation about at some point if that decision is something that has to be made," she said at a news conference.
Haley, like the Kushners, added that she has put space between herself and the former President, noting she had not talked to him since after the election but before the January 6 storming of the Capitol by a mob of his supporters.
The source close to Kushner downplayed the visit with Haley, saying South Carolina was just "one of the states along the way" on their drive.
Monday found them in Nashville, paying a visit to former State Department spokeswoman Morgan Ortagus, a close friend of Ivanka Trump's and frequent guest on Fox News. During the Trump administration, Ortagus worked for then-Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who has in recent months toyed with the idea of a run for the White House.
The Kushner family will eventually get to their East Coast digs, and the person close to Kushner noted they will also spend time at their old apartment in New York City, in addition to Bedminster. They'll also perhaps visit the Hamptons, the summer playground of the rich and connected.
In Bedminster, the Kushner cottage and the Trump cottage are separated by mere tens of feet, about as close as the families have been for an extended period since the White House. Kushner's allies say that won't be a problem for him, as the two men are "not at odds," as one describes their relationship. Another friend of Kushner's says the men have a "good relationship, but [Kushner] is not anywhere near his political orbit."
Things might be slightly more challenging for Ivanka Trump, though, who has for the last several months walked a tightrope between Trump, her father, and Trump, the wounded loser of a contentious election.
For the time being, she is not getting involved in the rhetoric, nor the unknowns that could be on the horizon for her father -- politics, business, relationships or investigations.
"She is being very present, in the moment," says a person who has worked closely with her for the last several years. "She's not concerned."
"After spending four years serving and traveling the country extensively, Ivanka is taking time with family and friends," her former chief of staff, Julie Radford, tells CNN.
Explaining why the former President's life is not simpatico with his daughter's, one of the people close to Kushner said, "She is focused on her children, and spending time with them, period."
"Listen, you lose an election, things happen, people get over it, they move on, these are natural consequences," says the friend of Kushner's.
The person familiar with Trump's thinking insists no one has been "removed" from his inner circle and that whatever the status of the relationship, the blurred lines among employee, adviser and son-in-law exist because they've both made them such.
"This is family, and family is in its own category. Its own unique category," the person said.
https://edition.cnn.com/2021/06/23/politics/donald-trump-ivanka-trump-jared-kushner/
Scoop: New book says Trump talked of COVID killing John Bolton
Mike Allen, author of AM
4 hours ago - Politics & Policy
https://www.axios.com/trump-john-bolton-covid-nightmare-scenario-6c34e67a-3872-449e-b927-8fa89b829061.html
"Nightmare Scenario," a book out next week on President Trump's handling of COVID, reports that he said he hoped it would take out his former national security adviser, John Bolton, who had just written an explosive tell-all about his time in the White House.
When asked about the quote, Bolton gave Axios' Jonathan Swan this classic reply: "Fooled me — I thought he was relying on his lawyers."
Here's the passage by Washington Post journalist Yasmeen Abutaleb and Damian Paletta in "Nightmare Scenario," out Tuesday:
Trump had tried to joke about the virus for months, sometimes even mocking people who had become ill. ... At one meeting several months [before Trump got sick], NEC director Larry Kudlow had stifled a cough. The room had frozen.. ... Trump had waved his hands in front of his face, as if to jokingly ward off any flying virus particles, and then cracked a smile. "I was just kidding," he'd said. "Larry will never get COVID. He will defeat it with his optimism." ... "John Bolton," he had said ... "Hopefully COVID takes out John."
The authors' sources thought Trump was deadly serious.
Go deeper: DOJ drops criminal probe, civil lawsuit against John Bolton over Trump book
https://www.axios.com/trump-john-bolton-covid-nightmare-scenario-6c34e67a-3872-449e-b927-8fa89b829061.html
US may slow Afghanistan withdrawal as Taliban win series of victories
Joe Biden has said US troops will leave by September, but American officials had suggested the pullout could be completed as early as July
By Ben Farmer
22 June 2021 • 6:33pm
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/06/22/us-may-slow-afghanistan-withdrawal-taliban-win-series-victories/
America could slow down its withdrawal from Afghanistan amid rapid battlefield gains by the Taliban which have raised alarm in Nato capitals, the Pentagon said.
Ashraf Ghani's forces have been swept out of many rural areas since the insurgents launched a nationwide offensive at the start of May.
Joe Biden has promised all US troops will be out of Afghanistan by September, but in recent weeks officials had briefed that the pull out was ahead of schedule and could be complete as early as July.
John Kirby, Pentagon spokesman, said September remained the deadline and the pace could be adjusted by conditions.
"The situation in Afghanistan changes as the Taliban continue to conduct these attacks and to raid district centres as well as the violence, which is still too high," he told reporters.
“If there needs to be changes made to the pace, or to the scope and scale of the retrograde, on any given day or in any given week, we want to maintain the flexibility to do that," he said.
"We're constantly taking a look at this, every single day: what's the situation on the ground, what capabilities do we have, what additional resources do we need to move out of Afghanistan and at what pace."
"All of these decisions are literally being made in real time," he added.
Afghanistan's main border crossing with Tajikistan was on Tuesday one of the Taliban's latest gains.
We are seeing mass surrenders of Afghan security forces," Kabul-based journalist Bilal Sarwary told the BBC. The Taliban have shared videos on their WhatsApp channels and websites showing government soldiers surrendering and being told to go home.
The onslaught had taken 50 of 370 districts in Afghanistan since May according to the United Nations special envoy.
Deborah Lyons told the U.N. Security Council that the announcement earlier this year that foreign troops would withdraw sent a "seismic tremor" through Afghanistan.
"Those districts that have been taken surround provincial capitals, suggesting that the Taliban are positioning themselves to try and take these capitals once foreign forces are fully withdrawn," the former Canadian diplomat said.
The seizure of Shir Khan Bandar, about 30 miles from Kunduz city, came a day after the Taliban had encircled the city.
"Unfortunately this morning and after an hour of fighting the Taliban captured Shir Khan port and the town and all the border check posts with Tajikistan," said Kunduz provincial council member Khaliddin Hakmi.
Separately, an army officer told AFP: "We were forced to leave all check posts... and some of our soldiers crossed the border into Tajikistan."
America has already turned over several of its last remaining bases to the Afghan forces and generals say more than half of the last stage of withdrawal is complete.
Mr Kirby said US forces continued to support Afghan troops in fighting the Taliban, but that would soon no longer be possible.
"So long as we have the capability in Afghanistan, we will continue to provide assistance to Afghan forces," he said
"But as the retrograde gets closer to completion, those capabilities will wane and will no longer be available."
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/06/22/us-may-slow-afghanistan-withdrawal-taliban-win-series-victories/
Russia claims its warship has fired warning shots and bombs at British destroyer near Crimea
The Ministry of Defence dismissed the reports that warning shots were fired at HMS Defender, insisting it was a routine gunnery exercise
By Dominic Nicholls, DEFENCE AND SECURITY CORRESPONDENT ;
Lucy Fisher, DEPUTY POLITICAL EDITOR ;
Nataliya Vasilyeva, RUSSIA CORRESPONDENT, MOSCOW and India McTaggart
23 June 2021 • 12:34pm
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/06/23/russia-claims-warship-has-fired-warning-shots-deter-british/
Russian forces fired warning shots at a Royal Navy destroyer after it entered the country's territorial waters in the Black Sea, the Russian Defence Ministry has said.
A border patrol boat fired warning shots at HMS Defender and a Su-24M warplane dropped four bombs close to the ship, the Defence Ministry said in a statement reported by the Russian Interfax news agency.
HMS Defender left Russian waters soon afterwards, having ventured as much as 3 kilometres (2 miles) inside, the ministry said. The incident took place in the northwestern part of the Black Sea.
"The destroyer was warned in advance that weapons would be fired in case of a violation of the Russian state border. It disregarded the warning," the statement said.
"As a result of joint actions of the Black Sea Fleet and the Border Service of the Russian Federal Security Service, HMS Defender left the territorial sea of the Russian Federation at 12.23pm."
The Ministry of Defence (MoD) has dismissed the reports from Russia that warning shots were fired at HMS Defender, insisting it was a routine gunnery exercise and the Royal Navy vessel was "conducting innocent passage through Ukrainian territorial waters in accordance with international law".
The Telegraph understands Russian forces were undertaking a gunnery exercise in the vicinity of HMS Defender and provided the maritime community with prior-warning of their activity. Russian aircraft were also exercising in the area.
Defence sources said HMS Defender is taking the most direct and internationally recognised route between Ukraine and Georgia.
The UK does not recognise Russia’s claim to Crimea, in line with the international consensus that Russia’s annexation of Crimea is illegal.
Defence Secretary Ben Wallace said HMS Defender was "shadowed" by Russian vessels and "she was made aware of training exercises" in the area.
HMS Defender carried out a "routine transit" from Odessa towards Georgia across the Black Sea, he said.
"As is normal for this route, she entered an internationally recognised traffic separation corridor.
"She exited that corridor safely at 0945 BST. As is routine, Russian vessels shadowed her passage and she was made aware of training exercises in her wider vicinity."
HMS Defender, a Type 45 destroyer, is part of the UK Carrier Strike Group currently heading to the Indo-Pacific region.
However, it was announced earlier this month that it would be temporarily breaking away from the group to carry out its "own set of missions" in the Black Sea.
A UK Defence source told The Telegraph: "Defender was transiting, she was being shadowed by some small patrol boats and aircraft and the Russians asked her to leave where she was - they did not want her to be so close to Sevastopol, their Black Sea base.
"But she’s allowed to be there. Defender was legal at all times in terms of innocent passage. She managed to go faster than the Russian vessels that were shadowing her.
"These small patrol boats were being outpaced so they fired into the distance, using small guns." The shots were not fired at HMS Defender.
The source added that the Royal Navy believed there were no bombs or ordnance deployed by the Russian Navy, adding that it seemed that the "Rusians are lying".
The insider said that while Moscow appeared to be trying to provoke a response, the British Government would now "downplay and de-escalate" the incident.
A recent open source report from the US Naval Institute said the location information of HMS Defender and a Dutch Frigate were spoofed to show they left Odesa port on Friday night and provocatively sailed to within two nautical miles of the port of Sevastopol, 180 miles away in Crimea.
MoD officials confirmed to The Telegraph the incident happened and said neither ship had left port at the time suggested by the fake data. Russia is widely suspected as having been behind the spoofing of the Automatic Identification System (AIS) used to show ship's locations.
The alleged incident comes just two days after the announcement that Britain is to assist Ukraine with the "design and build of warships" and the construction of two new naval bases.
Defence minister Jeremy Quin and his Ukrainian counterpart signed a "memorandum of implementation for naval partnership projects" on board HMS Defender in Odessa on Monday, according to a UK Government Facebook page.
A retired Russian admiral has said Russia did nothing wrong in firing the warning shot at the British destroyer.
"They did everything right, without violating any international law," Admiral Viktor Kravchenko, former head of the Russian Navy's General Staff, told Interfax.
"A report about the British vessel's violation will be presented in a note of protest. The British will at least have to apologise... The British may say that this was a navigation mistake. But the coast was so close - what kind of mistake was that?"
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/06/23/russia-claims-warship-has-fired-warning-shots-deter-british/