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The nation cannot forget Donald Trump’s betrayal of his oath
Opinion by the Editorial Board
June 15, 2021 at 10:37 p.m. GMT+1
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-nation-cannot-forget-donald-trumps-betrayal-of-his-oath/2021/06/15/c4a7790e-ce0a-11eb-8014-2f3926ca24d9_story.html
MANY REPUBLICANS want the nation to ignore and forget President Donald Trump’s poisonous final months in office — the most dangerous moment in modern presidential history, orchestrated by the man to whom the GOP still swears allegiance. Yet the country must not forget how close it came to a full-blown constitutional crisis, or worse. Tuesday brought another reminder that, but for the principled resistance of some key officials, the consequences could have been disastrous.
The House Committee on Oversight and Reform on Tuesday released emails showing that the White House waged a behind-the-scenes effort to enlist the Justice Department in its crusade to advance Mr. Trump’s baseless allegations of fraud in the 2020 election. On Dec. 14, 10 days before Jeffrey Rosen took over as acting attorney general, Mr. Trump’s assistant emailed Mr. Rosen, asserting that Dominion Voting Systems machines in Michigan were intentionally fixed and pointing to a debunked analysis showing what “the machines can and did do to move votes.” The email declared, “We believe it has happened everywhere.”
Later that month, Mr. Trump’s assistant sent Mr. Rosen a brief that the president apparently wanted the Justice Department to submit to the Supreme Court. The draft mirrored the empty arguments that the state of Texas made to the court before the justices dismissed the state’s lawsuit. Piling on the pressure, then-White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows also dispatched an email asking Mr. Rosen to examine allegations of voter fraud in Georgia. A day later, Mr. Meadows apparently forwarded Mr. Rosen a video alleging that Italians used satellites to manipulate voting equipment. These were just some of the preposterous White House emails claiming fraud in arguably the most secure presidential election ever.
To his credit, Mr. Rosen rebuffed the White House’s entreaties to deploy the Justice Department’s vast powers on behalf of Mr. Trump’s lie, adding his name to the roster of honorable state and federal officials who showed fidelity to truth and duty at that crucial moment. Some have paid with their jobs. Republicans committed to the “big lie” are gunning to replace others, including those with vote-counting responsibilities. If Mr. Trump or another candidate again presses false fraud claims, many Republican officials may find it more difficult to resist the pressure to back the lie — or, indeed, may eagerly participate in advancing it.
Given Mr. Trump’s reckless actions after losing the 2020 vote, and the violence they spurred, the newly released emails are unsurprising. But consider that fact for a moment: It is unsurprising that the president of the United States leaned on the Justice Department to help him try to steal an election. The country cannot forget that Mr. Trump betrayed his oath, that most Republican officeholders remain loyal to him nonetheless — and that it could be worse next time.
2871 Comments
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-nation-cannot-forget-donald-trumps-betrayal-of-his-oath/2021/06/15/c4a7790e-ce0a-11eb-8014-2f3926ca24d9_story.html
Cummings reveals WhatsApp message which appears to show PM calling Hancock 'totally f****** hopeless'
Greg Heffer, political reporter 35 mins ago
https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/uknews/cummings-reveals-whatsapp-message-which-appears-to-show-pm-calling-hancock-totally-f-hopeless/ar-AAL6wlx?li=BBoPWjQ
Boris Johnson's former chief aide has shared a WhatsApp message in which the prime minister appears to call Health Secretary Matt Hancock's efforts "totally f****** hopeless".
Dominic Cummings, who has been engaged in a weeks-long feud with Downing Street, published a lengthy blogpost that he claimed showed details of how "Number10/Hancock have repeatedly lied about the failures last year".
Amid his more than 7,000 words, Mr Cummings also included a series of screenshots from what he said were his WhatsApp exchanges while working in Downing Street during the first wave of the coronavirus pandemic last year.
In one exchange, which Mr Cummings said was part of late-night messages on 26 March 2020, he and Mr Johnson are shown to be discussing actions from "MH" in boosting the UK's COVID testing capacity.
The screenshot shows a reply, purportedly from the prime minister, stating: "Totally f****** hopeless".
Mr Cummings added, shortly after receiving that message from the prime minister, he had a series of missed calls from Mr Johnson who was calling to say he'd tested positive for coronavirus.
In another exchange, said to be from 27 April last year, Mr Johnson is said to have openly wondered about taking responsibility for procuring Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) away from Mr Hancock and giving it to Cabinet Office minister Michael Gove.
The prime minister is claimed to have written: "On ppe it's a disaster. I can't think of anything except taking Hancock off and putting Gove on."
Mr Cummings, who left his role as Mr Johnson's chief adviser last November amid a Number 10 power struggle, last month gave seven hours of evidence to MPs on the government's response to the COVID crisis.
He used that appearance to claim Mr Hancock should have been sacked for "15 to 20 things" including "lying" to people "on multiple occasions".
In how own evidence to MPs on the government's COVID response, Mr Hancock last week said it was "telling that no evidence has been provided" about some of the claims Mr Cummings made.
And now, in what he said was his response to Mr Hancock's testimony, Mr Cummings has described his latest blogpost as being designed to include "just a few things to support what I told MPs and show that No10/Hancock have repeatedly lied about the failures last year".
Among his explosive claims was his depiction of contrasting styles in the handling of key COVID meetings between Mr Johnson and Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab, who deputised for the prime minister after Mr Johnson fell seriously ill with COVID.
The prime minister's former adviser wrote that meetings under Mr Raab were "less pleasant for everybody but much more productive".
"Raab can chair meetings properly instead of telling rambling stories and jokes," Mr Cummings added.
"He let good officials actually question people so we started to get to the truth.
"Unlike the PM who as soon as things get 'a bit embarrassing' does the whole 'let's take it offline' shtick before shouting 'forward to victory', doing a thumbs-up and pegging it out of the room before anybody can disagree."
Mr Cummmings also claimed Mr Johnson has a "clear plan" to leave Downing Street "at the latest a couple of years after the next election", which is scheduled for 2024.
"He wants to make money and have fun not 'go on and on'," Mr Cummings wrote.
At the end of his blogpost, Mr Cummings listed a "few simple questions" to ask Mr Johnson.
This included asking why the prime minister kept Mr Hancock in post "given his failures on testing, care homes and PPE" and "how many more people died as a result of your failure to remove him?".
Mr Cummings also wrote: "Why is No10 lying, including to Parliament, about the fact that the original plan was 'herd immunity by September' and had to be abandoned?"
And he also suggested Mr Johnson be asked whether he now agrees "with Hancock that there was no shortage of PPE or do you agree with yourself in April 2020 that PPE supply was 'a disaster' that required moving Hancock?".
Labour's deputy leader Angela Rayner branded the accusations from Mr Cummings as "absolutely damning".
She said a promised public inquiry into the government's handling of the COVID crisis "can't wait" until next year, adding: "We can't allow history to be rewritten. In order to get to the truth that public inquiry must begin now.
"Any minister who has been found to have broken the ministerial code and lied should and must resign."
Mr Johnson declined the opportunity to comment on Mr Cummings's claims when asked about them during Prime Minister's Questions on Wednesday afternoon.
https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/uknews/cummings-reveals-whatsapp-message-which-appears-to-show-pm-calling-hancock-totally-f-hopeless/ar-AAL6wlx?li=BBoPWjQ
Dominic Cummings leaks WhatsApp exchange suggesting Boris Johnson called Matt Hancock ‘totally f*****g hopeless’
todayuknews 24 mins ago
https://todayuknews.com/politics/dominic-cummings-leaks-whatsapp-exchange-suggesting-boris-johnson-called-matt-hancock-totally-fg-hopeless/
Boris Johnson described Matt Hancock as “totally f*****g hopeless” as the Covid pandemic took hold in the UK, former Downing Street aide Dominic Cummings has claimed.
Mr Johnson’s former top adviser leaked WhatsApp messages apparently from the prime minister, which included the expletive-laden attack on the health secretary.
Mr Cummings accused the PM of trying to “rewrite history” to defend Hancock and said Mr Johnson “cannot be trusted now either on Covid or any other crucial issue of war and peace”.
Follow live: Dominic Cummings claims Boris Johnson to quit as PM within two years after next election
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/brexit-news-latest-boris-johnson-b1866802.html
And he claimed that the public inquiry announced by the PM was designed to delay its findings until after Johnson leaves office in 2025 or 2026, meaning that the UK will be faced with five years of “chronic dysfunction” in government unless “some force intervenes” to speed up the process.
https://todayuknews.com/politics/dominic-cummings-leaks-whatsapp-exchange-suggesting-boris-johnson-called-matt-hancock-totally-fg-hopeless/
What the Rich Don’t Want to Admit About the Poor
June 13, 2021
By Ezra Klein
Opinion Columnist
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/13/opinion/stimulus-unemployment-republicans-poverty.html
I’m not going to pretend that I know how to interpret the jobs and inflation data of the past few months. My view is that this is still an economy warped by the pandemic, and that the dynamics are so strange and so unstable that it will be some time before we know its true state. But the reaction to the early numbers and anecdotes has revealed something deeper and more constant in our politics.
The American economy runs on poverty, or at least the constant threat of it. Americans like their goods cheap and their services plentiful and the two of them, together, require a sprawling labor force willing to work tough jobs at crummy wages. On the right, the barest glimmer of worker power is treated as a policy emergency, and the whip of poverty, not the lure of higher wages, is the appropriate response.
[Hear more from Ezra Klein by following his New York Times Opinion podcast, “The Ezra Klein Show.”]
Reports that low-wage employers were having trouble filling open jobs sent Republican policymakers into a tizzy and led at least 25 Republican governors — and one Democratic governor — to announce plans to cut off expanded unemployment benefits early. Chipotle said that it would increase prices by about 4 percent to cover the cost of higher wages, prompting the National Republican Congressional Committee to issue a blistering response: “Democrats’ socialist stimulus bill caused a labor shortage, and now burrito lovers everywhere are footing the bill.” The Trumpist outlet The Federalist complained, “Restaurants have had to bribe current and prospective workers with fatter paychecks to lure them off their backsides and back to work.”
But it’s not just the right. The financial press, the cable news squawkers and even many on the center-left greet news of labor shortages and price increases with an alarm they rarely bring to the ongoing agonies of poverty or low-wage toil.
As it happened, just as I was watching Republican governors try to immiserate low-wage workers who weren’t yet jumping at the chance to return to poorly ventilated kitchens for $9 an hour, I was sent “A Guaranteed Income for the 21st Century,” a plan that seeks to make poverty a thing of the past. The proposal, developed by Naomi Zewde, Kyle Strickland, Kelly Capatosto, Ari Glogower and Darrick Hamilton for the New School’s Institute on Race and Political Economy, would guarantee a $12,500 annual income for every adult and a $4,500 allowance for every child. It’s what wonks call a “negative income tax” plan — unlike a universal basic income, it phases out as households rise into the middle class.
“With poverty, to address it, you just eliminate it,” Hamilton told me. “You give people enough resources so they’re not poor.” Simple, but not cheap. The team estimates that its proposal would cost $876 billion annually. To give a sense of scale, total federal spending in 2019 was about $4.4 trillion, with $1 trillion of that financing Social Security payments and $1.1 trillion supporting Medicaid, Medicare, the Affordable Care Act and the Children’s Health Insurance Program.
Beyond writing that the plan “would require new sources of revenue, additional borrowing or trade-offs with other government funding priorities,” Hamilton and his co-authors don’t say how they’d pay for it, and in our conversation, Hamilton was cagey. “There are many ways in which it can be paid for and deficit spending itself is not bad unless there are certain conditions,” he said. I’m less blasé about financing a program that would increase federal spending by almost 20 percent, but at the same time, it’s clearly possible. Even if the entire thing was funded by taxes, it would only bring America’s tax burden to roughly the average of our peer nations.
I suspect the real political problem for a guaranteed income isn’t the costs, but the benefits. A policy like this would give workers the power to make real choices. They could say no to a job they didn’t want, or quit one that exploited them. They could, and would, demand better wages, or take time off to attend school or simply to rest. When we spoke, Hamilton tried to sell it to me as a truer form of capitalism. “People can’t reap the returns of their effort without some baseline level of resources,” he said. “If you lack basic necessities with regards to economic well-being, you have no agency. You’re dictated to by others or live in a miserable state.”
But those in the economy with the power to do the dictating profit from the desperation of low-wage workers. One man’s misery is another man’s quick and affordable at-home lunch delivery. “It is a fact that when we pay workers less and don’t have social insurance programs that, say, cover Uber and Lyft drivers, we are able to consume goods and services at lower prices,” Hilary Hoynes, an economist at the University of California at Berkeley, where she also co-directs the Opportunity Lab, told me.
This is the conversation about poverty that we don’t like to have: We discuss the poor as a pity or a blight, but we rarely admit that America’s high rate of poverty is a policy choice, and there are reasons we choose it over and over again. We typically frame those reasons as questions of fairness (“Why should I have to pay for someone else’s laziness?”) or tough-minded paternalism (“Work is good for people, and if they can live on the dole, they would”). But there’s more to it than that.
It is true, of course, that some might use a guaranteed income to play video games or melt into Netflix. But why are they the center of this conversation? We know full well that America is full of hardworking people who are kept poor by very low wages and harsh circumstance. We know many who want a job can’t find one, and many of the jobs people can find are cruel in ways that would appall anyone sitting comfortably behind a desk. We know the absence of child care and affordable housing and decent public transit makes work, to say nothing of advancement, impossible for many. We know people lose jobs they value because of mental illness or physical disability or other factors beyond their control. We are not so naïve as to believe near-poverty and joblessness to be a comfortable condition or an attractive choice.
Most Americans don’t think of themselves as benefiting from the poverty of others, and I don’t think objections to a guaranteed income would manifest as arguments in favor of impoverishment. Instead, we would see much of what we’re seeing now, only magnified: Fears of inflation, lectures about how the government is subsidizing indolence, paeans to the character-building qualities of low-wage labor, worries that the economy will be strangled by taxes or deficits, anger that Uber and Lyft rides have gotten more expensive, sympathy for the struggling employers who can’t fill open roles rather than for the workers who had good reason not to take those jobs. These would reflect not America’s love of poverty but opposition to the inconveniences that would accompany its elimination.
Nor would these costs be merely imagined. Inflation would be a real risk, as prices often rise when wages rise, and some small businesses would shutter if they had to pay their workers more. There are services many of us enjoy now that would become rarer or costlier if workers had more bargaining power. We’d see more investments in automation and possibly in outsourcing. The truth of our politics lies in the risks we refuse to accept, and it is rising worker power, not continued poverty, that we treat as intolerable. You can see it happening right now, driven by policies far smaller and with effects far more modest than a guaranteed income.
Hamilton, to his credit, was honest about these trade-offs. “Progressives don’t like to talk about this,” he told me. “They want this kumbaya moment. They want to say equity is great for everyone when it’s not. We need to shift our values. The capitalist class stands to lose from this policy, that’s unambiguous. They will have better resourced workers they can’t exploit through wages. Their consumer products and services would be more expensive.”
For the most part, America finds the money to pay for the things it values. In recent decades, and despite deep gridlock in Washington, we have spent trillions of dollars on wars in the Middle East and tax cuts for the wealthy. We have also spent trillions of dollars on health insurance subsidies and coronavirus relief. It is in our power to wipe out poverty. It simply isn’t among our priorities.
“Ultimately, it’s about us as a society saying these privileges and luxuries and comforts that folks in the middle class — or however we describe these economic classes — have, how much are they worth to us?” Jamila Michener, co-director of the Cornell Center for Health Equity, told me. “And are they worth certain levels of deprivation or suffering or even just inequality among people who are living often very different lives from us? That’s a question we often don’t even ask ourselves.”
But we should.
Ezra Klein joined Opinion in 2021. Previously, he was the founder, editor in chief and then editor-at-large of Vox; the host of the podcast, “The Ezra Klein Show”; and the author of “Why We’re Polarized.” Before that, he was a columnist and editor at The Washington Post, where he founded and led the Wonkblog vertical. @ezraklein
A version of this article appears in print on June 14, 2021, Section A, Page 22 of the New York edition with the headline: What the Rich Don’t Admit About the Poor. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe
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https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/13/opinion/stimulus-unemployment-republicans-poverty.html
Ronaldo snub wipes $4bn off Coca-Cola's market value
Fizzy drinks maker recovers most of the lost value after football star's apparent dig during Euros press conference
By Hannah Boland
16 June 2021 • 9:23am
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2021/06/16/ronaldo-snub-wipes-4bn-coca-colas-market-value/
More than $4bn (£2.8bn) was wiped off the value of Coca-Cola after Cristiano Ronaldo appeared to snub the fizzy drink maker at a press conference earlier this week.
Shares in the drinks maker dropped as much as 1.7pc after the press conference on Monday in which Ronaldo removed two bottles of Coca-Cola from in front of him. The slide took its value from $242bn to $238bn, although it later recovered some of those losses.
Ronaldo's outburst took place at a pre-match press conference in Budapest on Monday ahead of the football game between Portugal and Hungary.
After moving the bottles, Ronaldo held up a water bottle, saying "agua", seen as a suggestion that instead people should drink water. He later went on to score two goals in the Euros game, which saw Portugal win 3-0 over Hungary.
Ronaldo is well known for having a strict diet, which includes lean meats and sees him avoid sugary foods.
A spokesman for the Euros said: "Players are offered water, alongside Coca-Cola and Coca-Cola Zero Sugar, on arrival at our press conferences."
Ronaldo's move has, however, garnered support from anti-obesity campaigners. Caroline Cerny, Alliance Lead at Obesity Health Alliance, told the Telegraph earlier this week: "It is great to see a role model like Cristiano Ronaldo reject Coca-Cola for water, setting a positive example for young fans and showing his disdain for a cynical marketing attempt to link him with a sugary drink".
The drinks maker had taken a hit during the start of the pandemic, with sales slumping across all its markets as the world went into lockdown. However, it said in April this year that it was experiencing a rebound as many pubs and restaurants were able to reopen. In the first three months of the year,Coca-Cola reported net revenue of $9bn, up 5pc on the same period a year earlier.
Over 2021 as a whole, the company, which also makes Sprite and Fanta, said it was forecasting organic sales growth in the high single-digits.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2021/06/16/ronaldo-snub-wipes-4bn-coca-colas-market-value/
Kylie Atwood @kylieatwood President Biden announces 9 ambassador picks ahead of his summit with Putin, the list includes the US ambo to Israel, NATO & Mexico among others. The US ambo to Russia, John Sullivan, will be in the Putin-Biden meeting tomorrow.
8:34 PM · Jun 15, 2021·Twitter for iPhone
THREAD
President Biden announces 9 ambassador picks ahead of his summit with Putin, the list includes the US ambo to Israel, NATO & Mexico among others. The US ambo to Russia, John Sullivan, will be in the Putin-Biden meeting tomorrow. pic.twitter.com/kQDpZ4DMS0
— Kylie Atwood (@kylieatwood) June 15, 2021
The more we learn about Trump’s corruption of DOJ, the worse it gets
Opinion by Greg Sargent
Columnist
June 15, 2021 at 3:36 p.m. GMT+1
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/06/15/trump-recruit-justice-department/
Another day, another extraordinary revelation about Donald Trump’s efforts to corrupt the Justice Department: We’re now learning that, as president, Trump went to far greater lengths than previously known to actively recruit the department in his efforts to overturn the 2020 election.
This comes after we learned last week that, during the Trump years, the Justice Department subpoenaed the phone records of two House Democrats, possibly as direct retaliation against two of Trump’s most prominent political foes.
But the latest revelations push us into terrible new territory. First, they fill in important new detail demonstrating that Trump absolutely did fully intend to thwart a duly elected new government — the one chosen by the people — from assuming power, in order to seize a second term for himself illegitimately.
Second, there’s reason to think that in this case, as we learn more the revelations are going to get worse.
Here’s why: There is a chance that House Democrats will soon secure an interview with the person at the center of these new revelations.
That person is Jeffrey Rosen, who became acting attorney general after William P. Barr was pushed out by Trump in December of 2020. If an interview can be secured, Rosen can tell us more about Trump’s efforts to corrupt the department in order to subvert our political system and self rule.
Rosen, we’re now learning, was a key target of Trump’s efforts to get the department to help him overturn the election results. Democrats on the House Oversight Committee just released a tranche of new emails and documents revealing how Trump did this. The department turned the documents over to the committee as part of its ongoing investigation into the Jan. 6 insurrection.
Among the key revelations:
* Trump’s White House assistant sent Rosen an email on Dec. 14 that included materials purporting to document extensive election fraud in Michigan. The email included “talking points” that said there must be a “review of votes throughout Michigan.”
* Just after this happened, a senior Justice Department official forwarded a similar email with these materials to U.S. attorneys in Michigan, which seems like it might have been an effort to get an investigation going.
* Less than an hour after those emails were sent, Trump announced on Twitter that Barr would be stepping down, and that Rosen would be replacing him. Importantly, Trump had already sent Rosen his marching orders in terms of helping subvert the election.
* On Dec. 29, Trump’s White House assistant sent a draft brief to Rosen and other top department officials that Trump wanted the department to file with the Supreme Court. It called on the court to declare that electors for Joe Biden in six states that Trump lost must not be counted. The email explicitly says Trump personally asked for the brief to be sent for those officials’ review, a direct presidential order.
* According to the New York Times, that brief echoed the baseless claims made in the Texas lawsuit that also sought to invalidate Biden’s electors, which the Supreme Court had already dismissed. This shows Trump was fully devoted to subverting the election outcome now matter how fraudulent his legal claims were revealed to be.
There’s lots more here, including additional efforts by others in Trump’s orbit — such as then-White House chief of staff Mark Meadows — to pressure the department to examine claims of purported election fraud.
As bad as all this is, we may learn more that’s still worse. That’s because, as sources on the committee tell me, Rosen is in discussions with committee officials about sitting for a transcribed interview.
What we might still learn
Such an interview could fill in critical details. Among the things Rosen could speak to are whether there were additional communications between Trump and Rosen — including verbal ones, as well as unreleased email communications.
If there were more communications between them, Rosen could fill in additional detail about the full scope of Trump’s efforts to get the department to help overturn the election.
Those could easily demonstrate even worse and more concerted efforts to corrupt the department than those we already know about. According to the committee sources, the department has not indicated that what they did turn over is all it has in its possession along these lines.
Rosen might also be able to say when in the timeline he realized just how serious and deliberate Trump’s efforts to overturn the election really were. And he might be able to say more about possible additional efforts by Trump or people around him to get other department officials to scrutinize other examples of supposed election fraud.
Let’s not lose sight of what really happened
Here’s the larger context: Republicans are still refusing to agree to a bipartisan commission to examine the Jan. 6 insurrection. This is coming amid widespread claims by Trump and his propagandists that the violence wasn’t really all that bad or that he didn’t actually intend for the mob he incited to subvert the election’s peaceful conclusion through intimidation and violence.
This newly revealed pressure on the Justice Department came in the days leading right up to that incitement. The more it’s revealed that Trump absolutely did fully intend to subvert the election via corrupt and illicit means to remain in power illegitimately, the harder it is to deny what we all saw with our own eyes.
After failing to accomplish that via his bottomless efforts to corrupt the process, Trump attempted to complete the task with mob political violence. That’s what happened, and the more we learn, the worse it will be.
1366 Comments
Opinion by Greg Sargent
Greg Sargent writes The Plum Line blog. He joined The Post in 2010, after stints at Talking Points Memo, New York Magazine and the New York Observer. Twitter
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/06/15/trump-recruit-justice-department/
Trump Wanted The Justice Department To Copy Texas's Failed Election Case But Add More Conspiracy Theories
House Democrats released documents on Tuesday about efforts by Trump and White House officials to get the Justice Department to wade into post-election fights.
Zoe Tillman BuzzFeed News Reporter
Reporting From Washington, DC
Posted on June 15, 2021, at 12:34 p.m. ET
https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/zoetillman/trump-doj-planned-election-lawsuit-copied-texas?bftwnews&utm_term=4ldqpgc#4ldqpgc
WASHINGTON — Former president Donald Trump pushed the Justice Department last year to bring an election challenge in the US Supreme Court that largely copied Texas’s failed case word for word while amping up the conspiracy theories.
House Democrats on Tuesday released a cache of emails and other documents revealing how senior Trump administration officials urged DOJ to intervene in post-election legal fights on Trump’s behalf. The collection included a draft lawsuit that Trump wanted the Justice Department to file in the Supreme Court challenging President Joe Biden’s wins in Pennsylvania, Georgia, Michigan, Arizona, Nevada, and Wisconsin.
The department did not bring the case, and Trump’s private efforts to contest the election results were rejected at every level of the legal system, including before the Supreme Court. The Wall Street Journal first reported in January on Trump’s push to get DOJ to take his fight to the justices, but the draft released by the House Oversight Committee hadn’t been public before.
A side-by-side review shows that Trump’s proposed complaint would have simply reargued Texas’s unsuccessful one, while also adding language that leaned into false and debunked conspiracy theories that Trump and his allies were touting at the time about compromised voting technology. Texas filed its complaint on Dec. 7; the Supreme Court tossed it out less than a week later, finding Texas lacked standing to sue other states over how they managed voting.
Several weeks later, on Dec. 29, the newly released emails show that White House staff and an outside lawyer who had worked on Texas’s case tried to pitch Trump’s draft — at his direct request, they said — to Justice Department officials.
Large sections of Trump’s draft — the arguments, formatting, and footnotes — are copied from Texas’s complaint verbatim, substituting “the United States” as the party bringing the case for Texas or “Plaintiff State.” One of the few substantive differences is that Texas sued Pennsylvania, Georgia, Michigan, and Wisconsin; Trump’s case would have added Arizona and Nevada.
Texas’s filing: “Plaintiff State alleges that each of the Defendant States flagrantly violated constitutional rules governing the appointment of presidential electors. In doing so, seeds of deep distrust have been sown across the country.”
Trump’s draft: “The United States alleges that each of the Defendant States flagrantly violated constitutional rules governing the appointment of presidential electors. In doing so, seeds of deep distrust have been sown across the country.”
The draft not only copied Texas’s legal arguments but also much of the rhetorical flair.
The introduction of Trump’s proposed complaint read: “The United States therefore brings this action to ensure that the U.S. Constitution does not become simply a piece of parchment on display at the National Archives.”
Texas began with the same image: “Either the Constitution matters and must be followed, even when some officials consider it inconvenient or out of date, or it is simply a piece of parchment on display at the National Archives.”
Trump’s proposed lawsuit diverged from Texas’s in arguing why the United States had the legal authority to challenge election results in individual states. Trump’s team proposed language that the United States could intervene “to protect the interests of all citizens … in the fair and constitutional conduct of elections used to appoint presidential electors.” The Wall Street Journal previously reported that senior Justice Department officials concluded this argument wasn’t viable.
Another difference between the two documents is that Trump’s draft leaned into conspiracy theories being pushed by Trump and other Republicans — particularly lawyer Sidney Powell, who brought a slew of unsuccessful election challenges — that questioned the reliability of voting technology supplied by a private vendor, Dominion Voting Systems.
Texas’s complaint included one section that mentioned that several states named in the case had contracted with Dominion. Trump’s proposed complaint brought up Dominion in multiple places and made it a freestanding argument. Trump would have had the Justice Department argue that there were “grave questions” about the “vulnerability” of electronic voting machines used in the last election, name-checking Dominion.
There is no evidence that voting technology supplied by Dominion in the presidential election was compromised or involved in election fraud. Dominion is pursuing billion-dollar defamation suits against Powell, Rudy Giuliani, Fox News, and My Pillow CEO Mike Lindell for pushing false claims and conspiracy theories about the company.
The emails released by House Democrats show that Molly Michael, a White House aide, had sent the draft complaint on Dec. 29 to then–acting attorney general Jeffrey Rosen and other senior DOJ officials “for your review.” Michael wrote that she was doing so at Trump’s request. Michael also wrote she’d shared the document with Trump’s chief of staff Mark Meadows and White House counsel Pat Cipollone.
The emails also show that Kurt Olsen, a lawyer who had worked on Texas’s case, tried to contact several DOJ officials the same day to pitch the draft. He described it as being “modeled” on Texas’s filing.
In one message time stamped 10:57 a.m. on Dec. 29, Olsen wrote to Jeffrey Wall, the US solicitor general at the time, to say that Trump had “directed” Olsen to discuss the draft with Rosen but that he hadn’t been able to reach Rosen “despite multiple calls/texts.” At 12:45 p.m., Olsen wrote to John Moran, who was Rosen’s chief of staff, indicating that Moran had called Olsen about the draft but insisting that Trump had “directed” Olsen to brief Rosen in person. Olsen told Moran that Trump had “seen” the draft.
The emails show that Moran kept Rosen in the loop about Olsen’s communications and passed along a copy of the draft but that he also told Olsen a meeting wasn’t possible because Rosen was busy at the White House. Moran indicated Olsen had already started driving to DC in anticipation of getting a meeting. That evening, Olsen sent an email suggesting he did connect with Rosen, but it wasn’t clear how; he wrote to Moran that Rosen had asked for examples of Supreme Court cases that touched on legal arguments raised in the draft. The New York Times reported that an unidentified source said Olsen and Rosen never met.
Olsen did not immediately return a request for comment. In another set of emails, Steven Engel, who was head of the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel at the time, suggested that the draft appeared to have been written by Larry Joseph, another Washington-based lawyer who had worked on the Texas case. Joseph told BuzzFeed News in an email that he wasn’t involved in the effort to convert the Texas case into the draft case that Trump wanted the Justice Department to bring on behalf of the US government.
https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/zoetillman/trump-doj-planned-election-lawsuit-copied-texas?bftwnews&utm_term=4ldqpgc#4ldqpgc
emptywheel @emptywheel ·18m Here's the stuff 3%er Russell Taylor, who is about to have a detention hearing, brought to insurrection.
https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.dcd.232193/gov.uscourts.dcd.232193.11.0.pdf
6:11 PM · Jun 15, 2021·TweetDeck
THREAD
Here's the stuff 3%er Russell Taylor, who is about to have a detention hearing, brought to insurrection.https://t.co/noqfGio14D pic.twitter.com/kLojXWI3Tl
— emptywheel (check, mate) (@emptywheel) June 15, 2021
Adam Klasfeld @KlasfeldReports Prosecutors just cited these Telegram messages in the Three Percenters case in connection with the breach of Capitol.
Russell Taylor—reportedly seen with Roger Stone the day before the siege—posted these on the question of violence, feds say.
ICYMIv- https://lawandcrime.com/u-s-capitol-siege/traitors-need-to-be-executed-several-three-percenters-charged-in-u-s-capitol-riot-indictment-filled-with-weapons-and-insurrection-chatter/
6:16 PM · Jun 15, 2021·Twitter Web App
THREAD
Prosecutors just cited these Telegram messages in the Three Percenters case in connection with the breach of Capitol.
— Adam Klasfeld (@KlasfeldReports) June 15, 2021
Russell Taylor—reportedly seen with Roger Stone the day before the siege—posted these on the question of violence, feds say.
ICYMI https://t.co/fnArJB6SMu pic.twitter.com/9h1UUGlPbI
emptywheel @emptywheel From an FBI analysis of Proud Boy Telegram chats.
"I mean fuck 'tifa looks like professionals compared to us."
https://documentcloud.org/documents/20891256-210615-nordean-telegram-analysis
5:51 PM · Jun 15, 2021·TweetDeck
THREAD
From an FBI analysis of Proud Boy Telegram chats.
— emptywheel (check, mate) (@emptywheel) June 15, 2021
"I mean fuck 'tifa looks like professionals compared to us."https://t.co/sPZGmBfhHA pic.twitter.com/p1poY1gfGV
Daniel Morgan death: Met Police accused of ‘institutional corruption’ over 1987 unsolved murder
Call for Cressida Dick to quit after report into private detective's killing says allegations against investigating officers were covered up
By Martin Evans, CRIME CORRESPONDENT
15 June 2021 • 12:33pm
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/06/15/daniel-morgan-met-police-accused-institutional-corruption-concealing/
Dame Cressida Dick is facing calls to resign after a damning report into the unsolved 1987 murder of private investigator Daniel Morgan accused the force of "institutional corruption".
Mr Morgan’s brother Alistair, who has fought a 30-year campaign for justice, accused the Met Commissioner of delaying the independent panel’s work and said the force needed "better leadership".
Scotland Yard was accused of failing to tackle widespread corruption and cover-ups and of putting the protection of its own reputation before solving a brutal murder.
Mr Morgan was killed with an axe in the car park of the Golden Lion pub in Sydenham, south-east London, on March 10 1987.
Despite five police inquiries, no one has been brought to justice over the father-of-two’s murder.
At the time of the murder, he had been running a private detective firm called Southern Investigations with business partner Jonathan Rees.
For years, it has been alleged that the investigation was hampered by corrupt police officers, who also had links to tabloid journalists.
In 2013, Theresa May, then the home secretary, ordered an independent review into the investigation.
In a long-awaited 1,200-page report, published on Tuesday, the panel said the original 1987 murder investigation had been beset by "very significant failings" from the moment of the discovery of Mr Morgan’s body.
The report found that police had failed to secure the crime scene, had not sought alibis for all the suspects and had failed to follow important lines of inquiry properly.
"Many of the opportunities which were lost were not retrievable" the independent panel concluded.
The report identified a culture within the Met at the time of the murder which allowed close association between police officers and people linked to crime – including examples of them drinking in pubs together.
Some officers were also found to have been involved in "lucrative corrupt practices" such as selling confidential information.
But the report found no evidence to support the theory that Mr Morgan was murdered because he was about to expose police corruption.
The panel said it had received evidence from serving and retired officers that those who tried to expose wrongdoing had been "ostracised, transferred to a different unit, encouraged to resign, or have faced disciplinary proceedings".
The report also found that a 1988 investigation into the murder led by Hampshire Police and the Police Complaints Authority was far from independent.
"Despite the fact there was significant contradictory evidence, the Hampshire/Police Complaints Authority investigation concluded that the manner in which the investigation was conducted by the Metropolitan Police showed determination to bring those responsible before the court," the report found.
The independent panel also examined allegations that corrupt police officers had been working closely with Southern Investigations, which was then feeding stories to News of the World journalists.
During a cold case review into the murder in 2000, it emerged that News of the World reporters had placed the detective in charge, David Cook, and his family under surveillance.
Allegations of widespread corruption involving police officers involved in the investigation were subsequently ignored or covered up, the independent report found.
The report stated: "The family of Daniel Morgan suffered grievously as a consequence of the failure to bring his murderers to justice, the unwarranted assurances which they were given, the misinformation that was put into the public domain and the denial of the failings in investigation, including failing to acknowledge professional incompetence, individuals’ venal behaviour and managerial and organisational failures.
"The Metropolitan Police also repeatedly failed to take a fresh, thorough and critical look at past failings.
"Concealing or denying failings, for the sake of the organisation’s public image, is dishonesty on the part of the organisation for repetitional benefit and constitutes a form of institutional corruption."
Baroness Nuala O’Loan, the chairman of the independent panel, said that corruption was not purely historical but was still present within the force.
She said: "The Metropolitan Police concealed from the family of Daniel Morgan, and from the wider public, the failings in the first murder investigation and the role of corrupt officers.
"That lack of candour over so many years has been a barrier to proper accountability."
She said the Met owed the family of Mr Morgan and the wider public an apology for its many failings.
Responding to the report, the family said in a statement: "We welcome the recognition that we - and the public at large - have been failed over the decades by a culture of corruption and cover up in the Metropolitan Police, an institutionalised corruption that has permeated successive regimes in the Metropolitan Police and beyond to this day."
Priti Patel, the Home Secretary, making a statement on the Daniel Morgan report, told MPs: "It's devastating that 34 years after he was murdered, nobody has been brought to justice."
Ms Patel described the Morgan case as "one of the most devastating episodes in the history of the Metropolitan Police".
She told MPs: "The report itself is deeply alarming and finds examples of corrupt behaviour - corrupt behaviour was not limited to the first investigation, that the Metropolitan Police made a litany of mistakes and that this irreparably damaged the chances of successful prosecution of Daniel Morgan's murder."
Ms Patel added: "The report accuses the Metropolitan Police of a form of institutional corruption.
"Police corruption is a betrayal of everything policing stands for in this country. It erodes public confidence in our entire criminal justice system. It undermines democracy and civilised society.
"We look to the police to protect us and so they are invested with great power."
Dame Cressida was also criticised in the report for delaying the panel’s work by not handing over information in a timely manner.
Baroness O’Loan said despite the panel being established eight years ago, the Met had only handed over some relevant material in March this year.
She said: "At times our contact with the Metropolitan Police Service resembled police contact with litigants rather than with a body established by the Home Secretary to enquire into a case."
Dame Cressida also came under fire over her refusal to allow the panel team access to the HOLMES police data system.
The report said: "The Metropolitan Police's lack of candour manifested itself in the hurdles placed in the path of the panel, such as (then Assistant Commissioner) Cressida Dick's initial refusal to recognise the necessity for the panel to have access to the HOLMES system."
Mr Morgan’s brother said: "Cressida Dick was in charge of the disclosure, she has made it very difficult."
He said she ought to now consider her position, adding: "The police hate scrutiny and she has been true to form in that respect."
Raju Bhatt, the family's solicitor, added: "You heard from the panel that the institutionalised corruption that they found is a current problem in the present tense.
"The current leadership in the Met has to take responsibility for that continuing."
Downing Street later said Boris Johnson still had confidence in the Met Commissioner.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/06/15/daniel-morgan-met-police-accused-institutional-corruption-concealing/
Met Police chief apologises for failings in murdered private detective investigation
16 mins ago
https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/uknews/met-police-chief-apologises-for-failings-in-murdered-private-detective-investigation/ar-AAL4mBn
Metropolitan Police Commissioner Dame Cressida Dick has apologised for the force's failings over the case of murdered private detective Daniel Morgan.
Dame Cressida said it is a "matter of great regret that no one has been brought to justice and that our mistakes have compounded the pain suffered by Daniel's family".
A long-awaited report by an independent panel into the axe murder of Mr Morgan in 1987 has accused the Metropolitan Police of "a form of institutional corruption" and found "multiple very significant failings" during its initial investigation.
Conservative former prime minister Theresa May, who established the panel when she was home secretary, told Sky News: "This is a very hard-hitting report, it's a damning report.
"It reveals sadly significant corruption in the Metropolitan Police that took place around the investigation into Daniel Morgan's killer.
"My thoughts are with Daniel Morgan's family today because this has been a 34-year battle for them to find some sense of understanding about what happened around the killing of their brother."
Mrs May described the commissioner as "an extraordinarily able police officer... who will want to ensure the Metropolitan Police have taken the steps necessary to make sure they are able to deal with corruption in the force".
The ex-PM said the "vast majority" of officers act with integrity, adding: "Where corruption does occur it must be rooted out with vigour, unlike what happened through this episode of finding the killer of Daniel Morgan."
https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/uknews/met-police-chief-apologises-for-failings-in-murdered-private-detective-investigation/ar-AAL4mBn
COVID-19 vaccinations: More than 30 million people in UK have had both coronavirus jabs
Public Health England says two doses are highly effective against hospitalisation from the Delta variant, first detected in India.
Tuesday 15 June 2021 17:19, UK
https://news.sky.com/story/covid-19-vaccinations-more-than-30-million-people-in-uk-have-now-had-both-doses-of-a-coronavirus-jab-12333277
More than 30 million people in the UK are now fully vaccinated against COVID-19, according to the government.
A total of 30,209,707 people have had both doses of a coronavirus vaccine (57.4% of the adult population).
And 41,831,056 have received a first jab (79.4%).
Live COVID updates from the UK and around the world
It comes as the UK reported more than 7,000 daily COVID cases for a seventh day in a row.
Another 7,673 infections have been recorded in the latest 24-hour period, along with 10 more coronavirus-related deaths.
The figures compare with 7,742 infections and three fatalities announced on Monday, while 6,048 cases and 13 deaths were recorded this time last week.
NHS England has now extended the offer of a vaccine to everyone over the age of 23.
And all over-18s in England will be able to book a first dose by the end of this week, Downing Street has confirmed.
Meanwhile, members of the public who have already had their first jab are being urged to come forward for their second dose to help protect against the threat of new COVID variants.
To ensure people have the strongest possible protection, second doses for over-40s will be speeded up by reducing the dosing interval from 12 weeks to eight weeks.
All over-40s who received a first dose by mid-May will be offered a second dose by 19 July.
Also, new analysis by Public Health England (PHE) showed for the first time that two doses of a COVID vaccine are highly effective against hospitalisation from the Delta variant, first detected in India.
The data suggests the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine is 96% effective and the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine is 92% effective against hospitalisation after both doses.
Health secretary Matt Hancock said: "Second doses are increasingly vital, so this is an incredibly important milestone. Day after day, our vaccination programme reaches new heights.
"With over 30 million people across the UK now receiving a second dose, we are giving the fullest possible protection to our loved ones in the face of new variants.
"The strength of the union has never been clearer than in the UK vaccination effort. All four corners of this country have pulled together for one common purpose - to get the jab and fight this virus.
"I want to pay tribute to everyone right across the country who has answered our call to arms and rolled up their sleeves to get the jab. I encourage everyone over 23 to come forward and get the jab."
Over-18s in Wales and Northern Ireland can already get a jab, and people over 30 are eligible in Scotland.
On Monday, prime minister Boris Johnson announced a delay to step four in England's roadmap out of COVID-19 measures, pushing back the hoped for 21 June "Freedom Day" to 19 July amid a rise in cases of the Delta variant.
Cabinet Office minister Michael Gove has told Sky News that 19 July is the "terminus date" for England's remaining coronavirus restrictions and it would take an "unprecedented and remarkable" change in circumstances to derail that.
Also, Scotland is "likely" to maintain COVID restrictions for a further three weeks from 28 June, the nation's first minister Nicola Sturgeon has said.
Speaking in Holyrood, Ms Sturgeon did not rule out the further easing of restrictions, but said the Scottish government needed to "buy ourselves sufficient time" to allow the vaccination programme to continue its work.
A three-week delay would allow more people to receive a second coronavirus vaccine amid concerns about rising cases of the Delta variant, she added.
https://news.sky.com/story/covid-19-vaccinations-more-than-30-million-people-in-uk-have-now-had-both-doses-of-a-coronavirus-jab-12333277
Brandi Buchman @BBuchman_CNS Here's a link to the emails laying out Trump's pressure campaign:
https://oversight.house.gov/sites/democrats.oversight.house.gov/files/documents/COR-SelectedDOJDocuments-2021-6-15-FINAL.pdf
Oversight Committee
@OversightDems
· 5h
#BREAKING @OversightDems Chair @RepMaloney has released new documents showing President #Trump’s efforts to pressure the Department of Justice to overturn the lawful results of the 2020 presidential election.
#BREAKING 🚨: @OversightDems Chair @RepMaloney has released new documents showing President #Trump’s efforts to pressure the Department of Justice to overturn the lawful results of the 2020 presidential election.
— Oversight Committee Democrats (@OversightDems) June 15, 2021
Here's a link to the emails laying out Trump's pressure campaign: https://t.co/OEbdJHMdGJ https://t.co/L7RVJqo8Kf
— Brandi Buchman (@Brandi_Buchman) June 15, 2021
Power and Peril: 5 Takeaways on Amazon’s Employment Machine
Outsiders see a business success story for the ages. Many insiders see an employment system under strain.
By Jodi Kantor, Karen Weise and Grace Ashford
June 15, 2021
Updated 9:21 a.m. ET
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/15/us/politics/amazon-warehouse-workers.html
An Amazon worker tries to return from a Covid-related leave and is mistakenly fired. A wife panics as disability benefits halt for her gravely ill husband. An employee is fired for having a single underproductive day.
An examination by The New York Times into how the pandemic unfolded inside Amazon’s only fulfillment center in New York City, known as JFK8, found that the crisis exposed the power and peril of Amazon’s employment system. The company famously obsessed with satisfying customers achieved record growth and spectacular profits, but its management of hundreds of thousands of warehouse workers was marked at times by critical mistakes, communication lapses and high turnover.
Here are the takeaways:
1. Amazon has been churning through employees.
Amazon conducted a hiring surge in 2020 that was unparalleled in American corporate history. In just three months, it signed up 350,000 workers — more than the population of St. Louis — offering a wage of at least $15 an hour and good benefits.
But even before the pandemic, previously unreported data shows, Amazon was losing about 3 percent of its hourly associates each week — meaning its turnover was roughly 150 percent a year. At that rate, Amazon had to replace the equivalent of its entire work force roughly every eight months.
Kelly Nantel, an Amazon spokeswoman, responded to questions about the company’s turnover by saying, “Attrition is only one data point, which when used alone lacks important context.”
Inside Amazon’s Seattle headquarters, the turnover has made some executives worry that the company may run out of workers. Paul Stroup, who until recently led human resources teams focused on understanding warehouse workers, felt disappointed that he “didn’t hear long-term thinking” about the company’s quick cycling through workers. He likened it to using fossil fuels despite climate change.
“We keep using them,” he said, “even though we know we’re slowly cooking ourselves.”
2. Buggy and patchwork systems caused some workers to lose their benefits, and even their jobs, in error.
More than 25 current and former Amazon employees who worked on the disability and leave system bemoaned its inadequacy in interviews, calling it a source of frustration and panic. The problems escalated during the early months of the pandemic, when a new case management system designed to address the problems and provide flexibility was still buggy. Workers who had applied for leaves were penalized for missing work, triggering job-abandonment notices and then terminations.
“Please note the following,” Dan Cavagnaro, a JFK8 worker, wrote in a final, unanswered email plea. “I WISH TO REMAIN EMPLOYED WITH AMAZON.”
He was mistakenly fired anyway.
Dangelo Padilla, who worked as an Amazon case manager at a back office in Costa Rica, said he had witnessed numerous people being fired for no reason.
“I saw those situations every day,” he said.
Ms. Nantel, the spokeswoman, said the company had quickly approved personal leaves during the pandemic, hiring 500 people to help process the increased volume, and worked hard to contact employees before they were fired to see if they wanted to keep their jobs.
3. Amazon’s strict monitoring of workers has stoked a culture of fear.
Amazon tracks workers’ every movement inside its warehouses. Employees who work too slowly, or are idle for too long, risk being fired.
Dayana Santos was a top performer when she had one bad day in 2019. Her bus was late, then her department was reassigned, causing her to scour the warehouse for a new workstation. That afternoon, she was stunned to find that she was being fired for having too much “time off task,” or T.O.T.
Very few associates are fired for low productivity or time off task, but employees don’t know that. The goal, JFK8’s internal guidelines state, “is to create an environment not where we are writing everyone up, but that associates know that we are auditing for T.O.T.”
The system was designed to identify impediments a worker may face, but some executives, including the early architect of Amazon’s warehouse human relations, worry that the metrics now cast an outsize shadow on the work force, creating an anxious, negative environment.
After questions about Ms. Santos and T.O.T. from The Times, Amazon announced changes to its policy so that workers would never be fired for one bad day. Ms. Santos and all those like her are now eligible to be rehired. The company said it had been reconsidering the policy for months.
4. There is rising concern over racial inequity.
The retail giant is largely powered by employees of color. According to internal records from 2019, more than 60 percent of associates at JFK8 are Black or Latino.
And Black associates at the warehouse were almost 50 percent more likely to be fired — whether for productivity, misconduct or absenteeism — than their white peers, the records show. (Amazon said it could not confirm the data without knowing more specifics about its source.)
Derrick Palmer, a Black worker at JFK8, began at the company in 2015 as an enthusiast, and he was often a top producer.
But between the constant monitoring, the assumption that many workers are slackers and the lack of advancement opportunity, “a lot of minority workers just felt like we were being used,” Mr. Palmer said. His comments echoed the sentiment of Black workers behind an unsuccessful unionization campaign at an Amazon warehouse in Alabama this year.
This spring, the company introduced a host of diversity plans, including a goal to “retain employees at statistically similar rates across all demographics” — an implicit admission that the numbers had been uneven across races. At JFK8, leaders are holding weekly “talent review” meetings to ensure that Black and Latino workers, among others, are advancing.
5. Many of Amazon’s most contentious policies go back to Jeff Bezos’ original vision.
Some of the practices that most frustrate employees — the short-term-employment model, with little opportunity for advancement, and the use of technology to hire, monitor and manage workers — come from Jeff Bezos, Amazon’s founder and chief executive.
He believed that an entrenched work force created a “march to mediocrity,” said David Niekerk, a former long-serving vice president who built the company’s original human resources operations in the warehouses.
Company data showed that most employees became less eager over time, he said, and Mr. Bezos believed that people were inherently lazy. “What he would say is that our nature as humans is to expend as little energy as possible to get what we want or need,” Mr. Niekerk said. That conviction was embedded throughout the business, from the ease of instant ordering to the pervasive use of data to get the most out of employees.
Mr. Bezos recently made startling concessions about the system he invented. In a letter to shareholders, he said the union effort in Alabama had shown that “we need a better vision for how we create value for employees — a vision for their success” — and vowed to become “Earth’s best employer.”
What is not clear is how or whether he and his successors will reassess the systems that have propelled Amazon’s dominance.
Mr. Cavagnaro, the worker Amazon inadvertently fired, asked: “Are they going to address the issue of an expendable work force? Are there going to be any changes?”
Jodi Kantor is a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative reporter and best-selling author. She and Megan Twohey are the co-authors of “She Said”, which recounts how the reporters broke the story of sexual abuse allegations against Harvey Weinstein, helping to ignite the #MeToo movement. @jodikantor • Facebook
Karen Weise is a technology correspondent based in Seattle, covering Amazon, Microsoft, and the region's tech scene. Before joining The Times in 2018, she worked for Bloomberg Businessweek and Bloomberg News, as well as ProPublica. @kyweise
Grace Ashford is a researcher and reporter with the Investigations unit. Her recent work has focused on city housing policy and the crisis of affordability in New York. @gr_ashford
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/15/us/politics/amazon-warehouse-workers.html
Gohmert Swears $5,500 ‘Donation’ to Holocaust Denier Was a Mistake
William Bredderman
Tue, 15 June 2021, 1:00 am·6-min read
https://uk.sports.yahoo.com/news/gohmert-swears-5-500-donation-000058038.html
Rep. Louie Gohmert celebrated New Year’s Eve 2020 by dropping several thousand dollars into the coffers of a vitriolically homophobic and antisemitic pastor, federal records indicate. But his office insists the whole thing was just a giant mistake.
Team Gohmert claims it hired a Christian singer named Steve Amerson from Granada HIlls, California, but accidentally reported to the Federal Election Commission that the cash went to the Tempe, Arizona address of the Faithful Word Baptist Church, led by the infamous Pastor Steve Anderson.
Yes, the pastor happens to embrace a more extreme form of Gohmert’s homophobic rhetoric. And yes, the money was earmarked as a “donation.” But it wasn’t meant for Anderson, and wasn’t a donation at all, in Team Gohmert’s telling. They just screwed up the name, purpose, and address of the recipient of their largesse. Oops.
Disclosures to the FEC show that the Louie Gohmert for Congress Committee sent $5,500, to an entity in Tempe called “Anderson Ministries.” There is in fact no organization of this name registered in the Grand Canyon State—but the address in the campaign filing matches that of Anderson’s church.
Standing at the vanguard of the small but growing New Independent Fundamentalist Baptist movement, Faithful Word Church calls for homosexuality to be punished with the death penalty in the doctrinal statement published on its webpage. But that demand seems mild compared to the seething rhetoric Anderson has unleashed against the LGBTQ community: in a 2014 video posted to his now-deplatformed YouTube account, he declared “if you executed the homos, like God recommends, you wouldn’t have all this AIDS running around.” In 2016, he applauded the the mass shooting at the gay nightclub Pulse in Orlando, asserting “there’s 50 less pedophiles in this world.”
Gohmert’s rhetoric toward the LGBTQ community has been far less violent, though only slightly more tolerant. In 2010, he asserted that homosexuality is a form of adultery, argued for barring gay people from the military on the grounds that they “cannot control their hormones.” Four years later, he lauded a Mississippi statute that enshrined the right to discriminate against gay people on religious grounds. A year after that, he suggested as a thought experiment stranding gay and lesbian couples on deserted islands, and comparing their situation after a century to similarly marooned straight couples to “see which one nature favors.”
Anderson also has demonstrated a particular animosity toward Jewish people, as evidenced in titles of the sermons listed on his IMDB page, which include “The Jews Are Our Enemies,” “The Jews Killed Jesus,” “Unbelieving Jews Are Under God’s Wrath,” “Jews Worship a Female God Named ‘Shekinah,’” and “Jewish Synagogue = Synagogue of Satan.” He has also, as the Anti-Defamation League noted in a 2015 report, propagated false claims that millions of Jews were not gassed and cremated in Nazi concentration camps during World War II.
“The real ‘burnt offering’ is going to be when all of these Jews that don’t believe in Jesus Christ go to hell for eternity,” Anderson said in one video, alluding to the literal Greek meaning of holocaust. “That’s the oven that they ought to be worried about.”
Anderson has also dabbled in crude documentary film-making, producing such works as Marching to Zion—which, according to the ADL, claims that Jewish people worship the Antichrist—and Marxist Lucifer King, about about civil rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., whom Faithful Word Church has labeled “a wicked false prophet, a sexual pervert, and a Communist tool.”
In 2009, after Anderson gave a sermon in which he prayed for the death of then-President Barack Obama, a member of Faithful Word Church brought a semiautomatic weapon to one of the commander-in-chief’s speaking events in Phoenix.
Such activity has prompted nations across Europe, Africa, and the Caribbean to forbid Anderson from entering or spreading his gospel in their lands—even to the point of deporting the preacher, as Botswana did in 2016.
“He’s incredibly antisemitic, incredibly homophobic,” said Aryeh Tuchman, associate director at the ADL’s Center on Extremism, noting that Anderson’s New IFB movement now encompasses 30 houses of worship. “He is a highly problematic individual who pumps antisemitism, hatred and bigotry into the rhetoric, the preachings, and the teachings of these other churches.”
Tuchman noted that Anderson has also called for denying women the right to vote and has denounced Islam. He called Gohmert’s donation “mysterious,” not just because of Anderson’s hateful statements toward vulnerable groups, but also because the preacher has shown contempt for many of the people and causes the conservative congressman treasures: namely, for ex-President Donald Trump, the State of Israel, and mainstream Baptist congregations like the one Gohmert belongs to.
"Why was this donation made?” Tuchman wondered. “If he knew what Anderson was about, then it is shocking and highly disturbing that he would give money to a known antisemite, Holocaust denier, and homophobe. If this was a donation where they were unaware of who Anderson was, and what he represents, I don’t know why they why they would send that donation, but there was a level of due diligence that wasn't made.”
Tuchman acknowledged, however, that Gohmert has repeated false claims about Jewish billionaire George Soros that critics have deemed antisemitic.
The Daily Beast reached out to Anderson for comment, but received notice from his wife Zsuzsanna that he was unavailable. She would not verify whether Faithful Word had received and deposited the funds from Gohmert’s campaign, but asserted that she and her husband neither knew nor supported Gohmert.
“We can neither confirm nor deny that such a donation was made to our ministry,” she said. “We don’t follow the donations closely, and don’t see the urgency of setting aside the time on a very busy week to look into the financial records.”
“Anybody is allowed to donate to our ministry and we’re thankful for it and we’ll put it toward the Lord’s work,” she added.
Gohmert’s treasurer, William Long, told The Daily Beast that the gift to “Anderson Ministries” was “probably” intended for Faithful Word Baptist Church. However, he insisted that he was unfamiliar with the organization, and did not believe the congressman shared its views.
Still, he said that the eight-term Republican personally handles all donations from the campaign to churches and nonprofits.
“I’m sure that Louie sent it or carried it to him,” Long said. “Things like charitable contributions, yes, he pretty well makes the decisions.”
But Gohmert’s chief-of-staff, Connie Hair, subsequently called The Daily Beast and claimed the situation was a massive misunderstanding. The check the congressman signed was not to the Tempe-based Anderson, but to the Sunshine State-based Amerson, she asserted. Hair said the $5,500 was not a donation, despite what the filing said, but payment for Amerson’s appearance at a December fundraiser.
The address and information in the filing was the result of a botched internet search by Long, according to Hair—who maintained it was Amerson who got the money.
“That’s who it was written to, and Louie gave it to him, and when Bill Long got the check and the charge, he searched ‘Anderson Ministries’ instead of ‘Amerson,’” she said. “Bill Long is amending our filing.”
Hair did not immediately provide invitations or any other materials documenting Amerson’s appearance at an event last year. Amerson did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Read more at The Daily Beast.
https://uk.sports.yahoo.com/news/gohmert-swears-5-500-donation-000058038.html
New emails detail Trump’s efforts to have Justice Department take up his election fraud claims
By Karoun Demirjian
June 15, 2021 at 2:13 p.m. GMT+1
https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/trump-emails-doj-election-fraud-claims/2021/06/15/638ab654-cdc9-11eb-8014-2f3926ca24d9_story.html
President Trump’s staff began sending emails to Jeffrey Rosen, the No. 2 at the Justice Department, asking him to embrace Trump’s claims of voter fraud in the 2020 election at least ten days before Rosen assumed the role of acting attorney general, according to new emails disclosed by the House Committee on Oversight and Reform in advance of a hearing to probe the causes of the Jan. 6 riot at the Capitol.
On the same day as the Electoral College met to certify the election results — which was also the day Trump announced that William P. Barr would be stepping down as attorney general — his assistant sent Rosen an email with a list of complaints concerning the way the election had been carried out in Antrim County, Michigan.
The file included a forensic analysis of the Dominion voting machines the county employed, alleging they were “intentionally and purposefully” calibrated to create fraudulent results, and “talking points” that could be used to counter any arguments “against us.”
“It’s indicative of what the machines can and did do to move votes,” the document Trump sent to Rosen reads. “We believe it has happened everywhere.”
The email — one of several previously undisclosed records released by the Oversight Committee Tuesday morning — sheds light on the type of pressure Trump was putting on the Justice Department to take up his crusade against Joe Biden’s 2020 victory.
It also shows how Trump was attempting to influence Rosen before he stepped into the top role at DOJ, where he would come under continued pressure from the White House to launch a formal investigation into the integrity of the 2020 election — pressure he resisted — in advance of the Jan. 6 riot at the Capitol.
A lawyer for Rosen did not immediately return a request for comment.
On Tuesday afternoon, the House is continuing its examinations of the Jan. 6 riot at the Capitol with a pair of simultaneous hearings, both probing the military and law enforcement responses to the attack as it unfolded.
Gen. Charles E. Flynn and Lt. Gen. Walter Piatt, who served as the director and deputy directors of the Army staff on the day of the insurrection, will deliver their first public congressional testimony before the Committee on House Oversight and Reform.
Both were involved in determining whether the National Guard should be dispatched to aid Capitol Police and local law enforcement agencies in holding back a crowd of 10,000 pro-Trump demonstrators, approximately 800 of whom managed to break into the Capitol building.
In testimony before a joint Senate panel investigating the attacks, former Capitol Police Chief Steven A. Sund said that Piatt was one of the Pentagon officials who resisted his entreaties to dispatch National Guard to the Capitol, effectively slow-walking the response.
They will be appearing alongside FBI Director Christopher Wray, who has previously testified to other congressional panels about his agency’s response. Acting Capitol Police Chief Yogananda D. Pittman, who was also invited to appear, declined citing a lack of proper notice and scheduling conflicts, according to a statement provided by the Capitol Police.
Her conflict is another Jan. 6 hearing, this one at the House Committee on Administration, which is interviewing the Inspector General of the U.S. Capitol Police alongside the director of justice and law enforcement issues at the Government Accountability Office at the same time as the House Oversight hearing.
Matt Zapotosky contributed to this report.
Image without a caption
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/national-security/trump-emails-doj-election-fraud-claims/2021/06/15/638ab654-cdc9-11eb-8014-2f3926ca24d9_story.html
Covid-19 Virus Ranged From Illinois to Massachusetts Before States Reported First Cases
People in five U.S. states were infected with the Covid-19 virus well before their state’s first confirmed case, including some in December 2019
By Betsy McKay
June 15, 2021 9:00 am ET
https://www.wsj.com/articles/covid-19-virus-ranged-from-illinois-to-massachusetts-before-states-reported-first-cases-11623762001?mod=e2tw
The Covid-19 virus infected people in five U.S. states in December 2019 and early 2020 before those states reported their first cases, according to a large new government study, providing new insights into the first, unseen weeks of the nation’s deadly epidemic.
Scientists analyzing blood samples taken for a National Institutes of Health research program identified seven people in states from Mississippi to Wisconsin to Pennsylvania who were infected with the new virus days or weeks before the first cases were confirmed in their areas. At least a couple had mild symptoms.
Their findings were published online by the journal Clinical Infectious Diseases Tuesday.
Two samples, one taken from a person from Illinois and another from a person from Massachusetts, date to Jan. 7 and 8, 2020, respectively, the researchers said. Antibodies found in the samples appear about two weeks after a person has been infected, the researchers said.
The number of Covid-19 cases found in the frozen, stored blood samples is small, suggesting the early cases in the U.S. were sporadic.
All told, the researchers found evidence of infection in just nine out of 24,079 participants whose blood samples were taken between Jan. 2, 2020, and March 18, 2020, for the NIH research program.
Still, the findings provide evidence the new coronavirus was infecting Americans before the world learned that it was causing a deadly outbreak in Wuhan, China. Two of the cases also occurred weeks before public-health officials confirmed the virus had arrived in the U.S., and before they started testing people widely.
“It helps us understand a little bit more about the geographic spread of where the virus was in those very early days of the U.S. epidemic,” said Keri Althoff, lead author and associate professor of epidemiology at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore.
The cases the researchers found, Dr. Althoff said, suggest the new virus was “being seeded perhaps in states that we didn’t necessarily have on our radar before this.”
The findings also underscore the need for tests to be widely available as early as possible when an outbreak occurs, she said. Limited by the number of tests and labs early in the pandemic, public-health officials evaluated only people with symptoms who had traveled to a country where Covid-19 was spreading, missing many who were infected.
The study is the latest trying to piece together the earliest days of the Covid-19 pandemic in the U.S.
Late last year, researchers at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the American Red Cross reported that there could have been isolated cases of Covid-19 in the U.S. as early as mid-December 2019. The researchers said they found evidence of infection in a young man who gave blood in northern California at that time, and an individual who donated in Connecticut on Jan. 10, 2020.
Another study published in the scientific journal Nature Communications earlier this month found evidence of sporadic Covid-19 cases in New York City a month before the first officially documented case and its pandemic wave in March 2020.
The studies suggest a slow, stealthy introduction of the virus, causing only isolated cases at first before it eventually took hold, spread and hit officials’ radar, researchers said.
“We have good indication that there wasn’t really widespread transmission in the United States” in December 2019 or January 2020, said Natalie Thornburg, a CDC microbiologist who was one of the authors of the study with the Red Cross. The new study’s conclusions were “very similar to our own,” she said.
Finding isolated cases of an illness that predate an outbreak is in keeping with the usual pattern for the spread of such infectious diseases, said Dr. Althoff. “Oftentimes, especially with something like a respiratory viral infection, the first case we see is not the very first case in whatever geographic region,” she said.
Possible early cases have been reported in Italy and other countries as well. While many scientists believe the new virus first started spreading in China, Chinese authorities have urged searching for the origin in other countries.
The latest findings don’t suggest the virus originated in the U.S., Dr. Althoff said. “If you were to look at just the air-traffic-control patterns across the world in December of 2019 and January 2020, people were still moving about a lot during this time,” she said. “The world was a very global place.”
For the latest study, researchers analyzed blood samples from people who had enrolled in an NIH research program called All of Us, which was established to help researchers study disease risk factors and treatments for people of diverse backgrounds.
The nine people the researchers identified were from a geographically diverse swath of the country, far from metro areas like Seattle and New York City where people enter the U.S. and the first reported outbreaks of Covid-19 later occurred.
Seven of the people had antibodies, a sign of infection, before the first case in their state was officially confirmed, according to the study.
Three were in Illinois, and their blood samples were collected before the first person was diagnosed there on Jan. 24. The others included one person from Massachusetts, whose blood was taken in January; one person from Wisconsin and another from Pennsylvania, whose blood was collected in early February; and one person from Mississippi, whose blood was collected in early March.
Their infections were confirmed with two tests for antibodies targeting different parts of the virus.
Two additional people tested positive in Illinois in February, after the state had confirmed two cases.
Five of the nine people were African-American, two were Hispanic and two were white, according to the study. Two sought medical attention for mild Covid-19 symptoms around the time their blood was drawn but weren’t diagnosed with the disease. One person reported having a fever, cough and sore throat, and believed they had had Covid-19.
Dr. Althoff said it wasn’t known whether any of the nine had traveled to an area where Covid-19 was circulating. The participants will be offered a chance to receive their results, the authors said.
The CDC’s Dr. Thornburg and Josh Denny, chief executive of the NIH’s All of Us program and an author of the latest study, both said they don’t plan to search blood samples earlier than December 2019, given how few they have found back then. “We’ve seen a very low rate of positivity in this time period,” Dr. Denny said.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/covid-19-virus-ranged-from-illinois-to-massachusetts-before-states-reported-first-cases-11623762001?mod=e2tw
Trump’s Ex-Staff Chief Is Asked to Testify on DOJ Election Role
Kathleen Hunter
June 15 2021, 5:21 PM June 15 2021, 6:29 PM
(Bloomberg) -- A House committee is asking former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows and several former Justice Department officials to be interviewed about evidence it says shows President Donald Trump and his allies tried to pressure the department to help him overturn the 2020 presidential election. Democrats on the Oversight and Reform Committee assert that the documents they’ve obtained
Democrats on the Oversight and Reform Committee assert that the documents they’ve obtained illustrate how Trump, Meadows and others in December 2020 and early January 2021 repeatedly pressed senior DOJ officials to advance unsubstantiated allegations of voter fraud.
“These documents show that President Trump tried to corrupt our nation’s chief law enforcement agency in a brazen attempt to overturn an election that he lost,” the panel’s chairwoman, Carolyn Maloney, a New York Democrat, said in a statement. Maloney added, “Those who aided or witnessed President Trump’s unlawful actions must answer the Committee’s questions about this attempted subversion of de
Maloney added, “Those who aided or witnessed President Trump’s unlawful actions must answer the Committee’s questions about this attempted subversion of democracy. My Committee is committed to ensuring that the events leading to the violent Jan. 6 insurrection are fully investigated.” Among evidence cited by Maloney and her Democratic colleagues are newly released documents they say show Meadows
Read more at: https://www.bloombergquint.com/politics/house-panel-seeks-meadows-testimony-in-2020-election-inquiry
Copyright © BloombergQuint
Trump Pressed Official to Wield Justice Dept. to Back Election Claims
The former president began pressuring his incoming acting attorney general even before announcing that his predecessor was stepping down, emails show.
By Katie Benner
June 15, 2021 Updated 8:02 a.m. ET
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/15/us/politics/trump-justice-department-election.html?referringSource=articleShare
WASHINGTON — An hour before President Donald J. Trump announced in December that William P. Barr would step down as attorney general, the president began pressuring Mr. Barr’s eventual replacement to have the Justice Department take up his false claims of election fraud.
Mr. Trump sent an email via his assistant to Jeffrey A. Rosen, the incoming acting attorney general, that contained documents purporting to show evidence of election fraud in northern Michigan — the same claims that a federal judge had thrown out a week earlier in a lawsuit filed by one of Mr. Trump’s personal lawyers.
Another email from Mr. Trump to Mr. Rosen followed two weeks later, again via the president’s assistant, that included a draft of a brief that Mr. Trump wanted the Justice Department to file to the Supreme Court. It argued, among other things, that state officials had used the pandemic to weaken election security and pave the way for widespread election fraud.
The draft echoed claims in a lawsuit in Texas by the Trump-allied state attorney general that the justices had thrown out, and a lawyer who had helped on that effort later tried with increasing urgency to track down Mr. Rosen at the Justice Department, saying he had been dispatched by Mr. Trump to speak with him.
The emails, turned over by the Justice Department to investigators on the House Oversight Committee and obtained by The New York Times, show how Mr. Trump pressured Mr. Rosen to put the power of the Justice Department behind lawsuits that had already failed to try to prove his false claims that extensive voter fraud had affected the election results.
They are also the latest example of Mr. Trump’s frenzied drive to subvert the election results in the final weeks of his presidency, including ratcheting up pressure on the Justice Department. And they show that Mr. Trump flouted an established anticorruption norm that the Justice Department acts independently of the White House on criminal investigations or law enforcement actions, a gap that steadily eroded during Mr. Trump’s term.
The documents dovetail with emails around the same time from Mark Meadows, Mr. Trump’s chief of staff, asking Mr. Rosen to examine unfounded conspiracy theories about the election, including one that claimed people associated with an Italian defense contractor were able to use satellite technology to tamper with U.S. voting equipment from Europe.
Much of the correspondence also occurred during a tense week within the Justice Department, when Mr. Rosen and his top deputies realized that one of their peers had plotted with Mr. Trump to first oust Mr. Rosen and then to try to use federal law enforcement to force Georgia to overturn its election results. Mr. Trump nearly replaced Mr. Rosen with that colleague, Jeffrey Clark, then the acting head of the civil division.
Mr. Rosen made clear to his top deputy in one message that he would have nothing to do with the Italy conspiracy theory, arrange a meeting between the F.B.I. and one of the proponents of the conspiracy, Brad Johnson, or speak about it with Rudolph W. Giuliani, Mr. Trump’s personal lawyer.
“I learned that Johnson is working with Rudy Giuliani, who regarded my comments as an ‘insult,’” Mr. Rosen wrote in the email. “Asked if I would reconsider, I flatly refused, said I would not be giving any special treatment to Giuliani or any of his ‘witnesses’, and reaffirmed yet again that I will not talk to Giuliani about any of this.”
Mr. Rosen declined to comment. A spokesman for Mr. Trump could not immediately be reached for comment.
The documents “show that President Trump tried to corrupt our nation’s chief law enforcement agency in a brazen attempt to overturn an election that he lost,” said Representative Carolyn B. Maloney, a New York Democrat who is the chairwoman of the House Oversight Committee.
Ms. Maloney, whose committee is looking into the events leading up the Jan. 6 storming of the Capitol by a pro-Trump crowd protesting the election results, including Mr. Trump’s pressure on the Justice Department, said she has asked former Trump administration officials to sit for interviews, including Mr. Meadows, Mr. Clark and others. The House Oversight Committee requested the documents in May as part of the inquiry, and the Justice Department complied.
The draft brief that Mr. Trump wanted the Justice Department to file before the Supreme Court mirrored a lawsuit that Attorney General Ken Paxton of Texas had filed to the court, alleging that a handful of battleground states had used the pandemic to make unconstitutional changes to their election laws that affected the election outcome. The states argued in response that Texas lacked standing to file the suit, and the Supreme Court rejected the case.
The version of the lawsuit that Mr. Trump wanted the Justice Department to file made similar claims, saying that officials in Georgia, Michigan, Wisconsin, Arizona, Nevada and Pennsylvania had used the pandemic to unconstitutionally revise or violate their own election laws and weaken election security.
To try to prove its case, the lawsuit relied on descriptions of an election monitoring video that appeared similar to one that Republican officials in Georgia rejected as doctored, as well as the debunked notion, promoted by Mr. Trump, that machines made by Dominion Voting Systems had been hacked.
Eager to speak with Mr. Rosen about the draft Supreme Court lawsuit, a lawyer named Kurt Olsen, who had advised on Mr. Paxton’s effort, tried unsuccessfully to reach him multiple times, according to emails sent between 11 a.m. and 10 p.m. on Dec. 29 and obtained by the House Oversight Committee investigators.
Mr. Olsen first reached out to Jeffrey B. Wall, the acting solicitor general who would have argued the brief before the Supreme Court. “Last night the President directed me to meet with AG Rosen today to discuss a similar action to be brought by the United States,” Mr. Olsen wrote. “I have not been able to reach him despite multiple calls/texts. This is an urgent matter.”
Mr. Rosen’s chief of staff, John S. Moran, told Mr. Olsen that the acting attorney general was busy with other business at the White House. About an hour later, Mr. Olsen drove from Maryland to Washington “in the hopes of meeting” with Mr. Rosen at the Justice Department, the emails show.
When Mr. Olsen could not get through to Mr. Rosen or Mr. Moran, he called an employee in the department’s antitrust division, according to the documents.
The emails do not make clear whether Mr. Olsen met with Mr. Rosen, but a person who discussed the matter with Mr. Rosen said that a meeting never occurred. Rather, Mr. Olsen eventually cold-called the official’s private cellphone and was politely rebuffed, the person said, requesting anonymity because the matter is part of an ongoing investigations.
Mr. Olsen provided more fodder for his case in an email sent later that night to Mr. Moran, saying that it was at Mr. Rosen’s request.
On the day that Mr. Trump announced that Mr. Rosen would be the acting attorney general, he wanted him to look at materials about potential fraud in northern Michigan, according to an email obtained by the committee. That fraud claim had been the subject of a lawsuit filed by the former Trump adviser Sidney Powell, who argued that Dominion voting machines had flipped votes from Mr. Trump to Joseph R. Biden Jr.
The state’s Republican clerk had said that human error was to blame for mistakes there that initially gave more votes to Mr. Biden, and a hand recount at the county level conducted in December confirmed that the machines had worked properly.
A federal judge threw out Ms. Powell’s lawsuit on Jan. 7, saying that it was based on “nothing but speculation and conjecture.” She has been accused of defamation in a lawsuit by Dominion in part because of the Michigan claims.
Mr. Rosen is in the process of negotiating to give a single interview with investigators from the House Oversight Committee, the Senate Judiciary Committee and others who are looking into the final days of the Trump administration; and he has asked the Justice Department’s current leaders to sort what he can and cannot say about the core facts that involve meetings at the Oval Office with Mr. Trump, which could be privileged.
Mr. Rosen met with department officials and spoke with Mr. Trump’s representatives within the last week to discuss these matters, according to a person briefed on the meetings. If the parties cannot come to an agreement, the issue could be thrown into court, where it most likely would languish for months, if not years.
Katie Benner covers the Justice Department. She was part of a team that won a Pulitzer Prize in 2018 for public service for reporting on workplace sexual harassment issues. @ktbenner
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/15/us/politics/trump-justice-department-election.html?referringSource=articleShare
Peter Geoghegan @PeterKGeoghegan·7m BREAKING Parliament is to investigate Michael Gove’s ‘Orwellian’ FOI unit.
Huge result for @openDemocracy journalism - and transparency - as public administration and constitutional affairs committee launches Freedom of Information inquiry.
UK Parliament to investigate Michael Gove’s ‘Orwellian’ FOI unit
Public administration and constitutional affairs committee to launch inquiry in the wake of openDemocracy’s reporting on government secrecy
Peter Geoghegan
15 June 2021, 12.22pm
https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/freedom-of-information/uk-parliament-to-investigate-michael-goves-orwellian-foi-unit/
THREAD
BREAKING🚨🚨🚨Parliament is to investigate Michael Gove’s ‘Orwellian’ FOI unit.
— Peter Geoghegan @ democracyforsale.uk (@PeterKGeoghegan) June 15, 2021
Huge result for @openDemocracy journalism - and transparency - as public administration and constitutional affairs committee launches Freedom of Information inquiry.https://t.co/rKW7KulKfR
FBI warns QAnon could deploy 'real-world violence'
Tue, 15 June 2021, 8:14 am
https://uk.news.yahoo.com/fbi-warns-qanon-could-deploy-071401370.html
The United States FBI warned members of Congress that QAnon followers could engage in real-life violence again, after their prominent role in the deadly Capitol riot in January.
FBI experts distributed a bulletin to Congress earlier this month, which said QAnon conspiracists have expressed frustrations about their predictions not coming true.
Those included Hillary Clinton’s arrest and former President Donald Trump’s restoration to power.
Some believers have posted they can “no longer trust the plan.”
The bulletin warned some QAnon followers online may feel obligated to engage in real world violence against Democrats and others they feel are “political opposition.”
At the same time, the FBI has said the number of those supporters have dwindle, because predictions have failed to happen and QAnon content has been largely removed from social media platforms.
https://uk.news.yahoo.com/fbi-warns-qanon-could-deploy-071401370.html
Biden, E.U. eliminate long-running aircraft trade dispute, but other Trump tariffs still stand in the way
By Michael Birnbaum , Anne Gearan and David J. Lynch
June 15, 2021 at 12:25 p.m. GMT+1
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/biden-eu-tariffs/2021/06/15/88fcfe92-cd4c-11eb-a7f1-52b8870bef7c_story.html
BRUSSELS — President Biden and European Union leaders reached a deal Tuesday to put to rest a 17-year-old trade dispute about subsidies for aircraft manufacturers, officials said, a significant step in calming trade relations after the fury of the Trump years.
A five-year truce, which was announced at the outset of a Tuesday meeting in Brussels between Biden and the top leaders of E.U. institutions, was the latest effort in a transatlantic reconciliation tour that the new president started last week at the Group of Seven summit in Britain.
At each stop, including at NATO on Monday, Biden has tried to mend ties that were damaged by President Donald Trump, who often sidled up to traditional American adversaries and targeted longtime allies with vitriol.
“It’s overwhelmingly the interest of the United States of America to have a great relationship with NATO and the E.U.,” Biden said Tuesday as he started the meeting with the E.U. leaders. “I have a very different view than my predecessor did.”
Tuesday’s deal will quell fears that the European Union and the United States could hit each other with tariffs on everything from French wine to Harley-Davidson motorcycles, as they did in recent years as part of the dispute, which also targets Boeing.
“Today’s announcement resolves a long-standing trade irritant in the U.S.-Europe relationship,” said U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai. “Instead of fighting with one of our closest allies, we are finally coming together against a common threat.”
Even as supply lines strain, Biden is in no rush to scrap Trump’s steel tariffs
Europe also welcomed the deal.
“This meeting has started with a breakthrough on aircraft. This really opens a new chapter in our relationship because we move from litigation to cooperation on aircraft, after 17 years of dispute,” von der Leyen said in a statement released as she sat down with Biden.
But as was the case in Biden’s earlier stops on his first international tour as president, there were also lingering irritants from the Trump years that were not immediately resolved in the lead-up to Tuesday’s E.U. meeting, a sign that some of Trump’s foreign policy may outlast him. Biden did not remove tariffs that Trump imposed on European steel, a major frustration for the European Union, nor did he announce plans to remove pandemic-era restrictions on European travel to the United States even though the E.U. has made plans to reopen to Americans. The White House has said both issues still need a little bit of time.
Biden on Wednesday will wrap up his European tour with a meeting in Geneva with Russian President Vladimir Putin, promising to deliver a far tougher message to the Kremlin than Trump, who sought out Putin’s approval and friendship.
In Biden’s talks with von der Leyen and European Council President Charles Michel, the U.S. president will be looking to move from antagonism to accord.
“There’s a lot of stuff on the table now for a political deal if both sides are willing,” said Rufus Yerxa, president of the National Foreign Trade Council, an industry group. “Both sides really need it badly.”
Under the terms of the E.U.-U.S. deal on airplane manufacturers, the two sides agreed to put aside differences in their nearly 17-year battle over government financial aid for rivals Boeing and Airbus. The truce will suspend tariffs related to the dispute for five years, Tai said.
The two sides still need to agree on acceptable limits of public support for the two aircraft companies, an unresolved issue that appeared to be a potential source for tension, or at least disagreements.
The World Trade Organization in 2019 authorized the United States to impose tariffs on $7.5 billion worth of European goods in response to illegal aircraft subsidies. The European Union retaliated with its own levies on $4 billion in U.S. products, including whiskey, molasses and motorcycles.
“This deal will shore up the longer-term competitiveness and innovation of a key sector, aircraft, that is one of the most important sources of middle-class jobs at home,” Tai said.
The deal might provide a template for using global trade rules to limit Chinese government financial support for its nascent commercial aircraft industry. The Americans and the Europeans agreed to team up to address China together.
In another nod toward shared interests, the United States and the E.U. also plan to announce a new cooperative trade and technology council, which could help the allies shape global standards for digital innovations and fight back against “China’s nonmarket practices,” a senior U.S. official said Monday, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss the negotiations.
E.U. and U.S. officials also have been working toward an agreement to address Trump’s tariffs on industrial metals and Europe’s retaliatory levies on U.S. goods. But a resolution on that remained out of reach on Tuesday.
Discussions over those tariffs are “very constructive” but are not likely to be resolved while Biden is in Europe this week, the official said.
“We do believe there’s a way to resolve this that works for the U.S. and the E.U.,” the official said.
Last month, the European Union suspended plans to impose additional countermeasures on $3.8 billion in U.S. products in a bid to pave the way for progress in that spat.
“We have to de-escalate and solve E.U.-U.S. trade disputes,” Valdis Dombrovskis, the bloc’s top trade official, told the European Parliament last week.
The two sides have said they will work toward lifting the metals tariffs by Dec. 1. Asked at a news conference Sunday to justify continuing the so-called Section 232 tariffs amid his calls for transatlantic harmony, Biden suggested a willingness to eliminate them.
“A hundred and twenty days. Give me a break. Need time,” he replied, understating the number of days since his inauguration.
The metals tariffs are popular with Biden’s labor allies in the United Steelworkers union. Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo praised the levies earlier this year, saying they “helped save American jobs.”
Europeans view them with particular frustration, since they were imposed under U.S. rules that allow the president to address national security threats. E.U. leaders say they are allies, not national security risks.
The “freeze” in tariff escalation is helpful, but the underlying dispute should be resolved quickly, and the focus should be on “addressing the real underlying problem, which is Chinese steel overcapacity,” the E.U. ambassador to Washington told an audience last week.
“Am I hopeful? Sure. It’s my job to be hopeful,” Stavros Lambrinidis said during a preview of Biden’s trip at the German Marshall Fund.
“People standing around the world and looking at us fighting in the past few years, when we did, you know they pop open bottles of champagne when that happens,” he said.
Removing the tariffs will likely require eventual agreement to address the global surplus in steel and aluminum production that the Trump administration cited as a reason for imposing them in 2018.
That won’t be easy: 30 nations have been holding talks on the issue for five years with little to show for them.
Still, the mood surrounding Biden’s European talks is certain to represent an improvement over the recent past. Trump, who often complained that “Europe treats us worse than China,” irritated European leaders with harsh criticism of their trade practices and even threatened to impose steep tariffs on imports of German automobiles.
But Tuesday’s discussions will not eliminate transatlantic trade frictions. U.S. technology companies already are gearing up to oppose an E.U. legislative proposal that would impose controls on the operations of the largest online platforms. The “digital markets act” would put especially tough rules on American Internet giants such as Facebook, Google, Amazon, Apple and Microsoft.
“I think we’ll hear confirmation the two sides are continuing to work on certain trade issues, working to resolve Boeing-Airbus and the 232 tariffs. But I am concerned there are other looming issues, like the digital markets act, that mean we haven’t seen the true conflict even start yet,” said Jamieson Greer, a partner at King & Spalding and a former top trade official in the Trump administration.
Lynch reported from Washington. Quentin Ariès in Brussels contributed to this report.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/biden-eu-tariffs/2021/06/15/88fcfe92-cd4c-11eb-a7f1-52b8870bef7c_story.html
Documents show Trump, allies pressed DOJ to overturn 2020 election -U.S. House Oversight panel
Tue, June 15, 2021, 12:19 PM·1 min read
https://news.yahoo.com/u-house-panel-justice-department-111928828.html
WASHINGTON (Reuters) -Documents obtained from the U.S. Department of Justice detail efforts by then President Donald Trump, his chief of staff and other allies to pressure the department to challenge the 2020 presidential election results, a U.S. House panel said on Tuesday.
The House Oversight and Reform Committee, which sought the records from the Justice Department, outlined a series of overtures from Trump, top aide Mark Meadows and an outside private attorney pushing the department to act on the former Republican president's false election claims.
The documents come as U.S. lawmakers continue to investigate the Jan. 6 deadly attack on the U.S. Capitol by pro-Trump supporters seeking to thwart Congress' certification of Democrat Joe Biden's win.
"These documents show that President Trump tried to corrupt our nation’s chief law enforcement agency in a brazen attempt to overturn an election that he lost," Chairwoman Carolyn Maloney said.
Their release comes ahead of the committee's hearing later on Tuesday with FBI director Christopher Wray, who testified before another House panel earlier this month, and General Charles Flynn, brother of former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn, who has also advanced Trump's election conspiracy theories.
Representatives for Trump could not be immediately reached for comment.
(Reporting by Susan Heavey; Editing by Catherine Evans and Steve Orlofsky)
https://news.yahoo.com/u-house-panel-justice-department-111928828.html
Malicious content exploits pathways between platforms to thrive online, subvert moderation
by George Washington University
JUNE 15, 2021
https://phys.org/news/2021-06-malicious-content-exploits-pathways-platforms.html
Malicious COVID-19 content (e.g. anti-Asian hate) exploits pathways between social media platforms to spread online. Credit: Neil Johnson/GW
Malicious COVID-19 online content—including racist content, disinformation and misinformation—thrives and spreads online by bypassing the moderation efforts of individual social media platforms, according to new research published in the journal Scientific Reports. By mapping online hate clusters across six major social media platforms, researchers at the George Washington University show how malicious content exploits pathways between platforms, highlighting the need for social media companies to rethink and adjust their content moderation policies.
Led by Neil Johnson, a professor of physics at GW, the research team set out to understand how and why malicious content thrives so well online despite significant moderation efforts, and how it can be stopped. The team used a combination of machine learning and network data science to investigate how online hate communities sharpened COVID-19 as a weapon and used current events to draw in new followers.
"Until now, slowing the spread of malicious content online has been like playing a game of whack-a-mole, because a map of the online hate multiverse did not exist," Johnson, who is also a researcher at the GW Institute for Data, Democracy & Politics, said. "You cannot win a battle if you don't have a map of the battlefield. In our study, we laid out a first-of-its-kind map of this battlefield. Whether you're looking at traditional hate topics, such as anti-Semitism or anti-Asian racism surrounding COVID-19, the battlefield map is the same. And it is this map of links within and between platforms that is the missing piece in understanding how we can slow or stop the spread of online hate content."
The researchers began by mapping how hate clusters interconnect to spread their narratives across social media platforms. Focusing on six platforms—Facebook, VKontakte, Instagram, Gab, Telegram and 4Chan—the team started with a given hate cluster and looked outward to find a second cluster that was strongly connected to the original. They found the strongest connections were VKontakte into Telegram (40.83% of cross-platform connections), Telegram into 4Chan (11.09%), and Gab into 4Chan (10.90%).
The researchers then turned their attention to identifying malicious content related to COVID-19. They found that the coherence of COVID-19 discussion increased rapidly in the early phases of the pandemic, with hate clusters forming narratives and cohering around COVID-19 topics and misinformation. To subvert moderation efforts by social media platforms, groups sending hate messages used several adaptation strategies in order to regroup on other platforms and/or reenter a platform, the researchers found. For example, clusters frequently change their names to avoid detection by moderators' algorithms, such as vaccine to va$$ine. Similarly, anti-Semitic and anti-LGBTQ clusters simply add strings of 1's or A's before their name.
"Because the number of independent social media platforms is growing, these hate-generating clusters are very likely to strengthen and expand their interconnections via new links, and will likely exploit new platforms which lie beyond the reach of the U.S. and other Western nations' jurisdictions." Johnson said. "The chances of getting all social media platforms globally to work together to solve this are very slim. However, our mathematical analysis identifies strategies that platforms can use as a group to effectively slow or block online hate content."
Based on their findings, the team suggests several ways for social media platforms to slow the spread of malicious content:
* Artificially lengthen the pathways that malicious content needs to take between clusters, increasing the chances of its detection by moderators and delaying the spread of time-sensitive material such as weaponized COVID-19 misinformation and violent content.
* Control the size of an online hate cluster's support base by placing a cap on the size of clusters.
* Introduce non-malicious, mainstream content in order to effectively dilute a cluster's focus.
"Our study demonstrates a similarity between the spread of online hate and the spread of a virus," Yonatan Lupu, an associate professor of political science at GW and co-author on the paper, said. "Individual social media platforms have had difficulty controlling the spread of online hate, which mirrors the difficulty individual countries around the world have had in stopping the spread of the COVID-19 virus."
Going forward, Johnson and his team are already using their map and its mathematical modeling to analyze other forms of malicious content—including the weaponization of COVID-19 vaccines in which certain countries are attempting to manipulate mainstream sentiment for nationalistic gains. They are also examining the extent to which single actors, including foreign governments, may play a more influential or controlling role in this space than others.
https://phys.org/news/2021-06-malicious-content-exploits-pathways-platforms.html
us Hughes @SeamusHughes Breaking this am: The White House has released a National strategy for counting domestic terrorism. First time an Administration has done so.
BRIEFING ROOM
FACT SHEET: National Strategy for Countering Domestic Terrorism
JUNE 15, 2021
•
STATEMENTS AND RELEASES
https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2021/06/15/fact-sheet-national-strategy-for-countering-domestic-terrorism/
11:11 AM · Jun 15, 2021·Twitter for iPhone
THREAD
https://twitter.com/SeamusHughes/status/1404743421953286144
Critical entities targeted in suspected Chinese cyber spying
By ALAN SUDERMAN
today
https://apnews.com/article/government-and-politics-hacking-technology-business-asia-pacific-7350235e07d46ba5afc1238b553ea4b9
RICHMOND, Va. (AP) — A cyberespionage campaign blamed on China was more sweeping than previously known, with suspected state-backed hackers exploiting a device meant to boost internet security to penetrate the computers of critical U.S. entities.
The hack of Pulse Connect Secure networking devices came to light in April, but its scope is only now starting to become clear. The Associated Press has learned that the hackers targeted telecommunications giant Verizon and the country’s largest water agency. News broke earlier this month that the New York City subway system, the country’s largest, was also breached.
Security researchers say dozens of other high-value entities that have not yet been named were also targeted as part of the breach of Pulse Secure, which is used by many companies and governments for secure remote access to their networks.
It’s unclear what sensitive information, if any, was accessed. Some of the targets said they did not see any evidence of data being stolen. That uncertainty is common in cyberespionage and it can take months to determine data loss, if it is ever discovered. Ivanti, the Utah-based owner of Pulse Connect Secure, declined to comment on which customers were affected.
But even if sensitive information wasn’t compromised, experts say it is worrisome that hackers managed to gain footholds in networks of critical organizations whose secrets could be of interest to China for commercial and national security reasons.
“The threat actors were able to get access to some really high-profile organizations, some really well-protected ones,” said Charles Carmakal, the chief technology officer of Mandiant, whose company first publicized the hacking campaign in April.
The Pulse Secure hack has largely gone unnoticed while a series of headline-grabbing ransomware attacks have highlighted the cyber vulnerabilities to U.S. critical infrastructure, including one on a major fuels pipeline that prompted widespread shortages at gas stations. The U.S. government is also still investigating the fallout of the SolarWinds hacking campaign launched by Russian cyber spies, which infiltrated dozens of private sector companies and think tanks as well as at least nine U.S. government agencies and went on for most of 2020.
China has a long history of using the internet to spy on the U.S. and presents a “prolific and effective cyber-espionage threat,” the Office of the Director of the National Intelligence said in its most recent annual threat assessment.
Six years ago Chinese hackers stole millions of background check files of federal government employees from the Office of Personnel Management. And last year the Justice Department charged two hackers it said worked with the Chinese government to target firms developing vaccines for the coronavirus and stole hundreds of millions of dollars worth of intellectual property and trade secrets from companies across the world.
The Chinese government has denied any role in the Pulse hacking campaign and the U.S. government has not made any formal attribution.
In the Pulse campaign, security experts said sophisticated hackers exploited never-before-seen vulnerabilities to break in and were hyper diligent in trying to cover their tracks once inside.
“The capability is very strong and difficult to defend against, and the profile of victims is very significant,” said Adrian Nish, the head of cyber at BAE Systems Applied Intelligence. “This is a very targeted attack against a few dozen networks that all have national significance in one way or another.”
The Department of Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity & Infrastructure Security Agency, or CISA, issued an April alert about the Pulse hack saying it was aware of “compromises affecting a number of U.S. government agencies, critical infrastructure entities, and other private sector organizations.” The agency has since said that at least five federal agencies have identified indications of potential unauthorized access, but not said which ones.
Verizon said it found a Pulse-related compromise in one of its labs but it was quickly isolated from its core networks. The company said no data or customer information was accessed or stolen.
“We know that bad actors try to compromise our systems,” said Verizon spokesman Rich Young. “That is why internet operators, private companies and all individuals need to be vigilant in this space.”
The Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, which provides water to 19 million people and operates some of the largest treatment plants in the world, said it found a compromised Pulse Secure appliance after CISA issued its alert in April. Spokeswoman Rebecca Kimitch said the appliance was immediately removed from service and no Metropolitan systems or processes were known to have been affected. She said there was “no known data exfiltration.”
The Metropolitan Transportation Authority in New York also said they’ve not found evidence of valuable data or customer information was stolen. The breach was first reported by The New York Times.
Nish, the BAE security expert, said the hackers could have broken into networks but not stolen data right away for any number of operational reasons. He compared it to a criminal breaking into a house but stopping in the hallway.
“It’s still pretty bad,” Nish said.
Mandiant said it found signs of data extraction from some of the targets. The company and BAE have identified targets of the hacking campaign in several fields, including financial, technology and defense firms, as well as municipal governments. Some targets were in Europe, but most in the U.S.
At least one major local government has disputed it was a target of the Pulse Secure hack. Montgomery County, Maryland, said it was advised by CISA that its Pulse Secure devices were attacked. But county spokesman Scott Peterson said the county found no evidence of a compromise and told CISA they had a “false report.”
CISA did not directly respond to the county’s statement.
The new details of the Pulse Secure hack come at a time of tension between the U.S. and China. Biden has made checking China’s growth a top priority, and said the country’s ambition of becoming the wealthiest and most powerful country in the world is “not going to happen under my watch.”
https://apnews.com/article/government-and-politics-hacking-technology-business-asia-pacific-7350235e07d46ba5afc1238b553ea4b9
Marjorie Taylor Greene led early in the House’s crazy stakes. But a dark horse has emerged.
Opinion by Dana Milbank
Columnist The Washington Post
June 14, 2021 at 5:55 p.m. CDT
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/06/14/look-out-marjorie-taylor-greene-dark-horse-andrew-clyde-shows-champion-caliber-crazy/
It’s a real horse race to determine who will be the looniest House Republican of 2021.
Much as in real horse racing, there will be no Triple Crown winner this year. Medina Spirit won the Kentucky Derby, but the victory was marred by evidence of doping, and Medina Spirit then lost the Preakness to Rombauer. Rombauer’s reign was brief, falling to Essential Quality at the Belmont.
In the House of Representatives’ crazy stakes, likewise, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-QAnon) made an early Run for the Roses with talk of Jewish “ space lasers,” stalking Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), and claiming that mask mandates are tantamount to the Holocaust. But Greene fell back into the crazy pack after Churchill Downs, and, in a surprise development, Louie Gohmert (R-Tex.), a perennial also-ran, took top honors at Pimlico by calling the Jan. 6 insurrection a nothingburger and by attending a QAnon conference at which the violent overthrow of the U.S. government was discussed.
But the final leg of crazytown’s Triple Crown has just gone to a dark horse, Rep. Andrew S. Clyde. The first-term Georgia Republican put himself on the map with his notion that the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol “ was a normal tourist visit.” And now, with an assist from Gohmert and from former Virginia attorney general Ken Cuccinelli (a crazy horse long ago put to pasture), Clyde has filed a federal lawsuit on a matter of the most pressing constitutional importance.
“This is a direct assault on a foundational legal principle of our republic and it should cause great alarm in all of us,” Clyde, wearing a tie clip in the shape of an automatic weapon, announced to reporters outside the Capitol Monday.
Furlongs of grave allegations raced from his lips. “Unconstitutional!” “Authoritarian conduct!” “An active ongoing attack on our democracy!”
What existential threat to our country had Clyde uncovered? The Chinese? The Russians? The Proud Boys?
No. Clyde is mad about magnetometers.
Since the insurrection, he and all 434 of his colleagues have been required to walk through metal detectors to get to the House floor. Clyde, a former gun shop owner (in which capacity he fought the IRS), is along with Gohmert one of a small few who have refused to cooperate with the Capitol Police’s efforts to keep guns out of the chamber. His refusal cost him $15,000 in fines.
Now, Clyde is suing because he wants “to do everything within my power to expose House Resolution 73 [the magnetometer rule] for the danger it poses to our Republic.” Apparently, the danger it poses is mostly to Clyde and Gohmert. The ethics committee dropped fines against Reps. Hal Rogers (R-Ky.) and Rep. Jim Clyburn (D-S.C.).
With logic on par with 20th-century political scientist Bluto, a.k.a. John Belushi (“ Was it over when the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor?”), Clyde complained to reporters Wednesday that the House Ethics Committee, which isn’t a court of law, failed to give him his day in court.
“A person cannot be fined and have their salary forcibly taken away without due process of law,” Clyde proclaimed. “In any normal court, anything else than a unanimous verdict would be cause of a mistrial or a hung jury and no fine would be levied.”
Clyde was baffled by the bipartisan ethics committee’s practice of requiring majority agreement to uphold a member’s appeal. “In baseball, a tie goes to the runner,” Clyde reasoned.
The committee also isn’t a baseball league.
Gohmert, trying to keep pace with Clyde, howled: “You have a formula for a third-world theocracy, oligarchy. This is insane!” He said the courts must act “before the Constitution is completely obliterated by the speaker.
All because of the machines that go “beep.”
The pair also claimed they have “incontrovertible” evidence that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) skipped the magnetometer with impunity, but the speaker’s office has indeed controverted the claim.
Gohmert told reporters he shouldn’t have been fined when he refused a magnetometer after using the men’s room — because “there’s not a tank on the toilets where somebody could leave a gun like [in] ‘The Godfather.’ ”
A CNN reporter asked Clyde, twice, whether he still believes the Jan. 6 attack was normal tourist behavior.
Clyde insisted on limiting questions to “the lawsuit against the magnetometers.” So let’s. It’s signed at the bottom by Cuccinelli with the disclaimer “Local Bar Application Forthcoming.” As for injuries, it alleges that the magnetometer menace caused Clyde to miss a vote on the Anti-Doping Agency Reauthorization Act. (It passed, 381 to 37.)
I asked Clyde and Gohmert who was paying Cooch. Turns out the Republican Party is bankrolling the lawsuit, and the fees are “between attorney and client privilege,” Clyde professed.
So the lawmakers used federal property to announce a Republican Party lawsuit that should cost hundreds of thousands of dollars to redress $20,000 in fines? Now that is some thoroughbred crazy.
7 Comments
Image without a caption
Opinion by Dana Milbank
Dana Milbank is an opinion columnist for The Washington Post. He sketches the foolish, the fallacious and the felonious in politics. Twitter
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/06/14/look-out-marjorie-taylor-greene-dark-horse-andrew-clyde-shows-champion-caliber-crazy/
Rep. Andrew S. Clyde (R-Ga.) downplayed the events of Jan. 6 as “acts of vandalism” and suggested it was a “boldfaced lie” to call what happened that day an “insurrection.”
“Watching the TV footage of those who entered the Capitol and walked through Statuary Hall showed people in an orderly fashion staying between the stanchions and ropes, taking videos, pictures,” Clyde said. “You know, if you didn’t know the TV footage was a video from January the 6th, you would actually think it was a normal tourist visit.”
41 minutes of fear: A video timeline from inside the Capitol siege
https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/2021/01/16/video-timeline-capitol-siege/?itid=lk_interstitial_manual_12
US military guns keep vanishing, some used in street crimes
By KRISTIN M. HALL, JAMES LAPORTA, JUSTIN PRITCHARD and JUSTIN MYERS
today
https://apnews.com/article/government-and-politics-business-gun-politics-crime-6caba27108d05a8b7c1860959d1ae130
Pulling a pistol from his waistband, the young man spun his human shield toward police.
“Don’t do it!” a pursuing officer pleaded. The young man complied, releasing the bystander and tossing the gun, which skittered across the city street and then into the hands of police.
They soon learned that the 9mm Beretta had a rap sheet. Bullet casings linked it to four shootings, all of them in Albany, New York.
And there was something else. The pistol was U.S. Army property, a weapon intended for use against America’s enemies, not on its streets.
The Army couldn’t say how its Beretta M9 got to New York’s capital. Until the June 2018 police foot chase, the Army didn’t even realize someone had stolen the gun. Inventory records checked by investigators said the M9 was 600 miles away -- safe inside Fort Bragg, North Carolina.
“It’s incredibly alarming,” said Albany County District Attorney David Soares. “It raises the other question as to what else is seeping into a community that could pose a clear and present danger.”
The armed services and the Pentagon are not eager for the public to know the answer.
In the first public accounting of its kind in decades, an Associated Press investigation has found that at least 1,900 U.S. military firearms were lost or stolen during the 2010s, with some resurfacing in violent crimes. Because some armed services have suppressed the release of basic information, AP’s total is a certain undercount.
Government records covering the Army, Marine Corps, Navy and Air Force show pistols, machine guns, shotguns and automatic assault rifles have vanished from armories, supply warehouses, Navy warships, firing ranges and other places where they were used, stored or transported. These weapons of war disappeared because of unlocked doors, sleeping troops, a surveillance system that didn’t record, break-ins and other security lapses that, until now, have not been publicly reported.
While AP’s focus was firearms, military explosives also were lost or stolen, including armor-piercing grenades that ended up in an Atlanta backyard.
Weapon theft or loss spanned the military’s global footprint, touching installations from coast to coast, as well as overseas. In Afghanistan, someone cut the padlock on an Army container and stole 65 Beretta M9s -- the same type of gun recovered in Albany. The theft went undetected for at least two weeks, when empty pistol boxes were discovered in the compound. The weapons were not recovered.
In the first public accounting of its kind in decades, an Associated Press investigation has found that at least 1,900 U.S. military firearms were lost or stolen during the 2010s, with some resurfacing in violent crimes. Because some armed services have suppressed the release of basic information, AP’s total is a certain undercount.
Government records covering the Army, Marine Corps, Navy and Air Force show pistols, machine guns, shotguns and automatic assault rifles have vanished from armories, supply warehouses, Navy warships, firing ranges and other places where they were used, stored or transported. These weapons of war disappeared because of unlocked doors, sleeping troops, a surveillance system that didn’t record, break-ins and other security lapses that, until now, have not been publicly reported.
While AP’s focus was firearms, military explosives also were lost or stolen, including armor-piercing grenades that ended up in an Atlanta backyard.
Weapon theft or loss spanned the military’s global footprint, touching installations from coast to coast, as well as overseas. In Afghanistan, someone cut the padlock on an Army container and stole 65 Beretta M9s -- the same type of gun recovered in Albany. The theft went undetected for at least two weeks, when empty pistol boxes were discovered in the compound. The weapons were not recovered.
..
MUCH MORE
https://apnews.com/article/government-and-politics-business-gun-politics-crime-6caba27108d05a8b7c1860959d1ae130?utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=June15_MorningWire&utm_term=Morning%20Wire%20Subscribers
UK regulator warns Google about accepting scam adverts
FCA tells MPs it will take action against social media and search engines that host online frauds
Kalyeena Makortoff Banking correspondent
@kalyeena
Mon 14 Jun 2021 15.25 EDT
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2021/jun/14/uk-regulator-warns-google-about-accepting-scam-adverts
The City regulator has warned it will take legal action against Google and social media companies if they continue to accept advertisements for online financial scams that have flourished during the pandemic.
The Financial Conduct Authority’s head of enforcement, Mark Steward, told the Treasury select committee on Monday that the UK had been blocked until recently from taking action against online platforms that failed to screen financial adverts to make sure they were approved by an FCA-authorised firm or individual.
That was due to the fact that EU rules on financial adverts did not extend to online platforms such as Google. This “exception” effectively allowed scammers to post fraudulent adverts online since they did not need to go through extra checks. But the FCA is now free to crack down on rule breakers, Steward said.
“It’s not immediately apparent whether social media were really aware of what this change actually meant. We’ve made them aware,” Steward said. “We now have quite a lot of traction with the social media industry to force change,” he added. If firms fail to comply, “we will take action”.
The warning came a month after the City of London police and the consumer body Which? joined forces to urge the government to make changes to its proposed online safety bill that would ensure tech giants such as Google and Facebook are held legally responsible for fake and fraudulent adverts.
But the FCA’s newly regained powers could be another way that online platforms are held to account for the proliferation of online scams.
Scams and fraud have escalated over the past year as locked-down consumers spent more time online. Some people end up losing money after using search engines to research investments at a time of record-low interest rates, while others have been tricked by adverts on social media sites. Many scams have involved cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin or schemes that claim to offer early access to pension pots.
The FCA said it was forced to issue 1,200 warnings online last year about fraudulent adverts on Google and social media platforms that were not issued or approved by FCA-authorised firms. This is double the number issued in 2019.
“This is something that Google could have recognised at the gateway, before allowing [those adverts] to appear on its searches,” Steward said.
MPs said firms such as Google were benefiting from online scammers, who paid for adverts on their platforms. Meanwhile, Google also made money from regulators such as the FCA, which spent roughly £600,000 in 2020 to post its own anti-scam adverts in response.
The Conservative MP and Treasury committee member Anthony Browne said most people had been “absolutely shocked” by the fact that social media companies, particularly Google, “profit from promoting fraud”.
“The legal definition of fraud is gaining financial advantage by deception. And Google is gaining financial advantage here, and it is deceiving its customers who use Google,” Browne, a former chief executive of the British Bankers’ Association, said.
“It’s not the one generating the content, but it is the one that puts the fraudulent content out there, and enacts the deception. There seems to me there’s actually a legal case to be made here,” Browne added.
Browne asked how far the FCA was willing to go in order to punish firms that flout the rules. “You’re hinting that [you] will take legal action against social media companies such as Google if they don’t comply with the financial services market?”
“Yes,” Steward replied.
A Google spokesperson said protecting consumers and legitimate financial services firms was a priority for the company, which has ring-fenced $5m (£3.5m) worth of Google ad credits to support public scam awareness campaigns meant to protect people from fraud in the UK.
“We have been working in consultation with the FCA for over a year to implement new measures and we are developing further restrictions to financial services advertising to tackle the scale of this issue,” they said.
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2021/jun/14/uk-regulator-warns-google-about-accepting-scam-adverts
Aaron Rupar @atrupar I mean, I think this is just what he looks like without the orange makeup
@JakeSherman · 35m
>@DailyMail on Trump
7:04 PM · Jun 14, 2021·Twitter for iPhone
THREAD
I mean, I think this is just what he looks like without the orange makeup https://t.co/scUcK7GKzm
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) June 14, 2021
Piers Morgan @piersmorgan ·14m Very sorry to hear this, Christiane, but no surprise to see you tackling cancer head-on with the same inspirational strength, fortitude & optimism that you tackle everything in life.
I wish you every success with your treatment. F
Christiane Amanpour
@camanpour
· 36m
Some personal news from me:
VIDEO https://twitter.com/i/status/1404491523073392640
6:55 PM · Jun 14, 2021·Twitter for iPhone
THREAD
Very sorry to hear this, Christiane, but no surprise to see you tackling cancer head-on with the same inspirational strength, fortitude & optimism that you tackle everything in life.
— Piers Morgan (@piersmorgan) June 14, 2021
I wish you every success with your treatment. 👊👍 https://t.co/Of81tUbv9c
Are Democrats doomed in the midterms? Not if they can do this first.
Opinion by Greg Sargent
Columnist
June 14, 2021 at 4:06 p.m. GMT+1
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/06/14/democrats-midterms-suburban-women/
The midterm elections will take place in approximately 500 days. Which is exactly why some Democratic strategists believe it’s urgent to begin executing their midterm strategy right now — nearly a year and a half in advance.
In some respects, the political landscape for Democrats looks forbidding. Though they passed the massive covid-19 relief package known as the American Rescue Plan, Sen. Joe Manchin III’s (D-W.Va.) opposition to ending the filibuster means that even if they pass a huge infrastructure package, action on many major priorities could then grind to a halt.
That’s one reason Democratic strategists are taking steps now to set the terms of the debate in the midterms. To this end, they say they’ve homed in on a key demographic: suburban women who support President Biden but are at risk of either backing Republicans in 2022 or staying at home.
This demographic is somewhat distinct from the relatively affluent, educated White suburbanite demographic that is often discussed as central to the suburban shift to Democrats in the 2018 and 2020 elections.
Instead, this group is a subset of suburban women who are more likely to be non-college-educated and somewhat less affluent, and tend to be drawn from the working class or lower middle class, or the ranks of small-business owners.
“Without a doubt, it’s a key target audience,” John Anzalone, one of Biden’s pollsters, told me.
Democrats see this group as a challenge and an opportunity. Recent research by the group American Bridge in four states with big Senate races — Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Arizona and Georgia — found that among suburban women who approve of Biden but are not committed to voting Democratic (or voting at all) in 2022, an uncomfortably large percentage were unaware of the details of the covid rescue package.
Yet at the same time, large percentages of them generally approve of Biden’s overall priorities, the group’s spokesman, Max Steele, told me.
This has led Democrats to conclude they must do more to inform these voters about what’s in the relief package, which included stimulus checks, tax credits for families with children, aid to small businesses and large expenditures on vaccine distribution.
And so, American Bridge is running a new ad in Virginia, the site of a big 2021 gubernatorial contest, that features a female small-business owner who says she backed Biden in 2020 but doesn’t always vote for Democrats, and notes that “I really have seen firsthand” the “massive impact” of the rescue package on the economy.
“With the help of Democrats in Congress, Joe Biden got it done,” she says, concluding that “Biden is in our corner.”
The group recently ran a similar ad featuring a female restaurant owner in Arizona, who says the relief package gave her “hope,” and adds that Biden is “thinking about small business” and “thinking about me.”
And the Biden-aligned group Building Back Together recently started airing an ad in several swing states that pitches Biden’s infrastructure plans — and features Biden using the word “jobs” at least half a dozen times.
This messaging is key to winning that demographic, Democrats believe. First, it allows them to tell a story about how policy will impact those voters — the relief package is already bringing benefits, and the infrastructure and jobs plans would create more blue-collar jobs, invest in the economy of the future, and bring more support to economically struggling families.
One challenge is that there’s a “universe” among that demographic that “doesn’t know enough” about Biden’s agenda, Anzalone says.
“It’s going to be really important to communicate that these plans reward hard work, create opportunity for them in this economic recovery, and that this is about them,” Anzalone told me. “That’s the key.”
Dan Sena, who led the House Democrats’ campaign arm during their big 2018 win, points to another crucial nuance here: Many of these voters might be persuadable by bogus GOP claims to fiscal conservatism.
Democrats believe that Republican attacks on these plans as threatening everything from fiscal Armageddon to a rampaging socialist takeover are designed to peel off those voters. So the war is on to define Biden’s plans before GOP attacks do.
As Sena notes, for Republicans to win the House, they’ll have to win back some suburban voters in areas where Biden did very well. “The very first place Republicans are likely to go will be the suburbs, especially with non-college-educated White women,” Sena told me.
Lurking in the background is an even more basic imperative: keeping Biden’s approval rating up. As Cook Political Report analyst Dave Wasserman told me, Biden’s real approval rating (accounting for the possibility of polling errors), must be above 50 percent as “pretty much a prerequisite for Democrats’ hopes of holding the House.”
In some ways, Democrats have a good story to tell: The vaccine rollout is a governing success, the covid rescue plan is helping Americans everywhere, and if economic growth lifts off, Democrats will plausibly be able to claim to have presided over a robust recovery on many fronts.
But it’s perfectly plausible that the Democratic legislative agenda will soon stall out. And, of course, Republican voter suppression and extreme gerrymanders tilt the electoral field even more in the GOP’s direction.
If there’s anything that will give Democrats a decent chance of holding Congress, it probably starts with keeping Biden’s approval ratings buoyed and with relentlessly keeping voters informed about what Biden and Democrats did pass into law — and, above all, the direct impact it’s having on them.
496 Comments
Image without a caption
Opinion by Greg Sargent
Greg Sargent writes The Plum Line blog. He joined The Post in 2010, after stints at Talking Points Memo, New York Magazine and the New York Observer. Twitter
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/06/14/democrats-midterms-suburban-women/
Coronavirus infections dropping where people are vaccinated, rising where they are not, Post analysis finds
By Dan Keating , Naema Ahmed , Fenit Nirappil , Isaac Stanley-Becker and
Lenny Bernstein
June 14 at 6:00 AM
https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2021/06/14/covid-cases-vaccination-rates/?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=wp_main
States with higher vaccination rates now have markedly fewer coronavirus cases, as infections are dropping in places where most residents have been immunized and are rising in many places people have not, a Washington Post analysis has found.
States with lower vaccination also have significantly higher hospitalization rates, The Post found. Poorly vaccinated communities have not been reporting catastrophic conditions. Instead, they are usually seeing new infections holding steady or increasing without overwhelming local hospitals.
As recently as 10 days ago, vaccination rates did not predict a difference in coronavirus cases, but immunization rates have diverged, and case counts in the highly vaccinated states are dropping quickly.
Vaccination is not always even within each state, and The Post found the connection between vaccine shots and coronavirus cases at the local level comparing more than 100 counties with low vaccination rates (fewer than 20 percent of residents vaccinated) and more than 700 with high vaccination rates (at least 40 percent vaccinated).
Counties with high vaccination had low coronavirus rates that are going down. In counties where few people are vaccinated, not only are there higher case rates, but the number of cases there also is growing.
But experts worry that unvaccinated people are falling into a false sense of security as more transmissible variants can rapidly spread in areas with a high concentration of unvaccinated people who have abandoned masking and social distancing.
Nationally, 43 percent of eligible Americans are fully vaccinated, and the country is averaging under 16,000 new infections a day — levels not seen since the early days of stay-at-home orders in March 2020. Ten states, concentrated in the Deep South and rural West, report fewer than 35 percent of residents are fully immunized.
An uptick in infections in numerous states offers a preview of summer surges that could take hold “if the unvaccinated continue to behave as though they’re vaccinated,” said Michael Saag, an infectious-disease doctor at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. For now, risk is unevenly distributed, concentrated in communities where shots are sparse, he said.
Local public health officials fear the public is tuning out the danger as they see news reports of cratering infections and scenes of reopened bars and entertainment venues across the nation, assuming vaccinations are no longer necessary.
Missouri’s Polk County — where less than a quarter of the population of roughly 30,000 is fully vaccinated — has reported nearly 90 new infections in one week, an increase after several months of decline.
Michelle Morris, the country’s public health administrator, said infections are concentrated among students after the school year ended May 21 and clusters linked to Mother’s Day and graduation gatherings. Immunity isn’t widespread enough to naturally stop the spread.
“We are going to continue to see what we are seeing as far as our daily case count,” Morris said. “Unfortunately, we are going to see increased hospitalization, and it worries me we may see additional deaths related to it as well.”
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https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2021/06/14/covid-cases-vaccination-rates/?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=wp_main
Lockdown easing in England delayed to 19 July
Published 7 minutes ago
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-57476776
The final stage of easing lockdown restrictions in England is to be delayed for four weeks until 19 July, the prime minister has confirmed.
It means most remaining curbs on social contact will continue beyond 21 June, when they had been due to be lifted.
The limit on wedding guest numbers will be removed but venues will still have to adhere to other rules.
Boris Johnson said he was "confident" the delay would not need to be longer than four weeks.
Scientists advising the government had warned there could be a "significant resurgence" in people needing hospital treatment for Covid-19 if stage four of easing the lockdown went ahead on 21 June.
It comes amid rising cases, driven by the more transmissible Delta variant, which was first identified in India.
Mr Johnson told a Downing Street press conference that going ahead with stage four on 21 June would mean "a real possibility that the virus will outrun the vaccines and that thousands more deaths would ensue which could otherwise have been avoided".
The delay would give the NHS "a few more crucial weeks to get those remaining jabs into the arms of those who need them", he said.
This breaking news story is being updated and more details will be published shortly. Please refresh the page for the fullest version.
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https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-57476776
Vaccines Offer Significant Protection Against Covid-19 Delta Variant, U.K. Analysis Shows
Public Health England says Pfizer shot 96% effective against hospitalization, and AstraZeneca shot 92% effective
y Jason Douglas and Suryatapa Bhattacharya
June 14, 2021 1:16 pm ET
https://www.wsj.com/articles/vaccines-offer-significant-protection-against-covid-19-delta-variant-u-k-analysis-shows-11623690999
Public health officials in the U.K. say they are increasingly confident that vaccines offer significant protection against the Delta variant of coronavirus, a hopeful sign as the highly transmissible strain spreads across the world.
Separate studies from researchers in England and Scotland published Monday found that while protection against infection was somewhat diminished against Delta compared with more established variants, two doses of vaccine offered considerable protection against severe illness and hospitalization.
The findings are the latest indicating that Covid-19 vaccines are able to protect people against new variants, despite early concerns that the variants might be able to elude them.
“Vaccine effectiveness against Delta is still very, very substantial,” said Aziz Sheikh, director of the University of Edinburgh’s Usher Institute of medicine and the lead author of one the two analyses.
An analysis of more than 14,000 Delta cases by England’s public health agency found a double dose of the shot developed by Pfizer Inc. and BioNTech SE reduces the risk of hospitalization after infection with Delta by 96%. Two doses of the vaccine developed by the University of Oxford and AstraZeneca reduces the risk by 92%, Public Health England said.
A separate study by academics and public health officials in Scotland, published as a letter in the Lancet medical journal, reported a reduction in vaccine effectiveness against infection with Delta compared with earlier strains, but similar levels of protection against severe illness.
Two doses of the Pfizer shot was estimated to reduce the risk of infection with Delta, first identified in India, by 79%, compared with a 92% reduction for the Alpha variant, first detected last year in England and also known as B.1.1.7. For the shot developed by AstraZeneca, the figures were 60% and 73%, respectively.
The Scottish analysis estimated the risk of hospitalization with Delta was reduced by around 70% after two doses of either vaccine.
U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson on Monday said a planned easing of public health restrictions slated for June 21 would be delayed for up to four weeks after cases of the Delta variant began rising rapidly in the country. Caseloads are currently averaging about 7,000 a day, three and a half times the rate a month ago, with most of those new cases caused by Delta.
The government hopes the delay will provide a window to extend vaccination to younger age groups and to ensure older people have the maximum protection afforded by receiving both doses of vaccine. The U.K. opted to extend the interval between vaccine doses to up to 12 weeks earlier in the pandemic to provide some protection to as many people as possible quickly. In May, the government accepted advice from scientists that the maximum interval should be reduced to eight weeks for people over 50, healthcare workers and those with serious health conditions.
Of 33,000 Delta cases logged in England, 58% were in unvaccinated individuals, mostly in younger age groups, according to England’s public health agency. Two-thirds of those admitted to hospital hadn’t been vaccinated. A little over a fifth of those admitted had been sickened after only one dose of vaccine, with those fully vaccinated accounting for only 10% of hospital admissions.
“We’ve got an opportunity to counter the threat of this Delta variant by encouraging uptake of both doses of the vaccine,” Jim McMenamim, national incident director for Covid-19 at Public Health Scotland, said on a conference call with reporters Monday.
The Delta variant was first detected in India during a towering wave of infection earlier this year. Recent analyses there similarly suggest vaccines are holding up well against the variant.
A recent study of health workers at the Christian Medical College in the southern Indian city of Vellore showed that being fully vaccinated protected against severe disease. The study, conducted between Jan. 21 and April 30, showed only 9.6% of 7,080 healthcare workers who were fully vaccinated developed an infection. Among them, 64 were hospitalized, four needed oxygen support, two were admitted to intensive care and no one died.
Among those who hadn’t been vaccinated, 27.2% became infected, the study found. Being fully vaccinated lowered infection and hospitalization by 65% and 77% respectively, the study concluded.
Some 93.4% of the front-line workers received the AstraZeneca shot, and the rest received Covaxin, a Covid-19 vaccine produced by India’s Bharat Biotech.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/vaccines-offer-significant-protection-against-covid-19-delta-variant-u-k-analysis-shows-11623690999
BBC Politics @BBCPolitics "This House needs to know first. I find it totally unacceptable that once again, we see Downing Street running roughshod over members of parliament"
Speaker Sir Lindsay Hoyle criticises government for informing media before MPs about latest restrictions
https://bbc.in/3wrWJxE
VIDEO
"This House needs to know first. I find it totally unacceptable that once again, we see Downing Street running roughshod over members of parliament"
— BBC Politics (@BBCPolitics) June 14, 2021
Speaker Sir Lindsay Hoyle criticises government for informing media before MPs about latest restrictionshttps://t.co/r1G7KD6Gx6 pic.twitter.com/QZI4yD16is
"This House needs to know first. I find it totally unacceptable that once again, we see Downing Street running roughshod over members of parliament"
— BBC Politics (@BBCPolitics) June 14, 2021
Speaker Sir Lindsay Hoyle criticises government for informing media before MPs about latest restrictionshttps://t.co/r1G7KD6Gx6 pic.twitter.com/QZI4yD16is
The Brutal Truth About Bitcoin
June 14, 2021
By Eswar Prasad
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/14/opinion/bitcoin-cryptocurrency-flaws.html?smtyp=cur&smid=tw-nytimes
Mr. Prasad is a professor at Cornell University and a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution.
Bitcoin, the original cryptocurrency, has been on a wild ride since its creation in 2009. Earlier this year, the price of one Bitcoin surged to over $60,000, an eightfold increase in 12 months. Then it fell to half that value in just a few weeks. Values of other cryptocurrencies such as Dogecoin have risen and fallen even more sharply, often based just on Elon Musk’s tweets. Even after the recent fall in their prices, the total market value of all cryptocurrencies now exceeds $1.5 trillion, a staggering amount for virtual objects that are nothing more than computer code.
Are cryptocurrencies the wave of the future and should you be using and investing in them? And do the massive swings in their prices — nearly $1 trillion was wiped off the their total value in May — portend trouble for the financial system?
Bitcoin was created (by a person or group that remains unidentified to this day) as a way to conduct transactions without the intervention of a trusted third party, such as a central bank or financial institution. Its emergence amid the global financial crisis, which shook trust in banks and even governments, was perfectly timed. Bitcoin enabled transactions using only digital identities, granting users some degree of anonymity. This made Bitcoin the preferred currency for illicit activities, including recent ransomware attacks. It powered the shadowy darknet of illegal online commerce much like PayPal helped the rise of eBay by making payments easier.
As it grew in popularity, Bitcoin became cumbersome, slow, and expensive to use. It takes about 10 minutes to validate most transactions using the cryptocurrency and the transaction fee has been at a median of about $20 this year. Bitcoin’s unstable value has also made it an unviable medium of exchange. It is as though your $10 bill could buy you a beer on one day and a bottle of fine wine on another.
Moreover, it has become clear that Bitcoin does not offer true anonymity. The government’s success in tracking and retrieving part of the Bitcoin ransom paid to the hacking collective DarkSide in the Colonial Pipeline ransomware attack has heightened doubts about the security and nontraceability of Bitcoin transactions.
While Bitcoin has failed in its stated objectives, it has become a speculative investment. This is puzzling. It has no intrinsic value and is not backed by anything. Bitcoin devotees will tell you that, like gold, its value comes from its scarcity — Bitcoin’s computer algorithm mandates a fixed cap of 21 million digital coins (nearly 19 million have been created so far). But scarcity by itself can hardly be a source of value. Bitcoin investors seem to be relying on the greater fool theory — all you need to profit from an investment is to find someone willing to buy the asset at an even higher price.
Despite their high valuations on paper, a collapse of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies is unlikely to rattle the financial system. Banks have mostly stayed on the sidelines. As with any speculative bubble, naïve investors who come to the party late are at greatest risk of losses. The government should certainly caution retail investors that, much like in the GameStop saga, they act at their own peril. Securities that enable speculation on Bitcoin prices are already regulated, but there is not much more the government can or ought to do.
Bitcoin is not innocuous. Transactions are processed by “miners” using massive amounts of computing power in return for rewards in the form of Bitcoin. By some estimates, the Bitcoin network consumes as much energy as entire countries like Argentina and Norway, not to mention the mountains of electronic waste from specialized machines used for such mining operations that burn out rapidly.
Whatever Bitcoin’s eventual fate, its blockchain technology is truly ingenious and groundbreaking. Bitcoin has shown how programs running on networks of computers can be harnessed to securely conduct payments, within and between countries, without relying on avaricious financial institutions that charge high fees. For migrant workers sending remittances back to their home countries, for instance, such fees are a major burden. Technologies that make payments cheaper, quicker and easier to track would benefit consumers and businesses, facilitating both domestic and international commerce.
The technology is not without risks. Facebook plans to issue its own cryptocurrency called Diem intended to make digital payments easier. Unlike Bitcoin, Diem would be fully backed by reserves of U.S. dollars or other major currencies, ensuring stable value. But, as with its other ostensibly high-minded initiatives, Facebook can hardly be trusted to put the public’s welfare above its own. The prospect of multinational corporations one day issuing their own unbacked cryptocurrencies worldwide is deeply disquieting. Such currencies won’t threaten the U.S. dollar, but could wipe out the currencies of smaller and less developed countries.
Variants of Bitcoin’s technology are also making many financial products and services available to the masses at low cost, directly connecting savers and borrowers. These developments and the possibilities created by the new technologies have spurred central banks to consider issuing digital versions of their own currencies. China, Japan, and Sweden are already conducting trials of their digital currencies.
Ironically, rather than truly democratizing finance, some of these innovations may exacerbate inequality. Unequal financial literacy and digital access might result in sophisticated investors garnering the benefits while the less well off, dazzled by new technologies, take on risks they do not fully comprehend. Computer algorithms could worsen entrenched racial and other biases in credit scoring and financial decisions, rather than reducing them. The ubiquity of digital payments could also destroy any remaining vestiges of privacy in our day-to-day lives.
While Bitcoin’s roller-coaster prices garner attention, of far more consequence is the revolution in money and finance it has set off that will ultimately affect every one of us, for better and worse.
Eswar Prasad is a professor at Cornell University and a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. His new book, The Future of Money: How the Digital Revolution is Transforming Currencies and Finance, will be published in September.
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/14/opinion/bitcoin-cryptocurrency-flaws.html?smtyp=cur&smid=tw-nytimes
The Health Benefits of Coffee
Drinking coffee has been linked to a reduced risk of all kinds of ailments, including Parkinson’s disease, melanoma, prostate cancer, even suicide.
By Jane E. Brody
June 14, 2021, 5:00 a.m. ET
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/14/well/eat/coffee-health-benefits.html?smid=tw-nytimes&smtyp=cur
Americans sure love their coffee. Even last spring when the pandemic shut down New York, nearly every neighborhood shop that sold takeout coffee managed to stay open, and I was amazed at how many people ventured forth to start their stay-at-home days with a favorite store-made brew.
One elderly friend who prepandemic had traveled from Brooklyn to Manhattan by subway to buy her preferred blend of ground coffee arranged to have it delivered. “Well worth the added cost,” she told me. I use machine-brewed coffee from pods, and last summer when it seemed reasonably safe for me to shop I stocked up on a year’s supply of the blends I like. (Happily, the pods are now recyclable.)
All of us should be happy to know that whatever it took to secure that favorite cup of Joe may actually have helped to keep us healthy. The latest assessments of the health effects of coffee and caffeine, its main active ingredient, are reassuring indeed. Their consumption has been linked to a reduced risk of all kinds of ailments, including Parkinson’s disease, heart disease, Type 2 diabetes, gallstones, depression, suicide, cirrhosis, liver cancer, melanoma and prostate cancer.
In fact, in numerous studies conducted throughout the world, consuming four or five eight-ounce cups of coffee (or about 400 milligrams of caffeine) a day has been associated with reduced death rates. In a study of more than 200,000 participants followed for up to 30 years, those who drank three to five cups of coffee a day, with or without caffeine, were 15 percent less likely to die early from all causes than were people who shunned coffee. Perhaps most dramatic was a 50 percent reduction in the risk of suicide among both men and women who were moderate coffee drinkers, perhaps by boosting production of brain chemicals that have antidepressant effects.
As a report published last summer by a research team at the Harvard School of Public Health concluded, although current evidence may not warrant recommending coffee or caffeine to prevent disease, for most people drinking coffee in moderation “can be part of a healthy lifestyle.”
It wasn’t always thus. I’ve lived through decades of sporadic warnings that coffee could be a health hazard. Over the years, coffee’s been deemed a cause of conditions such as heart disease, stroke, Type 2 diabetes, pancreatic cancer, anxiety disorder, nutrient deficiencies, gastric reflux disease, migraine, insomnia, and premature death. As recently as 1991, the World Health Organization listed coffee as a possible carcinogen. In some of the now-discredited studies, smoking, not coffee drinking (the two often went hand-in-hand) was responsible for the purported hazard.
“These periodic scares have given the public a very distorted view,” said Dr. Walter C. Willett, professor of nutrition and epidemiology at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. “Overall, despite various concerns that have cropped up over the years, coffee is remarkably safe and has a number of important potential benefits.”
That’s not to say coffee warrants a totally clean bill of health. Caffeine crosses the placenta into the fetus, and coffee drinking during pregnancy can increase the risk of miscarriage, low birth weight and premature birth. Pregnancy alters how the body metabolizes caffeine, and women who are pregnant or nursing are advised to abstain entirely, stick to decaf or at the very least limit their caffeine intake to less than 200 milligrams a day, the amount in about two standard cups of American coffee.
The most common ill effect associated with caffeinated coffee is sleep disturbance. Caffeine locks into the same receptor in the brain as the neurotransmitter adenosine, a natural sedative. Dr. Willett, a co-author of the Harvard report, told me, “I really do love coffee, but I have it only occasionally because otherwise I don’t sleep very well. Lots of people with sleep problems don’t recognize the connection to coffee.”
In discussing his audiobook on caffeine with Terry Gross on NPR last winter, Michael Pollan called caffeine “the enemy of good sleep” because it interferes with deep sleep. He confessed that after the challenging task of weaning himself from coffee, he “was sleeping like a teenager again.”
Dr. Willett, now 75, said, “You don’t have to get to zero consumption to minimize the impact on sleep,” but he acknowledged that a person’s sensitivity to caffeine “probably increases with age.” People also vary widely in how rapidly they metabolize caffeine, enabling some to sleep soundly after drinking caffeinated coffee at dinner while others have trouble sleeping if they have coffee at lunch. But even if you can fall asleep readily after an evening coffee, it may disrupt your ability to get adequate deep sleep, Mr. Pollan states in his forthcoming book, “This Is Your Mind on Plants.”
Dr. Willett said it’s possible to develop a degree of tolerance to caffeine’s effect on sleep. My 75-year-old brother, an inveterate imbiber of caffeinated coffee, claims it has no effect on him. However, acquiring a tolerance to caffeine could blunt its benefit if, say, you wanted it to help you stay alert and focused while driving or taking a test.
Caffeine is one of more than a thousand chemicals in coffee, not all of which are beneficial. Among others with positive effects are polyphenols and antioxidants. Polyphenols can inhibit the growth of cancer cells and lower the risk of Type 2 diabetes; antioxidants, which have anti-inflammatory effects, can counter both heart disease and cancer, the nation’s leading killers.
None of this means coffee is beneficial regardless of how it’s prepared. When brewed without a paper filter, as in French press, Norwegian boiled coffee, espresso or Turkish coffee, oily chemicals called diterpenes come through that can raise artery-damaging LDL cholesterol. However, these chemicals are virtually absent in both filtered and instant coffee. Knowing I have a cholesterol problem, I dissected a coffee pod and found a paper filter lining the plastic cup. Whew!
Also countering the potential health benefits of coffee are popular additions some people use, like cream and sweet syrups, that can convert this calorie-free beverage into a calorie-rich dessert. “All the things people put into coffee can result in a junk food with as many as 500 to 600 calories,” Dr. Willett said. A 16-ounce Starbucks Mocha Frappuccino, for example, has 51 grams of sugar, 15 grams of fat (10 of them saturated) and 370 calories.
With iced coffee season approaching, more people are likely to turn to cold-brew coffee. Now rising in popularity, cold brew counters coffee’s natural acidity and the bitterness that results when boiling water is poured over the grounds. Cold brew is made by steeping the grounds in cold water for several hours, then straining the liquid through a paper filter to remove the grounds and harmful diterpenes and keep the flavor and caffeine for you to enjoy. Cold brew can also be made with decaffeinated coffee.
Decaf is not totally without health benefits. As with caffeinated coffee, the polyphenols it contains have anti-inflammatory properties that may lower the risk of Type 2 diabetes and cancer.
Jane Brody is the Personal Health columnist, a position she has held since 1976. She has written more than a dozen books including the best sellers “Jane Brody’s Nutrition Book” and “Jane Brody’s Good Food Book.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/14/well/eat/coffee-health-benefits.html?smid=tw-nytimes&smtyp=cur