A frantic warning from 100 leading experts: Our democracy is in grave danger

Opinion by Greg Sargent
Columnist
The Washington Post
June 1, 2021 at 8:49 a.m. CDT
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/06/01/frantic-warning-100-leading-experts-our-democracy-is-grave-danger/

Democrats can’t say they weren’t warned.

With yet another GOP effort to restrict voting underway in Texas, President Biden is now calling on Congress to act in the face of the Republican “assault on democracy.” Importantly, Biden cast that attack as aimed at “Black and Brown Americans,” meriting federal legislation in response.

That is a welcome escalation. But it remains unclear whether 50 Senate Democrats will ever prove willing to reform or end the filibuster, and more to the point, whether Biden will put real muscle behind that cause. If not, such protections will never, ever pass.

Now, in a striking intervention, more than 100 scholars of democracy have signed a new public statement of principles that seeks to make the stakes unambiguously, jarringly clear: On the line is nothing less than the future of our democracy itself.

“Our entire democracy is now at risk,” the scholars write in the statement, which I obtained before its release. “History will judge what we do at this moment.”

And these scholars underscore the crucial point: Our democracy’s long-term viability might depend on whether Democrats reform or kill the filibuster to pass sweeping voting rights protections.

“We urge members of Congress to do whatever is necessary — including suspending the filibuster — in order to pass national voting and election administration standards,” the scholars write, in a reference to the voting rights protections enshrined in the For the People Act, which passed the House and is before the Senate.

What’s striking is that the statement is signed by scholars who specialize in democratic breakdown, such as Pippa Norris, Daniel Ziblatt and Steven Levitsky. Other well-known names include Francis Fukuyama and Jacob Hacker.

“We wanted to create a strong statement from a wide range of scholars, including many who have studied democratic backsliding, to make it clear that democracy in America is genuinely under threat,” Lee Drutman, senior fellow at New America and a leading organizer of the letter, told me.

“The playbook that the Republican Party is executing at the state and national levels is very much consistent with actions taken by illiberal, anti-democratic, anti-pluralist parties in other democracies that have slipped away from free and fair elections,” Drutman continued.

Among these, the scholars note, are efforts by GOP-controlled state legislatures everywhere to restrict access to voting in ways reminiscent of tactics employed before the United States became a real multiracial democracy in the mid-1960s:

Republican lawmakers have openly talked about ensuring the “purity” and “quality” of the vote, echoing arguments widely used across the Jim Crow South as reasons for restricting the Black vote.

The scholars also sound the alarm about GOP efforts to deepen control of electoral machinery in numerous states, casting them as a live threat to overturn future elections, and a redoubling of emphasis on extreme gerrymanders and other anti-majoritarian tactics:

In future elections, these laws politicizing the administration and certification of elections could enable some state legislatures or partisan election officials to do what they failed to do in 2020: reverse the outcome of a free and fair election. Further, these laws could entrench extended minority rule, violating the basic and longstanding democratic principle that parties that get the most votes should win elections.

Democracy rests on certain elemental institutional and normative conditions. Elections must be neutrally and fairly administered. They must be free of manipulation. Every citizen who is qualified must have an equal right to vote, unhindered by obstruction. And when they lose elections, political parties and their candidates and supporters must be willing to accept defeat and acknowledge the legitimacy of the outcome.

After noting that all these Republican efforts are threatening those fundamental principles, the scholars warn: “These actions call into question whether the United States will remain a democracy.”

Crucially, the scholars note that the John Lewis Voting Rights Act — which would restore some protections gutted by the Supreme Court — would be insufficient, and they call for federal protections such as those in the For the People Act, or S.1.

“Just as it ultimately took federal voting rights law to put an end to state-led voter suppression laws throughout the South" in the 1960s, the scholars write, so must federal law step in again:

True electoral integrity demands a comprehensive set of national standards that ensure the sanctity and independence of election administration, guarantee that all voters can freely exercise their right to vote, prevent partisan gerrymandering from giving dominant parties in the states an unfair advantage in the process of drawing congressional districts, and regulate ethics and money in politics.
It is always far better for major democracy reforms to be bipartisan, to give change the broadest possible legitimacy. However, in the current hyper-polarized political context such broad bipartisan support is sadly lacking.

That is the rub. An acceptance that protecting democracy will never, ever, ever be bipartisan, and will happen only on a partisan basis, is fundamental to accepting the reality of the situation that Democrats face.

We can go back and forth about specific misgivings that some Democrats have about S.1 — see this good Andrew Prokop report for an overview — but the core question is whether Democrats will cross that Rubicon. So doing would lead inevitably to the need to reform or end the filibuster.

Sen. Joe Manchin III (D-W.Va.) is the most visible obstacle here. But an unknown number of other moderate Democrats are also reluctant to cross that Rubicon, and it’s unclear how much effort Biden will put into making that happen.

And so, when these scholars warn that history is watching, those Democrats are the ones who should take heed.


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/2021/06/01/frantic-warning-100-leading-experts-our-democracy-is-grave-danger/

Supreme Court won't review $2 billion verdict against Johnson & Johnson in talc powder case

By Ariane de Vogue and Jen Christensen, CNN
Updated 1635 GMT (0035 HKT) June 1, 2021
https://edition.cnn.com/2021/06/01/politics/johnson--johnson-supreme-court-2-billion-verdict/index.html?utm_source=twCNNp&utm_medium=social&utm_content=2021-06-01T18%3A08%3A04&utm_term=link

(CNN)The Supreme Court said on Tuesday that it won't review a lower court opinion that awarded a $2 billion verdict in a case brought by a group of women who sued Johnson & Johnson after developing ovarian cancer which they say stemmed from exposure to asbestos in the company's talc powder.

There have been tens of thousands of lawsuits brought against J&J and other talcum powder companies. J&J had sold the talc-based powder, Johnson's Baby Powder, for more than 100 years and created several other products using talc. Talc is among one of the softest minerals that can reduce friction and has a great ability to absorb oils and odor.

Neither Justice Samuel Alito nor Brett Kavanaugh participated in the court's review of the case. Although they didn't explain their thinking, it is likely because Alito had stock in the company and Kavanaugh's father worked with a trade association linked to Johnson & Johnson.

Johnson & Johnson had asked the Supreme Court to review a June 2020 decision from a Missouri appeals court. That ruling had reduced a lower court decision in which a jury awarded 22 plaintiffs $4.7 billion when the women claimed that their regular use of J&J's talc-based powder caused their ovarian cancer. The company had asked that court to throw the lawsuit out altogether.

Instead, the appeals court cut the verdict to $2.1 billion since some of the women who brought the lawsuit lived out of state. It also eliminated two of the plaintiffs. It otherwise upheld the outcome of the trial, since, the court found "significant reprehensibility in (J&J's) conduct," and said that J&J exposed consumers to asbestos over several decades "done with reckless disregard of the health and safety of others."

During the trial, lawyers introduced internal memos that showed J&J had discussed the presence of asbestos in their talc products for several decades. The plaintiffs told the appeals court that J&J "knew of the asbestos danger," tried to discredit scientists that were publishing studies that were unfavorable about J&J products, and decided not to switch out talc in its powder for cornstarch because it was costly.

Mark Lanier, a lawyer for the plaintiffs in the case called Tuesday's ruling a "victory for justice."

"This was a victory not just for the amazing women and their families who we were privileged to represent, but a victory for justice," Lanier told CNN. "This result is exactly what separates America from the rest of the world. This decision sends a clear message to the rich and powerful: You will be held to account when you cause grievous harm under our system of equal justice under law."

In a statement Tuesday, Johnson & Johnson said the court's action "leaves unresolved significant legal questions that state and federal courts will continue to face on issues related to due process rights and personal jurisdiction."

The company added, "The matters that were before the court are related to legal procedure, and not safety. Decades of independent scientific evaluations confirm Johnson's Baby Powder is safe, does not contain asbestos, and does not cause cancer."

In May 2020, J&J announced that it would stop shipping talc-based Baby Powder in the US and Canada. The company had said at the time that it had re-evaluated its products in light of the novel coronavirus in March and stopped shipping hundreds of items, including the talc-based powder, so it could place a priority on its high-demand products.

The company's cornstarch-based powder remains on the market.

Some scientific studies have shown that women do have an increased risk of ovarian cancer with talc use in the genital area, but others do not. Most studies suggest more research is needed.

A separate set of lawsuits tied the talc products to mesothelioma. Scientists in those trials testified that they found asbestos in samples of the product. The company argued it did extensive testing to make sure their products were asbestos-free. Talc is often mined near asbestos and studies have shown there is a risk of cross-contamination during mining, but since the 1970s talc products were required to be asbestos-free.

https://edition.cnn.com/2021/06/01/politics/johnson--johnson-supreme-court-2-billion-verdict/index.html?utm_source=twCNNp&utm_medium=social&utm_content=2021-06-01T18%3A08%3A04&utm_term=link

Louie Gohmert Distances Himself From QAnon Event Where Michael Flynn Called for Coup

BY EWAN PALMER ON 6/1/21 AT 11:49 AM EDT
https://www.newsweek.com/louie-gohmert-qanon-michael-flynn-coup-1596553

Republican congressman Louie Gohmert has distanced himself from a QAnon conference he attended—claiming he wasn't aware of its connection to the conspiracy theory and that he does not support a military coup in this country as suggested at the event by Michael Flynn.

Gohmert, who represents Texas's 1st congressional district, spoke at the three-day "For God & Country Patriot Roundup" in Dallas, Texas, over the Memorial Day weekend.

While on stage at the $500-a-head event which also featured a host of names connected to the movement listed as a domestic terrorist threat by the FBI, Gohmert downplayed the January 6 attack on the Capitol in Washington D.C.

The Washington Post reported that Gohmert claimed that "it wasn't just right-wing extremists" who attacked the Capitol despite there being no evidence that left-wing protesters such as antifa also carried out the attack.

Gohmert also reportedly suggested the deadly attack trying to prevent the results of a democratic election from being confirmed was not that bad compared to other attacks against America.

"Some of us think Pearl Harbor was the worst attack on democracy, some of us think 9/11 was the worst attack," he said. "Some of us think that those things were worse attacks on democracy."

Gohmert also posed for pictures with popular QAnon promoter RedPill78, real name Zak Paine.

The event has attracted major media coverage after Flynn, Donald Trump's former national security advisor turned QAnon icon, suggested that there "should be" a Myanmar-style military coup in the U.S. during a Q&A session on Sunday.

As outrage over the comments grew, CBS19 reporter David Lippman tweeted that one of Gohmert's team attempted to tell one of the network's reporters "that he wasn't at that event" despite there being videos and images of him onstage.


David Lippman CBS19 @david_lippman

A member of @replouiegohmert's staff just tried to tell one of our reporters that he wasn't at that event.

Alex Kaplan
@AlKapDC
A sitting member of Congress, Louie Gohmert, is currently speaking at a QAnon event in front of the event's logo, which has the QAnon slogan right in it.


7:35 PM · May 31, 2021·Twitter Web App
THREAD

A member of @replouiegohmert's staff just tried to tell one of our reporters that he wasn't at that event. https://t.co/ovBVxoZ3qX

— David Lippman (@david_lippman) May 31, 2021

UK reports zero daily COVID-related deaths for first time since pandemic began

44 mins ago
https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/coronavirus/uk-reports-zero-daily-covid-related-deaths-for-first-time-since-pandemic-began/ar-AAKBhF5?li=BBoPWjQ

The UK has reported zero daily coronavirus-related deaths for the first time since the pandemic began.

Also, 3,165 new COVID-19 cases were recorded in the latest 24-hour period, according to government data.

The latest figures come after a bank holiday weekend when the number of deaths and cases can be lower due to reporting lags.

The last time there were no deaths was on 7 March 2020, before the first lockdown.

On 10 May this year, England, Scotland and Northern Ireland all reported no deaths, but four were logged in Wales.

Meanwhile, another 93,103 people had their first dose of a coronavirus vaccine on Monday, taking the total to 39,477,158.

Some 195,546 people had their second jab on Monday, meaning 25,734,719 have now been fully vaccinated.

Tuesday's figures take the total number of recorded cases so far to 4,490,438 and deaths to 127,782.

The race to vaccinate the UK gathered pace yesterday after a major walk-in vaccination centre at Twickenham Stadium opened up the jab offer to anyone aged over 18 for one day only in order not to waste doses.

Currently, only those aged over 30 in England are being invited to book their first vaccine.

The call led to lengthy queues in south-west London as thousands of young people lined up for a jab.

It comes amid growing calls from some experts for the government to delay the lifting of the remaining lockdown restrictions in England later this month.

Professor Ravi Gupta, a member of the New and Emerging Respiratory Virus Threats Advisory Group (Nervtag), told Sky News that a further easing of measures on 21 June was "a bit early".

"I think we need at least a few weeks - probably a month until schools have closed when the risk of transmission within schools falls during summer holidays," he said.

"It then gives us another four weeks' worth of data to collect about how the [Indian variant of the] virus is growing in the population, what sort of rate it is growing at, how it is doing relative to the previous strain B117.

"And also how effective our vaccines are against this new virus.

"All of that information is coming in weekly and it will enable us to build up a better picture whilst staying safe and maintaining the gains we made through that really painful three of four months we had."

Prof Gupta warned the Indian variant - now renamed as the Delta variant by the World Health Organisation - offered a "real risk now of generalised transmission in young people who are not vaccinated and, of course, school-age children as well as those who are vulnerable and haven't responded to the vaccine".

Prof Gupta's view is reinforced by Professor Adam Finn, a member of the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI), who suggested going ahead with the 21 June reopening would be a "bad decision".

And British Medical Association (BMA) council chair Dr Chaand Nagpaul has said the country is at a "pivotal moment" in the fight against coronavirus.

"A premature ending of all legal restrictions which then resulted in a surge of infections would undermine our health service's efforts to tackle the biggest level of backlog of care it has ever faced," he said.

While the government has not made an official decision on the 21 June reopening it has promised to make an announcement on 14 June - a week before.

Small business minister Paul Scully said that ramping up the vaccination programme could yet see the restrictions lifted later this month.

He said: "We're taking a careful view on where any increase in infections with the Indian variant are happening and that's why we're looking at surge testing in those areas and really making sure we're getting on the front foot."

Also, Heathrow Airport has opened a dedicated terminal for passengers on direct flights from red list countries, following concerns that they are mixing with those from green and amber nations.

Travellers will now go through Terminal 3, although a dedicated facility for processing such travellers is eventually planned for Terminal 4.

Stay alert to stop coronavirus spreading - here is the latest government guidance. If you think you have the virus, don't go to the GP or hospital, stay indoors and get advice online. Only call NHS 111 if you cannot cope with your symptoms at home; your condition gets worse; or your symptoms do not get better after seven days. In parts of Wales where 111 isn't available, call NHS Direct on 0845 46 47. In Scotland anyone with symptoms is advised to self-isolate for seven days. In Northern Ireland, call your GP.

https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/coronavirus/uk-reports-zero-daily-covid-related-deaths-for-first-time-since-pandemic-began/ar-AAKBhF5?li=BBoPWjQ

Trump is Reportedly Telling People He Will Be Reinstated as President By August

By Colby HallJun 1st, 2021, 9:24 am
https://www.mediaite.com/trump/trump-is-reportedly-telling-people-he-will-be-reinstated-as-president-by-august/

Former President Donald Trump is reportedly telling people that he expects to get reinstated by August, according to New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman.

Haberman shared this rather stunning detail in a quote tweet of a CNN segment featured in a tweet from Donie O’Sullivan. The video features a number of QAnon followers lauding a Myanmar-style coup of the US government ostensibly to replace President Joe Biden with Trump.

Haberman wrote in her quote tweet “Trump has been telling a number of people he’s in contact with that he expects he will be reinstated by August” with an important parenthetical caveat that states “(no that isn’t how it works but simply sharing the information).”

Her comments do not come in a vacuum either. A number of Trump toadies have made similar comments before and during the QAnon conference that was held in Dallas, Texas over the weekend.

Former National Security Advisor to Trump Michael Flynn (who pled guilty to lying to federal investigations before being pardoned) appeared to argue on behalf of a Myanmar-style coup during the QAnon conference. A biker vest clad Sidney Powell also stated during the QAnon conference that Trump should be reinstated as president. Why? Because according to the former Trump attorney there was “abject fraud and obtaining a coup of the United States of America.” There was not.

And lest we forget Mike Lindell, founder of MyPillow and massive advertiser on Fox News prime time. He insisted during a podcast with Steve Bannon last week that “Donald Trump will be back in office in August,” vowing to file a lawsuit that will confirm evidence of voter fraud during the 2020 election.

So Flynn, Powell, and Lindell are all advocating some sort of reinsertion of Trump into office, though there is no Constitutional way for that to happen. But according to the reliably well-sourced Haberman, Trump himself is promoting the idea that he will be back in office by late summer.

The idea that Trump would be reinstated into the White House is so absurd that it abuts “impossible” to happen. But the reason to amplify this story is to illustrate just how far gone many QAnon followers and their leaders—including Trump—appear to be in their delusion. And the surprisingly large number of supporters who keep buying it.

https://www.mediaite.com/trump/trump-is-reportedly-telling-people-he-will-be-reinstated-as-president-by-august/

How an 'upscale' lounge in Vancouver's Trump hotel became an alleged gangster haven

Leasing over 9,000 square feet from the hotel, the Ivy Rosé Lounge opened in March 2020. It didn’t take long for trouble to start, according to a court decision

Author of the article:Tom Blackwell
Publishing date:Jun 01, 2021 • 36 minutes ago • 3 minute read
https://nationalpost.com/news/canada/how-an-upscale-lounge-in-vancouvers-trump-hotel-became-an-alleged-gangster-haven-spelling-its-demise

Located inside Vancouver’s now-defunct Trump International Hotel, the Ivy Rosé Lounge aimed to provide some nighttime glitz to the city’s downtown.

With two floors, a pool and hot tub, the club was “one of the top, upscale lounges in the city,” its owners boasted online.

But there was also another, less-savoury side to the bar, court documents allege. Police showed up repeatedly to respond to fights and other disturbances, COVID rules were routinely flouted, and in the few months after the Ivy opened last year, it became a known hang-out for the city’s organized-crime figures, those documents suggest.

There were even hidden cameras to warn staff when police or bylaw enforcement were headed their way.

Finally in March, the Trump hotel — which went into bankruptcy itself last August — cancelled the lounge owners’ lease. The business sued in response.

But a B.C. Supreme Court judge has just denied the Ivy Lounge an interim injunction to put the eviction on hold. The bar’s blatant violation of public health rules and embrace of shady clients suggest the hotel had a legal right to throw it out, ruled Justice Gordon Weatherill.

“It takes no more than a modicum of common sense to recognize that (Ivy’s) ongoing, repeated, and flagrant disregard of public health orders, liquor restrictions, as well as its apparent indifference (to put it at its most generous) towards the clientele it allowed to frequent the licensed area would negatively affect the reputation of the property and the hotel,” he said.

Lawyers for the two sides in the dispute could not be reached for comment Monday.

The Trump International Hotel and Tower — 15 floors of hotel and 48 of condominiums — opened in 2017 at a ceremony attended by then-president Donald Trump’s sons, and has been a regular focus of controversy since.

Protesters picketed outside over Trump’s presidential policies, while a city councillor and others urged almost immediately that the name be changed.

It all came to an end last August when the Malaysian-based companies that own the facility declared bankruptcy, the hotel a victim of the pandemic and its devastation of the travel industry. TA Hotel Management had licensed the Trump name and the ex-president’s firm to manage the property.

Leasing over 9,000 square feet from the hotel, the Ivy Rosé Lounge opened last March, just before lockdowns were imposed during COVID-19’s first wave. It re-launched in August, investing $83,000 in partitions and other public-health measures.

“Easily one of the best nightclubs I’ve ever been to,” raved a reviewer on Ivy’s Facebook page, where the club is described as a an “unparalleled entertainment experience.”

But it didn’t take long for trouble to start, according to Weatherill’s decision.

Vancouver police informed the hotel on Feb. 25 that it had responded to 43 calls related to the Ivy since June, including two involving weapons, four public-health breaches, two fights and two assaults, according to an email cited by the judge.

“We don’t want to be seen on the 6 o’clock news as the location of a shooting or gang violence,” said the email from hotel management.

Condos in the luxury building designed by famed architect Arthur Erickson have been valued at as much as $9 million.

The email also noted that the lounge “had installed hidden cameras to alert staff when police and/or liquor inspectors were approaching.”

Police warned the hotel that the Ivy Lounge had become “a preferred destination for gang members and people involved in organized crime” and that officers had received 29 complaints since Nov. 17, 2020 about public health violations and loud music.

“One month after an individual had been ejected from the Ivy Lounge by the VPD Gang Crime Unit, that individual had been killed in what was believed to be a targeted shooting,” the judge noted.

Another letter from the hotel operators’ lawyers in March complained of “noted gang members” being allowed to enter the Ivy Lounge, said Weatherill.

The bar argued that it had not been given an opportunity to correct problems raised by its landlord.

The hotel responded that a section of the agreement between them allowed it to immediately end the lease if the lounge brought the operation into disrepute.

If the case goes to trial, there is a “strong likelihood” the hotel would win, said the judge.

• Email: tblackwell@postmedia.com | Twitter: tomblackwellNP

https://nationalpost.com/news/canada/how-an-upscale-lounge-in-vancouvers-trump-hotel-became-an-alleged-gangster-haven-spelling-its-demise

There was also a T-shirt with the symbol for the National Partisan Movement, an online group meant to groom the next generation of far-right members.

A HOPE not hate investigation into the National Partisan Movement reveals an international far-right youth group engaging in hate crime and acquiring weapons.
https://www.hopenothate.org.uk/investigation-for-the-future-by-the-future/

Texas man who planned ‘mass casualty event’ at Walmart had assault weapons, racist symbols, police said

By Jaclyn Peiser
June 1, 2021 at 11:04 a.m. GMT+1
https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2021/06/01/texas-walmart-coleman-blevins-shooting/

Last week, Coleman Thomas Blevins logged on to an online forum to confess a menacing plan, police said: The 28-year-old from Kerrville, Tex., was going to storm into a Walmart and shoot up the place.

But an undercover police officer intercepted the message. After consulting the FBI, law enforcement swiftly labeled Blevins a national security threat.

On Friday, the Kerr County Sheriff’s Office arrested Blevins and charged him with making a terroristic threat — thwarting a possibly deadly scenario, police said. Officials said they later found weapons and racist and extremist materials in his home.

“Our investigators did outstanding work in this case, and possibly saved many lives,” Sheriff Larry Leitha said in a news release on Sunday. “The plot interrupted in this case is unthinkable.”

The arrest comes amid a spate of mass shootings across the country. On Mother’s Day, a gunman in Colorado Springs killed six people at a birthday party and then turned the gun on himself. In mid-April, a 19-year-old fatally shot eight people at a FedEx plant in Indianapolis. Other mass shootings in Atlanta and Boulder have left those cities reeling.

Texas has previously been the scene of a deadly attack at a Walmart. In 2019, a 21-year-old gunman brandishing an assault-style rifle stormed into an El Paso Walmart and killed 22 people, law enforcement said, in what authorities called a hate crime and domestic terrorism. In the weeks before the incident that rocked the border town, the shooter wrote a manifesto using language borrowed from extremist groups, authorities said.

Blevins was previously convicted of a felony and was out on probation, police said. It is unclear what the crime was or how long he has been on probation, but one condition of his release was that he was forbidden from owning weapons, Leitha said.

Police began monitoring Bevins in an online forum, which isn’t named in court documents, earlier last week. Undercover officers worked to gain a rapport with Blevins in the forum, according to the sheriff’s office.

“Through the period of investigation, KCSO investigators made contact and conversed with Mr. Blevins, confirmed his affiliation and networking with extremist ideologies,” the sheriff’s office said.

Then on Thursday, the sheriff’s office, with the help of the Texas Department of Public Safety’s criminal investigations division, intercepted a message from Blevins indicating he was preparing to pursue a “mass casualty event” and “made a specific threat that included Walmart,” the sheriff’s office said.

Investigators with the county’s special operations division called the FBI, which confirmed that Blevins was serious about the threat.

With the assistance of the FBI, Kerrville Police Department and the Secret Service, the sheriff’s office arrested Blevins on Friday in Kerrville, a town of more than 23,700 people about 70 miles northwest of San Antonio. Blevins was booked in Kerr County Jail on $250,000 bond. Jail records do not indicate if he has a lawyer. He could also faces federal charges from the FBI or other federal agencies, the sheriff’s office said. It is unclear when Blevins is due in court.

Following the arrest, police searched Blevins’s home, where they found an assault weapon, ammunition, handwritten notes, drugs and “racial ideology paraphernalia,” police said.

Officers also found several flags, including a Confederate flag, a Saudi Arabian flag and one with a swastika and a sonnenrad, a Norse symbol that was appropriated by the Nazis. There was also a Falangist flag, which once represented the extreme nationalist group during Spain’s civil war in 1936.

Law enforcement also found several books tied to extremism, including “The Turner Diaries,” a right-wing novel that is said to have inspired dozens of terrorist attacks and hate crimes, including the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995, and “Revolt Against the Modern World” by Julius Evola, a far-right Italian writer and philosopher who wrote about fascism in the 1920s and ’30s and who is often referenced by domestic extremists. There was also a T-shirt with the symbol for the National Partisan Movement, an online group meant to groom the next generation of far-right members.

“This case reminds us that we need to always be vigilant,” Leitha, the sheriff, said in the release. “Many think ‘that can’t happen here,’ and it was well on the way to happening.”


195 Comments

Image without a caption
By Jaclyn Peiser
Jaclyn Peiser is a reporter on the Morning Mix team. She previously covered the media industry for the New York Times. Twitter
https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2021/06/01/texas-walmart-coleman-blevins-shooting/

Texas man accused of planning mass shooting at Walmart is arrested

May 31, 2021, 3:02 PM BST
By Elizabeth Chuck
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/texas-man-accused-planning-mass-shooting-walmart-arrested-n1269143?cid=sm_npd_nn_tw_ma

A man accused of plotting an "unthinkable" attack on a Texas Walmart has been arrested and charged with making a terroristic threat, officials said.

Last week, investigators intercepted a message indicating that Coleman Thomas Blevins, 28, of Kerrville, Texas, was planning a mass shooting, and had mentioned Walmart, according to a news release from the Kerr County Sheriff’s Office.

After arresting Blevins on Friday, authorities discovered firearms, ammunition and "radical ideology paraphernalia, including books, flags and handwritten documents" in his home, the news release said.


Authorities executed a search warrant on the home of Coleman Thomas Blevins of Kerrville, Texas.Facebook

Kerrville is about 65 miles northwest of San Antonio. The Kerr County Sheriff's Office worked with state and federal authorities to arrest Blevins.

“This case reminds us that we need to always be vigilant. Many think ‘That can’t happen here,’ and it was well on the way to happening,” Kerr County Sheriff Larry Leitha said. “Our investigators did outstanding work in this case, and possibly saved many lives. The plot interrupted in this case is unthinkable."


Image: Elizabeth Chuck
Elizabeth Chuck
Elizabeth Chuck is a reporter for NBC News who focuses on health and mental health, particularly issues that affect women and children.
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/texas-man-accused-planning-mass-shooting-walmart-arrested-n1269143?cid=sm_npd_nn_tw_ma

In major rewrite of church law, Pope Francis aims for clearer penalties for sex abuse offenders

By Chico Harlan
June 1, 2021 at 12:31 p.m. GMT+1
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/europe/pope-francis-canon-law-sex-abuse/2021/06/01/f4c3dff2-c2ba-11eb-89a4-b7ae22aa193e_story.html

ROME — The Vatican on Tuesday said that Pope Francis had signed off on a rewrite of the universal Catholic Church's internal penal system, updating a version in place since the 1980s and laying out clearer penalties for the sexual abuse of minors.

The changes, though years in the making, are in part a response to the church’s raft of abuse and financial scandals — which have often been magnified by secretive, highly subjective decision-making about how and whether to apply punishments.

Pope Francis, in a letter accompanying the revisions, said the laws aimed to be clearer and simpler, while reducing the number of instances in which penalties are left to the “discretion of authorities.”

“It is necessary that these norms be closely related to social changes and the new needs of the People of God,” the pope wrote.

The changes give the church authorities — whether in the Vatican or a far-flung parish — a new template for assessing and addressing possible church violations. The changes deal specifically with church penal sanctions; other parts of canon law — the church’s vast set of ecclesiastical rules — remain unchanged. Still, those revisions alone mark the most significant rewrite of canon law in four decades, since the era of Pope John Paul II.

The new laws state that clerics who abuse minors or other vulnerable people be punished with “deprivation from office,” and potentially with a defrocking. Previously, the church had only said such cases merit “just penalties,” not excluding defrocking.

In addition, the church also explicitly criminalized the grooming of minors for participation in pornography, as well as the acquisition and distribution of child pornography. The new laws also state that laypeople in positions of power can be punished for abuse as well.

The church is now several decades into its effort to reduce cases of clerical abuse and better hold to account bishops and cardinals who have sometimes protected known abusers.

Church critics say the very effort to handle punishment in-house is misguided: Civil authorities should be immediately notified and given responsibility for cases. But those critics say that even the church’s canonical system, when used to dole out penalties to abusers, has been too lax, tending to value the word of priests over those of their alleged victims.

Before these changes, Francis — under enormous pressure from a wave of abuse cases — had taken more piecemeal measures. In the aftermath of a global church abuse summit in 2019, Francis enacted new legislation requiring priests and nuns to report abuse accusations to church authorities. He also drew up a new system for investigating complaints of abuse or coverup against bishops or other higher-ups, one of the long-standing trouble-spots for the church.

The revisions in canon law released Tuesday go far beyond the abuse issue, though some of the foundational parts remain unchanged. Like the previous version, this one says that excommunication should be used only for the gravest offenses. One instance, then and now, that can lead to excommunication: procuring an abortion. Heretics and schismatics get the same punishment.

But this version has changes that seem to acknowledge some of the church’s recent scandals, including financial misconduct by church authorities. The new norms expand on the list of money-related crimes, specifically mentioning “financial” offenses, adding that to the existing violation of conducting trade or business “contrary to the prescripts of the canons.”

The Vatican has been dealing with the fallout of a losing real estate investment in a London luxury property that allegedly landed large profits for the financiers who brokered the deal. Vatican prosecutors are investigating the deal.


By Chico Harlan
Chico Harlan is The Washington Post's Rome bureau chief. Previously, he was The Post’s East Asia bureau chief, covering the natural and nuclear disasters in Japan and a leadership change in North Korea. He has also been a member of The Post's financial and national enterprise teams. Twitter

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/europe/pope-francis-canon-law-sex-abuse/2021/06/01/f4c3dff2-c2ba-11eb-89a4-b7ae22aa193e_story.html

Senate Republicans know they chose cowardice in killing a Jan. 6 investigation. They just proved it.

Opinion by James Downie
Digital opinions editor
May 31, 2021 at 3:29 p.m. GMT+1
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/05/31/senate-republicans-know-they-chose-cowardice-killing-jan-6-investigation-they-just-proved-it/

Give Rep. Michael McCaul (R-Tex.) some credit. On Friday, Senate Republicans put the final nail in the coffin of an independent commission to investigate the Jan. 6 insurrection. On Sunday, not one Republican senator appeared on the network talk shows to defend another GOP blow against democracy. Instead, they left it to McCaul to make their case for them during an appearance on CNN’s “State of the Union.”

“Some” credit doesn’t mean “a lot.” McCaul’s argument didn’t resolve the hypocrisies and contradictions Republicans have relied on to avoid looking too closely at what happened in January and who is responsible for it. There’s no good way to do that. But at least McCaul defended that position rather than hiding from host Jake Tapper’s questions.

Unlike some Republicans who sought to minimize the events of Jan. 6 from the beginning, McCaul earlier this year came out in support of legislation that would make it easier for prosecutors to charge domestic terrorists and international terrorists the same way. And when defending House Republicans’ sixth investigation into two coordinated attacks on U.S. facilities in the Libyan city of Benghazi, which the party tried to weaponize against former secretary of state Hillary Clinton as she prepared to run for president, McCaul made a strong argument in favor of transparency. “We owe it to the victims, their families and the American people to find out the truth,” he said in 2014.

But when Tapper pressed McCaul on why the public deserved a thorough investigation of Benghazi then, but doesn’t need an independent commission to investigate a catastrophe closer to home, McCaul didn’t have much of an answer.

“I view this not as an overview of policy, like the 9/11 Commission did,” argued McCaul. “It’s a criminal investigation … that properly falls within the venue, the purview of the Department of Justice, where I worked for many years, rather than a politically appointed commission.” While prosecuting campaign finance violations at the Justice Department, where he previously worked, McCaul said a concurrent congressional investigation “provided duplicative testimonies. It undermined our federal investigation.”

That’s hard to swallow. McCaul did not explain how two concurrent investigations would cloud a full accounting of the Jan. 6 insurrection, but six consecutive Benghazi probes, separate from the FBI’s investigation into the attacks, were necessary or helpful.

But more broadly, whether an independent panel on Jan. 6 would have focused on matters of policy or criminal investigations is beside the point. The country needs a Jan. 6 commission similar in structure to a Sept. 11 commission because both days saw an attack on the United States. That the actors behind one assault were foreign and the ones behind the other domestic makes no difference. We need the truth — no matter how inconvenient for one party.

At least McCaul made his case, however weak.

Republican senators, whose votes actually doomed the commission, did not even defend themselves.

On “Fox News Sunday,” Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.) stuck to answering questions on a bipartisan infrastructure package. The rest of her GOP colleagues were absent.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) may believe that a commission will hurt Republicans politically. But clearly his caucus believes killing the commission isn’t something to crow about either. And no wonder: A YouGov/Economist poll released last week found that voters supported the commission by a margin of 56 percent to 30 percent. Fifty-one percent of independents and even 28 percent of Republicans back an independent commission. In a heavily polarized country, that’s practically a landslide.

If Sens. Joe Manchin III (D-W.Va.) and Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.) would finally come to their senses and stop treating the filibuster like their highest priority, Republican cowardice would matter far less. Manchin rightly called GOP opposition to the commission “unconscionable” and a “betrayal of the oath we each take.” But so long as the pair continues to allow Republicans to block any bill of major consequence, that outrage is just empty words.

Nevertheless, the fault ultimately lies with McConnell and the members his caucus. As former Republican congresswoman Barbara Comstock said on “Meet the Press,” many Americans “still don’t realize how violent that [day] was. … People are still talking about [sic] these were like tourists. We need to have that full story out. It’s going to get out one way or the other."

Senate Republicans had a chance to stand up for that truth, and to stand in solidarity against an attack on the democratic process itself. They chose cowardice — and their behavior since Friday shows that they know it.


Opinion by James Downie
James Downie is The Washington Post’s Digital Opinions Editor. He previously wrote for The New Republic and Foreign Policy magazine. Twitter
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/05/31/senate-republicans-know-they-chose-cowardice-killing-jan-6-investigation-they-just-proved-it/

Lieutenant Colonel Yevgeny "Eugene" Vindman said he would be willing to prosecute a court martial of Mr Flynn, who is still subject to the Uniform Code of Military Justice.

"With these seditious remarks, Comrade Flynn may have crossed the line for recall to active duty and court-martial. As a JAG I'm qualified and also happy to prosecute this case," he said on Twitter. "PS, US mil would NEVER support this. We love America."


Steve Vladeck @steve_vladeck Yes, Flynn’s still subject to the Uniform Code of Military Justice as a retired Army officer. The constitutionality of jurisdiction over retirees for post-retirement offenses is something we’re currently challenging in the Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces & the D.C. Circuit.

Steve Vladeck @steve_vladeck
· May 26
Just filed in the D.C. Circuit:

Our brief in Larrabee defending the district court's ruling that it's unconstitutional to subject retired servicemembers to court-martial — rather than civilian trial — for offenses they commit *while* they are retired:

https://www.justsecurity.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/3-Appellee-Brief-as-Filed.pdf



THREAD

Just filed in the D.C. Circuit:

Our brief in Larrabee defending the district court's ruling that it's unconstitutional to subject retired servicemembers to court-martial — rather than civilian trial — for offenses they commit *while* they are retired:https://t.co/aXtpz4h5nX pic.twitter.com/hu7RLkjT8N

— Steve Vladeck (@steve_vladeck) May 26, 2021

Yes, Flynn’s still subject to the Uniform Code of Military Justice as a retired Army officer. The constitutionality of jurisdiction over retirees for post-retirement offenses is something we’re currently challenging in the Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces & the D.C. Circuit. https://t.co/RQThYguIP1

— Steve Vladeck (@steve_vladeck) May 30, 2021

Michael Flynn denies saying Myanmar-like coup 'should' happen in United States

by Daniel Chaitin, Deputy News Editor | | May 31, 2021 10:22 AM
| Updated May 31, 2021, 07:36 PM
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/michael-flynn-myanmar-coup-united-states

Retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn denied that he embraced the idea of a coup in the United States.

During a right-wing conference in Dallas called the "For God & Country Patriot Roundup" over the weekend, the former White House national security adviser was asked by someone in the audience, who identified as a "simple Marine": "Why what happened in Myanmar can’t happen here?"

After cheers erupted in the crowd, as shown in clips posted to social media, Flynn replied, "No reason. I mean, it should happen here."

justin glawe @JustinGlawe ·May 31 - Here is video of former general and National Security Advisor Mike Flynn calling for a Myanmar-like coup to replace the sitting U.S. president with Donald Trump. The talk of war is very real.

VIDEO

Here is video of former general and National Security Advisor Mike Flynn calling for a Myanmar-like coup to replace the sitting U.S. president with Donald Trump. The talk of war is very real. pic.twitter.com/1GoP5OG1He

— Justin Glawe (@JustinGlawe) May 30, 2021

Here is video of former general and National Security Advisor Mike Flynn calling for a Myanmar-like coup to replace the sitting U.S. president with Donald Trump. The talk of war is very real. pic.twitter.com/1GoP5OG1He

— Justin Glawe (@JustinGlawe) May 30, 2021

Ex-general says Michael Flynn is getting ‘crazier and crazier’ after endorsing military coup in US

‘Unfortunately, he has, in my view, gone off the deep end’

Shweta Sharma
@Ss22Shweta
2 hours ago
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/mark-hertling-flynn-minilary-coup-b1857282.html

A retired veteran of the US Army has blasted Michael Flynn for suggesting a Myanmar-style coup in the US and said Donald Trump’s former national security adviser is getting “crazier and crazier.”

Retired Lt General Mark Hertling, who served for 37 years in the US army, appeared on CNN to say Mr Flynn might have lost control of himself.

"I knew him when he was an active soldier. And I think just some of the things he's saying are getting crazier and crazier as the day goes on," said Mr Hertling.

“And, unfortunately, he has, in my view, gone off the deep end and he shouldn't say those kinds of things because it runs contrary to what we vow an oath to defend and what we serve as soldiers and former soldiers in the Army," he said.

His stern comments came after Mr Flynn, who was first and one-time national security adviser to Mr Trump, endorsed the idea of a coup in the US on the lines of one in Myanmar in which the military overthrew a democratically elected government and seized its powers.

Mr Flynn’s statements, criticised by several former military personnel, were made during the "For God & Country Patriot Roundup," in Dallas on Sunday.

An attendee who identified himself as a Marine asked Mr Flynn, "I want to know why what happened in M inamar(sic) can't happen here?"

"No reason. I mean, it should happen here," he said, as the crowd cheered.

Mr Hertling noted that the person who identified himself as a Marine and “mispronounced Myanmar...is very simple.”

Lieutenant Colonel Yevgeny "Eugene" Vindman said he would be willing to prosecute a court martial of Mr Flynn, who is still subject to the Uniform Code of Military Justice.

"With these seditious remarks, Comrade Flynn may have crossed the line for recall to active duty and court-martial. As a JAG I'm qualified and also happy to prosecute this case," he said on Twitter. "PS, US mil would NEVER support this. We love America."

Mr Vindman was fired last year from his job at the US army office by Mr Trump after he raised concerns about the former president's dealings with Ukraine.

Mr Flynn was also ousted from his job after he pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI concerning his deals with Russia's ambassador prior to Mr Trump taking office. He was later pardoned by Mr Trump.

But after leaving the White House, Mr Flynn has become an active member of QAnon.

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/mark-hertling-flynn-minilary-coup-b1857282.html

British scientists invent new 'sugar bomb' which takes seconds to destroy cancer cells

Thomas Hornall, PA & Lucy Skoulding 20 hrs ago
https://www.msn.com/en-gb/health/medical/british-scientists-invent-new-sugar-bomb-which-takes-seconds-to-destroy-cancer-cells/ar-AAKyXeB?li=BBoPWjQ

Scientists in Britain have invented a "sugar bomb" which destroys cancer cells in a matter of seconds, it has emerged.

Cancerous tumours need "food" to spread, so they consume the "bomb" which has a drug inside it.

Scientists at the University of Edinburgh combined the tiny cancer-killing molecule SeNBD with a chemical food compound to trick malignant cells into ingesting it.

The peer-reviewed experimental study was carried out on zebrafish and human cells, but researchers say more studies are needed to confirm if it is a safe and swift method of treating early stage cancer and drug-resistant bacteria.

Healthy cells are not harmed by the drug and it only works against cancer cells because they grow fast and need more food than the healthy ones.

Scientists hope that with this discovery the new treatment will increase survival rates and also prevent patients from having to go through chemotherapy.

It's only been tested on glioblastoma so far, which is the most common type of brain cancer.

Tests showed that the "sugar bomb" destroyed the sugar-craving cells in the tumour in mere seconds.

By coupling SeNBD with a chemical food compound it becomes the "ideal prey for harmful cells" which ingest it "without being alerted to its toxic nature".

The drug was invented by University of Edinburgh researchers who compared it to a Trojan Horse, and its effects to a "metabolic warhead".

SeNBD is also a light-activated photosensitiser, meaning it kills cells only after it is turned on by visible light.

It could tackle breast, prostate and lung cancers.

And Nature Communications has reported that the treatment will also be adapted for cancers that prefer consuming fat or protein.

With the treatment, a surgeon can precisely decide when they want to activate the drug, reducing the chances of it destroying healthy tissues and avoiding side-effects like hair loss caused by other anti-cancer agents, said the university.

Lead researcher Professor Marc Vendrell, chair of translational chemistry and Biomedical Imaging at the University of Edinburgh, said: "This research represents an important advance in the design of new therapies that can be simply activated by light irradiation, which is generally very safe.

"SeNBD is one of the smallest photosensitisers ever made and its use as a 'Trojan horse' opens many new opportunities in interventional medicine for killing harmful cells without affecting surrounding healthy tissue."

Dr Sam Benson, a post-doctoral researcher at the university, said the mechanism of the drug's delivery means it goes through the "front door of the cell" rather than having to "find a way to batter through the cell's defences".

https://www.msn.com/en-gb/health/medical/british-scientists-invent-new-sugar-bomb-which-takes-seconds-to-destroy-cancer-cells/ar-AAKyXeB?li=BBoPWjQ

Biden to honor forgotten victims of Tulsa race massacre

By JONATHAN LEMIRE
2 hours ago
https://apnews.com/article/george-floyd-death-of-george-floyd-donald-trump-tulsa-coronavirus-pandemic-6c24f5e351ceceddff2292178d146ef9

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden will take part in a remembrance of one of the nation’s darkest — and largely forgotten — moments of racial violence, marking the 100th anniversary of a massacre in Tulsa, Oklahoma, that wiped out a thriving Black community.

Biden’s visit Tuesday, in which he will grieve for the more than 300 Black people killed at the hands of a white mob a century ago, comes amid a national reckoning on racial justice. And it will stand in stark contrast to the last presidential visit to Tulsa, which took place last year.

After suspending his campaign rallies after the onset of the pandemic, President Donald Trump chose Tulsa as the site of his return and picked June 19, the holiday known as Juneteenth that commemorates the end of slavery in the United States. Upon receiving fierce criticism, Trump postponed the event by a day, though the rally was still marked by protests outside and empty seats inside the downtown arena.

Biden will be the first president to be part of the remembrances of what happened in what used to be known as “Black Wall Street.” On May 31 and June 1 in 1921, white residents and civil society leaders looted and burned to the ground the Greenwood district and used planes to drop projectiles on it.

The attackers killed up to 300 Black Tulsans and forced survivors for a time into internment camps overseen by National Guard members. Burned bricks and a fragment of a church basement are about all that survive today of the more than 30-block historically Black district.

The ongoing struggle over racial justice will continue to test Biden, whose presidency would not have been possible without overwhelming support from Black voters, both in the Democratic primaries and the general election.

He has pledged to help combat racism in policing in the wake of protests that swept the nation after George Floyd’s death a year ago and restarted a national conversation about race. Floyd, a Black man, was killed by a white Minneapolis police officer, Derek Chauvin, who pressed his knee on Floyd’s neck.

Chauvin was convicted in April, but Biden said the country’s work was far from finished with the verdict, declaring, “We can’t stop here.”

Biden called on Congress to act swiftly to address policing reform. But he has also long projected himself as an ally of police, who are struggling with criticism about long-used tactics and training methods and difficulties in recruitment.

Despite its horror, the massacre in Tulsa has only recently reentered the national discourse — and the presidential visit will serve to put an even brighter spotlight on the event.

“This is so important because we have to recognize what we have done if we are going to be otherwise,” said Eddie Glaude, chair of the Center for African American Studies at Princeton University. Biden’s visit “has to be more than symbolic. To tell the truth is the precondition for reconciliation, and reconciliation is the basis for repair.”

Historians say the trouble 100 years ago in Tulsa began after a local newspaper drummed up a furor over a Black man accused of stepping on a white girl’s foot. When Black Tulsans showed up with guns to prevent the man’s lynching, white residents responded with overwhelming force.

A grand jury investigation at the time concluded, without evidence, that unidentified agitators had given Tulsa’s African Americans both their firearms and what was described as their mistaken belief “in equal rights, social equality and their ability to demand the same.”

Tensions persist in Tulsa ahead of Biden’s appearance Tuesday.

Organizers called off a headline commemoration of the 100th anniversary of the Tulsa Race Massacre, saying no agreement could be reached over monetary payments to three survivors of the deadly attack. It highlights broader debates over reparations for racial injustice.

Reparations for Black Americans whose ancestors were enslaved and for other racial discrimination have been debated in the U.S. since slavery ended in 1865. Now they are being discussed by colleges and universities with ties to slavery and by local governments looking to make cash payments to Black residents.

But some of Tulsa’s Black residents question whether the $20 million spent on the construction of the Greenwood Rising museum in an increasingly gentrified part of the city could have been better spent helping Black descendants of the massacre or residents of the city’s predominantly Black north side several miles away from Greenwood.

Disagreements among Black leaders in Tulsa over the handling of commemoration events and millions of dollars in donations have led to two disparate groups planning separate slates of events marking the massacre’s 100th anniversary.

Biden, who served as vice president to the nation’s first Black president and selected a Black woman as his own vice president, backs a study of reparations, both in Tulsa and more broadly, but has not committed to supporting payments. He recently declared the need for Americans to confront its ugly past, saying, “We must acknowledge that there can be no realization of the American dream without grappling with the original sin of slavery, and the centuries-long campaign of violence, fear, and trauma wrought upon African American people in this country.”

The White House also issued a statement declaring Monday to be a “day of remembrance” for the massacre.

Trump’s own visit to Oklahoma last June came at a highly charged moment, just days after he ordered the forcible clearing of Lafayette Square across from the White House, with federal officers pushing out those peacefully protesting Floyd’s death. Trump reflexively embraced law enforcement throughout his presidency and was frequently accused of using racist rhetoric when painting apocalyptic — and inaccurate — scenes of American cities.

There were some brief skirmishes between Trump supporters and protesters outside the Tulsa venue last June. But the main headline was the disappointing turnout for Trump, who had proclaimed that the campaign had received a million ticket requests for his return to rallies.

Instead, he faced an arena that wasn’t even half full, as even supporters in a deep-red state stayed away during a surge in the coronavirus pandemic, resulting in a sea of empty seats and a furious president.

https://apnews.com/article/george-floyd-death-of-george-floyd-donald-trump-tulsa-coronavirus-pandemic-6c24f5e351ceceddff2292178d146ef9

‘Lee Harvey Oswald’ trends on Twitter after conservatives get punked on Memorial Day

Matthew Chapman
May 31, 2021
https://www.rawstory.com/lee-harvey-oswald/

On Memorial Day, Twitter blew up as several prominent right-wing figures were tricked into honoring Lee Harvey Oswald, the gunman who assassinated President John F. Kennedy.

The ruse was pulled off by The Intercept reporter Ken Klippenstein, who shared a picture of Oswald as a young private first class to several conservative accounts with the request, "My grandpa's a big fan of yours and is a veteran, he would be thrilled if you could RT this photo of him for Memorial Day." Right-wingers who fell for the prank included Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL), American Conservative Union president and lobbyist Matt Schlapp, and revisionist history documentary filmmaker Dinesh D'Souza.

beth @bethbourdon · 6h my god, it’s a trifecta



12:11 AM · Jun 1, 2021·Twitter for iPhone
YHREAD

my god, it’s a trifecta pic.twitter.com/yYYJ2psK11

— beth (@bethbourdon) May 31, 2021

At least 16 members of UK military referred to anti-extremism scheme

Exclusive: majority of Prevent investigations due to concerns about far-right activity, figures reveal

Analysis: attractiveness of British military for far-right continues to be a threat

Ben Quinn
@BenQuinn75
Mon 31 May 2021 18.30 BST
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/may/31/attraction-of-british-military-to-the-far-right-continues-to-be-a-threat-prevent

The attractiveness of the armed forces for the far right is as old as British fascism’s earliest incarnations.

During the extreme right’s periodic postwar resurgences, groups such as Oswald Mosley’s Union Movement and later the National Front also coveted recruits from the military’s ranks.

Yet in an age of concern about a new far right – technologically literate and at its most extreme focused less on political activity than on violence – the continued threat is underlined by records revealing multiple investigations of military personnel under the UK’s counter-terrorism programme, Prevent.

No fewer than 14 investigations were carried out in 2019, including 11 stemming from potential far-right concerns, while there were more this year and last. What’s missing is the number of referrals to Channel, the discrete de-radicalisation process under Prevent, which is voluntary.

Nevertheless, the figure is striking at a time when concerns about the far right’s penetration of the armed forces in democracies have been on the rise globally – particularly in the US and Germany.

It’s clear on some levels why the far right, often with a love of performative quasi-military trappings, would be drawn towards men and women in uniform. To those who hold themselves up as patriots, any association with Britain’s defenders lends the ultimate credibility. One only has to recall the smile on Tommy Robinson’s face in a 2018 video the English Defence League founder posted of himself surrounded by a group of young infantrymen.

There is also the obvious attraction, particularly for groups with individuals with violent intent in mind, of tapping into military training, if not closely guarded arms.

In all of this, credit may be given to the Ministry of Defence for its approach to far-right activity in its ranks, in terms of public statements and measures such as the internal guidance it emerged last year was being used by officers to spot “extreme rightwing” attitudes among soldiers. Activists have also been booted out when identified.

But images such as those that emerged in 2019 showing British paratroopers had used pictures of then Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn for target practice are among those that suggest that there is work to do.

What’s also not in doubt are the concerns – voiced by the service complaints ombudsman among others – about racism within the armed forces. Any foothold by the far right, however small, would deepen those fears.


https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/may/31/attraction-of-british-military-to-the-far-right-continues-to-be-a-threat-prevent

How Young G.O.P. Leaders Sold Out Their Generation

New York Times
May 31, 2021
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/31/opinion/elise-stefanik-trump-republicans.html

Once upon a time, a shiny new trio of young conservatives — Ryan Costello, Carlos Curbelo and Elise Stefanik — wanted to help build a modern, millennial Republican Party. The 30-somethings, all sworn into Congress in 2015, understood that millennials often agreed on many of the nation’s core problems, and believed it was up to them to offer conservative solutions. They were out to create a new G.O.P. for the 21st century.

“Whether it’s environmental policy or immigration policy, the younger generations are more open to the America of tomorrow,” Mr. Curbelo told me in 2018, when I interviewed him for a book about millennial political leaders. “We certainly have a lot of work to do on all those issues. The good news is that we have a lot of younger Republicans in Congress, and they all get it.”

It was clear, even then, that millennial voters across the political spectrum cared more about issues like racial diversity, L.G.B.T.Q. rights and college affordability than their parents did. Polls showed that young Republicans were more moderate on some issues than older ones, particularly on questions of immigration and climate change.

So Mr. Curbelo and Ms. Stefanik teamed up to fight for immigration reform, particularly for protections for young immigrants. They refused to join the right wing’s fight against marriage equality, likely recognizing that most young people embraced L.G.B.T.Q. rights. And Ms. Stefanik introduced a 2017 resolution, along with Mr. Costello and Mr. Curbelo, calling for American innovation to fight climate change — one of the strongest climate change statements to come out of the Republican Party in years. (Some octogenarian Republicans remained skeptical of climate science; just two years earlier, Senator Jim Inhofe brought a snowball onto the Senate floor to prove that global warming was a hoax.)

But their visions of the “America of tomorrow” hadn’t foreseen Donald Trump.

By 2018, Mr. Trump’s antics had helped lead Mr. Costello to opt for early retirement. That fall Mr. Curbelo, a sharp critic of the president, lost his re-election bid. Mia Love, the only Black Republican woman in Congress, was also defeated in the Democratic wave that year. Another young House Republican, Justin Amash, left the party in the face of Trumpism and dropped his bid for re-election in 2020. And Will Hurd, a young moderate and one of the few Black Republicans in the House in recent years, also decided not to run again.

Ms. Stefanik is one of the few of this set who survived, but only by transforming into a MAGA warrior. By 2020, she was co-chairing Mr. Trump’s campaign and embracing his conspiracy theories about a stolen election. Her pivot paid off: This month, she was elected to the No. 3 position in the House Republican Party. She is now the highest-ranking woman and most powerful millennial in the House G.O.P.

But a comparison of her past goals and present ambitions makes clear that Ms. Stefanik has morphed from optimist to operator, choosing short-term power over the long-term health of her party.

When I interviewed Ms. Stefanik in 2018 and 2019, she seemed to understand that the Republican Party was in trouble with young people. “The G.O.P. needs to prioritize reaching out to younger voters,” she told me. “Millennials bring a sense of bipartisanship and really rolling up our sleeves and getting things done.” Now she has tied her political career to the man who has perhaps done more than any other Republican to drive young voters away from her party, resulting in surging youth turnout for Democrats in the 2018 and 2020 elections.

Ms. Stefanik’s rise — and her colleagues’ fall — is not just a parable of Trumpism. It’s a broader omen for a party struggling to reach a 21st-century electorate. She ascended by embracing a movement that is all about relitigating the past rather than welcoming the future. Now she and other new Trump loyalists in Congress are caught between their party and their generations, stuck between their immediate ambitions and the long-term trends. The G.O.P. has embraced a political form of youth sacrifice, immolating their hopes for young supporters in order to appease an ancient, vengeful power.

Of course, the road to political obsolescence is littered with the bones of political analysts like me who predicted that demographics would be destiny. But Mr. Trump didn’t just devastate the G.O.P.’s fledgling class of up-and-coming talent. He also rattled the already precarious loyalty of young Republican voters; from December 2015 to March 2017, nearly half of Republicans under 30 left the party, according to Pew. Many returned, but by 2017, nearly a quarter of young conservatives had defected.

Millennials and Gen Zers were already skeptical of the G.O.P., but Mr. Trump alienated them even further. His campaign of white grievance held little appeal for the two most racially diverse generations in U.S. history. Youth voter turnout was higher in 2020 than it was in 2016, with 60 percent of young voters picking Joe Biden. His youth vote margin was sufficient to put him over the top in key states like Arizona, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Georgia, according to an analysis by Tufts University, and young voters of color were particularly energized.

Contrary to conventional wisdom that young people are always liberal and older people are always conservative, most voters form their political attitudes when they’re young and tend to stay roughly consistent as they age. And anti-Trumpism may now be one of the most durable political values of Americans under 50. By the end of Mr. Trump’s presidency, after the Jan. 6 insurrection, almost three-quarters of Americans under 50 said they strongly disapproved of him. Even young Republicans were cooling off: According to a new CBS poll, Republicans under 30 were more than twice as likely as those older than 44 to believe that Mr. Biden was the legitimate winner of the 2020 election and roughly twice as likely to believe the party shouldn’t follow Mr. Trump’s lead on race issues.

“Younger conservatives aren’t focused on the election being stolen or the cultural sound bites,” said Benji Backer, the president of the American Conservation Coalition, a conservative climate action group. He told me that Ms. Stefanik had “distanced herself from the youth conservation movement,” after years of being one of the most climate-conscious Republicans in Congress. Now, he said, “peddling misinformation about the election and Jan. 6 has made it harder for young people to look up to her as a future voice in the party.”

The new G.O.P. of 2015 has been replaced by a newer G.O.P.: a cohort of young Republican leaders who seem far more concerned with owning the libs on social media than with proposing conservative solutions to issues that matter to young people.

This cohort includes millennials like Representative Matt Gaetz and Representative Lauren Boebert as well as Representative Madison Cawthorn, a Gen Z-er, all Trump loyalists who voted to overturn the electoral vote result. Mr. Gaetz introduced a bill to terminate the Environmental Protection Agency, Ms. Boebert introduced a bill to designate antifa as a “domestic terrorist organization,” and Mr. Cawthorn has so embraced the Trumpian ethos of rhetoric as leadership that he once said he “built my staff around comms rather than legislation.”

It’s clear that this version of the Republican Party is firmly the party of old people: Mr. Gaetz and Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene kicked off their America First tour with a Trumpian rally at the Villages, Florida’s famous retirement community.

Once, the young leaders of the G.O.P. were trying to present next-generation solutions to next-generation problems. Now they’ve traded their claim on the future for an obsession with the past.

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/31/opinion/elise-stefanik-trump-republicans.html

Former Trump advisor Michael Flynn said the US should have a coup like Myanmar, where the military overthrew the democratically elected government
Kelsey Vlamis

Mon, 31 May 2021, 1:47 am·2-min read
https://uk.finance.yahoo.com/news/former-trump-advisor-michael-flynn-004712913.html

Former national security adviser Michael Flynn spoke at a QAnon conference in Dallas this weekend.

When asked about the coup in Myanmar, Flynn said that "it should happen here."

Myanmar's military overthrew the democratically elected government and has killed hundreds of people.

Michael Flynn, who served as President Donald Trump's national security adviser, told a crowd at a QAnon conference in Dallas, Texas, this weekend that the US should have a coup like the one in Myanmar.

On February 1, Myanmar's military overthrew its democratically elected government and arrested its leaders. The coup immediately sparked protests across the country, prompting the junta to launch a campaign against its own citizens.

Upwards of 800 Burmese people, including at least 40 children, have been killed, according to Myanmar's Assistance Association for Political Prisoners. More than 4,000 people have been arrested.

Flynn, who has become a prominent figure in the QAnon conspiracy theory, was a main attraction at the event, held at the Omni Hotel in Dallas.

In a video shared on Twitter, an attendee asks Flynn: "I want to know why what happened in Myanmar can't happen here."

The crowd immediately cheers, followed by Flynn's response: "No reason. I mean, it should happen here."

Mamie @MC_Hyperbole ·16h Here is the video of former national security advisor Michael Flynn saying that he thinks a coup like the coup in Myanmar should happen in the US.

VIDEO https://twitter.com/i/status/1399129297240084489

THREAD
https://twitter.com/MC_Hyperbole/status/1399129297240084489

QAnon communities have praised the Myanmar coup and endorsed the idea that it should happen in the US, according to Media Matters for America.

In 2017, Flynn pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about his communications with Russia. He later accused the Justice Department of entrapment and moved to withdraw his guilty plea. In November, Trump pardoned him.

Read the original article on Business Insider

https://uk.finance.yahoo.com/news/former-trump-advisor-michael-flynn-004712913.html

Four more Oath Keepers indicted for participating in Capitol attack

New indictment is part of a larger criminal conspiracy case that now includes 19 members of the far-right group

Edward Helmore
Mon 31 May 2021 14.16 BST
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/may/31/capitol-attack-four-more-oath-keepers-indicted

Four additional members of the Oath Keepers, a far-right militia group that took part in the storming of the US Capitol on 6 January, have been indicted for participating in the event.

Court documents unsealed on Sunday named three individuals living in Florida – Joseph Hackett, 51, of Sarasota, Jason Dolan, 44, of Wellington, and William Isaacs, 21, of Kissimmee. The three appeared last Thursday before US magistrates in Tampa, West Palm Beach and Orlando. A fourth person’s name was hidden.

The four new defendants are charged with conspiring to obstruct Congress’s confirmation of the 2020 presidential election results in a joint session of Congress that was interrupted by the attack on the Capitol by a pro-Trump mob. Five deaths were ultimately linked to the attack.

The four Oath Keepers are each accused of forcing entry through the Capitol’s East Rotunda doors after marching up the steps wearing combat uniforms, tactical vests, helmets and Oath Keepers insignia.

The new indictment is part of a larger criminal conspiracy case that now includes 19 members of the far-right group. Members previously charged in the government’s case have pleaded not guilty.

According to prosecutors, members of the group attended a 9 November meeting during which the Oath Keeper’s founder Stewart Rhodes, referred to in government documents as Person One, described the attack as an insurrection.

“We’re gonna be posted outside DC, awaiting the president’s orders. … We want him to declare an insurrection,” according to documents.

Prosecutors say the Oath Keepers is a loose federation of militia groups that targets law enforcement and military members for recruitment and promotes a totalitarian vision of the government that its members believes represents a threat to American citizens.

Rhodes, who has not been charged, has claimed that the government is trying to build the action of a few members into an alleged organizational conspiracy. “I may go to jail soon, not for anything I actually did, but for made-up crimes,” Rhodes told Texas Republicans in March, according to the Washington Post.

The new indictment alleges that Rhodes began developing plans to keep Donald Trump in office by force six days after the presidential vote. During an online meeting on 9 November, prosecutors claim, he told some of the Oath Keepers now under indictment:

We want [Trump] to declare an insurrection, and to call us up as the militia,” Rhodes allegedly stated.


https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/may/31/capitol-attack-four-more-oath-keepers-indicted

I’d be a Republican if it weren’t for the Republicans. So might many other African Americans.

Opinion by Robert J. Walker
May 30, 2021 at 1:00 p.m. GMT+1
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/05/30/id-be-republican-if-it-werent-republicans-so-might-many-other-african-americans/

Robert J. Walker, a retired educator and freelance writer in Walls, Miss., is the author of “12 Characteristics of an Effective Teacher.”

In an 1927 interview with the Harvard Crimson, Swarthmore College philosophy professor J.H. Holmes said he had spoken with Mahatma Gandhi about the Indian leader’s views of Western religion. “I like your Christ,” Gandhi told him, “but not your Christianity.” During Gandhi’s lifetime, many in India embraced the teachings of Christ, but they did not see Christ-like examples lived by their British rulers — and thus saw no need to convert to the Christian faith.

Something similar might be said about many of my fellow African Americans and their views of the Republican Party. They might share the Christian values and family values often espoused by the GOP, but they do not see nearly enough Republicans living those values. And they see far too many betraying them.

I would be a Republican if it weren't for the Republicans.

Many African American Christians are conservative in their beliefs, especially African American Christians living in the Deep South. I was born, raised, educated and still live in one of the reddest of red states: Mississippi. Like many churchgoing African Americans across the South, I agree with Republican rhetoric extolling low taxes, not depending on the government, working hard for what you get and living within your means.

Many of us even agree with Republicans on matters such as immigration and abortion. We hear Republicans say they are a “big tent” party and that they are welcoming to all people. But are they really?

We hear them when they say they are still the party of Abraham Lincoln, Ulysses S. Grant, Teddy Roosevelt, Dwight D. Eisenhower and Ronald Reagan. But are they really?

As Rachel Maddow on MSNBC often suggests, “Watch what they do, not what they say.” African Americans are watching what Republicans are doing, not what they are saying.

Before the 1960s, African Americans — or at least those who were not prohibited from voting by Jim Crow laws — voted Republican nearly half the time. Why? Because before the 1960s, the Republican Party backed legislation that had the residual effect of benefiting Black people. And the Democratic Party welcomed racist Southern segregationists.

After President Lyndon B. Johnson’s push for civil rights outraged “Dixiecrats” and then President Richard M. Nixon courted them with his “Southern strategy” appealing to racism, the parties shifted: The GOP came to resemble what the Democratic Party had once been, and the Democratic Party began to look more and more like what Republicans used to be. The Black vote followed the transformation. African Americans who once voted Republican began to overwhelmingly vote Democratic.

The Republican Party could have tried to regain Black support, but the GOP seems to have decided that doing so is just too much work — it’s easier to try to stop Black people from voting, period. In Republican-controlled states across the nation, the campaign for a 21st-century Jim Crow is well underway.

That is a tragedy, both for African Americans who are losing access to the ballot and for the Republican Party. It didn’t have to happen this way. How much more inspiring would it be if Republicans courted the African American vote instead of trying to suppress it?

Imagine if the GOP made high-profile African American appointments in the Republican National Committee. And imagine Republicans supporting, instead of almost automatically opposing, legislation that might primarily assist Black families.

Once upon a time, not too long ago, African Americans were prominent among Republicans. Colin Powell, the retired four-star Army general, was secretary of state in the George W. Bush administration. Then Powell gave way to Condoleezza Rice, the former national security adviser. A few years later, Michael Steele, the former lieutenant governor of Maryland, became chairman of the Republican National Committee.

What happened, GOP? Maybe you should ask those luminaries how to court the African American vote, and how to recruit local and national Black candidates for office.

Between now and November 2022, if Republican candidates came to our neighborhoods to conduct town hall meetings, to support our businesses, to visit our community centers and our churches to speak to the congregation, you just might see African Americans giving the Republican Party a fresh look. I would be among them. But the way things stand now? No way.


https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/05/30/id-be-republican-if-it-werent-republicans-so-might-many-other-african-americans/

Johnson & Johnson asks high court to void $2B talc verdict

By MARK SHERMAN
an hour ago
https://apnews.com/article/nj-state-wire-johnson-and-johnson-us-supreme-court-michael-brown-courts-37eb80193bd041286864392a764a2068

WASHINGTON (AP) — Johnson & Johnson is asking for Supreme Court review of a $2 billion verdict in favor of women who claim they developed ovarian cancer from using the company’s talc products.

The case features an array of high-profile attorneys, some in unusual alliances, including former independent counsel Kenneth Starr, who is representing the women who sued Johnson & Johnson. The nation’s largest business groups are backing the company, and a justice’s father also makes an appearance because of his long association with the trade group for cosmetics and personal care products.

The court could say as soon as Tuesday whether it will get involved.

At the root, Johnson & Johnson argues that the company didn’t get a fair shake in a trial in state court in Missouri that resulted in an initial $4.7 billion verdict in favor of 22 women who used talc products and developed ovarian cancer.

A state appeals court cut more than half the money out of the verdict and eliminated two of the plaintiffs but otherwise upheld the outcome in a trial in which lawyers for both sides presented dueling expert testimony about whether the company’s talc products contain asbestos and asbestos-laced talc can cause ovarian cancer.

The jury found for the women on both points, after which Judge Rex M. Burlison wrote that evidence at the trial showed “particularly reprehensible conduct on the part of Defendants.”

The evidence, Burlison wrote, included that the company knew there was asbestos in products aimed at mothers and babies, knew of the potential harm and “misrepresented the safety of these products for decades.”

Nine of the women have died from ovarian cancer, lawyers for the plaintiffs said

Johnson & Johnson denies that its talc products cause cancer and it called the verdict in the Missouri trial “at odds with decades of independent scientific evaluations confirming Johnson’s Baby Powder is safe, is not contaminated by asbestos and does not cause cancer.” The company also is the maker of one of three COVID-19 vaccines approved for use in the United States.

Health concerns about talcum powders have prompted thousands of U.S. lawsuits by women who claim asbestos in the powder caused their cancer. Talc is a mineral similar in structure to asbestos, which is known to cause cancer, and they are sometimes obtained from the same mines. The cosmetics industry in 1976 agreed to make sure its talc products do not contain detectable amounts of asbestos.

Last year, a U.S. government-led analysis of 250,000 women found no strong evidence linking baby powder with ovarian cancer in the largest analysis to look at the question, though the study’s lead author called the results “very ambiguous.”

The findings were called “overall reassuring” in an editorial published with the study in January 2020 in the Journal of the American Medical Association. The study wasn’t definitive but more conclusive research probably isn’t feasible because a dwindling number of women use powder for personal hygiene, the editorial said.

A few months later, the company announced it would stop selling its iconic talc-based Johnson’s Baby Powder in the U.S. and Canada, citing declining demand driven by what it called misinformation about health concerns.

The disputed link between cancer and talc is not really a part of the high court case. Instead, the company said it should have not been forced to defend itself in one trial against claims by women from 12 states, differing backgrounds and with varying histories of using Johnson & Johnson products containing talc.

The $1.6 billion in punitive damages is out of line and should be reduced, the company also argued in a brief that was written by Neal Katyal, a Washington lawyer who aligns with progressive causes and also represents corporate clients. Katyal, who was the acting top Supreme Court lawyer for a time in the Obama administration, declined an on-the-record interview.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce and trade associations for manufacturers, insurers and the pharmaceutical industry are among the business organizations backing Johnson & Johnson’s appeal.

Tiger Joyce, president of the American Tort Reform Association, pointed to how long it took the trial judge to read the jury its instructions as an indication of how unfair the trial was to Johnson & Johnson.

“When a defendant is facing a case where it takes over five hours for the judge to read the jury instructions to the jury, you just have to ask yourself what are we doing here,” said Joyce, whose group generally backs limits on liability lawsuits.

Starr said in an interview with The Associated Press that none of Johnson & Johnson’s legal arguments is worth the court’s time. “As the jury found and as every judge to review this six-week trial record has concluded, Johnson & Johnson’s conduct over decades was reprehensible,” Starr said.

In addition to Starr, other members of the women’s legal team are former Attorney General John Ashcroft and Washington lawyers David Frederick and Tom Goldstein, frequent advocates before the Supreme Court.

Justice Brett Kavanaugh worked for Starr when he investigated the affair between President Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky, which led to Clinton’s impeachment.

Another name that pops up in some documents in the case is E. Edward Kavanaugh, who was the longtime president of the Cosmetic, Toiletry and Fragrance Association and is the justice’s father.

Kavanaugh’s group fought efforts to list talc as a carcinogen or attach warning labels to talc products. Kavanaugh is retired and the group now is called the Personal Care Products Council.

Ethicists contacted by the AP said they haven’t seen anything that would warrant the justice having to step aside from the case.

Already, one justice almost certainly won’t take part. Justice Samuel Alito reported last year that he owned $15,000 to $50,000 in Johnson & Johnson stock. Federal law prohibits judges from sitting on cases in which they have financial interest.

https://apnews.com/article/nj-state-wire-johnson-and-johnson-us-supreme-court-michael-brown-courts-37eb80193bd041286864392a764a2068

Canada confronts its dark history of abuse in residential schools

Landmark report reveals school system’s brutal attempt to assimilate thousands of native children for more than a century and gives voice to survivors

This article is more than 5 years old
Mali Ilse Paquin in Montreal
Sat 6 Jun 2015 13.00 BST
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jun/06/canada-dark-of-history-residential-schools


Residential School survivor Lorna Standingready, left, is comforted during the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada closing ceremony in Ottawa earlier this week. Photograph: Blair Gable/Reuters

Sue Caribou contracts pneumonia once a year, like clockwork. The recurring illness stems from her childhood years at one of Canada’s horrific residential schools. “I was thrown into a cold shower every night, sometimes after being raped”, the frail 50-year-old indigenous mother of six said, matter-of-factly.

Caribou was snatched from her parents’ house in 1972 by the state-funded, church-run Indian Residential School system that brutally attempted to assimilate native children for over a century. She was only seven years old. “We had to stand like soldiers while singing the national anthem, otherwise, we would be beaten up”, she recalled.

Caribou said Catholic missionaries physically and sexually abused her until 1979 at the Guy Hill institution, in the east of the province of Manitoba. She said she was called a “dog”, was forced to eat rotten vegetables and was forbidden to speak her native language of Cree.

“I vowed to myself that if I ever get out alive of that horrible place, I would speak up and fight for our rights”, she said.

Her voice and that of 150,000 other residential school pupils was finally heard across the nation this week as Canada faced one of the darkest chapters in its history. The head of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), set up to examine the school system’s legacy, did not mince his words when he unveiled his landmark report. “Canada clearly participated in a period of cultural genocide”, declared Justice Murray Sinclair to cries and applause of survivors in Ottawa. Although prime minister Stephen Harper apologised for the school system in 2008 (as did the Roman Catholic Church in 2009), his government has always denied that it was a form of genocide.

Many survivors who gathered in Ottawa felt empowered for the first time in their life after hearing findings of the six-year-long commission.

“It feels like our story is validated at last and is out there for the world to see”, said a tearful 58 year-old Cindy Tom-Lindley, who is executive director of the Indian Residential School Survivor Society in British Columbia. “We were too scared as children to speak out. So to give our testimonies to the commission was liberating and emotional.”

As many as 6,000 children died in residential institutions, which ran from 1876 to 1996.

The accurate figure could be much higher however, since the government stopped recording aboriginal students’ deaths in 1920 in light of the alarming statistics. Caribou believes that dozens of pupils perished at the institution where she was detained. “Remains were found all over the fields. But numbers do not reflect the reality. Many of my friends committed suicide after their release”, said Caribou, who said she was frustrated that an inquiry did not take place twenty years ago, after the last of the residential schools closed

Justice Sinclair, who was the second aboriginal judge to be appointed in Canada in 1988, made clear the connection between residential schools and the social ills plaguing the First Nations today, namely unemployment, domestic violence, the over-representation of aboriginal children in foster care and the high homicide rate of indigenous women.

“I didn’t learn anything at the Guy Hill school except the “Our Father” prayer and the national anthem”, said Caribou. “My children taught me how to read and write. I’ve been a housekeeper all my life because of my lack of education and poor health”.

The hopeful mood among survivors in the capital was met with silence by the government, despite urgent calls to act on the commission’s 94 recommendations. Prime Minister Harper did not utter a word while he attended the emotional closing ceremony of the TRC on Thursday, nor did he announce any measures that would further reconciliation for survivors and close the economic gap between First Nations and non-aboriginal Canadians.

Since coming into power in 2006, the Conservative government has repeatedly rejected some long-standing demands by First Nations, such as holding a national enquiry on the missing and murdered aboriginal women, a measure also recommended by Justice Sinclair.

“If Stephen Harper’s apology for residential schools is not followed by actions, it will prove to be meaningless”, warned Perry Bellegarde, Chief of the Assembly of First Nations. Bellegarde said Harper should move quickly on certain policy proposals, such as promoting the use of native languages and introducing aboriginal rights in the school curriculums across the nation. Bellegarde also stressed that more funding is desperately needed for equal education on reserves, where the government spends 3,000 dollars less per student than the national average.

The upcoming federal elections this October might still turn the tide in favour of the First Nations. Leaders of the two opposition parties – the New Democratic Party and the Liberal Party – have both promised to act on key policies if elected on October 19. There has been growing support in the general population for aboriginal requests, with three quarters of Canadians in favour of a public enquiry on violence against indigenous women who are four times more at risk of being murdered. NDP’s Thomas Mulcair has pledged that he would set up one within days of being elected.

Tom-Lindley hopes that the awareness and political pressure on the Harper government will continue to grow until Election Day.

“Canadians are starting to get the message that this is not only an aboriginal issue, it concerns everyone. We have found our voice and we will not keep quiet anymore.”

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jun/06/canada-dark-of-history-residential-schools

Canada: remains of 215 children found at Indigenous residential school site

Officials make grim discovery near Kamloops, British Columbia

First Nation chief says causes and timings of deaths not known

Tracey Lindeman in Ottawa
Fri 28 May 2021 16.27 BST
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/may/28/canada-remains-indigenous-children-mass-graves

A mass grave containing the remains of 215 Indigenous children has been discovered on the grounds of a former residential school in the interior of southern British Columbia.

The grim discovery at the former school near the town of Kamloops was announced late on Thursday by the Tk’emlups te Secwépemc people after the site was examined by a team using ground-penetrating radar.

“We had a knowing in our community that we were able to verify. To our knowledge, these missing children are undocumented deaths,” said Rosanne Casimir, chief of the Tk’emlúps te Secwépemc, in a statement.

Some of the remains belong to children as young as three years old, but the causes and timing of their deaths are not yet known. “At this time we have more questions than answers,” said Casimir.

The Kamloops Indian residential school was established in 1890 under the leadership of the Roman Catholic church, and closed in 1978.

It was part of a cross-Canada network of residential schools created to forcibly assimilate Indigenous children by removing them from their homes and communities, and forbidding them from speaking their native languages or performing cultural practices. Physical, emotional and sexual abuse were rampant within these institutions, as was forced labour.

At least 150,000 children attended such schools in what a historic 2015 Truth and Reconciliation Commission described as a “culture of genocide” targeting Canada’s Indigenous people.

In documents submitted to the commission, former Kamloops attendees described the harsh conditions of the school, which did not receive enough per-capita funding from the government to pay for its costs.

George Manuel, who attended in the 1920s, said: “Every Indian student smelled of hunger.” The school was described as being cold in winter and unsanitary.

The same documents mention that students were exposed to outbreaks of measles, tuberculosis, influenza and other contagious diseases, and many died.

In a 1935 report on a death from measles at the school, an agent noted that “the sleeping accommodation for 285 pupils in the school consists of five dormitories, which are crowded. During an epidemic it is impossible to properly isolate the patients and contacts.”


Wooden stakes mark areas where bodies are believed to be buried on the site of the former Kamloops school. Photograph: Canadian Press/Rex/Shutterstock

Violence against the Kamloops residential school students continued until its closure. The TRC recounted that in the 1960s, the school principal at Kamloops advocated for putting older boys who got into fights into a boxing ring. “Put them in the ring with gloves and supervise a boxing match until both boys are too tired to care any more.”

Indigenous communities have long believed mass graves of residential school students existed, and proving it has been a decades-long process. “It matters because the story of secret residential-school mass graves is an urban legend,” said a column in British Columbia news outlet TheTyee.ca.

The TRC has calculated at least 3,201 residential school deaths, although the true total may never be known due to unaccounted deaths and destroyed files.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/may/28/canada-remains-indigenous-children-mass-graves

Texas Democrats block restrictive voting bill by walking off the floor to deny GOP-majority House a quorum

By Amy Gardner
May 31, 2021 at 6:06 a.m. GMT+1
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/texas-voting-restrictions/2021/05/30/51dfa134-c140-11eb-93f5-ee9558eecf4b_story.html

Texas Democrats staged a dramatic walkout in the state House late Sunday night to block passage of a restrictive voting bill that would have been one of the most stringent in the nation, forcing Republicans to abruptly adjourn without taking a vote on the measure.

The surprise move came after impassioned late-night debate and procedural objections about the GOP-backed legislation, which would have made it harder to vote by mail, empowered partisan poll watchers and made it easier to overturn election results. Republicans faced a midnight deadline to approve the measure.

Gov. Greg Abbott (R) tweeted that he would add the bill to a special session he plans to call later this year to address legislative redistricting. “Legislators will be expected to have worked out the details when they arrive at the Capitol for the special session,” he wrote.

But it was an unmistakable defeat for the governor and fellow Republicans, who had crafted one of the most far-reaching voting bills in the country — pushing restrictions championed by former president Donald Trump, who has falsely claimed that his defeat in the 2020 election was tainted by fraud.

The exodus from the floor came after Chris Turner, the House Democratic chairman, sent instructions to colleagues at 10:35 p.m. Central time instructing them to exit the House, according to an image shared with The Washington Post.

“Members, take your key and leave the chamber discreetly,” Turner wrote, referring to the key that locks the voting mechanism on their desks. “Do not go to the gallery. Leave the building.”

“We decided to come together and say we weren’t going to take it,” state Rep. Jessica González (D) said in an interview after the walkout, adding that she objected to the measure’s content and the way it was crafted with no input from her side of the aisle. “We needed to be part of the process. Cutting us out completely — I mean, this law will affect every single voter in Texas.”

The Republican-majority House took up the legislation after the Senate passed it early Sunday following a marathon overnight debate that stretched more than seven hours. The measure mirrors other GOP-backed legislation approved in Georgia, Florida and other states.

In a statement, Turner said that dozens of House Democrats were prepared to give speeches objecting to the bill, but that “it became obvious Republicans were going to cut off debate to ram through their vote suppression legislation. At that point, we had no choice but to take extraordinary measures to protect our constituents and their right to vote.”

After the walkout, House Democrats assembled at a predominantly Black church in Austin, Mt. Zion Fellowship Hall, to speak to reporters. Staff members said leaders chose the location to highlight the party’s successful fight against a bill they said would have targeted voters of color in particular.

“We remain vigilant against any attempt to bring back this racist bill in a special session,” Sarah Labowitz, policy and advocacy director for the ACLU of Texas, said in a statement.

In a statement late Sunday, Republican House Speaker Dade Phelan said the decision by Democrats to abruptly leave the chamber killed a number of other pending bills that had bipartisan support. “Texans shouldn't have to pay the consequences of these members' actions — or in this case, inaction,” he said, adding that majority of Texans support “making our elections stronger and more secure.”

As the night wore on, it became clear that House Democrats intended to do everything they could to block Senate Bill 7, pushing the legislation perilously close to the body’s midnight deadline to act. At one point early in the session, more than two dozen Democrats were absent for a procedural vote, prompting a flurry of speculation that they might try to block a vote by denying the House the necessary quorum.

Calling the measure “egregious” and “horrific,” Democratic lawmakers likened it to the Jim Crow laws of the 20th century that effectively barred Black Americans from voting in Southern states. They sought to slow the process by arguing that the bill had not been properly debated in either chamber.

“That means the voices of Texans were not heard in this debate,” said Rep. John Bucy III (D).

Republicans hashed out a final version behind closed doors late last week over the objections of Democrats, civil rights leaders and business executives, who said the measure targets voters of color. President Biden on Saturday called it “wrong and un-American,” and Democrats vowed to immediately challenge it in court.

“Every American needs to be watching what’s happening in Texas right now,” Rep. Colin Allred (D-Tex.) said Sunday at a news conference. “And we have to have a federal response to this because this has gone way too far.”

“This isn’t legislation,” he added. “This is discrimination.”

Democrats urged Congress to pass federal voting rights legislation, which has been stalled in the U.S. Senate.

“This is a now-or-never moment in American democracy,” Rep. Joaquin Castro (D-Tex.) said, adding: “If we don’t act now, then our democracy is not going to look the same either in 2022 or 2024.”

The Texas measure is the latest example of how Republican legislators around the country have pushed for new voting restrictions as Trump has kept up a barrage of false attacks on the integrity of the 2020 election.

How the new Texas voting bill would create hurdles for voters of color

GOP lawmakers in Texas argued the bill is necessary to shore up voter trust, even though they have struggled to justify the need for stricter rules in the state, where officials said the 2020 election was secure.

Sen. Bryan Hughes (R), one of the sponsors of the measure, wrote on Twitter on Saturday that it “is a strong bill that gives accessibility & security to Texas elections.”

Senate Bill 7 would have imposed a raft of hurdles on casting ballots by mail and enhanced civil and criminal penalties for election administrators, voters and those seeking to assist them.

The measure would have made it illegal for election officials to send out unsolicited mail ballot applications, empowered partisan poll watchers and banned practices such as drop boxes and drive-through voting that were popularized in heavily Democratic Harris County last year. It would have barred early-voting hours on Sunday mornings, potentially hampering get-out-the-vote programs aimed at Black churchgoers.

The final version included numerous provisions inserted at the last minute, including language making it easier to overturn an election, no longer requiring evidence that fraud actually altered an outcome of a race but rather only that enough ballots were illegally cast that could have made a difference. The legislation also would have changed the legal standard for overturning an election from “reasonable doubt” to “preponderance of the evidence” — a much lower evidentiary bar.

Texas Republicans finalize bill that would enact stiff new voting restrictions and make it easier to overturn election results

The Senate debate began late Saturday night and lasted more than seven hours into early Sunday, as Democrats argued that the measure would create barriers for many voters of color.

One Black senator from Houston, Borris Miles (D), took issue with a provision requiring anyone who transports more than two voters to the polls to fill out a form, saying that many of the voters he represents lack transportation and get rides from other residents.

“You really have no idea and no realistic vision about how things work in my neighborhood and neighborhoods like mine,” he said during the overnight debate. “Everybody doesn’t have access to cars.”

Miles gestured to portraits of Confederate leaders hanging on the walls of the Senate chamber and asked, “Why are we allowing people to roll back the hands of time?”

The proposed voting hurdles came after the state logged record turnout in the 2020 election, including huge surges in early voting in cities including Austin and Houston.

One lawmaker accused Republican proponents of Senate Bill 7 of intentionally erecting barriers for voters in Harris County, home of Houston and an increasingly Democratic stronghold with a large minority population.

“Let’s talk about the elephant in the room,” said Sen. Carol Alvarado (D-Houston), according to Houston Chronicle reporter Jeremy Wallace, who chronicled the debate on Twitter through the night. “This is about Harris County.”

The bill would have broadly prohibited local election officials from altering election procedures without express legislative permission — a direct hit against Harris County, where election officials implemented various expansions last year to help voters cast ballots during the coronavirus pandemic. It also specifically targeted some of those expansions, explicitly banning drive-through voting locations, temporary polling places in tents and 24-hour or late-night voting marathons.

Republican Sen. Paul Bettencourt of Houston defended the restrictions, claiming without evidence that “drive-through voting didn’t work” and resulted in a 1.5 percent error rate.

Chris Hollins, who served as elections clerk in Harris County last year, disputed that claim.

“Drive-thru voting is safe, convenient, and secure for Texas voters. It worked so well in 2020 that nearly 1 in 10 in-person voters in Harris County cast their votes at drive-thrus,” he said in a text message.

“It’s a great service for Democratic and Republican voters, and everyone in between. Senator Bettencourt is not a fan because in 2020, too many of those voters were women and minorities.”

Republican sponsors of the bill dismissed the criticism.

“Senate Bill 7 is one of the most comprehensive and sensible election reform bills in Texas history,” Rep. Briscoe Cain (R) and Hughes said in a statement issued Friday evening. “There is nothing more foundational to this democracy and our state than the integrity of our elections.”

Cliff Albright, co-founder of the group Black Voters Matter, said such rhetoric mirrors the language used during the Jim Crow era to bar Black Americans from voting without explicitly stating that as the goal. He noted that an earlier version of the voting bill described the need to protect the “purity of the ballot box,” a phrase in the Texas Constitution. Similar language was used decades ago by white supremacists to limit Black voting.

“This bill is exactly in the Jim Crow tradition,” Albright said. “While not mentioning race, it is inarguably the case that these provisions are squarely aimed at Black and Brown voters.”

Critics also took aim at the process as much as the substance of Senate Bill 7, the details of which were hammered out behind closed doors. And they slammed Republican leaders for not appointing a single Black lawmaker to the negotiating team on a bill with major civil rights implications in a state with a long history of voting discrimination.

Marc Elias, a prominent Democratic election lawyer, promised to challenge the law in court quickly if Abbott signs it. He also noted that the measure’s restriction of early voting before 1 p.m. on Sundays is a direct assault on “souls to the polls,” the longtime get-out-the-vote effort that encourages Black voters to cast their ballots after church services.

Elias also accused business leaders of doing too little to block the bill.

“Can anyone send links to the statements about the new Texas bill from the 700 companies that said they were standing up against voter suppression?” Elias tweeted on Saturday. “Specifically, what steps they will take in Texas now?” The tweet also included images of crickets, denoting the business community’s silence in recent days about the Texas bill.

As the voting rights fight moves to Texas, defiant Republicans test the resolve of corporations that oppose restrictions

GOP lawmakers in dozens of states are pushing new voting measures in the name of election security, under intense pressure from supporters who echo Trump’s false claims of rampant fraud. States including Florida, Georgia, Iowa and Montana have passed measures that curtail voting access, imposing new restrictions on mail voting, the use of drop boxes and the ability to offer voters food or water while they wait in long lines.

During debate in the House earlier this month, Cain maintained that he was not backing a voter “suppression” bill but rather a voting “enhancement” bill, insisting that the measure was designed to protect “all voters.”

According to the final text approved Sunday, the Texas bill would have:

* Imposed state felony penalties on public officials who offer an application to vote by mail to someone who didn’t request it.

* Allowed signatures on mail ballot applications to be compared with any signature on record, eliminating protections that the signature on file must be recent and that the application signature must be compared with at least two others on file to prevent the arbitrary rejection of ballots.

* Imposed new identification requirements on those applying for mail ballots, in most cases requiring a driver’s license or ­Social Security number.

* Imposed a civil fine of $1,000 a day for local election officials who do not maintain their voter rolls as required by law, and impose criminal penalties on election workers who obstruct poll watchers.

& Granted partisan poll watchers new access to watch all steps of the voting and counting process “near enough to see and hear the activity.”

? And required individuals to fill out a form if they plan to transport more than two nonrelatives to the polls, and expand the requirement that those assisting voters who need help must sign an oath attesting under penalty of perjury that the people they’re helping are eligible for assistance because of a disability and that they will not suggest for whom to vote.


Amy B Wang contributed to this report.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/texas-voting-restrictions/2021/05/30/51dfa134-c140-11eb-93f5-ee9558eecf4b_story.html

Sidney Powell Claims Trump 'Can Simply Be Reinstated,' Biden Told to Leave White House

BY JASON LEMON ON 5/30/21 AT 10:47 AM EDT
https://www.newsweek.com/sidney-powell-claims-trump-can-simply-reinstated-biden-told-leave-white-house-1596207

Attorney Sidney Powell, who filed baseless 2020 election challenges on behalf of former President Donald Trump, insisted on Saturday that the Republican politician "can simply be reinstated"—continuing to promote conspiracy theories and misinformation about President Joe Biden's victory.

Powell made the remarks during the "For God & Country Patriot Roundup" conference in Dallas this weekend. Also speaking at the event was retired general Michael Flynn, the former Trump national security who has also repeatedly pushed false claims about the 2020 election.

"He can simply be reinstated," Powell said of Trump during the conference. The crowd cheered loudly in response to her groundless claims.

"And Biden is told to move out of the White House," the lawyer continued with a smirk on her face. "And President Trump should be moved back in. I'm sure there's not going to be credit for time lost, unfortunately. Because the Constitution itself sets the date for inauguration. But he should definitely get the remainder of his term and make the best of it. That's for sure," Powell insisted.

Powell also suggested that Trump could have fought harder to stay in office. "He had all the tools he needed," she said. "From the day after the election, everyone else around him at the White House was telling him to just pack it up and go home."

In the wake of Trump's election loss in November, the former president initially solicited the legal aid of Powell to formally represent his campaign in court challenges to the results. However, after the attorney was widely mocked for her bizarre and often illogical claims, the then president said publicly that she was not officially part of his legal team. Powell continued to file election challenges independently, including the so-called "Kraken" lawsuits in key battleground states.

Powell's lawsuits, as well as dozens of others filed by Trump and his allies, failed in state and federal courts. Even judges appointed by Trump and other Republicans rejected the allegations. Meanwhile, multiple ballot recounts and audits in key battleground states—including in places where the election was overseen by Republicans who supported Trump—have reaffirmed Biden's election win.

Former Attorney General William Barr, who was widely viewed as one of Trump's most loyal Cabinet members, asserted in December that there was "no evidence" of fraud that would impact the election's outcome. Prior to that, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency at the Department of Homeland Security described the 2020 election as the "most secure in American history." The federal agency, which was led by a Trump appointee at the time, said there was "no evidence that any voting system deleted or lost votes, changed votes, or was in any way compromised."

But Trump, Powell, Flynn and other allies of the former president continue to promote baseless claims about the 2020 election. These groundless allegations have added fuel to the bizarre QAnon conspiracy theory. Adherents to QAnon believe that the country is largely run and controlled by a group of Satan-worshipping pedophile Democratic politicians and Hollywood elites. They believe that Trump has somehow been working to challenge and destroy their organization.

A poll released last week by the Public Religion Research Institute found that nearly a quarter (23 percent) of Republicans agreed with the statement, "the government, media, and financial worlds in the U.S. are controlled by a group of Satan-worshipping pedophiles who run a global child sex trafficking operation." Furthermore, 28 percent of Republicans said they believe that "true American patriots" may need to resort to violence to save the U.S. because it has gone so off track.

"Our country needs to turn around," Brenda Bintz, a retired nurse from New Jersey who attended the weekend conference featuring Powell and Flynn, told The Dallas Morning News. "We've turned our back on God."

Powell is facing a $1.3 billion defamation lawsuit from Dominion Voting Systems over her false claims about the company's alleged involvement in a plot to rig the election for Biden. In response to the lawsuit, Powell's attorneys said in a March court filing related to the defamation lawsuit "that reasonable people would not accept" Powell's statements about the 2020 election "as fact."

Newsweek reached out to Powell for further comment.

https://www.newsweek.com/sidney-powell-claims-trump-can-simply-reinstated-biden-told-leave-white-house-1596207

Netanyahu could lose PM job as rivals attempt to join forces

By JOSEF FEDERMAN
37 minutes ago
https://apnews.com/article/middle-east-israel-338004eee311023736078cec262713be

JERUSALEM (AP) — The head of a small hard-line party on Sunday said he would try to form a unity government with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s opponents, taking a major step toward ending the 12-year rule of the Israeli leader.

In a nationwide address, Yamina party leader Naftali Bennett said he had decided to join forces with the country’s opposition leader, Yair Lapid.

“It’s my intention to do my utmost in order to form a national unity government along with my friend Yair Lapid, so that, God willing, together we can save the country from a tailspin and return Israel to its course,” Bennett said.

The pair have until Wednesday to complete a deal in which they are expected to each serve two years as prime minister in a rotation deal. Lapid’s Yesh Atid party said negotiating teams were to meet later Sunday.

A unity government would end the cycle of deadlock that has plunged the country into four inconclusive elections over the past two years. It also would end, at least for the time being, the record-setting tenure of Netanyahu, the most dominant figure in Israeli politics over the past three decades.

In his own televised statement, Netanyahu accused Bennett of betraying the Israeli right wing.

He urged nationalist politicians who have joined the coalition talks not to establish what he called a “leftist government.”

“A government like this is a danger to the security of Israel, and is also a danger to the future of the state,” he said.

Bennett, a former Netanyahu aide turned rival, said he was taking the dramatic step to prevent yet another election. While sharing Netanyahu’s nationalist ideology, Bennett said there was no feasible way for the hard-line right wing to form a governing majority in parliament.

“A government like this will succeed only if we work together as a group,” he said.

He said everyone “will need to postpone fulfilling all their dreams. We will focus on what can be done, instead of fighting all day on what’s impossible.”

Each of the past four elections was seen as a referendum on Netanyahu -- who has become a polarizing figure as he stands trial on corruption charges — with each ending in deadlock.

Netanyahu is desperate to stay in power while he is on trial. He has used his office as a stage to rally support and lash out against police, prosecutors and the media.

If his opponents fail to form a government and new elections are triggered, it would give him another chance at seeing the election of a parliament that is in favor of granting him immunity from prosecution. But if they succeed, he would find himself in the much weaker position of opposition leader and potentially find himself facing unrest in his Likud party.

Netanyahu, who has accused Bennett of betraying the Israeli right wing, planned a televised statement later Sunday.

In order to form a government, a party leader must secure the support of a 61-seat majority in parliament. Because no single party controls a majority on its own, coalitions are usually built with smaller partners.

As leader of the largest party, Netanyahu was given the first opportunity by the country’s figurehead president to form a coalition. But he was unable to secure a majority with his traditional religious and nationalist allies.

Netanyahu even attempted to court a small Islamist Arab party but was thwarted by a small ultranationalist party with a racist anti-Arab agenda. Although Arabs make up some 20% of Israel’s population, an Arab party has never before sat in an Israeli coalition government.

After Netanyahu’s failure to form a government, Lapid was then given four weeks to cobble together a coalition. He has until Wednesday to complete the task.

Lapid already faced a difficult challenge, given the broad range of parties in the anti-Netanyahu bloc that have little in common. They include dovish left-wing parties, a pair of right-wing nationalist parties, including Bennett’s Yamina, and most likely the Islamist United Arab List.

Lapid’s task was made even more difficult after war broke out with Hamas militants in the Gaza Strip on May 10. His coalition talks were put on hold during the 11 days of fighting.

But with Wednesday’s deadline looming, negotiations have kicked into high gear. Lapid has reached coalition deals with three other parties so far. If he finalizes a deal with Bennett, the remaining partners are expected to quickly fall into place.

___

AP correspondent Ilan Ben Zion contributed reporting.

https://apnews.com/article/middle-east-israel-338004eee311023736078cec262713be

Manhattan DA could pursue racketeering charge in Trump Org probe, experts say

Lawyers suggest that District Attorney Cy Vance might use New York’s “little RICO” statute to prosecute enterprise corruption.

By JOSH GERSTEIN and BETSY WOODRUFF SWAN
Politico
05/27/2021 06:49 PM EDT
https://www.politico.com/news/2021/05/27/trump-organization-probe-491279

Manhattan District Attorney Cy Vance could be considering a criminal charge that former President Donald Trump’s business empire was a corrupt enterprise under a New York law resembling the federal racketeering statute known as RICO, former prosecutors and defense attorneys said.

New York’s enterprise corruption statute — which carries the potential for severe penalties — can be applied to money-making businesses alleged to have repeatedly engaged in criminal activity as a way to boost their bottom line.

“I’m sure they’re thinking about that,” veteran Manhattan defense attorney Robert Anello said. “No self-respecting state white-collar prosecutor would forgo considering the enterprise corruption charge.”

The state law — sometimes called “little RICO” — can be invoked with proof of as few as three crimes involving a business or other enterprise and can carry a prison term of up to 25 years, along with a mandatory minimum of one to three years.

“It’s a very serious crime,” said Michael Shapiro, a defense attorney who used to prosecute corruption cases in New York. “Certainly, there are plenty of things an organization or business could do to run afoul of enterprise corruption, if they’re all done with the purpose of enhancing the revenue of the enterprise illegally. … It’s an umbrella everything else fits under.”

Despite a series of court battles over access to Trump’s tax returns and Trump Organization records, no charges have been filed against the Trump Organization, Donald Trump or current Trump Organization officials. A spokesperson for Vance’s office declined to comment on whether prosecutors are mulling charges under the enterprise corruption law.

Attorneys for the Trump Organization did not respond to requests for comment, but Trump himself has denounced Vance’s ongoing probe as a politically inspired witch hunt.

“This is purely political, and an affront to the almost 75 million voters who supported me in the Presidential Election, and it’s being driven by highly partisan Democrat prosecutors,” Trump said in a statement Tuesday, following reports that Vance impaneled a special grand jury to hear testimony about potential crimes involving the Trump organizations.

“New York City and State are suffering the highest crime rates in their history, and instead of going after murderers, drug dealers, human traffickers, and others, they come after Donald Trump,” the former president added.

Vance’s team has reportedly examined a wide range of Trump and Trump Organization activities, including whether Trump aides knowingly submitted inflated real estate valuations to lenders and insurance companies while understating values for tax purposes, as The New York Times has detailed.

Former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen made similar claims during House testimony in 2019 and has been cooperating with Vance’s office after serving time in federal prison on several charges.

Prosecutors are reportedly eyeing several properties in their probe of potential financial wrongdoing, including Trump’s Seven Springs Estate in Westchester County, as CNBC has reported. New York Attorney General Letitia James, who recently agreed to coordinate her efforts with Vance’s, has also been examining valuations of Trump Tower in Chicago and Trump National Golf Club Los Angeles, according to a court filing last year.

The district attorney’s office has also examined financial payments made during the 2016 campaign to two women in bids to keep stories about alleged sexual encounters with Trump from going public. Lawyers said alternative explanations given for the payments could violate New York laws against making false entries in business records.

Not all lawyers are convinced that trying to paint Trump’s entire business empire as a criminal enterprise, or bringing an umbrella charge that would seem to assert that, is a good idea.

“Can you imagine a defense attorney standing up and saying: ‘Are you saying the whole Donald Trump enterprise is a criminal organization?’” asked Jeremy Saland, a former prosecutor in the Manhattan DA’s office who is now in private practice.

Saland said prosecutors would probably be better off simply attempting to file specific charges on things like tax or business fraud, rather than trying to broaden the case.

“Why overcharge and complicate something that could be fairly simple?” he said. “Why muddy up the water? Why give a defense attorney something that could confuse a jury and be able to crow that they beat a charge in a motion to dismiss?”

Saland also noted that the penalties for crimes like high-value tax frauds are similar to enterprise corruption.

One challenge for prosecutors could be the time limits in the New York state racketeering law. The government would have to prove two of any crimes charged occurred in the previous five years. That means any alleged crimes that took place during the height of the Trump campaign in 2016 could lose their ability to trigger the “little RICO” law in the coming months.

However, if prosecutors can meet those timing requirements, invoking New York’s racketeering law might allow them to buttress their case with evidence of older episodes of wrongdoing or episodes they can’t charge individually, lawyers said.

New York’s enterprise corruption law — part of the Organized Crime Control Act — was passed in 1986 and modeled on the better-known federal statute dating to 1970, the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act.

The measures were originally billed as means of cracking down on the mafia, drug gangs and businesses fronting for organized crime, but over time courts ruled that the broad statutes were not limited to such uses and could be used against such things as anti-abortion protesters who threatened violence or blockaded clinics.

The laws “all were designed for organized crime, but the courts have held by the terms of those statutes they have broad applicability,” Anello said.

Former prosecutors and defense attorneys described Vance’s move to use a special grand jury, first reported by the Washington Post Tuesday, as a logical one.

“The impaneling of one of these grand juries nearly always means that the DA has at least tentatively decided to present at least some charges to the grand jury for its consideration of an indictment or indictments. Typically, the exact contours of what those charges are, against whom, and what they will look like is not decided until much later in the long-term grand jury’s life,” emailed Daniel Alonso, who served as chief assistant district attorney under Vance.

Alonso said one focus of the probe seems to be Trump Organization Chief Financial Officer Allen Weisselberg, whose personal income tax returns have reportedly come under scrutiny. The New York Times has reported that Manhattan’s district attorney appears to be seeking Weisselberg’s cooperation with the probe. “Beyond that, we’ll have to wait and see,” said Alonso, now with law firm Buckley LLP.

Other lawyers said if Vance seeks charges, the grand jury is virtually certain to go along.

“I was a special prosecutor. I presented lots of cases to lots of special grand juries,” Shapiro said. “The prosecutors work together with the grand jury, day to day. … The natural thing that happens is everyone gets the idea we’re all on the same team. Ultimately, the grand jury will do what the prosecutors asks them to do. … If at the end of a number of months, this grand jury is asked to bring charges against Trump and others, they’ll do it — 999 times out of 1,000 they do it.”

Regardless of what charges prosecutors are weighing, their move to use a special grand jury means the probe is plowing ahead.

“While it does not mean that charges are certain, it is a necessary step toward indictment,” said Barbara McQuade, a former U.S. attorney. “We have known for a while that the DA had obtained Trump’s tax returns after a lengthy battle. It appears that those documents contained sufficient evidence of potential criminal activity to take this next step.”

New York state law requires grand juries hear firsthand any testimony cited in an indictment. While FBI agents can simply paraphrase witness testimony to grand juries for federal cases, the New York rule requires greater evidentiary heft.

“New York grand juries differ from federal grand juries in that hearsay is not permitted,” McQuade noted. “That means that prosecutors must present first-hand witnesses, which may explain why the grand jury will sit for three days a week for six months.”

And in this case — as in many cases involving complex financial fraud — witness testimony could be pivotal, according to Kan Nawaday, a partner at Venable and former federal prosecutor.

“I doubt that there’s going to be a smoking gun document,” he said. “I think any investigation would have to rely on witness testimony, which is — it’s been reported — why everyone believes that the ultimate target of the investigation is likely Allen Weisselberg or other executives in the Trump Organization who knew day-to-day details of how they conducted their business.”

If prosecutors pursuing the Trump Organization go down the “little RICO” road, it would not be the first time a Trump business has faced legal claims that its practices amounted to racketeering. As Trump won the presidency in 2016, he was battling a civil class-action lawsuit claiming that the activities of his Trump University real-estate program ran afoul of federal RICO.

Trump’s lawyers vehemently rejected the assertion, arguing that the plaintiffs were trying to turn “garden-variety” fraud claims into a federal racketeering case. Trump’s team also pointed to a court ruling calling RICO “the litigation equivalent of a thermonuclear device.”

However, a federal judge ruled that the suit could proceed to trial. After Trump won the 2016 election, he settled that case and related Trump University suits for $25 million, while still denying wrongdoing.

https://www.politico.com/news/2021/05/27/trump-organization-probe-491279

‘They didn’t talk about it’: how a historian helped Tulsa confront the horror of its past


After the Tulsa Race Massacre in 1921, whole neighborhoods such as the Greenwood district were destroyed. Photograph: Universal History Archive/Getty Images

David Smith
@smithinamerica
Sun 30 May 2021 07.00 BST

In 1921, a white mob attacked Tulsa’s Black Wall Street, killing an estimated 300 people, but it wasn’t talked about until recently

There was no memorial to it in town. Teachers made no mention of it, not even during a half-semester devoted to local history. The white schoolboy Scott Ellsworth of Tulsa, Oklahoma, was left to wonder what the city’s darkest secret could be.

“As a 10- and 11-year-old, I would occasionally hear older adults, neighbours, talking about what we then called ‘the riot’ and they would always lower their voices or change the subject,” recalls Ellsworth, now 67. “I started to catch wind of these stories about bodies floating down the Arkansas River, machine guns on the roofs of town, but you couldn’t really find out anything about it.”

All that changed one day in 1966 when the local library installed a microfilm reader and Ellsworth and friends fed in daily newspapers from 1921. “We were just gobsmacked: hundreds die, martial law declared,” says the author and historian. “We weren’t sophisticated enough to put it all together but I knew at that point that the skeleton in the closet was true.”

The truth that could no longer be denied was that, on 31 May and 1 June 1921, a white mob had attacked Tulsa’s Black Wall Street, killing an estimated 300 people and wounding 800 more while robbing and burning businesses, homes and churches. Planes dropped explosives on the area, razing it to the ground. It remains one of the worst acts of racial violence in American history.

Tulsa is now preparing to mark the centenary of the bloodshed in its Greenwood neighbourhood with a commemoration featuring Joe Biden, a candlelight vigil, the unveiling of a history centre, the Tulsa Juneteenth festival and other events and performances.

But it took years of dogged research by Ellsworth to help start the city on a journey to end its culture of silence and confront its racist past. He was studying history at a college in Portland, Oregon, when he decided to make the massacre the subject of his senior thesis. He returned to Tulsa in the summer of 1975 but found it difficult to penetrate the taboo.

“Records were missing, they were destroyed,” he says by phone from Ann Arbor, where he teaches at the University of Michigan. “Clerks would kind of blow me off in offices and I just couldn’t put this together at all. It was almost impossible to find any photographs but I did see one of Greenwood after the massacre and it just looked like Nagasaki or Hiroshima or Frankfurt, just totally everything gone.”

Ellsworth made a breakthrough when he came across a collection of city directories – precursors of telephone books listing the names of every individual and business. “I noticed that after about every 10th name, there was a lower case ‘c’ in parentheses. I realised, oh, that meant ‘coloured’, so this is a listing of all the African American people and businesses.

“I’d been really interested in trying to understand what the Greenwood business community looked like. So I went to the city engineer’s office and got these ‘plat’ maps that I taped together and then I went through these city directories and I wrote down every single address and what the business was, what person lived there. The business community then became alive to me. It just wasn’t statistics.”

Eventually Ellsworth tracked down William D Williams, an African American retired teacher who had been 16 when the massacre happened. “I drive to his house and sit down and I’m explaining who I am and he’s kind of cool to me. I’m thinking, ‘This interview is going nowhere, I should try to figure out where to end it,’ and politely get out.

“Then I remembered my map and we spread it out on his kitchen table and all of a sudden he’s just entranced, he’s poring over this thing, he’s moving his finger from address to address to address, and he’s smiling and shaking his head. What I had created was a map of his youth and there were names he hadn’t thought about in 70 years.

“Then all of a sudden he looks up and says, ‘OK, tell me what you want to know’. I thought it was going to be an hour interview; we talked for four hours and it was the moment. He was the one, he was at all the right places in the right time and really it’s because of him that we were able to save the history of what happened.”

Ellsworth adds: “I was honoured because Mr Williams had been waiting all of his life to tell this story. He was waiting for a journalist, a TV crew, a professor. He sure as hell wasn’t waiting for a 21-year-old white kid from the side of town that the people had come to murder him and his family. I give him great credit for taking a chance on talking to me.”

Three years later, Ellsworth returned to Tulsa again to turn his thesis into a book. Williams connected him with other elderly African American survivors who told their stories for the first time. The author formed a deep bond with them.

“They had never been interviewed before. They didn’t talk about the massacre in their own family. I ended up being their witness. It didn’t have to be me. It could have been you or somebody else. It just happened to be me. That was one of the highest professional moments of my life.”

Conversely, Ellsworth found it almost impossible to get any white person to admit they had been involved in the carnage (none faced criminal charges). On one occasion he visited a white police officer who was happy to talk about his career but became taciturn when the subject came up.

“He had a scrapbook of photographs of him in uniform and whatnot. This is the pre-digital era so I’ve borrowed a 35mm camera and I’m taking photos of them and all of a sudden I turn a page and it’s all riot photographs. I’m so excited because I haven’t seen it and he grabs the book and says, ‘No, you can’t take pictures.’ People just didn’t want to talk about it at all. It’s like families of German soldiers: who wants to talk about this?”

When Ellsworth’s Death in a Promised Land – the first comprehensive history of the massacre – was published in 1982, the survivors threw a launch party but the book was mostly ignored by the local white media. However, the author notes: “For a number of years it was the most stolen book out of the Tulsa City county library system. They’d even steal the branch copies. So once a year, I just sent them a box of books.”

Tulsa’s secret was out and could not be forgotten again. The massacre’s 75th anniversary in 1996 received national media attention. The Tulsa Race Riot Commission was formed a year later to carry out a long overdue investigation and make the case for reparations.

Ellsworth started a search for the unmarked mass graves of victims but it stalled in 2000 due to political wrangling. The effort resumed at the request of the city mayor in 2019. With a combination of hard work and luck, 12 fragile pine coffins and remains were found last October in what had been the city’s most important cemetery at the time of the massacre.

“Obviously, I was thrilled. This had been a 20-plus-year search but the reality is sad and deadening when you think of these people. But in all honesty, I thought back about WD Williams and those other survivors who had really led me on this story and I thought about how happy they would be. I really thought of them.”

The mass grave at Oaklawn cemetery will be exhumed on the hundredth anniversary. It will be one more step towards Tulsa’s reckoning with itself. But it will not necessarily bring peace and reconciliation to a city that remains deeply segregated along racial lines.

“The story of the massacre was actively suppressed in the white community for 50 years,” reflects Ellsworth, who returns to the subject in a new book, The Ground Breaking: An American City and Its Search for Justice, published by Dutton Books in the US and Icon Books in the UK. “Researchers had their lives threatened, their jobs threatened.

“Some people don’t want to talk about this at all; they just want to cover it back up. Others are shameful about it. Others are heartbroken. You had whole generations of people who grew up in Tulsa not knowing about it and now to learn about it, that’s caused some stress.”

But there was also widespread silence in the African American community for nearly half a century, he adds. “A number of the survivors suffered PTSD all their lives. Others, like Holocaust survivors, didn’t really want to burden their children with these stories. So there were descendants who were my age that didn’t learn about the fact that their grandparents had lost their home and their business until they were in their 40s. They didn’t talk about it.”

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/may/30/tulsa-race-massacre-scott-ellsworth-historian

Phone intercepts shine more light on Jordanian prince’s alleged coup attempt

Discussions took place before Prince Hamzah was put under house arrest

Martin Chulov and Michael Safi
Sun 30 May 2021 05.00 BST
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/may/30/phone-intercepts-jordanian-prince-alleged-coup-attempt

Aides to the former Jordanian heir Prince Hamzah sought pledges of allegiance on his behalf from tribal leaders and former military officers in the weeks before he was detained, conversations caught on phone intercepts and listening devices suggest.

The recordings are key pieces of evidence in the Jordanian government’s case against two men accused of acting as proxies for Hamzah in a failed attempt to oust his half-brother, King Abdullah, as monarch. Both men – Bassem Awadallah, a former envoy to Saudi Arabia, and Sharif Hassan bin Zaid, a cousin of the king – are expected to stand trial in Amman starting on Monday.

The calls and intercepts, which have been heard by the Guardian, took place over three weeks in March, a period in which officials say Hamzah tried to rally support from figures who could elevate what officials describe as a seditious plot into a serious challenge to Abdullah’s reign.

The recordings include the Arabic term mubayaa, which implies swearing an oath to a caliph or monarch. The use of such a phrase alarmed intelligence officials who had begun surveilling Hamzah and his aides, setting in motion a real-life Game of Thrones, which placed two of Jordan’s most senior royals at odds and implicated its two closest allies.

The Guardian on Wednesday revealed the US had warned of the alleged plot in a call to Jordan’s spy agency in March. At the same time, a report was handed to Abdullah, who had been frozen out of plans by Donald Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner to reshape the Middle East during the former US president’s tumultuous four years.

The American warning came after Bin Zaid allegedly approached a US diplomat soliciting support for the former crown prince’s ascent to the throne.

By then, intelligence officials had intercepted several calls that appeared to seek loyalty. One of the calls to a tribal official heard a voice saying: “Our guy has made a decision to move, do you pledge allegiance?”

A bug placed in a meeting of tribal figures in northern Jordan recorded the men present discussing how to organise support for Hamzah. Meetings of civilians were to be kept to 15 people, while meetings of retired military leaders were limited to seven.

The Jordanian case against Hamzah, who remains under house arrest, is that he sought to move against Abdullah, who removed him from the line of succession in 2004 and installed his son, around the time of a tragedy blamed on negligence at a hospital that killed seven patients in the city of Salt.

“He arrived wearing his father [King Hussein’s] tie,” a senior official said. “There were messages between him and his friends saying ‘you should not take a photo with His Majesty’.”

By mid-March, after the warnings had been delivered to the royal court and Jordan’s general intelligence directorate, officials believe Hamzah saw a confluence of circumstances – commemorations of a 50-year-old battle with Israel and of a decade-old youth movement, as well as Mother’s Day – as a chance to build momentum.

“At that point Hamzah was asking for advice on how to proceed,” the official said. “He was told: ‘These decisions need well thought-out responses. When it’s time for the full knockout, you will know.

“His people told those they had recruited: ‘When he acts, it is to be for the jugular.’”

Regional sources said the alleged plot may have been an epilogue to a wider drama in the region over the past four years: Kushner’s attempt to launch his so-called “deal of the century” plan, which ripped up the rulebook on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman was integral to Kushner’s ambitions. Awadallah had remained on close terms with Riyadh, and the Saudi foreign minister, Faisal bin Farhan Al Saud, is understood to have flown to Amman the day after he was arrested to seek his release.

Abdullah rigidly opposed the Kushner deal, as a direct threat to the kingdom’s custodianship of holy sites in Jerusalem – a key facet of Hashemite legitimacy – and a blow to hopes that Jordan’s significant population of Palestinian refugees may one day be able to return to their own state.

Hamzah is understood to be confined to his home, and was last heard from in leaked videos in April claiming his innocence.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/may/30/phone-intercepts-jordanian-prince-alleged-coup-attempt

Did Jordan’s closest allies plot to unseat its king?

Alleged sedition and a royal family feud may have been driven by a broader plan to reshape the Middle East

“The upshot is that Trump lost and it all fell over,” said a regional intelligence source. “Had he been re-elected, this would be a very different region.”

Senior officials in Amman would not be drawn on the likelihood of a foreign element to the alleged plot, and nor would they confirm that their most trusted security partner, the US, had alerted them to a potential threat. However, the officials clearly took comfort from the fact that the new US administration has restored a traditional security relationship, which had been traduced under Trump.

US officials have confirmed to the Guardian that in the final months of 2020, officials sought advice on which areas of funding to Jordan were outside congressional approval and could therefore be cut without debate.

Amman was ultimately spared a budget blow. As Joe Biden has settled in, its leaders have collectively exhaled and prefer not to focus on how close, if at all, King Abdullah came to being ousted by Jordan’s two closest friends.


Martin Chulov in Amman and Michael Safi
Wed 26 May 2021 12.45 BST
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/may/26/did-jordans-closest-allies-plot-to-unseat-its-king

Trump Shocked That Washington Post CEO Also Heads Reagan Library: ‘How the Hell Did That Happen?’

Lindsey Ellefson
Fri, May 28, 2021, 2:53 PM·1 min read
https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/trump-shocked-washington-post-ceo-135300920.html

Former president Donald Trump released a quizzical statement Friday, pondering “how the hell” Washington Post publisher and CEO Fred Ryan came to chair the Ronald Reagan Presidential Institute and Foundation, which oversees the late Republican’s presidential library.

Ryan, who served in the Reagan administration and later went on to found Politico, got the gig back in 1995, before Trump was even a reality television personality.

“Ronald Reagan would not be happy to see that the Reagan Library is run by the head of the Washington Post, Fred Ryan. How the hell did that happen? No wonder they consistently have RINO speakers like Karl Rove and Paul Ryan. They do nothing for our forward-surging Republican Party!” Trump declared in one of the many statements blasted out to his office’s email list since he was banned from Twitter following the deadly Jan. 6 riot at the Capitol.

Ryan was Reagan’s post-administration chief of staff from 1989 to 1995. Prior to that, he was one of the youngest people to ever serve as assistant to the President. He also served as Director of the White House Private Sector Initiatives program, acting as Reagan’s liaison to the American and international business communities, all according to his biography on the Reagan Foundation website.

It was not immediately clear what prompted Trump’s statement or his assertion that Reagan “would not be happy to see” that Ryan is chairman, as he was when Reagan died in 2004.

A representative for the Post did not immediately return a request for comment.

Read original story Trump Shocked That Washington Post CEO Also Heads Reagan Library: ‘How the Hell Did That Happen?’ At TheWrap


https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/trump-shocked-washington-post-ceo-135300920.html

COVID-19 cases 'growing exponentially' as professor warns government against repeating 'mistake' of acting too late

Professor Sir Tim Gowers, who was praised by Dominic Cummings this week, tells Sky News he is worried by the rise in COVID cases.

By David Mercer, news reporter
Saturday 29 May 2021 16:23, UK
https://news.sky.com/story/covid-19-cases-growing-exponentially-as-professor-warns-government-against-repeating-mistake-of-acting-too-late-12319957

COVID infections appear to be "growing exponentially", a professor has warned as he urged the government not to repeat the mistake of acting too late to tackle the spread of the virus.

Sir Tim Gowers - whose argument against herd immunity helped trigger England's first lockdown last year - told Sky News that the recent increase in coronavirus cases "worries me".

"They seem to be multiplying by a certain fraction each day - in other words, growing exponentially," he said.

"We're still at a reasonably low base but, on the other hand, we know that there's a lag.

"Even if we were to take serious action and more social distancing action, that growth would continue for a while until the effect of that action kicked in."

Sir Tim, a world-leading mathematician at the University of Cambridge, was hailed by Dominic Cummings as "one of the smartest people on the planet" during his evidence to MPs this week.

Before England's first lockdown in March last year, the professor sent the prime minister's then-chief aide a five-page document warning of the need to "move urgently to extreme containment measures".

On Saturday, Sir Tim told Sky News that if it becomes clear that the UK's COVID-19 reproduction number "is significantly bigger than 1 then we just have to act".

It was announced yesterday that the R value in England is 1 to 1.1, up from 0.9 and 1.1 the previous week, suggesting the epidemic is growing.

https://news.sky.com/story/covid-19-cases-growing-exponentially-as-professor-warns-government-against-repeating-mistake-of-acting-too-late-12319957

Good Law Project @GoodLawProject 16h BREAKING: Priti Patel's SECOND bid to help her friend win PPE deal worth millions

Revealed: Priti Patel's SECOND bid to help her friend win PPE deal worth millions - amid calls for probe over whether her lobbying broke rules

By David Rose For The Daily Mail
22:01 28 May 2021, updated 22:03 28 May 2021
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9630911/amp/Priti-Patels-SECOND-bid-help-friend-win-PPE-deal-worth-millions.html

THREAD

BREAKING: Priti Patel's SECOND bid to help her friend win PPE deal worth millions https://t.co/Tgp1QoFd16

— Good Law Project (@GoodLawProject) May 28, 2021

The anti-elite elites who want to thwart a Jan. 6 commission

Opinion by Kathleen Parker
Columnist
May 28, 2021 at 11:16 p.m. GMT+1
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/05/29/anti-elite-elites-who-want-thwart-jan-6-commission/

If I understand correctly, elites are so evil that even elites are anti-elite. And no one is more anti-elite than the uber-elite Donald Trump.

How do we know this? For starters, people with private planes and heliports atop buildings named for themselves are not very interested in schmoozing with the so-called common man. A common woman is something else, clearly. Donald Trump would no more seek out the company of most MAGA-hat-wearing followers than Melania Trump would make her own clothes.

I mention Donald Trump against my best intentions because the former president seems to be everywhere. Not him personally, but his surrogates. The freshest to his stable is none other than the elite, anti-elitist Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R), a Yale- and Harvard-educated lawyer who recently signed a bill to restrict “Silicon Valley elites” from indefinitely blocking political figures’ speech. This bit of overreach toward Twitter and Facebook coincides nicely with Trump’s sustained whine since being shut down by the two social media giants, who determined that his incendiary rhetoric warranted permanent eviction.

I don’t disagree with that reasoning, even though it looks like censorship in what’s supposed to be an open marketplace of ideas and expression. Trump is a scowling hatemonger whose pathological lies have been to varying degrees flagged and tagged by both sites. No one can force a private company to admit people who abuse community standards. That said, shutting out a president of the United States is a mind-boggling precedent that serves mostly to fuel conspiracy theorists.

As I’ve argued previously, it seems better to let everyone talk and draw one’s own conclusions. Social media’s operating assumption in denying some people a soapbox in the virtual public square is that people in the audience are generally too witless to distinguish between truth and falsehood. This may well be true, but still, isn’t it better for all of us to know what liars, thieves and fools are thinking?

I’ll leave the legal arguments to others, but not necessarily to DeSantis, who surely understands that private companies can do as they please if clients — or whatever Twitter people call themselves — fail to adhere to rules (even if they are just recently promulgated). DeSantis’s attack on the tech Goliaths was a brilliant tactic — so long as he doesn’t mind seeming kind of dumb. A Harvard law graduate probably knows better. Even Trump knows better than most of what he says and does, but he’s found the anti-elite formula so effective, he doesn’t care that elites think he’s insane. Actually, elites no longer care, either.

Today’s riddle: If everybody is an elite — and elites are all populists — does Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.)still have to be a socialist?

Plainly, DeSantis either is running for president in 2024 or hopes to be Trump’s running mate, should the former president seek another term. One shudders to consider the latter, especially in light of Senate Republicans’ blocking of the Jan. 6 commission. Their resistance to an investigation raises an obvious question: What are they so afraid will be discovered?

To argue that this is politics as usual is to say that insurrections are as ordinary as, well, Trump rallies. But Americans know better. We all watched in shock as fatigue-clad and costumed “warriors” breached the Capitol and stalked the hallways chanting threats to public officials who were in hiding.

Make no mistake: Jan. 6 is a date that will live in infamy.

When Franklin D. Roosevelt famously said the same about Dec. 7, 1941, he was referring to the surprise Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. Though that was an attack by a foreign power that led to war at incalculable human cost, the domestic attack by our fellow Americans raised the threat of accomplishing outcomes our enemies have long sought — the ruin of our democracy and the potential for civil war.

That Republicans would thwart an investigation into the events of that day suggests that the GOP has abandoned the union and sided with a former president whose words on Jan. 6 bordered on treasonous. There is no excuse to not pursue an investigation while there’s still time to save this fragile republic. Besides, it’s the anti-elite, populist thing to do.


https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/05/29/anti-elite-elites-who-want-thwart-jan-6-commission/

‘2 If By Sea’: Oath Keepers Messages Shed New Light on Alleged Plot to Storm D.C. With Guns by Way of Potomac

ADAM KLASFELD May 28th, 2021
https://lawandcrime.com/u-s-capitol-siege/2-if-by-sea-oath-keepers-messages-shed-new-light-on-alleged-plot-to-storm-d-c-with-guns-by-way-of-potomac/

Hours before Senate Republicans killed an independent commission to investigate the Jan. 6th siege, federal prosecutors disclosed communications about how Oath Keepers allegedly plotted to storm Washington, D.C. with guns by boat by way of the Potomac River.

Those discussions became public in a filing seeking to maintain the strict pretrial release conditions of Oath Keepers member Thomas Caldwell, whom prosecutors allege organized a group of militia members on “standby with guns in a hotel across the river.” In the brief, prosecutors also alleged that a message from the militia’s leader described a “worst case scenario” where former President Donald Trump “calls us up as part of the militia to to assist him inside DC.”

Pulling a line from one of the immortal verses of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, the extremist group’s Florida chapter leader Kelly Meggs allegedly imagined the militia members as the modern day equivalent of their American colonial forebears.

“1 if by land,” Meggs allegedly wrote in an encrypted message on the group’s Signal channel, quoting Longfellow’s 1861 poem “Paul Revere’s Ride.”

“North side of Lincoln Memorial,” Meggs’s message continued, according to the government. “2 if by sea[,] Corner of west basin and Ohio is a water transport landing !!”

The alleged Oath Keepers plot to ferry heavy weapons across the Potomac River on a boat was previously reported by the New York Times in February, but prosecutors first made new evidence supporting that claim public on the day Trump’s Republican Party blocked independent scrutiny into the attack.

According to the government’s eight-page brief, the 65-year-old Caldwell allegedly answered Meggs’s call by asking a member of another militia group about procuring a boat for their so-called “quick reaction force,” or QRF.

The lengthy message states:

Can’t believe I just thought of this: how many people either in the militia or not (who are still supportive of our efforts to save the Republic) have a boat on a trailer that could handle a Potomac crossing? If we had someone standing by at a dock ramp (one near the Pentagon for sure) we could have our Quick Response Team with the heavy weapons standing by, quickly load them and ferry them across the river to our waiting arms. I’m not talking about a bass boat. Anyone who would be interested in supporting the team this way? I will buy the fuel. More or less be hanging around sipping coffee and maybe scooting on the river a bit and pretending to fish, then if it all went to shit, our guy loads our weps AND Blue Ridge Militia weps and ferries them across. Dude! If we had 2 boats, we could ferry across and never drive into D.C. at all!!!! Then get picked up. Is there a way to PLEASE pass the word among folks you know and see if someone would jump in the middle of this to help. I am spreading the word, too. Genius if someone is willing and hasn’t put their boat away for the winter.

Prosecutors claim there is evidence that the quick reaction force members had guns.

“On January 4, Person One posted to the Oath Keepers website, ‘As we have done on all recent DC Ops, we will also have well armed and equipped QRF teams on standby, outside DC, in the event of a worst case scenario, where the President calls us up as part of the militia to to assist him inside DC,” the government’s memo states.

In prior briefings, prosecutors identified “Person One” as Oath Keepers founder and leader Stewart Rhodes, who has not been charged with any wrongdoing.

On the morning of Jan. 6, Rhodes allegedly wrote in the “DC OP: Jan 6 21” Signal chat: “We will have several well equipped QRFs outside DC. And there are many, many others, from other groups, who will be watching and waiting on the outside in case of worst case scenarios,” according to the filing.

A still-unidentified “Person Three” was allegedly in charge of the quick reaction force, and the filings suggests that prosecutors may be closing in on that individual.

“The investigation has shown that Person Three did, in fact, come to Washington, D.C., from January 5-7, 2021,” the filing states.

Like Caldwell and other Oath Keepers, this person stayed at the Comfort Inn Ballston. Prosecutors included stills from surveillance footage that they claim show the militia members with objects shaped like rifles.


This still from hotel surveillance footage allegedly shows Oath Keepers member Thomas Caldwell “carrying a large and long object wrapped under a bed sheet” to the still-identified Person Three, whom prosecutors claim headed the militia’s “quick reaction force.” (Photo from DOJ filing)

At least five people died during and after the assault on the Capitol, and at least 139 law enforcement officers were injured, prosecutors say.

Caldwell, who has pleaded not guilty, has been charged with conspiring with more than a dozen people and is indicted with nine other Oath Keepers. Meggs, the Florida chapter leader, was previously quoted saying that Trump wanted his supporters to “make it wild” on the day of the Capitol siege.

https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/20792713/2-if-by-sea-oath-keepers-brief.pdf

https://lawandcrime.com/u-s-capitol-siege/2-if-by-sea-oath-keepers-messages-shed-new-light-on-alleged-plot-to-storm-d-c-with-guns-by-way-of-potomac/

The GOP Now Stands for Nothing

A party that doesn’t believe in anything ends up believing only in its right to rule.

8:58 AM ET
Tom Nichols
Author of Our Own Worst Enemy


GETTY / THE ATLANTIC

The Republicans in Congress are blocking a bipartisan investigation into the January 6 insurrection. Their spines crushed by years of obedience to Donald Trump, the members of the GOP have once again retreated from civic responsibility, with one more humiliation of those last few in the party who thought that the Senate Republicans might mimic something like statesmanship.

However, this effort is more than the usual cynical mendacity and crass careerism (or, as one might say, “Elise Stefanik”) that characterize the current Republican Party. This latest insult to the rule of law and the Constitution was possible only because the Republicans have already lost confidence in their own principles. The GOP now stands for nothing. The party of Lincoln has become, in every way, a political and moral nullity.

American conservatism once meant something definite and tangible. You could fight those beliefs and policies; you could argue with them, admire them, or hate them. But they existed. Strom Thurmond, Ronald Reagan, Howard Baker, and Edward Brooke were not necessarily deep thinkers, and they didn’t all agree on everything. But the GOP held clear lines of thought that stood as alternatives to liberalism.

Most of those ideas were predicated on some basic beliefs about human beings themselves, including the conviction that human nature is fixed rather than malleable, that intellect is a better guide to action than emotion, that tradition is valuable, and that religious faith is a cornerstone of a healthy society. On policy, too, the conservatives moved along broad but common lines. They believed that incrementalism is better than sudden change, that America is exceptional, that patriotism is honorable, and perhaps most important, that government is a necessity to be controlled, rather than a teacher to be revered.

These principles gave the Republican Party several decades of an almost preternatural self-confidence in the eventual triumph of their ideas. After all, if human nature is eternal and rationality is unassailable, then emotional schemes and government overreach that deny these realities are bound to fail. America is exceptional, and therefore America can do what its citizens believe they can do—especially if they treat government as an instrument rather than a master.

This confidence once attracted young voters (such as me, back in the late 1970s) to the party. The country then seemed to be falling apart—faced with riots, political assassinations, bombings overseas and at home. My colleague David Frum has called the ’70s “strange, feverish years,” a time of “unease and despair, punctuated by disaster.” The liberal Columbia University professor Mark Lilla would later write about how difficult it is “to convey to anyone who wasn’t alive and politically aware at the time what a dreary place America seemed in the late 1970s, how lacking in direction and confidence.”

The Republicans stepped forward in 1980 as optimistic warriors. Joined by some disaffected Democrats, they were certain that they had the intellectual and moral strength to claim victory over domestic chaos and foreign challenges. Reagan and the resurgent Republicans fought the narrative of an America in decline after years of “stagflation,” urban decay, and rampant Soviet aggression. (The Cold War was still raging then.) Republican solutions—including laissez-faire economics at home and a confrontational foreign policy abroad—were born from an ideological conviction that led a prominent liberal Democrat, Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan of New York, to warn his colleagues in 1981 that the GOP “has become a party of ideas.”

The self-assurance of the Republicans who emerged from the post-Watergate wilderness might seem impossible to comprehend now that the modern GOP is rife with know-nothings and apocalyptic hysterics. But their confidence in their own ideas was unassailable—indeed, often to an unhealthy degree.

All of that is gone. Today’s Republicans exist only to stay in power, not least so that their elected officials can avoid what they dread most: being sent home to live among their constituents. The conservative writer George Will is right that the Republican Party in 2021 has become “ something new in American history,” a “political party defined by the terror it feels for its own voters.”

Republican legislators should be scared. Their base is an angry white minority that cares nothing about government; its members want their elected officials to rule by hook or by crook, the Constitution and democracy itself be damned, and they don’t want any guff about namby-pamby ideas or policies. They want the elections controlled, the institutions captured, and the libs owned. The rest, to them, is just noise.

The survival instinct that this white-minority rage has triggered in craven Republican politicians is how the GOP mutated from a party championing individual liberty into a movement pushing monstrously statist authoritarianism. It is how the party of limited government began agitating for government truth ministries. It is how the party of exuberant free marketeers became a cabal of crony capitalists and knee-jerk protectionists. It is how the party that once fought Kremlin expansionism provided top cover for Russian intelligence attacks against U.S. institutions.

Republicans have tried to argue that if they are not in power, the Democrats and their ultraliberal allies will destroy our system of government and create a majoritarian nightmare. We must stay in power, they mewl, so that democracy itself will survive long enough to outlive the encroaching authoritarianism of the left.

These defenses are risible nonsense in the wake of Trump’s constitutional mayhem and the GOP’s descent into conspiratorial lunacy. But even on their own terms, Republican excuses are little more than lightly veiled defenses of minority rule. The GOP long ago abandoned any effort to convince women, people of color, immigrants, and others that the party had a place for them. Instead, Republicans in Congress have surrendered to the ignorance and racism of their most extreme voters in exchange for a continued life of privilege inside the comforting embrace of the Capital Beltway.

The Republicans, facing an investigation into an insurrection provoked by their own leader, have armored up and gone into armadillo mode. They will protect their own—rather than their nation and the Constitution they swore to defend. This behavior should serve as a warning: A party that doesn’t believe in anything ends up believing only in its right to rule. And a movement that believes only in its own power is a deadly enemy of constitutional democracy.

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/05/republicans-stand-for-nothing-january-6-commission/619036/

£5 million cash found under mattress in Fulham flat

Anthony France 5 hrs ago
https://www.standard.co.uk/news/crime/5-million-pounds-cash-found-under-mattress-fulham-flat-b937732.html

Three money launderers have been sentenced after £5.1 million in “dirty cash” was found under beds, in cupboards and dumped on the floor of a flat.

The money, the Met’s largest single cash seizure, was discovered when lockdown stopped it being taken out of the country.

Police said it was stacked up at the Fulham flat because the gang “didn’t know what to do with it”.

It was found when undercover officers swooped on Ruslan Shamsutdinov, 36, as he struggled to put heavy bags into a car outside the luxury Porteus Apartments last June.

The holdalls contained cash linked to Sergejs Auzins, 46, a Russian middleman working for gun and drugs syndicates across London.

Officers raided the gated mews and recovered £5,082,000 that at least 10 gangs had been unable to clean due to lockdown restrictions, Harrow crown court heard.

Detective Superintendent Jason Prins said his team accidentally stumbled across the Fulham flat during a long-running operation into firearms and Class A drugs supply.

He said: “This is the largest ever single cash seizure by the Met and I believe one of the largest ever nationally.

“In the flat, there was money everywhere you went — under the beds, in cupboards and on the floor. They couldn’t even hide it. It was a money laundering hub for a number of crime groups.”

A further €39,000 and £8,000 was discovered at Uzbekistan national Shamsutdinov’s home in Glenister Road, Hackney.

Five weeks later, detectives observed their accomplice, Serwan Ahmadi, 35, handing over a bag to a fourth suspect in north London.

Within hours, Met Specialist Crime officers arrested Ahmadi in Victoria Road, Edmonton, along with £59,980.

A search of the Iranian’s home in nearby Pycroft Way uncovered £198,600.

The following day, July 15, 2020, Auzins was detained at his house in Windward Road, Rochester, where another £14,435 was seized — bringing the total to nearly £5.4 million.

Det Supt Prins added: “Covid had really exacerbated their problem of how to get rid of money.”

On Friday, Shamsutdinov was jailed for three years and nine months, Auzins, three years and four months, and Ahmadi, received a suspended sentence after pleading guilty to conspiracy to conceal and disguise criminal property.

The seized cash will eventually fund Met and Home Office operations to tackle violent crime.

Astonishingly, Det Supt Prins said of the Fulham apartment believed to be worth £900,000: “We still haven’t established who actually owns it.

“Organised crime is motivated by money and is one of the biggest causes of violence on our streets. Tackling this violence is our main priority.”

https://www.standard.co.uk/news/crime/5-million-pounds-cash-found-under-mattress-fulham-flat-b937732.html

The world’s lithium is either mined in Australia or from salt flats in the Andean regions of Argentina, Bolivia and Chile, operations that use large amounts of groundwater to pump out the brines, drawing down the water available to Indigenous farmers and herders. The water required for producing batteries has meant that manufacturing electric vehicles is about 50 percent more water intensive than traditional internal combustion engines. Deposits of rare earths, concentrated in China, often contain radioactive substances that can emit radioactive water and dust.


Salton Sea is key to CA's EV future, contains 1/3 of global lithium supply

By Susan Carpenter California
PUBLISHED 2:35 PM PT May. 27, 2021
https://spectrumnews1.com/ca/la-west/environment/2021/05/27/salton-sea-is-key-to-ca-s-ev-future--contains-1-3-of-global-lithium-supply

A former resort town that is now an environmental blight, the Salton Sea could soon be reborn as a major source of lithium for electric vehicles. That’s what California has in mind for the shallow, landlocked lake in Imperial County.

“Right here in Southern California, we have the enormous opportunity to be a competitive player in the world lithium market,” California Assemblymember Eduardo Garcia said Wednesday, during the state legislature’s first select committee hearing on cultivating a local lithium economy.

What You Need To Know

The Salton Sea contains one of the world's largest supplies of lithium

The lithium is generated during geothermal energy production

The California Energy Commission says lithium is "the oil of the clean energy future"

The first commercial lithium recovery facility in the Salton Sea could start construction in 2024

The Salton Sea has the potential to meet 40% of global lithium demand, said Garcia, who authored AB 1657, the bill that established the Lithium Valley Commission within the California Energy Commission to explore strategies to develop the industry.

Lithium is a key component of the lithium-ion batteries that power electric vehicles — “the oil of the clean energy future,” as California Energy Commission Chairman David Hochschild said during the hearing.

Comprised of Salton Sea representatives, environmental groups, tribal nation spokespeople and state officials, the 14-member Lithium Valley Commission will issue a report on the viability of California lithium next year.

Ninety-five percent of the world’s lithium currently comes from Chile, Argentina, Australia and China, using environmentally destructive practices such as open pit mining and evaporation ponds.

“We’re very mindful going into this that extractive industries have had a very damaging impact on many communities around the world,” Hochschild said. “We can do it much better and differently in part because of the nature of this resource, which will allow for the greenest way to recover lithium that exists in the world.”

Known as Lithium Valley, the lithium in the Salton Sea is produced through a process called direct extraction and is integrated into the geothermal energy generation process, which uses steam from hot water reservoirs below the Earth’s surface to produce electricity. Part of a geothermal brine containing multiple types of minerals, the lithium is recovered using a closed-loop system powered with the renewable energy that geothermal generates.

Lithium extracted from geothermal brine generates 4% of the greenhouse gas emissions compared with lithium produced by Chinese pit mines, according to Controlled Thermal Resources, one of three companies currently developing geothermal lithium extraction technology in the Salton Sea area.

“The vision with Lithium Valley is to complete that full lithium ecosystem — to produce lithium at scale in an environmentally sensitive way, support electric vehicles and also energy storage,” Hochschild said.

California is the national leader in electric vehicle adoption, as well as production. More than 860,000 EVs have been sold in the state since they first came on the market a decade ago. They currently account for about half of all EV purchases in the U.S. — a number that is expected to grow exponentially following Gov. Gavin Newsom’s executive order last September mandating that 100% of new passenger vehicle sales in the state be zero emissions.

Thirty-four EV manufacturers also call the state home, including the Tesla factory in Fremont and the bus makers BYD and Proterra in SoCal. Last year, electric vehicles became the state’s No. 1 export.

In addition to powering vehicles, lithium batteries are also used to store the energy produced from renewable energy sources such as wind and solar. Hochschild said California will be increasing energy storage tenfold this year as it seeks to convert the state to 100% renewable energy by 2045.

In addition to its potential as a major source of lithium, the Salton Sea plays a key role in the state’s renewable energy goals. It is the site of 11 geothermal energy plants.

“It’s inevitable that we will depend on geothermal to get to 100% renewables by 2045,” said California Public Utilities Commissioner Martha Guzman Aceves, who is a member of the Lithium Valley Commission.

The state is eyeing geothermal as an equivalent, round-the-clock, energy-generating replacement for Diablo Canyon — the state’s last remaining nuclear plant that is scheduled to be retired in 2025. It is, however, more expensive. Generating income from geothermally-derived lithium could help bring down the cost.

“Building the lithium supply chain presents an imperative and an opportunity,” said Kaina Pereira, senior advisor on business development in the Governor’s Office of Business and Economic Development. “We must extrude and extract a lot of lithium. There is a current global contest on this emerging resource.”

With many car companies announcing plans to entirely phase out cars that run on gasoline by 2035, the rush is on for the lithium that will be necessary to make the batteries that will replace the fossil fuels used by internal combustion engines.

There could be a lithium supply crunch by 2023, according to Benchmark Mineral Intelligence, as the world rushes to adopt electric vehicles. More than 2 million tons of lithium will be needed every year to meet demand.

Lithium derived from the Salton Sea would not only help meet that demand but offer other key benefits, including reduced emissions from transporting materials.

Producing lithium locally eliminates the transportation constraints of mining lithium in foreign countries and shipping it to battery makers in Asia who then ship the batteries to EV makers in California. Producing and sourcing lithium close to where it will ultimately be used helps reduce the environmental footprint of its production.

“It’s not just about producing bags of environmentally friendly lithium,” said Controlled Thermal Resources CEO Rod Colwell. “It’s producing a whole sector of the environmentally friendly supply chain and removing 20 links from that supply chain.”

Co-locating the lithium supply with battery and EV manufacturing in a single area is a great opportunity, he said.

There are multiple benefits to the Salton Sea community as well: Reduced air pollution, better health and high-wage jobs.

Controlled Thermal Resources’ Hell’s Kitchen Lithium and Power Project in the Salton Sea area is capable of generating 1,100 megawatts of clean energy that could power as many as a million homes. It would also create 1,980 project jobs, 2,500 ancillary jobs and contribute $350+ million to the economy, according to the Imperial Valley Economic Development Corporation.

“We’re a community that has for decades been faced with unemployment levels comparable to an economic depression and battled decades-long environmental issues on both sides of our large county,” said Imperial County CEO Tony Rouhotas, Jr. “The southern end of the county is home to some of the most polluted rivers in North America, while on the northern end, the sea is evaporating, creating a fine dust that finds its way into the lungs of children and families living nearby.”

Lithium, Rouhotas said, is an opportunity to simultaneously improve public health and the area’s economic fortunes.

Berkshire Hathaway Energy, which operates 10 geothermal plants adjacent to the Salton Sea, is capable of producing 90,000 of the 300,000 tons of lithium produced each year globally, according to Jonathan Weisgall, the company’s vice president of government relations. The area has at least a 75-year supply of lithium, he said.

Berkshire Hathaway Energy recently received a $6 million grant from the California Energy Commission and $15 million from the U.S. Department of Energy to determine the technical and commercial feasibility of recovering lithium from the 50,000 gallons of geothermal brine it generates every minute while producing geothermal energy.

Its first demonstration plant could be running by January 2022 and its first commercial operation could begin construction in 2024.

“There’s a race right now for lithium,” Weisgall said. “If we can recover it, we could easily supply at least a quarter of the world’s demand.”

https://spectrumnews1.com/ca/la-west/environment/2021/05/27/salton-sea-is-key-to-ca-s-ev-future--contains-1-3-of-global-lithium-supply

‘Florida’s Worst Cop’ Was Just Fired for Misconduct—for the Seventh Time

FLORIDA, MAN

“It’s sad because I love policing. I don’t like corrupt cops,” former Opa-Locka Sgt. German Bosque said.

Pilar Melendez
National Reporter
Updated May. 28, 2021 6:45PM ET / Published May. 28, 2021 1:16PM ET
https://www.thedailybeast.com/german-bosque-floridas-worst-cop-was-just-fired-for-misconduct-for-the-7th-time?via=newsletter&source=DDAfternoon

A Florida police sergeant has been fired after allegedly conspiring to cover for a colleague who failed to secure an October crime scene—marking the seventh time the lawman has been terminated for misconduct and criminal behavior, officials said Friday.

The City of Opa-Locka terminated the employment of Sgt. German Bosque this week after an internal review found he “engaged a subordinate officer to create a false police report and failed to secure a firearm at a crime scene” last October, City Manager John Pate told The Daily Beast. After the officer discovered the gun was missing—and replaced it with a phony plastic version—Bosque was caught on a body camera yelling at his subordinate, who appeared to have failed to secure the scene, before coaching him on how to conceal the truth.

“It’s sad because I love policing,” Bosque told the Miami Herald on Wednesday night about his termination. “I don’t like corrupt cops. I hate when I’m portrayed as a dirty cop who slipped through the cracks.”

Andrew Axelrad, a lawyer for the South Florida Police Benevolent Association who is representing Bosque, told The Daily Beast that his client denies any wrongdoing and insists they plan to fight for his reinstatement.

The firing marks the seventh time Bosque, once dubbed “Florida’s Worst Cop,” has been fired during his 28-year career at the Opa-Locka Police Department—with alleged violations ranging from excessive force, stealing from suspects, and misuse of police firearms. He has also been arrested and cleared three times.

The countless misconduct claims have earned Bosque state-wide attention, including a 2011 exposé by the Sarasota Herald-Tribune that stated his personnel file was more like “a rap sheet than a résumé.” The bombshell report detailed more than 40 internal affairs complaints against the sergeant—noting that 16 were for excessive force or battery. Most recently, Bosque was found guilty of false imprisonment and witness-tampering in 2014 after he allegedly illegally handcuffed a man trying to file a complaint against him. While he was sentenced to 364 days in jail, he did not serve any time.

In 2016, a Miami-Dade appeals court overturned the witness-tampering conviction after a judge ruled prosecutors failed to turn over police records to Bosque’s defense during his June 2014 trial. A State Attorney’s Office declined to re-try Bosque and an arbitrator eventually awarded his job back in 2018.

Bosque declined The Daily Beast’s request for comment.

Pate said the decision to terminate Bosque again stems from an Oct. 15, 2020, incident in which officers were dispatched to a home after reports of an abandoned firearm. The night before, the Miami-Dade Police Department tried to apprehend an armed felon—and the gun was believed to be a part of that incident.

“Upon arriving on the scene, the primary officer located the firearm and notified dispatch and his supervisor, Sgt. Bosque,” Pate said in a statement. “During the course of the investigation, the officer left the firearm unattended and contacted Sgt. Bosque, who had left the scene.”

When Bosque realized that the gun had been stolen, Pate says he “immediately began coaching the primary officer with a false narrative clearly intended to cover up the truth.”

According to body-camera footage obtained by the Miami Herald, Bosque can be heard going through the cover-up story they planned to tell their colleagues, asking “What do we tell them you went to get in the car?”

“I went to check the call log and see if we could pull a case number,” the officer said, according to the outlet.

“No, something else. Anything else? You thought it was going to rain and you came to get a tarp...You were going to cover it with a tarp or something; you didn’t want it to get wet,” Bosque responded.

Bosque is then shown telling another cop about the incident, stating that the officer called him “five minutes ago” about the gun being “switched out” and replaced with a “fucking pellet gun or something.” “I’ve been here over 25 years, it’s fucking embarrassing of course,” Bosque is heard saying in the video.

The city says that by creating this false narrative, “Bosque failed in his supervisory duties by not effectively addressing the mistake of the primary officer’s failure to secure the firearm when he originally located it” and engaged in “corrupt acts.” Bosque and the officer also didn’t attempt to find the missing gun—thus putting the community and his colleagues in danger.

Axelrad told The Daily Beast he believes his client wasn’t trying to cover up anything, but simply “astounded that something so foolish could have occurred when the only job of the officer assigned was to babysit a gun until the detectives from another agency arrived.”

“Bosque did present potential reasons why the officer may have gone to his car, abandoning his assigned post. In no way was this intended to cover up the incident, but to try to determine if there were an acceptable reason for the officer to have abandoned his post,” Axelrad said Friday, noting that when the officer made it clear he had abandoned his post, all reports about the incident were factual. “There was never a direct or even implied order to do anything but tell the truth. Bosque was just trying to determine what the truth was when he first got to the scene, which is routine in police work.”

The lawyer also said that the officer who was responsible for losing the gun was only given a reprimand while his client has been terminated—a fact he believes is the result of the city not upholding basic due process.

“As to this being his seventh termination, each case needs to be looked at individually. The number is certainly high, but that is only because each case was so weak that a termination could not possibly have been sustained,” Axelrad said. “This does not mean an officer can’t have a stellar career and does something so egregious that they are terminated for a first offense. That certainly happens, and good cops, which are 99 percent do not want to work with bad.”

He added that while an officer like Bosque “can appear to be problematic,” it is the “police administration’s conducting improper investigations” and its “lack of integrity” that drives that conclusion.

“With Bosque, it gets progressively worse, where at this point he would be terminated for the most minor of allegations, even if the underlying minor violation can’t be proven,” Axelrad added.

Pate, however, notes that any “reasonable person would believe that this record of criminal and official misconduct would be sufficient to prevent any individual from ever being a police officer having the power to adversely impact the lives of citizens in our community much as we have seen in the news lately.”

“Unfortunately, the powerful police unions and employment arbitrators who sit in judgment of these cases have put Sgt. Bosque back to work as a police officer every time,” he said, adding that this power denies the city’s ability to punish “to correct and punish a bad cop who tarnishes the badge.”

The city manager insisted that Bosque was given proper due process during the internal investigation and that officials heard his side of the story before making their termination recommendation.

Axelrad, however, believes Bosque will wear his Oka-Locka police uniform again.

“I fully anticipate that an independent arbitrator will reinstate him to police sergeant,” he said.


Pilar Melendez
National Reporter
@pbmelendez
Pilar.Melendez@thedailybeast.com
https://www.thedailybeast.com/german-bosque-floridas-worst-cop-was-just-fired-for-misconduct-for-the-7th-time?via=newsletter&source=DDAfternoon