article_text
stringlengths 294
32.8k
⌀ | topic
stringlengths 3
42
|
|---|---|
Even in the event of a federal government shutdown, Utah Sen. Mike Lee says there’s “no reason” for Congress to stop the impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden.
Congress must fund the government by Sept. 30, or many government employees will be furloughed. Federal public safety employees and military members may have to work without pay.
Earlier this month, Republican House Speaker Kevin McCarthy authorized three House committees to open an impeachment investigation into the business dealings of Biden’s family members, primarily the president’s son Hunter. House Republicans have scheduled the first impeachment inquiry hearing for Thursday, just days before the government funding deadline.
During a Sunday morning appearance on Fox News, Lee told host Maria Bartoromo that he does not believe a shutdown would impact the investigation into Biden.
“I am aware of no reason, Maria, why that inquiry could not continue even if the government were to shut down temporarily,” Lee said. “There’s nothing suggesting to me that Congress can’t do its work if that happens.”
On Monday, Lee’s office reiterated that Congress would not be forced to pause the Biden probes in the event of a government shutdown.
“Congress is not required to suspend such investigations in the event of a government shutdown and can deem these activities essential,” Lee spokesperson Billy Gribbin said in an email.
Lee told Bartiromo he would like to avoid a shutdown, suggesting that Congress temporarily fund the government for a few weeks until a funding deal can be hammered out.
“The House of Representatives has got things moving to the point where we may have as many as four appropriations bills. That’s going to take some time. They might not be able to get it done in the next week. I think the best way to move it forward right now would be to extend the government spending for a few weeks to keep it open,” Lee said.
The Utah senator hasn’t always been so hesitant to shut down the government, and in the past, has been a vocal proponent of using a shutdown to try and force spending cuts or to stop government policies he disagrees with.
Shortly after taking office in 2013, Lee was at the forefront of a 17-day shutdown to defund the Affordable Care Act. That shutdown cost the state millions of dollars in lost tourist revenue. Then, Lee initially said he would not forego his pay during the shutdown, but later said he would donate a portion of his pay to charity.
During the two-day government shutdown in January 2018, Lee voted against a spending bill to reopen the government because it contained a long-term extension of a government surveillance program he worried was spying on Americans. Lee had previously threatened a government shutdown to block that program.
Lee was one of two GOP senators to vote against a funding bill to reopen the government after a 35-day shutdown from Dec. 22, 2018, to Jan. 25, 2019 — the longest in U.S. history. | US Congress |
Apple's "Find My" tracking network is useful for tracking down lost items with an AirTag attached. However, malicious actors can misuse it to leak data. A keyboard with a keystroke logger built by IT security expert Fabian Bräunlein now demonstrates that this actually works on a larger scale. Using such a device, malicious attackers could spy out passwords and send them to themselves - unnoticed, bypassing all security measures in the local network, via the iPhones and other Apple devices of uninvolved persons in the vicinity - a clearly punishable act under criminal law in many countries.
The "Find My" location network is based on millions and millions of iPhones, iPads and Macs. These receive Bluetooth signals from Apple AirTags, other Apple devices and compatible products and automatically report their location to the Apple cloud. Home-built devices can also participate in the location network, as researchers at TU Darmstadt discovered some time ago. However, this is a double-edged sword: While hobbyists use it to build compatible trackers based on a microcontroller like the ESP32, attackers can employ it to transmit arbitrary data that goes far beyond location - for example, passwords recorded by a keylogger.
Bräunlein discovered and criticized the fact that "Find My" harbors a certain potential for abuse as early as spring 2021. The problem still exists now, almost three years later, as Bräunlein proves with a recent experiment for which he integrated a keylogger into a USB keyboard. Everything typed into the keyboard is sent through Apple's "Find My" network to the attacker's computer, which can be located anywhere in the world. Passwords, confidential e-mails and much more would fall into the hands of the attacker.
Keyloggers have been a serious security threat for years. There are various hardware keyloggers that are plugged in between the USB keyboard and the computer and are invisible to virus protection programs. Such devices store keyboard records in their internal memory and could in many cases also transmit the tapped data to the attacker via Wi-Fi – at least in theory. However, in practice, this could be quickly detected, for example if a company monitors Wi-Fi activities on site with a monitoring solution.
Data leakage through Bluetooth
Using Bräunlein's method instead, attackers can act largely invisibly: It only sends Bluetooth low-energy packets with a short range to transmit the data, which are hardly noticeable. The packets are similar to the Bluetooth advertisements that Apple AirTags send in order to be found. When Apple devices within range receive such packets, they automatically respond by uploading location reports to Apple's "Find My" network. Based on these location reports, the attacker can reconstruct the sent data. This attack is particularly insidious because it employs the victim's own Apple devices or those of completely uninvolved persons to sneak the keylogger's data onto the Internet.
Ironically, the data transfer is possible because the "Find My" network has been strongly trimmed for data protection. The cryptography used means that neither the Apple devices nor Apple itself can determine from which AirTags the Bluetooth packets originate - and whether they are real devices at all or an attacker. The attacker cannot manipulate the content of the location report, but he can specify the hash that is used to store the location report in the Apple network, cleverly encode the bits and bytes he wishes to transmit within the hash, and retrieve it. By retrieving the location reports, he can find out what data his keylogger has sent. Since the retrieval is effecte via the Internet, the attacker can be in any location at the time.
Countermeasures?
Attacks cannot be prevented in principle due to the architecture of the tracking network. Apple could try to detect and block unusual activities. However, this could lead to a game of cat-and-mouse with the attackers. High-security areas can be enforced by requiring employees and visitors to hand over iPhones, iPads and MacBooks or at least to turn off the tracking functions. Additionally, any use of other Apple devices with activated "Find My" could be prohibited in such areas. Under iOS and iPadOS, for example, transmission is disabled via the "Find My" network switch under "Settings/[Your name]/Find My/Search for my [device]". Of course, anyone in the vicinity would also have to follow these steps.
c’t has asked Apple to comment on this vulnerability. However, we have not received a response at the time of publication.
For more information about this vulnerability, read Keylogger takes advantage of Apple's location network from c’t issue 25/23 (German language).
(dmk) | US Crime, Violence, Terrorism & cybercrime |
(Photo: Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc. via Getty Images)
'Let Them Wallow in Their Pigsty': Unified Democrats Say They Won't Vote to Save McCarthy
"We are not voting in any way that will help Republicans," said Rep. Pramila Jayapal.
To donate by check, phone, or other method, see our More Ways to Give page.
"We are not voting in any way that will help Republicans," said Rep. Pramila Jayapal.
House Democrats made clear Tuesday that they will not help GOP Speaker Kevin McCarthy save his leadership job as the chamber prepares to vote shortly on far-right Rep. Matt Gaetz's motion to take the gavel from the California Republican.
"We are not voting in any way that will help Republicans," Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), the chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, told reporters at the U.S. Capitol, pointing to McCarthy's actions in the wake of the January 6 insurrection and his continued support for former President Donald Trump, as well as his refusal to honor the bipartisan debt ceiling deal, which nearly sparked a government shutdown.
"There is reason after reason to just let Republicans deal with their own problems," said Jayapal. "Let them wallow in their pigsty of incompetence and inability to govern."
Confident in his ability to survive the Gaetz-led revolt, McCarthy is expected to call a vote Tuesday on the Florida Republican's motion to vacate. A majority of the House lawmakers present for the vote is required for the motion to succeed.
At least six House Republicans have said they will vote yes on the motion, which would be enough to oust McCarthy if all Democrats also vote yes—though absences could impact the threshold. If the motion succeeds, a temporary speaker will take McCarthy's spot—and it's not yet clear when a new election will be held.
In addition to Gaetz, the five other Republicans who have indicated they will vote to vacate are Reps. Eli Crane and Andy Biggs of Arizona, Bob Good of Virginia, Tim Burchett of Tennessee, and Matt Rosendale of Montana.
A vote is expected later Tuesday afternoon.
In a "Dear Colleague" letter on Tuesday, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) signaled that Democrats are unified and "will vote yes on the pending Republican motion to vacate the chair."
"House Democrats remain willing to find common ground on an enlightened path forward," Jeffries wrote. "Unfortunately, our extreme Republican colleagues have shown no willingness to do the same. It is now the responsibility of the GOP members to end the House Republican Civil War."
Rank-and-file Democrats have thus far provided no indication that they will break from their leadership to rescue McCarthy, who agreed earlier this year to allow any single House member to bring a motion to vacate as part of his deal with far-right Republicans to secure the speakership.
Rep. Summer Lee (D-Pa.) said in a statement Tuesday that "McCarthy voted to sell out our democracy to a mob of armed white supremacists to become speaker."
"He then sold his speakership to help MAGA extremists criminalize abortion, cut Social Security and Medicare, ban Black history, gut workers' rights and voting rights, and sell out our children's safety to the gun lobby and corporate polluters," Lee added. "If we didn't stop him, he would have sold out the entire country to keep his little gig as speaker of the chaos caucus. Why would I—or any Democrat—vote for a Republican speaker who supports Donald Trump and white supremacists? It's a NO from me." | US Congress |
Sen. John Fetterman, D-Pa., took a shot at California Gov. Gavin Newsom over the weekend over what many have referred to as a "shadow" presidential campaign against President Biden.
"Let me say something that might be uncomfortable," Fetterman said at a Democratic Party dinner in Iowa over the weekend. "Right now there are two additional Democrats running for Pennsylvania, excuse me, running for president right now. One, one is a congressman from Minnesota. The other one is the governor of California. They're both running for president, but only one had the guts to announce it."
Fetterman continued, "I got to tell you, let me say I got an opinion. If you are a Democrat that wants to criticize and go after Joe Biden, our president, just go ahead and write a check for Trump."
The Pennsylvania Democrat was referencing a recent announcement from Democratic Rep. Dean Phillips that he will be running a primary challenge to Biden while Newsom has faced accusations in recent months of vying for the job without officially announcing.
"This trip here, he's trying to build a base," GOP Congressman Doug LaMalfa told Fox News Digital last month in response to some high profile trips Newsom has taken, including to China, as speculation grows that President Biden may not run for a second term. "He's running the back channels until Biden takes himself out and the party says, 'Man we're going to get killed on this.'"
Fetterman's swipe at Newsom comes around the same time a New York Times-Siena College poll showed that Biden trails former President Trump in the key swing states of Nevada, Georgia, Arizona, Michigan and Pennsylvania.
A Monmouth University poll released earlier this month showed that 76% of voters agreed Biden, 80, was "too old" to serve another term, compared to just 48% who said the same about Trump, 77.
Newsom has denied he's running for president multiple times, and when asked, he told NewsNation's Chris Cuomo in September that he's "not worthy of that conversation" and that Biden "deserves it."
The offices of Newsom and Fetterman did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Fox News Digital. | US Federal Elections |
Suspect in custody after shooting at Texas State Fair leaves 3 wounded
One suspect is in custody after a shooting left three people wounded at the Texas State Fair Saturday night.
Dallas police said three people were injured with non-life-threatening injuries after a shooting broke out near the food court of the Dallas State Fair at about 7:45 p.m. local time on Saturday. The initial investigation determined that one man shot at another man.
The shooter was taken into custody after he ran from the scene. Police noted that a gun was recovered and that the investigation is ongoing.
The State Fair of Texas posted on X, formerly known as Twitter, that it was evacuating attendees from the park as a result of the shooting at about 8 p.m. local time on Saturday. It will now have a delayed opening on Sunday.
Dallas City Councilmember Adam Bazaldua said that the shooting sparked from an issue between two people who knew each other. He also used the incident to call for more gun control reform in Texas.
“I have been updated by the City Manager about a shooting that occurred in The State Fair of Texas food court tonight, sparked from a conflict between two people who knew each other. Three people were injured and the shooter is in DPD custody. The park is being evacuated for everyone’s safety,” he wrote on X.
“It’s one thing to have a right to bear arms, it’s another to have legislation, like permit-less carry, that makes it easier for senseless acts of gun violence like this to be carried out in our state. I wish our Republican friends in Austin would pass meaningful gun legislation to help our constituents feel safe in public,” he continued.
The fair allows those with valid handgun licenses to carry their weapons “in a concealed manner while attending the Fair,” according to the website. The police did not say whether the suspect had a valid license or what kind of gun he was carrying.
The Hill has reached out to Dallas Police for comment.
Copyright 2023 Nexstar Media Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. | US Crime, Violence, Terrorism & cybercrime |
Idaho Republican lawmakers are hastily trying to negotiate a deal for a special legislative session to reinstate a presidential primary election, but the House and Senate GOP majorities have yet to agree on a proposal that must be approved this week before the Republican National Committee’s deadline to finalize election dates.
Idaho law right now does not allow for a presidential primary, after a bill to move the election from March to May that legislators passed this year inadvertently eliminated a mechanism for candidates to file for the election. In the wake of the error, the state Republican and Democratic parties separately voted to hold caucuses to select their presidential nominees.
Last month, Senate Republican leaders proposed a special session to establish a May primary for presidential candidates, as the approved legislation intended, and most senators are on board. But most House members support a separate proposal that would instead reinstate the March primary.
At least 60% of Senate and House members must agree on one of the proposals to trigger a special session. Meanwhile, Republican National Committee rules dictate that changes to primary election dates must be finalized by Oct. 1, which is Sunday.
Rep. Brent Crane, R-Nampa, who is shopping the House proposal, said Monday that the odds of a special session before Sunday are “pretty good” because there’s bipartisan support for a primary election rather than a caucus.
“You’re finding both parties are saying, ‘This is a problem. A caucus is not the system we want to have for the selection process,’” Crane told the Idaho Statesman by phone. “We’re eight weeks apart on the date, essentially.”
Negotiations were continuing Tuesday, according to Senate President Pro Tem Chuck Winder, R-Boise. The House proposal “doesn’t appear to be acceptable at this time,” Winder said by phone.
“We’re working on, potentially, a counter to that,” he said.
What are the proposals?
The House proposal, sponsored by Rep. Lance Clow, R-Twin Falls, would repeal House Bill 138, the legislation that moved the presidential primary from March to May and passed easily, 61-6-3 in the House and 23-11-1 in the Senate. Previously, Idaho held its presidential primary in March and all other primary elections in May.
HB 138, which Idaho Gov. Brad Little signed into law this year, attempted to consolidate the primary elections, improve voter turnout and save taxpayers about $2.7 million in costs associated with a separate election. But it accidentally neglected a mechanism allowing candidates to file for the election, which eliminated the presidential primary altogether.
The Senate passed a trailer bill, Senate Bill 1186, that would have fixed the error, but the legislation failed in the House State Affairs Committee after Idaho GOP Chairwoman Dorothy Moon lobbied against it.
Moon previously told the Statesman that a March selection process compels candidates to focus their time and resources on Idaho and that a special session would “needlessly expend taxpayer resources” because the state party will not budge on a March date.
Last month, Senate GOP leadership proposed allowing the state political parties to move forward with plans. But if the parties choose not to caucus, the state would hold a presidential primary election in May. The bill, sponsored by Winder, would have the same effect as the trailer bill that failed in the House earlier this year.
Senate Republicans said the proposal is meant to protect voter access, since a caucus “significantly limits the number of citizens who can participate,” including active-duty military members, out-of-state missionaries and seniors with limited mobility, among other groups.
Democrats, meanwhile, have pushed for a restoration of the primary elections in either month.
“Our Democratic representatives have signed both petitions to return to a special session to restore a primary,” House Minority Leader Ilana Rubel, D-Boise, said in a news release Monday. “Whether the primary takes place in March or May, the important thing is that all Idaho voters be given an opportunity to vote.”
Senate, House at impasse over May primary
Lawmakers can call a special session if at least three in five members of both the House and Senate agree to meet. Per a constitutional amendment that voters approved last year, lawmakers must circulate a petition that specifies the subjects they’ll address in the special session. Lawmakers can consider only those issues when they meet.
More than 60% of House members support Clow’s petition, Crane said, and Senate GOP leaders announced earlier this month that they have more than 60% support for Winder’s bill.
But Crane, who chairs House State Affairs, the committee that rejected the trailer bill with a fix to the candidate filing mechanism, said committee Republicans still don’t support the change. Committee Republicans opposed the initial legislation because the state party opposed moving the primary election from March to May, Crane said.
“The presidential primary process is a party process, and the party wasn’t consulted,” Crane said. “Members of my committee said we’re going to honor the party’s request here.”
Winder noted that House Bill 138 sailed through the House on that lopsided 61-6 vote in February, before the Senate discovered the candidate filing error and cleared the trailer bill. All but two Republicans on Crane’s committee supported HB 138 in the full House vote.
“We corrected it with (Senate Bill) 1186, sent it back over to them, and they gave it a cursory hearing and no motion to pass it,” Winder said. “As a result, we’re in the situation we are.”
Winder said senators won’t support the House’s current proposal in light of the support its members showed for a May primary during this year’s legislative session. There’s “a lot of work to do yet” before an agreement, Winder said.
“Originally, everybody wanted to consolidate the presidential primary with the partisan primary in May,“ he said. “We just want people to be able to vote for president, but we also want to make sure that there’s a good turnout for the legislative races.”
Reporter Kevin Fixler contributed. | US Federal Elections |
U.S. access and identity management giant Okta says hackers stole data about all of its customers during a recent breach of its support systems, despite previously stating that only a fraction of customers were affected.
Okta confirmed in October that a hacker used a stolen credential to access its support case management system and steal customer-uploaded session tokens that could be used to break into the networks of Okta customers. Okta told TechCrunch at the time that around 1% of customers, or 134 organizations, were affected by the breach.
In a blog post published on Wednesday, Okta chief security officer David Bradbury said the company has since determined that all of its customers are affected by the breach. Okta spokesperson Cat Schermann would not provide an exact figure when asked by TechCrunch, but Okta has around 18,000 customers, according to the company’s website, including 1Password, Cloudflare, OpenAI, and T-Mobile.
Bradbury said on September 28, a hacker ran and downloaded a report that contained data belonging to “all Okta customer support system users.” For 99.6% of customers, hackers accessed only full names and email addresses, according to Okta, though in some cases they may also have accessed phone numbers, usernames and details of some employee roles.
“While we do not have direct knowledge or evidence that this information is being actively exploited, there is a possibility that the threat actor may use this information to target Okta customers via phishing or social engineering attacks,” Bradbury said. The notorious Scattered Spider hacking group, also known as Oktapus, has previously leveraged various social engineering tactics to target the accounts of Okta customers, including Caesars Entertainment and MGM Resorts.
Okta is advising all customers to use multi-factor authentication and to use phishing-resistant authenticators, such as physical security keys.
Okta says its follow-up analysis has also determined that the threat actor accessed “additional reports and support cases” containing the contact information of all Okta-certified users and some Okta Customer Identity Cloud (CIC) customer contacts. Some Okta employee information was also included in these reports, but the company hasn’t confirmed how many of its 6,000 employees are affected.
Okta says that none of its government customers are affected by the breach, and said its Auth0 support case management system was not impacted.
The identity of the threat actors behind the most recent breach of Okta’s systems is not yet known.
This is the latest of many security incidents impacting Okta. Last year, the company admitted that hackers stole some of its source code. A separate incident earlier in the year saw hackers post screenshots showing access to the company’s internal network after hacking into a company Okta used for customer service. | US Crime, Violence, Terrorism & cybercrime |
Two employees at a Kansas prison were fired, and six others were disciplined, after accusations that they mocked and failed to help an injured female inmate.
Other inmates at the Topeka Correctional Facility said the injured inmate spent two hours crawling back to her cell after hurting herself in September, CBS affiliate WIBW reported. The inmate was eventually hospitalized with broken bones, the station reported.
Inmates told KCUR-FM that prison staff called the injured woman "fat" and "lazy," and didn't provide assistance because they thought she was faking.
Hours later, the inmate was hospitalized with an injured foot, and didn't return to the prison for several weeks, the Kansas news service reported.
The Kansas Department of Corrections found eight staff members "performed in a manner that is unacceptable" while violating the agency's policies and values, WIBW reported.
KDOC spokesperson David Thompson said in a statement that officials take allegations of mistreatment seriously.
"We are confident that these actions represent a temporary lapse in judgment for the handful of staff that were involved and do not reflect a systemic issue at TCF or the larger correctional system," Thompson said.
Prison staff will get training so that "employees feel empowered to challenge and report any order — including from a superior officer — that they feel is illegal, immoral, or unethical," Thompson said.
The Topeka Correctional Facility is the only women's prison in Kansas.
for more features. | US Crime, Violence, Terrorism & cybercrime |
During Supreme Court oral arguments over the Biden administration's $400 billion student debt relief plan, Chief Justice John Roberts referred to the Trump administration "acting on its own" to cancel the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, saying, "We blocked that effort" in 2020.
At stake on Tuesday are two cases challenging President Joe Biden's plan to forgive up to $20,000 for millions of student loan borrowers. Many legal experts have suggested the justices might defer to the "major questions doctrine," a legal doctrine the 6-3 Republican-appointed majority court has used to limit executive agency power in the federal government.
"The case reminds me of the one we had a few years ago under a different administration, where the administration tried acting on its own to cancel the DREAMers program ... and we blocked that effort," said Roberts, speaking to Justice Department Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar, who is defending the loan forgiveness plan.
The decision Roberts referenced was a 5-4 opinion written by him, in which he sided with the liberal justices against the Trump administration's efforts to end the DACA program. Roberts's legal parallels between Trump's overreach on undoing protections for certain undocumented immigrants and Biden's unilateral plan to wipe away student debt could spell trouble for the fate of the program that already has 16 million applicants.
"And I just wonder, given the posture of the case and given our historic concern about the separation of powers, you would recognize at least that this is a case that presents extraordinarily serious, important issues about the role of Congress ... significant enough that the major questions doctrine ought to be considered," Roberts added.
Under the doctrine, if an agency works in a way that could have major political or economic implications, it must request the authority of Congress. The six Republican states challenging the plan are arguing the college debt relief plan is too massive for the Biden administration to use the authority in debt relief implementation.
The Department of Education used the HEROES Act of 2003, which is designed to allow for student debt relief during national emergencies or wartime, to justify forgiving millions of borrowers under the argument that they would be in a worse position to pay their dues following the COVID-19 pandemic.
“The secretary acted within the heartland of his authority and in line with the central purpose of the HEROES Act in providing that relief here," Prelogar said. "To apply the major questions doctrine to override that clear text will deny borrowers critical relief that Congress authorized and the secretary deemed essential."
Earlier, in arguments, liberal Justice Sonia Sotomayor suggested the cost of the forgiveness plan "seems to favor the argument that this is a major question."
Prelogar acknowledged the plan was a "significant action" but struggled to think that the sheer cost of the plan can be the "sole measure for triggering application of the major questions doctrine."
The arguments took place in Nebraska v. Biden, the first of two challenges to Biden's student debt relief plan. | SCOTUS |
Shortly after he was elected Speaker of the House, Mike Johnson suggested to Sean Hannity that he was willing to put up with George Santos’s cornucopia of lies and accused-criminal status so that Republicans could hold on to their razor-thin majority in the House. “We have a four-seat majority in the House,” Johnson explained. “It is possible that that number may be reduced even more in the coming weeks and months, and so we’ll have what may be the most razor-thin majority in the history of the Congress. We have no margin for error. And so George Santos is due due process…if we’re going to expel people from Congress, just because they’re charged with a crime, or accused, that’s a problem.” (Santos has pleaded not guilty to the charges against him.)
At the time Johnson said all this, there appeared to be little appetite among Republicans to throw out one of their own, as was reflected in the two failed votes to boot Santos from Congress. Yet fast-forward a few weeks—following an Ethics Committee report filled with allegations that New York representative engaged in criminal activity, including spending campaign cash on Botox, Sephora, and OnlyFans—and the sentiment appears to have shifted, a whole lot.
For one thing, Johnson has gone from basically saying he won’t support expulsion without an actual conviction to having conversations about Santos’s “options.” Per The Hill:
It’s not clear what Santos’s options could possibly be besides “resign now” or “get expelled later this week,” but perhaps Johnson has a third idea he’ll reveal when lawmakers return to DC on Tuesday.
For his part, Santos is apparently resigned to his fate, saying on Friday during a conversation on X Spaces: “I know I’m going to get expelled when this expulsion resolution goes to the floor. I’ve done the math over and over, and it doesn’t look really good.” During the same conversation, he claimed Congress is filled with “felons galore” and “people with all sorts of shiesty backgrounds.” He also threw in that some of his colleagues are “more worried about getting drunk every night with the next lobbyist that they're going to screw—and pretend like none of us know what's going on.”
From respectable business journalist to…
This will only encourage him
Elsewhere!
Biden Campaign Aims to Weaponize Trump’s Threat to Obamacare
The New York Times • Read More
Businessman accused of bribing Sen. Menendez had deep ties to Egypt
The Washington Post • Read More
Billionaire Ken Langone to meet with Nikki Haley, becoming latest GOP donor to weigh supporting her White House bid
CNN • Read More
Christie: Trump deserves blame for rise in antisemitism
The New York Times • Read More
Arizona Legislators Must Testify About Voting Laws, Supreme Court Rules
The New York Times • Read More
Matt Gaetz Is Miraculously More Hated Than Ever in Congress
The Daily Beast • Read More
The sound of crunching chips is annoying. Doritos has made a silencer.
The Washington Post • Read More
Nom Nom Nom. What’s the Deal With Cookie Monster’s Cookies?
The New York Times • Read More | US Congress |
Fetterman Proposes Internal Sanctions for Embattled Menendez: Report
'It's astonishing to me how anyone would be okay with that,' Fetterman said of Melendez's alleged conduct
Sen. John Fetterman, D-Pa., proposed internal sanctions on Sen. Bob Menendez, D-N.J., on Thursday, as the New Jersey lawmaker faces an indictment on charges of mishandling classified information and acting as a foreign agent.
Fetterman's proposal, while aimed at Menendez, according to Politico, would prohibit access to classified documents, committee assignments and using government funds for international travel more to any senator facing such charges.
“It's important to make a statement and to force people to come down on: is it appropriate for a man who's been accused of acting as a foreign agent [to be] receiving [that] kind of classified briefings,” Fetterman said.
He is accused of accepting bribes of cash, gold bars and a Mercedes Benz in exchange for official acts that would benefit three New Jersey businessmen.
Fetterman has spoken out about Menendez and his indictments before, calling on the New Jersey senator to resign and mentioning an expulsion vote.
“It's astonishing to me how anyone would be okay with that," Fetterman also said of Menendez's alleged conduct.
- John Fetterman Becomes First Senator to Call for Menendez Resignation
- Fetterman Calls for Senate To Expel Bob Menendez Amid Foreign Agent Charge
- Fetterman and Menendez Get Into Tiff on Capitol Hill Escalator
- Fetterman Compares Menendez to Tony Soprano in Repeating Call for Resignation
- Fetterman Plans to Give Back Menendez Donation In Cash-Filled Envelopes (Exclusive)
- Fetterman Says He is ‘Not Interested’ in Menendez Addressing the Senate Unless it is ‘to Resign’
- 74 Americans Evacuated Gaza Amid Israel-Hamas War, Biden SaysPolitics
- Trump Jr. Says He Thinks Civil Fraud Testimony ‘Went Really Well’Politics
- Sen. Tuberville Comms Director Suggests GOP Senators Who Thwart Military Appointment Blockade Should be PrimariedPolitics
- Democrat State Representative Jumps Into Crowded Primary In AlabamaPolitics
- GOP ‘Strongly’ Eyes Subpoena of Hunter Biden in Impeachment Probe (Exclusive)Politics
- Blinken to Urge Israel to Series of Pauses in War With HamasPolitics
- House Democrat Says Marjorie Taylor Greene Is ‘Corrosive’ But Not Worth Censuring Now (Exclusive)Politics
- Watchdog Group Calls On Rep. Comer to Release Tax Returns and Bank Records (Exclusive)Politics
- Durbin Becomes First Senator to Call for Hamas-Israel CeasefirePolitics
- George Santos Hits Republican Colleague Over Son’s Drug ConvictionPolitics
- Bromance Blooming With Speaker Johnson After House GOP’s Gnarly BreakupPolitics
- Witnesses Testify About Atmosphere of Rally Before Jan. 6 Riot During Trump Colorado 14th Amendment TrialPolitics | US Congress |
- Oops!Something went wrong.Please try again later.
ST. LOUIS (AP) — Thousands of information technology workers contracting with U.S. companies have for years secretly sent millions of dollars of their wages to North Korea for use in its ballistic missile program, FBI and Department of Justice officials said.
The Justice Department said Wednesday that IT workers dispatched and contracted by North Korea to work remotely with companies in St. Louis and elsewhere in the U.S. have been using false identities to get the jobs. The money they earned was funneled to the North Korean weapons program, FBI leaders said at a news conference in St. Louis.
Court documents allege that North Korea’s government dispatched thousands of skilled IT workers to live primarily in China and Russia with the goal of deceiving businesses from the U.S. and elsewhere into hiring them as freelance remote employees. The workers used various techniques to make it look like they were working in the U.S., including paying Americans to use their home Wi-Fi connections, said Jay Greenberg, special agent in charge of the St. Louis FBI office.
Greenberg said any company that hired freelance IT workers “more than likely” hired someone participating in the scheme. An FBI spokeswoman said Thursday that the North Koreans contracted with companies across the U.S. and in some other countries.
“We can tell you that there are thousands of North Korea IT workers that are part of this,” spokeswoman Rebecca Wu said.
Federal authorities announced the seizure of $1.5 million and 17 domain names as part of the investigation, which is ongoing.
FBI officials said the scheme is so prevalent that companies must be extra vigilant in verifying whom they are hiring, including requiring interviewees to at least be seen via video.
“At a minimum, the FBI recommends that employers take additional proactive steps with remote IT workers to make it harder for bad actors to hide their identities," Greenberg said in a news release.
The IT workers generated millions of dollars a year in their wages to benefit North Korea’s weapons programs. In some instances, the North Korean workers also infiltrated computer networks and stole information from the companies that hired them, the Justice Department said. They also maintained access for future hacking and extortion schemes, the agency said.
Officials didn't name the companies that unknowingly hired North Korean workers, say when the practice began, or elaborate on how investigators became aware of it. But federal authorities have been aware of the scheme for some time.
In May 2022, the State Department, Department of the Treasury, and the FBI issued an advisory warning of attempts by North Koreans “to obtain employment while posing as non-North Korean nationals.” The advisory noted that in recent years, the regime of Kim Jong Un “has placed increased focus on education and training" in IT-related subjects.
John Hultquist, the head of threat intelligence at the cybersecurity firm Mandiant, said North Korea’s use of IT freelancers to help fund the weapons program has been in play for more than a decade, but the effort got a boost from the COVID-19 pandemic.
“I think the post-COVID world has created a lot more opportunity for them because freelancing and remote hiring are a far more natural part of the business than they were in the past,” Hultquist said.
North Korea also uses workers in other fields to funnel money back for the weapons program, Hultquist said, but higher pay for tech workers provides a more lucrative resource.
Tensions on the Korean Peninsula are high as North Korea has test-fired more than 100 missiles since the start of 2022 and the U.S. has expanded its military exercises with its Asian allies, in tit-for-tat responses.
The Justice Department in recent years has sought to expose and disrupt a broad variety of criminal schemes aimed at bolstering the North Korean regime, including its nuclear weapons program.
In 2016, for instance, four Chinese nationals and a trading company were charged in the U.S. with using front companies to evade sanctions targeting North Korea’s nuclear weapons and ballistics initiatives.
Two years ago, the Justice Department charged three North Korean computer programmers and members of the government’s military intelligence agency in a broad range of global hacks that officials say were carried out at the behest of the regime. Law enforcement officials said at the time that the prosecution highlighted the profit-driven motive behind North Korea’s criminal hacking, a contrast from other adversarial nations like Russia, China and Iran that are generally more interested in espionage, intellectual property theft or even disrupting democracy.
In September, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un called for an exponential increase in production of nuclear weapons and for his country to play a larger role in a coalition of nations confronting the United States in a “new Cold War,” state media said.
In February, United Nations experts said that North Korean hackers working for the government stole record-breaking virtual assets last year estimated to be worth between $630 million and more than $1 billion. The panel of experts said in a report that the hackers used increasingly sophisticated techniques to gain access to digital networks involved in cyberfinance, and to steal information that could be useful in North Korea’s nuclear and ballistic missile programs from governments, individuals and companies.
—-
Eric Tucker in Washington, D.C, contributed to this report. | US Crime, Violence, Terrorism & cybercrime |
- The Education Department released its new proposal for a strengthened gainful employment rule.
- The rule would place safeguards for borrowers to ensure they don't take on more student debt than they can afford.
- The department is aiming to implement the final rule by July 2024.
President Joe Biden's Education Department has finally released long-awaited proposals to establish safeguards for student-loan borrowers.
On Wednesday, the department announced its proposal for a new, "strongest-ever" gainful employment rule, along with other plans to ensure financial transparency for students before they enroll in a program, according to the press release.
The initial gainful employment rule was established by then-President Barack Obama in 2014, and it cut off federal student aid for schools that offered programs that left students with too much debt compared to their likely post-graduation earnings.
However, in 2019 former President Donald Trump repealed the rule, and Biden pushed back its reinstatement to July 2024 at the earliest. Now, borrowers finally have a glimpse into what the new rule will look like.
"President Biden has taken unprecedented steps to fix our broken student loan system and help millions of Americans struggling with student debt, creating new opportunities for borrowers, their families, and their communities. At the same time, we need to hold colleges accountable for unaffordable costs and better protect students from programs that fail to deliver real value and upward mobility," Education Secretary Miguel Cardona said in a statement. "The rules proposed today are about helping ensure that when students invest in a postsecondary education, they get a solid return on investment and a greater shot at the American dream."
As Under Secretary of Education James Kvaal told reporters on a Wednesday press call, the "proposed rule would use two independent metrics to determine whether for-profit degrees and certificate programs across all institutions are delivering value to students." Specifically, those programs would be required to show that:
- Graduates can afford their student-loan payments by ensuring the share of their annual earnings needed to make those payments, known as their debt-to-earnings ratio, is equal to or less than 20% of their discretionary earnings
- And at least half of the programs' graduates have higher earnings than a typical high school graduate in the labor force who never pursued higher education.
Aaron Ament, president of borrower advocacy group Student Defense, said in a statement that the announcement is a "strong proposal."
"Ever since the Trump Administration illegally repealed the 2014 Gainful Employment rule, students have been left unprotected from predatory higher ed profiteers," Ament said.
"While we applaud the Department's efforts and urge swift completion of the rulemaking process, this proposal will not take effect until July 2024 at the earliest," Ament added. "We also remain concerned that the finalization or implementation of this proposal could be stalled or completely sidelined by legal challenges. The Department should, once and for all, concede that the repeal of the 2014 Rule was illegal and consent to its immediate reinstatement as a bridge and a backstop to its new rule."
The gainful employment rule has drawn criticism from for-profit schools in the past who have argued that they were being targeted by the strengthened regulations. Insider has previously reported on the fraudulent behavior many for-profit schools have engaged in, such as misleading borrowers about the true costs of a program and leading them into unaffordable debt. The new rule would crack down on that behavior.
Jason Altmire, president and CEO of Career Education Colleges and Universities — which represents for-profit institutions — said in a statement that Biden's proposal "unfairly targets programs at proprietary institutions and fails to account for the unique challenges facing students and communities that career-oriented programs serve."
Along with a new gainful employment proposal, the department also announced that it will increase transparency on college pricing by collecting information on all colleges and programs about their costs and typical borrowing amounts and making that information available publicly on the department's website. The department will also create a "watch list of the least financially valuable postsecondary education programs, focusing on the programs that play an outsized role in burdening graduates with unaffordable debts," per the press release.
Democratic lawmakers have previously pushed for a strengthened gainful employment rule. The Congressional Progressive Caucus wrote in its executive action agenda for Biden this year that the department "should protect students by expediting and strengthening a reinstated Gainful Employment rule," along with informing "applicants if they are applying to an institution on the low-value college list that risks leaving students with high debt and low earnings prior to administering financial aid."
The proposed regulations will be published on the Federal Register on May 19, and the public will then have 30 days to submit public comments on the proposal. Senior department officials told reporters on a press call that they are confident the rules will be finalized by November 1, with implementation on July 1, 2024. | US Federal Policies |
House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., said Tuesday that he won’t offer Democrats any deals in exchange for their votes on a motion to vacate his speakership, which the House will begin considering later in the day.
Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., introduced a motion to vacate the speaker's office on Monday. McCarthy can only stand to lose a handful of votes, prompting speculation that he could seek help from across the aisle.
McCarthy, however, quashed the notion on CNBC’s "Squawk Box," declaring, "They haven't asked for anything, and I'm not going to provide anything."
"Are we now in a situation in our government that we just provided keeping government open, that we're going to play politics with how you become speaker? If that's the case, then I think we've got real problems," he said.
McCarthy said he refuses to put House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries "in any position at all, and I respect whatever decision anybody makes."
McCarthy said Gaetz has had it out for him "from the very beginning."
"He’s been blaming me for an ethics complaint against him that happened in the last Congress I have nothing to do with," McCarthy said. "He wants me to try to wipe that away. I'm not going to do that. That's illegal. And you know what? If someway I lose my job because I uphold the law because I uphold the continuity of government, so be it."
The House Ethics Committee has been investigating Gaetz since 2021 on allegations, including campaign finance violations as well as claims of taking bribes and using drugs — accusations the congressman has vehemently denied. Gaetz also denies allegations leaked from a Justice Department sex trafficking probe said to have involved an underage girl.
Fox News' Daniel Wallace contributed to this report. | US Congress |
Attorney General Merrick Garland said in interview that aired Sunday that he would resign if asked by President Joe Biden to take action against Republican presidential frontrunner Donald Trump. But he doesn't think he'll be put in that position.
“I am sure that that will not happen, but I would not do anything in that regard,” he said in an interview on CBS “60 Minutes.” “And if necessary, I would resign. But there is no sense that anything like that will happen.”
The Justice Department is at the center of not only indictments against Trump that include an effort to overturn the 2020 election and wrongly keeping classified documents, but also cases against Biden's son Hunter, the aftermath of the riot at the U.S. Capitol and investigations into classified documents found in the president's home and office. Garland has appointed three separate special counsels.
Garland has spoken only sparingly about the cases and reiterated Sunday he would not get into specifics, but dismissed claims by Trump and his supporters that the cases were timed to ruin his chances to be president in 2024.
“Well, that’s absolutely not true. Justice Department prosecutors are nonpartisan. They don’t allow partisan considerations to play any role in their determinations,” Garland said.
Garland said the president has never tried to meddle in the investigations, and he dismissed criticism from Republicans that he was going easy on the president's son, Hunter, who was recently indicted on a gun charge after a plea deal in his tax case fell apart. Hunter Biden is due in a Delaware court this week.
“We do not have one rule for Republicans and another rule for Democrats. We don’t have one rule for foes and another for friends," he said. ”We have only one rule; and that one rule is that we follow the facts and the law, and we reach the decisions required by the Constitution, and we protect civil liberties."
Garland choked up when talking about his concerns over violence, particularly as judges and prosecutors assigned to the Trump cases got death threats.
“People can argue with each other as much as they want and as vociferously as they want. But the one thing they may not do is use violence and threats of violence to alter the outcome,” he said. “American people must protect each other. They must ensure that they treat each other with civility and kindness, listen to opposing views, argue as vociferously as they want, but refrain from violence and threats of violence. That’s the only way this democracy will survive.” | US Political Corruption |
Ellis, one of the ex-president's former lawyers, accepted a plea deal in October after she was named in an indictment accusing Trump of conspiracy to commit forgery, solicitation of violation of an oath by a public official, and breaking Georgia's anti-racketeering act. The former president has since pleaded not guilty.
Ellis pleaded guilty to one felony charge of aiding and abetting false statements and writings, and agreed to the prosecutor's recommendations that she face five years of probation, pay a $5,000 fine in restitution, and perform 100 hours of community service.
ABC News has obtained a video recording of an interview with prosecutors a day before her plea deal that has angered Trump supporters. In the clip, she alleged that Dan Scavino, Trump's deputy chief of staff at the time, said to her in December 2020 that "the boss" didn't plan to leave the White House "under any circumstances," regardless of the results of the election.
Newsweek has contacted Scavino and Ellis to comment on this story.
"Well, we don't care, and we're not going to leave," Ellis claimed that he said "in a kind of excited tone" after she told him the attempt to challenge the election was "essentially over."
She said: "And I said, 'What do you mean?' And he said: 'Well, the boss,' meaning President Trump -- and everyone understood 'the boss,' that's what we all called him -- he said: 'The boss is not going to leave under any circumstances. We are just going to stay in power.'"
Ellis continued: "And I said to him, 'Well, it doesn't quite work that way, you realize?' and he said, 'We don't care.'"
Responding to clips of the interview, which circulated on X, formerly Twitter, MAGA supporters were outraged at her testimony.
Laura Loomer, a political activist called Ellis a "grifter." The lawyer had accepted over $217,000 in legal funds to fight the case and some have called on her to return the money since she has now pleaded guilty.
Conservative commentator Rogan O'Handley similarly implied the video was leaked to fundraise for Georgia prosecutors.
A third account called Ellis "a nasty clown," and a fourth said she was a "traitor."
A total of 18 other co-conspirators were also named in the indictment, including prominent Trump allies Rudy Giuliani and John Eastman.
In October, another former Trump lawyer, Kenneth Chesebro, pleaded guilty in the case, while Sidney Powell, another ex-Trump lawyer, admitted six misdemeanor counts of conspiracy to commit election interference in a court hearing in Atlanta. Bail bondsman Scott Hall was the first to accept a plea deal in September.
ABC News and The Washington Post has also obtained recordings of interviews with Powell and Chesebro.
In a statement to ABC News, Steve Sadow, Trump's lead counsel in the Fulton County case, called the "purported private conversation," as described by Ellis, "absolutely meaningless."
"The only salient fact to this nonsense line of inquiry is that President Trump left the White House on January 20, 2021, and returned to Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, Florida," Sadow said. "If this is the type of bogus, ridiculous 'evidence' DA Willis intends to rely upon, it is one more reason that this political, travesty of a case must be dismissed."
Uncommon Knowledge
Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
fairness meter
About the writer
Kate Plummer is a Newsweek reporter based in London, U.K. Her focus is on U.S. politics and national affairs, and she is particularly interested in the impact of social policy decisions on people as well as the finances of political campaigns, corruption, foreign policy, democratic processes and more. Prior to joining Newsweek, she covered U.K. politics extensively. Kate joined Newsweek in 2023 from The Independent and has also been published in multiple publications including The Times and the Daily Mail. She has a B.A. in History from the University of Oxford and an M.A. in Magazine Journalism from City, University of London.
Languages: English.
You can get in touch with Kate by emailing [email protected], or by following her on X at @kateeplummer.
Kate Plummer is a Newsweek reporter based in London, U.K. Her focus is on U.S. politics and national affairs, and... Read more
To read how Newsweek uses AI as a newsroom tool, Click here. | US Political Corruption |
Mainstream House Republicans long frustrated with the antics of their combative anti-establishment colleagues are launching a revolution as a growing group of them lash out — at the expense of GOP Speaker nominee Jim Jordan (R-Ohio).
The group of 22 Republicans who opposed Jordan on a second Speaker ballot Wednesday include those from swing districts and safe ones; new members and longtime House veterans.
And they do not look like they are moving.
Small groups of hard-line conservatives have used maximum leverage tactics to push and pull the rest of their GOP colleagues all year. It started with the 15-ballot saga to elect former Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) in January; continued through tanking procedural votes to block floor action over spending; and commenced with ousting McCarthy and blocking the first nominee selected to replace him, Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-La.).
The slim four-seat GOP majority had always provided the opportunity for ideological moderates, or any group of five Republicans, to take a similar tactic. But they had not banded together to make an organized, public move to do so — until now, against the candidacy of the founding chairman of the confrontational House Freedom Caucus who rose to be chairman of the House Judiciary Committee.
Some of those are vulnerable Republicans long seen as likely Jordan opponents, wary of being tied to his brand of combative politics. Others are appropriators with grudges over how Jordan’s hard-line conservative supporters have handled spending issues.
Rep. Steve Womack (R-Ark.), chairman of the Appropriations Subcommittee on Financial Services and General Government, said that he is looking for a GOP Speaker that is “not just capable of moving the bills that we would prefer to move,” but will also “have the skill sets to work with the opposing party, particularly in the Senate.”
“Mr. Jordan, while perfectly suited for [the] Judiciary and Oversight positions that he’s held, does not possess the skill sets that are going to be needed to be an effective Speaker and to be able to deliver what we need to deliver,” Womack said.
Still others are lawmakers who long for the days when the GOP conference could hold a closed-door vote, elect a candidate for Speaker and then have that candidate win his colleagues’ backing on the floor.
They are outraged that Jordan allies who would not support Scalise after he narrowly won such a vote last week are now demanding that they support Jordan.
“Immediately, five people said, ‘We’ll never vote for Steve Scalise, only Jim Jordan.’ And you’re like, ‘OK, I guess our vote don’t count,’” Rep. Don Bacon (R-Neb.) said. “That was the straw that broke the camel’s back for me.”
“You can’t be at a game or process where only one side’s playing by the rules,” Bacon said.
Rep. Mike Kelly (R-Pa.), another Jordan opponent, expressed similar frustration.
“This has to do with the integrity of that conference,” Kelly said. “They don’t need to lecture me on the way things work. I’m 75 years old. I’ve watched it my entire life, how things work. This is what tears teams apart.”
Some of those who resisted Scalise and insisted on Jordan, for their part, said an effort by Scalise allies to defeat a rule change that would have required near-unanimity support for a GOP Speaker nominee — aiming to keep GOP division out of public view — was “very swamp” and turned them off of his candidacy.
The number of holdouts on Jordan remains small compared to the rest of the House GOP. And Jordan has argued he has broad support from all types of members.
“We’ve got people who are defense hawks who are for us, appropriators who are for us, Main Street Group who are for us, conservative members who are for us,” Jordan said Wednesday. “We’ve got a complete cross section of the conference.”
But for the Jordan holdouts, it is also the pressure campaign tactics, coming mostly from outside commentators and activists, that are further inflaming them and hardening their opposition to the Ohio Republican. Multiple members who voted against Jordan have gotten swarms of phone calls to their offices after their numbers have been plastered online, coming mostly from those not in their districts.
“Early on, there was a chance that some of them might be able to come around. And then we got into the attack dog tactics that were employed against the people that voted against him the first time,” Womack said.
Rep. Mariannette Miller-Meeks (R-Iowa) said Wednesday that she received “credible death threats” after defecting from Jordan.
Jordan quickly condemned the threats.
“We condemn all threats against our colleagues and it is imperative that we come together. Stop. It’s abhorrent,” Jordan wrote on X.
The holdouts against Jordan have increased chatter about some Republicans working with Democrats to empower Speaker Pro Tempore Patrick McHenry (R-N.C.) as the conference fails to coalesce around a Speaker. But it is unclear whether those voting against Jordan would go that far.
And those supporting Jordan charge that the objections to him are mostly emotional.
“I’d be curious to see what my colleagues’ objectives are now besides just literally saying no,” said Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas), a Freedom Caucus member who had resisted McCarthy in January and Scalise last week.
“We went down to the floor, we did nomination speeches, and we got behind people and explained what we wanted. We offered proposals, we offered thoughts. We put out a list of things that we thought ought to change in the institution,” Roy said of the holdouts against McCarthy in January. “What are they doing besides sitting around whining?”
Womack agreed about the general dynamics of the two parallel Speaker holdouts — but saw it as more of a warning for Jordan.
“The January 20 [against McCarthy] were all trying to extract something. it was transactional,” Womack said. “The October 20 — I’ve talked to these people. There’s not an ask. There is nothing that the candidate can offer that can move these members from their positions.”
Mychael Schnell contributed. | US Congress |
Donald Trump is a liar, but he has told the truth at least once: Running for president in 2016, he promised to appoint Supreme Court justices who would “automatically” overturn Roe v. Wade. Trump did just that by putting Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett on the bench. But now—as he campaigns to return to the White House, and as his party continues to pay for the Dobbs decision at the ballot box—he appears to be trying to rewrite recent history.
Rolling Stone reports the former president has privately discussed plans recently to campaign as a “moderate” on abortion, seeking to avoid discussing reproductive rights in the hardline terms of GOP primary rivals like Ron DeSantis and instead stake out a position that “makes both Republicans and Democrats very happy.” The fall of Roe, he’s apparently told aides, has eliminated any “leverage” the anti-abortion conservatives had over him.
“The [anti-abortion] activists who thought they could force Donald Trump to commit political suicide were deeply mistaken,” a Republican associated with Trump’s campaign told the outlet. “These were all-or-nothing types who should realize that he doesn’t need them. They need him.”
Trump's effort to rebrand as an abortion “moderate” is, by all means, absurd. Not only does it defy his prior statements on the issue, including his suggestion in the 2016 cycle that there “should be some form of punishment” for women who seek abortions; it attempts to underplay the outsize role Trump played in ending the federal right to an abortion, as he even acknowledged earlier this year. “After 50 years of failure, with nobody coming even close, I was able to kill Roe v Wade,” Trump wrote on his social media page in May.
Of course, that was before voters showed Republicans what they thought of the Dobbs decision and the talk of a national abortion ban in this month’s off-year elections: In yet another cycle, Democrats outperformed expectations, riding reproductive rights to victories in Virginia and Kentucky. In Ohio, a key swing state, voters approved a ballot measure to enshrine abortion protections in the state constitution. And a recent NBC News poll found that abortion and democracy were top concerns for single-issue voters in 2024. His supposed “moderate” position—whatever that is supposed to mean—is nothing more than a transparent effort to avoid the fate of Republicans who lost on the issue in 2022 and 2023. “Let’s be clear: Donald Trump is responsible for ending Roe v. Wade,” Joe Biden wrote in September. “And if you vote for him, he’ll go even further.”
That should be obvious, but Trump has a knack for muddying the waters. “I haven’t seen Trump say something either way on abortion,” one Trump voter in bellwether Pennsylvania told the New York Times earlier this month. “He doesn’t seem to care either way and that’s fine with me,” she added. “I don’t think Trump was responsible for the Supreme Court’s decision,” another swing-state voter, from Michigan, told the outlet. “I honestly think that Trump is just for less government and states’ rights, and I’m fine with that.”
With a close race expected in 2024, Democrats shouldn’t take their advantage with pro-choice voters for granted. They must, as my colleague Molly Jong-Fast argued earlier this month, continue to hammer Republicans—and Trump specifically—on abortion. | SCOTUS |
The House of Representatives will reconvene on Wednesday morning to try to elect a new speaker, after the hard-right congressman Jim Jordan failed to win the gavel in the first round of voting.
Twenty Republicans opposed Jordan on Tuesday, leaving him far short of the 217 votes needed to ascend to the speakership. Because of Republicans’ razor-thin majority in the House, Jordan can only afford four defections within his party and still become speaker.
The House has been without a speaker since the historic ouster of the Republican Kevin McCarthy earlier this month. As long as the chair is vacant, the House is stuck, unable to advance any legislation.
Many Republicans have expressed their desire to quickly pass an aid package for Israel amid its war with Hamas, but the House cannot do so until a new leader is elected.
Jordan, a congressman from Ohio, initially said after the failed vote that he hoped to continue to a second ballot on Tuesday evening, but he scrapped that plan as he struggled to expand his support within the Republican conference. The House will instead reconvene at 11am on Wednesday to begin the next round of voting, although it remained unclear whether Jordan could sway enough of his critics to win the top job.
Jordan appeared poised to pick up at least two votes ,on Wednesday, from the congressmen Gus Bilirakis of Florida and Doug LaMalfa of California. Bilirakis missed the first vote because of a death in the family, and LaMalfa, who supported the former Republican speaker Kevin McCarthy on the first ballot, said that he would back Jordan moving forward.
Jordan’s other detractors appeared confident after the first ballot, suggesting their ranks may grow in the second round of voting. Several Republicans joined the congressman Mario Díaz-Balart of Florida in calling for an immediate follow-up vote on Tuesday, a move that would have deprived Jordan of additional time to negotiate with the holdouts.
Speaking to reporters on Tuesday, Jordan appeared ready for a potentially lengthy floor battle, and he dismissed the possibility of his Republican critics working with House Democrats to form a bipartisan coalition.
“We’ve got to have a speaker. And it can’t be some deal with the Democrats. The American people don’t want that,” Jordan said.
The House Democratic leader, Hakeem Jeffries of New York, indicated that some Republicans were indeed prepared to work across the aisle to resolve the standoff, saying that there have been “informal conversations that have accelerated over the last few days”.
“My hope, now that it’s clear Jim Jordan lacks the votes to be speaker, [is] that those conversations will accelerate this evening,” Jeffries told reporters on Tuesday.
One idea floated by centrist Democrats would involve temporarily expanding the powers of the acting speaker, the Republican congressman Patrick McHenry of North Carolina, to allow the House to take up urgent legislation. In addition to the proposed aid package for Israel, the House must approve some kind of stopgap funding measure by 17 November to avoid a government shutdown.
Jeffries told reporters that he had no plans to meet with McHenry, but added: “High-level members on the Democratic side of the aisle are ready, willing and able to have those conversations.”
Even as he hinted at a possible bipartisan path out of the current impasse, Jeffries firmly rejected the idea of elevating Jordan to the speakership.
“I have respect for Patrick McHenry. I think he is respected on our side of the aisle,” Jeffries said. “There are a whole host of other Republicans who are respected on our side of the aisle. Jim Jordan is not one of them.” | US Congress |
MADISON, Wis. (AP) — A newly released audio recording offers a behind-the-scenes look at how former President Donald Trump’s campaign team in a pivotal battleground state knew they had been outflanked by Democrats in the 2020 presidential election. But even as they acknowledged defeat, they pivoted to allegations of widespread fraud that were ultimately debunked — repeatedly — by elections officials and the courts.
The audio from Nov. 5, 2020, two days after the election, is surfacing as Trump again seeks the White House while continuing to lie about the legitimacy of the outcome and Democrat Joe Biden’s win.
The Wisconsin political operatives in the strategy session even praised Democratic turnout efforts in the state’s largest counties and appeared to joke about their efforts to engage Black voters, according to the recording obtained Thursday by The Associated Press. The audio centers on Andrew Iverson, who was the head of Trump’s campaign in the state.
“Here’s the deal: Comms is going to continue to fan the flame and get the word out about Democrats trying to steal this election. We’ll do whatever they need. Just be on standby if there’s any stunts we need to pull,” Iverson said.
Iverson is now the Midwest regional director for the Republican National Committee. He deferred questions about the meeting to the RNC, whose spokesperson, Keith Schipper, declined comment because he had not heard the recording.
The former campaign official and Republican operative who provided a copy of the recording to the AP was in the meeting and recorded it. The operative is not authorized to speak publicly about what was discussed and did not want to be identified out of concern for personal and professional retaliation, but said they came forward because Trump is mounting a third attempt for the White House.
In response to questions about the audio, Trump campaign spokesperson Steven Cheung said: “The 2024 campaign is focused on competing in every state and winning in a dominating fashion. That is why President Trump is leading by wide margins in poll after poll.”
Wisconsin was a big part of Trump’s victory in 2016, when he smashed through the Democrats’ so-called “Blue Wall” in the upper Midwest, and his campaign fought hard to keep the swing state in his column four years later before his loss to Biden
Biden defeated Trump by nearly 21,000 votes in Wisconsin in 2020, a result that has withstood independent and partisan audits and reviews, as well as lawsuits and recounts in the state’s two largest and Democratic-leaning counties.
Yet, two days after the election, there was no discussion of Trump having won the state during the meeting of Republican campaign operatives.
Instead, parts of the meeting focus on discussions about packing up campaign offices and writing final reports about how the campaign unfolded. At one point on the recording, Iverson is heard praising the GOP’s efforts while admitting the margin of Trump’s defeat in the state.
“At the end of the day, this operation received more votes than any other Republican in Wisconsin history,” Iverson said. “Say what you want, our operation turned out Republican or DJT supporters. Democrats have got 20,000 more than us, out of Dane County and other shenanigans in Milwaukee, Green Bay and Dane. There’s a lot that people can learn from this campaign.”
The meeting showcases another juxtaposition of what Republican officials knew about the election results and what Trump and his closest allies were saying publicly as they pushed the lie of a stolen election. Trump was told by his own attorney general there was no sign of widespread fraud, and many within his own administration told the former president there was no substance to various claims of fraud or manipulation — advice Trump repeatedly ignored.
In the weeks after the election, Trump and his allies would file dozens of lawsuits, convene fake electors and pressure election officials in an attempt to overturn the will of the voters and keep Trump in office.
It’s unclear whether the staff in Wisconsin coordinated their message directly with campaign officials in Washington.
Parts of the Nov. 5 meeting also center on Republican outreach efforts to the state’s Black community.
At one point, the operatives laugh over needing “more Black voices for Trump.” Iverson also references their efforts to engage with Black voters.
“We ever talk to Black people before? I don’t think so,” he said, eliciting laughter from others in the room.
Another speaker on the recording with Iverson is identified by the source as GOP operative Clayton Henson. At the time, Henson was a regional director for the RNC in charge of Wisconsin and other Midwestern states. They give a postmortem of sorts on the election, praising Republican turnout and campaign efforts while acknowledging the Democrats’ robust turn-out-the-vote campaign.
Henson specifically references Democratic turnout in Dane County, which includes Madison, the state capital, and is a liberal stronghold in the state. A record-high 80% of the voting-age population cast ballots in 2020 in the county, which Biden won with 76% of the vote.
“Hats off to them for what they did in Dane County. You have to respect that,” Henson said. “There’s going to be another election in a couple years. So remember the lessons you learned and be ready to punch back.”
Henson, reached by phone Thursday, said, “No thank you” when asked to comment about the meeting. | US Federal Elections |
While this Summer of Indictments may stoke the hopes that our long national nightmare might be ended through judicial means, we should be realistic: The pathway to moving on from America’s MAGA mistake can, and must, be realized through democratic means. We shouldn’t pretend, in any event, that Trumpism and MAGA will might be blinked from existence, but discrediting its political future will take resounding losses to Democrat candidates in 2024. Voters of differing political beliefs must form unlikely, but necessary, alliances, to ensure that Republicans suffer vast defeats at the polls next year, up and down the ballot.
Is this a daunting task? Not unduly; numerous such alliances have occurred in our youthful 243-year-old republic. But the doing-so won’t just be critical for our short-term electoral circumstances: It is the necessary first step in our nation’s healing and reconciliation. And just as the Union did in the aftermath of Appomattox, those on the winning side—who’ve gathered on the correct side of history—will need to lead civic and communal renewals.
I realize, and respect, that a not-small number of Democrats, Trump-disdaining Republicans, and purple-leaning voters might recoil at such a message, especially given the fact I’ve already renounced Trump and MAGA myself. But if a great nation deserves the truth, the truthtellers should have the necessary courage to pursue reconciliation.
This will take some forbearance. MAGA voters need to be shown that the vast majority of the elected officials and pundits they’ve followed have failed them, lied to them, mocked them privately, incessantly insulted their intelligence. Most of all, however, they’ve been traumatized in believing in parallel existences full of hysteria, phobias and paranoia. But these voters aren’t beyond redemption—for the most part, they are good and decent people who didn’t deserve to be dehumanized at the hands of the GOP.
National reconciliation means that we can’t just leave MAGA voters to fend for themselves. That they’ve fended for themselves for years—generations, for some—is the biggest reason a corrupted GOP was able to prey on their concerns and fears—some of which had some valid, such as economic worries; and, some in dreadful abeyance of reality, such as the misbegotten fears of a tyrannical, hostile Democrat takeover of their lives, livelihoods, rights and families. I may not be able to offer a blanket endorsement of Democrat policies, but I credit the Democratic Party for not trafficking in the kinds of nefarious mythologies the Republican Party promulgates.
But we should be clear about one thing: It’s the voters who might be redeemed. The Republican Party is, in its current form, beyond redemption. If we hope to bring about the end of our MAGA madness, reconcile as a nation, and move on with our lives, we have to give up on the popular idea that we have to “save the Republican Party.” Giving up on this fruitless pursuit might be the best first step toward healing. Here’s a secret: If you scratch the surface of a dedicated MAGA voter, more often than not, you’ll find someone who already who already, deep down, loathes the GOP. Let’s make use of this.
Much of our national, centrist/center-left press tend to express that they have something different in mind. Whether or not, they want to acknowledge this, they clearly believe that MAGA voters are uneducated and uncouth. They think this because they haven’t lived this life, as I once did—politically traumatized and fully convinced that the Democratic Party posed an existential threat to our country. Yes, the press may understand MAGA voters in the abstract, but they aren’t hip to the ethos that’s been beaten into them at the hands of the Republican Party—or they’re embarrassed to admit they missed the story.
There is a pretty obvious tell, by the way: Not a day goes by in which I don’t read a tweet, editorial, column or pontification yearning for someone to save the GOP. However well-intended, this is counterproductive and delusional. The Republican Party cannot be saved; the media needs to accept that a mercy-killing of the GOP is necessary for a valid and responsible conservative party to rise in its place. Perhaps it’s too much to ask the press to relentlessly editorialize in that direction. Make no mistake, however: The Republican Party that so many want to save is relentless in their aims.
It often seems as if MAGA voters are adept at choosing party over country. But the good news is that I don’t think it would take much to cleave these voters from the GOP—for most Trump voters, party affiliation isn’t what is driving their fealty. As one who was once deep down the Trump/MAGA rabbit hole, I can tell you that Trump voters actually despise the GOP nearly as much as they do the Democratic Party. They only believe that Republicans were always preferable to Democrats because they were, sadly, paralyzed by blind partisanship—not because they think the GOP offers innovative solutions to complex challenges.
I often congregated with affluent, financially comfortable Trump voters who lived those age-old Thoreauvian lives of quiet desperation. In between their Biblical quotes on social media and their myriad pursuits of pleasure, they saw a less White, less Christian, less heterosexual, less-zealous-about-the-Second-Amendment nation as one in decline. The quietly desperate often want a quasi-dictatorial party to emerge on the right because they’ve been made to believe that this is what Democrats are. The GOP, in pursuit of raw power, stokes little beyond these vindictive impulses. And so while voters from the left and right might reasonably agree that the government cannot ameliorate every ill in our country, what MAGA voters have come to want is a retaliatory government—mirroring what they think the Democrats are.
There’s no better example of this phenomenon than what’s happening here in Florida, at the hands of Governor Ron DeSantis. His reign is all-revenge-all-the-time—and it’s in many ways unrecognizable from what previous political generations understood to be conservative. But as the shadow primary season has wended on, DeSantis has largely failed to catch fire as a Trump successor. It is to be hoped that this is a sign of vulnerability.
I am loath to offer prognostications, but I’ve started to wonder if GOP officials aren’t in some way anticipating a round of massive federal, state, and local defeats to the Democrats next year, thanks, in no small part, to a record number of single-issue voters. Voter apathy is driven by the lack of a compelling reason to go to the polls; this election is shaping up to have several substantial motivators. And whether it’s abortion, firearms, education, voting rights, climate change, or the U.S. Supreme Court, it all lines up well for Democratic candidates.
And a nation of conservatives is likely to further splinter into the factions that began to take shape during the past presidential election cycle: MAGA Republicans, centrist conservatives of the Mitt Romney vein, and “liberal” Republicans—whose policy commitments will be a redder shade of purple (if only because they actually have a bona fide interest in policy). I cannot support the GOP in its current form. Irrespective of my reservations about the Democratic Party, I cannot—I will not—support a party that formally declared the January 6 insurrection as “legitimate political discourse.” That’s just one more lie that no member of the Republican party elite believes but which they force upon their base, much like the many similar myths about the encroach of socialism and Marxism that they use to traumatize their own at the expense of millions of Americans.
Having recently visited Gettysburg, what came into focus was Lincoln’s insistence that Americans appeal to the better and braver angels of our nature, and put behind them a war that remains the deadliest in our history. It is one of history’s saddest twists that Lincoln did not live to see the fruits of his impassioned advocacy and efforts to mend civic bonds. Just as the Confederacy needed to be defeated, so, too, does the GOP; calls to “save” this Republican party should cease in favor of saving something that’s actually worth preserving.
It is to be lamented that our current epoch mandates sides be taken. I am, admittedly, reticent about an “us versus them” message of mercy-killing the GOP; us versus them, in perpetuity, is unhealthy—perhaps fatal—for any democracy. “Democracy,” as John Adams wrote in 1814, “never lasts long. It soon wastes exhausts and murders itself.” My personal and political journey out of MAGA is living proof that while healing is not painless, it is possible—and liberating. For the MAGA supporters in your life, be patient. Remember that MAGA has made many forget that our nation is a forgiving one. It is astoundingly easy to fall prey to right-wing mythologies; let us not forget this when engaging with the MAGA voters in our lives. And have faith that the effort is true to our history: The never-ending, regularly frustrating toil of perfecting our Union mandates unlikely, but necessary, alliances. | US Federal Elections |
Washington — The House will consider whether to punish two of its most polarizing lawmakers on Wednesday, with members of both parties trading accusations regarding controversial statements made by GOP Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene and Democratic Rep. Rashida Tlaib.
Both lawmakers are the target of separate censure resolutions, a type of formal reprimand for conduct that falls short of warranting expulsion from Congress. The House is set to vote Wednesday evening on whether to "table," or kill, the measures. The prospects for either resolution were unclear ahead of the votes.
Dueling censure resolutions
Last week, Greene introduced a resolution to censure Tlaib over her criticism of Israel, accusing the Michigan Democrat of "antisemitic activity, sympathizing with terrorist organizations and leading an insurrection" at a House office building.
After the deadly terror attacks by Hamas in Israel earlier this month and the subsequent Israeli airstrikes on Gaza, hundreds of protestersat the Cannon House Office Building on Oct. 18 calling for a cease-fire in the Hamas-controlled territory. U.S. Capitol Police estimated 300 protesters were arrested and said three people were charged with assaulting officers.
Capitol Police said protesters entered the building legally through visitor security checkpoints and were permitted to gather, but protests aren't allowed inside. The demonstration was far from an "insurrection," as Greene's resolution portrays it.
Greene also cited a number of statements Tlaib has made in support of Palestinians and that were critical of the Israeli government.
"Tlaib must be censured for her radical support of Hamas terrorists and hatred of our ally Israel," the Georgia Republican wrote Wednesday on X.
Tlaib, the House's only Palestinian American, said in a statement that Greene's "unhinged resolution is deeply Islamophobic and attacks peaceful Jewish anti-war advocates."
In retaliation for the resolution against Tlaib, Democratic Rep. Becca Balint of Vermont filed a resolution of her own to censure Greene. Balint's measure accuses Greene of making repeated racist, antisemitic and xenophobic statements and stoking conspiracy theories.
In a statement Thursday, Balint said Greene's resolution "is an overt Islamophobic attack" on Tlaib.
"Her resolution is riddled with lies," the statement said. "It's bigoted. It's dangerous. This kind of rhetoric fans the flames of hate and fear at a time when Muslim Americans are already facing increased threats and violence."
Balint's measure said Greene has "repeatedly fanned the flames of racism, antisemitism, LGBTQ hate speech, Islamophobia, anti-Asian hate, xenophobia, and other forms of hatred."
Greene mocked Balint for an impassioned speech she gave on the House floor calling for her censure.
"Slow down and breathe a little Becca," she said on X. "Geez and they call me a conspiracy theorist."
for more features. | US Congress |
When asked whether Biden thought it was "appropriate," Jean-Pierre told reporters Tuesday, "Obviously not."
"I would have to refer to the Secret Service on that and the Park Police for questions about the way the protest was handled," she said. "That is their focus. That is their job."
After last weekend's protests against Israel's response to Hamas's Oct. 7 terrorist attack, Jean-Pierre also tried to avoid questions about whether people tearing down posters of Israeli hostages being held by Hamas were taking part in peaceful protests.
"I've sort of kind of seen the reporting here and there," she said. "I'm just not going to go into specifics on that particular thing. What I can say is there are real violent protests and threats that are happening right now, and senior administration officials are aware of these reports, which are deeply concerning, and that is something that we're focused on."
White House national security spokesman John Kirby earlier acknowledged it had been one month since the terrorist attack, recognizing the hostages in addition to the Israelis and the Palestinians who have been killed during the conflict.
"One month in, it's good for everybody to take a knee, take a pause, and remember the scope of the suffering here,” he said. | US Involvement in Foreign Conflicts |
AZ Senate rocked by claims of election violations, as Lake presses appeal in challenge to 2022 vote
State Senate Elections Committee hearing testimony from election integrity groups alleging maladministration of elections in Maricopa County.
The Facts Inside Our Reporter’s Notebook
The Arizona Court of Appeals heard oral arguments Wednesday in Kari Lake's election challenge, as a state Senate panel is hearing explosive allegations of 2022 election failures in Maricopa County, and the Democrat Secretary of State seeks to have Lake, the 2022 GOP nominee for governor, prosecuted for tweeting evidence from the public Senate hearings of mismatched ballot signatures.
The appeals court heard arguments in Lake's appeal of a December decision in Maricopa County Superior Court rejecting her election lawsuit against county election officials and Gov. Katie Hobbs. Lake's suit alleged that numerous irregularities in the 2022 gubernatorial election, including election machine issues in nearly 60% of the county's 115 vote centers, effectively suppressed heavily Republican Election Day vote.
The court heard Lake's case two days after she was separately referred for criminal prosecution by Democratic Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes to Attorney General Kris Mayes regarding a Lake tweet about Senate testimony on the improper counting of ballots with mismatched signatures.
"Today's Senate Testimony CONFIRMS nearly 40,000 ballots illegally counted (10% of the signatures reviewed)," Lake tweeted on Jan. 23. "I think all the 'Election Deniers' out there deserve an apology."
Lake included a graphic displaying a sampling of ballots that were counted despite being signed in a hand that appeared to differ sharply from the voter's signature in the voter registration database.
The signatures that Lake posted were shared in a presentation to the Arizona state Senate Elections Committee the day she tweeted them.
On Monday, Fontes wrote in a letter to Mayes that Lake may have committed a class 6 felony by posting voter signatures online.
"This is becoming all too common in politics — another attempt to weaponize the justice system with a phony allegation against a Republican," Lake attorney Tim LaSota fired back on Wednesday. "Adrian Fontes selectively quotes the statute in an attempt to distort the law and smear Kari Lake in the process. Kris Mayes should immediately say that she will have no part in this shameful, disgusting effort.
"This information came from the Arizona Senate investigation on acceptance of clearly mismatched signatures on early ballots, and Kari Lake has an absolute right under the First Amendment to republish the information presented to the Senate."
The Arizona state Senate Elections Committee, chaired by Republican state Sen. Wendy Rogers, has been hearing testimony since last week from election integrity groups regarding the administration of elections in Maricopa County.
During a hearing last week on 2022 election irregularities, Shelby Busch, the cofounder of We the People AZ, testified before the committee that 47,366 of verified voter signatures reviewed by her group didn't meet the basic Arizona Secretary of State standards, showing pictures of the signatures in her presentation.
Busch's group was commissioned by outgoing state Senate President Karen Fann to submit public records requests to the Maricopa County Elections Department. We the People AZ investigated both the 2020 and 2022 elections in the county.
Busch also reported that 217,305 ballots of the 464,926 ballots fed into tabulators on Election Day in Maricopa County in 2022 were rejected.
On Monday, Busch told the committee that her group found multiple violations of state election law by the county. The alleged infractions include excessive ballot adjudication; the effective disenfranchisement of thousands of (mostly Republican) voters on Election Day; and around 300,000 ballots that didn't have chain of custody.
Busch found, for example, that the number of ballots referred to a bipartisan board for adjudication due to missing information or an overvote jumped sharply in the last two election cycles. While the normal rate of adjudication isn't greater than 4%, the percentage rose to 11.9% in 2020, then 14.36% in 2022.
She testified that 64% of the 4,021 people waiting in lines of 85 or more people when the polls closed at 7 p.m. never got to vote.
Heather Honey, the founder of election integrity watchdog Verify Vote, testified that there was a lack of chain of custody for around 300,000 Early Voting ballots dropped off in drop boxes on Election Day. Honey previously gave similar testimony during Lake's election trial in December.
Technical problems at vote centers on Election Day are a central focus of Lake's lawsuit. At her rally in Scottsdale, Ariz., on Sunday, she revealed more on what her team has found.
Lake showed a heat map that hangs in the Maricopa County Tabulation and Election Center that represented 2020 Republican in-person Election Day and early voting turnout and overlaid it with pins indicating where vote centers experienced major election machine malfunctions on Election Day in 2022. Most of the problematic vote centers were in deep red, or Republican, areas of the county.
"Coincidence??" Lake tweeted with pictures of the map with the pins on Wednesday. "Look how perfectly Election Day Polling FAILURES on November 8th match up with the REPUBLICAN heat map."
Maricopa County didn't immediately respond to a request for comment. | US Federal Elections |
Subscribe to Here’s the Deal, our politics
newsletter for analysis you won’t find anywhere else.
Thank you. Please check your inbox to confirm.
Kim Chandler, Associated Press
Kim Chandler, Associated Press
Sudhin Thanawala, Associated Press
Sudhin Thanawala, Associated Press
Leave your feedback
BIRMINGHAM, Ala. (AP) — The chief suspect in the disappearance of Natalee Holloway has admitted he beat the young Alabama woman to death on a beach in Aruba after she refused his advances. New details in the killing emerged Wednesday as Joran Van der Sloot pleaded guilty to extorting Holloway’s mother, resolving a case that has captivated the public’s attention for nearly 20 years.
Although van der Sloot isn’t charged in Holloway’s death, his attempt to squeeze a quarter million dollars from the slain teen’s mother gave investigators a crucial link to the 2005 killing. And after finally seeing him in a U.S. courtroom, the family said they’re putting years of doubt and uncertainty behind them.
“As far as I’m concerned, it’s over,” Beth Holloway, Natalee’s mother, told reporters outside the federal courthouse in Alabama. “Joran van der Sloot is no longer the suspect in my daughter’s murder. He is the killer.”
Natalee Holloway went missing during a high school graduation trip with classmates. She was last seen on May 30, 2005, leaving a bar with van der Sloot, a Dutch citizen and student at an international school on the Caribbean island where he grew up. He was questioned in the disappearance but never prosecuted. A judge declared Holloway dead, but her body was never found.
WATCH: Documentary highlights plight of missing Black women and why their cases go ignored
Van der Sloot said in his confession that he pushed her body into the sea.
Now 36, he has pleaded guilty to one count each of extortion and wire fraud in exchange for a 20-year sentence. That prison term will run concurrently with a 28-year sentence he’s serving in Peru for killing Stephany Flores in 2010.
U.S. Judge Anna Manasco said the details of his confession factored into her sentencing decision.
“You have brutally murdered — in separate instances years apart — two young women who refused your sexual advances,” she said.
Shackled and wearing an orange jail uniform, van der Sloot told the crowded courtroom he hoped the confession provides closure.
“I would like the chance to apologize to the Holloway family, my own family,” he said, later adding, “I am no longer the person I was back then.”
Mark White, an attorney for Holloway’s father Dave Holloway, said it his understanding that van der Sloot could not be prosecuted in Aruba — even with his confession — because the statute of limitations has expired .
The judge said the plea deal required van der Sloot to provide all the information he knew about Natalie Holloway’s disappearance, allow her parents to hear in “real time” his discussion with law enforcement, and take a polygraph test.
After the hearing, Beth Holloway told reporters she was “absolutely confident” that they finally got the truth from van der Sloot after years of lies.
WATCH: After viral story on D.C. girls, understanding the real perils for missing children of color
Court documents offer a transcript of his confession.
In an interview conducted by his attorney, he says he and Holloway were lying on the beach kissing. She started to resist, but he kept touching her, so she kneed him between the legs. He stood up and kicked her “extremely hard” in the face while she was still lying down.
At that point, he said, she was “unconscious, possibly even uh, even dead, but definitely unconscious.” He said he picked up a nearby cinderblock and brought it down on her face.
Frightened and unsure what to do, he said he dragged her body until he was knee-deep in the waves, then pushed her out to sea.
The Holloway family has long sought answers about the disappearance, and van der Sloot has given different accounts over the years, at one point saying Holloway was buried in gravel under the foundation of a house but later admitting that was untrue.
Five years after the killing, an FBI sting recorded the extortion attempt in which van der Sloot asked for $250,000 from Beth Holloway to tell her where to find her daughter’s body. He agreed to accept $25,000 to disclose the location, and asked for the other $225,000 once the remains were recovered.
Van der Sloot chose “greed over Beth Holloway’s grief,” prosecutor Lloyd Peeples told the judge Wednesday.
Van der Sloot moved from Aruba to Peru before he could be arrested in the extortion case. The government of Peru agreed to temporarily extradite him to face trial on the extortion charge, and he will return to Peruvian custody after his case is concluded.
While giving her impact statement Wednesday, Beth Holloway turned to stare directly at her daughter’s killer, sitting just a few feet away in court.
“You look like hell, Joran,” she said.
Support Provided By:
Learn more | US Crime, Violence, Terrorism & cybercrime |
Six people who gathered signatures to try to get a Republican congressional candidate on Colorado’s primary ballot in 2022 have been charged by state prosecutors on accusations that they submitted signatures of dead people and signatures that didn’t match voter files.
One of the people was charged in February, while the other five were charged last week, according to the Colorado Attorney General’s Office, which announced the charges Tuesday.
The six people gathered signatures for Republican Carl Andersen, a Woodland Park businessman, who sought to qualify for the primary ballot for the 7th Congressional District. But an unusually high number of the signatures gathered were disqualified by the Secretary of State’s Office and Anderson failed to make the ballot.
That led to an investigation by the Colorado Attorney General’s Office and the district attorneys in Denver and Jefferson counties.
Investigators interviewed several people whose names appeared on signature petitions for Anderson who said they had never signed the petition, according to an arrest affidavit. Some people’s names who were on the petition who said they had moved from Colorado before the petition had been circulated.
The Unaffiliated is our twice-weekly newsletter peeling back the curtain on Colorado politics and policy.
Each edition is filled with exclusive news, analysis and behind-the-scenes coverage you won’t find anywhere else. Subscribe today to see what all the buzz is about.
This isn’t the first time signature gathering for a candidate has led to criminal charges in Colorado. A woman pleaded guilty to forging names for an unsuccessful Republican U.S. Senate candidate, Jon Keyser, in 2016. The saga that played a role in unraveling Keyser’s campaign.
The Secretary of State’s Office regulates companies that gather signatures for candidate and ballot initiative petitions, as well as the individuals hired by those companies. The legislature this year increased penalties for companies that knowingly allow signature gatherers to commit fraud and also increased licensing requirements.
The six people charged in the Anderson case worked for Grassfire LLC, a Wyoming company with offices in Oregon. The company hasn’t been charged and told authorities they did not know of the alleged illegal activity by the petitioners.
After the petition was rejected, Andersen sued in district court in an effort to make the primary ballot, but his case was rejected. Democrat Brittany Pettersen, of Lakewood, was elected to represent the 7th District.
Each of the six is charged with one count of attempting to influence a public servant, which is a Class 4 felony punishable by up to six years in prison, and one count of perjury, a Class 2 misdemeanor punishable by up to 120 days in jail.
Diana Watt, a woman with a Florida drivers license, was Grassfire’s leader, according to an arrest affidavit. She is charged, along with Jordahni Rimpel, of Georgia; Terris Kintchen, of Arizona; and Alex Joseph, Patrick Rimpel and Aliyah Moss, all of Florida.
Watt’s arrest affidavit was filed in February and the others were filed June 13. The accused have not been arrested, according to the attorney general’s office.
Watt told investigators she had been given a list of signatures by a circulator she trusted just before the circulator had to leave town for an emergency. The signatures had not yet been notarized by the circulator, so Watt put her name on them assuming they were valid. Afterwards, she learned they were fraudulent.
“Go ahead and charge me,” she told investigators, according to the arrest affidavit. “I don’t give a (expletive) at this point.”
One of Grassfire’s owners told investigators no one had told Watt to notarize signatures she didn’t witness and that she was fired for doing so.
Andersen is not suspected of wrongdoing, the office said. He told The Sun that he’s been cooperating with the Attorney General’s Office for the past year.
“I pray that justice prevails and the system improves and this never happens to another candidate again,” he said in a text message.
His campaign paid Grassfire more than $67,000 to gather the signatures, according to FEC records.
A website for Grassfire was no longer active Tuesday.
Colorado congressional candidates must collect 1,500 signatures from voters in the district they want to represent to make the ballot, or they may go through the caucus and assembly process. | US Federal Elections |
Los Angeles — A flash mob of at least 17 masked thievesholiday shoppers to rob a Nike store Sunday night near Los Angeles is exactly the kind of crime cities across the country are trying to crack down on this holiday season.
The same goes forin Sweetwater, Florida, a suburb of Miami, where K-9s and extra officers will be more visible.
"You're going to be probably the safest you could be anywhere, any place in the world," Sweetwater's mayor, Jose "Pepe" Diaz, said.
This comes as a new annual Gallup poll on personal safety shows more Americans fear becoming victims of a crime, with 40% of respondents to the poll saying they were afraid to walk alone at night within a mile of their home, the highest such number in the poll since 1993. Fifty percent of respondents feared getting their car stolen, and 17% said they avoid going to the mall.
On Monday, CBS News accompanied authorities as they carried out a raid in L.A., arresting suspected robbers accused of being involved in an organized shoplifting ring that targeted drug stores like CVS and Walgreens throughout California.
Even in posh Beverly Hills, officials said they are determined to keep shoppers safe. Police drones are now in the air 14-hours a day after aon a jewelry store in March of 2022 in which the suspects used crowbars and axes. Beverly Hills police officers are also monitoring 2,500 security cameras in the city.
"We've created this real-time watch center where all of the city cameras can be watched in a single place," Beverly Hills Mayor Dr. Julian Gold told CBS News, adding that he believes the drones and security cameras have led to a decrease in crime, while helping shoppers and residents feel safer.
"If we don't do something soon, our stores are going to be out of business," said Aaron Jones, president and CEO of International Protective Service, which provides armed guards to commercial businesses nationwide. He says the number of requests for security guards has tripled since 2020.
"They realize that they have to do something to protect people," Jones said.
In addition to extra security, some retailers are experimenting with new store layouts to help reduce blind spots and deter shoplifters. It's estimated U.S. retailers lost a record $112 billion dollars in stolen merchandise in 2022, according to a survey from the National Retail Federation.
for more features. | US Crime, Violence, Terrorism & cybercrime |
FBI special agent carjacked in Washington, D.C.
The agent’s Chevy Malibu has already been recovered.
An FBI special agent was carjacked at gunpoint in Washington, D.C., Wednesday afternoon, according to multiple law enforcement sources.
The incident occurred near the 1200 block of Constitution Ave., NE.
The agent was driving a blue Chevy Malibu, which contained the agent’s body armor and radio when it was stolen, sources said. The agent was not harmed, sources told ABC News.
The car was recovered a short time later, sources said.
The DC Metropolitan Police Department is investigating the matter.
The FBI Washington Field Office and the Metropolitan Police Department Carjacking Task Force are also investigating, according to an FBI spokesperson.
On Wednesday evening, the FBI confirmed the incident, saying in a statement: "At this time, we can confirm that an FBI employee was carjacked on the afternoon of November 29. The vehicle was recovered, and the FBI Washington Field Office and the Metropolitan Police Department's Carjacking Task Force are investigating."
Washington, D.C., has been experiencing an unprecedented surge in carjackings, surpassing 900 offenses recorded year-to-date in recent days. Carjackings are up more than 100% over last year.
Seventy-seven percent of carjackings in the district this year involve guns, according to MPD. Juveniles account for 65% of carjacking arrests.
ABC News' Luke Barr contributed to this story. | US Crime, Violence, Terrorism & cybercrime |
HOOVER, Ala. -- Authorities in Alabama said Monday that a woman has confessed to fabricating a story that she was kidnapped after stopping to check on a toddler she saw walking on the side of the interstate.
Hoover Police Department Chief Nicholas Derzis said Carlee Russell's attorney, Emory Anthony, provided a statement on Monday saying there was no kidnapping.
"There was no kidnapping on Thursday July 13. My client did not see a baby on the side on the road," the statement read, according to Derzis, who read it at a news conference. She did not leave the city, and acted alone, the statement added.
“My client apologizes for her actions to this community, the volunteers who were searching for her, to the Hoover Police Department and other agencies as well, as to her friends and family," Anthony said in a statement. "We ask for your prayers for Carlee, as she addresses her issues and attempts to move forward, understanding that she made a mistake in this matter. Carlee again asks for your forgiveness and prayers.”
The Hoover Police Department announced the development five days after casting doubt on Russell’s story. Derzis said it is possible that Russell could face charges. He said they are trying to determine where she was in the two days she was gone.
“This was an elaborate deal. When you talk about calling 911,” the chief said.
Russell, 25, disappeared after calling 911 on July 13 to report a toddler wandering beside a stretch of interstate. She returned home two days later and told police she had been abducted and forced into a vehicle.
Her disappearance became a national news story. Images of the missing 25-year-old were shared broadly on social media.
Russell told detectives she was taken by a man who came out of the trees when she stopped to check on the child, put her in a car and an 18-wheel truck, blindfolded her and held her at a home where a woman fed her cheese crackers, authorities said at a news conference last week. At some point, Carlee Russell said she was put in a vehicle again but managed to escape and run through the woods to her neighborhood.
Investigators cast doubt on her story in a news conference last week. They said in the days before her disappearance, she searched for information on her cellphone about Amber Alerts, a movie about a woman’s abduction and a one-way bus ticket from Birmingham, Alabama, to Nashville, Tennessee, departing the day she disappeared. Her phone also showed she traveled about 600 yards while telling a 911 operator she was following a 3- or 4-year-old child in a diaper on the side of the highway.
Hoover is about 10 miles (16 kilometers) south of Birmingham. | US Crime, Violence, Terrorism & cybercrime |
Tucson to ask court for recount guidance on measure boosting politician pay
The Tucson City Council on Tuesday gave its official stamp of approval to a handful of city races from the Nov. 7 elections.
But members also voted to petition the Maricopa County Superior Court to determine if a recount is necessary for a ballot measure that would boost their salaries, along with that of newly reelected Mayor Regina Romero.
Final, unofficial results show the measure, known as Proposition 413, passed by 289 votes. Arizona state law requires a recount if a vote margin is equal to or less than half a percent of the total votes cast in the race. In this case, that threshold is about 470 votes.
Although the results of the Proposition 413 race fall within that margin, Tucson City Attorney Mike Rankin said the recount does not apply to city items referred to the ballot — only to statewide ones. The recount provisions "relating to local municipal elections, only apply to elections of candidates to an elected office rather than referred non-candidate ballot measures,” Rankin said in a news release.
Tucson ballot measure:Poised to pass by 289 votes, it might not be recounted. Here's why
Rankin, at a City Council meeting on Tuesday, recommended filing a legal action requesting the court decide if a recount is necessary and notify the secretary of state and attorney general of the Proposition 413 canvass and result.
Council members and the mayor supported his recommendation.
“It is an extra layer of protection and to be able to make sure that the public feels comfortable with it,” Romero said.
Proposition 413 amends the city charter, tying the salaries of the council and mayor to those of the Pima County Board of Supervisors. This means increasing the council salary from $24,000 per year to $76,600 and increasing the mayor's salary from $42,000 to $95,750, 1.25 times the salary of the Board of Supervisors, effective Dec. 4. The measure also ties future pay changes for city officials to the Board of Supervisors.
Pima County supervisors vote 4-1 on canvass
The move came after the Board of Supervisors voted 4-1 to approve the canvass of the Nov. 7 elections.
Supervisor Sharon Bronson voted in opposition without elaborating on her position.
Supervisor Steve Christy was hesitant to approve the canvass without the assurance that Tucson would recount the Proposition 413 vote. Christy said the City Council and mayor "ignored" the rules about triggering a recount and noted that such an increase in pay and the way the increase was formulated was “unprecedented.”
“It would seem to me they would want to take every effort to ensure that the tabulation is accurate and has the confidence of the community that it was done accurately,” Christy said.
Proposition 413 was put on the ballot after the Citizens’ Commission on Public Service and Compensation recommended the salary increases be brought before voters. The commission is appointed every two years to review the council and mayoral salaries. This was the first year since 1999 that voters approved an increase in salaries.
Tucson's city government:Democrats poised for continued control
Reach the reporter at [email protected].
The Republic’s coverage of southern Arizona is funded, in part, with a grant from Report for America. Support Arizona news coverage with a tax-deductible donation at supportjournalism.azcentral.com. | US Local Elections |
A New York City councilwoman was arrested Friday after she allegedly brought a firearm to a pro-Palestinian rally at Brooklyn College, the NYPD said.
Inna Vernikov, a Republican who represents the neighborhoods of Sheepshead Bay and Brighton Beach, was seen and filmed at the Thursday rally with a handgun in her pants. Although the councilwoman has a concealed carry permit, she violated the recently passed city law that prohibits civilians from bringing firearms to protests, the police said.
"At no point in time was anyone menaced or injured as a result of her possessing the firearm at the earlier protest," the NYPD said in a statement.
Vernikov, a Ukrainian immigrant who has been a staunch opponent of Palestinian rallies, posted a video of herself at the rally on X, formerly known as Twitter, claiming, "If you are here, standing today with these people, you’re nothing short of a terrorist without the bombs."
Her office did not immediately return messages for comment.
The police said that after they contacted Vernikov about her violation, she arrived at a Brooklyn police station along with her attorney and was charged with criminal possession of a firearm. She turned in her gun and permit, according to police.
The investigation is ongoing.
New York City Council Speaker Adrienne Adams said in a statement that the council is investigating the incident and it will be referred to the council's Standards and Ethics Committee.
"It is unacceptable and unlawful for a civilian to ever bring a firearm to a rally or protest, and especially important for elected officials to model a respect for the law that is expected of all New Yorkers," Adams said in a statement.
Gov. Kathy Hochul responded to the incident on X stating, "New York's gun safety laws apply to everyone." | US Local Policies |
Column: Has the Republican Party proved to be so anti-government that it cannot govern at all?
Nothing I could write here about House Republicans and the cannibalism that has paralyzed Congress, amid international crises and the threat of a government shutdown, could be worse than what the Republicans are saying about themselves, and to one another, as they head into a third week divided over who should be the House speaker.
Worst of all are the profanity-filled death threats streaming in from the Republicans’ radicalized voters, whipped up by right-wing media figures and groups including the gun lobby. At least one Republican’s wife now sleeps with a loaded gun. Another had a sheriff assigned to his daughter’s school.
This broken party has given frightening new meaning to the old saw about forming a circular firing squad.
Opinion Columnist
Jackie Calmes
Jackie Calmes brings a critical eye to the national political scene. She has decades of experience covering the White House and Congress.
All because a minority of House Republicans finally showed some spine and on Friday blocked Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio — a party-busting vandal, Jan. 6 seditionist, alleged enabler of sexual abuse, would-be impeacher of President Biden and all-around, far-right “legislative terrorist” (a fellow Republican’s words, not mine) — from getting the most powerful job in Congress.
But rejecting Jordan, as welcome as that is, still leaves a vacant speakership. And as any Republican will tell you, no one in their House majority can win the gavel as things stand.
This saga — from former Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s ouster earlier this month, through Republicans’ failure to rally around House Majority Leader Steve Scalise of Louisiana, to Jordan’s humiliation after a third failed vote Friday — has exposed for the world just how bad things have gotten for the Republican Party: It has grown so anti-government that it can’t even govern its own caucus in the House, the one institution where it holds power.
And that’s because so many in the party — elected officials and voters — won’t be led. Republicans have the majority in the House, but it’s a majority in name only. In reality, the House Republicans are an amalgam of competing factions, from right to far-right to extremist, and party members genuinely loathe one another more than they dislike Democrats.
Jordan-the-bomb-thrower might ultimately win the speakership of the House. But you have to believe Republicans know better than to buy his revamp.
Conservative media and social media stardom have turned even the most junior and otherwise inconsequential figures — say, Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz, the architect of this speaker-less anarchy — into power brokers who insist on having their sway. Like-minded conservative voters — small-dollar donors steeped in Fox News — bankroll the chaos agents; Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, that Georgia peach of a provocateur, is among Congress’ most successful fundraisers.
Here’s how insurgent and “Beetlejuice” fan Rep. Lauren Boebert of Colorado explained why House Republicans have failed to agree on a speaker: “There are 224 alpha males and alpha females who are here in the Republican Party. We are here because we convinced hundreds of thousands of people that we are leaders.”
No matter how this speaker mess ends — and it must somehow end — that perverse reward system will remain. And the House under Republican “leadership” will be all but ungovernable through the 2024 election.
Former Speaker Nancy Pelosi had a similarly thin Democratic majority yet managed to keep her party factions united and to shepherd into law major legislation, some of it bipartisan. But here’s the difference: Democrats believe in governance. Too many Republicans do not; their credo has shifted over the last quarter century from small government to anti-government. We’re watching the result.
Squabbling with critics, blaming the media, stacking the courts — it’s no way to run a country, whether in Israel or the U.S. And it’s a distraction from real threats.
Again, take it from a Republican: “Frankly, it doesn’t matter who the speaker is,” Rep. Mike Lawler of New York said, “because if we [Republicans] can’t govern as a group, as a conference, it doesn’t matter.”
Jordan, true to his brand as a belligerent, on Friday insisted on a third House vote for speaker. As widely predicted, he lost by even more votes than on the earlier ballots. He and his allies talked of pressing his candidacy through the weekend; after all, McCarthy was elected in January on the 15th ballot. But in a closed-door caucus and with secret ballots, Republicans voted to yank Jordan’s nomination as speaker.
His refusal to accept that he was not going to be speaker until the reality was forced on him was hardly a surprise. Jordan still won’t concede that Donald Trump lost reelection. He declined to do so yet again at a news conference Friday morning. His stubborn opposition to democracy — that’s what it is — only underscored why Jordan should never be the speaker.
The sad fact, however, is that Jordan’s reprehensible role as Trump’s chief congressional lieutenant in the run-up to the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection wasn’t even much of a factor in opponents’ thinking. Nor was the fact that as speaker, this unrepentant election denier could have sabotaged the certification of the 2024 presidential vote if the Republican lost.
If Republicans choose Ohio Rep. Jordan to be speaker of the House, the person second in line for the White House would be a guy who actively sought to overturn a free and fair election.
Instead, the reasons Jordan’s foes gave were personal, political or both. Some blamed him for stoking the death threats against them and their families. One, Rep. Drew Ferguson of Georgia, said Republicans don’t “need a bully as the speaker.”
But they need someone — the country needs someone — so Congress can function. Government funding runs out Nov. 17. Biden is sending a request for aid to Ukraine and Israel. Other essential legislation, including agriculture and defense bills, are pending.
Many Republicans are trying to shift the blame for the fiasco onto Democrats because they all opposed McCarthy and then Jordan — as if Republicans would’ve voted to retain Pelosi had an insurgent Democrat ever moved, like Gaetz did against McCarthy, to unseat her.
But they know the blame actually lies with themselves — thus the name-calling and near-fisticuffs.
They need to come together, if only temporarily. And then voters should fire them in 2024.
Get the latest from Jackie Calmes
Commentary on politics and more from award-winning opinion columnist.
You may occasionally receive promotional content from the Los Angeles Times. | US Congress |
Steven Senne/AP
toggle caption
Nathan Carman leaves federal court in Providence, R.I., on Aug. 21, 2019. Carman, charged with killing his mother at sea during a 2016 fishing trip, has died in jail, federal authorities said Thursday.
Steven Senne/AP
Nathan Carman leaves federal court in Providence, R.I., on Aug. 21, 2019. Carman, charged with killing his mother at sea during a 2016 fishing trip, has died in jail, federal authorities said Thursday.
Steven Senne/AP
The Vermont man charged with killing his mother off the coast of New England in a scheme to inherit millions of dollars has died in jail while awaiting trial, federal authorities said Thursday.
Nathan Carman, 29, pleaded not guilty last year to fraud and first-degree murder in the death of his mother, Linda Carman, and was scheduled to go on trial in October.
An eight-count indictment also says Carman shot and killed his wealthy grandfather John Chakalos as he slept in 2013, in order to obtain money and property from his grandfather's estate. But the indictment does not charge Carman with his grandfather's killing, and he had consistently denied any involvement in the two deaths.
The cause of Carman's death was not immediately clear. He was the sole occupant of a county jail cell when guards found him dead at around 2:30 a.m., said Doug Losue, superintendent of the Cheshire Corrections Department, which runs the facility. Losue said the death was being investigated by police in Keene, which is near the Vermont state line.
The U.S. Marshals Service confirmed Carman died Thursday in their custody, adding that the service does not own or operate detention facilities but partners with state and local governments to house approximately 65% of its prisoner population.
One of his lawyers, Martin Minnella, said Carman appeared "in good spirits" when he last spoke to his defense team on Wednesday.
"We were meeting with some experts today over Zoom at 12 o'clock. We were prepared to start picking a jury on Oct. 10 and we were confident we were going to win," Minnella said.
Chakalos' three surviving daughters — Carman's aunts — said in a statement Thursday that they were "deeply saddened" to hear about his death and asked for privacy "while we process this shocking news and its impact on the tragic events surrounding the last several years."
In September 2016, Carman organized a fishing trip with his mother, who lived in Middletown, Connecticut, during which prosecutors say he planned to kill her and report that his boat sank and his mother disappeared in the accident.
He was found floating in an inflatable raft eight days after leaving a Rhode Island marina with his mother, whose body was never recovered. Prosecutors allege he altered the boat to make it more likely to sink. Carman denied that allegation.
Federal prosecutors say the deaths of Carman's mother and grandfather paved the way for him to inherit an estimated $7 million — Linda Carman's share of her father's estate. That inheritance remains tied up in probate court in Connecticut, where his three aunts sought to block Carman from receiving any money from his grandfather's estate.
Minnella and fellow defense attorney David Sullivan criticized the indictment — including allegations Carman killed his grandfather, saying he was never charged with that crime.
"The whole situation would have come out in court," Minnella said Thursday. "This young man would have been vindicated."
Prosecutors say the inheritance scheme spanned nearly a decade and began with Carman buying a rifle in New Hampshire, which he allegedly used to shoot Chakalos in the man's home in Connecticut on Dec. 20, 2013. Carman then discarded his own computer's hard drive and the GPS unit in his truck, prosecutors said.
Police say Carman was the last person to see his grandfather alive and owned a semi-automatic rifle similar to the one used to kill Chakalos — but the firearm disappeared. In 2014, police in Windsor, Connecticut, drafted an arrest warrant charging Carman with murder in his grandfather's death, but a state prosecutor declined to sign it and requested more information. No criminal charges were brought until the federal indictment.
After Chakalos' death, Carman received $550,000 from two bank accounts his grandfather had set up and that he was the beneficiary of when Chakalos died. He moved from an apartment in Bloomfield, Connecticut, to Vernon, Vermont, in 2014.
He was unemployed much of the time and by the fall of 2016 was low on funds, prosecutors said, which is when he arranged the fishing trip with his mother. | US Crime, Violence, Terrorism & cybercrime |
A 65-year-old Jewish man has died after an altercation at a pro-Palestinian rally in Thousand Oaks, Jewish community leaders announced on Monday.
The incident unfolded around 3:15 p.m. near the busy intersection of Thousand Oaks Boulevard and Westlake Road where, according to fire officials, authorities first received a call of a “fight in progress” with an elderly man “down.”
According to the Jewish Federation of Greater Los Angeles, the victim was “struck in the head by a megaphone wielded by a pro-Palestinian protestor.”
A video posted to social media shows the man lying on the ground with an obvious head injury as two people, including a pro-Palestinian demonstrator, try to help.
He was transported to a hospital where he succumbed to his injuries, the Federation said.
The victim’s name was not immediately released.
“While we wait for more information from our law enforcement partners, we remind you that this is the fourth major antisemitic crime committed in Los Angeles this year alone,” the Federation said in a statement. “Violence against our people has no place in civilized society. We demand safety. We will not tolerate violence against our community. We will do everything in our power to prevent it.”
It was unclear if anyone was arrested or questioned in connection with the incident.
This is a developing story. Stay with KTLA for updates. | US Crime, Violence, Terrorism & cybercrime |
Secret Service protecting Biden relative open fire as people try to break into SUV
Secret Service agents protecting President Joe Biden’s granddaughter have opened fire after three people tried to break into an unmarked Secret Service vehicle in Washington
WASHINGTON -- Secret Service agents protecting President Joe Biden’s granddaughter opened fire after three people tried to break into an unmarked Secret Service vehicle in the nation’s capital, a law enforcement official told The Associated Press.
The agents, assigned to protect Naomi Biden, were out with her in the Georgetown neighborhood late Sunday night when they saw the three people breaking a window of the parked and unoccupied SUV, the official said. The official could not discuss details of the investigation publicly and spoke to the AP on Monday on the condition of anonymity.
One of the agents opened fire, but no one was struck by the gunfire, the Secret Service said in a statement. The three people were seen fleeing in a red car, and the Secret Service said it put out a regional bulletin to Metropolitan Police to be on the lookout for it.
Washington has seen a significant rise in the number of carjackings and car thefts this year. Police have reported more than 750 carjackings this year and more than 6,000 reports of stolen vehicles in the district. U.S. Rep. Henry Cuellar of Texas was carjacked near the Capitol last month by three armed assailants, who stole his car but didn't physically harm him.
Violent crime in Washington has also been on the rise this year, up more than 40% compared with last year. In February, U.S. Rep. Angie Craig of Minnesota was assaulted in her apartment building, suffering bruises while escaping serious injury. | US Crime, Violence, Terrorism & cybercrime |
Borrowers Lament the Failure of Biden’s 'Too Good to Be True’ Student Debt Forgiveness Plan
The Supreme Court ruling leaves them figuring out how to cope with repayments.
(Bloomberg) -- Student loan borrowers will no longer have any of their debt forgiven by President Joe Biden’s one-time relief plan after the Supreme Court voided the White House proposal.
That ruling comes just as a three-year pause on federal loan repayments is set to end. Borrowers who’d hoped for a more permanent reprieve are now trying to figure out where they can cut spending before those bills come due.
“It was too good to be true,” said Rudi Petry, a 31-year-old brand strategist in Durham, North Carolina. She has $95,000 of debt from undergraduate and graduate school, and was eligible for $20,000 in forgiveness. She said she won’t be able to afford her apartment when repayments resume, so she’ll have to move, and dreams of having a wedding and building a business will be put on hold.
The loans still make sense to her. “I saw myself as investing in myself — I needed that credential, and it worked, I got the job that I wanted,” she said. “But now I do have to pay the price. Now, it’s mentally starting from scratch again.”
The Supreme Court on Friday ruled 6-3 along ideological lines that the Biden administration’s effort to wipe $430 billion in student debt exceeded its power. “The question is not whether something should be done; it is who has the authority to do it,” Chief Justice John Roberts wrote in the majority opinion.
“The decision is very disheartening,” said Crystal Douglas, an occupational therapist and single mother in Michigan with $85,000 in federal student debt. The breathing space of forgiveness, when loan payments were also suspended, helped her pay for support services for her son at school. But with her finances already so tight even without the $300 she was paying monthly toward her student loans before the pandemic, figuring out what to cut back when her loan payments resume will be tough.
“Anything I can cut would be at my son’s expense so I can free up some financial space,” she said. “It just puts a lot of families at a disadvantage. We have to figure out what’s more important, our student debt or our families.”
For Alix Chronister, a 24-year-old in Kansas City, Missouri with $30,000 in federal loans, the worry now is managing repayments on her $50,000-per-year-salary. The $20,000 in forgiveness she was eligible for would have helped a lot, she says, but it’s “disappointing, mostly” that relief is once again out of sight.
“The most frustrating part is that I feel like, when it comes down to it, the billionaires will bail out banks but when it comes to helping the middle class, they’re like, ‘I'd rather not,’” she said.
Read more: Biden Can Cancel Student Debt Even If Supreme Court Blocks Order, Advocates Say
Student debt activists have long held that Biden should forgive part of the $1.8 trillion federal student loan balance some other way if the Supreme Court threw out his plan. The president is expected to announce new actions to protect borrowers later on Friday.
“Student loan relief is a promise from President Biden to more than 40 million families,” said Melissa Byrne, executive director of We, the 45 Million, a student-debt advocacy group. “It is our chance for dignity. He must immediately implement a plan B including finding a different path to ensure no repayment begins until cancellation is delivered.”
The White House had proposed $10,000 in student-debt forgiveness for borrowers who made less than $125,000 per year or $250,000 per year as a household. Those who had received Pell Grants when they went to school and met the income requirements were eligible for $20,000 in forgiveness. Before the White House paused the application portal in November, around 26 million people had applied.
An estimated 20 million with federal debt were expecting to have their balance completely forgiven under Biden’s plan. The Department of Education in a court filing last November warned of a spike in delinquencies and defaults when payments resume should one-time forgiveness not go through.
Coco Rowe, a 28-year-old in Las Vegas with about $20,000 in student debt, would have been eligible to have $10,000 forgiven. That would have been especially critical to her finances given that she was laid off from her artificial-intelligence job at the beginning of the pandemic, and hasn’t yet been able to find another full-time role.
“It was like a positive light in a time that was really hard for a lot of people and still is. It’s really disappointing that it was dangled in front of our faces and then taken away,” she said. “For my generation especially it was an expectation that you were supposed to go to college and then once you graduated you’ll get a good paying job and you can pay your debt. I was expecting having to pay it back, but if I could redo it, I don’t know if I would get a degree.”
More stories like this are available on bloomberg.com
©2023 Bloomberg L.P. | US Federal Policies |
Donald Trump will speak in Florida next to Matt Gaetz, who set the House speaker's ouster in motion
Former President Donald Trump is set to speak to some of his supporters near Mar-a-Lago Wednesday as he continues to dominate the Republican primary race for the White House despite four criminal cases against him.
Former President Donald Trump is set to speak to some of his supporters near Mar-a-Lago Wednesday as he continues to dominate the Republican primary race for the White House despite four criminal cases against him.
Trump is appearing Wednesday at a convention center in West Palm Beach, Florida, with U.S. Rep. Matt Gaetz, a congressional ally who, with other hard-right conservatives, engineered the ouster of House Speaker Kevin McCarthy. The unprecedented action has kept Congress partly shuttered.
Trump has used the power vacuum to underline his lingering influence over the Republican Party. He has backed Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan to replace McCarthy. Jordan formed a close alliance with the former president, particularly during the effort to overturn the results of the 2020 election, which Trump lost to President Joe Biden. Two of the cases against Trump, in Washington and Georgia, are over his efforts to overturn the results.
Trump has continued to travel to early primary states and has been spending much of his time focused on the four criminal indictments and several civil cases he is facing.
He has put pressure on his Republican challengers to drop out of the 2024 primary race to help him defeat Biden. On Tuesday, he criticized GOP candidates for meeting with donors in an event hosted by Utah Sen. Mitt Romney, who unsuccessfully challenged then-President Barack Obama in 2012 as the Republican presidential nominee, and Paul Ryan, a former congressman who was the House speaker between 2015 and 2019.
“These failed candidates should have started by campaigning effectively, which they didn’t because they don’t have the skill or the talent,” Trump said on his Truth Social site.
Among those 10 Republicans challenging him are Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, once a strong ally; Mike Pence, his former vice president; and Nikki Haley, who served as United Nations ambassador under Trump. | US Federal Elections |
For years, lawmakers and commentators have feared that the Chinese government could use TikTok — which is owned by a Chinese parent company, ByteDance — to secretly distribute content sympathetic to the Chinese Communist Party in order to shift public opinion in the United States.According to new claims by four former employees of the company, ByteDance already has used one of its apps to push pro-China messages to Americans: its now-defunct English-language news app, TopBuzz. ByteDance forcefully denies the claims.The four former ByteDance employees, each of whom worked on TopBuzz, claimed that ByteDance instructed members of its staff to place specific pieces of pro-China messaging in the app. According to three of the former employees, TopBuzz staff sometimes promoted content by “pinning” it to the top of the app. One former employee remembered staff posting panda videos in the app, along with videos promoting travel to China. Another remembered a staff member pinning a video in which a white man talked about the benefits of moving his startup to China.Do you know something that deserves to be investigated and exposed in the public interest? To learn how to reach us securely, go to tips.buzzfeed.com.According to all four former employees, staff were required to provide evidence to ByteDance that the content had in fact been placed in the app as directed. Three of the former employees said staff were required to take screenshots of the live content in TopBuzz and send them back to the company.One source characterized most of the pro-China messages as “soft” rather than overt political statements. But, the person said, “Let’s be real, this was not something you could say no to. If they don’t do it, somebody’s going to jail.”The sources spoke to BuzzFeed News on the condition of anonymity for fear of retribution. Many of the details provided by these sources were independently corroborated by other sources and by screenshots viewed by BuzzFeed News.This is the first report alleging that TikTok’s parent company at one point intentionally used one of its apps to distribute pro-China messages to Americans.In response to a request for comment, ByteDance spokesperson Billy Kenny said in an email: “The claim that TopBuzz — which was discontinued years ago — pinned pro-Chinese government content to the top of the app or worked to promote it is false and ridiculous. TopBuzz had over two dozen top tier US and UK media publishing partners, including BuzzFeed, which clearly did not find anything of concern when performing due diligence.” In response, a spokesperson for BuzzFeed Inc. said, “BuzzFeed, Inc. reaches its audience on all the major platforms — including those owned by ByteDance — while continuing to report on those platforms with rigorous journalism.” One source characterized most of the pro-China messages as “soft” rather than overt political statements. But, the person said, “Let’s be real, this was not something you could say no to.” TopBuzz, the app where the content was allegedly published, was the international version of ByteDance’s “insanely popular” Chinese news aggregator app Toutiao. In addition to promotional materials still available on YouTube, screenshots of the app from 2018 portray it as similar to Apple News or Google News, except that it allowed users to create articles alongside mainstream news outlets and use comment sections to discuss them. Launched in 2015, it amassed 40 million monthly active users by 2018 and was hailed as a major driver of traffic to US news publishers. But it was shuttered in June 2020, eight months after Reuters reported that the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States was investigating ByteDance’s purchase of Musical.ly, the app that would later become TikTok, as a potential national security risk. (Disclosure: In a previous life, I held policy positions at Facebook and Spotify.)“We always knew in the back of our heads that this wasn’t going to last, because of the whiff of a Chinese company involving itself in US politics,” one former employee said about TopBuzz continuing to operate in the US. Being in the news business, the person said, “was more a liability than an asset to them.”In September 2020, over fears that it could be used by the Chinese government to spy on US citizens, then-president Donald Trump threatened to ban TikTok if it was not sold to an American company. But the ban — and the sale — never materialized. Instead, TikTok engaged with CFIUS and US-based data host Oracle on the effort called Project Texas, which is intended to firewall off some data about US TikTok users from ByteDance leadership in Beijing. Last month, BuzzFeed News reported — and then in a response to a letter from nine US senators, TikTok confirmed — that the company has allowed and will continue to allow some ByteDance employees in China to access US user data.But the allegation that ByteDance actively inserted pro-China messages into one of its apps raises another regulatory concern about TikTok: that ByteDance could use TikTok in a similar way to influence public discussion in the United States (or elsewhere) in order to benefit China’s authoritarian government.Adam Segal, director of the Digital and Cyberspace Policy Program at the Council on Foreign Relations, told BuzzFeed News that the allegations “certainly speak to the concerns that a Chinese app that is providing information could be misused for Chinese propaganda.”Still, he said he wasn’t entirely surprised: “This is how the company was used to operating in the Chinese market, and so they were just going to do the same thing in foreign markets.”The operations of TopBuzz provide a rare window into how ByteDance previously balanced its relationship with the Chinese government and its desire to dominate the international market for news and entertainment. Interviews with 15 former ByteDance employees who worked on TopBuzz also suggest efforts to censor content critical of the Chinese government, an operation to scrape and republish content from news publishers without permission, and an emphasis on featuring sensationalist, often inaccurate news to drive engagement.Ten of the former employees claimed that a content review system would flag reporting on the Chinese government alongside nudity, hate speech, and other content for removal from the app. For instance, five former employees allege that coverage of the Hong Kong protests was subject to removal from TopBuzz. Two claimed content was sometimes removed for depicting openly LGBTQ people, although a third said that such content was sometimes allowed when US team members lobbied for its inclusion. (According to three of the sources, staff were encouraged to confer with the Beijing team about content moderation on “edge cases,” some of which just mentioned the Chinese government in passing.) Five allege that the company removed any articles that mentioned President Xi Jinping, and three remembered removing content that referenced Winnie the Pooh, because of a ban in China on memes comparing the character to Xi. (The Chinese Government has a history of censoring content related to Winnie the Pooh.) ByteDance did not respond to questions from BuzzFeed News about alleged censorship in TopBuzz. Ten of the former employees claimed that a content review system would flag reporting on the Chinese government alongside nudity, hate speech, and other content for removal from the app. While TopBuzz never discussed these policies publicly, at least one former ByteDance employee who worked on TopBuzz alluded to them on LinkedIn, saying she was “responsible for managing the content inside the platform according to Chinese government policies.” The former employee declined to speak with BuzzFeed News.In March 2020, the Intercept reported that TikTok moderators were also ordered to censor videos that harmed China’s “national honor” or discussed “state organs such as police.” At the time, TikTok spokesperson Josh Gartner told the Intercept that “most of” the content moderation guidelines they reported on had either been discontinued or never implemented. Gartner declined to clarify whether the company still had a rule against “harming national honor” or videos about police. ByteDance did not respond to a follow-up question from BuzzFeed News about whether such a rule was ever in place or remains in place today.Seven former ByteDance employees also described an effort by the company to scrape and republish content from other sources, including videos from YouTube and journalism from mainstream newspapers and magazines, allegedly without those sources’ permission.Two of the employees recalled the company attributing scraped content to fake bylines, and one said that the invented names often sounded like “stripper names.” As BuzzFeed News reported earlier this year, ByteDance also published scraped content without creators’ knowledge or permission in another of its short-form video apps: a TikTok predecessor called Flipagram.Five former employees say ByteDance did attempt to negotiate licensing partnerships with some publishers, including the New York Times and ProPublica. But three of those people claimed the company also sometimes scraped content from licensed publishers before licenses were obtained or after they expired. When reached for comment, Jordan Cohen, a representative for the New York Times, confirmed that TopBuzz had republished their stories without a license and were sent a cease and desist order, which they obliged. Alexis Stephens, a representative for ProPublica, said the organization was unaware of any misappropriation of ProPublica journalism by TopBuzz. When reached for comment, a representative for BuzzFeed Inc. said they had no knowledge of misuse of their content on the app.YouTube did not respond to a request for comment by press time. ByteDance did not respond to questions from BuzzFeed News about publishing content from news publishers without permission.Six former employees also claimed that the company used the scraped data to experiment with training its algorithms to write articles automatically, without the need for human journalists. On LinkedIn, another former employee who worked on TopBuzz and was based in Beijing described creating “templates for automated story writings by AI robots.” That former employee did not respond to an interview request. ByteDance did not comment on the allegations about using scraped data to train AI models to write news articles.Former employees also described persistent content quality issues in the app along with decisions by ByteDance to prioritize engagement — and thus profit — over accuracy. Six of them described frustrated efforts by US staff to reduce the amount of hyperpartisan content and fake news in the app. A February 2018 op-ed for Technode by globalization consultant Elliott Zaagman also claimed TopBuzz sent push notifications containing fake news, including false headlines about Alabama Senate candidate Roy Moore winning an election he lost and Yoko Ono having an affair with Hillary Clinton.In September 2018, the company removed nearly 2.7 million pieces of content, acknowledging that they violated the platform’s “community standards and guidelines,” but employees said clickbait and low-quality content persisted in the app long after this time.For example, a screenshot of the app reviewed by BuzzFeed News showed that just eight days after the mass content removal, TopBuzz sent a push notification to users with text that said: “When his tongue touches your cervix repeatedly.”In interviews, several of the former employees compared TopBuzz’s troubles to those of Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube, which also struggled with a proliferation of misinformation and hyperpartisan content between 2015 and 2020.But according to five of the former employees, ByteDance went beyond other platforms in at least one important way: They claim it not only distributed and recommended divisive content published by others, but it also sometimes created that content itself. The five former employees allege that teams in New York, Los Angeles, and Beijing were tasked with writing Quora-like questions to their users as a way of encouraging more engagement with the app. One former employee recalled being asked to write questions about “cops and African Americans,” describing the questions as “race-baiting.” Another described them as “a little bit dog whistly.” ByteDance did not comment on the allegations that it instructed staff to write polarizing questions in the app.ByteDance’s embrace of politically divisive content on TopBuzz stands in contrast to its more recent approach to content on TikTok. In recent days, as lawmakers like Sens. Ted Cruz, Mark Warner, and Marco Rubio have continued to raise concerns about Chinese influence over TikTok, the company has sought to assuage concerns that it could influence civic discourse by emphasizing that TikTok is used primarily for entertainment, rather than political conversation. ByteDance also increased its lobbying spend in the US by 130% in Q2, with a focus on, among other things, a key antitrust bill, online privacy bills, and a defense spending bill.When asked by CNN’s Brian Stelter whether TikTok might be used to influence Americans’ commercial, cultural, or political behavior, Michael Beckerman, TikTok’s head of public policy for the Americas, said, “we are not the go-to place for politics.” He acknowledged that the app was “a place for free expression” but continued: “the primary thing that people are coming and using TikTok for is entertainment and joyful and fun content.”Despite this characterization, BuzzFeed News recently reported that TikTok now functions as a core search engine for many younger users — and its popularity has made it an ever-increasing part of our civic and political ecosystem.Brandon Silverman, former CEO of the tech giant transparency tool CrowdTangle (which was later bought by Facebook), told BuzzFeed News that while today, the app “has a lot of dance videos and cat videos, what we don’t want to do is look back after the midterms, or after 2024, and realize it has also become a really important part of our political and civic information ecosystem.”Segal, the director at the Council on Foreign Relations, for his part, said TikTok will have an uphill battle in assuring American lawmakers that its algorithms will not be “gamed for Chinese interests.”When asked what the company could do to regain regulators’ trust, he said: “I just don’t know how they can do it in this hybrid structure where ByteDance still has a significant say.”Do you know something that deserves to be investigated and exposed in the public interest? To learn how to reach us securely, go to tips.buzzfeed.com. | US Federal Policies |
The judge overseeing former President Donald Trump's civil fraud trial in New York should be wary of the former president's efforts to elicit a strong reaction from him, former U.S. House Judiciary Committee counsel Michael Conway warned in a column for MSNBC. Conway cited the trial of the "Chicago Seven" to alert Engoron to a potential legal strategy from team MAGA: In the Chicago case, the defendants made a point to chafe Judge Julius Hoffman and jury convictions were ultimately overturned on appeal. As Conway noted, Trump's legal team last week filed a motion for a mistrial that alleged misconduct on Engoron's behalf. Though other legal experts have panned the motion as a "terrible strategy," Conway argued that "if judges do take this bait and make errors, an appellate court could potentially conclude that the trial was unfair and reverse the judgment."
"In New York, Engoron has used strident language in rejecting Trump’s legal positions, terming them 'pure sophistry, 'risible,' 'bogus arguments and 'egregious' in his summary judgment opinion," Conway wrote. "He sanctioned five Trump attorneys $7,500 each for the 'borderline frivolous' arguments in their briefs. Harsh language isn’t a problem if it’s justified. But the more Engoron pushes the envelope, the more he risks an appellate court disagreeing with his assessment. And Trump’s lawyers can and will argue the judge’s rhetoric is evidence of judicial bias." Conway also called attention to the "drama" surrounding Trump's targeting of his law clerk, which partially led to the judge's slapping the ex-president with a partial gag order. "Engoron's interactions with his law clerk, and the drama that has surrounded them, are another area of concern," Conway said. "Trump has repeatedly criticized the clerk, making false statements about her that the court found had precipitated threats of violence. When Trump twice violated a gag order prohibiting such remarks, he was fined $15,000."
"Engoron’s issuance of gag orders barring Trump and his lawyers from commenting about his law clerk both publicly and in court sessions is also facing scrutiny by a higher court. On Thursday, a New York appellate judge temporarily halted Engoron’s gag orders, citing First Amendment protections," Conway continued. "An appellate court panel is scheduled to evaluate the issue on Nov. 27. So here again we have Engoron committing a potentially unnecessary unforced error. Instead of trying to mitigate risk, he is clearly allowing emotion to color his responses. And there are other examples of Engoron seemingly overreacting in response to relentless complaining from Trump’s lawyers. Obviously, Trump’s civil trial is very different from the Chicago Seven trial, a criminal proceeding with a jury, in multiple important ways. And the appeals court cited multiple reasons to reverse the Chicago convictions. But Engoron would be wise to consider the lessons of that case nonetheless. He needs to take all necessary steps to ensure that a New York appellate court cannot overturn his decision. And that means not reacting to Trump’s hate-filled speech, or to his lawyers’ baiting and provocation. It’s simply not worth it." | US Circuit and Appeals Courts |
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene joined a growing chorus of right-wing figures pushing to put former Fox News host Tucker Carlson on a 2024 GOP ticket led by Donald Trump.
The Georgia congresswoman, who told the Guardian in August her name was “on a list” of vice presidential candidates if the former president returns to power, replied Friday to a tweet by ultra-conservative activist Charlie Kirk pushing for a Trump-Carlson ticket.
“I agree with you Charlie,” Greene wrote on X. “There’s no one better than Tucker Carlson!!”
The idea of Trump teaming up with Carlson gained momentum after the frontrunner to win the Republican nomination said on a conservative radio show this week that he’d consider joining forces with the 54-year-old pundit.
When rumors Carlson might run for president circulated in July 2022, he quickly shot them down.
“ I have zero ambition, not just politically, but in life,” he said in an interview with Semafor founder Ben Smith.
It was around that time Internet fabulist Alex Jones told Greene she’d beat Trump if she ran for office in 2024. Greene stated becoming president is something she’s considered.
According to Carlson, then a prime time star on Fox News, he enjoyed his job and had no plans to leave it. Less than a year later, Fox News cut Carlson loose. Text messages from Carlson revealed during the discovery process of the network’s lawsuit with Dominion Voting showed Carlson claiming to “hate (Trump) passionately,” adding the former president was good at “destroying things.”
The outlet reached a $787 million settlement with Dominion over their lies about the latter’s voting machines tampering with the 2020 election results.
Carlson has since expressed support for Trump, whom he interviewed for a social media video in August.
__________ | US Federal Elections |
- Attorney General Merrick Garland delivered a powerful defense of the Department of Justice and federal law enforcement officers in testimony before the House Judiciary Committee.
- "We will not be intimidated. We will do our jobs free from outside interference. And we will not back down from defending our democracy," Garland told the GOP-led panel.
- The DOJ is currently prosecuting Donald Trump and Hunter Biden, the son of President Joe Biden, in various criminal cases.
WASHINGTON — Attorney General Merrick Garland delivered a full-throated defense of federal law enforcement officers and the Department of Justice in testimony Wednesday before the Republican-led House Judiciary Committee.
"We will not be intimidated. We will do our jobs free from outside interference. And we will not back down from defending our democracy," Garland said.
The highly anticipated hearing pitted Garland against a committee whose primary mission under the leadership of Ohio Republican Rep. Jim Jordan has been to challenge the DOJ's practices through a partisan lens.
Even the official announcement of the oversight hearing underscored Jordan's political agenda, explaining that lawmakers intended to "examine how the Justice Department has become politicized and weaponized under the leadership of Attorney General Merrick Garland."
Garland, however, pushed back against Jordan and turned the tables on House Republicans, who have used their majority to launch counter-investigations into the prosecution of former President Donald Trump and the unrelated prosecution of President Joe Biden's son Hunter Biden.
"Our job is not to do what is politically convenient. Our job is not to take orders from the President, from Congress, or from anyone else, about who or what to criminally investigate," the attorney general said.
Garland took particular issue with the singling out of specific DOJ officials for public criticism. Among those officials are special counsel Jack Smith, who leads a team prosecuting Trump on 44 felony counts in two separate cases, and U.S. Attorney for Delaware David Weiss, a Trump appointee who is overseeing the prosecution of Biden's son Hunter on gun and tax charges.
Garland recently appointed Weiss special counsel for the probe of Hunter Biden.
Trump and House Republicans have railed against Smith, with Trump repeatedly accusing Smith of being "deranged," and most recently of seeking to "take away my right of speaking freely and openly" after Smith requested a partial gag order of the former president.
Jordan mentioned Smith by name in his opening statement Wednesday, saying, "Jack Smith, the guy who a few years ago was looking for ways to prosecute … victims of the weaponized government."
Garland said, "All of us at the Justice Department recognize that with this work comes public scrutiny, criticism, and legitimate oversight."
"But singling out individual career public servants who are just doing their jobs is dangerous -- particularly at a time of increased threats to the safety of public servants and their families."
This is breaking news, please check back for updates. | US Political Corruption |
US energy officials announce fusion success 'that could revolutionize the world'The United States has taken “the first tentative steps towards a clean energy source that could revolutionize the world” through a successful fusion experiment, announced Jill Hruby, the under secretary for nuclear security.The breakthrough came after an experiment that saw “192 high-energy lasers converge on a target about the size of a peppercorn, heating a capsule of deuterium and tritium to over three million degrees Celsius and briefly simulating the conditions of a star and achieving ignition.”Speaking earlier, the White House science chief, Arati Prabhakar, gave a one-sentence summary of what scientists at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California achieved: “They shot a bunch of lasers at a pellet of fuel and more energy was released from that fusion ignition than the energy of the lasers.”Key events1h agoUS energy officials announce fusion success 'that could revolutionize the world'2h agoBiden to speak after data shows surprise inflation drop2h agoUS expected to announce 'major scientific breakthrough' of fusion successShow key events onlyPlease turn on JavaScript to use this featureTechnology does not always progress in a straight line. It has its ups and downs, setbacks that overshadow its breakthroughs, fraudsters, phonies and scandals that distract from its innovators.Look no further than what’s been going on in the world of cryptocurrency, where the news has been dominated by last month’s collapse of FTX, formerly the world’s third-largest digital asset exchange. John J Ray III, CEO of the-now defunct company, is testifying before Congress – alone, after FTX’s founder Samuel Bankman-Fried was arrested yesterday in the Bahamas on US fraud charges.For the latest on the hearing, follow the Guardian’s live blog anchored by Kari Paul:The energy department’s press conference on the breakthrough in its fusion experiment has wrapped up, but before it concluded, a top official said it could be a long time before the technology becomes commonly used.“There are very significant hurdles, not just in the science but in technology,” said Kim Budil, director of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, where the experiment was conducted. “This is one igniting capsule one time, and to realize commercial fusion energy, you have to do many things. You have to be able to produce many, many fusion ignition events per minute, and you have to have a robust system of drivers to enable that.”She predicted that “with concerted effort and investment, a few decades of research on the underlying technologies could put us in a position to build a power plant.”Marv Adams, deputy administrator for defense programs at the National Nuclear Security Administration, gave a detailed (and easy to understand) recap of what happened in the successful experiment.He began by holding up a cylinder similar to the one used in the experiment: Inside that was a small, spherical capsule about half the diameter of a BB. One hundred and ninety two laser beams entered from the two ends of the cylinder and struck the inner wall. They didn’t strike the capsule, they struck the inner wall of this cylinder and deposited energy, and that happened in less time than it takes light to move 10 feet, so it’s kind of fast. X-rays from the wall impinged on the spherical capsule. Fusion fuel in the capsule got squeezed. Fusion reaction started. This had all happened before, 100 times before. But last week, for the first time, they designed this experiment so that the fusion fuel stayed hot enough, dense enough and round enough for long enough that it ignited, and it produced more energies than the lasers had deposited– about two mega joules in about three mega joules out, a gain of 1.5. The energy production took less time than it takes like to travel one inch.US energy officials announce fusion success 'that could revolutionize the world'The United States has taken “the first tentative steps towards a clean energy source that could revolutionize the world” through a successful fusion experiment, announced Jill Hruby, the under secretary for nuclear security.The breakthrough came after an experiment that saw “192 high-energy lasers converge on a target about the size of a peppercorn, heating a capsule of deuterium and tritium to over three million degrees Celsius and briefly simulating the conditions of a star and achieving ignition.”Speaking earlier, the White House science chief, Arati Prabhakar, gave a one-sentence summary of what scientists at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California achieved: “They shot a bunch of lasers at a pellet of fuel and more energy was released from that fusion ignition than the energy of the lasers.”The energy secretary, Jennifer Granholm, is making her announcement of a “major scientific breakthrough”, reportedly a successful fusion reaction.Follow this blog for the latest on the speech as it happens, or you can watch it on the live feed embedded above.Founder of collapsed cryptocurrency exchange FTX Samuel Bankman-Fried was supposed to testify before Congress today, but he won’t be making it. He was arrested yesterday in the Bahamas, and is now in deep legal trouble, the Guardian’s Alex Hern reports:Sam Bankman-Fried, the founder and former chief executive of the crypto exchange FTX, has been charged by the US Securities and Exchange Commission with defrauding investors in the company.The SEC said: “The Securities and Exchange Commission today charged Samuel Bankman-Fried with orchestrating a scheme to defraud equity investors in FTX Trading Ltd, the crypto trading platform of which he was the CEO and co-founder. Investigations as to other securities law violations and into other entities and persons relating to the alleged misconduct are ongoing.”The SEC said Bankman-Fried concealed his diversion of FTX customers’ funds to Alameda Research, FTX’s crypto hedge fund, while raising more than $1.8bn (£1.5bn) from investors, including about $1.1bn from about 90 US-based investors.Biden to speak after data shows surprise inflation dropThe White House has announced Joe Biden will speak about his “efforts to tackle inflation” at 10 am, after government data showed consumer prices rose by less than expected in November.Inflation has climbed at rates not seen since the 1980s since Biden took office, fueled by a combination of factors including pandemic-caused supply chain snarls, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, low interest rates and demand from US consumers. The price growth has become a major liability for Biden, and is seen as one reason why his approval rating with voters has been underwater for more than a year.The Bureau of Labor Statistics data released today was generally positive, but contained some hard truths for the world’s largest economy: while prices grew less than expected last month in a sign that inflation could be on its way to becoming markedly lower, Americans were still paying high prices for housing, food and other essentials.Here’s more on the data from the Guardian’s Dominic Rushe:The cost of living continued to rise at levels unseen in decades in November, the US Bureau of Labor Statistics reported on Tuesday, but the rate of inflation does appear to be finally slowing. The latest consumer price index (CPI) figures – which measure a broad range of goods and services – showed prices rising by 7.1% from last November with a 0.1% increase from October. The latest annual rise was lower than expected and is down from 9.1% in June, the highest rate in more than 40 years, but is still more than three times higher than the Federal Reserve’s target rate of 2%. The Fed has been hiking interest rates at the fastest pace since the 1980s as it seeks to slow the economy and bring prices down. It is expected to announce another rate rise on Wednesday, its eighth consecutive increase. The latest dip in the rate of inflation was helped by falling gas prices – once one of the biggest drivers of rising prices. But US consumers continued to experience soaring costs for services such as healthcare, rents and eating out. Housing costs were by far the largest contributor to the monthly increase, more than offsetting decreases in energy indexes.Joe Biden has made transitioning the United States away from fossil fuels a major priority of his administration, and the reported breakthrough in fusion energy will no doubt be a happy surprise. But as the Guardian’s Nicola Davis reports, it could be a long time before the technological advance is put to practical use:Researchers have reportedly made a breakthrough in the quest to unlock a “near-limitless, safe, clean” source of energy: they have got more energy out of a nuclear fusion reaction than they put in.Nuclear fusion involves smashing together light elements such as hydrogen to form heavier elements, releasing a huge burst of energy in the process. The approach, which gives rise to the heat and light of the sun and other stars, has been hailed as having huge potential as a sustainable, low-carbon energy source.However, since nuclear fusion research began in the 1950s, researchers have been unable to a demonstrate a positive energy gain, a condition known as ignition.That was, it seems, until now.US expected to announce 'major scientific breakthrough' of fusion successGood morning, US politics blog readers. This morning, we’re expected to hear details of what the Biden administration has dubbed a “major scientific breakthrough”, reportedly the success of a fusion experiment that produced more energy than was put in. While this would be a major development in the world of clean energy, don’t expect it to become widely used anytime soon, likely not for years. We will find out more when energy secretary Jennifer Granholm speaks at 10am eastern time.There is plenty of other news expected today: Joe Biden will sign the Respect for Marriage Act protecting same-sex and interracial marriage rights in a White House ceremony at 3:30 pm, alongside Kamala Harris and both their spouses. FTX founder Samuel Bankman-Fried will testify before the House Financial Services committee, wait, no he won’t, he was arrested last night by police in the Bahamas at the behest of the United States. The collapsed cryptocurrency exchange’s current CEO John Ray III will appear as scheduled at the 10 am hearing. The US-Africa Leaders Summit begins in Washington, where Biden will welcome top officials from dozens of African countries. | US Federal Policies |
The initiation of an impeachment investigation against a president ought to be an earthshaking moment in the nation’s history.
Yet when Republican House Speaker Kevin McCarthy announced the opening of such a probe into President Joe Biden Tuesday, it felt like more of an inevitable consequence of America’s diseased politics than a constitutional thunderclap.
McCarthy argued that the impeachment inquiry was the “logical” next step amid Republican claims – so far unproven – that Biden was enriched by his son Hunter’s business ventures when he was vice president. Impeachment did seem to be a logical next step – but less from an evidentiary perspective than a political one, with the effort pushed by hardline Republicans, including many members who voted not to certify Biden’s 2020 victory. The House GOP majority, which has remained in thrall to Trump, now serves as an arm of his bid to win back the White House next year.
The speaker’s impeachment move comes as he is facing extreme pressure from far-right pro-Trump members of his conference ahead of an internal GOP showdown over spending and amid questions over whether he could survive as speaker if he fails to impeach Biden, following the double impeachment of his predecessor.
The impression that McCarthy is acting at the behest of a vengeful Trump was bolstered by the disclosure that the ex-president was on the phone with House leadership on Tuesday, as CNN reported.
It’s not new for the California Republican to be seen to be Trump’s proxy. He pledged loyalty to the former president at Mar-a-Lago days after he left office in disgrace for telling his supporters to “fight like hell” before the Capitol insurrection on January 6, 2021.
Republicans could use an impeachment investigation of the president to fuel public suspicion over Hunter Biden’s cascading controversies. They’ll try to muddle the political effect of Trump’s own two impeachments and his four looming criminal trials by creating the impression that political corruption is simply endemic.
The United States is now on the cusp of its third possible impeachment in three and a half years. McCarthy’s move raises the question of whether the standard for this last-resort constitutional remedy is being watered down. A new impeachment process that comes to be seen as purely politically motivated also raises the risk that a once-rare step will become a regular habit when the House is controlled by one party and the White House by another.
But the coming impeachment investigation represents a gamble for Republicans since it could cause a backlash in moderate districts that their majority depends on. And heading into 2024, when polls show limited enthusiasm for Joe Biden’s reelection bid even amid in his own party, an impeachment inquiry into the president may help the White House boost excitement among Democrats. Ian Sams, a White House spokesman for oversight and investigations, blasted the impeachment investigation as “extreme politics at its worst.”
But the strain of an impeachment inquiry is hardly the way the White House would have preferred to prepare for election year. The White House plans to send a letter to top US news executives on Wednesday, urging the media to “ramp up its scrutiny of House Republicans for opening an impeachment inquiry based on lies,” according to a draft copy obtained by CNN.
Even if nothing comes of the inquiry, the chatter could increase voter concern about the president’s role in Hunter Biden’s affairs after 61% of the public said in a CNN poll released last week that they think he had at least some involvement in his son’s business career.
And McCarthy’s announcement came as concern mounts among some Democrats about Biden’s age – he would turn 82 before being inaugurated for a second term. In a column likely to drive conversation on the issue on Wednesday, influential Washington Post foreign policy writer David Ignatius, who is often sympathetic to the president, said he didn’t think Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris should run for reelection.
Democratic Sen. Dick Durbin told CNN Tuesday that while the impeachment inquiry decision was a symptom of an “out of control” Republican House majority – and that there was no evidence to back impeachment – he did feel “uncomfortable” with the impression that Hunter Biden capitalized on his father’s position, as he did about similar allegations about Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, in the previous administration.
Suspicions of influence peddling by a son, but no evidence of presidential wrongdoing
McCarthy did not cite any evidence of wrongdoing by Joe Biden when he made the announcement of an impeachment inquiry. And he did not put the decision to a vote of the full House – as he once said he would and for which he once criticized then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi for not doing – amid signs that more moderate Republicans critical to his hopes of keeping the majority fear they could pay a price for the move in 2024.
“These are allegations of abuse of power, obstruction and corruption,” the California Republican said, in announcing the investigation. “They warrant further investigation by the House of Representatives.”
Information made public by GOP-led House committees suggests at the very least a strong perception of a conflict of interest on the part of Hunter Biden in various ventures, including in China and Ukraine, while his father was dealing with those foreign policy portfolios as vice president.
But despite releasing details of bank records connected to the younger Biden showing a series of lucrative payments, GOP House committees have failed to produce evidence that the president personally benefited from his son’s business deals or that he abused his power in a way that would fit the constitutional standard for impeachment of treason, bribery and high crimes and misdemeanors. The Republican leadership of the House Oversight Committee claims that dinners Joe Biden attended with his son and his associates in 2014 and 2015 and a visit he made to Ukraine, shortly after Hunter Biden started earning $1 million a year from the Ukrainian energy firm Burisma, show corruption.
Yet those details don’t seem to meet even the standard of circumstantial evidence showing that the president did something wrong. If the impeachment investigation does uncover more direct involvement of Joe Biden, condemnations of McCarthy’s action may have been premature.
But until then, the speaker will be criticized for showing only questionable justifications for initiating a process that, if pushed to its conclusion, would result in a Senate trial of the president to decide whether the result of a democratic election should be overturned and he should be dismissed.
Impeachment is always an inherently political process
One of the complexities of impeachment is that the standard for judging whether a president has abused his power is not a criminal one – it is a political question. One of the founders, Alexander Hamilton, for instance, wrote in Federalist 65 that prosecuting impeachments would “seldom fail to agitate the passions of the whole community, and to divide it into parties more or less friendly or inimical to the accused.” He added: “There will always be the greatest danger that the decision will be regulated more by the comparative strength of parties, than by the real demonstrations of innocence or guilt.”
In justifying his decision, McCarthy argued that an impeachment inquiry could unlock investigative powers not available to his majority in the normal course of business. But it is not clear that this is true. And absent stronger evidence of presidential wrongdoing at the outset, it’s harder for him to rebut accusations that he’s a weak speaker acting to save his own political skin. His tenure so far has been a procession of concessions to hardline “Make America Great Again” conservatives as he struggles to govern – and the impeachment bid seems to fit this pattern.
Some observers have suggested that the investigation could buy the speaker space to escape a standoff with the right over spending that could shut down the government. But it’s not a given McCarthy could appease members that way. And his warning on Tuesday that an impeachment inquiry doesn’t necessarily translate to an actual impeachment seems difficult to take seriously since he’d have to face down pro-Trump lawmakers to halt it once it gathers momentum, even if it fails to unearth missteps by Joe Biden. One of McCarthy’s fiercest critics, Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz, for instance, dismissed Tuesday’s announcement as “baby steps.”
By comparison with modern impeachments, the Biden investigation appears at the outset to be based on a thin foundation. President Bill Clinton was impeached for lying under oath and obstruction of justice after trying to cover up a sexual relationship with a White House intern, Monica Lewinsky. Trump’s first impeachment was over abuse of power and obstruction of Congress after he tried to coerce Ukraine into a criminal investigation of Biden. His second was for “incitement of insurrection” after the January 6 attack on Congress. Clinton and Trump were both acquitted in Senate trials in the absence of a two-thirds majority to convict them. Lawmakers drew up articles of impeachment against President Richard Nixon amid the Watergate scandal in the 1970s, but he resigned before the full House could act.
David Bateman, a professor of government and policy at Cornell University, said the Clinton and Trump impeachments all appeared plausible. “They seem to be clearly offenses for which you should be impeachable,” Bateman said. “This one right now, there’s been no evidence produced that suggests there was anything other than a son who’s trying to engage in some influence pending …. (And) no evidence that the father, as vice president, participated in any substantive way.”
GOP presidential candidate Chris Christie, a Trump critic, warned in an interview with CNN’s Jake Tapper that the paucity of current evidence against Biden augured against impeachment. “If in fact, you don’t have greater facts than what you have now, it would be cheapening impeachment,” the former New Jersey governor said, though he did add that “there is enough smoke here that you need to look.”
The opening of an impeachment inquiry could cause uncomfortable questions for Republicans who represent districts that Biden carried in 2020. But McCarthy’s decision not to put the issue to a vote in the full House right now could give some of these lawmakers cover. Rep. Dan Newhouse of Washington state, one of 10 House Republicans who voted to impeach Trump the second time around, echoed the party line when he said opening an impeachment investigation into Biden was the “next logical step.”
But McCarthy’s move on Tuesday seems to contradict his own claim to the moral high ground before the House voted to impeach Trump the first time in December 2019. He complained at the time that the move, led by Pelosi, was not supported by evidence. “Will we let impeachment become an exercise of raw political power, regardless if it damages our country?” McCarthy asked. “Or will we protect the proper grounds and process for impeachment now and in the future?”
“They want to undo the results of the last election, to influence the next one,” McCarthy said at the time – a comment that, in retrospect, appears to explain the pro-Trump GOP’s behavior nearly four years later.
Unless an impeachment investigation uncovers some currently unforeseeable abuse of power by Biden, it is certain, given the Democratic control of the Senate, that there will not be a two-thirds majority to convict him in a trial.
As McCarthy said, when referring to Trump in 2019, “He is president today. He will be president tomorrow. And he will be president when this impeachment is over.”
The key question, therefore, may not be whether Biden survives impeachment with his job intact, but whether McCarthy does. | US Political Corruption |
Judge imposes gag order on Donald Trump in D.C. trial
Judge Tanya Chutkan said Trump’s “presidential candidacy does not give him carte blanche to vilify … public servants who are simply doing their job.”
A federal judge has barred former President Donald Trump from attacking witnesses, prosecutors and court staff involved in his Washington, D.C., criminal case, imposing a gag order that sharply escalates the tension between Trump’s 2024 bid for the presidency and the realities of his status as a criminal defendant.
“First Amendment protections yield to the administration of justice and to the protection of witnesses,” Judge Tanya Chutkan said Monday as she issued the gag order. “His presidential candidacy does not give him carte blanche to vilify … public servants who are simply doing their job.”
For Trump, it’s one of the first tangible consequences of his brush with the criminal justice system, in this case on four felony charges related to his effort to subvert the 2020 election. Chutkan has scheduled Trump’s trial to begin on March 4 and emphasized Monday that the date would not change.
Chutkan’s order would require a significant shift in Trump’s public demeanor. He routinely uses his social media megaphone and rally speeches to assail his lead federal prosecutor, special counsel Jack Smith, as “deranged” and call his aides “thugs” — examples of commentary that Chutkan said risked poisoning the proceedings.
Trump, who opted to campaign in Iowa rather than attend the hearing, has also in recent weeks pointedly attacked several known witnesses in the case, suggesting that one of them — retired Gen. Mark Milley — would have warranted the death penalty in another era and repeatedly blasting former attorney general Bill Barr.
Acknowledging Trump’s broad right to weigh in on public policy issues as he pursues a second term in the White House, Chutkan said nevertheless that Trump could not launch a “pretrial smear campaign” against those who might testify against him. She said she would consider “sanctions” if she observes any violations, but she did not elaborate, although she said she planned to issue a written order with further details.
The pronouncement raises the prospect that Trump could face punishment — ranging from restrictions on social media to pretrial incarceration — if he continues to mount public attacks on Smith and his team or witnesses likely to testify.
Chutkan declined to impose restrictions on Trump’s ability to criticize Washington, D.C. or its residents or on his claims that the prosecution is part of a political vendetta on the part of the Biden administration, saying existing pretrial limits were sufficient.
The judge’s ruling followed a two-hour-long hearing in which Chutkan repeatedly sparred with Trump attorney John Lauro about the scope of any potential gag order and about the impact of Trump’s earlier provocative statements about potential witnesses and other participants in the D.C. election subversion case and other cases.
Lauro said early in the hearing that Trump would immediately appeal any order similar to the one prosecutors had requested. | US Political Corruption |
In the midst of impending battles over government funding and critical legislation like the annual defense policy bill, some of the House of Representatives' most conservative members are signaling that Speaker Mike Johnson's initial grace period is coming to an end.
Representative Andy Ogles from Tennessee, a member of the conservative House Freedom Caucus, likens Johnson's relationship with the hard-right wing to any marriage or relationship, emphasizing the need to build trust and meet expectations. While acknowledging Johnson as a friend, Ogles notes there are high expectations for the newly elected Speaker.
Other hard-liners, such as Representative Troy Nehls from Texas, agree that Johnson is entering a new phase as a leader. Despite describing the House as a mess and lamenting Republicans unwilling to negotiate, Nehls hopes Johnson will be given more grace.
Johnson's election as speaker was celebrated among the House's right flank for his conservative credentials compared to his predecessor, Kevin McCarthy. However, his role as one of the four party leaders requires him to represent all House Republicans, not just the conservative faction, especially in delicate negotiations to avoid a potential government shutdown in January.
Criticism arises as some members, like Representative Chip Roy, argue that Johnson has been more focused on negotiating four-corner deals than engaging with his conference. A spokesperson for Johnson asserts his commitment to conservative reforms and highlights priorities such as addressing the migrant crisis, cutting federal spending, and proceeding with the impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden.
Fragile Negotiations on Government Funding
Despite conservative hesitations in negotiating with Democrats, Freedom Caucus Chair Representative Scott Perry signals a willingness to accept a spending agreement larger than some original demands. Previously pushing for funding levels below the debt ceiling deal agreed upon by Biden and McCarthy, conservatives now concede to a spending cap of $1.59 trillion for the next fiscal year.
This concession represents a small victory for Johnson, given the demands for significant spending cuts that contributed to McCarthy's ousting. Parts of the government are funded until January 19, with the remaining functions funded until February 2.
Johnson's Challenging Role
While acknowledging Johnson's relatively new position as Speaker, most House Republicans recognize the difficulty of his circumstances. Representative Debbie Lesko praises Johnson for approaching his work with positivity, integrity, and commitment to America's future, acknowledging the challenging nature of the role.
Representative Matt Rosendale dismisses the notion of a grace period for Johnson, evaluating his performance day by day. Representative Warren Davidson emphasizes that conservative grievances against Johnson are not personal, stating, "He's got a tough situation. None of it's personal; we're just trying to make sure we deliver on the promises we made to the American people." | US Congress |
3 more red states ditch voter data-sharing collective as Trump rips 'fools game for Republicans'
"All Republican Governors should immediately pull out of ERIC, the terrible Voter Registration System that 'pumps the rolls' for Democrats and does nothing to clean them up," the former president wrote on his Truth Social platform.
The Facts Inside Our Reporter’s Notebook
Three more red states — Florida, Missouri, and West Virginia — this week followed Louisiana and Alabama in withdrawing from a multistate data-sharing partnership that facilitates voter registration and maintenance of voter rolls, citing unmet concerns over protecting voter information and partisan influence at the nonprofit.
The latest withdrawals from the Electronic Registration Information Center (ERIC) came after the nonprofit's board of directors rejected changes proposed by a bipartisan working group of several member states.
The rejected proposals included increasing protections for confidential voter information and limiting the power of partisan ex-officio ERIC board members, according to press releases from the departing states.
ERIC bills itself as a data-rich resource participating states can use in updating voter rolls.
"Each member state receives reports," explains ERIC's Frequently Asked Questions page, "that show voters who have moved within their state, voters who have moved out of state, voters who have died, duplicate registrations in the same state, and individuals who are potentially eligible to vote but are not yet registered.
"States may request a report identifying voters who appear to have voted twice within the state in the prior federal election, voted in more than one state in the prior federal election, or who voted on behalf of a deceased voter in the prior federal election."
The three states' withdrawals will take effect on June 3, with Alabama set to exit on Apr. 28. Following the departures, membership in the partnership will fall to 28 states and Washington, D.C., according to ERIC's website.
ERIC's founder and nonvoting board member is David Becker, who also founded the Center for Election Innovation & Research (CEIR). That organization, which received nearly $70 million from Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg's Chan Zuckerberg Initiative in 2020, claims, "The 2020 general election was the most secure in American history."
A former trial attorney in the Voting Section of the Department of Justice's Civil Rights Division, Becker has been described by former colleagues as "a hard-core leftist."
Florida Secretary of State Cord Byrd said in a statement Monday: "As Secretary of State, I have an obligation to protect the personal information of Florida's citizens, which the ERIC agreement requires us to share. Florida has tried to back reforms to increase protections, but these protections were refused. Therefore, we have lost confidence in ERIC."
Missouri Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft said on Monday: "Voter confidence is compromised when individuals vote in more than one state and nothing is done. It appears that ERIC will not make the necessary changes to address these concerns, therefore, it is time to move on."
In a letter to ERIC Executive Director Shane Hamlin, Ashcroft explained that the reasons for Missouri's exit include: ERIC's refusal "to require member states to participate in addressing multi-state voter fraud"; focus "on adding names to voter rolls by requiring a solicitation to individuals who already had an opportunity to register to vote and made the conscious decision to not be registered"; unnecessary restriction on "how Missouri utilizes data reports"; and the limited benefits Missouri derives from the partnership with only three of its bordering states as members.
West Virginia Secretary of State Mac Warner said Monday: "There is no defensible justification to allow any opportunity for partisanship in voter registration and list maintenance, much less in the administration of our nation's elections. It truly is a shame that an organization founded on the principle of nonpartisanship would allow the opportunity for partisanship to stray the organization from the equally important principle of upholding the public's confidence."
Warner announced that West Virginia will supplement its "state list-maintenance data sources that ERIC had facilitated" by using the U.S. Postal Service to identify voters who move out of state and the Social Security Administration Master Death File and DMV abandoned voter registrations to identify deceased voters.
Conservative election law nonprofit Public Interest Legal Foundation (PILF) is currently seeking to obtain ERIC voter list maintenance reports via lawsuits in Louisiana, Colorado, the District of Columbia, and Alaska.
"ERIC is currently the only system that allows states to find out who is registered to vote in multiple states," PILF President J. Christian Adams said in a statement. "States do not have any other available systems to use right now. Information leading to the arrest of double cross state voters is essential for voter list maintenance. ERIC's wall of secrecy is causing a lack of trust and erosion of confidence. ERIC must become transparent, or it will continue to lose member states."
Former President Donald Trump urged red states to abandon ERIC in a Truth Social post on Monday.
"All Republican Governors should immediately pull out of ERIC," he wrote, "the terrible Voter Registration System that 'pumps the rolls' for Democrats and does nothing to clean them up. It is a fools game for Republicans….And while these Governors are at it, GO TO SAME DAY VOTING, ALL PAPER BALLOTS, AND VOTER I.D. (VOTER IDENTIFICATION). Mail-In Voting ONLY for FAR AWAY MILITARY and those that are VERY SICK! PROBLEMS ON ELECTION'S [sic] SOLVED!"
ERIC has not responded to a request for comment.
"We are a member-run, member-driven organization," Hamlin wrote in a March 2 open letter on ERIC's website. "State election officials — our members — govern ERIC and fund our day-to-day operations through payment of annual dues, which they set for themselves."
Hamlin stressed the security of voter data maintained by ERIC, while acknowledging it is accessible as needed to ERIC employees, who work remotely to limit the organization's operating costs.
"ERIC is never connected to any state's voter registration system," he wrote. "Members retain complete control over their voter rolls and they use the reports we provide in ways that comply with federal and state laws." | US Federal Elections |
A reporter was briefly arrested on Thursday while covering a pro-Palestinian protest in the southwestern U.S. city of Tucson, Arizona.
Video and photos posted online show Alisa Reznick, a reporter with the National Public Radio affiliate KJZZ, being handcuffed and detained by a Pima County sheriff’s deputy. Reznick was wearing a visible press pass and identified herself as a journalist.
“I’m a reporter,” Reznick said. “And you’re under arrest,” a deputy replied.
Reznick was among 25 other people who were arrested at the protest. Although the reporter was released later that same morning, press freedom groups condemned the arrest.
“We are deeply concerned that the Pima County Sheriff’s Department handcuffed and detained NPR-affiliated journalist Alisa Reznick as she was doing her job covering a protest, and clearly identified herself as a journalist,” Katherine Jacobsen, U.S. and Canada program coordinator at the Committee to Protect Journalists, said in a statement.
“Police should conduct an internal investigation as to why they detained a reporter and obstructed her from newsgathering,” Jacobsen said.
Reznick was reporting on a protest outside UA Tech Park. The University of Arizona satellite campus is home to Raytheon, a defense contractor that has sent weapons to Israel.Pima County Sheriff Chris Nanos told Arizona Public Media that he stands by the arrest.
“If you find that our deputies did something that you think was inappropriate, unprofessional, illegal, please, I want to be the first to know about that,” Nanos said. “But from what I've seen, and what I've heard from talking to all the other media outlets, they don't believe our deputies were in violation or any of that, that they did their best to keep things calm.”
Nanos said Reznick was asked multiple times to leave the area but refused to do so.
“I am hearing that she was given that opportunity, as several other people, multiple times when she was requested, as were several others, to leave the area,” Nanos said. “Her, as well as now I understand this number has gone up to 26 people, chose not to do that.”
According to the Daily Beast website, a senior KJZZ editor said in a statement that the station was “continuing to seek clarity from the sheriff’s department on the circumstances of this incident where a clearly identified journalist was in the course of reporting the news.” | US Police Misconduct |
South Carolina officials have officially ruled the 2015 death of Murdaugh-linked Stephen Smith as murder — ahead of the planned exhumation of the gay teen’s body.
The state law enforcement division had been waiting to drop the bombshell conclusion until after the Alex Murdaugh double murder trial wrapped up and the ensuing drama quieted down, Bland Richter Law Firm announced Tuesday.
“SLED officials have revealed that they did not need to exhume Stephen Smith’s body to convince them that his death was a homicide,” said Charleston attorneys Eric Bland and Ronnie Richter, who were retained by Smith’s mother.
SLED was holding out on the announcement “out of concern that witnesses would not be as forthcoming under the Murdaugh sphere of influence.”
SLED revisited Smith’s case — originally deemed a hit-and-run — following the 2021 murders of Paul and Maggie Murdaugh, for which father and husband Alex was convicted on March 3.
Officials said “new evidence” connecting the established legal family to Smith’s death was discovered during the double murder investigation, but have not elaborated further.
Smith — an openly gay teen who was romantically linked to Buster Murdaugh — was found dead three miles away from his car on a road near the Murdaugh’s massive estate in July 2015.
He was found with a large wound to the right side of his forehead, a dislocated shoulder and cuts to his left hand.
Police initially stated the death “appeared to be a homicide,” but an autopsy performed the same day he was found dead ruled he had been the victim of a hit-and-run.
“I really don’t know why they did what they did,” Smith’s mother, Sandy, told News Nation Tuesday about the death ruling.
“I just knew in my heart that what they were telling me wasn’t true … I believe he was beaten to death.”
Sandy has long disputed the official recorded cause of death and has raised over $80,000 to exhume her son’s body.
Sandy has not directly tied the Murdaughs to her son’s murder, but plenty of internet sleuths and true crime journalists tied the mysterious death to the legal giant family.
On Monday, Buster Murdaugh “unequivocally” denied “vicious rumors” that he was involved in the Smith’s murder.
A Netflix special detailing the double murders — and other suspicious deaths related to the family — detailed speculations that Buster and Smith secretly dated in high school despite his family’s homophobic history.
“These baseless rumors of my involvement with Stephen and his death are false,” Buster said in a statement.
SLED officials have agreed to participate in the exhumation to gather more evidence as part of the murder investigation.
“We have a chance to right eight years of wrongs, and we intend to do just that,” Bland said. | US Crime, Violence, Terrorism & cybercrime |
Embattled Representative George Santos, a New York Republican, called other members of Congress "felons" who are in bed with lobbyists in a Friday interview about the recent House Ethics Committee report against him.
Santos has long been dogged by reports that he falsified aspects of his personal history while running for office since being elected to Congress in 2022, and by further accusations that he mishandled campaign funds. On November 16, the House Ethics Committee released its report on the freshman congressman, concluding after a 10-month investigation that there is "substantial" evidence that Santos broke federal laws by improperly utilizing campaign funds, including using them on Sephora, Botox, and OnlyFans purchases, among others alleged infractions. Santos maintains his innocence and has pleaded not guilty to charges related to a criminal investigation into his alleged fraud.
In the wake of the report's release, Santos announced that he would not be seeking reelection to represent New York's 3rd Congressional District in 2024, presenting a new opportunity for Democrats to potentially retake the House. He may depart office sooner than that, however, as a new motion to expel him from Congress is being considered and, given the ethics report against him, may prove successful where past efforts have not.
On Friday evening, Santos was interviewed by conservative podcast host Monica Matthews on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, where he made his most extensive comments yet about the report, dismissing its findings and lashing out against the alleged misdeeds of his congressional colleagues.
"It's flawed. It was designed to smear me," Santos said about the report. "It was designed to force me out of my seat. That is what the intention of this report was. This report wasn't a finding of facts."
He later added: "Within the ranks of the United States Congress, there's felons galore, there's people with all sorts of sheisty backgrounds, and all of a sudden, George Santos is the Mary Magdalene of the United States Congress. I don't want to work with a bunch of hypocrites. It's gross. I have colleagues who are more worried about getting drunk every night with the next lobbyists that they're going to screw and pretend like none of us know what's going on and sell off the American people."
The newest motion to expel Santos from the House was filed by Representative Michael Guest, a Mississippi Republican and the chair of the House Ethics Committee, but has not been put on the House floor schedule, and would require a member to notice the motion as privileged in order for it to do so.
During the Friday interview, Santos said Guest should "be a man and stop being a p****," urging him to take the steps necessary to get the motion moving forward.
Newsweek reached out to Guest's office via email for comment.
Uncommon Knowledge
Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
fairness meter
About the writer
Thomas Kika is a Newsweek weekend reporter based in upstate New York. His focus is reporting on crime and national politics. In the past, he has also focused on things like business, technology, and popular culture. Thomas joined Newsweek in 2021 and previously worked at the International Business Times. He is a graduate of the University at Albany. You can get in touch with Thomas by emailing [email protected]. Languages: English.
Thomas Kika is a Newsweek weekend reporter based in upstate New York. His focus is reporting on crime and national... Read more
To read how Newsweek uses AI as a newsroom tool, Click here. | US Congress |
January 6 panel releases Hutchinson transcriptsThe full report from the January 6 House panel investigating Donald Trump’s insurrection has not yet materialized, but the committee has just published transcripts of the testimony of a key witness.Cassidy Hutchinson, a former aide to Trump’s White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, gave some of the most dramatic, and damning testimony during a live public hearing in the summer. Cassidy Hutchinson testifies to the January 6 committee on 28 June. Photograph: Andrew Harnik/APShe said Trump attempted to strangle his secret service agent and lunged for the steering wheel when he was told that he would not be driven to join the rioters he incited during the January 6 Capitol riot.She gave further, closed doors testimony to the panel in September, released by the committee in two documents this morning. One from 14 September is here; and the other from the following day is here.The first session lasted five and a half hours, and the second was two and half. There’s more than 200 pages of transcript here, but one episode sticks out, aboard Air Force One early on 5 January 2021, as Trump was flying back to Washington after “stop the steal” rallies in Georgia.It would appear to allude to the plot to try to persuade vice-president Mike Pence to deny certification of Trump’s election defeat by Biden in Congress the following day, the infamous Capitol riot incited by Trump.In a conference room meeting attended by, among others, Georgia congresswoman Marjorie Taylor-Greene, allies were talking up the scheme, and assuring Trump it would succeed, Hutchinson says.But she says she then saw Meadows take Trump aside after the meeting and caution him thus: “In case we didn’t win this [the election] sir, and in case, like, tomorrow doesn’t go as planned, we’re gonna have to have a plan in place.”According to Hutchinson, Trump replied: “There’s always that chance we didn’t win, but tomorrow’s gonna go well,” a potentially crucial admission that Trump already knew his defeat was not fraudulent.Key events1h agoSchumer: Senate agrees $1.7tn spending deal2h agoJanuary 6 panel releases Hutchinson transcripts3h agoReport: Senate reaches deal on $1.7tn government spending bill3h agoThompson: January 6 panel 'found witnesses that justice department couldn't'4h agoAnother day of reckoning for Donald TrumpShow key events onlyPlease turn on JavaScript to use this featureMartin PengellySpeaking of impending investigations of Hunter Biden, the president’s son has hired a well-known Washington lawyer, who represented Jared Kushner in Congress as well as during the investigation of Russian election interference and links between Donald Trump and Moscow, to advise him during his looming congressional combat.Abbe Lowell. Photograph: Gerald Herbert/APThe younger Biden “has retained Abbe Lowell to help advise him and be part of his legal team to address the challenges he is facing,” another attorney, Kevin Morris, told news outlets on Wednesday.“Lowell is a well-known Washington based attorney who has represented numerous public officials and high-profile people in Department of Justice investigations and trials as well as congressional investigations. [For Hunter Biden] Mr Lowell will handle congressional investigations and general strategic advice.”Lowell has worked across the political divide, representing Democrats including Bob Menendez, a New Jersey senator, and the former senator and vice-presidential nominee John Edwards, both in corruption cases that ended in mistrials, and acting as chief minority counsel to House Democrats in the impeachment of Bill Clinton.Recently, Lowell represented Tom Barrack, a Trump ally acquitted in a foreign lobbying case.Lowell, 70, has said that to be a trial lawyer, “you have to have a desire to be a performer at some level. If I hadn’t done this, it would have been Broadway”.But his work for Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law and chief adviser, brought an uncomfortable sort of spotlight. Writing in the American Lawyer in late 2020, Lowell suggested criticism of his work for another client was generated “primarily because I later represented … the president’s son-in-law.“The resulting news coverage, and especially the more sensational headlines, triggered the all-too-common flurry of hate mail, threatening voice mails and anonymous criticisms for doing the very job that attorneys are supposed to do.”Full story:Martin PengellyJamie Raskin of Maryland, a member of the January 6 committee and before that a House manager in the second impeachment of Donald Trump, will be the top Democrat on the House oversight committee in the next Congress.Jamie Raskin. Photograph: José Luis Magaña/APRaskin beat Gerry Connolly of Virginia in a closed ballot on Capitol Hill.So far, so inside Beltway baseball. But it’s an important vote to note nonetheless. Raskin, who was a professor of constitutional law before entering Congress, has achieved a high profile and he will need to wield it to good effect in the oversight role from January, given Republicans’ declared intent to use the committee to launch investigations into Hunter Biden and other subjects designed to damage Joe Biden.The current oversight chair, Carolyn Maloney of New York, will leave Congress shortly, having lost her primary this year.James Comer of Kentucky, the incoming Republican chair, told reporters last month he intended to go on the offensive, by investigating whether family business activities have “compromise[d] US national security and President Biden’s ability to lead with impartiality”.“We want the bank records and that’s our focus,” Comer said. “We’re trying to stay focused on: ‘Was Joe Biden directly involved with Hunter Biden’s business deals and is he compromised?’ That’s our investigation.”Raskin’s work on the January 6 investigation is all but done. Now comes the next hefty task.Here’s some further reading about Raskin, from our Washington bureau chief, David Smith:White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson said she felt she had “Trump himself looking over my shoulder” as she discussed with her attorney her upcoming testimony to the January 6 committee earlier this year.Hutchinson, an assistant to then-president Donald Trump’s chief of staff Mark Meadows, makes the revelation in a transcript of a deposition to the panel that was released on Thursday morning.Mark Meadows. Photograph: Patrick Semansky/APIn it, Hutchinson, a star witness against Trump in public hearings of the committee this summer, outlines what she saw as sustained campaign of pressure by lawyers paid by Trump to get her to mislead the panel.CNN reported on Wednesday that Stefan Passantino, the top ethics attorney in the White House at the time, allegedly advised Hutchinson to tell the committee that she did not recall details that she did over Trump’s efforts to reverse his defeat to Joe Biden.According to the transcript, Hutchinson told the panel:It wasn’t just that I had Stefan sitting next to me; it was almost like I felt like I had Trump looking over my shoulder. Because I knew in some fashion it would get back to him if I said anything that he would find disloyal. And the prospect of that genuinely scared me. You know, I’d seen this world ruin people’s lives or try to ruin people’s careers. I’d seen how vicious they can be.Hutchinson, then 26, said she originally thought she was “fucked” because she couldn’t afford a lawyer after receiving a subpoena from the House committee, but was hooked up with Passantino through her White House contacts. It turned out that Passantino was being paid by a Trump political action committee.Hutchinson also said that Passantino had never explicitly asked her to lie to the panel:I want to make this clear to you: Stefan never told me to lie. He specifically told me, ‘I don’t want you to perjure yourself, but ‘I don’t recall’ isn’t perjury. They don’t know want you can and can’t recall’.But she said she felt increasingly pressured into misleading the panel. The relationship with Passantino soured, and ended, she said. Read more:Schumer: Senate agrees $1.7tn spending dealThe $1.7tn government spending bill could pass Congress as early as Thursday night after Democratic and Republican negotiators in the Senate appeared to strike a deal over certain amendments that were holding it up.Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer announced the agreement to clear about 15 amendments, the Associated Press reported. Such amendments are subject to a 60-vote requirement and would ordinarily fail in the evenly divided chamber.Chuck Schumer. Photograph: Evelyn Hockstein/Reuters“It’s taken a while, but it is worth it,” Schumer said in announcing the series of votes, needed to lock in an expedited vote on final passage and get the bill to Joe Biden’s desk before a partial government shutdown would begin at midnight Friday. The House will take up the bill after the Senate completes its work, the AP reports.The massive bill includes about $772.5bn for non-defense, discretionary programs and $858bn for defense, and would finance the government through September. Lawmakers were racing to get the bill approved before a shutdown could occur, and many were anxious to complete the task before a deep freeze and wintry conditions leave them stranded in Washington for the holidays. Many also want to lock in government funding before a new GOP-controlled House next year could make it harder to find compromise on spending.Read more:January 6 panel releases Hutchinson transcriptsThe full report from the January 6 House panel investigating Donald Trump’s insurrection has not yet materialized, but the committee has just published transcripts of the testimony of a key witness.Cassidy Hutchinson, a former aide to Trump’s White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, gave some of the most dramatic, and damning testimony during a live public hearing in the summer. Cassidy Hutchinson testifies to the January 6 committee on 28 June. Photograph: Andrew Harnik/APShe said Trump attempted to strangle his secret service agent and lunged for the steering wheel when he was told that he would not be driven to join the rioters he incited during the January 6 Capitol riot.She gave further, closed doors testimony to the panel in September, released by the committee in two documents this morning. One from 14 September is here; and the other from the following day is here.The first session lasted five and a half hours, and the second was two and half. There’s more than 200 pages of transcript here, but one episode sticks out, aboard Air Force One early on 5 January 2021, as Trump was flying back to Washington after “stop the steal” rallies in Georgia.It would appear to allude to the plot to try to persuade vice-president Mike Pence to deny certification of Trump’s election defeat by Biden in Congress the following day, the infamous Capitol riot incited by Trump.In a conference room meeting attended by, among others, Georgia congresswoman Marjorie Taylor-Greene, allies were talking up the scheme, and assuring Trump it would succeed, Hutchinson says.But she says she then saw Meadows take Trump aside after the meeting and caution him thus: “In case we didn’t win this [the election] sir, and in case, like, tomorrow doesn’t go as planned, we’re gonna have to have a plan in place.”According to Hutchinson, Trump replied: “There’s always that chance we didn’t win, but tomorrow’s gonna go well,” a potentially crucial admission that Trump already knew his defeat was not fraudulent.Nancy Pelosi is delivering the final press conference of her long-time tenure as House speaker, and is reminiscing over all the memorable presidents she has served:Pelosi: "I was speaker and minority leader under President Bush, under President Obama and under whatshisname?"— David Smith (@SmithInAmerica) December 22, 2022
It’s safe to say that Madam Speaker has not suddenly become that forgetful as she prepares to stand down.Kyrsten Sinema, Arizona’s Democratic-turned-independent senator, has always had a reputation as one of Washington’s more unconventional politicians. Now, it seems, she’s also one of the most demanding.The Daily Beast has published details of what it says is a 37-page memo “intended as a guide for aides who set the schedule for and personally staff Sinema during her workdays in Washington and Arizona”.It makes for quite a read, reminiscent of some of the more outlandish demands contained in the “riders” of various rock stars.Kyrsten Sinema. Photograph: Sarah Silbiger/ReutersSinema must always have a room temperature bottle of water at hand, the Beast says, citing the memo.At the beginning of each week, her executive assistant must contact Sinema in Washington to “ask if she needs groceries,” and copy both the scheduler and chief of staff on the message to “make sure this is accomplished”.Anyone booking her travel must avoid Southwest Airlines, never book her a seat near a bathroom, and never a middle seat, the Beast says.And if the internet in Sinema’s private apartment fails, the executive assistant “should call Verizon to schedule a repair” and ensure a staffer is present to let a technician inside the property.The allegations come just a week after Slate published a piece claiming Sinema was a prolific seller on Facebook’s online marketplace, listing mostly shoes and clothing.The Beast said Sinema’s office said it couldn’t verify the document’s authenticity, which is not an outright denial, and said the information as published “is not in line with official guidance from [her] office and does not represent official policies of [the] office”.You can read the Beast’s report here.Never one to hide his opinions, however extreme, Fox News host Tucker Carlson did not share in the almost universal acclaim for Ukraine president Volodymyr Zelenskiy’s historic address to a joint session of Congress on Wednesday night.“The president of Ukraine arrived at the White House, dressed like the manager of a strip club and started to demand money,” Carlson announced at the opening of his show on Wednesday, citing both Zelenskiy’s request for more western armaments and his trademark olive green military-style clothing.“Amazingly, no one threw him out. Instead, they did whatever he wanted,” Carlson continued, fuming at the further $1.85bn in US aid for Ukraine, including, for the first time, advanced Patriot air defense missiles, announced by the Biden administration on Wednesday.Tucker Carlson, Lauren Boebert, and Matt Gaetz stand with Putin; most of America stands with Zelensky and the people of Ukraine.The contrast between the far right and most of America has never been more glaring.— Ritchie Torres (@RitchieTorres) December 22, 2022
Right-wingers bashing US support for Ukraine as it fights to repel the 10-month-old invasion by Russia is nothing new. A number of politicians and celebrity figures such as Carlson have long questioned the tens of billions of dollars of taxpayers money committed so far.But the howls of protest have become louder in recent weeks as Republicans prepare to take control of the House, and a further $44bn in emergency aid for Ukraine is included in the $1.7tn government spending package that looks on track for congressional passage today.Ahead of November’s midterms, Republicans even hinted that if they won control, the stream of funding for Ukraine could be cut off, as reported by Axios, and others, in October.On Wednesday night in the House, two notorious Republican extremists, Lauren Boebert of Colorado and Matt Gaetz of Florida, remained sitting and unmoved as Zelenskiy spoke, while many party colleagues sprang to their feet in applause.It caught the attention of Democratic New York congressman Ritchie Torres, who was not impressed with the pair’s antics, or Carlson’s comments for that matter.“Tucker Carlson, Lauren Boebert, and Matt Gaetz stand with [Russian president Vladimir] Putin; most of America stands with Zelenskiy and the people of Ukraine. The contrast between the far right and most of America has never been more glaring,” he said in a tweet.Report: Senate reaches deal on $1.7tn government spending billCNN is reporting that Senate negotiators for the Democrats and Republicans have struck a deal to secure passage of the $1.7tn government spending package.A number of amendments are incorporated into the bill, reflecting a “furious push by Senate leaders to get this done,” the network reports.We’ll have more details soon.Thompson: January 6 panel 'found witnesses that justice department couldn't'Bennie Thompson, the Mississippi Democrat who chaired the January 6 House panel, says its investigation into Donald Trump’s insurrection uncovered witnesses that not even the justice department could find.Bennie Thompson. Photograph: Jacquelyn Martin/APIn a revealing interview with MSNBC on Wednesday night, Thompson also said the bipartisan, nine-member committee took its time before referring the former president for criminal charges on Monday because it “wanted to get things right”.Thompson, and Liz Cheney, the Republican vice-chair from Wyoming, will present their 800-page full report to Congress sometime today. The panel has already sent evidence to the justice department to assist its own parallel criminal investigation into Trump’s efforts to stay in power after losing the 2020 election to Joe Biden.Thompson told MSNBC:I am more comfortable with the fact that the special counsel has been actively engaged in pursuing any and all the information available. They have been in contact with our committee, asking us to provide various transcripts. There were people that we deposed that justice had not deposed. There were electors in various states that justice couldn’t find. We found them. We deposed them. So we had a lot of information, but now we make all that information available to them. And if they come back and want to interview staff or any members, ask any additional information, you know, we’ll be more than happy to do it. Thompson also spoke emotionally about the demands of conducting an intensive, 18-month inquiry, and the reason it was necessary:It’s been difficult. I have spent many nights away from home. I’ve spent a lot of time just trying to figure out why, in the greatest democracy in the world, would people want to all of a sudden stow on the Capitol because they lost an election? You know, normally in a democracy, you settle your differences at the ballot box. Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose, but under no circumstances do you tear the city hall up, or the courthouse up, and, God forbid, the United States Capitol. It was just something that for most Americans, it was beyond imagination. And so, it played out in real time. People could see it. And there are still a lot of people who can’t fathom why our people would do that. You can view Thompson’s MSNBC interview here.Another day of reckoning for Donald TrumpIt’s a third day of reckoning this week for Donald Trump as the January 6 House committee releases the final report from its 18-month investigation into the former president’s insurrection.Delayed from Wednesday, today’s publication of a dossier expected to run to 800 pages will expose in depth the extraordinary, and illegal efforts Trump employed to stay in power after he lost the 2020 election to Joe Biden. On Monday, the panel held its final hearing and referred Trump to the justice department for four criminal charges, including engaging in or assisting an insurrection. And on Tuesday, a separate House panel voted to release tax returns that Trump had fought for three years to keep secret. We already know from previous hearings much of the plotting and scheming that took place. Trump incited a mob that overran the US Capitol on January 6 2021, seeking to halt the certification of Biden’s victory; tried to manipulate states’ election results in his favor; and attempted to install slates of “fake electors” to reverse his defeat in Congress.On Wednesday night, the House panel released transcripts of 34 witness interviews.Today, the Select Committee made public 34 transcripts of witness testimony that was gathered over the course of the Select Committee’s investigation.These records can be found on the Select Committee’s website: https://t.co/JZaSH4GmdK— January 6th Committee (@January6thCmte) December 21, 2022
Subjects of the interview transcripts included Jeffrey Clark, a senior official in the Trump justice department; John Eastman, a conservative lawyer and an architect of Trump’s last-ditch efforts to stay in office; and former national security adviser Mike Flynn, who was convicted of lying to the FBI but pardoned by Trump.Each invoked his fifth-amendment right against self-incrimination.More transcripts are expected to be released today.Panel member Adam Schiff, a California Democrat, told CBS: “I guarantee there’ll be some very interesting new information in the report, and even more so in the transcripts.”Read more:Good morning US politics blog readers. If you figured things were winding down for the Christmas holiday, think again.Sometime today we will see the release of the full January 6 House committee report into Donald Trump’s insurrection, delayed from Wednesday for reasons unknown. But the panel did release transcripts of 34 witness interviews last night, many of which make interesting reading.Also in Trump news, we’re learning the former president paid no federal tax at all in the final year of his administration.Elsewhere, here’s what we’re following: There’s uncertainty over the passage of the bipartisan $1.7tn government spending package after early-hours drama in the Senate when Republicans threatened to blow up the deal over an immigration provision. Nancy Pelosi will give her last press conference, scheduled for 10.45am, before she stands down as speaker when Republicans take control of the chamber early next month. There’s reaction to Ukraine president Volodymyr Zelenskiy’s powerful and historic address to to a joint session of Congress on Wednesday night. Joe Biden has no public engagements scheduled, and no White House press briefing is listed, although that could change. A reminder you can follow ongoing developments in the war in Ukraine in our live blog here.Strap in and stick with us. It’s going to be a lively day. | US Political Corruption |
About a year ago, the US security firm Palo Alto Networks began to hear from a flurry of companies that had been hacked in ways that weren’t the norm for cybercriminals.
Native English-speaking hackers would call up a target company’s information technology helpdesk posing as an employee, and seek login details by pretending to have lost theirs.
They had all the employee information needed to sound convincing.
And once they got access, they’d quickly find their way into the company’s most sensitive repositories to steal that data for extortion.
Ransomware attacks are not new, but this group was extraordinarily skilled at social engineering and bypassing multi-factor authentication, said Wendi Whitmore, senior vice president for the security firm Palo Alto Networks’ Unit 42 threat intelligence team, which has responded to several intrusions tied to the group.
“They are much more sophisticated than many cybercriminal actors. They appear to be disciplined and organized in their attacks,” she said. “And that’s something we typically see more frequently with nation-state actors, versus cyber criminals.”
Known in the security industry variously as Scattered Spider, Muddled Libra, and UNC3944, these hackers were thrust into the limelight earlier this month for breaching the systems of two of the world’s largest gambling companies — MGM Resorts and Caesars Entertainment.
Behind the scenes, it has hit many more companies, according to analysts tracking the intrusions – and cybersecurity specialists expect the attacks to continue.
The FBI is investigating the MGM and Caesars breaches, and the companies did not comment on who may be behind them.
From Canada to Japan, the security firm CrowdStrike has tracked 52 attacks globally by the group since March 2022, most of them in the United States, said Adam Meyers, senior vice president of threat intelligence at the company.
Google-owned intelligence firm Mandiant, has logged more than 100 intrusions by it in the last two years.
Nearly every industry, from telecommunications to finance, hospitality, and media, has been hit.
Reuters was not able to determine how much money the hackers may have extorted.
But it’s not just the scale or the breadth of attacks that make this group stand out.
They’re extremely good at what they do and “ruthless” in their interactions with victims, said Kevin Mandia, Mandiant’s founder.
The speed at which they breach and exfiltrate data from company systems can overwhelm security response teams, and they have left threatening notes for staff of victim organizations on their systems, and contacted them by text and email in the past, Mandiant found.
In some cases — Mandia did not say which ones — hackers tied to Scattered Spider placed bogus emergency calls to summon heavily armed police units to the homes of executives of targeted companies.
The technique, called SWATing, “is something that’s utterly dreadful to live through as a victim,” he said. “I don’t even think these intrusions are about money. I think they’re about power, influence and notoriety. That makes it harder to respond to.”
Reuters couldn’t immediately reach the hacking group for comment.
17-22 year olds
There’s little detail on Scattered Spider’s location or identity.
Based on the criminals’ chats with victims and clues gleaned from breach investigations, CrowdStrike’s Meyers said they are largely 17-22 years-olds.
Mandiant estimates they’re mainly from Western countries, but it’s unclear how many people are involved.
Before calling helpdesks, the hackers acquire employee information including passwords by social engineering, especially ‘SIM swapping’ — a technique where they trick a telecom company’s customer service representative to reassign a specific phone number from one device to another, analysts say.
They also appear to make the effort to study how large organizations work, including their vendors and contractors, to find individuals with privileged access they can target, according to analysts.
That’s something David Bradbury, chief security officer of the identity management firm Okta, saw first-hand last month, when he discovered multiple Okta customers — including MGM — breached by Scattered Spider.
Okta provides identity services such as multi-factor authentication used to help users securely access online applications and websites.
“The threat actors have clearly taken our courses that we provide online, they’ve clearly studied our product and how it works,” Bradbury said. “This is stuff we haven’t seen before.”
A larger group named ALPHV said last week it was behind the MGM hack, and analysts believe it provided the software and attack tools for the operation to be carried out by Scattered Spider.
Such collaborations are typical for cybercriminals, said Okta’s Bradbury. ALPHV, which according to Mandiant is a “ransomware-as-a-service,” would provide services such as a helpdesk, webpage and branding, and in turn get a cut of whatever Scattered Spider would make from the hack.
While many ransomware attacks go unpublicized, the MGM hack was a vivid example of the real-world impact of such incidents.
It caused chaos in Las Vegas, as gaming machines stalled and hotel systems were disrupted.
Ransomware gangs often function like large organizations, and continue to evolve their methods to adapt to the latest security measures organizations use.
“In some ways this is just like the age-old game of cat and mouse,” said Whitmore, who compared Scattered Spider to Lapsus$, another group behind previous hacks into Okta and the technology giant Microsoft.
The British police last year arrested seven people between the ages of 16 and 21 following those hacks. | US Crime, Violence, Terrorism & cybercrime |
Most House Republicans, even some of the most conservative, supported Kevin McCarthy and praised his leadership on the House floor in the hours before his ouster.
"As the only member who's serving here who took every chance to vote against Speaker Boehner, and to vote against Speaker Ryan, I can tell you that this chamber has been run better, more conservatively, and more transparently, under Mr. McCarthy than any other speaker that I have served under," said hardline conservative Rep. Thomas Massie from the House floor before Tuesday's vote on the motion to vacate.
Here is what McCarthy did — and didn't — accomplish in his mere nine months as speaker.
Avoided a government shutdown
Congress was able to avoid shutting down the government after McCarthy put a 47-day funding resolution on the floor Saturday, hours before funding for the government would expire. It won the support of every Democrat but one, and 90 Republicans voted against it. The bill was overwhelmingly passed by the Senate and signed by President Biden.
The temporary spending authority will run out in mid-November, and the House will need a new speaker in place in order to address the next looming shutdown crisis.
Raised the debt ceiling
Republicans — led in part by McCarthy's temporary successor, Rep. Patrick McHenry — brokered a debt ceiling agreement with Democrats this summer.
The final agreement, signed by President Biden on June 3, suspends the debt limit until Jan. 1, 2025, after the next presidential election. Without a deal, the economic consequences could have been catastrophic.
Required director of national intelligence to declassify information relating to the origin of COVID-19
Under McCarthy, the House voted to require the director of national intelligence to declassify information related to the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic. The House approved the measure by unanimous consent, the Senate approved it, and President Biden signed it.
House Republicans also established the Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic, chaired by Republican Rep. Brad Wenstrup, a doctor.
The committee aimed to get to the bottom of the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic, and the federal response to the outbreak.
Intelligence agencies are divided on whether the pandemic began because of natural transmission or a lab accident. Although the president in March signed the legislation requiring "any and all of" the findings about COVID's origins to be declassified within 90 days, the director of national intelligence has so far released only athat says the intelligence community has found no evidence of a "biosafety incident" or pre-pandemic presence of the virus in a laboratory in Wuhan, China.
According to a coronavirus subcommittee, an unidentified, senior CIA whistleblower claimed the CIA offered hush money to cover up findings that the pandemic likely originated in a laboratory in Wuhan, China.
Passed by the House and stalled or dead in the Senate
H.R. 1, the House energy bill
The House in March passed H.R. 1, the Lower Energy Costs Act, with support from all but one Republican and four Democrats. Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania was the only GOP lawmaker to oppose the measure.
The legislation aims to boost domestic energy production, reform the permitting process for certain projects, such as natural gas pipelines, and unwind several of the Biden administration's energy policies.
While Republican leaders cheered the bill's passage, it's dead in the Senate, and the White House said President Biden would veto the measure.
Spending bills
Congress has so far failed to enact any of the appropriations bills that fund the government, although this is not unusual. It has only managed to pass all 12 spending bills on time in four years, and that last occurred in 1997.
In most years, Congress passes some of the individual appropriations measures before the end of the fiscal year in September and pushes through a short-term continuing resolution to keep government running while lawmakers wrap the rest into one big "omnibus" package for the next fiscal year.
This year, none of the 12 bills were passed before the end of September, threatening to shut the government down over the weekend when funding dried up. McCarthy's continuing resolution now gives lawmakers until mid-November to finish their appropriations work, but it cost him his speakership.
By the end of last week, the House had passed four appropriations bills, but they contain cuts that Democrats and the Biden administration are sure to reject, as well social policy riders that Democrats on the committee said were "irrelevant" and "harmful."
Military construction and veterans affairs
The military construction and veterans affairs appropriations bill passed the House in July. While it's $800 million above what President Biden requested, the bill cuts what the bill summary says is "wasteful spending," banning the use of funds "to promote or advance critical race theory" or to implement or enforce any of Mr. Biden's executive orders on diversity, equity and inclusion.
Defense, State Department and Foreign Operations and Homeland Security
These three appropriations bills passed in late September. Republicans cut $20 billion from the defense bill, much of it by defunding "this Administration's divisive social agenda," according to the bill summary.
The House defense appropriations bill bans funding for gender-affirming medical procedures, and it also removes funding for travel expenses for abortion services. And it makes cuts to the Pentagon's civilian personnel and climate-related programs
The bill description also contains a line stating that security clearances are to be denied "for any individual listed as a signatory in the statement titled 'Public Statement on the Hunter Biden Emails' dated October 19, 2020." This is a reference to a statement made by 51 former top intelligence officials who stated that the release of alleged emails from what was purportedly data from Hunter Biden's laptop "has all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation."
Investigations
Biden impeachment inquiry
Amid ongoing investigations by three GOP-led committees into Hunter Biden, Mr. Biden's son, and his overseas business dealings, McCarthy announced last month theinto the president.
McCarthy alleged members of Mr. Biden's family made millions of dollars from foreign firms and argued that the allegations show corruption on the part of the president and his family members. Despite the accusations, House Republicans have yet to uncover direct evidence of wrongdoing by Mr. Biden.
The House Oversight Committeeof its impeachment inquiry last month, though it may not have done much to bolster Republicans' claims that Mr. Biden committed high crimes and misdemeanors that warrant his removal. One of the GOP's witnesses, George Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley, testified that he did not believe the "current evidence" would support articles of impeachment.
But House Republicans were investigating the Bidens long before an impeachment inquiry began. In particular, they have been probing the business dealings of Hunter Biden, trying to connect any actions or alleged actions of the president's son to the president himself. Multiple committees, including the House Judiciary Committee and House Committee on Oversight and Reform, have been investigating the Bidens, issuing subpoenas and holding hearings.
Alleged weaponization of Justice Department
One of the first measuresin January was a resolution establishing a select subcommittee "on the weaponization of the federal government."
The panel investigates federal investigators, and its establishment stemmed from criticism by Republicans of the Justice Department's investigations involving former President Donald Trump, which include the probe into Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election,Trump's handling of sensitive government documents recovered from his South Florida property, Mar-a-Lago, and the August 2022 court-authorized search executed by the FBI at the property.
The committee is led by Rep. Jim Jordan and composed of 21 members, 12 Republicans and nine Democrats. It's held five hearings so far focusing on alleged politicization of the FBI and its treatment of whistleblowers, as well as accusations of censorship by Twitter, now known as X, and other social media companies.
UAP hearing
In July, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer announced a bipartisan effort to add an amendment to the annual defense spending bill that would require agencies to hand over records dealing with Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAPs), also referred to as UFOs.
Following this decision, McCarthy said in July that he'd "love to see what other facts and information see what we have. I'm very supportive of letting the American public see what we have."
A week later, thethen held a public hearing with three former military officers about their alleged encounters with UAPs. The blockbuster hearing inspired a to ask McCarthy to create a select committee to investigate UAPs.
Bipartisan China select committee
McCarthy had overwhelming bipartisan support in establishing the Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party in January. The House voted 365-65 in favor of creating the committee, with 146 Democrats joining all Republicans.
The committee has been a rare show of bipartisanship on Capitol Hill, highlighting threats Republicans and Democrats believe are posed by China's government.
"You have my word and my commitment, this is not a partisan committee," McCarthy said on the House floor in January.
Though committee members haven't agreed on all aspects of U.S. policy toward China, they have been able to.
for more features. | US Congress |
An American hacker was able to use a glitch on the CIA's X account (formerly known as Twitter) to direct potential informants to his own Telegram channel.
The link on the CIA's Twitter channel offers informants ways to covertly contact the agency - and large amounts of the text is in Russian, to enable people within the country to contact the CIA.
Kevin McSheehan, 37, said that he noticed that the Telegram link on the X page could be hijacked, and redirected it to his own channel to prevent hostile nations exploiting the link.
McSheehan, who describes himself as a 'pro-CIA patriot' told the BBC, 'My immediate thought was panic,'
'I saw that the official Telegram link they were sharing could be hijacked - and my biggest fear was that a country like Russia, China, or North Korea could easily intercept Western intelligence.
'The CIA really dropped the ball here.'
McSheehan is a so-called 'white hat' or ethical hacker, who uses skills similar to a criminal hacker to prevent data breaches.
The CIA's X account displayed a link to a Telegram channel, but due to the way X displays links, it linked to an unclaimed Telegram username instead.
McSheehan noticed the issue, which had appeared some time after September 27, and registered the username himself.
That meant that anyone clicking on the link was directed to McSheehan's own channel - where he warned them not to share any sensitive information.
McSheehan told the BBC, 'I did it as a security precaution.
'It's a problem with the X site that I've seen before - but I was amazed to see the CIA hadn't noticed.'
The CIA's X page, which has 3.4 million followers, has one link on it, to secure ways to contact the organization.
The most prominent of these is the Telegram channel - which was open to be hijacked for several days at least.
The page said, 'At CIA, we have a solemn duty to protect those who work with us around the world. If you're reaching out to CIA to share information about Russia, please do so securely via our portal on the dark web.
'When possible, CIA has verified its social media accounts through each platform's official process. This is CIA's official Telegram channel.'
The link was automatically truncated to t.me/s/SecurelyCont - which meant that anyone who registered the account SecurelyCont could hijack the traffic.
McSheehan linked it to a channel which said, 'THIS IS NOT AN OFFICIAL CIA CHANNEL — DO NOT SHARE SENSITIVE INFORMATION WITH ANYONE.'
It repeated the information in Cyrillic.
Speaking to Motherboard, the Maine-based security researcher said, 'I was motivated by National Security
'I assumed that it was a very recent mistake and that a bad actor was going to capitalize on it at any minute. I didn't even need to think—I just locked it down. I appointed myself the gig on the spot. I'm patriotic, very pro-CIA and have a documented history of whitehatting.'
McSheehan blamed technical changes at X (formerly Twitter) for the issue.
He said, 'The CIA is solid. X has been buggy for months with links, text formatting, etc,. Blame really can't be placed on the CIA. Did they drop the ball? Yes kind of—but everyone drops the ball sometimes.'
The issue was rapidly rectified after it was mentioned in media reports, but the CIA has not commented. | US Crime, Violence, Terrorism & cybercrime |
SIMI VALLEY, California, Sept 27 (Reuters) - Donald Trump's Republican rivals clashed at a chaotic presidential debate on Wednesday, leveling attacks at the absent former president, Democratic President Joe Biden and one another over issues from China to immigration to the economy.
But as the debate ended, none of the seven candidates on stage appeared to have secured the sort of breakout moment that would alter the dynamics of a primary contest that Trump has dominated for months, despite his four criminal indictments - which went virtually unmentioned during the two-hour broadcast.
Trump, who led his nearest rival for the nomination by 37 percentage points in the most recent Reuters/Ipsos poll, skipped the debate, as he did the first one in Wisconsin last month.
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis used his first answer to call out Trump for being "missing in action" and for adding trillions of dollars to the national debt.
"He should be on this stage tonight," DeSantis said, drawing applause from the audience at the Ronald Reagan presidential library in Simi Valley, California. "He owes it to you to defend his record."
DeSantis, whose poll numbers have declined after he was widely seen as the leading Trump alternative, has been more willing to attack the frontrunner recently after months of avoiding direct confrontation.
Former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, a frequent Trump critic, chimed in, saying Trump was "afraid" and mocking him as "Donald Duck" for skipping the debate.
Mike Pence, vice president under Trump from 2017-2021, offered a mild critique of Trump's desire to centralize power in the federal government, vowing to give power back to the states. And former United Nations ambassador Nikki Haley said Trump had taken the wrong approach on China by focusing exclusively on trade, rather than broader security issues.
Biden, the presumptive Democratic nominee for the November 2024 election, was also a frequent target for the Republican candidates, who castigated his handling of the economy and the southern border with Mexico.
But the debating candidates, most of them mired in single digits in national polls, spent the bulk of the evening assailing one another.
As in the first debate in August, entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy - a political neophyte whose campaign for the Republican presidential nomination is his first run for public office - repeatedly drew the ire of his more experienced opponents.
"Every time, I hear you, I feel a little dumber," Nikki Haley, the former United Nations ambassador, told Ramaswamy after he defended joining TikTok, the Chinese-owned social media site that has raised security concerns among U.S. officials. Ramaswamy said he uses the app to connect with young voters.
In the debate's final segment, moderator Dana Perino asserted that Trump's nomination was inevitable as long as the field remained fractured among multiple candidates.
"Polls don't elect presidents, voters elect presidents," DeSantis replied.
Minutes before the debate kicked off, Trump delivered a speech to autoworkers in the battleground state of Michigan, inserting himself into a national dispute between striking workers and the country's leading automakers a day after Biden joined a union picket line.
"They're all job candidates," Trump said dismissively of the seven Republicans at the debate. "Does anybody see any VP in the group? I don't think so."
By shunning both debates, the former president signaled he was focused on Biden, his once and perhaps future opponent, rather than the Republican contenders who trail badly in the polls.
The moderators did not ask the candidates about Trump's myriad legal problems. The 77-year-old businessman-turned-politician has been indicted in four criminal cases, and on Tuesday, a New York state judge found that he committed fraud by inflating the value of his business assets.
With less than four months until Iowa's first-in-the-nation Republican nominating contest, Trump's rivals are running short on time to weaken his commanding hold on the primary campaign.
Wednesday's debate loomed particularly large for DeSantis, whose campaign has already endured two staff shakeups as donors expressed concern about his inability to gain on Trump.
DeSantis, 45, made his name nationally by opposing many U.S. government policies to prevent the spread of COVID-19. He has since become a leading figure fighting what he argues are overly progressive policies favored by educators and corporations.
Haley, meanwhile, was hoping a second consecutive strong debate performance will convince some Republican donors she has the best odds of unseating Trump.
North Dakota Governor Doug Burgum also qualified for the debate.
IMMIGRATION IN FOCUS
All of the candidates vowed to take a muscular approach to immigration and attacked the Biden administration for failing to stem the migrant crisis that has fueled record illegal crossings at the southern border.
DeSantis promised to deploy the U.S. military against Mexican cartels, while Ramaswamy said he would try to revoke birthright citizenship for the children of those who entered the country illegally.
Even when asked about the expanding U.S. autoworkers' strike, Senator Tim Scott turned the subject to the border while criticizing Biden for joining the picket line on Tuesday.
"Biden should not be on the picket line," Scott said. "He should be on the southern border working to close our southern border because it is unsafe, wide open and insecure, leading to the deaths of 70,000 Americans in the last 12 months because of fentanyl."
Most of the candidates expressed support for continued aid to Ukraine, though DeSantis said he would not offer a "blank check." Ramaswamy, who has said he would cut off assistance, warned that backing Ukraine was pushing Russia further toward China, prompting renewed criticisms from his rivals that he would appease Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Reporting by Tim Reid; Additional reporting by Rami Ayyub, Kanishka Singh, Jasper Ward, Eric Beech and Gram Slattery; Writing by Joseph Ax in Princeton, New Jersey; Editing by Ross Colvin and Howard Goller
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles. | US Federal Elections |
WASHINGTON, Oct 27 (Reuters) - A U.S. judge on Friday asked former President Donald Trump whether he wants to appear on television when he stands trial in federal court on charges of attempting to overturn his 2020 election defeat.
U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan in Washington asked Trump’s lawyers to give their opinion by Nov. 10 on media requests to broadcast the trial, which is scheduled to begin in March 2024.
In two separate filings, NBC News and a coalition of 19 media organizations and press advocacy groups argue that the public has a right to see an unprecedented trial of a former U.S. president who is also the frontrunner for the 2024 Republican nomination. They argue that a federal rule barring broadcast of criminal proceedings is unconstitutional.
Prosecutors have said in court filings that they oppose the effort but have not explained why. They are due to file their argument by Nov. 3.
Trump’s lead lawyer in the case, John Lauro, previously told CNN that he personally supported televising the trial. Lauro told Reuters on Friday that Trump will respond "in accordance with the Court's Order."
It is unclear whether Trump, a former reality television star who has aggressively courted publicity in his business and political career, will want to broadcast the trial, which will come in the thick of the Republican nominating contest.
Trump has made extensive comments to TV cameras staked outside a New York state courtroom, where he is currently standing trial on civil business-fraud charges.
Federal courts, unlike many state courts, bar TV cameras and photography in courtrooms. A U.S. judicial panel on Thursday agreed to consider relaxing that broadcast ban, but said any change would not happen until after Trump stands trial in this case and a second criminal trial due to start in May over his alleged mishandling of classified documents.
Proceedings in a separate criminal election-subversion case in Georgia involving Trump and more than a dozen other defendants have been televised. He also is due to stand trial in March in New York in a case stemming from a hush-money payment to a porn star.
Trump has pleaded not guilty and accused prosecutors of interfering with his 2024 presidential campaign.
Reporting by Andrew Goudsward; editing by Andy Sullivan and Jonathan Oatis
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles. | US Federal Elections |
The House Republican speaker, Kevin McCarthy, suffered another embarrassing defeat on Friday, after hard-right lawmakers tanked his stopgap funding bill that would have averted a federal shutdown on Sunday morning.
McCarthy’s proposed stopgap measure, which would have funded the government for another month while enacting severe spending cuts on most federal agencies, failed in a vote of 198 to 232, as 21 Republicans joined Democrats in opposing the legislation.
With less than 36 hours left before government funding lapses, McCarthy appeared to be out of options to prevent a shutdown. Speaking to reporters before the vote, McCarthy tried to pitch the stopgap proposal as a means of buying time to continue negotiations over longer-term spending bills.
“We actually need a stopgap measure to allow the House to continue to finish its work – to make sure our military gets paid, to make sure our border agents get paid as we finish the job,” McCarthy said.
But that argument failed to sway the hard-right members of McCarthy’s conference, who have insisted for weeks that they would not back any short-term spending bill, known as a continuing resolution. With such a narrow House majority, McCarthy could only afford to lose a handful of votes within his conference to pass the continuing resolution without any Democratic support. The bill cleared a key procedural hurdle on Friday afternoon, but the proposal could not garner enough support for final passage.
Republican leaders informed members that votes were now expected in the House on Saturday, suggesting McCarthy may try again to pass a continuing resolution, but expectations for some kind of breakthrough were low on Friday afternoon.
In an attempt to appease the holdouts heading into the Friday vote, McCarthy has worked to advance a series of longer-term appropriations bills that include some of the steep spending cuts demanded by hard-right Republicans. On Thursday night, the House successfully passed three of those bills, but an agricultural funding proposal failed amid criticism from more moderate Republicans.
Despite McCarthy’s concessions, members of the hard-right House freedom caucus remained adamant on Friday that they would not support a continuing resolution.
“The continuing resolution being offered today is a bad deal for Republicans,” the congressman Matt Gaetz of Florida, one of the leaders of the holdouts, said in a floor speech before the final vote. “That’s why I’m voting against it.”
The continuing resolution included severe spending cuts for most of the federal government, sparking impassioned criticism among House Democrats. Every member of the House Democratic caucus opposed the continuing resolution, leaving McCarthy with no option for passing the bill.
“Once again, extreme Republicans in the House have demonstrated their complete and utter inability to govern,” the House Democratic leader, Hakeem Jeffries, said after the vote. “We are in the middle of a Republican civil war that has been ongoing for months and now threatens a catastrophic government shutdown that will hurt everyday Americans.”
Meanwhile, the Senate continued to work on its own bipartisan spending proposal, advancing the bill in a vote of 76-22 on Thursday. That measure would keep the government funded until 17 November, and it includes roughly $6bn in funding each for disaster relief efforts and aid for Ukraine.
But House Republicans have roundly rejected that bipartisan bill, denouncing the additional funding for Ukraine and arguing it does not go far enough to curtail government spending.
“The only way forward is for House Republicans to put the bipartisan continuing resolution that emerges from the Senate on the House floor on an up or down vote,” Jeffries said. “And if House Republicans were to do that, we can avoid a catastrophic, extreme Maga Republican government shutdown. It’s not that complicated.”
With each chamber rejecting the other’s proposal, it remained highly unclear on Friday afternoon how lawmakers could reach an agreement to keep the government open. As the federal government braced for a shutdown, the White House lambasted McCarthy for conceding to hard-right Republicans, after the speaker reneged on a funding deal he had struck with Joe Biden this spring.
“Extreme House Republicans are solely – solely – to blame for marching us toward a shutdown. That is what we’re seeing right now,” Karine Jean-Pierre, the White House press secretary, said on Friday.
Shalanda Young, the director of the Office of Management and Budget, also mocked McCarthy for promising to go without pay during a shutdown, which could furlough hundreds of thousands of federal workers.
“That is theater,” Young said at the White House. “I will tell you: the guy who picks up the trash in my office won’t get a paycheck. That’s real. And that’s what makes me angry.”
With less than two days left before government funding lapses on Sunday morning, a shutdown appeared to be a virtual certainty. | US Congress |
Last October, Marilyn Begay was walking along a street in Farmington, New Mexico, when two men jumped out of a van and approached her. They claimed to work at the nearby San Juan Regional Medical Center, and offered her a ride. Begay, a 46-year-old Navajo woman who had struggled with alcohol use and was under the influence at the time, says she agreed to get in the car after she recognized two passengers, friends of her brother. But once inside, she was plied with alcohol to the point of blacking out, and driven close to 400 miles southwest, across state lines, to a residential home in Phoenix.
After she refused to provide her name, birth date, and Social Security number to a man at the home, she says, “they locked me in a room and told me they’d take me home in the morning, but I noticed an unlatched window and escaped through it.” She slept at a bus stop that night, and the next day called relatives in Farmington. The cousin who picked her up, Reva Stewart, was no stranger to these bizarre and frightening scenarios.
For years, Stewart had posted notices of missing Indigenous people—mostly women—on bulletin boards outside her shop in Phoenix, Drumbeat Indian Arts. Last summer, Stewart started receiving more notices for men and also began observing strange activity outside her store, located across from the Phoenix Indian Medical Center. “These white vans would stop at the bus stops, then two men would appear and talk to our Native relatives,” said Stewart, who is Navajo and 54 years old. “They drove back and forth all afternoon.” Most who were solicited would wave the men off, but some would get into the van.
In the months after retrieving Begay, Stewart would receive dozens of calls that detailed horrific abuses of Native people who were picked up off the street and brought to nondescript locations. There was the 70-year-old man who was admitted to the intensive care unit after suffering severe injuries while trying to escape a home; the mother who called about her son who’d endured an unsupervised dry detox and ended up on life support; the relative who claimed that a five-person family, including a 4-month-old child, had been recruited by scammers to live in a home.
These were not random incidents. They were all connected to an elaborate, ongoing, multistate criminal scheme to defraud Medicaid of hundreds of millions of dollars by targeting Native communities’ most vulnerable people—some of whom have paid with their lives.
For decades, coverage for treatment of substance use disorder wasn’t standardized. If you could afford it, you could pay out of pocket for care. If you lived in an area with publicly funded treatment, you might have access to community-based resources like 12-step programs. Starting in the 1970s, recovery housing, such as sober homes, grew to fill the need for stable, long-term living environments.
Despite its proven benefits, recovery housing hasn’t been formally connected to any of the health care or social services systems. To date, most states don’t regulate the category. “Anybody can open up a house and throw four or five people in it, charge them, and say, ‘We have a sober house,’” said Joe Pritchard, CEO of Pinnacle Treatment Centers, which runs 162 clinical facilities and sober homes nationwide, though not in Arizona. A similar lack of regulation has applied to treatment centers that provide clinical services, where medications like naltrexone are administered alongside other therapies.
Federal changes to coverage broke the industry wide open. It started with the passage of the Mental Health Parity and Addiction Equity Act in 2008, which mandated insurers provide coverage for substance use disorder treatment on par with that for other medical conditions. Then, two years later, the Affordable Care Act authorized plans on its exchanges to cover treatment for the disorder. An additional 62 million people became insured, and the numbers of those seeking treatment skyrocketed.
Although the two laws led to better outcomes for both patients and insurers, they also created new opportunities for fraud. Because recovery-living facilities, such as sober homes, are considered housing and are usually peer-run, they can’t bill private insurance and don’t have access to public funds like Medicaid (rent and other living costs are often split among housemates). But licensed treatment facilities can, and so sober homes looking to exploit the system either work in tandem with—or are themselves operated by—these facilities. In a scheme known as patient brokering, sober-home operators and recruiters get kickbacks, usually in the form of cash payments, for delivering “patients” to treatment centers, which then illegally bill those individuals and their insurance for services they don’t provide.
“The fraud is actually pretty simple,” said Dave Sheridan, executive director of the National Alliance for Recovery Residences. “You charge a lot of money for things like outpatient services and laboratory drug testing, and you use some of the proceeds from that to pay for housing.”
On the streets of Arizona and New Mexico, as far as South Dakota, and directly on tribal lands, recruiters for these outfits have coerced people apparently struggling with homelessness, behavioral health issues, or substance use disorder to residential homes, short-term rentals, or motels in the Phoenix area. Victims have reported being offered limitless alcohol but only two bottles of water a day, given blue pills they believe were sedatives, or forced into dry detoxes that have led to delayed hospitalization and death. Many of these locations are reportedly unsanitary and crowded, and run by largely absent staff who have refused to contact people’s families, return their personal items, or let them leave.
The scammers bill Arizona’s American Indian Health Program—a plan under the state’s Medicaid agency, the Arizona Health Care Cost Containment System, or AHCCCS—for care that isn’t administered. Victims who aren’t already enrolled are either made to enroll or have their information used without their knowledge. “Anyone can call Access and register for the plan. You don’t even have to show a Certificate of Degree of Indian Blood,” Coleen Chatter, a former case manager for Navajo Nation’s Regional Behavioral Health Authority, told me. Often, scammers have moved people from home to home in order to bill them repeatedly. In one case, according to Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes, AHCCCS had been billed for more than 13 hours a day of alcohol rehabilitation services—for a patient who was 4 years old.
Government officials have known about such fraud for many years—and sometimes taken action. In 2018, the Arizona legislature passed a series of bills aimed at prohibiting patient brokering and creating more oversight on sober homes statewide, including a licensure requirement through the Arizona Department of Health Services. But Democratic Governor Katie Hobbs, who took office in January, alleged in a May press conference that her Republican predecessor, Doug Ducey, enforced the law “on a case by case basis, never implementing the systemic overhauls necessary to weed out this problem and failing to deliver true accountability.”
On the federal level, in 2016, Senators Elizabeth Warren, Marco Rubio, and Orrin Hatch called on the Government Accountability Office to review federal and state oversight of sober homes. The GAO evaluated five states, finding that four of them—Florida, Massachusetts, Ohio, and Utah—had conducted investigations into potentially fraudulent sober homes. “Activities identified by state investigators included schemes in which recovery home operators recruited individuals with substance use disorder to specific recovery homes and treatment providers, and then billed those individuals’ insurance for extensive and unnecessary drug testing for the purposes of profit,” its report read.
While the scams cited by the GAO largely defrauded private insurers, Arizona’s scheme is unusual in that it has targeted Medicaid funds. “I don’t think it’s too much to say this is one of the biggest scandals in the history of Arizona when it comes to our government,” Mayes said in May, announcing a long-overdue crackdown that has only just begun.
In January, after months of advocacy led by the Arizona state Senator Theresa Hatathlie, who is Navajo, and other tribal leaders, the FBI launched an investigation into the scams. In a call for victim information, the agency noted that scammers “frequent community gathering locations such as flea markets, trading posts, and medical centers to pick up clients,” some of whom “are intoxicated or offered alcohol during transport.” It added, “When the individuals regain a functional state in Phoenix (or other locations), they have no idea where they are or how they got there.” Navajo Nation leaders estimate that as many as 7,000 people have been victims of the scheme.
On May 16, the state announced a crackdown on the scam. Mayes said that health care payouts for outpatient behavioral health services—the category these entities fall under—went from $53 million in 2019 to $668 million in 2022. The amount that went to fraudulent actors is currently under investigation, but Mayes believes the majority of it occurred through the American Indian Health Program and amounts to hundreds of millions of dollars. “It could go well beyond that,” she added.
Arizona’s AHCCCS system also suspended or terminated payments to more than 150 treatment centers tied to the scheme, which officials said originated with a Nevada-based criminal syndicate. Arizona punishes patient brokering with civil penalties of at least $25,000 and up to $250,000. So far, Arizona officials have indicted 45 people and recovered $75 million. But some say tougher laws are needed. “Civil penalties don’t work. These homes have fines built into their business models,” said Alan Johnson, the chief assistant state attorney for Florida, which has combated similar schemes for decades. Since making patient brokering a criminal offense, Florida has had more than 120 prosecutions. After the first five prosecutions, Johnson told me, “there was a palpable difference. People closed up shop. They knew we were coming.”
Arizona is contending with another crisis: As these fraudulent homes close, hundreds of people are becoming displaced, with nowhere to go, as temperatures in Phoenix reach life-threatening levels. Officials have promoted a 211 hotline to connect people with temporary housing, transportation, and vetted treatment centers. But callers have reported experiencing long wait times and are sometimes directed to homeless shelters instead of health care facilities. There’s also concern that the hotline is itself difficult to access. “How are people who are now on the streets going to know about these resources? How is someone who’s in a home without a phone going to call 211?” said Raquel Moody, a 36-year-old who is Hopi and White Mountain Apache. “We need to think about this through the people. We need to go get them.”
Moody understands their needs more than most. Last year, after she was released from a court-mandated halfway house following three years in prison, she had a plan: Four years sober, she would become a peer-support specialist, someone with lived experience who guides others in addiction recovery. But when she returned home to the White Mountain Apache Reservation to help take care of her younger sister, Moody relapsed. She, along with a cousin, Carlo Jake Walker, checked into a sober home called Open Hand, on the outskirts of Phoenix. “I knew I needed to get back if I was going to stay on the right path,” she told me.
But Open Hand was nothing like the first halfway house she’d experienced. Its manager was absent, and there was more alcohol than food and water. (Owner Blad Herrera declined to comment.) When Moody discovered that Walker had started drinking there, they got into a fight. The next morning, December 10, Walker left the home before Moody woke up; she left the following day. When her cousin didn’t resurface, she distributed posters and looked for him in other sober homes.
Since leaving Open Hand, Moody has stayed in at least seven homes, simultaneously searching for Walker while seeking out a safe recovery space for herself. Each home would claim legitimacy, but soon enough, she would discover that it openly allowed drinking and drug use. “Every time I discovered people drinking or not being cared for, I’d speak up and they’d kick me out,” Moody told me. One day, she got a call from an unknown number; the man on the line had a proposition for her. “He told me he’d pay for my gas, my food, all my expenses, if I bring my people to him,” Moody said. She was offered $500 per person. When she confronted him—“Are you just buying us now?”—he blocked her.
On May 6, barely a week before Arizona announced its crackdown on sober home scams, she saw her cousin’s name in The Arizona Republic. It was an obituary. Walker, who was 38, had died two days after leaving Open Hand. He had been cremated, a process that goes against White Mountain Apache tradition, and buried at White Tanks Cemetery, a resting place for unclaimed remains. A PVC pipe, stuck in orange dirt, marks the site.
“If this happened to my brother, how many of our people are out there just buried with no names?” said Moody. All Walker had wanted was sobriety, she added. “And these places, they all say they’ll help, but in the end, it’s just money that they see in us.”
Open Hand is still accepting clients. | US Federal Policies |
- The Supreme Court is set to hear arguments later this month on two cases against President Joe Biden's student loan forgiveness plan.
- Black Americans have been hit especially hard by the student loan crisis, meaning they have a lot to lose if the Biden administration's forgiveness plan fails.
- Here are three reasons why student debt problems are worse for Black Americans.
In August, when President Joe Biden rolled out his historic plan to cancel up to $20,000 in student loan debt for tens of millions of Americans, one of the policy's stated goals was "to help narrow the racial wealth gap."
Shortly after the president's announcement, critics of student loan forgiveness brought a series of legal challenges against the plan, saying it was an abuse of executive authority, and soon the Biden administration had to pause its program.
The Supreme Court has agreed to hear two of those cases at the end of February. Legal experts say the policy faces a narrow path to survival with the court, given its conservative majority.
More from Personal Finance:
Biden to revisit 'billionaire minimum tax' in State of the Union
Amid inflation, shoppers turn to dollar stores for groceries
Savers poised for big win in 2023 as inflation falls
If the relief plan falls through, the consequences for Black Americans will be severe, advocates say.
"Not only would this be a disastrous blow to Black Americans, but to our economy as a whole — the racial wealth gap will widen, and the vicious cycle of economic inequality will continue," said Wisdom Cole, the national director of the youth and college division at the NAACP.
Here are three reasons why the student loan crisis is worse for Black Americans, and why they'd especially feel the loss of loan forgiveness, experts say.
The explosion in outstanding student debt over the past few decades has been blamed for making the racial wealth gap wider. Last year, Black families had 25 cents for every dollar of white family wealth, the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis found.
Because Black families have less wealth, their children typically need to borrow more for their education.
About 85% of Black students graduate with their bachelor's degree holding student debt, compared with 69% of white bachelor degree recipients, according to data from higher education expert Mark Kantrowitz.
And since student debt is often taken on relatively early in a person's life, it can then make it harder to hit other milestones down the line that help build wealth, such as buying a house and investing, experts say.
"Student loan debt is both a product of the racial wealth gap and a tool that exacerbates racial inequality," said Jaylon Herbin, director of federal campaigns at the Center for Responsible Lending.
In 2018, about 40% of Black college graduates said their student debt delayed their ability to buy a home, compared with 34% of their white peers, Kantrowitz found.
For-profit schools have come under fire for misleading students about their programs and career outcomes — and for preying on people of color.
"For-profit schools disproportionately target Black and low-income students across the country," Herbin said.
Nearly 18% of Black undergraduate students enroll in for-profit colleges, compared with closer to 11% of white undergraduate students, according to Kantrowitz.
"Black students are more likely to enroll in for-profit academic institutions with lower degree completion rates," Herbin said. "Therefore, they often are forced to repay debt for higher education that did not increase their job prospects."
In the 12 years after entering college, nearly half of for-profit students defaulted on their student loans, according to the Brookings Institution.
Because of historic racial and economic inequities, Black student loan borrowers struggle to repay their debt more than their white peers.
Prior to the pandemic, the default rate for Black student loan borrowers was more than 30%, compared with 13% for white borrowers, according to the the Center for American Progress. Meanwhile, white borrowers pay down their education debt at a rate of 10% a year, compared with 4% for Black borrowers.
Without student loan forgiveness, these repayment challenges are likely to only worsen, Cole said.
"The burden of student debt may very well follow Black borrowers for the rest of their lives, crippling their ability to achieve the upward mobility that higher education supposedly guarantees," he said. | SCOTUS |
Wondering why her husband wasn't home yet on the night of Feb. 16, 2022, Kirsten Bridegan kept calling his cell phone.
Finally, someone answered Jared Bridegan's phone. But it was a police officer, who told Kirsten that her daughter, 2-year-old Bexley, was fine but she should go to the police station right away.
Kirsten soon found out that her spouse of four years was dead. Police in Jacksonville Beach, Fla., said Jared was found lying next to his Volkswagen Atlas with multiple gunshot wounds shortly before 8 p.m. The door to the SUV was open and Bexley was strapped into her car seat in the back.
A tire had been in the road in front of Jared's car, according to police, who guessed that the 33-year-old Microsoft executive had gotten out of his vehicle to move it when he was killed.
Kirsten, also mom to 6-month-old daughter London with Jared, told Dateline she believed the tire was put there on purpose. Jared took that route all the time to visit the 9-year-old twins he shared with his ex-wife, Shanna Gardner, she said, and someone could have been lying in wait for him.
"Whoever did this is a whole other level of evil," Kirsten told Dateline. "You tricked him to stopping. Shot him at close range. Our daughter was in the car. What maniac does that?"
Who was Jared Bridegan?
Kirsten met her future husband on a dating app in early 2017, drawn in by "the kindness in his eyes and smile," and they wed that October, she told Dateline. Bexley was born in August 2019 and London arrived two years later.
The young family lived in St. Augustine, Fla., 26 miles away from Shanna's house in Ponte Vedra Beach. She and Jared had divorced in 2015 after five years of marriage and shared custody of their twin son and daughter.
Jared, whose LinkedIn bio says he was a senior design manager at Microsoft, "went above and beyond to be fun and make memories with the kids," Kirsten said.
In January, she launched Bexley Boxes to provide law enforcement with care kits to help children who've experienced trauma.
When Bexley had to wait for her at the police station after Jared was killed, Kirsten told Fox News Digital, "they didn't have anything really besides a coloring book and a squishy police car, and that just stuck with me for months."
She added, "It's been really difficult having had such loss and seemingly no justice, feeling like I'm treading water and that there's not much else I can do except try to help children in similar situations."
What happened to Jared Bridegan?
Jared took Bexley and the twins out for a "routine 'date night' dinner," Jacksonville Beach Police Department Det. C.L. Johns detailed in a January 2023 arrest warrant affidavit reviewed by E! News.
He had dropped the twins off at their mom's house and was on his way home along Sanctuary Boulevard, "a dark residential roadway," when, per the affidavit, he became the victim of a "targeted murder."
Jared talked to wife Kirsten on the phone moments beforehand and she told police she noticed nothing unusual, according to Johns. Coming upon a large damaged tire in the road that was blocking his route, Jared stopped, turned on his hazard lights, got out of his car and was shot multiple times, the affidavit continued. Police said they found his wallet, watch, wedding ring and phone at the scene.
Bexley, "not physically harmed," was in her car seat, the affidavit stated. Investigators determined that "projectiles" had struck the interior of the vehicle, "within feet" of where the child was sitting. Handgun shell casings were found at the scene, police said.
"Witnesses advised that the child was crying when they arrived on scene," the affidavit noted.
What were police looking for during the Jared Bridegan murder investigation?
Several weeks after the murder, police identified a dark-colored Ford-150 truck as a vehicle of interest, but no other developments were announced as months went by. A reward offered by First Coast Crime Stoppers steadily grew from $8,000 in the days right after Jared's death to $50,000 by May 9, 2022.
"Every tip that comes in has to be investigated to the fullest, until we have nothing else to go on, so that is time-consuming itself," Jacksonville Beach Police Sgt. Tonya Tator told First Coast News last August. She also said that, just because authorities weren't sharing many updates, that didn't mean they weren't making progress.
Det. Johns stated in the January 2023 warrant affidavit that, after reviewing motion-activated surveillance footage, he believed the tire—which investigators concluded came from a 2004 Ford F-150 Lariat—wasn't in the road shortly before the shooting because no other cars stopped or swerved while driving by.
And last summer, police quietly zeroed in on 61-year-old Henry Tenon as a suspect, according to the affidavit. He drove the make and model of truck they were looking for and, after he was arrested on a felony driving charge in August 2022, authorities questioned him about Jared's murder once he was in custody.
Investigators learned that Henry had been a tenant in a Jacksonville property owned by Mario Fernandez Saldana, the current husband of Jared's ex-wife Shanna, per the affidavit. Further investigation into Jared's life "revealed a highly acrimonious divorce" from Shanna, the document stated, and a "contentious relationship" with her and Mario.
Who was arrested for the murder of Jared Bridegan?
On Jan. 25, Henry Tenon was arrested on murder charges in connection with Jared's death. (In court a few weeks later, he pleaded not guilty to counts of second-degree murder, conspiracy to commit murder, accessory after the fact and child abuse, the last count related to Bexley being endangered when her dad was killed.)
Melissa Nelson, State Attorney for Florida's Fourth Judicial Circuit, said at the time authorities believed Henry had pulled the trigger but that he didn't act alone and their investigation was ongoing. He had been in jail since his August 2022 arrest and that's where he remained.
"I thought I had mentally prepared myself for that moment," Kirsten told Dateline after Henry's arrest. "But as his picture was shown and as the charges were read my hands started shaking, I wasn't prepared for it. Thankfully, my sister-in-law was standing next to me and we held on to each other and got through it."
Kirsten and Jared's brother, Adam Bridegan, said they had never heard of Henry Tenon.
"Feels good to have one answer," Adam told Dateline. "But as soon as you receive that answer, reality sets in and you realize what you're facing is, 'OK, this was conspiracy. This individual did not act alone.'"
The state attorney's office announced another break in the case this past spring: On March 16, Shanna's husband Mario was arrested and indicted by a grand jury on charges of first-degree murder, conspiracy to commit murder, solicitation to commit a capital felony and child abuse.
Mario has pleaded not guilty to all counts.
"We are dedicated to his defense," his attorney Jesse Dreicer told the Associated Press, "and are optimistic that when the all of the facts are made available our client will be exonerated." E! News has reached out to the lawyer for comment but has not yet heard back.
Three handwritten checks from Mario were found among Henry's bank records obtained by authorities in October 2022, according to a March arrest warrant affidavit reviewed by E! News. According to both suspect's warrant affidavits, each one heavily redacted, Henry initially told police he only spoke to Mario once in May after his lease ran out in February 2022, but phone records showed 35 phone contacts in February, 30 that March and several more in May and June.
"We are now 13 months since Jared's murder," Jacksonville Beach Police Chief Gene Paul Smith said when Mario's arrest was announced. "And we have not stopped working."
Added state attorney Nelson, "We remain committed to the seek the truth—the entire truth—and holding accountable every
individual involved in the murder of Jared Bridegan."
Meanwhile, immediately prior to Mario's arrest, Henry pleaded guilty to second-degree murder with a weapon and "agreed to testify truthfully against any accomplice," according to a press release from the prosecutor's office.
On Aug. 17, Shanna Gardner was arrested for the first-degree murder of her ex-husband. The indictment alleges that she and Mario conspired to kill Jared and solicited Henry to physically do the deed. Nelson's office said they would be seeking the death penalty for both Shanna and Mario.
Federal agents took Shanna into custody in West Richland, Wash., where she held without bail while awaiting extradition to Duval County, Fla.
"This investigation has uncovered the truth of Jared's murder," Nelson said at a news conference. "Henry Tenon did not act alone. Mario Fernandez did not plan alone. And Shanna Gardner's indictment acknowledges her central and key role in the cold, calculated, and premeditated murder of Jared Bridegan."
Jared's wife Kirsten, flanked by family members, told reporters, "Shanna's arrest ends one horrific chapter of our pursuit of justice for Jared and now we open a new one," she said. "This next chapter will be excruciating, but we are confident in the ability of the state's attorney's office and law enforcement to bring truth to light."
Kirsten said she believed the state attorney's decision to seek "the harshest punishment" in this case was "justified."
What has Shanna Gardner said about ex-husband Jared Bridegan's murder?
Shanna, 36, has not yet entered any plea or been arraigned. She remains in Washington and her next court date is Sept. 14.
Her attorney, Hank Coxe, told NBC News after her arrest that he does not publicly comment on pending legal matters. E! News has also reached out for comment but has not yet heard back.
In media interviews last summer, Shanna denied having anything to do with Jared's murder.
She became a suspect in the court of public opinion not long after the killing, with the most salacious reports emphasizing her and Jared's contentious divorce proceedings and at least one report claiming she'd had an affair while they were married (which she denied). She remained silent for months, but said she finally had to speak out because the online speculation and photographers following her around had become too much.
"I feel for Jared's family and what they are going through. I can't even imagine," Shanna told the Florida Times-Union in June 2022. "I have tried to be respectful. I have tried to give them space."
Shanna said she had been "trying to focus on the kids" in the meantime. But, she added, "It is becoming necessary to respond. I didn't want it to make a spectacle. I want people to know where I am coming from."
She said that Mario, whom she married in 2018, had been one of her children's biggest supporters since the death of their father. The twins had already been in counseling due to the divorce, Shanna told the paper, and the same counselor was helping them process their loss.
"You learn who your friends are," Shanna said. "I am fortunate enough to live in an amazing community and have an amazing family. The kids know they're loved. I would never want anybody to go through this. It's terrible to witness."
In her only TV interview, she told WJAX on July 5, 2022, that she and Jared had shared "happy moments" as parents of "the two most beautiful children in the world."
Acknowledging that court records showed a five-year-long custody battle following their split in 2015 (the Times-Union counted close to 300 entries and motions in their divorce file), Shanna told the station, "Anytime divorce comes into any situation, it's messy. It just is. I will say that I think that we both love our kids."
But eventually, there was a standing Wednesday date with the twins for whichever parent didn't have them that week. The night Jared was killed, Shanna said tearfully that she remembered her son saying it was "'a good date night'" as she tucked him in.
Shanna said she was "shocked" when she found out her ex was dead. "I fell to the floor," she recalled, "because I was devastated." She said she didn't know what had happened to Jared, but she was cooperating with detectives and didn't expect to face criminal charges herself.
"Even though we didn't always get along," Shanna said, "he was still the father of my kids."
(E! and NBC News are both members of the NBCUniversal family.) | US Crime, Violence, Terrorism & cybercrime |
WASHINGTON, Sept 7 (Reuters) - Donald Trump may seek to move the Georgia criminal case in which he is accused of conspiring to overturn his 2020 U.S. election loss from state to federal court - a potentially more favorable venue for the former president, his lawyer said in a court filing on Thursday.
Several of Trump's 18 co-defendants, including his former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, have filed petitions to move their cases to federal court since being charged last month following an investigation led by Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis.
Trump, the front-runner for the Republican nomination to face Democratic President Joe Biden in the 2024 election, has denied wrongdoing and pleaded not guilty, as have the rest of the defendants.
Trump and the other defendants were indicted on charges that they unlawfully pressured Georgia election officials to overturn Biden's election victory in the state.
Steven Sadow, a lawyer for Trump, wrote in a one-page court filing, "President Trump hereby notifies the court that he may seek removal of his prosecution to federal court."
Federal court could be more favorable for Trump because he would face a more politically diverse jury pool than in Fulton County, a Democratic stronghold. A federal trial would also allow him to argue that he is immune from prosecution for actions he took as part of his official duties as president. Such a move, however, would still involve a trial prosecuted by Willis under Georgia state law.
U.S. District Judge Steve Jones is expected to rule on the petitions to move the matter into federal court in the coming weeks.
A bid by Trump to move his case could compound legal complications that already threaten the prosecution's lofty goal of trying all 19 defendants as soon as next month. Judge Scott McAfee on Wednesday granted a request by former Trump lawyers Kenneth Chesebro and Sidney Powell to be tried on Oct. 23, though he has yet to decide whether the other defendants will join them.
Petitions by Meadows and others to have their cases moved could also shake up the case if a judge rules that all 19 defendants should be tried together in federal court.
Trump's wider legal troubles could create further scheduling headaches as he faces potential trials next year in three other criminal cases.
He is under indictment in Florida for his handling of classified documents upon leaving office, in Washington for his efforts to overturn the election results and in New York over hush money paid to a porn star before the 2016 election. Trump has pleaded not guilty and denied wrongdoing in all three cases.
Reporting by Kanishka Singh in Washington and Jack Queen in New York; Editing by Will Dunham, Susan Heavey and Cynthia Osterman
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles. | US Political Corruption |
Flesh on the bones of Trump's insurrectionThe final report of the House January 6 committee that’s been investigating Donald Trump’s insurrection for the last 18 months will drop today. And it’s unlikely to make very palatable reading for the former president.The document, running to more than 1,000 pages, will put flesh on the bones of Trump’s plotting and scheming to stay in power after his 2020 election defeat. Those efforts landed him a referral to the justice department for four criminal charges.Donald Trump. Photograph: Brandon Bell/Getty ImagesAnd it comes on the heels of Tuesday night’s vote by the House ways and means committee to publicly release up to six years of his tax returns, documents Trump had fought for three years to keep secret.We already knew, including from a series of televised hearings on the January 6 panel this year, many of the details of the insurrection. Trump incited a mob that overran the US Capitol on January 6 2021 seeking to halt the certification of Joe Biden’s victory; tried to manipulate states’ election results in his favor; and attempted to install slates of “fake electors” to reverse Biden’s win in Congress.But what we’ll see today is the deepest of dives into his efforts: the panel interviewed countless witnesses and reviewed thousands of documents and hundreds of hours of video evidence to compile the report and make recommendations.They include referrals to the House ethics committee for four Trump allies in Congress who refused to submit to the panel’s subpoenas to give evidence.We’re expecting the report to feature eight main chapters, detailed below, plus appendices that capture more aspects of the investigation, and findings from all of the select committee’s five investigative teams.We’ll bring you details when it drops. Donald Trump’s effort to sow distrust in the results of the election. The then-president’s pressure on state governments or legislatures to overturn victories by Joe Biden. Trump campaign efforts to send fake, pro-Trump electors to Washington from states won by Biden. Trump’s push to deploy the justice department in service of his election scheme. The pressure campaign by Trump and his lawyers against then-vice president Mike Pence. Trump’s effort to summon supporters to Washington who later fueled the 6 January mob. The 187 minutes of chaos during which Trump refused to tell rioters to leave the Capitol. An analysis of the attack on the Capitol. Key events33m agoFlesh on the bones of Trump's insurrectionShow key events onlyPlease turn on JavaScript to use this featureAmong the revelations to come from Tuesday’s House ways and means committee meeting, which voted to publicly release Donald Trump’s tax returns, was the bombshell that the IRS had failed to failed to conduct mandatory audits on the president during the first two years of his administration.The Associated Press has the details:The US Internal Revenue Service (IRS) failed to pursue mandatory audits of Donald Trump on a timely basis during his presidency, a congressional committee found on Tuesday, raising questions about statements by the former president and members of his administration who claimed he could not release his tax filings because of such ongoing reviews.A report by the Democratic majority on the House ways and means committee indicated the Trump administration may have disregarded an IRS requirement dating to 1977 that mandates audits of a president’s tax filings. The IRS only began to audit Trump’s 2016 tax filings on 3 April 2019, more than two years into his presidency and months after Democrats took the House. That date coincides with Richard Neal, the panel chairman, asking the IRS for information related to Trump’s tax returns.Required IRS audits of former President Donald Trump were delayed, according to a report issued by a Democratic-controlled House committee.A separate report suggested Trump paid a relatively modest share of his income to the federal government. https://t.co/m8y4Z2bJkE— The Associated Press (@AP) December 21, 2022
There was no suggestion Trump, who has announced a third presidential run, sought to directly influence the IRS or discourage it from reviewing his tax information. But the report found that the audit process was “dormant, at best”.The 29-page report was published hours after the committee voted on party lines to release Trump’s tax returns, raising the potential of additional revelations related to the finances of a businessman who broke political norms by refusing to voluntarily release his returns as he sought the presidency. The vote was the culmination of a years-long fight between Trump and Democrats, from the campaign trail to Congress and the supreme court.Democrats on the ways and means committee argued that transparency and the rule of law were at stake. Republicans said the release would set a dangerous precedent.“This is about the presidency, not the president,” Neal told reporters.Kevin Brady, the panel’s top Republican, said: “Over our objections in opposition, Democrats have unleashed a dangerous new political weapon that overturns decades of privacy protections. The era of political targeting, and of Congress’s enemies list, is back and every American, every American taxpayer, who may get on the wrong side of the majority in Congress is now at risk.”Trump spent much of Tuesday releasing statements unrelated to his tax returns. The IRS did not immediately comment. An accompanying report released by the nonpartisan joint committee on taxation also found repeated faults with the IRS approach to auditing Trump and his companies.IRS agents did not bring in specialists to assess the complicated structure of Trump’s holdings. They also determined limited examination was warranted because Trump hired an accounting firm they assumed would make sure Trump “properly reports all income and deduction items correctly”.Read more:Flesh on the bones of Trump's insurrectionThe final report of the House January 6 committee that’s been investigating Donald Trump’s insurrection for the last 18 months will drop today. And it’s unlikely to make very palatable reading for the former president.The document, running to more than 1,000 pages, will put flesh on the bones of Trump’s plotting and scheming to stay in power after his 2020 election defeat. Those efforts landed him a referral to the justice department for four criminal charges.Donald Trump. Photograph: Brandon Bell/Getty ImagesAnd it comes on the heels of Tuesday night’s vote by the House ways and means committee to publicly release up to six years of his tax returns, documents Trump had fought for three years to keep secret.We already knew, including from a series of televised hearings on the January 6 panel this year, many of the details of the insurrection. Trump incited a mob that overran the US Capitol on January 6 2021 seeking to halt the certification of Joe Biden’s victory; tried to manipulate states’ election results in his favor; and attempted to install slates of “fake electors” to reverse Biden’s win in Congress.But what we’ll see today is the deepest of dives into his efforts: the panel interviewed countless witnesses and reviewed thousands of documents and hundreds of hours of video evidence to compile the report and make recommendations.They include referrals to the House ethics committee for four Trump allies in Congress who refused to submit to the panel’s subpoenas to give evidence.We’re expecting the report to feature eight main chapters, detailed below, plus appendices that capture more aspects of the investigation, and findings from all of the select committee’s five investigative teams.We’ll bring you details when it drops. Donald Trump’s effort to sow distrust in the results of the election. The then-president’s pressure on state governments or legislatures to overturn victories by Joe Biden. Trump campaign efforts to send fake, pro-Trump electors to Washington from states won by Biden. Trump’s push to deploy the justice department in service of his election scheme. The pressure campaign by Trump and his lawyers against then-vice president Mike Pence. Trump’s effort to summon supporters to Washington who later fueled the 6 January mob. The 187 minutes of chaos during which Trump refused to tell rioters to leave the Capitol. An analysis of the attack on the Capitol. Good morning US politics blog readers, and welcome to what promises to be a hectic Wednesday. Donald Trump’s not-very-good week rolls into a third day with publication of the final report of the House January 6 committee that’s been investigating his insurrection for the last 18 months.We learned the essentials through a final public meeting and executive summary on Monday, when the bipartisan panel referred the former president for four criminal charges. But the final report, at more than 1,000 pages, will be a much deeper dive into Trump’s scheming to reverse his 2020 election defeat to Joe Biden.We’ll bring you the details when we receive it.Here’s what else we’re watching: There’s ongoing fallout from last night’s vote by the House ways and means committee to publicly release six years of Trump’s tax returns. Joe Biden and Washington lawmakers are preparing for Wednesday’s historic visit from Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelenskiy, his first trip outside his country since it was invaded by Russia 10 months ago. Biden meets his counterpart at 2.30pm, followed by a joint press conference. Hakeem Jeffries, the incoming Democratic House minority leader, and congresswoman Suzan DelBene, nominee for head of the party’s congressional campaign committee, host a press briefing at 1pm on plans to retake the majority in 2024. | US Political Corruption |
Buttigieg Says Trump Has ‘Lifelong Path’ of Disrespecting Military, Blasts His Vietnam Deferments After He Attacks Top General
The transportation secretary knocked the former president for suggesting Mark Milley could have been put to death for his actions in another time
Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg slammed Donald Trump Sunday for suggesting that former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley had committed acts that could be punishable by death.
Buttigieg, a Navy veteran, accused Trump of a "lifelong path" of disrespecting the military in an appearance on MSNBC with Jen Psaki.
"The level of disrespect for the American military, not to mention for [Milley] is both shocking and not shocking," Buttigieg said.
"This is part of a lifelong path with the former president," he added. ''I would argue [it] was first displayed when he faked a disability in order to avoid having to go to Vietnam, and allowed, I assume, some working-class person to go in his place."
That attitude has 'has continued ever since," Buttigieg emphasized.
The former mayor of South Bend, Indiana, also knocked Trump for his numerous attacks on the late Arizona Republican Sen. John McCain.
McCain, a one-time Navy pilot, spent more than five years in a notorious North Vietnamese prison known as the “Hanoi Hilton,” where he was repeatedly tortured.
- Pete Buttigieg Says Tucker Carlson Has ‘Fears About Masculinity’
- Pete Buttigieg Mocks DeSantis Ad for Using ‘Shirtless Oiled Up Body Builders’ to Prove ‘Manhood’: ‘Who Are You Trying to Help?’
- Republican Senator Introduces Bill Meant to Make Pete Buttigieg Fly Commercial Over Private
- Pete Buttigieg Warns I-95 Bridge Collapse Could Drive Up Cost of Goods
- Are Haley and Ramaswamy the Klobuchar and Buttigieg of 2024?
- In a Year of Frustrating Airport Fumbles, Pete Buttigieg Warns New Tech Could Make It Worse
Trump has referred to McCain as a "loser" because of his capture.
While he was campaigning for the 2016 presidential election, he said McCain was not a war hero, adding: "I like people who weren't captured."
Trump received multiple deferments during the Vietnam War, once for bone spurs and the rest so he could finish his time in college.
"We do in fact still have some boundaries that matter in this country, and one of them is that our regard for the military and our respect for the military is non-partisan," Buttigieg said.
"This guy turned out to be a Woke train wreck who, if the Fake News reporting is correct, was actually dealing with China to give them a heads up on the thinking of the President of the United States," Trump wrote.
"This is an act so egregious that, in times gone by, the punishment would have been DEATH! A war between China and the United States could have been the result of this treasonous act," the former president added.
- Rep. Dean Phillips Steps Down From Democratic Leadership RolePolitics
- Bill Maher Pleads With Biden to Step Down: ‘He’s Going to Turn the Country Back Over to Trump’Politics
- Florida GOP Rep. Carlos Gimenez Blasts Matt Gaetz As ‘Joe Biden’s Favorite Republican’Politics
- Biden Calls Out ‘MAGA Republicans’ After Shutdown Avoided: ‘Sick and Tired of the Brinkmanship’Politics
- Trump Asks When Jamaal Bowman Will Be ‘Prosecuted and Imprisoned’ For Pulling House Fire AlarmPolitics
- Biden Addresses Supreme Court Ethics, Threats to Democracy in ProPublica InterviewPolitics
- Graham Says Ousting McCarthy Would Be A ‘Disaster For the Future of the Republican Party’Politics
- Joe Manchin On Potential 2024 Third Party Run: ‘Why Not Have Options?’Politics
- Alaskans Get to Keep Their Popular ‘Fat Bear Week’ Contest Alive After US Avoids Government ShutdownNews
- Pelosi Tells CNN’s Jake Tapper He’s ‘Wasting’ Time On Gaetz’s Move to Oust McCarthy: ‘He Has No Sway In the House’Politics
- McCarthy to Gaetz On Ousting Him From Speakership: ‘Bring It On’Politics
- Ocasio-Cortez Would ‘Absolutely’ Cast a Vote to Oust McCarthyPolitics | US Federal Elections |
During a press breakfast before Wednesday's third Republican primary debate in Miami, LIBRE President Daniel Garza told reporters his organization, which supports free market policies, was "getting close to the final decision" on who to back before next year's election.
"Obviously, we feel strongly that the polarization and the division of the country is worsening, and we just need to turn the page on that," Garza said. "We need somebody who folks can get excited about and is going to create turnout as well. ... It's imminent."
"We want to turn the page on the current primary leader," he added. "We understand that Trump is, of course, the odds-on favorite to win the primary, so we don't have any illusions about that. But if there is areas where we can make a difference, prompt people in different ways, we will, but yeah, hopefully, we can begin to sort of turn those efforts towards that."
"But I will say, in parentheses here, that the support that you're seeing is really soft," he said. "I think that they're looking at Biden and they don't like what they see it with the direction of the country and on the economics. And so they're favoring Trump because of a nostalgia, but at the same time, I'm just not seeing the kind of passion, you know, for the candidate."
Trump is counterprogramming the downtown Miami debate with a rally in nearby minority-majority Hialeah as he tries to make in-roads with voters of color and as polling suggests Biden has his own problems with certain demographics. | US Federal Elections |
America’s cold war — with itself
In the 1972 presidential race, Richard Nixon ran against Sen. George McGovern and won 49 states. McGovern couldn’t even carry his home state of South Dakota. Only Massachusetts voted for the Democrat.
In 1984, Ronald Reagan won 49 states against Walter Mondale. Mondale at least won Minnesota, his home state.
Which leads me to this question: Can you name anybody in the entire United States who could run for president and win 49 states? I don’t mean in 2024; we know that’s not going to happen. But what about beyond the next election — even way beyond the next election? If there is anybody, I can’t think of who he or she is.
So here’s another question: What the heck happened to us since Nixon and Reagan?
Well, for openers, there was no internet, no Twitter, no Instagram, no TikTok, no Facebook — and there was no MSNBC or Fox News in Nixon or Reagan’s time. CNN was just getting off the ground in 1980. Whatever good cable news and social media may have done, there’s little doubt that they’ve helped polarize America. There’s a better chance that those House hearings on what we used to call UFOs will produce irrefutable evidence that aliens are right now living among us than there is the likelihood that a presidential candidate could win 49 states anytime soon, or even not-so-soon.
And nothing these days is too small to divide us. Democrats and Republicans, for the most part, don’t like the same TV shows. Liberals and conservatives can’t even come together over “Barbie,” the movie. Everything is political. Everything is “us” versus “them.”
“The standard explanation for this is the so-called echo-chamber effect,” is how Elizabeth Kolbert explained it in the New Yorker. “On Facebook, people ‘friend’ people with similar views — either their genuine friends or celebrities and other public figures they admire. Trump supporters tend to hear from other Trump supporters, and Trump haters from other Trump haters. A study by researchers inside Facebook showed that only about a quarter of the news content that Democrats post on the platform is viewed by Republicans, and vice versa. A study of Twitter use found similar patterns. Meanwhile, myriad studies, many dating back to before the Internet was ever dreamed of, have demonstrated that, when people confer with others who agree with them, their views become more extreme. Social scientists have dubbed this effect ‘group polarization,’ and many worry that the web has devolved into one vast group-polarization palooza.”
No one tunes into Fox News to hear what a great president Joe Biden is. And no one tunes into MSNBC or CNN to get rave reviews on Donald Trump. We tune into cable news and social media to feel comfortable about our preexisting beliefs. We feel safe in our echo chambers. “This can lead to a lack of exposure to diverse perspectives and an increased polarization between different ideological groups” — so says ChatGPT, the artificial intelligence program I reached out to in order to find out why we’re so divided in this country.
Here’s one more question: Is there anything that could bring us together? Maybe, but I don’t think so — not in the foreseeable future, anyway. A pandemic that killed more than a million Americans couldn’t bring us together — the opposite happened; it divided us. On one side Dr. Anthony Fauci was a hero, on the other he was a villain.
Even the attacks on 9/11 wound up dividing us. “We were hardly a united country on Sept. 10, 2001, but our divisions are far worse today,” is how William Galston described our disunity in a 2021 essay. “September 11 has left us with a legacy of fear — on the right, the fear of more terrorist attacks; on the left, fear that our response to this possibility will infringe civil liberties and open the door to discrimination against Muslims and other minorities.”
We can’t agree on whether the riot at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021 was an insurrection or merely a peaceful protest by patriots that got out of hand. And whether your respect the Supreme Court often depends on whether you’re a liberal or a conservative.
Let’s remember that it wasn’t always this way. We mourned JFK’s assassination — as a unified nation. We trusted the press when it told us about Watergate. Walter Cronkite was voted the most trusted man in America. But that was a long time ago. Who trusts the media today? And what politician’s passing would we mourn now — as a unified United States of America?
All of this has led some Americans to wonder if we’re heading for a civil war. They’re not paying attention. We’re already fighting a civil war. The good news is that it’s a “cold war” — so far.
But there just may be one thing that partisans on both sides could agree on — and it’s that the “other side” doesn’t deserve to be taken seriously, because the “other side” is completely, totally, and certifiably nuts.
Bernard Goldberg is an Emmy and an Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University award-winning writer and journalist. He was a correspondent with HBO’s “Real Sports with Bryant Gumbel” for 22 years and previously worked as a reporter for CBS News and as an analyst for Fox News. He is the author of five books and publishes exclusive weekly columns, audio commentaries and Q&As on his Substack page. Follow him on Twitter @BernardGoldberg.
Copyright 2023 Nexstar Media Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. | US Federal Elections |
Congress created 4 new unemployment insurance programs to support workers during the COVID-19 pandemic. Following this expansion, the amount of fraud in these programs increased. We estimate that, during the pandemic, total fraud in these programs was over $60 billion and perhaps much higher.
The Department of Labor has issued guidance, provided funding to states, and recommended improvements to state unemployment insurance programs to address such fraud. However, we testified that the department has yet to develop an antifraud strategy based on leading practices from our Fraud Risk Framework. We've previously recommended that it do so.
What GAO Found
GAO found evidence of substantial levels of fraud and potential fraud in unemployment insurance (UI) during the pandemic. GAO estimated over $60 billion in fraudulent UI payments by extrapolating the lower bound of the Department of Labor's (DOL) 2021 estimated national fraud rate for the regular UI program. However, such an extrapolation has inherent limitations and should be interpreted with caution. GAO is working to develop a more comprehensive estimate on the total extent of UI fraud during the pandemic. The DOL Office of Inspector General's UI fraud investigations resulted in over 1,200 indictments or initial charges from April 2020 through January 2023. Each week that office continues to open over 100 new UI fraud-related investigative matters.
Illustrative examples of unemployment insurance fraud cases
DOL and the states were not adequately prepared to handle UI fraud risks when the pandemic began. DOL has taken some recent steps to address UI fraud risks. For example, it has provided state workforce agencies with fraud-related guidance, integrity tools, and grant funding. DOL, however, has not yet implemented an antifraud strategy as called for by leading practices in GAO's Fraud Risk Framework.
The expediting of COVID-19 relief funding exacerbated an underlying improper-payment problem in the federal government, including UI, which predated the pandemic. For example, DOL reported an increase in estimated improper payments from $8.0 billion (9.2 percent estimated improper payment rate) for fiscal year 2020 to $78.1 billion (18.9 percent estimated improper payment rate) for fiscal year 2021. For fiscal year 2022, DOL reported estimated improper payments of $18.9 billion (22.2 percent estimated improper payment rate).
In June 2022, GAO added the UI system to its High Risk Program based on the system's need for transformation. The system's administrative and program integrity challenges pose significant risks to service delivery and expose the system to significant financial losses. Long-standing challenges with UI administration and outdated IT systems have further affected states' ability to meet the needs of unemployed workers, especially during economic downturns. Such challenges have also contributed to impaired service, declining access, and disparities in benefit distribution.
Why GAO Did This Study
The UI system has faced long-standing challenges with program integrity, which increased dramatically during the pandemic. According to DOL data, expenditures across all UI programs totaled approximately $878 billion from April 2020 through September 2022. This included benefits as part of four new UI programs Congress created to support workers during the pandemic. The unprecedented demand for benefits and the need to quickly implement the new programs increased the risk of financial fraud. Due to these circumstances and other challenges, GAO added the UI system to its High Risk Program in June 2022.
This statement addresses: (1) fraud in the UI programs, (2) UI fraud risks and management of such risks, (3) continued UI improper payment problems, and (4) the addition of the UI system to GAO's High Risk Program.
This statement is based on GAO's body of work related to the UI system during the pandemic. More detailed information on the objectives, scope, and methodology that form the basis of the statement can be found in individual reports, which are listed in the full hearing statement.
Recommendations
As of January 2023, GAO has 19 open recommendations to DOL, including eight to strengthen its management of UI fraud risks. Recommendations include considering options to prevent fraud in programs designed to help self-employed and contingent workers, designating an entity to manage fraud risks, performing fraud-risk assessments, and developing and implementing an antifraud strategy. | US Federal Policies |
There’s been a strange quality to the continuing tension in the air of American politics of late. On the surface, the usual things are happening – “usual” in this context means actions and statements by prominent politicians that would have been unthinkable a few years ago. But there’s something else going on as well.
Donald Trump is making the biggest headlines, of course. He went on trial on Tuesday in a civil case, brought in New York, about what the state says are shady business practices by his various real estate companies. A judge last week ruled that the companies were guilty of a massive fraud – and took the organisation’s business licences away, a step so extreme that no one has as yet been able to fully grasp the implications of it. (If Trump owned a restaurant, it would be forced to close its doors; but it is not yet clear what happens when the business is owning and managing skyscraper office buildings.) The trial this week is to assess financial penalties.
The case has clearly been on Trump’s mind, and his various speeches have taken on a dark cast. During a talk at a meeting of the California Republican Party in a suburb of Los Angeles, he paused at one point to mention Nancy Pelosi, the onetime democratic speaker of the House. He then said, feigning innocence, “How’s her husband doing, anybody know?” This was a reference to a brutal and almost fatal beating Pelosi’s husband, then 82, received a year ago from a deranged Trump fan wielding a hammer. His smirking words were treated as a punchline by the audience. It was a new low, even for him.
A new low, that is, until you consider his remarks about General Mark Milley, who he suggested was treasonous, noting that the death penalty might be in order. To be clear: Trump himself had named Milley as chairman of the joint chiefs of staff. He thus joins the long list of Trump’s own appointees he has disowned and tried to discredit.
But even in that context, the death penalty part stands out. Legal commentators have noticed that Milley may well be a witness in one of the several federal cases against Trump. Threatening witnesses when you are on trial is generally frowned upon in the US court system; accordingly, a new legal parlour game has emerged as experts debate whether or when a judge will take the steps that would ordinarily be taken about such activities, which might include a species of gag order or even the revocation of bail.
Such violent talk is catching. Florida governor Ron DeSantis, who is trying to out-Trump Trump for the Republican presidential nomination, went on a rant about illegal immigrants, who he said were carrying fentanyl into the US. Under his potential administration, DeSantis vowed that these people would be shot at the border. “Of course you use deadly force,” he said. “... They’re going to end up stone-cold dead.” Whether border agents would shoot first and then look for the fentanyl, or wait to find the fentanyl and then shoot, wasn’t clear.
Meanwhile, one of Trump’s most rabid Congressional supporters was getting into trouble. Lauren Boebert, a loose cannon from rural Colorado who spouts things about family values, was thrown out of a Denver theatre during a stage musical performance. The theatre said she’d been disruptive and was even vaping. The representative denied it … until CCTV footage from inside showed her vaping and being disruptive. Then more footage came out, in which you could plainly see Boebert and her date engaging in some not-very-family-friendly activities. (In the parlance of American high schoolers, Boebert’s date had rounded second and was heading fast toward third.)
Trump’s trial will continue for weeks; his legal calendar is packed with even more serious criminal charges in 2024. Other Republican-induced chaos proceeds in Washington; the Republican-controlled House of Representatives nearly shut the government down this week. A temporary deal was made, but now the speaker of the House, Kevin McCarthy, will have to fend off a pack of rabid attack dogs on his right, Lauren Boebert among them. In the balance: aid to Ukraine, an America ally under attack from one of America’s enemies.
Yes, in a way this is more of the same. Many Americans seem to get off on the spectacle at this point. Sometimes it seems that democracy, and perhaps the liberal West, is at stake. But there’s an argument to be made that a lot of Americans don’t think all of this is desirable. There’s a real world out there, and no one in it thinks this is, or should be, normal. It’s possible what we’re seeing isn’t the effects of a growing movement of destructive force, but rather the shaking and rattling of a poorly built car whose doors and wheels are about to fall off.
Bill Wyman is a former assistant managing editor of National Public Radio, in Washington. He lectures at the University of Sydney.
Get a weekly wrap of views that will challenge, champion and inform your own. Sign up for our Opinion newsletter. | US Political Corruption |
Most US adults say country is heading in wrong direction: poll
Most U.S. adults say the country is heading in the wrong direction, according to a recent survey from the Associated Press-NORC Research Center.
The poll, released Saturday, found 78 percent of respondents saying the country is headed in the wrong direction. Only 21 percent said it is headed in the right direction.
Just a month ago, slightly more Americans appeared to have a positive view of the country’s direction. Seventy-five percent said the country was headed in the wrong direction, while 25 percent said it was headed in the right direction.
The new poll also found a dip in President Biden’s job approval numbers in comparison to recent months, possibly spelling bad news for him as the next election year looms. This month, only 38 percent of Americans said they approved of the way he is handling his job as president, in comparison to 40 percent last month and 42 percent the month before that.
Top Stories from The Hill
Biden’s Republican colleagues in government aren’t getting much love from the public either.
Only 19 percent of Americans in the recent poll said they have a “very” or “somewhat” favorable opinion of former Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), who was ousted from his former position by a bipartisan vote in the House at the beginning of the month.
In the same poll, only 17 percent of Americans said they have a “very” or “somewhat” favorable opinion of Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.). Concerns about McConnell’s health and competency have risen recently after he appeared to freeze at two different press conferences within a matter of weeks.
The poll was conducted between Oct. 5-9 and featured responses from 1,163 U.S. adults over the age of 18. The margin of error is plus or minus 3.9 percentage points.
Copyright 2023 Nexstar Media Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. | US Federal Elections |
- George Santos may be expelled from the House of Representatives this week.
- But even if that happens, he could still enjoy all sorts of perks afforded to former lawmakers.
- That includes access to the House floor, lawmakers-only gym and dining facilities, and more.
Rep. George Santos of New York may be expelled from the House as soon as this week.
The scandal-plagued Republican apparently expects that to happen, declaring during a profanity-laden tirade against his colleagues that he would wear his expulsion "like a badge of honor."
A vote could happen as soon as Wednesday, and it increasingly appears as if the necessary two-thirds majority — or roughly 290 lawmakers — are willing to expel Santos.
But as it turns out, that's not the end of the story.
"He will become a former member of Congress," said Daniel Schuman, director of governance at the POPVOX Foundation. "Former members of Congress have a lot of privileges."
Those privileges — which would also apply if he resigned — typically include the ability to walk onto the House floor, use lawmakers-only facilities, and even purchase (and perhaps auction off) their own office furniture.
In other words, George Santos may be able to keep LARPing as a member of Congress if he's expelled.
However, Santos could be denied some of these perks — and at least one group says it's already prepared to do so.
Nonetheless, here are some of the key perks that the scandal-plagued congressman may get to enjoy, at least until he ends up behind bars.
He could keep hanging out on the House floor
It's not totally uncommon to see former members in the chamber when the House is in session.
Republican Sen. Markwayne Mullin of Oklahoma, a member of the House until last year, was spotted hanging out on the floor during the most recent speakership fight.
According to House rules, any former lawmaker can walk onto the floor unless they're a lobbyist, foreign agent, have a direct personal or financial interest in the bill being considered, or have been convicted of a crime "in relation to that individual's election to, or service to, the House."
That last one is fairly relevant here — Santos is set to go to trial next September for a bevy of charges related to his campaign.
But if Santos's former colleagues want to keep him from loitering around until a possible criminal conviction forbids him from doing so, they could take action on their own.
"They could pass a resolution to exclude him from the House," said Schuman.
He can keep using lawmakers-only gym and dining facilities
Under House rules and by custom, former lawmakers — as long as they're not registered lobbyists — have typically been allowed access to the House gym, as long as they pay a fee.
They can also use parking garages in the Capitol complex and have access to "seating in the House restaurant facilities and Members' dining room," according to the Congressional Research Service.
He could buy his own desk for $1,000 — and probably auction it off for a handsome profit
According to a 2008 Congressional Research Service report, outgoing lawmakers are allowed to purchase their own office furniture.
That report states that lawmakers can buy their desks for $1,000, and their chair for $500. They can also purchase their district office furniture.
If you're George Santos — and have been accused of bilking campaign donors to buy Botox and OnlyFans — you've got to be thinking of the potential for one last grift.
And let's face it: He could make a decent chunk of change by auctioning off his desk.
After all, someone with too much money to spend would probably pay handsomely for it, if only for the meme value.
Exclusive group for former lawmakers wants nothing to do with Santos
Typically, former members of Congress are automatically granted membership in the United States Association of Former Members of Congress, an organization chartered by Congress in 1983 that boasts over 200 members.
The group markets itself as the "premier vehicle" to keep former lawmakers "engaged in government and connected to each other after their federal public service has ended," including via fancy receptions and travel and speaking opportunities.
But in a statement to Business Insider on Monday, the group made clear that it wants nothing to do with Santos.
"We welcome all Members who have completed their service in the House or Senate to join our organization, provided they are in good standing," the organization said. "Given the litany of substantiated allegations in the bipartisan House Ethics Committee's report, Congressman Santos would not fall into that category."
"As an organization that advocates for and showcases bipartisanship, good governance, and the dignity of public service, we feel Congressman Santos' conduct does not reflect those values," the group continued. "Given the long list of accusations he's currently facing, he likely has other things on his mind anyway."
He won't receive any pension benefits
Despite all these other perks, Santos won't receive a pension; according to the Congressional Research Service, members of Congress only receive pension benefits if they've served in the House for five years or more.
Santos hasn't even been in office for 11 months.
And even if he had been in Congress for longer, lawmakers lose pension benefits if they're convicted of public corruption-related offenses.
Though not yet convicted, Santos is set to face trial next September for federal charges including identity theft, wire fraud, and money laundering. | US Congress |
Billionaire GOP backer Peter Thiel expressed disappointment with politicians like former President Donald Trump, stating that he may be taking a break from loosening his purse strings for Republicans.
"Voting for Trump was like a not very articulate scream for help," Thiel said in an interview with the Atlantic, adding that Trump ultimately couldn't meet what he calls "low expectations."
He added that he was "disappointed" and "disenchanted" with the former president.
"There are a lot of things I got wrong," Thiel said. "It was crazier than I thought. It was more dangerous than I thought ... They couldn't get the most basic pieces of the government to work. So that was — I think that part was maybe worse than even my low expectations."
The PayPal co-founder donated to several Republican campaigns during the 2022 midterm elections, with only Sen. J.D. Vance (R-OH) as one of his few successes. Thiel gave Vance's campaign more than $20 million. Several Trump-endorsed candidates, many of whom Thiel supported, beat out centrist Republicans for the party nomination in 2022 — only to lose to their Democratic opponent.
Following those losses, Thiel said he is done giving money to the Republican Party for now, but said he would not become a "never-Trumper" GOP supporter in the future. He did note that Trump's efforts to overturn the 2020 election were "not helpful."
"There's always a chance I might change my mind," Thiel said to the Atlantic's Barton Gellman. "But by talking to you, it makes it hard for me to change my mind."
That means candidates like Blake Masters, who lost to Sen. Mark Kelly (D-AZ) and received support from Thiel in 2022, will likely miss out on donations from the billionaire in 2024. Masters is running for the House in Arizona's 8th Congressional District.
Thiel has cause to avoid Masters, specifically, after the Atlantic reported that Trump called Masters to tell him Thiel was a "f****** scumbag."
While not financially getting involved in politics, the billionaire took another step away from Trump in May. He said on the podcast Honestly with Bari Weiss that Gov. Ron Desantis (R-FL) would make a "terrific president," and he would support the governor in 2024. | US Federal Elections |
SWARTZ CREEK, Mich. (CBS DETROIT) - Presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. spent Friday afternoon on the UAW picket line in front of the General Motors Flint Processing Center in Swartz Creek.
The Democrat, who finds himself at odds with his own party on several issues, spoke with striking workers who told him they appreciated his visit and wished more politicians and elected officials would see first-hand what it's like to walk the picket line with working people.
"I think it's really important for our country. It's important for all the workers we met today, and you know, it's important for this community, but really for our whole country," Kennedy said. "We need to make sure the workers are taken care of. We need to make sure these industries stay here in Michigan. Everybody in our country is praying for a settlement."
On Friday, UAW President Shawn Fainhas been made with GM in negotiations. Fain also said GM has agreed to place electric vehicle battery plants under a national contract with the union.
Kennedy made several stops in the Flint area Friday, including an emotional meeting with the victims of the Flint water crisis.
for more features. | US Federal Elections |
Former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., is backing Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, for his replacement behind the gavel.
McCarthy's endorsement of Jordan comes after Rep. Austin Scott, R-Ga., announced his candidacy for the speakership.
"I'm going to support Jim Jordan," McCarthy told reporters on Friday.
As for the matchup between Scott and Jordan, McCarthy said he thinks the Ohio Republican has "got the votes."
"But we'll see… I think everybody has the right to run," McCarthy said. "I think Jim's better prepared in the process to be speaker."
Scott, a member of the House Intelligence Committee, announced his candidacy for the lower chamber's speaker's gavel on Friday.
The Georgia lawmaker's speaker candidacy came after Majority Leader Steve Scalise, R-La., the original nominee for the gavel, pulled out of the race Thursday night.
Scalise was voted as the House GOP's speaker nominee earlier this week to replace McCarthy, who was ousted via a motion to vacate last week.
"I have filed to be Speaker of the House," Austin tweeted Friday. "We are in Washington to legislate, and I want to lead a House that functions in the best interest of the American people."
Scott called Jordan his "good friend" while talking to reporters and that he doesn't "necessarily want to be the speaker of the House."
"I want a House that functions correct, but the House is not functioning correctly right now," Scott said.
The Georgia Republican said if the GOP is "going to be the majority party" they "need to act like it."
Scott said Rep. Frank Lucas, R-Ok., the chairman of the House Science, Space, and Technology Committee, would be nominating him for speaker.
The Georgia Republican said he also cares more about the GOP conference and he and his colleagues doing their jobs than who is the speaker.
"When I woke up this morning, I had no intention of doing this," Scott said. "It took me a long time to even get to my wife to tell her, ‘Call our friends, be in prayer, because we haven’t done any preparation or any whipping or anything for this."
"But I believe if we as Republicans are going to be the majority, we have to do the right things the right way," Scott said. "And we're not doing that right now."
Fox News Digital's Elizabeth Elkind contributed reporting. | US Congress |
It’s possible that former President Donald Trump will retake the White House in 2024. While Americans have yet to cast a single ballot in the primaries, no GOP rival has come close to dislodging him. Legal efforts to declare him ineligible under the Fourteenth Amendment may fall short. And President Joe Biden’s grim poll numbers could damage his reelection chances.
Trump has already promised that his second term will be different from his first. And by “different,” he does not mean “better.” A reelected Trump would be truly unaccountable because there won’t be as many consequences for misrule—the Twenty-Second Amendment would bar his reelection for a third term. (Trump appears to regret this: He once told Xi Jinping that being president for life sounds “great.”) Among Trump’s second-term proposals are the destruction of NATO’s principle of collective defense, purging the civil service, and the weaponization of the Justice Department against his political rivals.
The last two things on that list aren’t possible without lawyers. As I recently noted about Ron DeSantis, a president’s personnel choices are perhaps the most important decisions that he makes in office, save for Supreme Court nominations or military actions. An army of underlings end up making countless minor decisions that a president just doesn’t have time for, and they’re constantly at work trying to further the policy agenda they think he holds. In Trump’s case, it’s not just about who he’ll bring to Washington—it’s also about who is willing to destroy their careers and reputations to serve him along the way.
Trump has a complicated relationship with lawyers, to say the least. His campaign and associated super PACs have spent tens of millions of dollars on legal fees in the four ongoing criminal cases against him. He has alienated many of his retainers throughout his career by being a notoriously bad client. (Not just “bad” in the moral or legal sense, but “bad” in the sense that he is notoriously resistant to legal counsel and almost as bad at actually paying for these services when they are rendered.)
That’s why more reasonable establishment figures like John Dowd and Ty Cobb, who led his defense against the Russia investigation, are long gone. His longtime legal fixer Michael Cohen turned state’s witness against Trump a few years ago, implicating him in campaign finance offenses and various fraud-related schemes that now imperil the Trump Organization. Rudy Giuliani, the next closest thing he has to a consigliere, is facing disbarment and prosecution.
There are other legal advisers who have similarly immolated their careers on his behalf. Sidney Powell, who threatened to “unleash the kraken” after Trump lost in 2020, pleaded guilty last month in exchange for cooperating with Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis in Trump’s ongoing case there. So did Jenna Ellis and Kenneth Chesebro. Others may soon follow.
But if there is one constant of Trumpism, it’s that there are always new right-wing lawyers who are eager to fill the gap. The New York Times, writing this week about a rift between Trump and the Federalist Society, shed some light on the legal minds that Trump might turn to in a second term. Foremost among them is Jeffrey Clark, who tried to engineer his own rise as acting attorney general after the 2020 election when other Justice Department personnel refused to endorse Trump’s election myths. (He too is facing racketeering charges in Georgia but hasn’t yet flipped on Trump.)
As the Times noted, Clark wrote an essay in May that was simply titled, “The U.S. Justice Department is Not Independent.” For ethical and political reasons, most attorneys general since the Watergate crisis have tried to insulate the department’s prosecutorial decisions from the White House to avoid abuses of power or allegations of corruption. Clark argues, in what alternates between personal partisan grievances and constitutional analysis, that this state of affairs must end.
“Either the Constitution is properly amended to make DOJ independent or it is improperly amended through an attempt at legislation like that proposed in the wake of Watergate and then subsequently blessed by the Supreme Court,” he incoherently argued. “Under the constitutional system as it stands, however, DOJ independence does not exist and influencers on the Left of all stripes (as well as those on the Center-Right like Professor [Jack] Goldsmith) should stop claiming that it does. They are misleading the people.”
It is a fascinating project by Clark and others in Trump’s orbit. On one hand, they try to argue that the Justice Department should be subject to the president’s whims as a normative matter. In the same breath, they also claim that Biden’s supposed targeting of Trump and his allies for prosecution is corrupt and unacceptable. “No Attorney General should allow himself to be used as a tool to persecute the President’s political enemies,” Clark wrote without a hint of irony. “And no President should order his Attorney General to do so.”
That view is not shared by everyone around Trump, to say the least. One of the Times’ other quoted sources is Mike Davis, a former congressional aide and former clerk for Justice Neil Gorsuch. Davis is listed in IRS filings as the head of the Article III Project, which purports to back conservative judges and oppose liberal ones, as well as the head of other groups that claim to be involved in fights against Big Tech and purported censorship. He is most recently credited with launching a failed smear campaign against Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson during her Supreme Court confirmation hearings.
Davis’s Twitter feed, which is an unfiltered glimpse into his worldview, grew steadily more radicalized during the Covid-19 pandemic. Women of color who serve in government positions tend to draw most of his ire, ranging from D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser to Representatives Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar. “What are the third-world pigs in the Hamas Caucus up to today?” he wrote on October 21, in an apparent reference to certain Democratic members of Congress.
On September 17, Davis shared a post about a carjacking in Washington, D.C., that he blamed on the Black Lives Matter movement. “We must resume the mass-incarceration [sic] of the violent Black underclass,” Davis wrote. Later that month, he retweeted a post by Richard Hanania that claimed the “most likely explanation for New York Representative Jamaal Bowman pulling the fire alarm” is “low IQ and low impulse control,” which he described as “the same explanation of the actions of most Washington DC criminals.” Hanania’s history as an pseudonymous author for white supremacist sites had become public knowledge in August.
One of Davis’s favorite schticks is claiming he would abuse his power in a future Trump administration. “Please remove your cats and pronouns from your Twitter profiles,” he wrote on Twitter in March. “Because when I’m Trump’s next attorney general, I’m adding you to the domestic-terrorism watchlist.” He frequently suggests he would be a future acting attorney general. “My partisanship and vindictiveness will even make Biden and Garland blush,” he wrote last month. “Right before I indict them.”
In one memorable post over the summer, Davis posted a screenshot of the Biden family. “During my 3-week reign of terror as Trump’s acting attorney general, the only Biden I’ll spare from my political lawfare is the 5-year-old granddaughter Joe and Jill refused to acknowledge for years,” he wrote above it. “The rest of these corrupt scumbags called the Biden family will face my wrath.” And in another post riffing on the concept, he added in a would-be letter to Trump himself, “P.S. Don’t forget to sign my presidential pardon.”
It is tempting to dismiss Davis as someone without influence in Washington. Indeed, the Article III Project has shown no significant donations or expenses in its most recent IRS filings, and his political activities do not currently appear to extend beyond writing tweets and giving quotes to journalists. But Davis seems to have caught the attention of at least one influential person: former President Donald Trump, who occasionally posts Davis’s invariably pro-Trump legal claims on his Truth Social page.
Trump’s war on the federal government would go well beyond the Justice Department if he retakes the White House. Another focus of his grievances is the federal bureaucracy writ large, which Trump and his allies blame for his various policy failures during his first term. In October 2020, he sought to orchestrate the mass firings of civil servants through a mechanism known as Schedule F, but it never went into force as the administration’s attention turned to other matters ahead of the election. Now he and his allies want to revive it.
Trump, like all presidents, has the power to replace the people at the upper echelons of the executive branch—Cabinet members, agency heads, their top advisers, and so on. Those personnel are subject to Senate approval just like any other high-level appointment. But Trump, with his eye on the purported “deep state,” wants to go much deeper and purge civil servants who are otherwise protected from dismissal by federal law.
To that end, various MAGA groups have reportedly built a shadow government of sorts to plan exactly who would take over which agency should Trump win next year. This goes beyond the usual transition planning that every president-elect does from November to January. The goal is to create a more ideologically submissive civil service that will carry out whatever Trump orders, even if those orders are legally dubious.
Among those drafted into the project is Russ Vought, a former Office of Management and Budget director under Trump, and close Trump ally Stephen Miller, who currently heads an anti-diversity legal group. Michael Rigas, who currently works at the America First Policy Institute, is also part of the team. While serving at the White House’s Office of Personnel Management in Trump’s first term, Rigas reportedly told others that he didn’t think the Pendleton Act of 1883, which set up the merit-based appointment system for federal jobs, was constitutional. (Neither Miller nor Rigas is a lawyer.)
This is, essentially, the platform on which Trump is running for election. This is not to say that the former president doesn’t personally have stances on such matters as reproductive rights, immigration, foreign policy, or other vital issues—he obviously does. But he’s running for president in large part to immunize himself from his ongoing legal problems, and also to turn the federal government against those who he thinks have wronged him. In this quest, Trump has no shortage of people who would try to help him do it—and who would likely meet the same fate as their countless predecessors. | US Federal Elections |
Editor’s Note: Peter Bergen is CNN’s national security analyst, a vice president at New America, a professor of practice at Arizona State University, and the host of the Audible podcast “In the Room With Peter Bergen,” also on Apple and Spotify. The opinions expressed in this commentary are his own. Read more opinion at CNN.
On Monday, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said he was running as a third-party candidate to be president of the United States. Kennedy holds a mix of Republican and Democratic policy views which could make him attractive to the large numbers of American voters who are unhappy about a Biden-Trump rematch.
This may pose some real dangers for both President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump, who are the frontrunners in their respective parties, since in closely-contested US presidential elections, a small percentage of voters in relatively few swing states can have a disproportionately large effect on the outcome.
Third-party candidates — like the Green Party’s Ralph Nader in the 2000 election between Al Gore and George W. Bush, and Jill Stein in the 2016 election between Hillary Clinton and Trump — have had an outsize effect on the outcome of close US presidential elections despite their relatively small numbers at the polls.
It’s quite possible that Kennedy could do more damage to Biden as a third-party candidate than by running against Biden in the Democratic primaries, where Biden has a large lead over Kennedy. In a CNN New Hampshire poll last month, Biden had the support of 78% of likely Democratic primary voters in this early primary state, with only 9% for Kennedy.
By contrast, running as an independent candidate, about one in seven American voters would vote for Kennedy, according to an Ipsos/Rutters poll released on Thursday. That number could put a serious dent into Biden’s support in a general election — as well as Trump’s, since Kennedy draws support from both sides of the aisle.
So it is worth considering what — beyond his storied family political name and the dissatisfaction that many voters have with both Biden and Trump — the appeal of Kennedy might be.
RFK Jr.’s predilection for fringe positions is well known, particularly his long-debunked view that vaccines cause autism. But what makes him an attractive candidate for some Americans is that he is not easily pigeonholed as either a typical Democrat or a conventional Republican, since his policy positions straddle the left and the right.
His blistering critiques of the Biden administration on everything from how it has handled the Covid-19 pandemic to its support of the war in Ukraine have earned him praise from Republicans.
At the same time, he describes himself as “a traditional Kennedy Democrat. I’m a leading environmentalist, arguably, in the country. I’m for medical autonomy, for women’s right to choose. I’m anti-war. I’m pro-free speech.”
Kennedy told me this at the end of August for the Audible podcast “In the Room with Peter Bergen.” Beyond querying him about his controversial views on the pandemic — in which he debated with me about whether Covid vaccines had actually saved many lives — I was also interested in exploring his positions on the kinds of issues many American voters care most about, such as the economy, the border, affirmative action, gun control, climate change, abortion and the war in Ukraine.
Helping Trump?
I asked Kennedy if he was worried that running against the president would only serve to hurt Biden’s chances of beating Trump, the leading Republican nominee, in what will likely be yet another close general election.
He replied, “First of all, I get as many votes from Republicans as I do from Democrats. So, I don’t think that there’s that problem.” Kennedy went on to say, “President Biden has wounded himself. You know, he’s telling the country that he’s brought prosperity in the country. And 57% of people in this country cannot put their hands on $1,000 if they have an emergency. For those people, the engine light comes on in their car, and it’s the end of the world.”
Asked how he would fix this situation, Kennedy explained, “I will wind down the empire abroad, and I’ll start bringing that money home and investing in schools, public health, eliminating the chronic disease epidemic, and getting Americans healthy again. Our biggest cost, even bigger than the military, is health care.”
I asked if he thought a second Biden term or a second Trump term would be worse, and he surprised me by saying, “I don’t think either of them are good, but you know, I’m worried about Biden because I think he will — is more likely to get us in a nuclear war.”
Kennedy also seems to firmly believe that the war in Ukraine is as much the Biden administration’s fault as Russian President Vladimir Putin’s. And he believes that, if the Russian leader’s back were up against a wall, Putin wouldn’t hesitate to use atomic weapons, telling me, “He’s already said that if it’s existential, he’s going to use a nuclear weapon.”
Kennedy’s big idea in foreign policy is “neo-isolationism,” i.e., pulling back from what some term “American Empire.” His position is one that is embraced by many on the left flank of the Democratic Party as well as many Republicans, a large majority of whom think the US should stop funding the Ukraine war. A CNN poll published in August found 71% of Republicans think the US should not authorize additional funding to support Ukraine.
The Supreme Court
In light of the Supreme Court’s decision last year that overturned Roe v. Wade and the constitutional right to an abortion, I asked Kennedy how the Catholic faith he had grown up with might have informed his views about abortion. He told me, “I’ve seen late-term abortion pictures and they’re horrifying. So, I understand the people who want them banned, but I also am too skeptical of government to believe that it should be the one that should be dictating bodily decisions.”
Kennedy is also opposed to the Supreme Court’s decision in June to end affirmative action for minority Americans going to college, a case in which Harvard, his alma mater, was one of the defendants. At the same time, he says “legacy admissions,” which give the children of alumni preferential treatment when applying to attend many elite colleges, should end. He described the practice as “affirmative action for White people only.”
Even though the Supreme Court has produced two key recent decisions that he disagreed with, Kennedy would not — as some Democrats have advocated — add more liberal judges to the Supreme Court, saying, “I just think it’s a terrible precedent. I’m very much aware of the attempts by FDR to do that and how that was viewed by the American public as cheating on the rules.”
Climate change
Much of Kennedy’s professional career was spent as an environmental lawyer, most notably helping to clean up the Hudson River in New York. Since this year is on track to be the hottest on record, I asked him what the US should do about this.
He said he opposed “carbon capture,” a technique in which carbon is pumped under the ground in deep wells to be stored there. He describes this as a “boondoggle” for the carbon-producing industries. Instead, he advocates for “habitat” and “environmental” protection since “destroying the natural systems destroys the resilience of the planet to climate changes.”
The border
I also asked Kennedy how he’d approach another important issue for voters: America’s southern border.
Much of Kennedy’s take on border security sounds more in line with Republicans than Democrats. He said Trump had gotten “the wall” mostly right but that “you don’t need a wall all the way 2,200 miles from Brownsville, Texas to San Diego. But you do need a physical barrier. You do need a wall in the heavily populated areas.” Kennedy also said many more asylum judges are needed to process the hundreds of thousands of asylum claimants who are now crossing the US-Mexico border.
The Second Amendment
Kennedy says he is not a gun owner himself, but he is not for “taking people’s guns away,” and he would include in that category semi-automatic weapons like AR-15s that have often been used in mass shootings in the US. He said, however, if he were to become president and the US Senate and the House both had passed measures banning AR-15s, he would go along with that decision.
But in discussing America’s “gun culture” and the view by some that “their AR-15s are protecting them from government overreach” — he said it was a position he felt some sympathy with, given what he considered to be the massive US government overreach during the Covid pandemic.
On the Ukraine war, pandemic measures, US border policies, and the Second Amendment, RFK Jr. could easily be mistaken for a Republican, while on abortion, affirmative action and climate change, he sounds very much like a Democrat. All of this makes Kennedy a wild card who may scramble the presidential election and damage both Biden and Trump in unexpected ways. | US Federal Elections |
The sitting president of the Paterson City Council, already under indictment in a 2020 election fraud probe, faces new charges after state authorities say they uncovered evidence that he “personally collected ballots” in violation of New Jersey election law and tampered with witnesses in the case.
The fresh accusations against Alex Mendez provide new details in an long-looming vote-by-mail fraud probe that drew national attention after former President Donald Trump invoked the case in his attacks on the legitimacy of the 2020 presidential race.
Mendez, who represents the city’s 3rd Ward, now faces nine counts ranging from conspiracy to commit election fraud to forgery and witness tampering, according to the state Office of Public Integrity and Accountability, which brought the charges. The accusations stem from Paterson’s May 2020 municipal race.
Authorities also said they had charged Mendez’s wife, Yohanny Mendez, and two others in the scheme. Mendez and his attorney did not immediately return messages seeking comment. He has previously denied any wrongdoing.
In court documents made public Wednesday, state prosecutors additionally allege Mendez’s associates “stole ballots from residential mailboxes,” tossing several “that did not cast a vote for their candidate” in the trash.
“We allege that Mendez and his associates unlawfully collected ballots and tampered with ballots to give him an unfair edge in the race for the 3rd Ward seat on the Paterson City Council,” said Thomas Eicher, director of the state public integrity office.
Authorities now claim that after he was indicted in February 2021, Mendez, his wife and others were captured on an audio recording discussing how to “attempt to contact the witnesses against Alex Mendez and to propose a new statement” they could give to law enforcement “that would be helpful to the defense.”
Mendez is one of four men initially charged in the probe, which was sparked by reports that hundreds of mail-in ballots were found in a mailbox in Paterson and another in nearby Haledon. At time time, the coronavirus pandemic forced many voters to mail in their ballots.
New Jersey election law permits so-called “bearers” to mail somebody’s ballot for them — an accommodation meant to help elderly, infirm or other voters unable to cast a ballot in person. But such bearers are required to complete a certification on the ballot’s envelope and candidates are strictly forbidden from performing the task.
Mendez and another councilman, Michael Jackson, were both accused of illegally acting as bearers. The charges against Jackson remain pending more than three years later.
A third defendant, Shelim Khalique, saw charges dismissed and a fourth, Abu Razyen, was given pretrial intervention, according to The Paterson Press, which examined the status of the case last month.
In Mendez’s case, authorities say his campaign collected many ballots “not sealed by voters when they were turned over.” Brought to campaign headquarters, the ballots were then examined to see which candidate they supported, authorities claim.
“If the ballot did not select Mendez as the candidate of choice, his wife, Yohanny Mendez, allegedly would destroy the ballot and replace it with another mail-in ballot that did select Mendez for the council seat,” state authorities said Wednesday.
A campaign associate, Omar Ledesma, was additionally accused of visiting “specific neighborhoods and apartment buildings” known to have large numbers of supporters of Mendez’s main rival in the race, former Paterson Councilman William McKoy, and stealing ballots from mailboxes.
The fourth person charged Wednesday was Paterson resident Iris Rigo.
Separately, state authorities also announced another Paterson woman, Ninoska Adames, was charged with fraud and records tampering after she allegedly filled out a mail-in ballot for a relative to make it appear as if the relative could vote for Mendez in the 3rd Ward race.
That ballot was among nearly 400 other mail-in ballots allegedly dumped into the Haledon postal box by campaign workers as Mendez watched from his wife’s car, authorities claim.
State Attorney General Matthew Platkin said Wednesday Adames “generated a misleading paper trail with the intent of effectively adding a voter to the 3rd Ward.”
“And that voter’s ballot, along with others, were picked up for delivery by the eventual winner of the election in that section of Paterson,” Platkin said, referring to Mendez.
- N.J. council president ‘personally collected ballots’ in local voting fraud scheme, AG says
- Fight over N.J. concealed carry, gun-free zones gets its day in court
- N.J., 40 other states sue Facebook, Instagram for harming kids’ mental health
- N.J. cop trashed ‘good ol’ boy’ PD after discrimination suit. Can settlement silence her?
Our journalism needs your support. Please subscribe today to NJ.com. | US Local Elections |
MEMPHIS, Tenn. -- A man has been arrested in a shooting that wounded one person at a Memphis concert headlined by rapper Lil Baby, police said Thursday.
Kevin Young, 22, was arrested Wednesday on charges including reckless endangerment and unlawful possession of weapons and drugs at a home in Memphis, police said on social media.
Police responded to the Sept. 7 shooting at the FedExForum, located just steps from the popular Beale Street tourist destination in downtown Memphis. The 19,000-seat arena is home to the NBA’s Memphis Grizzlies and the University of Memphis men’s basketball team. The arena is also used as a concert venue.
Lil Baby was rushed off the stage when shots were fired. A man was wounded and taken to a hospital. No other injuries were reported.
The concert was canceled and the building was evacuated. Police have not said how the suspect was able to bring a gun into the arena, which contracts with a private security company to screen people for weapons. The arena has since instituted a clear bag policy for patrons.
Officers found guns, ammunition and drugs in the home where Young was arrested. Two other men who were in the home were also arrested on drug charges.
Online court records do not list a lawyer for Young.
After the shooting, Lil Baby posted a message on X, formerly known as Twitter:
“Unfortunately I Couldn’t Perform Last Night In Memphis , Ima Make Sure Everybody Gets A Refund Tho.” | US Crime, Violence, Terrorism & cybercrime |
Killer ex-cop Michael Valva’s former fiancée shocked the jury at her Long Island trial Wednesday when she said it was “a little chilly” — but she was “comfortable” — on the morning that Valva’s 8-year-old autistic son froze to death in their garage.
Jurors gasped and one uttered a quiet, “Oh my God” after Angela Pollina made the statement during her cross examination by Assistant District Attorney Kerriann Kelly in Suffolk County Court.
The prosecutor also showed videos of little Thomas Valva and his 10-year-old brother Anthony shivering on the cement garage floor because Pollina had demanded weeks earlier that her then-beau remove any creature comforts from the area.
In one video — recorded Jan. 5, 2020, less than two weeks before Thomas died — the boy took a dirty towel from the laundry basket in a pitiful attempt to keep himself warm.
Pollina later texted the video to Valva and said, “That SOB Thomas went in the dirty laundry basket to get a dirty towel. Look how he sneaks.”
Valva texted her back and asked her to leave the boys alone.
Kelly presented other text messages that illuminated Pollina’s savage streak toward the two boys.
In one, dated Feb. 27, 2019, Pollina told Valva to wash his son off in the yard.
“No bathroom! You want to wash them, do it in the backyard!” she said, before adding that she was taking the boy’s mattress away.
“It was a tough environment,” the remorseless Pollina, who remained defensive and argumentative throughout the hearing, told the jury. “I believe they had behavior issues.”
When Valva — who was convicted in December of murder in his son’s death and sentenced to 25 years to life behind bars — told her he didn’t want the boys exiled anymore, she told him he was “using [Thomas’s] autism as an excuse.”
“Try whatever you want but he is not coming back in this house,” she wrote.
Court observers and jurors alike gasped, shook their heads and whispered, “Jesus Christ,” as Pollina, 45, continued to detail the house of horrors she helped create at 11 Bittersweet Lane in Center Moriches during the early part of 2020.
One man on the jury wiped away tears, while others covered their faces with their hands throughout the cross-examination.
It was the second day of stunning testimony from Pollina, who on Tuesday admitted she had treated the boys “evil” and “horrible.” She also admitted that she put the boys in the garage the night before Thomas died of hypothermia.
And she said she’d tried to delete surveillance camera footage of the incident to protect her and Michael.
Pollina, who has been charged with second-degree murder and child endangerment, is expected to testify again Thursday before the jury moves into deliberations.
Prosecutors told jurors at the outset of Pollina’s trial that she was every bit as guilty of Thomas’s death as his father, a 43-year-old disgraced former member of the NYPD.
Authorities said Thomas died on Jan. 17, 2020, of hypothermia after he was locked in the garage for 16 hours in frigid temperatures. Paramedics who testified during Valva’s trial said the abused child was likely already dead when they arrived.
Earlier in her trial, a witness testified that Pollina would curse and scream at the boy and the couple would mock him for his autism.
On Wednesday, Kelly also played video recordings from a web of Nest surveillance cameras Pollina had set up that showed her berating Thomas’ brother, Anthony, and forcing him to put socks on his hands because she didn’t want to catch his germs after he’d put his hands down his pants.
Kelly asked if Pollina considered that maybe the boy had just been trying to stay warm in the frigid garage. Or that he was uncomfortable because Pollina made him wear diapers instead of using the bathroom in the house.
“It was inappropriate!” Pollina said.
Kelly also read off text messages in which Pollina told Valva that she was sending his kids to school without breakfast.
“I’m not feeding nobody!” Pollina allegedly texted. “I’m taking care of my own f—ing kids and that’s it. Your kids better not give my name to any more f—ing teachers!” | US Crime, Violence, Terrorism & cybercrime |
January 19, 2023 04:40 AM A coming showdown over the federal debt ceiling has raised interest in options for avoiding a default on the debt if Congress fails to raise the debt ceiling, including the possibility of far-out options, such as the Treasury picking and choosing which debts to pay or even minting a trillion-dollar platinum coin. Here is the current state of play. Once the Treasury hits the debt ceiling, it may no longer issue new debt to pay bills as they come due. Congress is the only body that has authority over raising the borrowing limit, which is $31.4 trillion. House Republicans have signaled that they will fight to exact concessions and use the opportunity as leverage to reduce spending and debt. LAWMAKERS HEADED FOR A BIG PARTISAN STANDOFF OVER THE DEBT LIMIT IN 2023 The Treasury plans to undertake “extraordinary measures,” which involves moving around government funds, to pay incoming bills for now — but its ability to do so will run out, most likely sometime in late spring or early summer. At that point, the government would be at risk of defaulting on its obligations, including on interest payments on the debt — an economically devastating scenario. In order to sidestep a default, a range of options have been floated over the years. Prioritizing payments The Treasury could attempt to prioritize payments — that is, paying some bills while allowing others to go unpaid. Such maneuvers have been contemplated before but have always been rejected as unworkable by the Treasury. During a standoff with Republicans in 2011, the Obama Treasury developed a contingency plan to use incoming tax revenue to keep making payments on the principal and interest on the federal debt. Other payments would be delayed until they could be paid in full as new tax payments came in. Cuts to government expenditures would grow worse each day that ticks by. Then-Treasury Secretary Jack Lew testified in 2013 that there are so many government programs that are seen as crucial that it would be devastating to begin putting those aside just to keep the government whole. “I don’t know how you could possibly choose between Social Security and veteran’s benefits, between Medicare and food assistance,” he said. Moody’s Analytics economist Bernard Yaros told the Washington Examiner that prioritizing is just “not a workable solution.” He pointed out that the complexity involved with doing so would be vexing. “Technologically, I think that it’s just also very difficult for the Treasury just to sort through the blizzard of payments that are due each day and to figure out which ones get prioritized and which ones don’t,” Yaros said. Such an effort would have to be undertaken against the backdrop of market turbulence as investors began to doubt the government and demanded higher interest rates on Treasury securities. Treasury yields, usually seen as a crucial safe asset, are connected to all other financial products. “It just wouldn’t be tenable for any long period of time. It wouldn’t calm markets,” Yaros added. The Treasury under Yellen has also thrown cold water on prioritization. The United States “pays all its bills on time,” said Treasury spokeswoman Lily Adams. “The only way for the government to address the debt ceiling is for Congress to raise or suspend the limit, just as they’ve done dozens of times before.” Still, Republicans have privately been crafting a payment prioritization plan for if Congress doesn’t agree to raise the debt ceiling, the Washington Post reported this week. The plan was reportedly part of the agreements that were reached between Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) and holdout Republicans who were exacting concessions in exchange for their vote for him to be speaker of the House. Some conservatives have argued that forcing the Treasury to prioritize payments could be helpful in addressing the high federal debt. House Republicans could also call for the Treasury to make payments to other high-priority obligations like Medicare, the military, Social Security, and benefits for veterans. The move would be immediately inflammatory and would spark condemnation because other items like Medicaid, air traffic control, and thousands of other programs might end up unprioritized. Maya MacGuineas, president of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, pointed out to the Washington Examiner that such prioritization has never been done before and that "we don't know legally or operationally if or how it would work." Invoking the 14th Amendment Another plan, although constitutionally debatable, is President Joe Biden invoking the 14th Amendment to supersede Congress. This notion is based on a broad reading of Section 4 of the amendment, which reads, “The validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law, including debts incurred for payment of pensions and bounties for services in suppressing insurrection or rebellion, shall not be questioned.” Neil Buchanan, an economist and professor of law at the University of Florida, has argued that the amendment makes the debt limit itself unconstitutional and empowers Biden to override Congress and compel the Treasury to continue issuing government bonds. “The debt ceiling casts doubt on the validity of the debt because what it says is that if the debt ceiling becomes binding, the country won’t be able to pay some of its obligations,” he told the Wall Street Journal during a similar 2021 fight over the debt limit. The move would likely face scrutiny in the courts. Former President Barack Obama faced similar questions during the 2011 debt limit standoff but said that after consultation, his lawyers were “not persuaded that that is a winning argument.” Platinum coin One of the more outside-of-the-box ideas is the idea of a trillion-dollar platinum coin minted for the express purpose of bypassing the debt limit. A provision in a law intended for developing commemorative coins allows the Treasury to mint a platinum coin in any denomination. In theory, the Treasury could mint such a coin with a $1 trillion face value and simply deposit it in the Treasury’s account at the Federal Reserve. The Treasury could then draw on the funds without having to issue new debt. In addition to being platinum, the coin at the center of the accounting maneuver would merely have to bear the words “United States of America,” “Liberty,” the year issued, “In God We Trust,” the denomination either in numerals or spelled out, and “E Pluribus Unum.” The Treasury has rebuffed calls for a trillion-dollar coin in the past though. In 2013, during another Obama-era fight with conservatives over the debt ceiling, the Treasury Department said it doesn’t think the commemorative coin law should be used in that manner. Yaros told the Washington Examiner that minting a platinum coin using the obscure loophole would be perceived as a “sign of desperation” and would likely still spark much angst in the financial markets. MacGuineas said the idea of the Treasury minting a platinum coin rubs her the wrong way. "It feels like the kind of thing that a joke government would be doing," she said. Super premium bonds Another option being discussed is the idea of issuing premium bonds — essentially, bypassing the debt ceiling through financial engineering. The concept is a bit complicated, but it hinges on the fact that the debt ceiling applies only to the face value of Treasury securities issued and not to their interest rates. So the Treasury could issue bonds offering super high interest rates as a way to raise more money at the same amount of debt, allowing the Treasury to keep paying its bills despite the debt ceiling. (Read on for an explanation of the math.) Proponents of issuing these types of bonds see it as less gimmicky than a trillion-dollar coin and a way, although not ideal, of avoiding the catastrophe of defaulting. Matt Levine of Bloomberg laid out an example of how this would work in a recent piece advocating the premium bonds if Congress doesn’t act. If right now the Treasury issues you a one-year security, you would pay $100 upfront, and then after a year, Treasury will pay you $100 plus $4.50 in interest. In issuing the bill, the Treasury’s debt rose by just the face amount of the security, $100, and not by $104.50 because the debt limit statute only caps the principal amount and not interest. If the amount were increased to $200, you would receive $209 at the end of the year in interest. The idea behind premium bonds is if Treasury issues a single $100 bond with a 109% interest rate, people would be willing to pay $200 for that $100 bond. So in short, the Treasury would get $200 in cash but would only incur $100 in debt because the debt limit statute caps just the principal amount. CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER Still, despite all of the unique and out-side-of-the-box ideas to mitigate default, the overwhelming majority of economists would argue that the only real solution to fixing the debt ceiling mess is for Congress to simply raise the limit once more. The consequences of failing to do so are just too profound, they argue. MacGuineas said the debt ceiling should be lifted as soon as possible. "I hope we can do this in a way that is both productive, where we get something done in terms of improving the fiscal health of the country, but without question, it should be drama-free, and anybody who is uttering the word 'default' shouldn't be helping to run the government," she said. | US Federal Policies |
BOISE, Idaho -- A grand jury has indicted a man who was already charged in the stabbing deaths of four University of Idaho students, allowing prosecutors to skip a planned week-long preliminary hearing that was set for late June.
Bryan Kohberger was arrested late last year and charged with burglary and four counts of first-degree murder in connection with the Nov. 13, 2022, killings of Xana Kernodle, Ethan Chapin, Madison Mogen and Kaylee Goncalves at a rental home near the University of Idaho campus. At the time, Kohberger was a graduate student studying criminology at nearby Washington State University, and the killings left the close-knit communities of Moscow, Idaho, and Pullman, Washington, reeling.
A preliminary hearing — where prosecutors must show a judge that there is enough evidence to justify moving forward with felony charges — had been scheduled to begin June 26. But on Tuesday, a grand jury indicted Kohberger on the same criminal charges, effectively rerouting the case directly to the state’s felony court level and allowing prosecutors to skip the preliminary hearing process.
Court documents have already detailed much of the investigation that prosecutors say ties Kohberger to the slayings. A white sedan allegedly matching one owned by Kohberger was caught on surveillance footage repeatedly cruising past the rental home on a dead-end street around the time of the killings. Police say traces of DNA found on a knife sheath inside the home where the students were killed matches that of the 28-year-old Kohberger. Investigators also contend that a cellphone belonging to Kohberger was near the victims’ home on a dozen occasions prior to the killings, though it was apparently turned off around the time of the early-morning attack.
Kohberger was arrested Dec. 30, 2022, at his parents’ home in eastern Pennsylvania, and law enforcement officials seized dark clothing, medical gloves, a flashlight and other items from the home, according to court documents. In Pullman, investigators seized stained bedding, strands of what appeared to be hair, and a single glove from his WSU campus apartment, according to another search warrant.
Still, the unsealed court documents do not appear to suggest a motive, nor whether the killer had specifically targeted any of the victims. It’s also not clear if prosecutors believe Kohberger had met any of the victims before the night they died.
Kernodle, Chapin, Mogen and Goncalves were friends and members of the university’s Greek system, and the three women lived together in the rental home just across the street from campus. Chapin — Kernodle’s boyfriend — was there visiting on the night of the attack. The killings left many of their classmates and residents of Moscow reeling with grief and fear.
Under Idaho law, felony criminal charges generally take one of two routes in court. Most often, a prosecutor files charges and the defendant is brought before a magistrate court to hear them and be advised of their rights. Then the prosecutor must convince the magistrate judge that there is enough evidence against the defendant to justify moving the case forward to the district court level. If the magistrate judge doesn't believe there is enough evidence, the case can be dismissed or reduced to less serious charges.
The other route is less-used in Idaho. It involves the prosecutor presenting the evidence to a grand jury — which meets in secret and without a judge present. The grand jury then decides if the defendant should be charged and exactly which charges the defendant should face. If the grand jury decides it is warranted, they indict the defendant on charges and the case goes directly to district court.
It's unlikely that the public will find out exactly what happened in the grand jury proceedings for Kohberger. State law doesn't allow anyone to be present except those directly involved in the grand jury process, such as the jurors, the prosecuting attorney and any witnesses.
Even once the grand jury is completed, the jurors aren't allowed to talk about what was said and done unless they are ordered to do so by the court. Any recordings or records made of the proceedings are sealed and only a district judge can share them with a defendant or the attorneys involved in the case. | US Crime, Violence, Terrorism & cybercrime |
Former President Donald Trump said Thursday that it is "very unlikely" he would pardon himself if he wins another term in 2024, adding in an exclusive interview with NBC "Meet the Press" moderator Kristen Welker that he believes he did nothing wrong.
"I think it’s very unlikely. What, what did I do wrong? I didn’t do anything wrong," Trump said. "You mean because I challenge an election, they want to put me in jail?"
The interview, Welker’s first as moderator of “Meet the Press,” will air Sunday on NBC affiliates across the country. NBC News has also extended an invitation to President Joe Biden to sit down with Welker for an interview.
Tune into “Meet the Press with Kristen Welker” this Sunday for more from Welker’s exclusive interview with former President Donald Trump. Check local listings.
Trump, who is the front-runner for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, has been indicted four times — in federal court in Washington, D.C., and Florida and in state courts in Georgia and New York. The charges stem from his efforts to overturn the 2020 election, his retention of classified documents after his defeat and hush-money payments made to porn actress Stormy Daniels.
In the interview, conducted at his Bedminster golf club in New Jersey, Trump recounted the debate around the pardon question during the close of his first term.
"People said, 'Would you like to pardon yourself?' I had a couple of attorneys that said, 'You can do it if you want,'" Trump said. "I had some people that said, 'It would look bad if you do it, because I think it would look terrible.'"
Trump recalled giving a decisive response at the time, in 2021: "Let me just tell you. I said, 'The last thing I’d ever do is give myself a pardon.'"
He added that on his last day in office, "I could have had a pardon done that would have saved me all of these lawyers and all of this — these fake charges, these Biden indictments."
But Trump declined to fully rule out a self-pardon when Welker pressed him about whether he might grant himself one "even if you were re-elected in this moment."
At the same time, Trump said Thursday's indictment of Hunter Biden, the president's son, does nothing to undercut his contention that there are two systems of justice — one for him and one for President Joe Biden's allies.
"There's no question about it," Trump said. "He had a plea deal that was the deal of the century. The art of the deal — you could write a book on it."
Hunter Biden was indicted on federal charges that he obtained a gun by falsely attesting that he was not using drugs. A plea deal he had negotiated with prosecutors fell apart this year. | US Political Corruption |
Your stock portfolio is lately looking a lot beefier thanks to the “midterm miracle.”
Now, let’s top it off with some “gridlock gravy.”
Last fall, I told you stocks were poised for a major bull run.
I noted that – from one Congress to another throughout US history – the nine months starting Oct. 1 before midterm elections have consistently been the most profitable nine-month periods for stocks since 1925.
You may also recall that my forecast wasn’t a majority opinion.
Instead, we got rampant doom-and-gloom over inflation, rate hikes and recession fears.
So what happened in the end? We saw stellar S&P 500 gains through June 30, with a 25.7% rise that topped the 19.5% historical mid-term miracle average and put an end to 2022’s bear market.
What now? Expect more bearish hand-wringing – and more gains.
Stocks usually rise in the back half of presidents’ third years, albeit less strongly.
US stocks were positive in 75% of them. The last negative full third year of any president’s term: 1939’s 0.9% slip during WWII’s eruption.
On that note, investors can expect plenty more headlines on Ukraine – that Ukraine is getting tired, that America is getting tired of sending it weapons – or worse, running out.
But this war won’t stop stocks, as it didn’t after its initial blip.
Regional wars never topple stocks for long, and never have. Only world wars do that.
Back home, as the consensus grows that we’re not headed for a recession, after all (again – a minority opinion last fall that you read here), brace for alarm bells about persistent inflation, and how it might need a more dire response from the Fed — or scarier, tax hikes.
The reality: inflation doesn’t come from excessive economic strength or from government spending, but rather from excess money creation.
The latter has been in hand for quite some time now – and inflation is coming down.
As for the 2024 election, there is plenty of fear about Biden and about Trump.
But it’s worth noting that in every election, we get a winner.
Whether it’s preposterous or not, whoever wins we will like more than we did before.
Election jitters will fade to a bullish tailwind.
(Another bit of good news: Over 83% of presidents’ fourth years – like 2024 – have been positive, averaging 11.4%.)
Which brings us to our secret sauce in the back half of any given administration: gridlock.
The legislative quiet that follows midterms – whether it’s the president’s enemies who have regained control of Congress, or it’s Congress getting split between two parties – zaps uncertainty around new, controversial laws that always create winners and losers.
Political squawking remains, but big bills go nowhere. Political risk aversion falls, juicing stocks.
Further, most presidents shun major legislation as re-election bids near, lest they irk large swaths of voters.
They use unaddressed issues as fundraising bait and campaign promises. Get me re-elected – then I’ll fix it! Politics 101.
Hence, after two years of mega-spending bills, this year features mainly social and foreign policy chatter.
Cluster munitions, NATO negotiations, student loan plans and replans, SCOTUS hype. Important? Maybe. Headline fodder? Yes. But nothing to rattle markets. Pundits shriek. Markets shrug.
It also looks like the 2024 Senate election is tilted toward Republicans.
The GOP currently only has two slightly vulnerable seats – Ted Cruz in Texas and Florida’s Rick Scott.
Meanwhile, Republicans look poised to flip seats held by Democrats in West Virginia, Montana, and very possibly Ohio.
Democrats have five more relatively vulnerable seats.
So, the GOP almost surely wins the Senate regardless of who wins the White House. That also will build business enthusiasm as November approaches.
Perhaps political risk isn’t your go-to source for anxiety.
Look at commercial real estate. Working from home, interest rates and excess capacity are adding up to a spectacular bust.
It might be a Main Street worry, but not for stocks. This story has cried wolf too many times.
Old stories that we know too well lose their market mojo. You can bet on that, always.
In fact, business is upbeat as recession fears ebb, and that augurs for a shift away from the bounceback categories I’ve favored since last fall – big, high-quality growth names, tech or otherwise – toward more traditional industrial and economically sensitive names.
Still, the wall of worry bull markets legendarily climb won’t disappear (see above) and that’s a good thing.
And as inflation wanes slowly but surely, and as slow growth defies recession fears, gridlock also will help keep us in positive territory well into 2024.
Take that to your congressman if you like – and make sure you take it to the bank.
Ken Fisher is the founder and executive chairman of Fisher Investments, a four-time New York Times bestselling author, and regular columnist in 17 countries globally. | US Federal Elections |
Subscribe to Here’s the Deal, our politics
newsletter for analysis you won’t find anywhere else.
Thank you. Please check your inbox to confirm.
Collin Binkley, Associated Press
Collin Binkley, Associated Press
Leave your feedback
WASHINGTON (AP) — House Republicans passed a resolution on Wednesday that would overturn President Joe Biden’s student loan cancellation plan, but the White House has vowed to veto it and the plan remains on hold as the Supreme Court considers its fate.
It adds to the GOP’s ongoing attack on Biden’s one-time student loan cancellation, which was halted in November in response to lawsuits from conservative opponents. The Supreme Court is now weighing the plan after hearing arguments in February. A decision is expected in the coming weeks.
Biden’s plan would cancel up to $20,000 in federal student loans for 43 million Americans. About 26 million had applied for the relief before courts intervened.
The latest Republican challenge employs the Congressional Review Act, which allows Congress to undo recently enacted executive branch regulations. Passing a resolution requires a simple majority in both chambers, but overriding a presidential veto requires two-thirds majorities in the House and Senate.
The vote was 218-203, with two Democrats, Rep. Jared Golden of Maine and Rep. Marie Gluesenkamp Perez of Washington state, supporting it.
Republican Rep. Bob Good of Virginia introduced the resolution in the House in March. Sen. Bill Cassidy, R-La., introduced it in the Senate, which has not taken up the measure.
WATCH: Breaking down the arguments as Supreme Court hears challenge to student loan relief plan
On Monday, the White House promised to veto the resolution if Congress approves it. The debt cancellation is based on “decades-old authority granted by Congress” to protect borrowers from the impact of national emergencies, according to a statement from the Office of Management and Budget.
The GOP resolution is “an unprecedented attempt to undercut our historic economic recovery,” the White House said.
If enacted, the measure would revoke Biden’s cancellation plan and curtail the Education Department’s ability to cancel student loans in the future. It would also rescind Biden’s latest extension of a payment pause that began early in the pandemic.
The measure would retroactively add several months of student loan interest that was waived by Biden’s extension, according to a letter from more than 260 organizations urging Congress to reject it.
Passing it “would immediately force tens of millions of borrowers into abrupt and unplanned repayment with devastating effects,” the coalition said. The action would also end Public Service Loan Forgiveness, a student loan cancellation program for teachers, firefighters and other public workers, the letter said.
About 43 percent of U.S. adults approve of how Biden is handling student debt, according to a recent poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research. That’s similar to his overall approval rating, 40 percent, but better than his ratings on the economy, gun policy and immigration. Biden gets credit for the issue among young adults in particular, with 53 percent under age 30 approving his handling of student loans.
READ MORE: White House proposes ‘student loan safety net’ amid debt forgiveness legal battle
Republicans say Biden overstepped his authority and illegally sidestepped Congress in pursuit of loan cancellation, which was a key campaign promise. Opponents say it’s too expensive and unfairly benefits college graduates at the expense of taxpayers who didn’t go to college.
Democrats say Biden’s plan gives needed relief to Americans hit hardest by the pandemic. They argue that federal law gives the Education Department wide authority to cancel student loans.
The Congressional Budget Office estimates that Biden’s one-time cancellation would cost about $315 billion.
Republicans have escalated their war on Biden’s student loan agenda in recent weeks. Last month, the House passed U.S. debt legislation that would have reversed Biden’s cancellation, ended the repayment pause and barred the Education Department from future debt forgiveness.
The bill, which was seen as dead-on-arrival in the Senate, also aimed to eliminate a new, more generous student loan repayment plan being pushed by Biden.
With neither party wielding a forceful majority in Congress, the Supreme Court could end up with the final say on the debate. The justices have been examining Biden’s plan in response to a challenge by six Republican-led states, along with a separate lawsuit brought by two students.
Support Provided By:
Learn more | US Federal Policies |
The body of the second of two Ohio prison escapees was found floating in the Ohio River on Sunday, authorities said.
Convicted double murderer Bradley Gillespie, 50, was spotted by a boater, Henderson, Ky., Police Chief Sean McKinney said at a news conference.
“A preliminary investigation indicates we recovered the body of Bradley Gillespie from the river,” he said.
Authorities received a call Sunday about a “possible body in the Ohio River” near a boat ramp, police said. Gillespie’s tattoos were some of the clues police used to make the preliminary identification. McKinney said police, firefighters, a coroner’s office and others responded to the tip.
Gillespie’s accomplice, 47-year-old James Lee, was captured Wednesday after the pair stole a car and led police on a chase during a traffic stop near the Kentucky-Ohio border. The 6-foot, 200-pound Gillespie fled on foot, sparking a manhunt that lasted for days.
The Daily News Flash
The two escaped from the Allen/Oakwood Correctional Institution in Lima, Ohio, about 90 miles northwest of Cleveland, on May 22 by hiding in a dumpster. Police offered a $21,000 reward for their capture.
They were found in Henderson, a Kentucky city across the Ohio River from Indiana that’s about 350 miles southwest of Lima. Lee’s prison term for burglary and safecracking began in 2021. Gillespie, convicted in a double homicide, had been in prison since 2016.
Besides murder, Gillespie’s charges included breaking and entering, theft, assault, possession of drugs, escape, forgery, receiving stolen property, weapons offenses and burglary, the Henderson Police Department said.
“The last time Gillespie was known to have been seen before today’s recovery was shortly after he fled from officers on foot at approximately 03:19 hours on the morning of 05/24/2023,” Henderson cops said in a statement.
The fugitive will undergo an autopsy on Tuesday, police said.
A major and three corrections officers have been on administrative leave since the escape, and further actions may be levied against others inside the prison. The Ohio State Highway Patrol is also investigating.
With News Wire Services | US Crime, Violence, Terrorism & cybercrime |
A paedophile who tormented four children could have been stopped three years earlier if prosecutors had taken action when a girl told police he'd sexually abused her, we can reveal.
Andrew Hadwin was found dead in his prison cell earlier this month while awaiting sentence for offences of rape and the appalling mistreatment of children with his partner Cheryl Pickles in a case that horrified the country.
The vile couple tormented children by starving them, feeding them soap, forcing them into boiling hot showers, shutting them in a cupboard and forcing them to stand in 'stress' positions for hours on end.
The malnourished youngsters walked miles to scavenge for food in supermarket bins and they were made to watch Hadwin and Pickles eat takeaway meals and sweets while being deprived of food themselves.
But a MailOnline investigation has found that evil Hadwin could have been stopped in 2015 - three years before police launched a probe in 2018 that finally brought him to justice.
Back then a young girl told police that Hadwin had been sexually abusing her.
Police sent a file to the Crown Prosecution Service, but a decision was made there was 'not a reasonable prospect of conviction' as the case amounted to Hadwin's word against the child.
Had action been taken at this earlier opportunity, years of suffering by children may have been prevented.
At his trial prosecutor Anne Richardson told the jury: 'Even as recently as 2015 sexual allegations made by children were not viewed in the way that they are now by the authorities.'
The same child was interviewed again in 2019 after police opened a fresh inquiry into Hadwin and his then partner Pickles.
Allegations of neglect, sexual abuse and rape were made by the girl against Hadwin, who was ultimately convicted of multiple offences.
But during the intervening period between police inquiries Hadwin and Pickles were responsible for the appalling mistreatment of other children, with one child left with life-limiting injuries as a result of the abuse.
A family member told Mailonline: 'The kids wouldn't have been abused if they had done something the first time he was reported.
'If the authorities had done their job in the first place he would never have been near those kids. If there was enough evidence to convict him this time then surely there would have been enough evidence the first time?'
She described the mistreatment as 'shocking and appalling' and had no idea the pair were behaving in this way. After the police intervention a relative discovered food was also buried in a garden by the young victims, she said.
'In hindsight it's upsetting to think good people were around them when they were starving and didn't know to help,' said the family member.
'Children often complain of being hungry but you just put that down to being kids.'
At the end of a seven-week trial Hadwin was last month found guilty of three counts of rape, seven of child cruelty and perverting the course of justice.
Pickles was convicted of five counts of child cruelty and perverting the course of justice.
The media didn't report on the Teesside Crown Court trial when it was ongoing and details of the case were revealed in a detailed press release from Durham Police immediately following their conviction.
But the press release made no mention of the first police investigation and the decision to reject prosecution in 2015.
Full details of the prosecution case against the couple have now been obtained by the Mail.
The court heard how the rape victim was also beaten by Hadwin and locked in a room with a bucket for a toilet, behaviour Miss Richardson said was 'Medieval.' After the CPS decided against charging Hadwin he started a relationship with Pickles.
They ended up living in a County Durham village and physically abused other children over several years, the court heard.
Evidence was presented to the jury about a child having 'freezing water' poured over their head and being forced to take scolding hot showers.
As well as putting soap in a child's mouth, the youngster's mouth was rinsed out with shampoo.
When taking baths children were also said to have been 'held under the water' by Pickles and to the point they lost consciousness.
Youngsters were so deprived of food one was caught on CCTV stealing from a supermarket.
They were forced to watch the defendants eat sweets and chocolates in front of them.
The couple spent large sums on Just Eat takeaways but the meals 'didn't end up in the children's stomachs.'
Instead the youngsters watched the couple eat them as a 'peculiar form of torture,' said Miss Richardson.
The children were also punished by being forced to stand 'either on one leg or with knees crouched and their hands on their head' sometimes 'all day.'
They were slapped if they couldn't maintain the 'stress' position. Hadwin walked with the aid of a stick and he used it to hit children, the court heard.
While Pickles was said to have stabbed a child in the hand with a knife. That same child was allegedly shut in a cupboard for prolonged periods 'more than 50 times.' One child told of going to school with no breakfast, feeling tired and hungry, and only sometimes being allowed tea.
Two of the children went out in search of sweets and were found by police in the early hours of the morning.
Police were also called when screams were heard from the defendants' home in 2018.
Summarising the behaviour, Miss Richardson said children were 'neglected in every sense, subjected to lack of food, clothing and toys, but also made to endure punishments which were cruel and totally inappropriate for their ages.'
The offences of perverting the course of justice related to the defendants producing forged letters they claimed had been written by a child admitting to telling lies about them and apologising.
Pickles is due to be sentenced on 28 April. Hadwin was found dead in his cell at HMP Durham on 2 February.
The cause of death is not known and an inquest into his death is yet to be opened.
The Crown Prosecution Service said evidence was originally not sufficient to prosecute Hadwin.
A CPS spokesperson said: 'In September 2015, the Crown Prosecution Service received a file of evidence from Durham Police in relation to a complaint of sexual abuse against Andrew Hadwin. After carefully considering the evidence available to the CPS at that time, we took the decision that there was insufficient evidence to secure a realistic prospect of prosecution.
'As a result of the subsequent Durham Constabulary investigation into Andrew Hadwin, the CPS was presented with significant further evidence in June of 2018. We used this evidence to build a robust case against Hadwin, which we successfully prosecuted to secure multiple convictions relating to his criminal offending.' | US Crime, Violence, Terrorism & cybercrime |
Subscribe to Here’s the Deal, our politics
newsletter for analysis you won’t find anywhere else.
Thank you. Please check your inbox to confirm.
Geoff Bennett
Geoff Bennett
Kyle Midura
Kyle Midura
Tess Conciatori
Tess Conciatori
Matt Loffman
Matt Loffman
Leave your feedback
Pennsylvania Sen. John Fetterman announced Thursday that he is in the hospital after voluntarily seeking treatment for clinical depression. Millions of Americans struggle with depression but few politicians ever share their stories publicly. Geoff Bennett discussed this with Jason Kander. He stepped away from a mayoral campaign in 2018 after acknowledging struggles with depression and PTSD.
Geoff Bennett:
Pennsylvania Senator John Fetterman announced today that he is in the hospital after voluntarily seeking treatment for clinical depression.
The senator is still recovering from a stroke last May. His office says he's often experienced depression, but that it became severe in recent weeks. Millions of Americans struggle with depression, but few politicians ever share their stories publicly.
Jason Kander is one of those who has. He stepped away from his mayoral campaign in 2018, after acknowledging he'd struggled in silence with depression and PTSD for nearly a dozen years.
Jason Kander, thank you so much for being with us.
And you praised Senator Fetterman in a tweet today, saying that his decision to be transparent and seeking help is awesome leadership.
Tell me more about that, why the public acknowledgement is so important.
Jason Kander (D), Former Missouri Secretary Of State: Well, look, so many of us tell ourselves stories. It doesn't matter whether you served in the military or whether you didn't. It doesn't matter.
We tell ourselves stories about how whatever we're going through doesn't measure up and doesn't count, right? I mean, I can tell you that one of the benefits of having been public about my own mental health challenges is that I'm a very self-safe place for people to come and talk to somebody and say, here's what I have been going through.
So what that affords me is the knowledge that, like, everybody is going through stuff. And, at the same time, not everybody feels the license, the permission slip to actually deal with that stuff.
And so whether you are a person that people know, like John Fetterman, or whether you're just somebody who the people in your office know, if you are transparent and public and open with people in your life, or people who are — know who you are, and you say, this is what I'm going through, this is what I'm doing about it, that is contagious in a good way.
It causes people to feel that they can give themselves permission to get help. And that saves lives.
You talked about the benefits that you experienced as a public figure navigating this issue.
To be clear, your experience is not Senator Fetterman's experience. But what about the flip side of that? How did being in the public eye, how did that compound things, complicate things for you?
Jason Kander:
Yes.
Well, for one thing, it, I think, for a long time kept me from going to the VA to get help, because I — it was one of many factors that caused me to think I — well, I'm a politician, so I can't be out here admitting this vulnerability.
But, eventually, I did. And then there was an interesting aspect of it. Like, look, when you're going through something, every day is not terrible, right? And, in fact, when you're going to therapy, gradually, a lot of the days start to be better than the day before.
But what the public knows is the last thing that they heard, the last thing they saw, which was, you're going through this thing. So you could be out at the grocery store, and you're feeling pretty good that day, and then somebody takes it upon themselves, very well-intentioned, to be the person who convinces you to feel better.
And then they say something that's kind of awkward, but well-intentioned. And that can be a strange feeling to feel like everybody you meet is now seeing you through this lens of having this mental health issue that you have either been dealing with or at that point may have dealt with.
And it kind of makes you feel like people see you as very fragile. And that's something that — look, I'm very confident that Senator Fetterman, like most Americans that go to get treatment for this, just like any other ailment, any physical ailment, I'm sure that that's going to go very well, and that he's going to be back to feeling like himself.
But what he will reckon with is, when he meets new people or when people regard him, there will be a period of time where they see him through this lens and through this knowledge. But he will learn to navigate that. And he will probably, I would imagine, come to take pride in the idea that he can be sort of an example of getting better, which encourages other people to go get help.
More than 50 percent of Americans will be diagnosed with a mental illness over the course of their lifetime, according to the CDC.
What lessons have you learned from your own journey that might help out others?
I have learned a lot of lessons.. I wrote a book about it, and which — which I'm happy to plug.
But one of, I think, the most important lessons that I would share here is that it's not a contest, that whatever you have been through or haven't been through that have led you to the place where you need some help, it doesn't really matter how you got here.
One of the things I think is so important about what Senator Fetterman is doing here is that, while I got a lot of praise for being public about it, also, our society sort of gives guys like me permission, right? Like, I'm a combat veteran. There's a certain expectation now that somebody like me might have this problem, and there's less judgment, I think, than somebody who is not in this very particular group that society seems to have given a special permission slip culturally to have a mental health problem that they need to overcome.
And so somebody like Senator Fetterman doing this is really important, because I can tell you that so many people come up to me all the time, and they will express some thing that they have been through or something, and they will say, but I didn't go to war or anything.
And I'm always like, that doesn't matter. It's not relevant. What my brain experienced and what your brain experienced, they — my brain doesn't know what you're brain experienced. So it really doesn't matter. Trauma is trauma.
Senator Fetterman, whether it's clinical depression that he's had for a long time that is like any other ailment that he needs to treat, or whether it's related to the trauma of having a stroke last year, or it's a mix of the two, fine. It doesn't matter. You don't need a permission slip. You don't need to justify it. If it's something that you struggle with, go and treat it.
And the last thing I'd say about it is, I think I have made a much greater impact on the world since going to get help than I did prior to it. And I — that, when I think about politicians who — and Senator Fetterman is not the only one now — who have announced that they have gone to get help for some sort of mental health issue, look, I think about the fact — like, what you just said, over 50 percent of people have had these challenges.
I think the number is probably higher than that. Look, if we're going to have people in leadership positions, whether in public office or in the corporate world or whatever, I would just rather they have dealt with their stuff, because I live under the assumption that almost all of us have stuff.
And I'd rather have people in charge who have dealt with that stuff than people who are suppressing that stuff and not dealing with it.
Jason Kander, thanks so much for the thoughtful conversation. Appreciate you.
Thank you, Geoff.
Watch the Full Episode
Geoff Bennett serves as co-anchor of PBS NewsHour. He also serves as an NBC News and MSNBC political contributor.
Tess Conciatori is a politics production assistant at PBS NewsHour.
Matt Loffman is the PBS NewsHour's Deputy Senior Politics Producer
Support Provided By:
Learn more | US Congress |
HijackLoader: The Rising Threat in Cybercrime's Arsenal, Delivering a Payload Punch
Plus, Facebook Messenger Becomes Battlefield for MrTonyScam: Vietnamese Cyber Group's Sneaky Phishing Campaign Targets Accounts
Zscaler ThreatLabz Uncovers the Modular Malware Loader, HijackLoader, and Its Sneaky Techniques
In the ever-evolving world of cybercrime, a new player has emerged on the scene, and it's making waves. Meet "HijackLoader," a malware loader that's been steadily gaining favor within the cybercriminal community. What sets it apart? While it may lack some of the advanced features of other loaders, it compensates with a modular architecture that enables it to utilize various modules for code injection and execution—a rarity in the world of loaders.
First detected in July 2023 by Zscaler ThreatLabz researcher Nikolaos Pantazopoulos, HijackLoader employs a host of tactics to fly under the radar. It deftly uses syscalls to dodge the watchful eyes of security solutions, keeps tabs on processes linked to security software using an embedded blocklist, and employs delays of up to 40 seconds at different stages to postpone code execution.
The initial access point that HijackLoader uses to infiltrate its targets remains shrouded in mystery. However, beneath its anti-analysis cloak, the loader houses a core instrumentation module that facilitates flexible code injection and execution through embedded modules.
To ensure persistence on compromised hosts, HijackLoader ingeniously creates a shortcut file (LNK) in the Windows Startup folder, pointing it to a Background Intelligent Transfer Service (BITS) job.
According to Pantazopoulos, "HijackLoader is a modular loader with evasion techniques, which provides a variety of loading options for malicious payloads. Moreover, it does not have any advanced features, and the quality of the code is poor."
This revelation coincides with Flashpoint's disclosure of an updated version of an information-stealing malware known as RisePro, previously distributed via a pay-per-install (PPI) malware downloader called PrivateLoader. RisePro, written in C++, specializes in harvesting sensitive information and sending it to a command-and-control server in the form of logs.
The ever-evolving landscape of cybercrime also witnessed the discovery of a new information stealer written in Node.js. This malware, distributed through malicious Large Language Model (LLM)-themed Facebook ads and counterfeit websites posing as ByteDance's CapCut video editor, stealthily snatches cookies and credentials from various Chromium-based web browsers.
As the cyber threat landscape continually morphs, these developments underscore the prevalence of stealer infections as a primary vector for initial attacks, enabling threat actors to infiltrate organizations and carry out post-exploitation activities. In this dynamic environment, it's no surprise that cybercriminals are continually innovating to create new strains of stealer malware, such as Prysmax, which boasts a multitude of functionalities designed to maximize impact while evading detection by security tools.
HijackLoader and its counterparts illustrate the relentless evolution of cybercrime, where adaptability and innovation reign supreme, keeping cybersecurity experts on their toes.
Guardio Labs Uncovers a Dangerous Phishing Attack Leveraging Facebook Messenger with High Infection Rates
In a relentless and audacious cyber campaign, a Vietnamese-based group has unleashed a devious phishing attack using Facebook Messenger as its primary vector. This operation, ominously referred to as "MrTonyScam," deploys a clever blend of social engineering and technical sophistication to compromise user accounts with malicious intent.
At the heart of this scheme lies a tiny compressed file attachment that serves as the bait. When recipients are enticed into clicking on RAR and ZIP archive attachments, a meticulously orchestrated chain of events is set into motion. This sequence includes a dropper that fetches the next-stage payload from GitHub or GitLab repositories, followed by an archive file housing a CMD file.
Within this CMD file lurks an obfuscated Python-based stealer, a formidable tool designed to exfiltrate all cookies and login credentials from various web browsers. These ill-gotten digital treasures are then discreetly routed to an actor-controlled Telegram or Discord API endpoint.
The ingenuity of MrTonyScam lies in its strategic use of stolen cookies. Once the thief has what they need, they promptly delete the cookies. This seemingly benign action has a profound consequence - it forcibly logs the victim out of their own account. At this juncture, the scammers pounce, using the stolen cookies to change passwords and assume control.
Although initiating the infection necessitates some degree of user interaction—downloading, unzipping, and executing an attachment—Guardio Labs' disconcerting findings reveal a high success rate. In the past 30 days alone, an estimated one in 250 victims fell victim to this cunning campaign.
The MrTonyScam threat has cast its web wide, with reports of compromises flooding in from various corners of the globe, including the United States, Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Indonesia, Japan, Nepal, Spain, the Philippines, and Vietnam.
As Guardio Labs researcher Oleg Zaytsev points out, "Facebook Accounts with reputation, seller rating, and high number of followers can be easily monetized on dark markets." In essence, these accounts become valuable assets, ripe for exploitation and manipulation.
This discovery comes on the heels of recent revelations by WithSecure and Zscaler ThreatLabz, shedding light on Ducktail and Duckport campaigns targeting Meta Business and Facebook accounts. The common thread of Vietnamese involvement suggests complex relationships and shared tools among cyber threat actors operating in this space, highlighting the growing significance of social media platforms in the cybercriminal ecosystem.
Jobs/Internships:
Wikimedia Foundation - Director of Engineering, Developer Experience - São Paulo, São Paulo, Brazil · Fully Remote
Mews - Senior Product Manager, POS - Barcelona, Barcelona, Spain · Hybrid
Roku - Senior Software Engineer, Platform Portability - Hsinchu, Taiwan · On-site
Coinbase - Product Manager II - Fully Remote
AlixPartners - IT Data Analyst Intern - Hybrid
Chan Zuckerberg Initiative - Data Science Intern, Science - Redwood City, CA (Onsite) · On-site
Temasek - Project Intern, Technology (Python Backend Developer) - Singapore, Singapore
Tesla - Internship, Fullstack Engineer, Infotainment UI (Winter/Spring 2024) - Palo Alto, CA
Thanks for reading Cyber Oracle! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work. | US Crime, Violence, Terrorism & cybercrime |
NEW YORK -- Most taxpayers are interested in filing their taxes directly to the IRS for free, a new report says, and that option will be tested next year.
The IRS has spent the past nine months studying whether U.S. taxpayers want to see a free, e-filing system run by the government — and is now preparing to launch a pilot program.
The prospect of a free, government-run, online tax filing system has been debated for a long time. Supporters argue that the option would make tax return services more equitable and accessible for taxpayers nationwide. But there's also been pushback from some big tax-prep companies.
Now, the IRS plans to launch a pilot program for the 2024 filing season to test a “direct file” system and help the federal government decide on whether to move forward with potentially implementing it in the future, IRS Commissioner Danny Werfel and the Treasury’s Chief Implementation Officer Laurel Blatchford confirmed on Tuesday.
There’s still limited details about the pilot as the agency determines the basic structure of the program, but Werfel said that members of the public will have the option to participate.
The IRS was tasked with looking into how to create a “direct file” system as part of the funding it received from the Inflation Reduction Act, Democrats’ flagship climate and health care measure that President Joe Biden signed last summer. It gave the IRS nine months and $15 million to report on how such a program would be implemented.
The IRS published a feasibility report Tuesday — which lays out taxpayer interest in direct file, how the system could work, its potential cost, operational challenges and more.
The report shows that the majority of surveyed taxpayers would be interested in using an IRS-provided tool to prepare and file their taxes electronically — and that the IRS is “technically capable of delivering direct file, but doing so would require additional resources and add complexity to IRS operations,” Werfel said on a call with reporters.
The IRS's existing free e-file option, available to lower income taxpayers who qualify, will remain in place, he added. Individuals of all income levels can also still submit their returns for free via the mail — although it can take months to process paper returns and taxpayers will still have to buy postage.
The new, direct e-file program being tested “could potentially save taxpayers billions of dollars annually,” said Blatchford, who noted that an individual taxpayer pays an average of $140 preparing their tax returns each year.
The report's initial cost analysis show that a pre-file option run by the IRS “could cost less than $10 per return to provide, and of course would be free to taxpayers — by comparison, simple electronic filing options currently available to taxpayers are around $40.”
The study estimates that annual costs of direct file may range, depending on the program's usage and scope, from $64 million for 5 million users to $249 million for 25 million users.
“We believe today’s announcement is a significant step toward revolutionizing access to the tax system so that it is easier and more equitable. A free and simple direct file service will ensure that more families in America receive the tax benefits they are eligible for," Amanda Renteria, CEO of civic tech nonprofit Code for America, said in a statement.
While supporters applauded the pilot program, critics have expressed skepticism about the IRS taking on the dual roles of both tax collector and tax preparer, arguing that the new service could create a power imbalance between taxpayers and the government.
There's also concern about historic racial disparities and bias seen in the IRS's enforcement of tax laws. In a Monday letter to the U.S. Senate, Werfel confirmed the IRS found that Black taxpayers may be audited at higher rates.
Big tax preparation companies also have millions of dollars to lose if the program comes to fruition. Last year, more than 60 million taxpayers were serviced between Intuit, the parent company of TurboTax, and H&R Block.
Neither H&R Block nor Intuit were immediately available to comment on Tuesday.
An Associated Press analysis shows that Intuit, H&R Block, and other private companies and advocacy groups for large tax preparation businesses, as well as proponents in favor of electronic free file, have reported spending $39.3 million since 2006 to lobby on “free-file” and other matters. Federal law doesn’t require domestic lobbyists to itemize expenses by specific issue, so the sums are not limited to free-file.
Werfel on Tuesday acknowledged concerns surrounding a possible direct file system, notably operational challenges, but maintained taxpayers should chose the filing option that works best for them and that “the IRS cannot run the tax system alone.”
“We rely on an extensive network of partners across tax professional groups, the software communities, the payroll community and countless dedicated organizations that work directly with taxpayers,” Werfel said. “This report changes none of that.” | US Federal Policies |
House Republicans have cast aside Ohio congressman Jim Jordan as the party’s pick to be the next Speaker of the House after he failed to gain support from a majority of the chamber on three separate ballots this past week.
Mr Jordan, a right-wing firebrand whose history of bomb-throwing and obstruction made his brand too toxic for a critical mass of moderate Republicans to stomach him as a replacement for former speaker Kevin McCarthy, lost a secret ballot election during a GOP conference meeting on Friday.
His candidacy for the speakership had been opposed by more than a dozen members on a first vote in the House chamber on Tuesday, with the ranks of his opponents growing on two subsequent roll-call votes, even as members who voted against him – and their staffers and family members – received abuse and death threats from people claiming to support Mr Jordan.
Earlier in the day, Mr Jordan once again failed to win a majority of the votes to become speaker of the House, with three Republicans from swing districts voting against him.
This came after he had delivered a defiant speech and press conference where he compared his bid to to Wright Brothers, Chuck Yeager breaking the sound barrier and the moon landing of 1969.
“I think people just realised he could not get to 217 and so it's time to find someone who can,” Rep Ken Buck (R-CO) told The Independent.
Mr Jordan’s exit came on the 17th day that the House of Representatives has not had a speaker after Rep Matt Gaetz (R-FL) filed a motion to vacate Mr McCarthy as speaker and several Republicans, along with ever Democrat, voted against him. In the aftermath, Republicans nominated House Majority Leader Steve Scalise to replace Mr McCarthy but many hardline conservatives opposed Mr Scalise’s bid and he removed himself from the running.
Rep Nancy Mace (R-SC), who voted to remove Mr McCarthy, decried Mr Jordan’s exit.
“I think it is bulls***,” she told The Independent. “They want to say that we have no plan, Jim Jordan was a good plan.”
Ms Mace criticised the fact that a large numbers of Republicans just voted for Mr Jordan on the floor and then voted to oust him in a secret ballot.
“They just knifed him in secret and in a backroom deal in the basement of the Capitol,” she said. “It’s disgusting.”
But Rep Mike Lawler (R-NY), a Republican from a swing district who opposed Mr Jordan on every ballot, said it was time to move on.
“I think the conference obviously spoke and Jim was gracious and accepting the results and stepping aside so that we can move forward,” he told The Independent. “Obviously, we'll be back on Monday. So any of the candidates that want to be considered will have announced by then and we'll hear what they have to say and make a decision.”
The decision by the House Republican conference will trigger a slew of new candidates running for the top job in the House of Representatives, where the GOP has a thin majority. Republicans have only 221 seats in a body of 435 seats, meaning they can only afford to lose five seats at any given moment.
The House has two vacancies at the moment, reducing the number of votes they can only lose to four. In addition, Republicans are staunchly divided, calling the differing factions the “Five Families.”
Rep Kevin Hern (R-OK) said he would be a qualified candidate for the job as chairman of the archconservative Republican Study Committee, a position many Republican luminaries including Mr Jordan and former vice president Mike Pence held.
“But I mean, listen, as RSC Chairman talking and listening to 176 members this entire year,” he told The Independent. “As part of the five families I've been in every meeting since November of last year with my counterparts.”
Conversely, Dan Meuser of Pennsylvania said he would consider throwing his hat in the ring.
“We had we had three great candidates, and now we're down to we got to find a new one,” Mr Meuser told The Independent.
Other names that have been floated are Budget Committee Chairman Jodey Arrington (R-TX) and Rep Byron Donalds (R-FL), according to Semafor.
“I think that Kevin and Steve and Jim all have this institutional group that supports them, and then the groups that oppose them,” Mr Buck said. In the same way he said other candidates would not have that same institutional opposition.
The end of Mr Jordan’s bid raises significant questions as Congress needs to pass a spending bill in less than a month to keep the US government open. Members of both parties also hope to pass an aid package to assist Israel after a deadly attack from Hamas two weeks ago triggered a military campaign in Gaza.
But legislation cannot pass the House without a speaker. House Republicans scuttled a plan to empower House Speaker Pro Tempore Patrick McHenry on Thursday that likely would have required the votes from Democrats.
Shortly after the announcement, Rep Sylvia Garcia, a Democrat from Texas, was overheard in the elevator laughing about Mr Jordan, a former college championship wrestler who frequently antagonised his Democratic colleagues.
“I didn’t think he could wrestle his way,” to the top, Ms Garcia told people. | US Congress |
With hours to go before ais poised to go into effect, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy announced Saturday he would try to push a short-term funding bill through the House with Democratic help — a move that could keep government open but puts his speakership at risk.
"The House is going to act so government will not shut down," McCarthy said, after an early-morning meeting with the Republican conference Saturday. "We will put a clean funding, stopgap on the floor to keep government open for 45 days for the House and Senate to get their work done."
He told reporters that it would give lawmakers more time to finish work on individual appropriations bills. The measure does not contain funding for Ukraine that was sought by Democrats but opposed by many Republicans. It does, however, include spending for disaster relief.
"Knowing what transpired through the summer — the disasters in Florida, the horrendous fire in Hawaii and also disasters in California and Vermont — we will put the supplemental portion that the president asks for in disaster there, too," McCarthy said.
The House was preparing for a quick vote Saturday on the plan.
"Our options are slipping away every minute," said one senior Republican, Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart of Florida, as he left the private session at the Capitol.
With no deal in place before Sunday,will face furloughs, more than 2 million active-duty and reserve military troops will work without pay and programs and services that Americans rely on from coast to coast will begin to face shutdown disruptions.
The sudden House action would fund government at current 2023 levels for 45 days and provide money for U.S. disaster relief.
McCarthy, Republican of California, will be forced to rely on Democrats for passage because the speaker's hard-right flank has said it will oppose any short-term measure. McCarthy was setting up a process for voting that will require a two-thirds supermajority, about 290 votes in the 435-member House for passage. Republicans hold a 221-212 majority, with two vacancies.
Relying on Democratic votes and leaving his right-flank behind is something that the hard-right lawmakers have warned will risk McCarthy's job as speaker. They are almost certain to quickly file a motion to try to remove McCarthy from that office, though it is not at all certain there would be enough votes to topple the speaker.
"If somebody wants to remove because I want to be the adult in the room, go ahead and try," McCarthy said of the threat to oust him. "But I think this country is too important."
The quick pivot comes after the collapse Friday of McCarthy's earlier plan to pass a Republican-only bill with steep spending cuts up to 30% to most government agencies that the White House and Democrats rejected as too extreme.
Across the Capitol, the Senate also prepared a rare Saturday session to advance its own bipartisan package that is supported by Democrats and Republicans and would fund the government for the short-term, through Nov. 17.
"Congress has only one option to avoid a shutdown — bipartisanship," said Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, Democrat of New York.
Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky echoed the sentiment, warning his own hard-right colleagues there is nothing to gain by shutting down the federal government.
"It heaps unnecessary hardships on the American people, as well as the brave men and women who keep us safe," McConnell said.
The federal government is heading straight into a shutdown that poses grave uncertainty for federal workers in states all across America and the people who depend on them — from troops to border control agents to office workers, scientists and others.
Families that rely on Head Start for children, food benefits and countless other programs large and small are confronting potential interruptions or outright closures. At the airports, Transportation Security Administration officers and air traffic controllers are expected to work without pay, but travelers could face delays in updating their U.S. passports or other travel documents.
An earlier McCarthy plan to keep the government open collapsed Friday due to opposition from a faction of 21 hard-right holdouts despite steep spending cuts of nearly 30% to many agencies and severe border security provisions.
The White House has brushed aside McCarthy's overtures to meet with President Joe Biden after the speaker walked away from the debt deal they brokered earlier this year that set budget levels.
Catering to his hard-right flank, McCarthy had returned to the spending limits the conservatives demanded back in January as part of the deal-making to help him become the House speaker.
After Friday's vote, McCarthy's chief Republican critic, Rep. Matt Gaetz of Florida, said the speaker's bill "went down in flames as I've told you all week it would."
Some of the Republican holdouts, including Gaetz, are allies of former President Donald Trump, who is Biden's chief rival in the 2024 race. Trump has been encouraging the Republicans to fight hard for their priorities and even to "shut it down."
Keshia Butts contributed to this report.
for more features. | US Congress |
Special counsel Jack Smith is still pursuing his investigation into efforts to overturn the 2020 election a month after indicting Donald Trump for orchestrating a broad conspiracy to remain in power, a widening of the probe that raises the possibility others could still face legal peril.
Questions asked of two recent witnesses indicate Smith is focusing on how money raised off baseless claims of voter fraud was used to fund attempts to breach voting equipment in several states won by Joe Biden, according to multiple sources familiar with the ongoing investigation.
In both interviews, prosecutors have focused their questions on the role of former Trump lawyer Sidney Powell.
According to invoices obtained by CNN, Powell’s non-profit, Defending the Republic, hired forensics firms that ultimately accessed voting equipment in four swing states won by Biden: Georgia, Pennsylvania, Michigan and Arizona.
Powell faces criminal charges in Georgia after she was indicted last month by Atlanta-area district attorney Fani Willis, who alleges that Powell helped coordinate and fund a multi-state plot to illegally access voting systems after the 2020 election.
Powell pleaded not guilty to the charges.
Those charges center around a voting system breach in Coffee County, Georgia, a rural, Republican district that voted overwhelmingly for Trump in 2020. Willis’ indictment describes the breach, and Powell’s alleged involvement, as central to the broader conspiracy to overturn the 2020 election results in Georgia.
Powell has also been identified by CNN as one of Trump’s un-indicted co-conspirators listed in Smith’s federal election indictment.
New details about Smith’s ongoing investigation indicate federal prosecutors are scrutinizing a series of voting breaches following the 2020 election that state investigators have been probing for more than a year.
Exactly how this recent line of inquiry fits into Smith’s ongoing criminal investigation remains unclear. Smith’s grand jury in Washington, DC, is set to expire on Sept. 15 but it can be extended beyond then.
The special counsel’s office declined to comment.
Scrutiny of Powell’s fundraising
According to sources, witnesses interviewed by Smith’s prosecutors in recent weeks were asked about Powell’s role in the hunt for evidence of voter fraud after the 2020 election, including how her nonprofit group, Defending the Republic, provided money to fund those efforts.
Powell promoted Defending the Republic as a non-profit focused on funding post-election legal challenges by Trump’s team as it disputed results in key states Biden had won. Those challenges and fundraising efforts underpinning them were all based on the premise that evidence of widespread voter fraud was already in hand.
But according to documents reviewed by CNN and witness testimony obtained by the House select committee that investigated January, 6, 2021, the group was used to fund a desperate search to retroactively back-up baseless claims that Trump’s lawyers had already put forward in failed lawsuits challenging the results in several states.
A series of invoices and communications obtained by election integrity groups including The Coalition for Good Governance and American Oversight show Defending the Republic contributed millions of dollars toward the push to access voting equipment in key states.
In a court filing after her indictment in Georgia, Powell denied involvement in the Coffee County breach but acknowledged that “a non-profit she founded” paid the forensics firm hired to examine voting systems there.
Powell did not respond to CNN’s request for comment.
Questions about conspiracy theories
Smith’s team has specifically asked witnesses about certain conspiracy theories pushed by Powell including that Dominion Voting Systems had ties to former Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez and featured software he used to rig his own election. The software company has previously said the turnout in those Venezuelan elections, not the voting system, was manipulated.
One witness who met with Smith’s team earlier last month, former NYPD Commissioner Bernie Kerik, spoke at length about how Trump allies accessed voting systems in Antrim County, Michigan, shortly after Election Day. Kerik also discussed the origins of a theory that voting machines could switch votes from one candidate to another, according to his lawyer Tim Parlatore.
Kerik also acknowledged the breach of voting systems in Coffee County during his interview with federal prosecutors, Parlatore told CNN, adding that while his client raised the topic, the conversation did not delve into specifics.
Kerik and another witness who met with Smith’s team in recent weeks were both asked if Powell was ever able to back-up her various claims of fraud, including conspiracy theories that foreign countries had hacked voting equipment.
Both were also asked about Defending the Republic and how it was used as a source of funding efforts to find evidence of voter fraud, sources told CNN.
Network of operatives
In addition, special counsel prosecutors have also heard from other witnesses about efforts to breach voting equipment in other states.
In April, an FBI agent and a prosecutor from Smith’s special counsel’s office interviewed a Pennsylvania resident named Mike Ryan, who used to work for a wealthy Pennsylvania Republican donor named Bill Bachenberg.
During his interview, which Ryan described to CNN, Ryan says he told federal investigators that Bachenberg worked with Powell and other Trump lawyers to access voting systems in Pennsylvania and other states after the 2020 election.
Bachenberg, who helped organize Pennsylvania’s fake electors, was subpoenaed by the House select committee last year but there is no public indication he testified. Ryan says he told federal investigators that after the 2020 election Bachenberg was in direct contact with Trump and a host of the former president’s most prominent allies – including lawyers Rudy Giuliani and John Eastman – participating in strategy calls about efforts to overturn the election results in multiple states.
It is unclear if Bachenberg has been contacted by Smith’s team or the FBI. Bachenberg did not reply to requests for comments from CNN.
Breaches in Pennsylvania and Michigan
Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson also told CNN that she’s spoken to investigators at both the state and federal level about the push to access voting systems.
Benson says when she met with Smith’s team earlier this spring, she, like Kerik, was asked specifically about efforts related to Antrim County, Michigan, where Powell and a lawyer named Stefanie Lambert helped fund a team of pro-Trump operatives who accessed voting systems shortly after Election Day in 2020.
The operatives then produced a report claiming votes were flipped from Trump to Biden in Antrim County. That report was then used as supposed evidence to support the dozens of failed lawsuits that Powell filed on Trump’s behalf alleging voter fraud. The report was since debunked.
“I believe the investigation at the federal level is broad and is meticulous and is looking at all the ways in which democracy was attacked in 2020. And so I would expect everything is on the table, every law that was violated,” Benson told CNN last month referring to the special counsel’s interest in efforts to access voting systems.
Lambert was charged last month by state prosecutors in Michigan for her alleged involvement in a conspiracy to access voting machines there. Lambert is also linked to a breach in Fulton County, Pennsylvania, where she provided legal representation for the county itself after two Republican county officials secretly allowed a forensics firm to copy voting machine data in an effort to help Trump overturn his 2020 loss in the state.
The breach is currently the subject of an ongoing probe being conducted by a prosecutor selected by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court.
Lambert and Bachenberg both received copies of voting system data from Fulton County during the breach, according to the recent civil lawsuit that names both individuals.
Lambert has also been identified by CNN as an unindicted co-conspirator in the Georgia indictment, which alleges she worked with Powell to secure voting system data that was copied from Coffee County and was tasked with helping collect invoices from the forensics firm hired through Defending the Republic.
In a statement to CNN, Lambert did not elaborate on her ties to Bachenberg but defended her election-related work, saying, “I am a zealous advocate for my clients. I haven’t broken any laws.”
Emails obtained by American Oversight indicate Bachenberg was involved in discussions about funding for the Arizona audit and helped facilitate a similar review in Pennsylvania.
That same month, Republicans in the Pennsylvania Senate launched a “forensic investigation” of the state’s 2020 election results. | US Political Corruption |
Butch Dill/AP
toggle caption
Alabama Secretary of State Wes Allen speaks during his inauguration on Jan. 16, 2023, in Montgomery, Ala. After pulling Alabama out of the Electronic Registration Information Center, Allen has now announced a new voter database.
Butch Dill/AP
Alabama Secretary of State Wes Allen speaks during his inauguration on Jan. 16, 2023, in Montgomery, Ala. After pulling Alabama out of the Electronic Registration Information Center, Allen has now announced a new voter database.
Butch Dill/AP
Last month, Alabama Secretary of State Wes Allen stood at a podium at the state capitol in Montgomery and announced what he called a novel way for his state to keep its voter lists up to date.
The program, called AVID or the Alabama Voter Integrity Database, will use federal data, as well as voting lists from five other states, to monitor when voters move, die or illegally vote in two different states in the same election.
"We are the first state in the nation to implement a system like this," he said.
But his claim is missing a lot of context.
AVID appears to mimic a bipartisan, cross-state partnership known as the Electronic Registration Information Center, or ERIC, which Alabama was a member of until Allen took office.
He and a number of other Republican secretaries of state abandoned the group earlier this year after the far right began targeting the organization with conspiracy theories. When he vowed to pull Alabama out, Allen himself repeated a conspiracy theory about the involvement of liberal billionaire George Soros in ERIC.
Nine states — all Republican-led — have now withdrawn from ERIC.
They all left without a plan to replace it.
And now, experts and election officials are watching a scattershot effort on the right to essentially recreate what the system produced, with many players — both mainstream and fringe — throwing their hats in the ring to try to capitalize on the data void.
Many details about these evolving projects remain unclear, but the elections community is deeply skeptical that any of them will be able to fully replicate ERIC, which took millions of dollars and years to develop.
"These states have decided that instead of using a wheel, they're going to invent a spherical device that will allow them to easily transport and roll items from A to B," said Josh Daniels, a former Republican county clerk in Utah. "Political officials who made bad choices to exit ERIC now have to make up the difference by essentially reinventing ERIC but without the benefit of years of experience and a system that has improved over time."
ERIC began a decade ago as a partnership between Democratic- and Republican-led states, and it gives its members access to the same federal data Allen cited for Alabama's use.
The compact also facilitates data-sharing between its two dozen or so member states and crucially does so by matching unique identifiers so election officials can feel confident the reports it produces are good enough to act on.
But records reviewed by NPR indicate that recent data-sharing agreements touted by Allen, whose office did not respond to an interview request, as well as other Republican secretaries of state may lack enough detail to yield reliable results.
"I'm not skeptical that they will fail; I know they will fail," said Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes, a Democrat and a former local election official. "ERIC is a system that was very carefully engineered by some of the best [experts] in the country to make sure that we could have a good system to achieve the ends that all of these folks that withdrew were asking for."
"That's the red flag"
Around the same time Alabama's Allen announced AVID, a number of other Republican secretaries of state announced new data-sharing agreements as well — with some even taking veiled shots at ERIC in the process.
"This is a major new development as states look to move beyond the old model of sharing voter data through an unaccountable third-party vendor," said Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose, as he announced partnerships with Virginia, West Virginia and Florida.
The states agreed to share many aspects of their voter rolls with each other, including name, date of birth and voting history.
But the documents formalizing the agreements — many of which NPR reviewed after they were acquired through records requests by the left-leaning transparency group American Oversight — don't include what experts say is a critical component for reliable data comparison: driver's license data. That's a key difference from ERIC, and is important because that data typically contains both a person's driver's license and Social Security numbers.
Michael Morse, an election law professor at the University of Pennsylvania who has researched ERIC and voter registration, said the moment he noticed states weren't sharing DMV data as part of these new agreements, he stopped taking the efforts seriously.
"That's the red flag. As soon as they say that, it's the end of the game," Morse said.
One of the reasons ERIC took so long to develop and roll out is because getting state DMVs on board to share that data is complicated by specific privacy laws. But voter registration lists alone don't generally have enough unique identifiable information to confidently say a voter in one state is the same as one in another state.
"The driver's license data helps integrate voter registration lists by supplementing them with this unique identifier that we often lack," Morse explained.
Without that harder-to-get data, Morse and election officials who spoke to NPR said these new agreements look very similar to a now-defunct program known as Kansas Crosscheck. That program also attempted to compare state voting lists in order to clean voter rolls and find fraud but ran into trouble because of false positives and security concerns.
"We've analyzed Crosscheck and it wasn't successful," Morse said. "I can't see a case in which the state-by-state agreements that don't involve the sharing of confidential information ... can be more accurate than ERIC. They can't be."
In an interview, Ohio's LaRose, who had praised ERIC before pulling his state out in March, conceded that the new partnerships will involve less data being shared between states, but he says Ohio will use them as a starting point for investigations.
"Imagine a massive Excel file or Excel sheet where we make sure that the data columns are lined up the right way, that we have the definitions of those data fields in such a way that they're usable," LaRose said. "And if we find a first, middle, last name and date of birth that matches between us and another state — that somebody with those first, middle and last name and date of birth voted in both states — then that gives us then the ability to launch a more detailed, hands-on, less automated investigation."
It also appears the Republican partnerships are only aiming to recreate the portions of ERIC that align with their political interests.
ERIC provides its member states data that helps election officials both clean up their voter rolls and find voter fraud, but also expand access by notifying states when a person has moved to a new district but hasn't yet registered to vote.
But as an NPR investigation detailed, that second prong related to access has now become a flashpoint in far-right conspiracies. And it appears the Republican state officials are abandoning it for now.
State agreements viewed by NPR don't include any requirements about registering eligible voters. And West Virginia, another former ERIC state, confirmed to NPR that its "primary focus with the [partnerships] is on the fraud component," according to Mike Queen, deputy chief of staff for Secretary of State Mac Warner.
Officials in West Virginia also said they are working to piece together other ways to get data to update their voter lists.
Earlier this year the state paid the credit monitoring service Experian more than $19,000 to pilot a program to help find out-of-date registrations on its lists, and officials are also exploring whether a national driver's license data partnership run by the American Association of Motor Vehicle Administrators can be used to update rolls. Alabama also says it plans to use that partnership for voting list maintenance, but the state has not provided more details on that work.
Conservative activists are seeking a bigger role
It's not just states themselves that are exploring new election data avenues.
The far right has attempted to capitalize on states leaving ERIC, with conservative activists offering to provide their own ways to maintain voter lists.
Maybe the most prominent effort is called EagleAI Network.
The software, which was created by a retired Georgia physician, uses "all public information," according to a planning document reviewed by NPR, and compares state voter lists to other things like newspaper obituaries, property records and rooftop and street pictures.
"EagleAl quickly and efficiently joins extremely large, reliably sourced, publicly available, multi-state and national data sets and points out registration irregularities that then needs evaluation, confirmation and resolution by your County Department of Elections staff and Boards of Election members," the document reads.
Morse, of the University of Pennsylvania, referred to these sorts of efforts as "vigilante maintenance," and said they seem to have many of the same shortcomings as the state partnerships.
"If you see the issue here as you need confidential administrative data to successfully match people across all lists, then you see that the public is not positioned to take over that job. It doesn't work," Morse said. "We may think it should work and we want it to work and we want the public to be involved in that way. But if we want that, we have to address the underlying privacy laws that we have that prohibit that."
Gerard Albert III/Myrtle Beach Sun News/Tribune News Service via Getty Images
toggle caption
Conservative attorney Cleta Mitchell speaks about election integrity at a South Carolina Republican Party event in Myrtle Beach on Aug. 27, 2022. Mitchell has been a key critic of ERIC who's now pushing an alternative called EagleAI.
Gerard Albert III/Myrtle Beach Sun News/Tribune News Service via Getty Images
Many of the far-right figures instrumental in building a backlash against ERIC are now pushing for Republican-led states to use EagleAI, according to material compiled by the nonprofit, left-leaning investigative group Documented and first reported by NBC News. That includes Cleta Mitchell, a prominent conservative attorney who has built a constellation of election denial groups across the country and who helped push false narratives about ERIC on her podcast.
"I think that probably we could get some of the secretaries of state who have withdrawn from ERIC to take a look at this," said Mitchell of EagleAI in March, following a demonstration of the software to a local election integrity group. "You know, I think that they're looking for an alternative."
NPR reviewed emails indicating that West Virginia state election officials have been briefed on the software, and emails acquired by Documented indicated similar briefings may be occurring in other states as well.
Another company trying to jump into the void left by states leaving ERIC is called Fractal. It was started by a man named Jay Valentine, who is a frequent contributor to the fringe conservative website The Gateway Pundit, which NPR found to be instrumental in building false narratives about ERIC.
"We currently manage 1.7 billion voter records, that we believe is the largest such system in existence," wrote Valentine, in a pitch email for Fractal to Texas Secretary of State Jane Nelson on May 23, the same day the Texas House passed a bill that cleared the way for the state to pull out of ERIC. That email was obtained by American Oversight and shared with NPR.
A few months later, Nelson appeared to share an article of Valentine's with her elections staff, with the subject line "interesting article." The article falsely claims that the 2020 election "was a fraud." NPR reached out to the secretary's office for comment Thursday but has not received a response.
In an interview with far-right podcast host Steve Bannon, Valentine said Fractal has received some funding from MyPillow founder Mike Lindell, a prominent election conspiracy theorist.
Voter registration data has long been fertile ground for conspiracy theories, because every year millions of Americans move or die and it's virtually impossible for the country's election lists to stay completely up to date. That's not the same thing as fraud occurring, Morse noted, but for those interested in pushing the narrative that elections can't be trusted, pointing out inaccuracies in the system serves the same purpose.
"The fear is that if you naively mash voter registration lists together, it sounds great and you just generate the appearance of fraud," Morse said. "It's just so easy to do [voter list maintenance] in a poor way and it's so hard to try to do the same thing in a more reliable way." | US Federal Policies |
Biden’s Hope To Kill Debt Limit Evaporates After Recent Deal
The recent debt crisis deal evaporated hopes for now of ending debt ceiling battles once and for all.
(Bloomberg) -- President Joe Biden’s deal with congressional Republicans staved off a federal default crisis for another two years — but also evaporated hopes for now of ending debt ceiling battles once and for all, legal experts and White House allies say.
In the midst of negotiations, Biden said he was tempted to pursue a test case in which federal courts might certify that the Constitution’s 14th Amendment gives the president unilateral authority to override the borrowing cap. Biden said constitutional scholars including Laurence Tribe, a Harvard University professor and occasional adviser, told him the unprecedented executive action could pass constitutional muster.
But by punting that effort until after congressional negotiations wrapped up, several scholars — including Tribe himself — say it’s now much harder for Biden to secure a ruling that would allow him to avert a future fight that threatens to rattle Washington and Wall Street.
“With the crisis having passed, no ‘test case’ would be likely to yield any authoritative adjudication,” Tribe said in an email. “The only solution, in my view, is for Congress to grab this bull by the horns and permanently eliminate the statutory ceiling.”
The White House itself has gone silent on the issue since the deal was reached. White House officials declined to comment when asked directly whether the administration was now or would be pursuing a 14th Amendment ruling with the immediate crisis resolved. Biden himself made no mention of seeking a ruling in a prime-time address he gave after resolving this year’s fight.
And White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said earlier this month that Biden believed the debt ceiling “is something for Congress to kind of deal with.”
Untested Powers
The notion of using the 14th Amendment to avoid a debt-ceiling breach has been hotly debated in recent years. A provision of the amendment says the validity of US public debts “shall not be questioned.” But whether that allows a president to keep accruing debt has not been adjudicated by courts.
Biden in May gave his most candid assessment yet of what extraordinary powers a president may have in the event Congress didn’t suspend or raise the ceiling.
“I’ll be very blunt with you: When we get by this, I’m thinking about taking a look at, months down the road, to see whether, what the court would say,” Biden said. “I think that only solves your problem if, once the court has ruled that it does apply for future endeavors.”
The comments marked a potential shift. During the Obama administration, Justice Department lawyers examined the issue and ultimately concluded the 14th Amendment wasn’t a viable pathway for averting a debt-ceiling breach — though that legal opinion has never been released publicly.
The current deal, which saw Democrats agree to moderate spending cuts and welfare reforms in exchange for suspending the ceiling until 2025, saps the urgency that may have been needed for a firm ruling.
“I don’t even know how the president could even get a test case at this point,” said Michael W. McConnell, professor at Stanford Law School.
Eric Posner, a professor at the University of Chicago Law School, agreed, saying he could not think of a way for the White House to seek a definitive ruling that would allow a president to bypass Congress in the future.
Federal courts are limited to adjudicating actual cases, Tribe said, but reiterated his belief that if judges were faced with a case on whether the 14th Amendment could be used for extra borrowing to avoid a default, they would treat the amendment as binding.
“Courts would probably avoid actually reaching the merits and, in any event, I don’t think a judicial solution would avoid the economic turmoil that the uncertainty itself would cause,” he cautioned.
The recent standoff fueled questions over what extreme or untested unilateral powers the administration would use in the event of a potential breach. Others include prioritizing payments or even minting a trillion-dollar coin — an idea Biden brushed aside.
Earlier: US Debt Limit’s Bad Options: The Coin, Premium Bonds and More
McConnell said he thinks the 14th Amendment option is a baseless legal theory and that he doubts a ruling would bring clarity.
“I can’t envision how it would work. And even if we were still up against the crisis – if the debt limit had not been increased and we still were facing the possibility of an imminent default – even then I don’t quite see how the 14th Amendment issue gets to court,” he said.
Tribe has called for Congress to kill the borrowing cap, but McConnell says it should stay.
“It would be a real mistake to get rid of it. I believe Congress has and should have the power of the purse,” McConnell said. “I think on the whole the debt limit serves a useful function.”
More stories like this are available on bloomberg.com
©2023 Bloomberg L.P. | US Federal Policies |
Feds, you'll need a warrant for that cellphone border search
Here's a story with a twist
A federal district judge has ruled that authorities must obtain a warrant to search an American citizen's cellphone at the border, barring exigent circumstances.
It is the first US court to do so, to the delight of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which along with other advocacy groups has been fighting for years to narrow the scope of border searches. Under current law, US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) can search anyone within 100 miles of an American national line, which covers a lot of people.
"EFF is thrilled about this decision, given that we have been advocating for a warrant for border searches of electronic devices in the courts and Congress for nearly a decade," said Sophia Cope, senior staff attorney, in a statement Tuesday.
Cope expressed hope that the US Second Circuit will adopt the lower New York court's interpretation if the case – United States vs. Smith (1:22-cr-00352-JSR) – is appealed.
The suck zone
Under the Fourth Amendment of the US Constitution, people in America should be protected from unreasonable search and seizure – specifically, searches conducted by authorities without probable cause. But there's a distance factor to be added in.
The CBP is afforded exceptional leeway to scrutinize the people and objects coming and going across the US border. The agency maintains [PDF] it can conduct warrantless searches at the border, an area that includes land border crossing points, seaports, and airports. And this border search exception, with some limitations requiring reasonable suspicion for invasive searches, has been supported by US courts.
The border however turns out to cover most of America in terms of population. Since 1953, the US Department of Justice has defined the border to be anywhere within 100 miles of the actual national limits.
- US border cops harvest info from citizens' phones, build massive database
- Secret Service, ICE break the law over and over with fake cell tower spying
- Lab explores dystopian future of AI helping cops catch criminals
- Are US border cops secretly secreting GPS trackers on vehicles without a warrant? EFF lawyers want to know
According to the American Civil Liberties Union, about two-thirds of the people in the US live within 100 miles of a border. So in theory these 200 million border zone dwellers could have their phones seized and searched at any time by CBP agents without a warrant.
The issue came up last year in United States vs. Smith. CBP detained defendant Jatiek Smith upon his return to Newark airport in New Jersey from Jamaica, and forced the US citizen by threat of indefinite detention to surrender his cellphone and password – an act of coercion that in this instance, according to Judge Jed Rakoff of the Southern District of New York, does not violate the Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination.
The agents reviewed the phone manually then imaged it without a warrant. Several weeks later, the government sought and obtained a search warrant. Smith sought to suppress the evidence gained from that search by claiming his rights were violated.
Judge Rakoff found Smith's Fourth Amendment argument against the search compelling, in light of the US Supreme Court's decision in Riley v. California (2014). In that case, the Supreme Court determined that police must get a warrant to search the cellphone of an arrested suspect. The Fourth Amendment protects against unreasonable searches and seizures.
"Copying and searching a traveler’s phone during a border crossing bears little resemblance to traditional physical border searches historically permitted without probable cause under the Fourth Amendment’s 'border search exception,'" Judge Rakoff wrote in his opinion and order [PDF].
"Rather, such searches extend the government’s reach far beyond the person and luggage of the border-crosser – as if the fact of a border crossing somehow entitled the government to search that traveler’s home, car, and office. The border search exception does not extend so far."
Crucially, the judge wrote:
As such, the court concludes that the government may not copy and search an American citizen's cellphone at the border without a warrant absent exigent circumstances.
If you're wondering whether that applies to non-citizens, the ruling added as a footnote: "The court need not here address whether the same result would hold for a non-resident or non-citizen."
The above was not enough to get Smith completely off the hook. Rakoff accepted that the CBP agents had acted in good faith – the agents believed they were authorized to conduct the search and later obtained a warrant – so he declined to suppress the evidence gathered from Smith's phone on that basis.
We ought to point out that Smith has been accused of running a brutal gangland extortion ring, hence the Feds' interest in him and the contents of his gadgets. According to prosecutors, Smith and others took over a Brooklyn-based company that cleans up fire-damaged properties, and then used that business "to extort other participants in the fire mitigation industry and to assert control over the industry using violence and threats of violence."
Smith is also a convicted sex offender and drug dealer who has been in and out of prison.
Nonetheless, it's reassuring to know the judiciary warming to its arguments that searching phones is different from searching luggage. ® | US Federal Policies |
Former President Donald Trump, the leading GOP candidate in 2024, is formally backing the Republican National Committee (RNC) “Bank Your Vote” initiative to push to get as many Republicans nationwide to vote early in 2024, Breitbart News has learned exclusively.
“Radical Democrats have abused and taken advantage of absentee and early voting laws to build a big lead over Republicans before election day,” Trump says in a new video recorded for the RNC and provided to Breitbart News exclusively. “While Republicans have worked to share our beautiful values with voters, Democrats and dangerous groups funded by the far left have simply focused on collecting ballots. That’s all they wanted to do—collecting ballots. But you know what? It turned out to be not such a bad idea. This must change for us to win in 2024. We may not like the current system, but we need to master the rules and beat the Democrats at their own game, and then we can make our own rules. Republicans must get tougher and fight harder to cast our votes and get our ballots turned in earlier so Democrats can’t rig the polls against us on election day. We cannot let that happen. They rigged the election in 2020—we cannot let that happen in 2024.”
Trump continues in the video by specifically praising the RNC’s new program. The RNC program encourages Republicans to engage in early voting in-person, absentee and mail voting, and ballot harvesting where legal. The fact that Trump is backing these efforts is a very big development for the party, especially given his history of ripping election issues.
“The RNC is leading the fight to help secure your vote in 2024 as well,” Trump says. “They’re fighting bad Democrat laws, putting folks on the ground to serve as poll workers and poll watchers, and engaging attorneys to monitor every step of the process. Go to BankYourVote.com to sign up and commit to voting early… We must defeat the far left at their own game or our country will never recover from this disastrous, crooked Biden administration.”
WATCH: TRUMP BACKS GOP’S ‘BANK YOUR VOTE’ PUSH:
Trump’s push for Republican voters to embrace the rules of elections as they are now—while pushing for changes later—echoes something he told Breitbart News late last year, right after he announced his 2024 candidacy.
“The best thing would be same-day voting, paper ballots, voter ID, et cetera,” Trump said in December 2022 in Miami in an interview with Breitbart News, reiterating his belief that changes are needed to the system. However, he said, until Republicans regain power and can change the voting laws, they have to fight like Democrats do under the current rules.
“For the time, though, we have to live with the system that stinks, so we have to fight it like they do,” Trump told Breitbart News then.
The RNC announced the “Bank Your Vote” initiative back in early June, with chairwoman Ronna McDaniel and other top party leaders endorsing the effort.
“To beat Joe Biden and the Democrats in 2024, we must ensure that Republicans bank as many pre-Election Day votes as possible,” McDaniel said in a statement then. “The RNC is proud to build on our historic efforts from last cycle and work with the entire Republican ecosystem to reach every state. Banking votes early needs to be the focus of every single Republican campaign in the country, and the Republican National Committee will lead the charge.”
In conjunction with the RNC, the National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC) and National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC) have also joined the push to bank votes ahead of the election. NRCC chairman Rep. Richard Hudson (R-NC) appointed Trump-backer Rep. Byron Donalds (R-FL) to lead the effort for the NRCC and NRSC chairman Sen. Steve Daines (R-MT)—who also backs Trump—appointed fellow Trump-backer Sen. Bill Hagerty (R-TN) to lead the senate-side push.
“I am proud to co-chair the RNC’s efforts to activate Republicans to ‘Bank Your Vote’ before Election Day,” Donalds said then. “With innovative technology to educate voters and safeguards in place to secure the process, Republicans are prepared to win up-and-down the ballot in 2024.”
“To take back the White House and Senate and strengthen our House majority in 2024, Republicans must play the game by today’s rules, which means maximizing our efforts to bank votes before Election Day,” Hagerty added. “We cannot afford to sacrifice most of the opportunities to bank votes in key states while Democrats run up the score. Encouraging Republicans to securely ‘Bank Your Vote’ is the only way to protect the vote and reclaim our out-of-control government. I’m pleased to work with leaders across the Republican Party, from the Senate to the House, our Governors, and the RNC on this important effort to deliver victories nationwide next November.”
Per the RNC, the comprehensive vote-banking effort that Trump now formally supports will comprise multiple fronts from digital and data to ground game to strategic messaging. The RNC’s data team will work with its digital team to identify voters likely to vote early, and use digital efforts to communicate with those voters. The party’s field operations, which have led efforts to knock on hundreds of millions of doors in the past couple election cycles, along with a nationwide group of volunteers, activists, and staff—the RNC’s election integrity team has 80,000 members nationwide—will, per the Party, make direct contacts with these people to ensure as many votes as possible are banked early. | US Federal Elections |
Candidate debates in Arizona to change for 2024 following challenges in last election. What to know
Candidate debates in next year's elections will see a new format, more advertising and working journalists as moderators under a plan approved by the Citizens Clean Elections Commission.
The publicly funded commission convened a work group this spring to take a fresh look at the debate process after the flurry of debates last year when every statewide office, from U.S. Senate to governor to treasurer, was on the ballot, said Gina Roberts, the commission's voter education director.
That cycle saw a meltdown just hours before the debate among Republican gubernatorial candidates last summer. Kari Lake threatened to not participate when she learned that Arizona Republic reporter Stacey Barchenger, who covered the heated gubernatorial race, would serve as one of the moderators. Lake objected to Barchenger's coverage.
The commission did not know of Barchenger's participation, which was arranged by Arizona PBS, which broadcast the debate. Barchenger was removed as a co-moderator.
During the general election campaign in the fall, Democrat Katie Hobbs declined to participate in the commission-sponsored governor's debate. Lake, who did not object to the debate format, then accepted a one-on-one interview sponsored by the commission.
But the commission abruptly canceled that interview when it learned that PBS had offered Hobbs a separate interview, not arranged by the commission.
The commission later sponsored a one-on-one interview with Lake on a different media channel and conducted by conservative talk show host Mike Broomhead.
Roberts said the controversy played a minor role in the discussions held by the work group.
How candidate debates in Arizona will change
One of the group's recommendations, approved on a 3-0 vote Thursday by the commission, is to create a moderator pool composed of local journalists.
By having a roster of potential moderators set up well in advance, candidates would have fair notice of who would run their debates, Roberts said.
The commission's 3-0 vote also gave the go-ahead to rework the format of legislative debates.
No longer will all candidates in a given legislative district participate in one debate, regardless of whether some are running for the state Senate while others seek a House seat. Going forward, the debates will pair candidates who are running for the same seat.
“That way, only the true opponents are debating each other," Roberts said.
The old format sometimes resulted in a Republican candidate for, say a House seat, rebutting a Senate Democratic candidate — even though the two would not face each other head-to-head on the ballot, Roberts said.
The change, she said, will hopefully attract more candidates to participate. Only candidates who use the state's publicly funded campaign finance program, which the commission oversees, are obligated to participate in debates. However, privately funded candidates often participate as well.
The work group, recruited by the commission as well as through an open public invitation, won praise for its diversity from Commissioner Mark Kimble, who served as chair. Members included representatives of both major parties, current and former candidates, and the media, including top editors from The Arizona Republic.
Tom Collins, the commission's executive director, said the group's diverse membership proved that people with differing ideologies and backgrounds can work together toward a common goal.
The changes, including broader outreach to raise awareness of the debates, hopefully will raise the debates' profile.
"The Clean Elections debates are the official debates in Arizona," Collins said. | US Federal Elections |
- As the Supreme Court weighs President Joe Biden’s student loan forgiveness plan, college tuition keeps climbing.
- This year’s incoming freshman class can expect to borrow as much as $37,000 to help cover the cost of a bachelor’s degree, according to a recent report.
College is only getting more expensive. Tuition and fees plus room and board at four-year, in-state public colleges rose more than 2% to $23,250, on average, in the 2022-23 academic year; at four-year private colleges, it increased by more than 3% to $53,430, according to the College Board, which tracks trends in college pricing and student aid.
Many students now borrow to cover the tab, which has already propelled collective student loan debt in the U.S. past $1.7 trillion.
This year's incoming freshman class will rely on loans even more in pursuit of a degree at a public college or university, a new report shows.
A 2023 high school graduate could take on as much as $37,300, on average, in student debt to earn a bachelor's degree, according to a NerdWallet analysis of data from the National Center for Education Statistics.
The share of parents taking out federal parent PLUS loans to help cover the costs of their children's college education has also grown, NerdWallet found.
The report factors in that it now takes an average of five years to complete a four-year degree, given that more undergraduates are putting their education on hold.
And even if the justices rule in favor of the Biden Administration's initiative to provide debt relief to low-to middle-income borrowers, students and their parents should not assume this would happen again going forward, according to Kalman Chany, a financial aid consultant and author of The Princeton Review's "Paying for College."
"Such broad relief as was announced last August citing the financial harms of the pandemic is not likely to occur again," he said.
"Nobody should assume future forgiveness as they make borrowing decisions today," added Rick Castellano, spokesman for education lender Sallie Mae.
Experts say reducing the amount you borrow at the outset will go a long way to easing your long-term debt burden.
Castellano advises families to explore free money like scholarships and grants first and get in line for other aid by completing the Free Application for Federal Student Aid, or FAFSA.
"Borrowing can be important step, but it shouldn't be the first step," Castellano said. Further, "when it comes time to borrow, it's critical to do so responsibly and not overborrow," he added.
There are several strategies that can help, but a "good rule of thumb is never to incur more debt than the annual salary one will receive at their first job after having been graduated," Chany said.
For those already struggling under the weight of student debt, borrowers have a little more time without a student loan bill, although the U.S. Department of Education indicated that the payment pause could end as soon as August. | SCOTUS |
I’m not the sort of person to wager money on Supreme Court rulings based on the tenor of oral arguments, but TNR contributor Matt Ford was one of many high court observers who thought there was reason to believe the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau—which has served as an advocate for ordinary Americans against a slew of fast-fingered corporate crooks—may just survive its day in court. Should the CFPB prevail, it will buck some significant trends: one being the recent Supreme Court’s antipathy toward Democratic governance and the administrative state in general, the other being the longer-running winning streak that corporate interests have enjoyed at the high court for as long as anyone can remember.
But whether we’re poised to celebrate the CFPB’s unlikely survival or soon to mourn its demise, it’s worth reflecting on the agency’s mission and urging Democrats not just to continue it but to make the idea of protecting ordinary people from corporate thieves and cheats even more central to the party’s identity. Obviously, that work will only be more difficult if the CFPB goes down—should the Roberts court do the deed, liberals must add its demise to the larger portfolio of complaints that have driven public esteem of the court to new lows. But even if it emerges unscathed, a passion for protecting the little guy from a universe of crooks should be fomented and channeled with renewed vigor, as should a commitment to making consumer protection a vital avenue of the party’s policymaking zeal and its political fury.
As the Public Interest Research Group recently recounted, the CFPB has some hefty accomplishments to its name. The agency, which is often referred to as Elizabeth Warren’s brainchild, has recouped $17.5 billion worth of consumer money. This year alone, it’s prevailed against a slew of foes, from big banks to shady data brokers, and offered guidance to help ordinary people avoid pitfalls and hang onto their hard-earned money. These are victories that Democrats should savor and tout, in the same way cops do when they force scofflaws to do a public perp walk, their seized assets left on a table as Instagrammable trophies.
There’s a simple idea here: It should be politically toxic to rip people off. One suspects that everyone who opposes the CFPB’s mission is aware of how it looks to throw in with plutocratic con men, which is probably why Big Business has confronted the agency in crab-walk fashion, sidling up to the supposed cracks in its constitutional edifice rather than challenge it frontally by going to bat for every unreliable fiduciary and financial scam artist in Christendom.
It’s somewhat significant that in this most recent case, it’s the ultimate financial bottom-feeders serving as plaintiffs: payday lenders, who I once described as being fit for only two purposes—“to encircle the working poor in inescapable cycles of crushing debt, and to continually generate plausible-sounding reasons for why a civilized society should continue to allow [them] to exist.” I suppose you can add “front-running for the entire financial services sector against the country’s consumer watchdog” to that brief—an advantage seized from having a toilet reputation in the first place.
Democrats, of course, haven’t always walked the right side of the street where consumer protection is concerned. Scofflaws of all varieties, from payday lenders to big banks, have found allies on the left side of the aisle far too often. This needs to change: The CFPB is an important part of the Democratic Party’s legacy. The taxpayers who ponied up billions of dollars to bail out the banking industry after the 2008 financial crisis got little thanks and almost nothing in return for their generosity. The CFPB is the only monument to their sacrifice; the only gift they got in return.
This is a ripe time to renew this past promise. Democrats will go into the 2024 election seeking once again to define Trump as an illiberal force bent on soiling our civic fabric, thus building on the pro-democracy message of the 2022 midterms—which pundits pooh-poohed but voters embraced. Democrats will also likely make hay out of the GOP’s antipathy to abortion rights and the post-Roe dystopia it engendered and is now trying to avoid talking about. But there’s room for Democrats to diversify their portfolio of enemies, and consumer protection allows them to take on targets that are less partisan but just as political—adding some “right versus wrong” to a message that’s already full of “left versus right.”
Moreover, consumer protection is a cause that provides ample opportunity to freeze Republicans in disadvantageous positions: It’s pretty effective politics to campaign against the crooks who are plundering everyone’s American dream one dime at a time. If Democrats invite Republicans to weigh in on whoever ends up in the consumer protection crosshairs, they can either agree and help Democrats forge bipartisan consensus or they can disagree and get implicated as enablers. Democrats can tether their consumer protection zeal to their pro-democracy arguments as well: Certainly the clear consequences of a Trump win will be an executive branch that’s not just hostile to consumer interests but likely to pervert the cause of consumer protection as a weapon against its political enemies.
As former TNR contributor Brian Beutler noted, in a recent edition of his Off Message newsletter, Democrats have recently struggled to recover the “confidence and combative energy they’d developed by the end of George W. Bush’s second term,” their “fighting spirit” replaced by a data-driven, poll-tested “spirit of timidity.” Well, the quickest way to get back in the ring is to start naming foes and picking fights. President Joe Biden has seeded the terrain by making the purveyors of junk fees one of his administration’s enemies. But this is a fun fight everyone should join.
This article first appeared in Power Mad, a weekly TNR newsletter authored by deputy editor Jason Linkins. Sign up here. | SCOTUS |
Rep. Matt Gaetz’s GOP colleagues are looking to boot him as the firebrand Florida lawmaker leads a push to oust House Speaker Kevin McCarthy.
Long peeved by Gaetz — who has targeted GOP leadership and undercut his party repeatedly — some Republicans are champing at the bit to expel the congressman if the House Ethics Committee investigating him finds wrongdoing, Fox News reported Sunday.
“No one can stand him at this point. A smart guy without morals,” one lawmaker told the outlet.
Gaetz, who is rumored to be eyeing a run for Florida governor, brushed aside the threat, posting a “Game of Thrones” meme.
A motion to expel requires a two-thirds vote to go through, meaning Democrats will hypothetically need to come on board, given the 221 to 212 Republican to Democrat makeup of the lower chamber.
Gaetz has professed his innocence on the ethics probe, which is reportedly nearing its conclusion.
The investigation is said to center around allegations that include sexual misconduct, illicit drug use and potential public corruption.
Republicans have a razor-thin four seat majority in the lower chamber, which means that Gaetz poses an outsized threat to McCarthy’s speakership.
His motion to vacate, which he plans to introduce this week will require a simple majority to pass.
“I think we need to move on with new leadership that can be trustworthy. Look, the one thing everybody has in common is that nobody trusts Kevin McCarthy. He lied to Biden. He lied to House conservatives,” Gaetz told CNN “State of the Union” host Jake Tapper.
McCarthy, in turn, has expressed confidence that he will prevail if a motion to oust him is presented.
“So be it. Bring it on. Let’s get over with it and let’s start governing,” McCarthy told CBS’ “Face the Nation” on Sunday.
“I’ll survive,” he added. “You know this is personal with Matt. Matt voted against the most conservative ability to protect our border. He’s more interested in securing TV interviews than doing something.”
Democrats have signaled they’ll want concessions if they are to throw him a lifeline and spare him from the forthcoming mutiny.
Earlier this year, Justice Department officials advised against charging Gaetz for wrongdoing in the probe against him for sex trafficking.
The House Ethics Committee has reportedly been examining since, though not many details about the inquiry are known.
McCarthy publicly alleged the underpinning of Gaetz’s animosity toward him is his refusal to intervene in the ethics review.
Gaetz has denied that.
“Not at all, Jake. I am the most investigated man in the United States Congress. I’ve been cleared by the DOJ, the FEC by a five-zero vote and the people who spread criminal lies about me are sitting in federal prison right now,” Gaetz told CNN Sunday. “I’m fine being investigated.”
Catalyzing Gaetz’s recent push to give McCarthy the boot is the recent spending patch McCarthy brought to the House floor Saturday to stave off a government shutdown.
That bill kept the government’s lights on until Nov. 17 and allocated $16 billion to domestic disaster relief.
Gaetz has vehemently opposed temporary spending patches like that and a slew of Republican holdouts have howled over the lack of gains for conservatives. | US Congress |
- The House will vote Tuesday on Rep. Jim Jordan's bid to become speaker.
- Jordan did not appear to have enough Republican votes to secure the gavel as of Tuesday morning.
- The House has been leaderless for two weeks after eight GOP lawmakers ousted former speaker Kevin McCarthy.
- The lower chamber is in a state of paralysis, unable to move forward with President Joe Biden's request for emergency security assistance for Israel.
The House of Representatives will vote Tuesday on whether Rep. Jim Jordan will become its next speaker, two weeks after a faction of hardline Republican lawmakers ousted then-Speaker Kevin McCarthy and threw the lower chamber into chaos.
The House will come to order at noon ET with the vote scheduled to begin at around 12:30 p.m.
The Judiciary Committee chairman can only afford to lose four Republicans out of 221 and still win the gavel. Yet as of Tuesday morning, there remained at least six GOP members publicly opposed to Jordan, and another handful who had yet to say how they would vote.
The deeply divided Republican conference has so far been unable to coalesce around a candidate for speaker after McCarthy's ouster. House Majority Leader Steve Scalise was the party's original nominee to replace McCarthy, but he was forced to abandon his bid last week after he could not secure the votes.
McCarthy himself faced 15 rounds of voting before he secured the gavel in January. Jordan has said he wants the House to keep voting today until it chooses a speaker, suggesting Jordan intends to wear down his opposition on the House floor.
The House has been leaderless for two weeks after a faction of eight Republicans led by Rep. Matt Gaetz of Florida ousted McCarthy in an unprecedented no-confidence vote.
Democrats refused to come rescue McCarthy's speakership, which lead to his downfall. They have no incentive do Jordan any favors either, a hard-right Republican and close ally of Donald Trump who is leading an impeachment inquiry against President Joe Biden.
This means Jordan has to rely entirely on his party's narrow majority. Democrats are backing House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries of New York.
The leadership vacuum in the House has put Congress in a state of paralysis, unable to move forward with important national security legislation amid rising tensions and escalating conflict around the world.
Biden and Republican national security hawks like House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Michael McCaul of Texas have warned the leadership vacuum in the lower chamber is dangerous.
The president has called on Congress to pass emergency security assistance for Israel after the devastating Hamas terrorist attacks, as well as for Ukraine as Kyiv is running out of time to push Russia back before the weather makes military operations more difficult.
This is a developing story. Please check back for updates. | US Congress |
Trump’s Second-Term Agenda: Turn the DOJ From His Prosecutor to His Biggest Defender
With a potential Trump victory, Inauguration Day 2025 would likely mean the end of the federal criminal cases and DOJ support to stymie Georgia and New York
Donald Trump’s four indictments have come to define his 2024 presidential bid. The historic criminal charges are at the core of his message to voters, how he generates big donations and where he’s spending precious campaign time.
They’re also guaranteed to be at the center of Trump’s first big explosive moves should he win a second term: Seeing to it on Inauguration Day 2025 that his two federal criminal cases go away - and to sidetrack, if not kill, the state cases too.
That’s the consensus from interviews with more than a dozen people across the political spectrum — MAGA supporters, policy experts, former Trump lawyers, ex-Justice Department officials from both GOP and Democratic administrations and some of the former president’s biggest critics.
At least some guard rails would remain in a second Trump term. No one doubts Trump would face serious political opposition and landmark legal challenges that test the American system and raise questions like nothing the country and its courts have seen before. Should Trump win the presidency but Democrats are successful in retaking the House of Representatives, impeachment would likely jump back to the top of the agenda over any moves to kill his criminal cases. But even with that constitutional backstop, almost every interview The Messenger conducted in recent weeks came to a similar conclusion: that Trump could almost instantly make the Justice Department shift footing from prosecuting him over mishandling classified documents and trying to overturn the 2020 election results to instead becoming once again his biggest legal defender.
"It would be done," said former Trump White House lawyer Ty Cobb. "There's zero doubt."
Added Akhil Reed Amar, Yale University’s Sterling Professor of Law and Political Science and a Trump critic: “The presidency is a very powerful office. He would be in a position to do many things.”
“Who's gonna say no to him now?” former Virginia GOP Rep. Barbara Comstock, a frequent critic of Trump’s, said last Wednesday night during a panel discussion in Washington, D.C. hosted by the conservative group, the Society for Rule of Law.
- Trump Knew Proper Declassification Process and Followed it During His Term, an Ex-White House Official Told DOJ Prosecutors
- Trump’s New Florida Indictment Shows Jack Smith May Have Flipped His Employee
- As Trump Lobs Threats at a Georgia Co-Defendant, His Fulton County Prosecutor So Far Maintains Silence
- Trump’s Legal 101: Debunking Five of the Ex-President’s Myths About His Criminal Cases
- Trump Campaign Defends Truth Social Post Flagged by DOJ: ‘The Definition of Political Speech’
- DOJ Opposes Televising Trump’s DC Trial
‘The American voters are on notice of what President Trump could do’
When it comes to the swirling mass of criminal allegations connected to his first term, Trump’s second term plans are no real secret.
He’s talked openly for more than a year about potentially pardoning January 6 rioters. In April, Trump's campaign posted one in a series of videos promising if re-elected to make it is "personal mission to restore the scales of justice in America."
Former aides unaffiliated with the Trump campaign stationed at the Heritage Foundation have crafted a policy playbook that proposes major overhauls at DOJ, including ending the 10-year term for Trump-appointed FBI Director Chris Wray and an immediate review of all major FBI investigations and activities with a plan to “terminate any that are unlawful or contrary to the national interest.”
Recent reporting by The New York Times and The Messenger has centered around other efforts underway to stock a new Republican White House and its DOJ with loyalist lawyers willing to make the kinds of decisions Trump’s first-term counselors wouldn’t.
Trump’s calls for revenge against his political enemies were prominent during the 2016 White House race but now carry a much more specific and threatening tone since the 77-year old former president is a defendant in four different jurisdictions where convictions could amount to significant prison time.
“If I happen to be president and I see somebody who’s doing well and beating me very badly, I say, ‘Go down and indict them.' They’d be out of business. They’d be out of the election,” Trump told Univision in an interview that aired Thursday.
Peter Strzok, a former FBI agent who landed in Trump’s cross hairs for leading the early stages of the bureau’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election, said the former president’s campaign rhetoric is not cryptic.
“He doesn’t hide anything,” Strzok said. “It’s not complicated. It’s out there. Get rid of as many people and get in as many loyalists as he possibly can. And turn the government into an instrument of his will and desire to turn it into a patronage system. It’s not hidden. He’s not talking out of both sides of his mouth.”
But sketching out how Trump’s second term would actually go is also inherently difficult. There’s a long list of both incremental and significant developments set to unfold over the next 12 months, including the pace of the Trump criminal court cases and possible trials scheduled to start next spring, plus future decisions from judges, juries and appellate panels that will keep on reshaping the landscape he would inherit on January 20, 2025.
Who controls both chambers of Congress in a potential second Trump term also has significant implications beyond just the legislative wins a Republican president might envision to also include Senate confirmation votes for his appointees, as well as more impeachments.
Trump’s supporters chuckle when asked about a third House impeachment possibility as a result of Trump nixing his criminal cases. That may cause political headaches but they also note that a re-elected Trump would be taking office with a mandate to make his criminal cases go away.
“Who cares? Badge of honor,” said Mike Davis, a former senior aide to Iowa GOP Sen. Chuck Grassley who is now founder and president of the Trump-supporting Article III Project. “The American voters are on notice of what President Trump could do when he’s back in office and they’re still going to put him back in office. The American people will decide this issue in 2024.”
Why a Supreme Court ruling would matter
How exactly Trump makes his cases vanish depends to a large degree on where they are in the process, said Anthony Coley, a former Biden Justice Department spokesman. A re-elected Trump would be most at risk in the event he’s been convicted in one of the two federal cases and also lost on all his appeals, including up to the U.S. Supreme Court.
“The operative words are fully adjudicated,” Coley said. “If the Supreme Court weighs in and upholds a case then that is the end of the line. He’ll have to serve, if he’s elected, incarcerated or we’ll see how the Bureau of Prisons would figure it out.”
The chances that any of Trump’s cases have gotten that far by January 2025 remains an open question. His trial in Washington, D.C., on four felony counts connected to 2020 election interference and the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection at the U.S. Capitol is scheduled to run from early March of next year until at least early May. Sandwiched inside that same time period is Trump’s criminal case in New York state court where he’s charged with 34 criminal counts in connection with a hush money payment to adult actress Stormy Daniels to keep her quiet about an alleged affair during the 2016 presidential campaign.
Trump’s South Florida federal trial for mishandling classified information after leaving the White House is on the books for late May, though U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon on Friday issued an order that acknowledged she’s well aware of the bunched-up calendar for all of Trump’s legal issues and that she’ll reconsider the timing of the 40-count felony trial involving the former president and two co-defendants during an early March hearing. There’s no trial schedule yet for Trump in Fulton County, Ga., where four of the former president's original 18 fellow co-defendants have since pleaded guilty with cooperation agreements in District Attorney Fani Willis' case that's also about 2020 election interference.
Considering all those moving parts, there’s a widespread expectation a second-term Trump would be able to get the Justice Department to file motions in federal court that permanently dismiss the federal charges. He could even do this without a Senate-confirmed attorney general by getting a Justice Department staffer to sign off on the filings “as long as they’ve got a bar card,” said a former senior DOJ official.
As for the political fallout from any mass Justice Department exodus over presidential interference, a senior ex-Trump aide acknowledged the Watergate-era scenario that played out along these lines before President Richard Nixon’s 1974 resignation: “That’d be a good riddance situation for most of the people in Trump world. The Saturday Night Massacre scenario of resignations would be a welcome thing. It’d not be an, ‘OMG we’re losing attorneys.’”
As a backstop, Trump’s supporters are also urging a self pardon — plus reprieves for all his family, associates and supporters — in case any judges presiding over the former president's cases won’t accept the DOJ’s change of position.
Trump critics like Yale’s Reed Amar, a constitutional expert and presidential historian who served as an informal consultant to the TV show ‘The West Wing,’ said that there are other ways a second-term Trump could secure a pardon protecting himself from criminal liability. “You could temporarily step aside, have your vice president do certain things and then resume the powers of the presidency,” he said.
In the Georgia and New York criminal cases, that also means widespread expectations that the DOJ would step in and file whatever motions are necessary requesting Trump as the duly-elected president be extracted from whatever stage of the proceedings he’s in, including incarceration should he have already been convicted.
That move has no precedent, and the U.S. Supreme Court could be asked to parse the question of whether a sitting president’s constitutional obligations supersede the outcome of a state criminal case. But even there, the expectation remains that Trump would at least get to serve his four years in the White House before having to face any kind of legal consequences in a state.
“If he's convicted and he doesn't get bailed out pending appeal, they'd have to spring him at noon on January 20,” said George Conway, the conservative lawyer and outspoken Trump critic who was married to former Trump White House counselor Kellyanne Conway. “I believe that and I'll be honest, nobody wants to see Donald Trump spend the rest of his life in prison more than I do.”
- Romney’s Chief of Staff Says Boss Is Not Seeking Third-Party Ticket With ManchinPolitics
- WATCH LIVE: National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan Joins White House Press BriefingPolitics
- White House Says Trump Vermin Comments Would Be ‘Unrecognizable to Our Founders’Politics
- Haley Launches $10 Million Ad Buy in Iowa, New HampshirePolitics
- Jack Smith: Trump’s Reversal on Televising DC Trial Aimed at Creating ‘Carnival Atmosphere’Politics
- Trump’s Attorneys Flag Colliding Court Dates in Florida, New York Criminal CasesPolitics
- Former Rep. Liz Cheney Blasts Trump ‘Vermin’ Comments, Compares Them to ‘Nazi Propaganda’Politics
- GOP Ohio State Lawmakers Propose Curtail to Judges’ Power on AbortionPolitics
- Biden Campaign Slams Trump ‘Vermin’ Comments: ‘Language of Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini’Politics
- Jill Biden to Lead New Initiative Designed to Change Approach to Women’s HealthPolitics
- Maryanne Trump Barry, Trump’s Sister, Dies at 86Politics
- Pro-Biden Priorities USA Dismisses Poll Worries, Says Election Will Be ‘Tough’ but ‘Winnable’Politics | US Political Corruption |
The Federal Reserve has raised interest rates 11 times in the last year and a half.
But the impact may not have hit most Americans, Moody's data suggests.
Americans don't have much floating-rate debt, which means many are likely locked into lower rates.
The Federal Reserve's historic rate hiking campaign may not have actually hit most Americans that hard.
That's because most household debt is likely still locked into lower, fixed rates secured before the central bank started aggressively ratcheting up rates to control inflation.
According to Moody's Analytics data shared with Insider, just 11.1% of household debt carried a floating rate as of the first quarter of this year, meaning that only a small amount of total household debt outstanding was adjusted higher as market rates climbed over the last year and a half.
That figure hovered close to 27% in 1997 and then 25% in 2000, but has since fallen steadily over the last two decades.
From the time of the Great Recession of 2008 up until last year, the US central bank kept rates historically low, leading many Americans locking in fixed rate borrowing costs on all kinds of consumer loans that are much lower than what's being offered today. This has prevented a lot of pain, as floating rate debt resets on a regular basis as benchmark rates rise.
In short: Americans sidestepped the worst of the Fed's monetary policy tightening campaign.
"US households have been largely insulated from Fed rate hikes, as most consumer debt carries a fixed interest rate, the bulk of which is in mortgages," Cristian deRitis, Moody's deputy chief economist, told Insider on Monday. He pointed to separate Equifax data that shows nearly 70% of mortgages carry an interest rate below 4%.
"Existing borrowers have not seen their monthly mortgage payments change even as the Fed Funds rate has risen," he said. "Most auto, student, and personal loans carry fixed rates as well, further insulating borrowers from interest rate increases."
While many US households aren't immediately exposed to rising rates, they have had a big impact on things like like credit cards. That could lead to higher credit card delinquency rates, deRitis noted.
Last Wednesday, the Fed announced a 25-basis-point rate hike to bring the federal funds rate to the 5.25%-5.50% range, with Chairman Jerome Powell maintaining that the inflation battle still hasn't been won. Markets, meanwhile, are acting as if it's the final hike of the year, and that policymakers will begin loosening in early 2024.
While the Fed's rate hike campaign may be at an end, anyone who took out a floating rate loan before the Fed started hiking rates —such as a home equity loan, a new personal line of credit, or certain auto loans–are likely facing higher payments today.
At the same time, at least some Americans are likely to have decided against taking out a loan because of high rates. Access to credit may have also diminished in recent months for some borrowers.
"Borrowers seeking new credit have been directly affected by higher rates leading some to forego taking on additional credit," deRitis said. "Tighter lending standards and a sharp increase in denied credit applications may further limit credit formation going forward."
Read the original article on Business Insider | US Federal Policies |
Subsets and Splits