06 August 22
Live on the homepage now!
Reader Supported News
The Wyoming representative, who serves as the vice chair of the House select committee investigating January 6, 2021, issued what was effectively a challenge to the Justice Department as CNN exclusively reported on Thursday that Trump's lawyers are in talks with its prosecutors -- in the most concrete step yet toward the former commander-in-chief.
The news was the latest sign that the department, criticized for months for moving too slowly to investigate Trump's election stealing effort and his incitement of the mob that invaded the US Capitol, is moving with speed and broadening its scope -- though there remains no indication when or even if the former President will be charged in the Justice Department's probe.
Cheney argued in an interview with CNN's Kasie Hunt taped Wednesday that if the Justice Department failed to act in the face of evidence of criminal wrongdoing, it would be disastrous to the idea of America itself.
"Understanding what it means if the facts and the evidence are there, and they decide not to prosecute -- how do we then call ourselves a nation of laws?," said Cheney, one of two Republicans on the panel.
CNN senior legal analyst Preet Bharara said that the fact that Trump's lawyers are already in communication with the investigation suggests they believe he may have some significant exposure down the line.
"Actively engaging suggests to me that the lawyers think that there is some jeopardy here and they should engage sooner rather than later," Bharara, a former US attorney for the Southern District of New York, told CNN's Wolf Blitzer. Bharara cautioned that the investigation could last a long time and that a decision "about whether or not to charge Donald Trump" could occur many months from now.
Learning what Trump was saying and thinking as his mob smashed its way into the US Capitol and during his prior schemes designed to overturn his election loss could help establish whether the ex-President acted with corrupt intent and could be at risk of being criminally charged.
More immediately, the dialogue with Trump's lawyers could also be the curtain raiser to what may well be a critical legal fight over the extent to which Trump -- as an ex-President -- can assert executive privilege over conversations and advice he received while in office. Such a case could go all the way to the Supreme Court and in itself break new legal ground since there is little litigation on the issue concerning out-of-office presidents. Executive privilege is the custom under which private conversations and advice given to a president can remain private, especially from Congress, under the doctrine of separation of powers.
A long legal duel
The potential legal battle that Trump's often risible privilege claims may spark could push the Justice Department investigation into the middle of the ex-President's likely 2024 campaign. This would risk yet another national political conflagration on top of many ignited by the 45th President.
But more broadly, the latest news about the Justice Department inquiry shows that there is an aggressive criminal probe that is narrowing in on a former President of the United States -- a historical watershed -- after an administration that is still tearing at the guardrails of the democratic system even out of office.
This does not necessarily mean that Trump will be charged. A criminal investigation requires a far higher level of proof than the House select committee, which has painted a damning picture of Trump's actions ahead of the Capitol insurrection. And Trump has made a life's work of escaping legal scrapes and attempts to enforce accountability. In his presidency alone, he wriggled free from the Russia investigation. He was the first President to be impeached twice by the House, although he wasn't convicted in Senate trials or barred from future federal office.
Still, according to the new CNN report, Trump's team has warned him there may be indictments resulting from the grand jury investigation. And sources say the former President has asked his advisers whether he is in personal legal jeopardy.
New visibility into aggressive DOJ investigation
Kimberly Wehle, a professor at the University of Baltimore School of Law, told CNN's Erin Burnett that the contacts between Trump's lawyers and prosecutors pointed to a legal joust over the scope of executive privilege.
"I think that Donald Trump is going to lose that battle, but the fact that his lawyers are engaging in this and telling him that he better beware, indictments could come, I think is very serious news for the former President but very good news for democracy, the rule of law and the Constitution," Wehle said.
The latest revelations about the grand jury probe reinforce signs that the Justice Department is acting with speed and expansive scope to investigate the insurrection following months of complaints -- even from members of the House select committee -- that it did not appear to be that active.
This in turn raises the possibility that yet another significant period of national trauma caused by Trump could lie ahead. The former President has already claimed that the Biden administration is weaponizing the Justice Department to pursue its political enemies -- a charge many critics leveled against him while he was still president. Trump would be sure to react to any signs that he is a target of the investigation or the possible indictments of those around him by claiming that he is being victimized by a politicized investigation. Given his hold over his supporters, and a record of inciting violence, political tensions could become acute.
All of this will sharpen the dilemma that Attorney General Merrick Garland would face if the evidence from the criminal probe suggests a prosecution is merited. Indicting a former President -- especially one running for the White House again -- would incite a political storm. This must raise the question of whether targeting Trump would be in the broader national interest outside the criminal context. At the same time, failing to pursue an ex-President accused of helping to foment a coup attempt could create an equally dangerous precedent and send a signal to future aberrant Presidents.
Trump team discussed potential defense strategies
The most significant news yet about the Justice Department criminal probe follows unmistakable signs of a comprehensive and quickening investigation. The department has, for instance, subpoenaed former White House Counsel Pat Cipollone and ex-deputy counsel Patrick Philbin.
Last week, it emerged that two of former Vice President Mike Pence's most senior aides, former chief of staff Marc Short and former counsel Greg Jacob, have already spoken to the grand jury. Investigators recently obtained a second warrant to search the cellphone of conservative lawyer John Eastman, one of the key figures in pushing Pence to overturn the 2020 election by rejecting electors from important swing states. Federal investigators in June carried out a pre-dawn search of the home of former Justice Department official Jeffrey Clark, who invoked his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination more than 100 times in a deposition to the House select committee.
In the latest reporting by CNN's Katelyn Polantz, Kara Scannell, Gabby Orr and Kristen Holmes, sources revealed that some members of Trump's legal team discussed possible defense strategies on at least two occasions in recent months. This comes as they await developments not solely in the Justice Department investigation but in a separate probe by officials in Georgia into Trump's efforts to overturn Biden's election victory in the crucial state in 2020.
Trump has grilled his attorneys on whether they actually believe he will face formal charges, but he has expressed skepticism that he will be indicted, one of the sources familiar with the matter said.
The CNN team also reveals that Trump has ignored advice from advisers to avoid speaking to former and current aides who have become entangled in the House select committee probe and could be drawn in by the criminal investigation.
When it comes to the issue of executive privilege, historical precedent could work against the former President. During the Watergate scandal, then-President Richard Nixon asserted executive privilege to try to prevent the handover of incriminating audio tapes. But in a ruling that could be significant in Trump's case, the Supreme Court said that executive privilege could not be used to thwart the administration of criminal justice.
The House January 6 committee did not litigate the question of Cipollone's reluctance to talk about certain conversations with Trump on the basis of executive privilege. It is racing against a ticking clock since it is likely to be disbanded by pro-Trump Republicans in the House if control of the chamber changes after the midterm elections in November. But the Justice Department has the luxury of more time to conduct a legal fight.
And the possibility of a prolonged investigation is one reason many observers believe Trump is leaning toward an early announcement of a 2024 presidential campaign, which would enable him to rile up his supporters by arguing that the investigation is a politicized attempt by the Biden administration to keep him from reclaiming the White House.
Russian soldiers. (photo: Creative Commons)
Both cities of Bakhmut and Avdiivka have been considered key targets of Russia’s ongoing offensive across Ukraine’s east, with analysts saying Moscow needs to take Bakhmut if it is to advance on the regional hubs of Sloviansk and Kramatorsk.
“In the Donetsk direction, the enemy is conducting an offensive operation, concentrating its main efforts on the Bakhmut and Avdiivka directions. It uses ground attack and army aviation,” the Ukrainian General Staff said on Facebook.
The last Russian strike on Sloviansk was July 30, but Ukrainian forces are fortifying their positions around the city in expectation of new fighting.
“I think it won’t be calm for long. Eventually, there will be an assault,” Col. Yurii Bereza, head of the volunteer national guard regiment, told The Associated Press.
Russian shelling killed five civilians and injured 14 others in the Donetsk region in the last day, Donetsk governor Pavlo Kyrylenko wrote Saturday on Telegram, saying two people were killed in Poprosny, and one each in Avdiivka, Soledar and Pervomaiskiy.
The governor of the eastern Dnipropetrovsk region said three civilians were injured after Russian rockets fell on a residential neighborhood in Nikopol, a city across the Dnieper River from the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power station. The nuclear plant has been under Russian control since Moscow’s troops seized it early in the war.
“After midnight, the Russian army struck the Nikopol area with (Soviet-era) Grad rockets, and the Kryvyi Rih area from barrel artillery,” Valentyn Reznichenko wrote on Telegram.
Another Russian missile attack overnight damaged unspecified infrastructure in the regional capital of Zaporizhzhia. On Thursday, Russia fired 60 rockets at Nikopol, damaging 50 residential buildings in the city of 107,000 and leaving residents without electricity.
Rafael Grossi, head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, warned this week that the situation was becoming more perilous day by day at the Zaporizhzhia plant.
“Every principle of nuclear safety has been violated” at the plant, he said. “What is at stake is extremely serious.”
He expressed concern about the way the plant is being operated and the danger posed by the fighting going on around it. Experts at the U.S.-based Institute for the Study of War said Russia is shelling the area intentionally, “putting Ukraine in a difficult position.”
The Ukrainian company operating the nuclear power station said Saturday that Russian troops are using the plant’s basement to hide from Ukrainian shelling and have barred its Ukrainian staff from going there.
“Ukrainian personnel do not yet have access to these premises, so in the event of new shelling, people have no shelter and are in danger,” Enerhoatom, a Ukrainian state enterprise, said on its Telegram channel.
Enerhoatom said Friday that Russian rockets had damaged the plant’s facilities, including a nitrogen-oxygen unit and a high-voltage power line. Local Russian-appointed officials acknowledged the damage, but blamed it on the Ukrainians.
In other developments:
__ In Ukraine’s south, two civilians were seriously injured Saturday after Russian forces fired rockets on the Black Sea port of Mykolaiv before dawn, according to regional authorities. That followed a Friday afternoon attack on Mykolaiv that killed one person and wounded 21 others.
__In the Kherson region south of Mykolaiv, the deputy mayor of the Russia-occupied city of Nova Kakhovka was in critical condition after an assassination attempt, the Russian state news agency RIA-Novosti said, citing the deputy head of the Kherson region, most of which is under Russian control.
__The first of three more ships carrying thousands of tons of corn from Ukraine anchored north of Istanbul on Saturday awaiting inspection, the Turkish Defense Ministry said. The Panama-flagged Navi Star, which is carrying 33,000 tons of grain to Ireland, left Odesa on Friday. It is being followed by the Turkish-flagged Polarnet and the Maltese-flagged Rojen, carrying over 25,000 tons of corn between them from Chornomorsk. The joint inspection center was set up to get grain blocked in Ukraine by the war to the world. On Friday, the center inspected its first north-bound ship as it headed for Chornomorsk.
__In the north, Ukraine’s second-largest city of Kharkiv and its surrounding area also came under Russian rocket fire again overnight, according to regional governor Oleh Syniehubov. A 18-year-old in Chuhuiv, a town near Kharkiv, had to be hospitalized Saturday after he picked up an unexploded shell. Both Chuhuiv and Kharkiv are near the Russian border and have endured sustained Russian shelling in recent weeks.
__The neighboring Sumy region, which also borders Russia, has also seen near-constant shelling and missile strikes. Its governor said Saturday the region was hit more than 60 times from Russian territory over the previous day, and one wounded civilian had to be hospitalized.
__ On the ammunition front, Russia has begun using Iranian combat drones in the war, Ukrainian presidential adviser Oleksiy Arestovych said in a YouTube adding that Tehran had transferred 46 drones to the Russian army.
Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) speaks at the Conservative Political Action Conference held at the Hilton Anatole on Aug. 5, 2022, in Dallas, Texas. (photo: Brandon Bell/Getty Images)
Militant speeches at the conservative convention underscore the threat that America’s culture wars could soon become literal
From Hungarian authoritarian Victor Orbán to former Trump adviser Steve Bannon to right-wing extremist Jack Posobiec, Conservative Political Action Committee speakers urged an us-versus-them confrontation, seemingly unbound from the constraints of electoral politics.
Bannon, now the host of the “War Room” podcast, brought his bellicose message to CPAC, appearing as the headline speaker at the convention’s Friday night ball. “We are at war,” Bannon told the MAGA faithful. “We are in a political and ideological war.” Repeating the Big Lie that the 2020 election was stolen from Donald Trump, Bannon insisted that Joe Biden is an “illegitimate imposter.” Calling on Republicans to send “shock troops” to Washington, Bannon promised the crowd they had an opportunity to “shatter the Democratic party as a national political institution.” He alleged that the party has been overrun by “radical, cultural Marxists” and “groomers” who “want to destroy the Republic.” Bannon insisted the GOP must pursue absolute victory over “power-mad and lawless” Democrats, asserting: “There can be no half measures anymore.”
Orbán — the Hungarian strongman fond of Nazi-style rhetoric against race mixing — received standing ovations for his stark address to the MAGA faithful on Thrusday. Orbán described European parliament and the federal government in Washington as “the two fronts in the battle being fought for Western civilization,” warning, “today, we hold neither of them, yet we need them both.” Orbán called on CPAC attendees and the far-right in Europe to forge a global movement. “We should unite our forces,” Orbán said, to “take back” Washington and Brussels.
On Friday, Sen. Ted Cruz, laying on a thick Texas accent for the home-state crowd, inveighed against what he called the “power hungry, abusive totalitarian nitwits” of the Biden administration and the Democratically controlled Congress. Cruz likened his service in the Senate to that of a gladiator: “It’s like the old Roman Colosseum where you slam on a breastplate and you grab a battle axe and you go fight the barbarians,” he said of his Democrat colleagues. “As they say in the military world,” Cruz continued, “it is a target-rich environment.”
Cruz then suggested that more than elections may be needed for conservatives to take back Washington from those he called “cheese-eating surrender monkeys.” Cruz told the crowd, “We’re on the cusp of something extraordinary in this country … And each of you are the vanguard. You are the dangerous radicals. Like the men who signed the Declaration of Independence … like those who died at the Alamo, you are the courageous heroes,” he insisted, “fighting for liberty in our country.”
While CPAC has banned a few overt white nationalists from its ranks (including the noxious, Hitler-praising livestreamer Nick Fuentes) it welcomed to its stage Jack Posobiec, the Pizzagate conspiracy theorist recently denounced as a hate extremist by the Southern Poverty Law Center for his ties to “white nationalists, antigovernment extremists, members of the Proud Boys, and neo-Nazis.” Posobiec took his turn in the spotlight to promote the New Right (effectively the latest rebranding of the hateful “alt-right”). And he, too, painted the coming conflicts of the culture war in militaristic terms: “Are you ready for new ideas to actually take the fight to the front lines,” he asked, “because that’s where we live and we’re not stopping.”
It could be tempting to dismiss such bombast from Cruz and Posobiec as empty rhetoric. But Kari Lake, the GOP nominee for governor in Arizona, directly threatened confrontation with the federal government over immigration at the Southern border should she win office in November.
“We have an invasion at the border,” Lake insisted, referring to undocumented immigrants and refugees. Lake then vowed that, after being sworn in, she would mount a military response, even lacking approval from the Biden administration: “As soon as my hand comes off the Bible, we’re going to send the Arizona National Guard troops to the border,” Lake said. Insisting on the “sovereignty” of the states, she insisted: “We will take the fight to the federal government. We’re not going to be victims of what they’re doing to us.”
The rhetoric of revolution and frontline confrontation went hand-in-hand with other speakers and presenters who cast the American left as demonic, evil, and destructive — in other words the kind of enemies who deserve to be dealt with harshly.
In between speeches, CPAC promoted a documentary, hosted by chair Matt Schlapp, called The Culture Killers, which inveighs against a “great desecration” perpetrated by the left. ”Anything that’s good, anything that’s holy, anything that’s truthful is being attacked,” Schlapp insisted on video. The documentary describes America as “under siege from an enemy within,” with one voice insisting, over images of burning cars, “There is no end. These people will never stop, until you stop ’em.”
Even ostensibly more-moderate politicians, like Florida Sen. Rick Scott, head of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, picked up these themes. Scott railed against Democrats as literally “evil” for pursuing an agenda he described as socialism.
Rick Scott is delivering a bonkers speech at CPAC pic.twitter.com/cIHcB92gRO
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) August 5, 2022
While damning the Democrats in terms that seemed to encourage political violence, CPAC speakers consistently minimized the actual political violence perpetrated by the MAGA movement on Jan. 6. Avowed “Christian nationalist” Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), for example, slammed Liz Cheney — chair of the committee investigating the Capitol insurrection — for pushing a “lie about Jan. 6.” (Greene was not specific about the lie in question, but has long minimized the day’s violence.)
CPAC then held a panel called “You’re Next: The Rise of the Democratic Gulag,” which presented Jan. 6 defendants not as alleged perpetrators of riot and insurrection, but as victims of a rigged judicial system.
Rep. Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.) was the official spokesperson for this line of idiocy. He claimed that Jan 6. defendants have been the recipients of “Soviet-style justice” — alleging without evidence that prosecutors, defense attorneys, and federal judges have been “colluding” to secure predetermined convictions. The congressman insisted that “all of the institutions in the United States have been weaponized, not unlike the former Soviet Union” to create an “American Gulag.”
Driving home this down-is-up worldview of justice — insisting that participants in an attempted coup directed by former President Trump are being mistreated by the justice system that’s attempting to hold them to account — the CPAC convention hall also presented a novel performance art installation.
It featured a caged man in an orange jumpsuit — meant to symbolize the Jan. 6 defendants — weeping over the injustice of his incarceration while wearing a MAGA hat. Convention attendees could don headphones to listen to testimonials from actual alleged rioters. This already-surreal scene got turned up to 11 in the late afternoon, when Greene spotted the installation and entered the jail cell to comfort and pray with the actor portraying the weeping man.
Some of the strangest political theater I’ve ever seen pic.twitter.com/pC5CghJmUU
— Tess Owen (@misstessowen) August 5, 2022
CPAC has long been a political circus, a relatively harmless sideshow. But its latest incarnation has become manifestly dangerous — more fascist than farce. It is holding up alleged perpetrators of political violence as martyrs. It is demonizing its domestic political opponents as diabolical “enemies within.” And it is giving MAGA supporters a militaristic frame for their charge to the “front lines” of America’s culture wars.
In short it is playing with fire. But it’s the rest of us who may get burned.
A Palestinian man looks through a damaged window at the remains of a house hit in an Israeli air strike, amid Israel-Gaza fighting, in Gaza City, August 6, 2022. (photo: Mohammed Salem/Reuters)
More homes are flattened, and Gaza’s sole power plant shuts down after running out of fuel.
The fighting, which began on Friday with Israel’s targeted killing of a senior commander of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, continued throughout the night, drawing the sides closer to an all-out war.
Shortly before noon on Saturday, Israel stepped up air strikes on Gaza, flattening a west Gaza City two-storey structure and badly damaging surrounding homes. Women and children rushed out of the area.
“Warned us? They warned us with rockets, and we fled without taking anything,” said Huda Shamallakh, who lived next door, adding that 15 people lived in the house that was targeted.
Reporting from Gaza, Al Jazeera’s Youmna ElSayed said that the attacks on Gaza “have not stopped since the early morning hours”.
Standing in front of another four-storey home flattened by an Israeli strike, ElSayed said the building had housed 30 residents.
“Israel is now targeting homes,” she said, explaining that several other residences in the Gaza Strip had been targeted. “A lot of people have fallen as casualties during the strikes, many of them children.”
Reporting from the Gaza-Israeli border, Al Jazeera’s John Holman said that the area was on high alert with people on the Israeli side sheltering as some rockets from Gaza fell onto southern Israel.
“We have the first report of injuries on the Israeli side – two soldiers,” he said, explaining that 160 rockets had been launched from Gaza into southern Israel since Friday.
“It gives you an indication of how uneven this fight between Israel – which has vast military capabilities – and the Islamic Jihad is,” he added.
Power plant shut down
Also on Saturday, Gaza’s sole power plant shut down after running out of fuel, an electricity company spokesman said, five days after Israel closed its goods crossing with the Palestinian enclave.
“The power plant in Gaza has stopped due to the fuel shortage,” said Mohammed Thabet, spokesman for the electricity company.
The electricity supply is expected to plummet to just four hours a day, Thabet said.
Diesel for the power plant is usually trucked in from Egypt or Israel, which has maintained a blockade of the enclave since the armed group Hamas took control of Gaza in 2007.
In a statement earlier on Saturday, Gaza’s electricity company said the shutdown “will affect all public utilities and crucial installations and exacerbate the humanitarian situation”.
The company called on “all parties to urgently intervene and allow the entrance of fuel deliveries for the power plant to work”.
“This brings the people and health sector into a bigger crisis. There were eight hours of electricity in Gaza … this has been shortened to four. It will be nothing if fuel doesn’t enter the Strip,” said Al Jazeera’s ElSayed.
Gaza’s 2.3 million residents experience regular power shortages and last week received only an average of 10 hours of electricity per day, according to data from the UN’s humanitarian agency OCHA.
Escalating tensions
The latest round of Israel-Gaza violence was sparked by the arrest this week of a senior Islamic Jihad commander in the occupied West Bank, part of a month-long Israeli military operation in the territory.
Citing a security threat, Israel then sealed roads around the Gaza Strip and on Friday killed Taysir al-Jabari, a commander of the al-Quds Brigades, in a targeted strike.
A blast was heard in Gaza City, where smoke poured from the seventh floor of a tall building. Video released by Israel’s military showed the strikes blowing up three towers.
The Palestinian Health Ministry said a five-year-old girl and a 23-year-old woman were among those killed in Gaza, and dozens of others were wounded.
Overnight, Israel arrested 19 Islamic Jihad members in the occupied West Bank, the Israeli military said.
In a nationally televised speech on Friday, Israeli Prime Minister Yair Lapid said his country launched the attacks based on “concrete threats”.
The violence poses an early test for Lapid, who assumed the role of caretaker prime minister ahead of elections in November, when he hopes to keep the position.
Lapid, a centrist former TV host and author, has experience in diplomacy having served as foreign minister in the outgoing government, but has thin security credentials.
A conflict with Gaza could burnish his standing and give him a boost as he faces off against former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, a security hawk who led the country during three of its four wars with Hamas.
Hamas also faces a dilemma in deciding whether to join a new battle barely a year after the last war caused widespread devastation.
There has been almost no reconstruction since then, and the isolated coastal territory is mired in poverty, with unemployment hovering at about 50 percent.
Hamas spokesman Fawzi Barhoum said “the Israeli enemy, which started the escalation against Gaza and committed a new crime, must pay the price and bear full responsibility for it”.
A demonstrator holds a sign with the image of Breonna Taylor. (photo: Jason Connolly/AFP/Getty Images)
The Department of Justice has announced federal criminal charges against four former and current Louisville police officers over their roles in the fatal shooting of Breonna Taylor. The charges come after the state of Kentucky failed to prosecute any police officers for Taylor’s death, despite nationwide Black Lives Matter demands to investigate. “How can it be that the federal government and state government are so far apart on this case?” says Sadiqa Reynolds, president and CEO of the Louisville Urban League, who calls the federal charges “a great step in the right direction.” Reynolds is demanding an investigation into Kentucky Attorney General Daniel Cameron’s prosecution of the case — which she says was either “incompetent” or “in collusion” with the police.
Former Louisville Metro Police detective Joshua Jaynes was taken into FBI custody Thursday morning and charged with obstruction and civil rights violations for knowingly using false, misleading and incomplete information to get the no-knock search warrant for Breonna Taylor’s home that led to her death. Also charged Thursday were Louisville Police Sergeant Kyle Meany, officer Kelly Hanna Goodlett and former Louisville police detective Brett Hankison.
Attorney General Merrick Garland announced the indictments Thursday.
ATTORNEY GENERAL MERRICK GARLAND: Earlier today, I spoke with the family of Breonna Taylor. This morning, they were informed that the Justice Department has charged four current and former Louisville Metro Police Department officers with federal crimes related to Ms. Taylor’s death. Those alleged crimes include civil rights offenses, unlawful conspiracies, unconstitutional use of force, and obstruction offenses. …
A fifth search warrant was for Breonna Taylor’s home, which was approximately 10 miles away from the West End. The federal charges announced today allege that members of Place-Based Investigations Unit falsified the affidavit used to obtain the search warrant of Ms. Taylor’s home,
that this act violated federal civil rights laws, and that those violations resulted in Ms. Taylor’s death. …Ms. Taylor was at home with another person who was in lawful possession of a handgun. When officers broke down the door to Ms. Taylor’s apartment, that person, believing that intruders were breaking in, immediately fired one shot, hitting the first officer at the door. Two officers immediately fired a total of 22 shots into the apartment. One of those shots hit Ms. Taylor in the chest and killed her.
AMY GOODMAN: That was Attorney General Merrick Garland. The head of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division, Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke, also spoke Thursday.
ASSISTANT ATTORNEY GENERAL KRISTEN CLARKE: The indictment alleges that by preparing a false affidavit to secure a search warrant for Breonna Taylor’s home, defendants Jaynes and Meany willfully deprived Breonna Taylor of her constitutional right to be free from unreasonable searches and seizures, and we allege that Ms. Taylor’s death resulted from that violation.
In a separate indictment, the grand jury charges former LMPD detective Brett Hankison with using unconstitutionally excessive force during the raid on Ms. Taylor’s home. Without a lawful objective justifying the use of deadly force, defendant Hankison traveled away from Ms. Taylor’s doorway to the side of the building and fired 10 shots into Breonna Taylor’s apartment through a bedroom window and a sliding glass door that were both covered with blinds and curtains.
AMY GOODMAN: That was Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke. She’s head of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division.
We go now to Louisville, where we’re joined by Sadiqa Reynolds, president and CEO of the Louisville Urban League.
Welcome back to Democracy Now!, Sadiqa. Can you respond to these federal charges that were brought against these four officers? The two white officers who actually shot Breonna Taylor were not charged.
SADIQA REYNOLDS: Absolutely. Thank you so much for having me again. It’s a pleasure to be here.
You know, we understand, and we’ve always understood in Louisville, that all of the officers might not be charged, but, I have to tell you, this is a great step in the right direction. There really has been a sense of relief in Louisville among the family members, among protesters, among those of us who have really tried to encourage people to keep their hope, to, you know, really have some faith in our system. Certainly, this idea that any of these officers are charged with killing Breonna Taylor, it has really been a big deal and has been celebrated in Louisville. We know it’s not over, but we are extremely thankful for the Department of Justice, I have to tell you that.
AMY GOODMAN: I want to go to Breonna Taylor’s mother, Tamika Palmer, who spoke at a news conference in Louisville yesterday. She criticized the Kentucky attorney general, Daniel Cameron.
TAMIKA PALMER: You don’t deserve to be where you are, and you need to go. And if we don’t continue to eat him, one of y’all’s on the menu next. He was dead wrong. It didn’t start with him, but he had the first — he had the right to do the right thing, and he chose not to.
AMY GOODMAN: So, Sadiqa Reynolds, let’s talk about this. Federal civil rights charges have been brought against these four officers, but the state charges were never brought, except against Brett Hankison for wantonly shooting into the blind-covered windows, the bullets going into the next-door neighbors’, who were white. He was ultimately acquitted of that. Now he’s been charged again. But what about Daniel Cameron, his significance? He’s running for governor next year.
SADIQA REYNOLDS: [inaudible] to be governor, even to run for governor. He clearly did a disservice. And what we want an investigation into is: What did Daniel Cameron know? Where did he get the information? What did he share with the grand jury? How can it be that the federal government and state government are so far apart on this case? We are concerned that he is either incompetent or in collusion. We’re not sure. The people do deserve to understand, because all of these people — all of these officers of the court are sworn to uphold and seek justice. And in this case in Kentucky, everybody who had an opportunity to do the right thing, including our attorney general, failed. And we are, again, extremely thankful for the FBI keeping their eye on the ball, and the Department of Justice.
And I have to tell you, we have been talking a lot about this incestuous relationship between police and prosecutors. Across the country, you see the failure to prosecute police. You see the failure to hold them accountable. And so we haven’t really seen the changes that we’ve needed. Sure, we’ve all celebrated what happened with, you know, the George Floyd case, Ahmaud Arbery case and now Breonna Taylor’s case, but we have to look at those cases where there are no charges. There is a significant problem between our prosecutors and our police department.
But very specifically, in Kentucky, we want an investigation into the Office of the Attorney General to understand what they knew, when they knew, and what was presented. It’s especially important here because, remember, that in the grand jury case, you had grand jurors who came forward who said this is not — “We were not told certain things. This is not what we wanted.” And so, we have to figure out and get to the bottom of what exactly happened in that matter. I think it’s very, very important.
AMY GOODMAN: So —
SADIQA REYNOLDS: And, you know — oh, go ahead. I’m sorry.
AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to go back to this issue of Cameron, because at a 2020 news conference announcing the grand jury’s findings, “Cameron said jurors 'agreed' that homicide charges were not warranted against the officers, because they were fired upon.” I’m reading from AP right now. “That prompted three of the jurors to come forward and dispute Cameron’s account, arguing that Cameron’s staff limited their scope and did not give them an opportunity to consider homicide charges against the police in Taylor’s death.” Sadiqa Reynolds?
SADIQA REYNOLDS: And that is the point. We need to understand what the scope of his investigation was, what was presented to that grand jury, what did he know, and what did he allow the grand jury to know. Was there any look at all into the warrant? And if not, why? Because at the point that he convened the grand jury, this city, protesters, every person, everybody in the city was saying, “There are problems with the warrant. There are problems with this case.” We were identifying things. Some of these things were so blatant and obvious that laymen were identifying them.
So we need to understand more about what our attorney general did or did not do, because it does feel like there may have been some predisposition as to what that case and how the case was going to turn out. And I think it’s important for those grand jurors to be heard. I mean, the jury system is an important system in this country. It is something that we rely on for our democracy, so we ought to hear from our jurors when they object to the process that they have been included in.
AMY GOODMAN: Sadiqa Reynolds, we want to thank you for being with us. And, of course, we’ll continue to follow this case. Sadiqa Reynolds is president and CEO of Louisville Urban League.
Activists rallying to defend DACA in Washington, D.C. (photo: Andrew Stefan/RSN)
The plan will only further entrench the reasons people leave.
One of the defining features of the economies of Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador is the small group of extremely powerful families whose business empires control much of each country’s economy. Commonly referred to as “the oligarchy,” the power they exert over each country’s political and economic systems cannot be overstated. Many members of the oligarchy have amassed enormous riches precisely by impoverishing the majorities, whether it be by paying miserable wages on agricultural plantations, profiting from stolen Indigenous land, or exerting influence over political actors to win favorable state contracts.
One of the “corporate commitments” announced by Vice President Harris to supposedly address migration is that U.S.-based apparel company SanMar will purchase more from Elcatex, a Honduras-based garment manufacturer that it partially owns. The Collective of Honduran Women (CODEMUH), an organization of women who work in Honduras’ garment sweatshops, has long denounced the low wages, long hours and serious repetitive motion injuries they suffer in Honduras’ textile industry. The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights has admitted a petition filed by CODEMUH and the Law Group for Human Rights on behalf of 26 women who have suffered musculoskeletal disorders as a result of working in Honduras’ garment factories, including three Elcatex workers with alleged permanent partial disability. The petition alleges these workers face “excessive working hours, ill-suited workplaces and the imposition of a system in which remuneration is dependent on reaching an output target.” In 2019, Elcatex joined other garment factories in Honduras in opening a “Back and Shoulder School” to help prevent musculoskeletal disorders. These schools have faced criticism, however, as well as claims that workers are unable to put some of the recommendations, such as taking pauses, into practice during the workday.
The White House contends that SanMar’s commitment to purchase more from Elcatex will create 4,000 additional jobs and thus help stem migration. Ironically, Elcatex and many of Honduras’ garment factories are located in its northern industrial corridor, in an area of high migration. If the White House was serious about addressing the root causes of migration, it would recognize that low wages are one of the key drivers. The White House’s “Call to Action” should be for U.S. apparel companies to ensure living wages and labor rights, including changes to prevent workers from suffering permanent injuries.
Who will be the true beneficiary of SanMar’s increased purchasing from Elcatex? According to the White House announcement, U.S.-based SanMar itself is a part owner of Elcatex, so the profits from this increased purchasing will pad its own pockets. Elcatex is also owned by Jesus Canahuati, one of Central America’s biggest businessmen and part of one of the most powerful families in Honduras.
Another of the “private sector commitments” celebrated by Vice President Harris is that of Fundación Terra, the foundation of Grupo Terra. Grupo Terra is a huge conglomerate owned by Freddy Nasser, one of the most powerful men in Honduras.
Grupo Terra’s energy empire includes Hidro Xacbal, S.A., which owns the Xacbal Hydroelectric Project and the Xacbal Delta Hydroelectric Project in Quiche, Guatemala. These projects are located in Indigenous Maya Ixil territory, where the U.S.-trained and supported Guatemalan military carried out genocide during the early 1980s. As Dr. Giovanni Batz writes in NACLA, “The Ixils have historically resisted against invaders, from the Spanish to coffee finqueros to corporations building megaprojects.” In March 2015, Ixil communities of Nebaj whose crops were going to be affected by the construction of a 4 kilometer tunnel for Grupo Terra’s Xacbal Delta Hydroelectric Project protested and publicly rejected the project. Also in 2015, the Guatemalan security forces violently repressed Ixil people who were blocking the construction of the Xacbal Delta project.
In December 2020, Guatemala’s Special Prosecutor Against Impunity accused Edwin Alberto Hernandez Roque, General Manager of Hidro Xacbal, S.A., of bribery, allegedly benefiting Hidro Xacbal, S.A. with energy contracts, as part of a case alleging that a network of businessmen and former public officials used the Ministry of Energy and Mines to obtain illicit economic benefits. In 2021, Hernandez Roque agreed to collaborate with prosecutors in the case in exchange for the charges against him being dropped.
Another part of Grupo Terra’s fortune comes from selling energy to the state of Honduras. Honduras’ state electricity company, Empresa Nacional de Energía Eléctrica (ENEE), has operated at a huge deficit for years, which comes in part from paying overvalued prices for energy produced by private companies. Many lucrative energy contracts were awarded to the country’s oligarchy by the governments following the 2009 coup d’etat. According to an investigation by the Jesuit organization ERIC, the ENEE pays 70% of its annual budget to purchase energy from private companies, of which Grupo Terra is the biggest winner — with its companies receiving $327 million in 2019 for 11 energy contracts. ERIC further reports that the ENEE pays six times as much to private companies to generate electricity as it costs the ENEE itself to produce it. Solar projects are especially lucrative for private companies, with Honduras paying an exorbitantly higher price for solar energy than other countries in Central America.
The 2009 coup was followed by 12 years of plundering and corruption, and now Honduran President Xiomara Castro and a new Congress have pledged to combat corruption and restore state institutions. As part of this, Honduras recently passed a new energy law, which, among other elements, enables the government to renegotiate the contracts by which it purchases energy from private energy producers and set more reasonable rates. The U.S. ambassador to Honduras criticized the law on Twitter when it was introduced in the Honduran Congress, expressing worry about its effect on foreign investment. This raises concerns that the United States’ true motives are corporate profit.
Vice President Harris’ announcement also celebrated that telecommunications company Millicom, headquartered in Luxembourg, will invest $700 million “to expand and maintain its mobile and broadband networks.” While better internet is certainly a good thing, the idea that Millicom is doing this for any reason other than to increase its corporate profits is ridiculous.
Central America’s mobile and broadband market is highly concentrated; Millicom’s Tigo controls 53.1% in Guatemala and 62.5% in Honduras. Tigo Guatemala is Millicom’s most profitable company, with an astronomical operating profitability margin. The company reports significant potential for increased profit by expanding internet accessibility. Its Tigo Money service, a mobile wallet linked to one’s phone number, receives remittances that those who have migrated send to family members back home.
Investing to expand its business is certainly a good business move for Millicom, and with very little competition it is virtually guaranteed that this investment will result in significant profits. The profits, however, will largely go to its headquarters in Luxembourg and its shareholders on the Nasdaq stock market, not to Tigo’s clients in Central America. Thousands upon thousands of Tigo users will continue to migrate to the United States every year, enriching Millicom’s profits when they send remittances home via Tigo Money.
At a recent House Foreign Affairs Committee hearing, Rep. Ilhan Omar (D‑Minn.) expressed skepticism about the “Call to Action’s” corporate commitments. She referred to a recent delegation she participated in to Central America, explaining “what we heard was a lot of stories about transnational private investments being a root cause of migration…. about mega projects displacing communities, about labor exploitation.”
Instead of addressing the root causes of migration, the White House announcement is a celebration of international corporations and the Central American oligarchies intensifying their stranglehold on the economies of northern Central America. If the White House were serious about addressing the true root causes of migration it would have honestly contended with the bloody U.S. history of intervention in the region, including coup d’etats and the financing and backing of military regimes as they carried out widespread atrocities. The United States must finally break free of the “banana republic” mentality that sees the region as a source of natural resources and cheap labor and begin to respect the autonomy and self-determination of the peoples in the region.
At the very least, the White House’s “Call to Action” should call on the U.S. corporations that operate in the region to pay living wages and respect labor rights, to respect the land and territorial rights of Indigenous peoples, and to obey, rather than try to weaken, relevant national laws. The current “Call to Action” is the opposite: it provides corporations with free P.R. and helps companies that may profit from dispossession, labor abuses and corruption to whitewash their brands. It sums up U.S. priorities towards Central America quite well: The real interest is, and always has been, corporate profit.
"The future may be smaller for sea life, according to a new scientific model." (photo: ABC)
This shrinking effect, should it occur, could have wide repercussions: reduced food mass at the bottom of the food chain would affect fisheries, leaving less food for people, as well as mean less carbon sequestered in the sea, potentially making climate change worse.
Scientists say the ability to accurately predict these impacts could improve management of ocean resources. But researchers don’t agree on exactly why this sea life shrinkage is happening, and say a variety of factors may need to be considered to make accurate forecasts.
In the new study, researchers present a mathematical model that explains these size reductions as a response to lower oxygen levels in the ocean. Looking at rising temperature and reduced oxygen level forecasts for the next decades, researchers found that zooplankton and other microscopic species could be up to 30% smaller, with impacts reverberating higher up the food chain.
There is a “temperature-size rule,” that describes the tendency for ectotherms (animals whose body temperature regulation depends on external sources) to reach smaller adult sizes under warmer conditions. With climate change escalating, the implications for marine life — and humanity — could be dire.
But so far, direct experimental evidence for this rule mostly comes from organisms with a body mass of less than 1 gram, explained study lead author Curtis Deutsch, a climate scientist at Princeton University in the U.S.
“Our mechanistic model tries to quantify that effect and use it to understand how much smaller things might get in the future,” explained Deutsch, who collaborated with ocean biologists and a paleobiologist to formulate the model. The results “suggest that larger fish [further up the food chain] will also be subject to shrinkage.”
The model is based on how marine ectotherms meet their metabolic demand for oxygen. The assumption is that their rate of metabolism rises in warmer water, with more oxygen needed to support those higher metabolic rates. But as water temperatures go up, the levels of dissolved oxygen go down. So if you need more oxygen, but the ocean is supplying less, then you may be in trouble, explained Deutsch.
One way to dodge that problem is to stay small. But that solution isn’t as simple as an organism growing only half as big to use half as much oxygen. As an animal gets larger, its outer surface area does not scale up equally with the increased number of cells needing oxygen. The new modeling equation predicts how much an organism must shrink, based on resting metabolic needs, under the limited-oxygen conditions expected as global warming worsens.
Additional support for this model can be gleaned from the fossil record, said Jonathan Payne, a paleobiologist at Stanford University in California and a senior author on the paper. Evidence from extinction events linked to global warming and ocean deoxygenation show that larger species were more likely to die off, while surviving species tended to be smaller.
And though a lot of information about the prehistoric world is missing, Payne said, there are enough proxy or fossil measurements to test the new equation’s calculations. It’s a “really neat tool for connecting the modern world with all the things that have happened in the history of animal life,” he noted.
The equation could also be incredibly useful now, said Rowan Lockwood, a conservation paleobiologist at Virginia’s College of William and Mary in the U.S., who was not involved in the study. “We spend a fair amount of time and energy trying to predict what the effects of global warming are going to be from a variety of perspectives. This model gives us a much broader and more applicable framework than what we’ve had before,” she pointed out.
In the northeastern United States, for example, sea scallops are shifting northward and into deeper water. It won’t be long before these migrating scallops move to where you can’t fish for them within the current permit system, the current dredging system, or with the boats now available, she explained. “So, for me, the coolest part of this [model] is that it gives tools to fisheries, managers, and harvesters, to predict where their harvest is going,” said Lockwood. And perhaps enough time to adapt management plans.
But this oxygen-limiting modeling approach doesn’t resolve the temperature-size rule for everyone. “With climate change, as species are finding themselves in environments that are beyond their normal temperature range, oxygen limitation is one thing that can cause them problems. But it is not the only thing,” explained Brad Seibel, a biological oceanographer at the University of South Florida, U.S., who collaborated with Deutsch on other studies.
The new study compared the way oxygen supply scales with the way resting metabolism scales, Seibel noted. “But that doesn’t test the equation against conditions where oxygen is actually limiting, because when you’re at rest, you’re not oxygen limited until the environmental oxygen declines to some very low critical level.” If the data were available, he suggests, it would be ideal to compare oxygen supply to the maximum metabolic rate.
Other studies indicate that species’ response to rising temperature is more complex than metabolic changes alone would suggest. What’s needed, some researchers say, is experimental evidence that accounts for species’ development rates, reproductive output, and impacts on overall fitness, tracked long term over many generations.
“It’s not a slam dunk, like experimental evidence,” Deutsch said of the model. But getting generational field data — especially for big fish — can be difficult and time consuming. The researcher is now pursuing additional indirect support for the model, looking at U.S. and international fisheries data sets collected over many years.
If the new one-line equation helps explain some first-order things, such as the general mechanism underlying the temperature-size rule, then we can start figuring out what other things matter to explain more details, noted Payne.
But the outlook appears daunting if this model’s predictions are even close to correct.
From Payne’s paleontological perspective, we face a challenging situation, but geology also tells us that things have been worse. After all, ancient records of shrinking species and mass extinctions weren’t affected by overfishing, pollution, land-use changes, and other human-caused impacts. “A lot of it is our own doing, which means we should also have the ability to undo at least some aspects of it,” he said.
This article was originally published on Mongabay.
Special Coverage: Ukraine, A Historic Resistance
READ MORE
Follow us on facebook and twitter!
PO Box 2043 / Citrus Heights, CA 95611
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.