12 August 22
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The FBI raid on Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence has reduced the Kremlin’s cronies to live TV hysterics.
When Trump lost the last presidential election to Joe Biden, experts and pundits in Moscow worried out loud that his prosecution for a bevy of potential offenses is imminent. They even contemplated offering their beloved “Trumpushka” asylum in Russia. As time went by, Putin’s mouthpieces became convinced that Trump was in the clear, and their fears subsided.
On Monday’s broadcast of The Evening With Vladimir Solovyov, the host and his panelists praised the participants of the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) and expressed their admiration for Trump and his allies. The same day, appearing on state TV program 60 Minutes, military expert Igor Korotchenko openly called for Russia to support Trump’s candidacy in the 2024 elections.
News of the raid landed in Moscow with a thud, as angry propagandists embellished the search with made-up details, claiming that “one hundred FBI agents” and hordes of police dogs rummaged through Mar-a-Lago. On Tuesday’s broadcast of 60 Minutes, Korotchenko angrily condemned the raid: “There is a straight-up witch hunt happening in America. Trump, as the most popular politician in the United States—who has every chance of prevailing in the upcoming presidential election—was chosen as such a witch,” he raged. “They won’t just be vilifying him, they will be strangling him. These raids, involving dozens of FBI officers and police dogs—this is worse than McCarthyism, my friends! This is a symbol of inordinate despotism.”
In the days preceding the raid, the host of 60 Minutes, Evgeny Popov, who is also a deputy of Russia’s State Duma, repeatedly referred to Trump as Russia’s “friend,” “protégé”, and a favored candidate, but cautiously added that Moscow is yet to decide on who to support in the upcoming U.S. elections. On Tuesday, Popov said: “As soon as Donald Trump complained that Biden was the worst president in the history of the United States, which is fast becoming a third world country, there was a knock on Donald’s door: “Knock-knock, this is the FBI!” More than one hundred agents stormed in and searched Trump’s Florida residence, Mar-a-Lago.” Popov joked that the agents were said to have found a couple of matryoshka, Putin’s portrait, a pioneer scarf, two icons, a parachute, and a chained bear with balalaika.
Without a hint of irony, the state TV host described the search of the former president’s home as a symptom of political persecution of dissidents in the United States. “Dozens of agents ransacked every office, went through every box, and took every document that was of interest to them. It is thought that the FBI was interested in the Top Secret documents supposedly taken by the ex-president from the White House... Biden, with his dictatorial tendencies, repressions, and persecution of dissidents, is turning America into Ukraine. He already did that, since the opposition is being persecuted by authorities,” Popov said. He fantasized that as the result of the raid, Florida would split from the United States and its new constitution would feature Trump’s assertion that there are only two genders: male and female.
Decorated Kremlin propagandist Vladimir Solovyov started Tuesday’s broadcast of his radio program, Full Contact With Vladimir Solovyov, by bringing up the raid of Trump’s Florida digs. He brought on state TV correspondent Valentin Bogdanov, reporting from New York City. “You couldn’t say we didn’t anticipate this turn of events. Machinery, meant to squeeze Trump out of political life, has been activated... They want to deprive him of an opportunity to participate in the upcoming presidential election... All of this is designed to create a nasty aura, to make Trump more toxic.”
Summing up the potential penalties for the suspected removal of top secret government documents, Bogdanov said they weren’t all that bad and were limited to a three-year prison term or a fine. He added: “The scariest consequence is that a person convicted for such a crime can’t be a candidate in the presidential election. Bingo! That’s what his opponents want: to deprive him of the opportunity to take part in this race.”
Assuming that Trump would be knocked out of the upcoming presidential election, Bogdanov speculated that Florida governor Ron DeSantis—whom he described as “Number Two” in the GOP—could easily defeat Joe Biden.
Solovyov asked: “Could this be the beginning of a civil war?” He ominously opined: “This is totally unprecedented, I don’t remember anything like this in American history. If Trump calls on his supporters to come out—and half the states are led by Trump’s allies—there’ll be hell to pay.”
Bogdanov replied: “The civil war is already underway in the United States. For now, this is a cold civil war, but it keeps heating up.”
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U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland. (photo: Getty)
The former president said on social media that he won’t oppose a Justice Dept. request to unseal the search warrant
Experts in classified information said the unusual search underscores deep concern among government officials about the types of information they thought could be located at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago Club and potentially in danger of falling into the wrong hands.
The people who described some of the material that agents were seeking spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss an ongoing investigation. They did not offer additional details about what type of information the agents were seeking, including whether it involved weapons belonging to the United States or some other nation. Nor did they say if such documents were recovered as part of the search. A Trump spokesman did not respond to a request for comment. The Justice Department and FBI declined to comment.
Attorney General Merrick Garland said Thursday that he could not discuss the investigation. But in an unusual public statement at the Justice Department, he announced he had personally authorized the decision to seek court permission for a search warrant.
Garland spoke moments after Justice Department lawyers filed a motion seeking to unseal the search warrant in the case, noting that Trump had publicly revealed the search shortly after it happened.
“The public’s clear and powerful interest in understanding what occurred under these circumstances weighs heavily in favor of unsealing,” the motion says. “That said, the former President should have an opportunity to respond to this Motion and lodge objections, including with regards to any ‘legitimate privacy interests’ or the potential for other ‘injury’ if these materials are made public.”
Late Thursday night, Trump said on social media that he agreed the document should be made public. In another post early Friday, he called the nuclear weapons issue a “hoax” and accused the FBI of planting evidence, without offering information to indicate such a thing had happened. Trump said agents did not allow his lawyers to be present for the search, which is not unusual in a law enforcement operation, especially if it potentially involves classified items.
Material about nuclear weapons is especially sensitive and usually restricted to a small number of government officials, experts said. Publicizing details about U.S. weapons could provide an intelligence road map to adversaries seeking to build ways of countering those systems. And other countries might view exposing their nuclear secrets as a threat, experts said.
One former Justice Department official, who in the past oversaw investigations of leaks of classified information, said the type of top-secret information described by the people familiar with the probe would probably cause authorities to try to move as quickly as possible to recover sensitive documents that could cause grave harm to U.S. security.
“If that is true, it would suggest that material residing unlawfully at Mar-a-Lago may have been classified at the highest classification level,” said David Laufman, the former chief of the Justice Department’s counterintelligence section, which investigates leaks of classified information. “If the FBI and the Department of Justice believed there were top secret materials still at Mar-a-Lago, that would lend itself to greater ‘hair-on-fire’ motivation to recover that material as quickly as possible.”
The Monday search of Trump’s home by FBI agents has caused a political furor, with Trump and many of his Republican defenders accusing the FBI of acting out of politically motivated malice. Some have threatened the agency on social media.
As Garland spoke Thursday, police in Ohio were engaged in a standoff with an armed man who allegedly tried to storm the Cincinnati office of the FBI. The man was killed by police later that day; authorities said negotiations had failed.
State and federal officials declined to name the man or describe a potential motive. However, a law enforcement official identified him as Ricky Shiffer.
According to another law enforcement official, agents are investigating Shiffer’s possible ties to extremist groups, including the Proud Boys, whose leaders are accused of helping launch the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol. Both officials spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss an ongoing investigation.
A person using Shiffer’s name on TruthSocial, Trump’s social media site, posted a “call to arms” message shortly after Monday’s FBI search became public.
“People, this is it,” the message reads. “Leave work tomorrow as soon as the gun shop/Army-Navy store/pawn shop opens, get whatever you need to be ready for combat. We must not tolerate this one. They have been conditioning us to accept tyranny and think we can’t do anything for 2 years. This time we must respond with force.”
The Washington Post could not confirm whether the account actually belonged to Shiffer.
In his statement on Thursday, Garland defended FBI agents as “dedicated, patriotic public servants” and said he would not “stand by silently when their integrity is unfairly attacked … Every day they protect the American people from violent crime, terrorism and other threats to their safety while safeguarding our civil rights. They do so at great personal sacrifice and risk to themselves. I am honored to work alongside them.”
It was Garland’s first public appearance or comment since agents executed the warrant at Mar-a-Lago Club, taking about a dozen boxes of material after opening a safe and entering a padlocked storage area. The search was one of the most dramatic developments in a cascade of legal investigations of the former president, several of which appear to be growing in intensity.
The investigation into the improper handling of documents began months ago, when the National Archives and Records Administration sought the return of material taken to Mar-a-Lago from the White House. Fifteen boxes of documents and items, some of them marked classified, were returned early this year. The archives subsequently asked the Justice Department to investigate.
Former senior intelligence officials said in interviews that during the Trump administration, highly classified intelligence about sensitive topics, including about intelligence-gathering on Iran, was routinely mishandled. One former official said the most highly classified information often ended up in the hands of personnel who didn’t appear to have a need to possess it or weren’t authorized to read it.
That former official also said signals intelligence — intercepted electronic communications such as emails and phone calls of foreign leaders — was among the type of information that often ended up with unauthorized personnel. Such intercepts are among the most closely guarded secrets because of what they can reveal about how the United States has penetrated foreign governments.
A person familiar with the inventory of 15 boxes taken from Mar-a-Lago in January indicated that signals intelligence material was included in them. The precise nature of the information was unclear.
The former officials and the other individual spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive intelligence matters.
This spring, Trump’s team received a grand jury subpoena in connection with the documents investigations, two people familiar with the investigation, who also spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss details, confirmed to The Post on Thursday. Investigators visited Mar-a-Lago in the weeks following the issuance of the subpoena, and Trump’s team handed over some materials. The subpoena was first reported by Just the News, a conservative media outlet run by John Solomon, one of Trump’s recently designated representatives to the National Archives.
People familiar with the probe have said it is focused on whether the former president or his aides withheld classified or other government material that should have been returned to government custody earlier. The people, who also spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the investigation, said that as authorities engaged in months of discussions on the subject, some officials came to suspect the Trump team was not being truthful.
Pressure had been building for Garland to say something so the public could understand why the Justice Department — and a federal magistrate judge — believed the extraordinary step of executing a search warrant at the home of a former president was necessary. But Garland has stuck with his practice of not discussing ongoing investigations.
“Upholding the rule of law means applying the law evenly without fear or favor,” Garland said Thursday. “Under my watch, that is precisely what the Justice Department is doing.”
Trump and his allies have refused to publicly share a copy of the warrant, even as they and their supporters have denounced the search as unlawful and politically motivated but provided no evidence to back that up.
Lawyers for the former president can respond to the government’s filing with any objections to unsealing the warrant, leaving it to the judge overseeing the case to decide. Trump also could publicly release the warrant himself.
The judge ordered the Justice Department to confer with lawyers for Trump and alert the court by 3 p.m. Friday as to whether Trump objects to the unsealing.
If made public, the warrant would probably reveal a general description of what material agents were seeking at Mar-a-Lago and what crimes they could be connected to. A list of the inventory that agents took from the property would also be released. Details could be limited, however, particularly if the material collected includes classified documents.
In addition to the anti-law enforcement threats and vitriol on social media sites and elsewhere this week, the furor over the search warrant has led to threats against the judge who approved the warrant request.
The Federal Law Enforcement Officers Association — the professional association representing 31,000 federal law enforcement officers and agents — said in a statement Wednesday evening that its agents had received “extreme threats of violence” this week.
“All law enforcement understand their work makes them a target for criminal actors,” wrote the group’s president, Larry Cosme. “However, the politically motivated threats of violence against the FBI this week are unprecedented in recent history and absolutely unacceptable.”
Republicans around Trump initially thought the raid could help him politically, but they are now bracing for revelations that could be damaging, a person familiar with the matter said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations.
Mariupol under attack from Russian forces. (photo: AP)
"Latvia recognises Russia's actions in Ukraine as targeted genocide against the Ukrainian people," the Baltic nation's parliament said in a resolution.
Western nations should increase their military, financial, humanitarian and diplomatic backing for Ukraine and support initiatives condemning Russia's actions, it added.
Millions of Ukrainians have fled their homes and thousands have been killed since Russia's invasion in February.
Moscow says it does not deliberately target civilians in what it calls its "special military operation" aimed at safeguarding Russia's security and protecting Russian speakers in Ukraine.
Ukraine's Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said he was grateful for the Latvian parliament's resolution.
"Ukraine encourages other states and organizations to follow suit," Kuleba tweeted.
Demonstrators hold signs while protesting in front of a Starbucks location in New York City on April 14, 2022. (photo: Michael M. Santiago/Getty)
Workers allege over 75 people have been fired in retaliation for organizing this year
According to an estimate by Starbucks Workers United, the strikes have cost Starbucks over $375,000 in lost revenue. The union created a $1m strike fund in June 2022 to support Starbucks workers through their strikes and several relief funds have been established for strikes and to support workers who have lost their jobs.
Starbucks employees have alleged over 75 workers have been fired in retaliation for union organizing this year, and hundreds of allegations of misconduct by Starbucks related to the union campaign are currently under review at the National Labor Relations Board, including claims of shutting down stores to bust unions, firing workers and intimidating and threatening workers from unionizing. Starbucks has denied all allegations.
More than 200 Starbucks stores around the US have won their union votes, with dozens of stores currently waiting for their election votes.
Sam Amato worked at Starbucks for 13 years in Buffalo, New York, before he was terminated on 5 August, a decision he argues is retaliatory for his strong support for unionization at his store and other Starbucks locations around the US.
He first became involved in the union organizing efforts in the Buffalo area in August 2021 as the first Starbucks stores in the US and his own store won their union election in early 2022.
In June, Amato and his co-workers were transferred to different stores while their own store underwent remodeling, where he said workers were heavily scrutinized by the store manager through disciplinary actions and write-ups.
“My store manager pulled me aside and said that due to an incident when I closed the lobby I was being separated,” said Amato. “Any questions I asked, my manager said they were unable to answer and that I would have to call Starbucks corporate to get an answer.”
He described that throughout the union organizing efforts, there had been a high turnover of store managers in the Buffalo area, as well as many firings and resignations of workers that have created understaffing issues, which resulted in closing the lobby and operating just the drive-thru in 3 July.
Immediately following his firing, several co-workers and other union supporters, shocked at his firing, began an indefinite strike at the Starbucks location in Buffalo to demand his reinstatement.
“I was fired because I’m a union leader and I was very vocal about it,” said Amato. “Starbucks pretends to be an ally and so progressive but they are the opposite and I genuinely have been shocked at how low they’re willing to go.”
Starbucks did not comment on Sam Amato’s firing.
Amid the wave of union elections at Starbucks, the company has rolled out new wage increases and benefits corporate wide, but has withheld the new pay increases and benefits from unionized workers despite the calls from these workers to enact these changes for them as they push for the company to negotiate a first contract with the unionized stores.
On 1 August, a unionized Starbucks store in Jacksonville, Florida, went on strike for one day to demand they also receive the new pay increases and benefits, the day they were implemented company wide.
“In the last week of July, I think people in my store were really starting to get really aggravated and pissed off that we weren’t receiving the raises,” said Mason Boykin, a Starbucks worker at the store.
Boykin argued that since their store unionized, workers had experienced schedule changes and hour cuts, which they allege are unfair labor practices.
“As far as striking goes, I think unionized stores recognize that the only way we’re going to receive what we’re worth is by uniting together and demanding it and that’s through striking,” added Boykin.
Several Starbucks stores in Massachusetts also held a one-day strike over the wage and benefits issue and two stores have continued the strike, while one store in Boston has been on an indefinite strike since mid-July in demand a store manager be removed or reprimanded for training over allegations of threats and retaliation against workers.
Jordie Adams, a Starbucks worker for six years currently at a non-unionized store in Boston, Massachusetts, after transferring from a unionized store in Connecticut, has been heavily involved in the strike and union organizing in Boston.
“Withholding of benefits is definitely affecting people from trying to pursue organizing their stores, which is obviously what Starbucks corporate is looking to do,” said Adams.
After working for Starbucks for six years, she said it had been eye-opening to see a different side of corporate that has aggressively opposed unionization.
“We all love Starbucks, we love coffee and we think that we can make it better if we’re just given the shot to do it,” she said.
A spokesperson for Starbucks said in an email: “We currently have strikes happening outside store locations in specific locations in the US. Starbucks has great partners and we value their contributions. We respect our partners’ right to engage in any legally protected activity or protest without retaliation.”
They added: “Once a store unionizes, no changes to benefits are legally allowed to be made without good faith collective bargaining. Partners still have access to all Starbucks benefits already in place when the petition was filed, but any changes to wages, benefits and working conditions that Starbucks establishes after that time would not apply to and would have to be reviewed in bargaining.”
Abortion opponents in Kansas react to the news that the anti-abortion referendum had failed, 2 August 2022. (photo: Charlie Riedel/AP)
The stunning defeat of the Kansas referendum and internal divisions have undercut an all-out assault on reproductive rights
However, since the highest court in the US overturned the ruling, many Republican leaders and officials have become more hesitant – or have even gone silent – over the exact type of bans they promised to enact.
As Republicans move towards an election season rife with internal disagreements within their own party and mixed public opinions on exceptions in abortion bans such as instances of rape and incest, many rightwing lawmakers are finding it increasingly difficult to implement cohesive abortion policies.
The phenomenon has been starkly illustrated by Kansas’s referendum last week, where the usually reliably Republican state voted to keep abortion protections in its state constitution, providing an unexpected boost from red state America to the abortion rights movement.
With delays in passing abortion bills across the US and contentious questions on how far the bans will reach, Republicans are now, as Sarah Longwell, a moderate Republican strategist, said to Politico, “the dog that caught the car”.
According to a survey conducted between 27 June and 4 July by the Pew Research center, a majority of the American public disapproves of the supreme court’s decision to overturn Roe: 57% of adults disapprove of the court’s decision, including 43% who strongly disapprove, and 41% of American adults approve while 25% strongly approve of the court’s decision.
The survey also found that 62% of Americans say that abortion should be legal in all or most cases, and 36% of Americans say that abortion should be illegal in all or most cases. Only 38% of Republicans say that abortion should be legal in all or most cases, marking a 1-point decrease from poll results obtained in 2007.
As Republican lawmakers grapple with mixed public opinions, many lawmakers have been divided over just how far they should go to ban abortions. With the recent case of the 10-year-old rape victim traveling across state lines from Ohio to Indiana to obtain an abortion continuing to dominate national headlines, many Republicans are realizing that the reality they are presented with differs vastly from their initial narratives surrounding abortion politics.
What kind of exceptions should be made in cases of rape and incest? Should a woman be granted an abortion if she is faced with a life-threatening ectopic pregnancy or an incomplete miscarriage? If an outright ban is put in place, should there be expansions of paid family leave benefits and increased funding for foster care and women’s health?
Some states have plowed ahead. Indiana has now passed a Republican-sponsored bill that would ban nearly all abortions in the state with limited exceptions, including cases of rape and incest, and to protect the health of the mother. That made it the first state in the US to put new restrictions in place, rather than just rely on a pre-existing “trigger law” passed before the supreme court’s decision.
But even in Indiana the move came after a series of thorny debates in the Indiana congress that reflect the growing divide Republicans are facing when it comes to fleshing out the specifics of abortion ban bills.
Before Roe v Wade was overturned, lawmakers did not spend “enough time on those issues, because you knew it was an issue you didn’t have to really get into the granular level in. But we’re in there and we’re recognizing that this is pretty hard work,” Republican Indiana state senator Rodric Bray told the New York Times.
Another Indiana Republican state senator, Kyle Walker, who voted against the ban last month, said: “I believe we must strike a balance for pregnant women to make their own health decisions in the first trimester of the pregnancy and also provide protections for an unborn baby as it progresses toward viability outside the womb.”
Even state senator Sue Glick, the sponsor of the bill, said that she was “not exactly” happy with the bill.
Meanwhile, the American Civil Liberties Union of Indiana called the bill “cruel” and “dangerous”, while Indiana Right to Life criticized it as being “weak and troubling”, saying that it “lacks any teeth to actually reduce abortions in Indiana by holding those who perform abortions or would intentionally skirt the law accountable with criminal consequences.”
South Dakota, a predominantly Republican state, is facing a similar situation.
Shortly after the bombshell leak of the supreme court draft opinion on Roe, Republican governor Kristi Noem announced that she will “immediately call for a special session to save lives and guarantee that every unborn child has a right to life in South Dakota.”
However, since the supreme court overturned Roe, Noem has yet to publicly give any indication of when or if a special session will still take place. In response to the Associated Press asking if the special legislative session is still on the table, Noem’s office said it will happen “later this year”.
Noem has largely kept her language surrounding South Dakota’s abortion bans vague, simply reaffirming that “there is more work to do” and promising to “help mothers in crisis”. In June, Noem appeared to soften her approach on abortions by saying that doctors, not their patients, should be prosecuted for offering abortion pills.
“I don’t believe women should ever be prosecuted,” she said. “I don’t believe there should be any punishment for women, ever, that are in a crisis situation or have an unplanned pregnancy,” she said. The governor also set up a website for pregnant women that aims to “help mothers and their babies before birth and after by providing resources for pregnancy, new parents, financial assistance and adoption.”
Speaking to the Associated Press, South Dakota Right to Life’s executive director, Dale Bartscher, said that Noem’s actions reflect a turning point in the anti-abortion movement.
“An entirely new pro-life movement has just begun – we stand ready to serve women, the unborn and families,” he said. The Guardian reached out to Bartscher for additional comments.
In Arkansas, the Republican governor, Asa Hutchinson, appears to have taken a softer approach on the issue after the state’s abortion trigger ban immediately went into effect when Roe was overturned. Last month, Hutchinson did not confirm that abortion will be a topic on the agenda of this month’s special session that is supposed to focus on tax cuts.
Referring to alternatives to abortion, Hutchinson said: “That’s come up in conversations … I’ve mentioned that need. You know, what can we do more for maternal care? What can we do more for adoption services because of the increased number that’s going to be demanding that? And so that is a potential issue … so just stay tuned.”
In May, Hutchinson acknowledged that his state’s abortion trigger law would result in “heartbreaking circumstances”, adding that “whenever you see that real-life circumstances like that, the debate is going to continue and the will of the people may or may not change”.
The governor admitted that abortions performed in the exceptions of rape and incest are increasingly “reflecting the broad view of Americans” but acknowledged that the issue is “still a very divided [topic].”
However, whether Hutchinson will ask lawmakers to consider the exceptions during the state’s upcoming legislative special session remains to be seen.
Meanwhile, in Ohio, the Republican governor, Mike DeWine, has refused to comment on the state’s recently enacted “heartbeat bill”, which makes abortions illegal after six weeks into a pregnancy. As a result of the state’s strict abortion laws, a 10-year-old rape victim from the state had to travel to Indiana to receive an abortion.
DeWine condemned the case as a “horrible, horrible tragedy” but did not signal whether he would amend abortion restrictions in the state. Speaking to reporters last month, DeWine refused to advocate for specific abortion policies and said that he is “going to let the debate play out a little bit”, referring to the legislative debate that is expected to happen in a few months.
“We’re going to hear from medical experts, we’re going to hear from other people,” he said, adding: “then there’ll be a time when I’ll certainly weigh in.”
Since Roe got overturned, Virginia’s top Republican lawmaker has been expressing similar sentiments to DeWine’s. In June, Governor Glenn Youngkin told an anti-abortion group that he would “happily and gleefully” sign any bill that would protect life, which he believes begins at conception.
Youngkin has expressed support for a ban on abortions after 15 weeks with exceptions for rape, incest and risk to the mother’s health.
Youngkin did not specify his support for any particular policies, although he acknowledged the divisive nature of the issue and called for a legislative process to hash out nuances in abortion ban bills.
“I’m a pro-life governor and I will sign a bill that comes to my desk that protects life and I look forward to that. But as of now, what we need is the process to start and to take the next four or five or six months and to work on a bill that can be supported on a bipartisan basis,” he said.
As Republicans across the country face a widening divide over the particularities of implementing abortion bans, a leading anti-abortion group has been urging Republicans in Congress not to leave the issue to the states. Many anti-abortion activists worry that extreme measures by Republican state lawmakers may cost Republican lawmakers seats nationally, especially with midterms on the horizon.
At the same time, in the wake of the Kansas referendum result, many Democratic strategists now believe public opinion, even in many red states, will be on their side. The issue can be used to shore up under-threat Democrats and wielded as a weapon against Republican candidates who can be portrayed as out of step with most Americans.
In a memo from Susan B Anthony Pro-Life America sent out in July, Republican lawmakers were encouraged to stay away from phrases such as “nationwide ban” and were urged not to relay the issue to state lawmakers.
“It is vitally important that pro-life Members of Congress highlight the abortion extremism of Democrats, who support abortion on demand, up until the moment of birth, paid for the taxpayer,” the memo said.
Protected by the anonymity of the voting booth, Kansas voters defined their values.
They don't need to rally or carry signs or fear retribution from their neighbors and extremists.
THEY VOTE!
And they will VOTE to support WOMEN'S RIGHTS!
Anti-Bolsonaro protests in Brazil. (photo: Bruna Prado/AP)
The protests take place amid concerns that Brazil’s President Jair Bolsonaro could refuse to accept election results.
In 1977, the masses poured into the University of Sao Paulo’s law school to listen to a reading of “A Letter to Brazilians”, a manifesto calling for a prompt return of the rule of law. On Thursday, they heard declarations defending democracy and the country’s elections systems, which far-right President Jair Bolsonaro has repeatedly attacked ahead of his bid for reelection in October.
While the current manifestos do not specifically name Bolsonaro, they underscore the country’s widespread concern that the far-right leader may follow in former US President Donald Trump’s footsteps and reject election results not in his favour in an attempt to cling to power.
One manifesto read at Thursday’s event garnered more than 800,000 signatures and warned that Brazilian democracy was under threat.
“We are at risk of a coup, so civil society must stand up and fight against that to guarantee democracy,” Jose Carlos Dias, a former justice minister who helped write the 1977 letter and the two documents read Thursday, told the Associated Press news agency.
In Sao Paulo, drivers stuck in traffic on one of the main roads to the law school applauded and honked as marching students chanted pro-democracy slogans. A huge inflatable electronic voting machine by the building’s main entrance bore the slogan “RESPECT THE VOTE.”
Bolsonaro’s commitment to democracy has been scrutinized since he took office, in large part because the former army captain has insistently glorified the country’s two-decade dictatorship, which ended in 1985.
For more than a year, in actions that appear to be lifted directly from Trump’s playbook, Bolsonaro has claimed Brazil’s electronic voting machines are prone to fraud, though, like Trump, he never presented any evidence. Bolsonaro has consistently trailed former President Luiz Inacio da Silva, known as Lula, in the polls ahead of the election.
Bolsonaro also began expressing a desire for greater involvement of the armed forces in election oversight. Last week, army officials visited the electoral authority’s headquarters to inspect the source codes of voting machines. Bolsonaro has alleged that some of the authority’s top officials are working against him.
At the law school on Thursday, Carlos Silveira carried a sign that read: “The military doesn’t count votes.”
“We are here because it is riskier not to do anything,” said Silveira, 43. “Bolsonaro has suggested a big anti-democratic act before the election, and the military has remained on his side, it seems. We want to show them we are the majority, and that our quest for democracy will win.”
When Bolsonaro launched his campaign, he called on supporters to flood the streets for the September 7 Independence Day celebrations. On that date last year, he declared before tens of thousands who rallied at his behest that only God can remove him from power.
A new study warns that boreal forests are fast approaching a tipping point. (photo: Robyn Beck/Getty)
A new study warns that boreal forests are fast approaching a tipping point.
A new study from a research team at the University of Michigan found that even a relatively small temperature increase of 1.6 degrees Celsius associated with climate change can have drastic effects on the dominant tree species in North American boreal forests, including reduced growth and increased mortality.
“Our results spell problems for the health and diversity of future regional forests,” University of Michigan forest ecologist Peter Reich, who led the study, told the University of Michigan news office.
This vast and nearly entirely intact boreal forest biome, stretching across the Canadian landmass and some of the northern U.S., below tundra and above more temperate forest, consists primarily of coniferous spruce, pine, and fir species. The research team found that modest warming increased juvenile mortality in all nine tree species common in boreal forests, and that it also severely reduced growth in northern conifer species such as balsam fir, white spruce, and white pine.
While the study also found that increased warming boosted the growth of some broadleaf hardwood species like certain oaks and maples, which are more common in the temperate south, these trees are probably too sparse to take the place of disappearing conifers. The ecosystem is likely to enter an entirely “new state,” according to the study.
“That new state is, at best, likely to be a more impoverished version of our current forest,” Reich told the university news office. “At worst, it could include high levels of invasive woody shrubs, which are already common at the temperate-boreal border and are moving north quickly.”
The five-year experiment used infrared lamps and soil-heating cables to heat thousands of spruce, pine, and fir seedlings at two University of Michigan forest sites in northeastern Minnesota. Seedlings were heated around the clock in the open air, from early spring to late fall, at two different potential projections of near-term temperature increases.
Reich, who is the director of the Institute for Global Change Biology at the University of Michigan’s School for Environment and Sustainability, elaborated that boreal forests may be reaching a tipping point at which even modest global warming creates a feedback loop that not only reduces the ability of boreal forests to support healthy plant, microbial, and animal biodiversity, but also their ability to remove and store carbon.
Additional research published in Nature this week found that climate change is driving spruce trees into swaths of Arctic tundra that haven’t hosted trees in thousands of years, and yet another study added to worries about the resilience of the Amazon rainforest to climate change.
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