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“Registering as an independent and showing up to work with the title of independent is a reflection of who I’ve always been, and it’s a reflection of who Arizona is,” Sinema said in a video. “We don’t line up to do what we’re told. We do what’s right for our state and for our country. I’m going to be the same person I’ve always been.”
With the move, Democrats will still control the Senate next year, but their hold could be less secure and give more sway to another moderate in the caucus, Sen. Joe Manchin III (D-W.Va.). In an op-ed in the Arizona Republic, Sinema — who has voted with President Biden more than 90 percent of the time — said that she never promised to be a guaranteed vote for the Democratic Party.
“Americans are told that we have only two choices — Democrat or Republican — and that we must subscribe wholesale to policy views the parties hold, views that have been pulled further and further toward the extremes,” she wrote. “Most Arizonans believe this is a false choice, and when I ran for the U.S. House and the Senate, I promised Arizonans something different.”
Sinema, a first-term senator who has broken with her party on some key issues, did not explicitly say she will continue to caucus with Democrats in an interview with CNN. But as long as she does not caucus with Republicans, as she told Politico she wouldn’t, the GOP side in the chamber would remain in the minority with 49 members.
A spokeswoman for Sinema, Hannah Hurley, told The Post that the senator intends to continue receiving her committee assignments from the Democrats.
“I don’t anticipate that anything will change about the Senate structure,” Sinema told Politico. “I intend to show up to work, do the same work that I always do. I just intend to show up to work as an independent.”
Sinema has modeled her Senate tenure on that of the late Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), a GOP maverick. She has angered quite a few Democrats in the Grand Canyon state, so much so that she was likely to face a Democratic primary challenge in a 2024 reelection bid. The lawmaker has been repeatedly criticized by the Democratic Party’s base for not being on board with core liberal priorities, including increasing the minimum wage.
Last January, leaders of the Arizona Democratic Party voted to censure Sinema. They cited “her failure to do whatever it takes to ensure the health of our democracy” — namely her refusal to go along with fellow Democrats to alter the Senate rule so they could overcome Republican opposition to a voting rights bill.
At the same time, Sinema has helped deliver several bipartisan wins for President Biden, most notably on infrastructure and gun control, and has been a consistent vote for the president’s administration and judicial nominees. But she has balked at efforts to ditch the filibuster for voting rights and other legislation in the closely divided Senate.
In a statement Friday, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre called Sinema a “key partner on some of the historic legislation President Biden has championed over the last 20 months,” including the infrastructure law, a semiconductor chips measure and a sweeping climate and health-care bill.
“We understand that her decision to register as an independent in Arizona does not change the new Democratic majority control of the Senate, and we have every reason to expect that we will continue to work successfully with her,” Jean-Pierre said.
Sinema’s announcement comes days after the Senate’s Democratic caucus claimed 51 seats with the reelection of Sen. Raphael G. Warnock (D-Ga.). The group includes two independents — Sens. Bernie Sanders (Vt.) and Angus King (Maine) — who caucus with the Democrats.
Sinema informed Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) of her decision on Thursday, according to Politico.
Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) said Friday that he was not surprised by the news given Sinema’s independent streak and did not believe it would change the organization of the Senate or how Sinema votes in the future.
“I take Kyrsten at her word that this doesn’t change how she votes and doesn’t change anything about her values or beliefs. She’s always been an independent thinker,” he said. “This seems like this changes the letter next to her name and not much else.”
Sinema, 46, ran for the Phoenix City Council more than 20 years ago on the Green Party ticket, served in the House and broke the GOP grip on Arizona in 2018 when she won the Senate seat, defeating Martha McSally (R). During her Senate tenure, her willingness to break with her party on key issues has drawn praise from the other side of the aisle.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) invited Sinema to speak at the McConnell Center at the University of Louisville in September, calling her the “most effective first-term senator” he has seen in his nearly 40-year Senate career.
“She is, today, what we have too few of in the Democratic Party: a genuine moderate and a dealmaker,” he said.
That appearance, in the heat of the midterm election campaign, angered Rep. Ruben Gallego (D-Ariz.), a potential challenger to Sinema in 2024, who wrote on Twitter, “I mean you could be out there helping our candidates @SenatorSinema But my sense is that you would actually prefer the Dems lose control of the Senate and House.”
On Friday, Gallego blasted Sinema’s move to switch party affiliations from Democrat to independent, suggesting it was self-serving politically and could hurt her leverage in the Democratic-controlled Senate.
“At a time when our nation deserves leadership most, Arizona deserves a voice that won’t back down in the face of struggle,” Gallego said. “Unfortunately, Senator Sinema is once again putting her own interests ahead of getting things done for Arizona.”
In her interviews, Sinema did not say whether she would seek reelection in 2024. In announcing her switch in party affiliation, she avoids a direct challenge from Gallego in the Democratic primary, but her move scrambles an all-but-certain competitive race if both parties nominate candidates.
During her first run for the U.S. Senate in 2018, Sinema tailored her campaign to undecided voters and independents. She avoided party labels and events, frequently wore purple and closed the race with a rare one-minute TV ad with a theme of working beyond partisan lines. “She’s independent, just like Arizona,” the ad said.
In freeing herself of a party label, Sinema, should she choose to run for reelection, averts what could be a nasty primary contest in a battleground state almost evenly divided between Republicans, Democrats and independent voters.
“What she’s going to have to do is win 40 percent of Republicans, 40 percent of Democrats and 60 percent of independents,” said Chuck Coughlin, a GOP consultant in Arizona. “It realigns who you’re marketing to, and the reason most people don’t do it is because you can’t afford to have a primary going on where you’re ignored.
“Well, she’s not going to be ignored, we know this. She’ll be sitting there, waiting,” he added.
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A man from occupied territories is checked by police in Zaporizhzhia. (photo: Alessio Mamo/The Guardian)
Opposing forces now face each other across narrow part of Dnipro River as Kyiv tries to keep Russians on the retreat
Despite predictions that the conflict would slow down in the winter months, civilians arriving in Zaporizhzhia through the last open crossing point on the frontlines say the fighting is escalating in southern Kherson region as Ukrainian forces seek to keep the Russians on the retreat towards Crimea and beyond.
“It has been machine guns lately, not artillery,” said Anna, a 78-year-old from Nova Khakovka after arriving at a police checkpoint in Zaporizhzhia. “The windows were shaking, the house was shaking. We were afraid that everything could collapse at any moment.”
“The fighting has become more intensive,” said Liudmyla, another woman from the town waiting for her papers to be checked at the Zaporizhzhia checkpoint. Like Anna and other new arrivals, she did not want to give her surname for fear of reprisals against relatives or friends left behind.
“There was machine gun fire right in the town park. We saw Russians running around the park with machine guns.”
There have been multiple reports of Ukrainian special forces raids across the Dnipro since the fall of Kherson city.
Liudmyla said the highway they travelled along, from Nova Kakhovka east towards the Russian stronghold in the city of Melitopol had been turned into a defensive line with concrete pyramids known as “dragon’s teeth” and trench networks.
Nova Kakovka is a particularly strategic point, a town of 70,000 people before the war, where Ukrainian and Russian forces now face each other across a narrow part of the Dnipro and a hydroelectric dam.
The town’s residents said the Russians had mined the 400-metre bridge running on top of the dam, with two trucks loaded with explosives parked along the span. The administrative offices of the adjacent hydroelectric plant had been turned into a bastion, bristling with weaponry. Civil servants working for the Russian occupation authorities abandoned the town last month.
Since Kherson city and the north-western part of the Kherson oblast fell to the Ukrainian counter-offensive on 11 November, the Russians have been setting up defensive lines in southern Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions.
The retreating troops who arrived in Nova Kakhovka in the past few weeks have been nervous and aggressive. Residents who had stayed because they had elderly relatives who could not move or who had hoped that the town’s liberation would come quickly, decided they had no choice but to leave.
“They came to my house at 7 o’clock in the morning. There was an armoured car outside. They were rapping on the door telling me to open faster,” Anna said. “They said they were looking for ‘bandits’. They just looted the other houses. They were looting everything.”
The Russians suffered heavy losses in Nova Kakhovka in late July and early August when Ukraine rained down newly acquired US guided rockets on an army base on the banks of the Dnipro. In the aftermath, residents said they saw bodies of dead Russian soldiers stacked in army trucks, and that the stench in the town became unbearable from the corpses being burned in the woods.
“They had a dump behind the forest but they would just move the bodies there and burn them,” Anna said. “The smell was indescribable. They were burning the remains for a whole week. It wasn’t possible to be on the streets at night. It was impossible to open a door or window.”
Oksana, who left Nova Kakhovka in mid-September, said she saw piles of Russian dead after the Ukrainian rocket strikes.
“There was a sort of military ambulance. It was a covered truck but there were little openings in the covering and I saw them, the bodies, stacked one on top of each other,” she said.
“From that day for a week there was smoke,” Oksana said. “You would shut the doors and close the windows. And there was this stench that you can’t confuse with anything else.”
The witnesses did not see the bodies being cremated and their accounts could not be independently verified. But they echoed reports in November from the outskirts of Kherson city that the Russians had resorted to burning their dead at a municipal landfill.
The last open crossing point for civilians along the southern front is near Vasylivka, a town on the Dnipro about 30 miles (50km) south of Zaporizhzhia. Up to 6,000 people used to cross each day before late September, when Russia declared the annexatieon of four Ukrainian regions, including Kherson and Zaporizhzhia and shelled a convoy of cars of civilians who had come to the Ukrainian side of the lines to collect relatives arriving from Russian-controlled territory.
Now the rate of arrivals is down to 300 a day, according to Oleksii Savytskyi, a municipal official overseeing a reception centre for the newly displaced.
“I think it is because they need to keep people as a human shield,” Savytskyi said. “If everyone just left, that would make the job for our military easier.”
Before the Ukrainians acquired US-made Himars multiple rocket launchers in July, Anna said the Russians in Nova Kakhovka felt unchallenged.
“They felt they were masters of the city,” she recalled. “They would go around drinking and said: ‘This is like a resort to us. We are going to move here.’”
After the missile strikes wiped out their riverbank camp, however, they withdrew their heavy weapons into the forest, and started digging trenches. After the fall of Kherson city, the size of the garrison increased dramatically, and in recent days it has become a lot more nervous.
“There’s a lot of them and they’re panicking because the Ukraine armed forces are too close,” Oksana said. “There is a feeling they can storm the city at any moment.”
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A protest in Tehran days after the death of Mahsa Amini. One medic said he treated a woman 'deliberately' shot in the genitals and thighs. (photo: Shutterstock)
Exclusive: Men and women coming in with shotgun wounds to different parts of bodies, doctors say
Doctors and nurses – treating demonstrators in secret to avoid arrest – said they first observed the practice after noticing that women often arrived with different wounds to men, who more commonly had shotgun pellets in their legs, buttocks and backs.
While an internet blackout has hidden much of the bloody crackdown on protesters, photos provided by medics to the Guardian showed devastating wounds all over their bodies from so-called birdshot pellets, which security forces have fired on people at close range. Some of the photos showed people with dozens of tiny “shot” balls lodged deep in their flesh.
The Guardian has spoken to 10 medical professionals who warned about the seriousness of the injuries that could leave hundreds of young Iranians with permanent damage. Shots to the eyes of women, men and children were particularly common, they said.
One physician from the central Isfahan province said he believed the authorities were targeting men and women in different ways “because they wanted to destroy the beauty of these women”.
“I treated a woman in her early 20s, who was shot in her genitals by two pellets. Ten other pellets were lodged in her inner thigh. These 10 pellets were easily removed, but those two pellets were a challenge, because they were wedged in between her urethra and vaginal opening,” the physician said. “There was a serious risk of vaginal infection, so I asked her to go to a trusted gynaecologist. She said she was protesting when a group of about 10 security agents circled around and shot her in her genitals and thighs.”
Traumatised by his experience, the physician – who like all medical professionals cited in this article spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisals – said he had a hard time dealing with the stress and pain he witnessed.
“She could have been my own daughter.”
Some of the other medical professionals accused security forces, including the feared pro-regime Basij militia, of ignoring riot control practices, such as firing weapons at feet and legs to avoid damaging vital organs.
One doctor from Karaj, a city near Tehran, said security forces “shoot at the faces and private body parts of women because they have an inferiority complex. And they want to get rid of their sexual complexes by hurting these young people.”
The ministry of foreign affairs was approached to comment on the allegations made by the medics but has yet to respond.
Nationwide protests
Activists say such horrific gender-based violence is no surprise given the misogynistic rule of Iran’s ayatollahs, who took power in the 1979 revolution and have maintained control with brute force, often against women.
It was the death in September of a 22-year-old woman, Mahsa Amini that ignited the boldest challenge to the hardline theocratic rule of the country’s clerics.
Amini was arrested for improperly wearing her headscarf and then apparently beaten into a coma by Iran’s morality police. In the days after her death, girls and women nationwide defied the legally imposed dress code and ripped off their hijabs.
Tehran has repeatedly blamed foreign enemies for the unrest and accused “terrorists” of killing dozens of security force members. That conflicts with statements from the UN office of the high commissioner for human rights, which said more than 300 people had been killed so far in the crackdown, including more than 40 children.
And while the UN human rights council has adopted the resolution to create a fact-finding mission to investigate alleged human rights violations, investigators are unlikely to be admitted to the country.
Part of Tehran’s campaign of intimidation has included threats to doctors who treat the wounded.
Facing such dangerous conditions, a doctor from Mazandaran said she was removing pellets, which are sometimes metal and sometimes plastic, with the lights off to avoid detection. “The women are so ashamed to go to the hospital that many are treated at home and that’s very dangerous,” the doctor said.
On 26 October, hundreds of medics protested outside the medical council of Iran, and were shot with pellet guns by the security forces. A surgeon from Tehran treated his colleagues who were shot in their backs and legs while running away.
The surgeon said he treated serious injuries of at least five protesters who were shot at close range by pellet guns. “One of the injured people I treated wasn’t even protesting. He was a bystander … and thought he wouldn’t be shot at. They’re shooting blindly at everyone who’s not one of them.”
Brian Castner, a senior crisis adviser on arms and military operations at Amnesty International, said the injuries shown in the photographs provided to the Guardian were broadly consistent “with the use of birdshot, which is designed for hunting and has no place in any legitimate or lawful use of force by police”.
He said it would be hard to gauge from the photos alone what parts of the body were targeted, or from what range, because of the spraying nature of birdshot pellets from shotguns. At least one photo showed what appeared to be a large single “slug” projectile, Castner said, which is used for hunting big game, such as deer. “The person who was hit is very lucky they were not hit in the chest or head and killed. There has been some evidence I have seen before of slug use, but this is a clear example.”
Shot in the eyes
The Tehran surgeon said that one case referred to him was a 25-year-old bystander who was shot in the face on 16 September, when the protests had just begun. “Pellets have hit his eyes, head and face … He is almost blinded in both eyes and he can only detect light and brightness with them. He is not in a good condition.”
It is one of the hundreds of reports that have emerged of protesters losing their eyesight after being shot by pellets at close range. The Guardian has seen photos of people with pellets lodged in their eyeballs.
One case that grew to national prominence was an attack on a student from the port city of Bandar Abbas, who was shot in her right eye. Ghazal Ranjkesh shared on her Instagram profile that she was shot while on the way back from work.
“The last image that my right eye saw was the smile of the person shooting at me,” she wrote in a post that has now been deleted after it was widely shared on protest groups and social media, creating a backlash.
More than 400 ophthalmologists from Iran have signed a letter alerting Mahmoud Jabbarvand, the secretary general of the Iranian Society of Ophthalmology, to what appears to be the deliberate blinding of protesters.
One of the ophthalmologists who signed the letter said they had treated four patients who lost some or all of their eyesight, including one 20-year-old man whose X-ray showed 18 pellets in his head and face.
“I felt horrible, I felt so angry and I had tears in my eyes looking at their pain. The eye is the most sensitive part of the human body and it is very painful to think about these injured people who are all young and have to live with this disability and low vision for the rest of their lives,” he said.
“I heard many similar cases from my colleagues and the cases of eye damage in the recent protests are much more. It’s more than 1,000 cases,” he said, adding that they had yet to receive a response to the letter.
The Guardian shared photos of eye and facial injuries sustained at the protests with Iain Hutchison, an oral and facial surgeon in the UK who founded the surgical research charity Saving Faces.
Hutchison said the images showed “people who have been shot at point-blank range using shotgun pellets shot directly into both eyes leaving serious permanent visual damage or blindness”.
The nature of the injury, he said, suggested “that they would have been held down or held still and not had the ability to move their head away”.
Knowing that demonstrators will need medical treatment for such severe injuries, authorities have increased surveillance at hospitals. A doctor from a hospital in Shiraz said that new security guard had been stationed outside the emergency ophthalmology department late last month.
“He controlled whoever was entering and exiting the emergency ophthalmology department, and he asked to see our identity cards and tags each time. It was the first time I saw this happening in the hospital. It looked like this addition to the guards happened after an increasing number of protesters with eye injuries were admitted,” said the doctor.
In other parts of the country, particularly in the Kurdistan region where the government has blockaded whole cities, volunteers are having to smuggle in bandages and medicine on foot.
Soran Mansournia, a Kurdish human rights activist who is part of a committee of doctors and has been coordinating with civilians to deliver medicines and treat wounded protesters secretly, said: “The number of wounded is very high. Every day we hear about the death of an injured person who did not go to hospital out of fear of arrest.”
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Our research finds that Britain's exploitative policies were associated with approximately 100 million excess deaths during the 1881-1920 period, write Sullivan and Hickel. (photo: Wikimedia Commons)
Between 1880 to 1920, British colonial policies in India claimed more lives than all famines in the Soviet Union, Maoist China and North Korea combined.
This rosy picture of colonialism conflicts dramatically with the historical record. According to research by the economic historian Robert C Allen, extreme poverty in India increased under British rule, from 23 percent in 1810 to more than 50 percent in the mid-20th century. Real wages declined during the British colonial period, reaching a nadir in the 19th century, while famines became more frequent and more deadly. Far from benefitting the Indian people, colonialism was a human tragedy with few parallels in recorded history.
Experts agree that the period from 1880 to 1920 – the height of Britain’s imperial power – was particularly devastating for India. Comprehensive population censuses carried out by the colonial regime beginning in the 1880s reveal that the death rate increased considerably during this period, from 37.2 deaths per 1,000 people in the 1880s to 44.2 in the 1910s. Life expectancy declined from 26.7 years to 21.9 years.
In a recent paper in the journal World Development, we used census data to estimate the number of people killed by British imperial policies during these four brutal decades. Robust data on mortality rates in India only exists from the 1880s. If we use this as the baseline for “normal” mortality, we find that some 50 million excess deaths occurred under the aegis of British colonialism during the period from 1891 to 1920.
Fifty million deaths is a staggering figure, and yet this is a conservative estimate. Data on real wages indicates that by 1880, living standards in colonial India had already declined dramatically from their previous levels. Allen and other scholars argue that prior to colonialism, Indian living standards may have been “on a par with the developing parts of Western Europe.” We do not know for sure what India’s pre-colonial mortality rate was, but if we assume it was similar to that of England in the 16th and 17th centuries (27.18 deaths per 1,000 people), we find that 165 million excess deaths occurred in India during the period from 1881 to 1920.
While the precise number of deaths is sensitive to the assumptions we make about baseline mortality, it is clear that somewhere in the vicinity of 100 million people died prematurely at the height of British colonialism. This is among the largest policy-induced mortality crises in human history. It is larger than the combined number of deaths that occurred during all famines in the Soviet Union, Maoist China, North Korea, Pol Pot’s Cambodia, and Mengistu’s Ethiopia.
How did British rule cause this tremendous loss of life? There were several mechanisms. For one, Britain effectively destroyed India’s manufacturing sector. Prior to colonisation, India was one of the largest industrial producers in the world, exporting high-quality textiles to all corners of the globe. The tawdry cloth produced in England simply could not compete. This began to change, however, when the British East India Company assumed control of Bengal in 1757.
According to the historian Madhusree Mukerjee, the colonial regime practically eliminated Indian tariffs, allowing British goods to flood the domestic market, but created a system of exorbitant taxes and internal duties that prevented Indians from selling cloth within their own country, let alone exporting it.
This unequal trade regime crushed Indian manufacturers and effectively de-industrialised the country. As the chairman of East India and China Association boasted to the English parliament in 1840: “This company has succeeded in converting India from a manufacturing country into a country exporting raw produce.” English manufacturers gained a tremendous advantage, while India was reduced to poverty and its people were made vulnerable to hunger and disease.
To make matters worse, British colonisers established a system of legal plunder, known to contemporaries as the “drain of wealth.” Britain taxed the Indian population and then used the revenues to buy Indian products – indigo, grain, cotton, and opium – thus obtaining these goods for free. These goods were then either consumed within Britain or re-exported abroad, with the revenues pocketed by the British state and used to finance the industrial development of Britain and its settler colonies – the United States, Canada and Australia.
This system drained India of goods worth trillions of dollars in today’s money. The British were merciless in imposing the drain, forcing India to export food even when drought or floods threatened local food security. Historians have established that tens of millions of Indians died of starvation during several considerable policy-induced famines in the late 19th century, as their resources were syphoned off to Britain and its settler colonies.
Colonial administrators were fully aware of the consequences of their policies. They watched as millions starved and yet they did not change course. They continued to knowingly deprive people of resources necessary for survival. The extraordinary mortality crisis of the late Victorian period was no accident. The historian Mike Davis argues that Britain’s imperial policies “were often the exact moral equivalents of bombs dropped from 18,000 feet.”
Our research finds that Britain’s exploitative policies were associated with approximately 100 million excess deaths during the 1881-1920 period. This is a straightforward case for reparations, with strong precedent in international law. Following World War II, Germany signed reparations agreements to compensate the victims of the Holocaust and more recently agreed to pay reparations to Namibia for colonial crimes perpetrated there in the early 1900s. In the wake of apartheid, South Africa paid reparations to people who had been terrorised by the white-minority government.
History cannot be changed, and the crimes of the British empire cannot be erased. But reparations can help address the legacy of deprivation and inequity that colonialism produced. It is a critical step towards justice and healing.
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Prosecutors have urged a federal judge to hold Donald Trump's office in contempt of court for failing to return all classified documents held at Mar-a-Lago. (photo: Getty)
The request came after months of mounting frustration from the Justice Department with the former president’s lawyers
In recent days, Justice Department lawyers have asked U.S. District Judge Beryl A. Howell to hold Trump’s office in contempt, according to the people, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe sealed court proceedings. The hearing is scheduled for Friday, according to two people with knowledge of the matter.
The request came after months of mounting frustration from the Justice Department with Trump’s team — frustration that spiked in June after the former president’s lawyers provided assurances that a diligent search had been conducted for classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago Club and residence. But the FBI amassed evidence suggesting — and later confirmed through a court-authorized search — that many more remained.
One of the key areas of disagreement centers on the Trump legal team’s repeated refusal to designate a custodian of records to sign a document attesting that all classified materials have been returned to the federal government, according to two of these people. The Justice Department has repeatedly sought an unequivocal sworn written assurance from Trump’s team that all such documents have been returned, and Trump’s team has been unwilling to designate a custodian of records to sign such a statement while also giving assurances that they have handed documents back.
The precise wording of the filing could not be determined because it remains under seal. Trump is under investigation for three potential crimes: mishandling classified documents, obstruction and destruction of government records.
Trump spokesman Steven Cheung said the former president’s lawyers “continue to be cooperative and transparent.” He added: “This is a political witch hunt unlike anything like this country has ever seen.”
A Justice Department spokesman declined to comment.
Trump’s team has searched a number of his other properties in recent weeks, in response to the Justice Department concerns and instructions from the judge, and turned over two items with classification markings to the government. Trump’s advisers told the FBI the items were found in a storage facility used by the former president in West Palm Beach, Fla. Other Trump properties searched in recent weeks include his Bedminster golf course in New Jersey and his home and office at Trump Tower in Manhattan. People familiar with those searches by a private firm say no classified documents were found at those locations.
Trump’s side has taken the position that such a request is unreasonable — that no lawyer could sign such a blanket certification in good faith or advise any client to do so, as opposed to attesting that a search of a given location has been completed in good faith. Some of Trump’s lawyers are also wary of making any claim under oath based on Trump’s word alone, two people familiar with the matter said.
The government’s request for a finding of contempt underscores the fundamental distrust that has existed since the spring between the government trying to retrieve sensitive documents and a former president whose responses have proved untrustworthy. That distrust has led to a legal impasse in sealed papers over what constitutes a complete search for classified papers.
When the government first issued a subpoena in May for any documents with classified markings, the official recipient of that subpoena was the office of the former president’s custodian of records — a role Trump’s team ultimately told the government was held by attorney Christina Bobb.
In June, Bobb signed an attestation that a diligent search had been conducted for any such material, but the FBI collected convincing evidence that was not the case. The government received a court-authorized search warrant in August, which turned up 103 more classified documents at Mar-a-Lago that had not been turned over in response to the subpoena.
But after months of back-and-forth, the core question has still not been answered to the Justice Department’s satisfaction: Are there any more classified items still in the former president’s possession? Prosecutors, having been burned before by empty promises, now want unqualified vows from someone in the official role of the custodian of records that there are no more classified skeletons in any of Trump’s closets.
Prosecutors have asked the judge to find Trump’s side in contempt as long as none of his advisers are willing to assume the role of custodian of records responsible for a complete answer to the question, these people said. In recent months, Bobb has publicly said she is not doing legal work related to the documents case but only advising Trump’s PAC on election issues.
If the judge were to agree, the most likely scenario would be a daily fine until the demands of the contempt motion are met. How large of a fine, or who would be forced to pay it, would be up to the judge.
It is not uncommon for large organizations to designate a records custodian who can take formal legal responsibility for the company or entity’s files. In Trump’s case, the subpoena sent in May was formally directed to his office’s custodian of records. No individual was named in the request.
Prosecutors have said in court filings that after Trump’s lawyers received the May subpoena, they asked for additional time to comply with it before agreeing to meet on June 3 to turn over records. The night before the scheduled meeting, Bobb — a lawyer and former One America News host — was called by Trump adviser Boris Epshteyn and asked to join lawyer Evan Corcoran at the meeting with Justice Department lawyers, according to a person familiar with the account she later gave to the FBI. Bobb had not previously met Corcoran.
At the June 3 meeting, Bobb gave the Justice Department a letter that began by saying she had been designated to serve as the office’s custodian of records, for purposes of the subpoena, according to people familiar with the conversation. The certification, with a redacted name, has been included in court filings. The letter said Bobb had been told a “diligent search” had been conducted of boxes “moved from the White House to Florida,” and that all documents responsive to the subpoena were being turned over.
The person close to Bobb has said she told the FBI she was skeptical of the letter and insisted on adding a disclaimer saying it was based on information provided to her by others.
Last month, Attorney General Merrick Garland appointed a special counsel to take over the investigation into the classified documents, along with an investigation into Trump’s attempts to overturn the 2020 election. In recent weeks, a number of Trump advisers have appeared in front of a grand jury hearing evidence in the classified documents case.
Stephen Ryan, a white-collar criminal defense attorney, said it is usually not difficult to figure out who should serve as the custodian of records for a company. “In the normal course of business, if you’re a real business, you have records and you have custodians of those records that you can call on,” he said. “It’s the person who holds custody of the records as part of their day-to-day activities.”
In this case, however, there is no representative of Trump who has actually maintained control of the records. “The department is in effect asking for something that doesn’t exist,” he said. “This is an extraordinary problem that is factually relatively unique.”
At this point, he said, “no one wants to put their head in the custodian noose.”
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Sen. Bernie Sanders will soon bring a war powers resolution to floor of Senate. (photo: Getty)
Backers of a war powers resolution say that a strong vote in the Senate will send a signal to Saudi Arabia that it does not have a free hand to restart hostilities.
An agreement for a ceasefire in Yemen between the Saudi-led alliance and the Houthis, who are backed by Iran, has expired, though both sides have tenuously maintained the peace. Backers of a war powers resolution say that a strong vote in the Senate in the lame duck will send a signal to Saudi Arabia that it does not have a free hand to restart hostilities, despite the Biden administration’s more placating posture amid its hunt for lower oil prices.
A war powers resolution is “privileged” in the Senate, which means that the sponsor of it can bring it to the floor for a vote without the need for approval by the chamber’s leadership once a certain amount of time has elapsed. At that point, the resolution has “ripened,” and the one sponsored by Sanders is now ripe.
Asked whether Sanders expected to have the votes to pass the resolution, Sanders said, “I think we do, yes.”
In 2019, Congress advanced a bipartisan version of the current Yemen war powers resolution, only to see it vetoed by President Donald Trump.
Sens. Bob Menendez, D-N.J., and Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, who both supported earlier versions of the bill, said they hadn’t seen draft text of the latest version of the resolution, and wouldn’t commit to how they would vote if Sanders brings the resolution to the floor. “I was not aware that it was on the docket next week,” Murkowski told The Intercept. (It’s not officially on the docket yet.) “I hadn’t heard that, I guess we’ll find out. I’m going to take a look at it.” Sen. Jon Ossoff, D-Ga., also said he would “review it in full” before a vote.
Menendez, chair of the Foreign Relations Committee, has previously called for a “freeze” in U.S. military support for Saudi Arabia. “The United States must immediately freeze all aspects of our cooperation with Saudi Arabia, including any arms sales and security cooperation beyond what is absolutely necessary to defend U.S. personnel and interests,” he said in October. “As Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, I will not green-light any cooperation with Riyadh until the Kingdom reassesses its position with respect to the war in Ukraine. Enough is enough.”
Also in October, John Kirby, the White House national security spokesperson, responded to Saudi Arabia’s effort to jack up gas prices by questioning the solidity of the relationship between the two countries, saying the administration was prepared work with Congress “to think through what that relationship ought to look like going forward.”
President Biden, he said, is “going to be willing to start to have those conversations right away. I don’t think this is anything that’s going to have to wait or should wait, quite frankly, for much longer.” The resolution gives Biden a post-fist-bump opportunity to have that conversation.
On Wednesday, a coalition of groups pushing to end the war in Yemen plan to release a letter to Congress calling for a WPR vote during the lame duck. On Tuesday, the House Foreign Affairs Committee holds a hearing on the issue. The House version is sponsored by outgoing Rep. Peter DeFazio, D-Ore., and needs the support of Rep. Jim McGovern, D-Mass., to get through the Rules Committee. McGovern is a co-sponsor of the resolution, as is Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., chair of the House Intelligence Committee. In the Senate, it’s co-sponsored by Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., who is not just the chamber’s No. 2, but also serves as chair of the Appropriations subcommittee that doles out Pentagon funding.
Next Wednesday, the House will be holding a public briefing, chaired by Rep. David Cicilline, a Democrat of Rhode Island, titled “Public Members Briefing on Navigating the Political and Humanitarian Landscape in Yemen: A Conversation with Civil Society on Paths Forward for Congress.” The primary path forward for Congress is a war powers resolution, though advocates are also pushing for restrictions on war-making in the National Defense Authorization Act, which must pass by the end of the calendar year.
The resolution will also be put forward at a complicated moment for Biden’s relationship with Saudi Arabia. Though Saudi Arabia has used its oil exports as a cudgel to attack the current administration which it views as opposed to its own economic interests and human rights record, relations began to thaw last month. The Biden administration moved to grant sovereign immunity to Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman in the lawsuit over journalist Jamal Khashoggi’s death, angering advocates.
Hassan El-Tayyab, legislative director for Middle East policy at Friends Committee on National Legislation, said the war powers resolution could pressure Saudi Arabia. “By removing the possibility of more U.S. support for Riyadh and its partners to renew airstrikes in Yemen, Congress can play a constructive role to keep the pressure on the Saudis to negotiate an extension of the truce,” said El-Tayyab.
The war between Russia and Ukraine, in which the U.S. has been supporting Ukraine without a declaration of war, may complicate the politics of the resolution. Some of the language as applied to Yemen could arguably apply equally to the war in Ukraine — though the resolution specifies that only Yemen-related activity is covered, Congress is under no obligation to be consistent in their interpretation, and U.S. support of Ukraine is restricted to defensive operations inside the country’s borders, whereas Saudi Arabia has been conducting its war inside Yemen.
The resolution defines “hostilities” in a number of ways, including “sharing intelligence for the purpose of enabling offensive coalition strikes” and “providing logistical support for offensive coalition strikes, including by providing maintenance or transferring spare parts to coalition members flying warplanes engaged in anti-Houthi bombings in Yemen.” That definition is legally safe in Ukraine, as there is no evidence the U.S. is helping Ukraine target Russia inside Russia’s own borders, and any strikes of occupying forces can reasonably be deemed defensive. Saudi Arabia, meanwhile, has waged a relentless — though now paused — bombing campaign inside Yemen, one which is impossible to call defensive because it long predated the Houthis more recent returning of fire into Saudi Arabia.
The second definition of hostilities reads:
The assignment of United States Armed Forces, including any civilian or military personnel of the Department of Defense, to command, coordinate, participate in the movement of, or accompany the regular or irregular military forces of the Saudi-led coalition forces in hostilities against the Houthis in Yemen or in situations in which there exists an imminent threat that such coalition forces become engaged in such hostilities, unless and until the President has obtained specific statutory authorization, in accordance with section 8(a) of the War Powers Resolution.
As The Intercept has reported, U.S. special operations personnel have played an active role in Ukraine under a presidential covert action finding, though such covert action has long been understood not to trigger Congress’s war powers jurisdiction, for better or for worse. Some of the most vocal supporters of U.S. support for Ukraine — such as Schiff and Sens. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., and Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I. — are also cosponsors of the Yemen war powers resolution.
Despite the ceasefire lapsing in October, the Saudis have yet to resume bombing. Anti-war advocates believe the Saudi hesitation flows from a concern that opponents of the war in Washington would get an upper hand at the first report of civilian casualties from a renewed campaign of bombing in a war that has stretched on for some seven years. The Saudis continue to maintain a blockade of Yemen, strangling the country’s economy and producing a humanitarian crisis of biblical proportions.
“While the situation in Yemen remains volatile, no amount of U.S. support for Saudi and UAE’s war on Yemen should be acceptable,” said Shireen Al-Adeimi, a Yemeni American academic who has been active against the war. “Whether a truce is re-negotiated or not, Congress needs to assert its constitutional authority over war-making under the Biden administration just as they did when Trump was assisting the Saudi-led coalition.”
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At the UN biodiversity conference, Indigenous leaders fight to be included in 30x30 talks. (photo: Andrej Ivanov/Getty)
At the UN biodiversity conference, Indigenous leaders fight to be included in 30x30 talks.
At the summit, one of the biggest topics of discussion will be the 30X30 protected areas plan, an international plan to conserve 30% of the world’s land and water by 2030. “We are waging war on nature,” U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said on Tuesday. “This Conference is our chance to stop this orgy of destruction.”
In the run up to COP15, the International Indigenous Forum on Biodiversity (IIFB), a caucus of Indigenous representatives and activists established in 1996 to advocate for Indigenous peoples at international meetings, has been advocating to include language that protects Indigenous rights in the final agreement. “The global biodiversity framework to save nature must respect, promote and support the rights of Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities if it stands any chance of succeeding,” the IIFB said in a statement.
However, amid a push to complete negotiations by deadline, IIFB representatives say they are concerned that their priorities may not be fully heard or included; During COP15, delegates have limited time to negotiate and agree on biodiversity targets and milestones. If an agreement isn’t reached during that time, then final text is moved up a level to a round that may not include Indigenous representatives.
“As the negotiation reaches its conclusion, the space for Indigenous Peoples becomes smaller and smaller,” Jennifer Corpuz, who is Kankanaey Igorot from the Northern Philippines and one of the lead negotiators of the International Indigenous Forum on Biodiversity, said. “If we’re not there, it’s very difficult for us to defend our position.”
Advocates are most concerned with 30X30 and its impacts on Indigenous peoples, rights and lands. In the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Indigenous Batwa were evicted, killed and group raped during a violent eviction campaign from Kahuzi-Biega National Park under the pretense of protecting the UNESCO World Heritage Site from poachers and deforestation. In Tanzania, nearly 150,000 Indigenous Maasai could be evicted from their homes to create game reserves and protected areas. In Nepal, Indigenous Tharu and others were evicted from their lands to create Chitwan National Park and Bardiya National Park, both of which have been supported by international conservation organizations like the World Wildlife Fund.
“If Indigenous Peoples do not maintain or secure ownership of our land nor have equal authority in the decision-making process, the UN’s 30×30 policy may be the biggest land grab in history and further threaten the physical and cultural survival of Indigenous Peoples worldwide,” Indigenous leaders wrote in a letter to Elizabeth Maruma Mrema, Executive Secretary of the UN Convention on Biological Diversity, and other COP15 participants.
The current biodiversity framework text recognizes Indigenous rights, but Corpuz says without Indigenous advocates attached to the draft as it moves through the system, decision makers may make changes that facilitate ongoing violations of Indigenous peoples rights. “Those who are leading the crafting of policy and those who are funding the creation of protected areas, they’re just so stuck in the idea that protected areas are the end all and be all,” Corpuz said. “But that’s not what the science is saying.”
Multiple reports and studies have shown that defending Indigenous rights also protects the environment. Indigenous land contains 80 percent of the world’s remaining biodiversity and the world’s healthiest and most resilient forests are on protected Indigenous territory. “It is undisputed that Indigenous-led conservation solutions have and will continue to deliver better results than approaches that disregard our land and collective rights. Rhetoric is not enough. Conservation must center on and include Indigenous Peoples in order to succeed,” said Amnesty International, Survival International, Minority Rights Group, and Rainforest Foundation UK in a joint statement that calls on states to “urgently reconsider” the 30X30 plan ahead of COP15.
“A human rights-based approach is crucial to a successful Global Biodiversity Framework,” said Lucy Mulenkei, Maasai and co-chair of the International Indigenous Forum on Biodiversity. “Such an approach would mean that biodiversity policies, governance and management do not violate human rights, and those implementing such policies should actively seek ways to support and promote human rights in their design and implementation.”
In Canada, Indigenous Protected and Conservation Areas (IPCAs) offer a successful model of Indigenous-led conservation. First Nations are currently in the process of creating IPCAs that would total nearly 200,000 square miles—larger than the entire state of California. These protected areas help protect Canada’s rich biodiversity as well as Indigenous culture and autonomy. They also provide economic benefits to Indigenous communities, especially through the Guardians program, which trains Indigenous people to manage protected areas.
Valérie Courtois, director of the Indigenous Leadership Initiative and member of the Innu community of Mashteuiatsh, hopes to use COP15 as an opportunity to show that Indigenous peoples can and should lead conservation efforts. “We’re hoping that by showing that it’s possible here in Canada, that it may be possible in other parts of the world to do that as well,” she said.
In 2010, at COP10 in Nagoya, Japan, governments agreed on a set of biodiversity targets, including plans for sustainable consumption and reducing natural habitat loss. According to the Convention on Biological Diversity, none of those targets have been fully met. However, the world is nearly halfway to the goal of 30 percent conservation.
“Only by recognizing the rights, knowledge, innovations, and values of Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities will we be able to push forward the global agenda to sustainably use and conserve biodiversity,” said Lakpa Nuri Sherpa, one of the Co-Chairs of the International Indigenous Forum on Biodiversity.
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