10 April 23
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Judge is alleged to have accepted luxury holidays from a Republican donor without declaring them
Allegations that he and his wife, Ginni, took dozens of trips, paid for by Republican donor Harlan Crow, were published by the investigative journalism group ProPublica.
It said that Mr Crow, a billionaire property developer, had funded luxury holidays for nearly two decades.
They allegedly included trips on Mr Crow’s yacht and flights on his private jet. Mr Thomas also allegedly stayed at the billionaire’s private all-male retreat at Monte Rio, California.
According to ProPublica, one of the trips could have cost more than $500,000.
Although judges are not banned from accepting such hospitality, they must disclose gifts or more than $415 (£334) under the Ethics in Government Act to avoid even “an appearance of impropriety”.
However, the holidays were not disclosed in his public filings, ProPublica alleged.
Mr Thomas, 74, who has been on the Supreme Court since 1991, is arguably its most conservative member.
His wife Ginni has also attracted controversy over her support for attempts to overturn the result of the 2020 presidential election.
With conservatives now enjoying a 6-3 majority on the Supreme Court, Mr Thomas has emerged as a prime target for Democrats.
Dick Durbin said the Senate Judiciary Committee, which he chairs, would act.
And Ms Ocasio-Cortez, the left-wing congresswoman from New York, stepped up the pressure on Sunday.
“I believe that we should pursue the course. And if it is Republicans that decide to protect those who are breaking the law, then they are the ones who then are responsible for that decision,” she said on CNN.
But with the Republicans controlling the House, impeachment is highly unlikely.
Mr Thomas denied impropriety when responding to the allegations.
“Harlan and Kathy Crow are among our dearest friends, and we have been friends for over twenty-five years, he said.
“As friends do, we have joined them on a number of family trips.”
Mr Crow also denied impropriety.
“Justice Thomas and Ginni never asked for any of this hospitality,”. He added that he had never discussed a case with the judge.
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Expelled Rep. Justin Pearson, D-Memphis, from left, expelled Rep. Justin Jones, D-Nashville, and Rep. Gloria Johnson, D-Knoxville, are recognized by the audience at Fisk University before Vice President Kamala Harris arrives, on Friday in Nashville, Tenn. (photo: George Walker IV/AP)
The two former Democratic lawmakers, who were expelled by Republican colleagues after they staged a protest on the House floor calling for gun law reforms, say they want their seats back.
Jones and Pearson, both of whom are Black, were voted out of the Tennessee House on Thursday for their actions that took place in response to the deadly school shooting in Nashville.
Some 130,000 voters in heavily Black districts are currently without representation in the House. Rep. Gloria Johnson, D-Knoxville, who is white and also led the protest, survived expulsion by one vote.
Jones and Pearson voiced their desire to return to their seats as lawmakers in an interview with NBC's Meet the Press on Sunday.
"We will continue to fight for our constituents," Jones said.
"This attack against us is hurting all people in our state," he added. "Even though it is disproportionately impacting Black and brown communities, this is hurting poor white people ... silencing them."
Pearson told NPR's All Things Considered on Saturday that he hoped to return to the legislature. He said he and Jones were stripped of their positions because they "decided that it was time for the state of Tennessee Republicans to stop listening to the NRA and start listening to the thousands of children and teens and grandmothers and siblings who are mourning because of the effects of gun violence."
Republicans said the expelled lawmakers disrupted order and broke procedural rules in the chamber.
Local officials' meetings this week could appoint both as interim replacements for the empty seats
The vacancies of both expelled lawmakers may be short-lived.
Nashville Vice Mayor Jim Shulman has called for a special Metropolitan Council meeting on Monday to discuss filling the empty District 52 House seat left by Jones, according to an email tweeted out by councilmember Bob Mendes.
If the council chooses to do so, it could vote to appoint an interim successor as soon as Monday night, Shulman told Axios.
The majority of Nashville's 40-member council have already vowed to reappoint Jones, according to NBC News — with some signaling their intention to do so before the council meeting was even called.
After the council appoints an interim House representative nominee, the county will hold a special election — in which Jones is eligible to run — to carry out the term.
Meanwhile, the board of commissioners for Shelby County, which includes Memphis, plans to consider reinstating Pearson.
Chairman Mickell Lowery announced he was calling a special meeting on Wednesday afternoon to "consider the action to reappoint Mr. Justin Pearson to his duly elected position to represent the citizens in District 86," local station Action News 5 reported.
Chances appear to favor Pearson's return: Commissioner Erika Sugarmon told the Memphis Commercial Appeal that the former lawmaker has enough supporters sitting in the commission, which has a Democratic supermajority, to get him successfully reappointed.
The county will then hold a special election to fill the seat.
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Smoke is seen during a shelling, amid Russia's attack on Ukraine, on the outskirts of the front line city of Bakhmut, Donetsk region, Ukraine April 6, 2023. (photo: Oleksandr Klymenko/Reuters)
Ukraine Says Russia Using 'Scorched Earth' Tactics in Bakhmut
Reuters
Excerpt: "A senior Ukrainian commander said on Monday that Russian troops were using 'scorched earth' tactics in the embattled city of Bakhmut and destroying buildings and positions with air strikes and artillery."
Ukrainian forces have hung on for months in Bakhmut, a small city in eastern Donetsk region, where the fiercest fighting of Moscow's full-scale Feb. 2022 invasion has killed thousands of soldiers and been dubbed the "meat-grinder".
"The enemy switched to so-called scorched earth tactics from Syria. It is destroying buildings and positions with air strikes and artillery fire," said Colonel General Oleksandr Syrskyi, commander of Ukraine's ground forces.
But the defence of the city of Bakhmut continued, he said.
Syrskyi, who is overseeing the operation in the east, on Sunday visited front line areas with the fiercest fighting around Bakhmut, Ukraine's Military Media Centre said.
"The situation is difficult but controllable," he said.
Ukraine also accused Russia of using "scorched earth" tactics last summer in its assault on Sievierodonetsk, a city in the eastern Luhansk region. Kyiv's forces were forced to withdraw from there in July after a Russian onslaught.
Ukraine has said its defence of Bakhmut is buying time for it to build up and reconstitute forces for a much-vaunted spring offensive and that it is inflicting huge losses on Russian forces trying to seize control.
But Russian forces have gained ground on the flanks of Bakhmut in recent weeks, threatening key supply lines for Kyiv's defenders and have also made advances inside the city.
The capture of Bakhmut would be Moscow's first major gain since it took the similarly-sized cities of Sievierodonetsk and neighbouring settlement Lysychansk.
Syrskyi said Russia was bringing in special forces and airborne assault units to help their attack on the city as members of Russia's private Wagner military group had become "exhausted".
Wagner militia fighters have been spearheading the assault on Bakhmut.
Reuters could not verify the battlefield accounts.
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Trump and Flynn. (photo: Elizabeth Brockway/The Daily Beast/Reuters)
Trump claimed an online event last month was hacked by “the radical left.” Turns out the chaos may have been the result of a “dumb” mistake by MAGA ally Michael Flynn.
But no one in the ex-president’s circle seemed to interrogate whether that was true. As it turns out, the chaos may have come from inside the house.
As The Daily Beast previously reported, the Pastors for Trump National Prayer Call on March 20, starring Trump, Roger Stone, and Michael Flynn, turned into chaos after the twice-impeached ex-president’s line went dead moments after he joined the call.
“I think what happened was that the radical left was working on the phone,” Trump claimed after rejoining the line. “There is no question about it.” Disconnected yet again, a frustrated Trump later reiterated, “I think probably it was the radical left that did something with [the phone lines].”
Pastors for Trump founder Jackson Lahmeyer told The Daily Beast at the time that the call’s private “backstage got flooded with people and trolls, just commenting all types of stuff.” The torrent of such “trolls” into the call’s back end—possibly the result of a “hack,” he said—may have caused the snafu. “Everything froze on our end. I think the system got overloaded with the number of viewers.”
In an era of deep political divisions, with many battles waged online, it wouldn’t be all that surprising if anti-Trump internet users somehow found a way to “hack” the event.
But while “Trump and everyone involved thought that the prayer call was hacked by the radical left,” a Trump insider with knowledge of the situation explained, there was actually no hack at all.
The Pastors for Trump event’s private back-end was infiltrated because Flynn publicly posted the link—a “dumb” mistake, this insider said, that has “never been publicly remedied.”
“Pray, pray, pray for America,” the former Trump national security adviser tweeted to his 1.1 million followers, two minutes after the event began, alongside a link granting users access to the private back-end of the call. As a result, “the private speakers’ area was flooded by hundreds of trolls, causing the whole system to crash. Those of us logged in using the link watched the whole thing happen in real time, and could see the faces of these trolls while they hurled insults and threats in the private backstage chatroom.”
Flynn’s tweet undoubtedly caused the breach, the insider said, because that private link “was generated by Pastors for Trump staff and given only to speakers. The backstage only holds 12 people. So using that link with hundreds of people crashed the entire system.”
As of this article’s publication, Flynn has still not deleted the tweet, which garnered more than 1,000 retweets and 121,000 views. Neither the retired lieutenant general nor Trump’s camp responded to requests for comment.
When reached for comment, Lahmeyer boasting that, “Our livestream prayer call with President Donald Trump was tremendous with over 155k people watching live and over 3k pastors.” But he avoided directly addressing Flynn’s alleged responsibility for the chaos, writing: “Unfortunately, Leftists Trolls invaded our backstage on the live stream because the link was shared publicly and that caused it to shut down. Thankfully, we were able to recover and record a phone call conversation with President Trump, where I had the opportunity to pray over him.”
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Gov. Ron DeSantis and Florida lawmakers have said the expansive legislation is an antidote to President Biden’s “open borders agenda” and a model for other states. (photo: Cheney Orr/AFP)
The Florida governor is pushing an aggressive proposal to penalize those who aid undocumented immigrants and to track costs for providing them with health care.
Expected to pass within weeks because Republicans have supermajorities in both chambers, the bills are part of what Mr. DeSantis describes as a response to President Biden’s “open borders agenda,” which he said has allowed an uncontrolled flow of immigrants to cross into the United States from Mexico.
The bills would expose people to felony charges for sheltering, hiring and transporting undocumented immigrants; require hospitals to ask patients their immigration status and report to the state; invalidate out-of-state driver’s licenses issued to undocumented immigrants; prevent undocumented immigrants from being admitted to the bar in Florida; and direct the Florida Department of Law Enforcement to provide assistance to federal authorities in enforcing the nation’s immigration laws.
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An Israeli border police officer aims his weapon as another prepares to fire tear gas canisters towards Palestinian demonstrators protesting against Israeli settlements near Nablus in the Israeli-occupied West Bank. (photo: Raneen Sawafta/Reuters)
Settlers and politicians march towards Nablus to demand that the outpost be legalised while the Israeli army shoots a teen in Jericho.
Mohammad Fayez Balhan, who was 15 years old, was shot in the head, chest and stomach on Monday.
“They shot him in the head,” the teen’s aunt Maysoon said. “What is going to happen to our people? What will happen to us?”
The Israeli military said that it had been operating in Jericho’s Aqabat Jabr refugee camp in an attempt to apprehend Palestinians it suspected of attacks against Israelis, and that its forces had responded to being fired at by the suspects.
Settler march
The incident comes as the Israeli army guards thousands of Israeli settlers marching to the abandoned illegal outpost of Evyatar to call on the Israeli government to legalise the outpost and to “denounce the increased attacks on settlements in recent weeks”.
The mother of two Israeli sisters killed last week in one such attack died from her injuries, hospital officials said on Monday.
Thousands of settlers, led by ministers in Israel’s far-right government, have taken part in the march, heavily protected by Israeli forces who closed the march’s path to Palestinians, although confrontations were still reported, with at least two Palestinians injured by rubber-coated bullets, and dozens of others treated for inhaling tear gas.
Al Jazeera’s Samir Abu Shammala said that Palestinians tried to confront the march, which was held under a banner declaring that “all of the land of Israel” was the property of Jewish Israelis, with the settlers implying that that included the occupied West Bank.
Abu Shammala added that the Palestinians had burned tyes and threw stones, and that groups of settlers had begun to leave the site of the march demanding the legalisation of the outpost, which lasted for three hours.
“There is still a heavy deployment of Israeli soldiers, as it is estimated that about 1,000 Israeli soldiers were deployed to secure the settlers’ march, according to Israeli sources,” Abu Shammala said.
The Palestinian Ministry of Foreign Affairs said it considered the march “a dangerous escalation and provocation of the Palestinian people, and an extension of the incitement calls of the Israeli right and the fascist right to deepen settlement at the expense of Palestinian lands, and it has dangerous repercussions on the situation in the arena of conflict”.
The ministry added that it is studying with legal experts the best ways to confront the settlement process, including filing a complaint with the UN Security Council, Human Rights Council and Permanent Commission of Inquiry as well as the relevant international courts.
The march started from the Zaatara military checkpoint towards the evacuated Evyatar outpost on Jabal Sabih in the town of Bita, south of Nablus, in the north of the West Bank.
Last year, Israeli settlers established the illegal Evyatar settlement outpost on private Palestinian lands on Jabal Sabih. The Israeli authorities decided to evacuate it after months of Palestinian protests.
Meanwhile, tensions at Al-Aqsa Mosque continued for the fifth day in a row as a group of settlers stormed the courtyards of the compound early on Monday under the protection of Israeli forces. Previously, Israeli forces prevented Palestinian worshippers below the age of 50 from entering Al-Aqsa Mosque to perform the dawn Fajr prayer.
The forces tightened their presence at the Al-Aqsa gates before opening them after the start of the prayer.
In light of the developments, Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant decided to deploy security reinforcements in the Tel Aviv area starting Monday after the Israeli army conducted an assessment of the security situation there.
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John Day Dam on the Columbia River close to Goldendale, Washington, near the proposed sites of a pumped hydro storage facility. (photo: Greg Vaughn/VW PICS/Universal Images Group)
The Yakama Nation is fighting a pumped hydro storage development near Goldendale, Washington – but it’s just one of many.
Yakama Nation Tribal Councilman Jeremy Takala sounded weary. For five years, tribal leaders and staff have been fighting a renewable energy development that could permanently destroy tribal cultural property. “This area, it’s irreplaceable.”
The privately owned land, outside Goldendale, Washington, is called Pushpum, or “mother of roots,” a first foods seed bank. The Yakama people have treaty-protected gathering rights there. One wind turbine-studded ridge, Juniper Point, is the proposed site of a pumped hydro storage facility. But to build it, Boston-based Rye Development would have to carve up Pushpum — and the Yakama Nation lacks a realistic way to stop it.
Back in October 2008, unbeknownst to Takala, Scott Tillman, CEO of Golden Northwest Aluminum Corporation, met with the Northwest Power and Conservation Council, a collection of governor-appointed representatives from Washington, Oregon, Idaho and Montana who maintain a 20-year regional energy plan prioritizing low economic and environmental tolls. Tillman, who owned a shuttered Lockheed Martin aluminum smelter near Goldendale, told the council about the contaminated site’s redevelopment potential, specifically for pumped hydro storage, which requires a steep incline like Juniper Point to move water through a turbine. Shortly thereafter, Klickitat County’s public utility department tried to implement Tillman’s plan, but hit a snag in the federal regulatory process. That’s when Rye Development stepped in.
“We’re committed to at least a $10 million portion of the cleanup of the former aluminum smelter,” said Erik Steimle, Rye’s vice president of project development, “an area that is essentially sitting there now that wouldn’t be cleaned up in that capacity without this project.”
Meanwhile, Tillman cleaned up and sold another smelting site, just across the Columbia River in The Dalles, Oregon, a Superfund site where Lockheed Martin had poisoned the groundwater with cyanide. He sold it to Google’s parent company, Alphabet, which operates water-guzzling data centers in The Dalles and plans to build more. For nine years, the county and Rye plotted the fate of Pushpum — without ever notifying the Yakama Nation.
The tribal government only learned of the development in December 2017, when the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) issued a public notice of acceptance for Rye’s preliminary permit application. Tribal officials had just 60 days to catch up on nine years of development planning and issue their initial concerns and objections as public comments.
When it came time for government-to-government consultation in August 2021, FERC designated Rye as its representative. But the Yakama Nation refused to consult with the corporation. “The tribe’s treaty was between the U.S. government and the tribe. We’re two sovereigns,” said Elaine Harvey, environmental coordinator at Yakama Nation Fisheries, who’s been heavily involved with the project. “We’re supposed to deal with the state.”
FERC countered that using corporate stand-ins for tribal consultation is standard practice for the commission. When the tribe objected, FERC said it could file more public comments to the docket instead of consulting.
But sensitive cultural information was involved, which, by Yakama tribal law, cannot be made public. Takala noted, for example, that Yakama people don’t want non-Natives harvesting and marketing first foods the way commercial pickers market huckleberries: “That has an impact for our people as well, trying to save up for the winter.” The tribe needs confidentiality to protect its cultural resources.
There’s just one catch: Rule 2201. According to FERC, Rule 2201 legally prohibits the agency from engaging in off-the-record communications in a contested proceeding. Records of all consultations must be made available to the public and other stakeholders, including prospective developers and county officials. Who wrote Rule 2201? FERC did.
“Nevertheless,” FERC wrote to the Yakama Nation in December 2021, “the Commission endeavors, to the extent authorized by law, to reduce procedural impediments to working directly and effectively with tribal governments.” FERC said the nation could either relay any sensitive information in a confidential file — though that information “must be shared with at least some participants in the proceeding” — or else keep it confidential by simply not sharing it at all, in which case FERC would proceed without taking it into account. So formal federal consultation still hasn’t happened. But FERC is moving forward anyway.
“It’s important for First Nations to be heard in this process,” said Steimle, the developer. During a two-hour tour of the site, he championed the project’s technical merits and its role in meeting state carbon goals. “If you look at Europe at this point, it’s probably 20 years ahead of us integrating large amounts of renewables.”
Steimle repeatedly described Rye as weighed down by stringent consultation and licensing processes. Rye, he said, lacks real authority: “We don’t have the power in the situation to ultimately decide, you know, it’s going to be this technology, or it’s going to be in this final location.” Becky Brun, Rye’s communications director, echoed Steimle’s tone of inevitability: “Regardless of what happens here with this pumped storage project, this land will most certainly get redeveloped into something.”
When asked what Rye could offer the Yakama people as compensation for the irreversible destruction of their cultural property, Steimle suggested “employment associated with the project.”
Takala wasn’t surprised. “That’s always the first thing offered on many of these projects. It’s all about money.”
Presented with the reality that Yakama people might not want Rye’s jobs, Steimle hesitated. “Yeah, I mean I, I can’t argue that — maybe it won’t be meaningful to them.”
But for Klickitat County, the jobs pitch works: It’s a chance to revive employment lost when the smelter closed. “That was one of the largest employers in Klickitat County — very good family-wage jobs for over a generation,” said Dave Sauter, a longtime county commissioner who finished his final term at the end of 2022. The smelter’s closing was “a huge blow,” he said. “Redevelopment of that site would be really beneficial.”
Sauter acknowledged the pumped hydro storage facility would only provide about a third of the jobs that the smelter offered in its final days, but “it will lead to other energy development in Klickitat County.” The county, with its armada of aging wind turbines and proximity to the hydroelectric grid, prides itself on being one of the greenest energy producers in the state and has asked FERC for an expedited timeline.
Klickitat County’s eagerness creates another barrier to the Yakama Nation. In Washington, a developer can take one of two permitting paths: through the state’s Energy Facility Site Evaluation Council, or through county channels. Both lead to FERC. In this case, working with the county benefits Rye: Klickitat, a majority Republican county, has a contentious relationship with the Yakama Nation, one that even Sauter described as “challenging.”
“Klickitat County refuses to work with us,” said Takala. On Sept. 19, 2022, Harvey logged into a Zoom meeting with the Klickitat County Planning Department to deliver comments as a private citizen. Harvey says county officials, who know her from her work with the Yakama Nation, locked her out of the Zoom room, even though the meeting was open to the public and a friend of hers confirmed that the call was working and the meeting underway. Undeterred, Harvey attended in person and delivered her comments.
The Planning Department denied that Harvey was deliberately locked out, claiming that everyone who arrived on Zoom was admitted. They also said they were having technical difficulties.
Fighting Rye’s proposal has required the efforts of tribal attorneys, archaeologists and government staffers from a number of departments. “Finding the staff to do site location is very difficult when we don’t have the funds put forth,” Takala said.
And Rye’s project is just one of dozens proposed within the Yakama Nation’s 10 million-acre treaty territory. Maps from the tribe and the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife show that of the 51 wind and solar projects currently proposed statewide — not including geothermal or pumped hydro storage projects, which are also renewable energy developments — at least 34 are on or partially on the Yakama Nation’s ceded lands. Each of these proposals has its own constellation of developers, permitting agencies, government officials and landowners.
“There’s so many projects being proposed in the area that we here at the nation are feeling the pressure,” said Takala. He noted that when it comes to fulfilling obligations to tribes, the United States drags its feet. “But when it’s a developer, things get pushed through really quickly. It’s pretty much a repeating history all over again.”
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