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Kara Voght | A Democratic Survival Guide to the New House GOP Majority
Kara Voght, Rolling Stone
Voght writes: "The people who lived through the last era of House GOP insanity weigh in on how today's Democrats can weather the new one."
The people who lived through the last era of House GOP insanity weigh in on how today's Democrats can weather the new one
Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.), the soon-to-be House minority leader, has been telling his fellow Democratic lawmakers to think of the next two years this way: The White House is the client, House Democrats are the defense attorney. Indeed, the Biden administration has huddled a coterie of legal, legislative, and communications specialists to map out likely vectors of GOP oversight and will hire more into the effort. Ashley Etienne, who led House Democrats’ impeachment war room, has dispatched top protégés to communications posts at federal agencies Republicans have indicated they’re eager to interrogate: the Departments of Homeland Security (over border security), Health and Human Services (over COVID), and Education (over woke indoctrination).
Democrats, after all, are familiar with how Republicans intend to use their control of the House of Representatives. Indeed, GOP lawmakers have said it out loud for months. Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), the soon-to-be chair of the House Judiciary Committee, said Republicans would use their oversight powers to “frame up the 2024 race” — a race they “need to make sure that [Trump] wins.” Incoming House Oversight chairman Rep. James Comer (R-Ky.), meanwhile, vowed the intensity of investigations under his committee would “prevent Joe Biden from running” for another term.
The vibes harken back to a not-so-distant era on Capitol Hill, when the Tea Party surge wrested control of the House halfway through Barack Obama’s first term — time when Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), then chair of the House Oversight Committee, vowed to do after the 2010 midterms: “I want to hold seven hearings a week, times 40 weeks.” With little hope of advancing legislation under divided government, Republicans are looking to investigate everything from Covid to critical race theory.
To lawmakers and operatives of both parties who survived that era of GOP interrogation, they caution that this new regime will bring much of the same — only worse. “This crop of House Republicans make Darrell Issa look intellectual,” says Eric Schultz, who served as a deputy White House press secretary during that era.
After House Republicans reclaimed the House in a landslide victory during the 2010 midterms, House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) issued a mandate to his new majority: “We’re in the communications business now,” recalls Kurt Bardella, who served as Issa’s spokesperson. Issa’s House Oversight Committee was the nerve center of that directive, tasked with interrogating and amplifying any whiffs of scandal from the Obama administration. While many in leadership eyed their new Tea Party majority warily, Issa welcomed some of the feistier new lawmakers, like Reps. Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.) and Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah), onto his committee.
Their work began in earnest with an investigation into Obama’s management of Operation Fast and Furious, a George W. Bush-era program that had permitted illegal gun sales in order to track Mexican drug cartels. In September 2011, the House Energy and Commerce Committee dug into the bankruptcy of Solyndra, a solar-panel manufacturer that had received a $535 million loan guarantee from the Energy Department. The committee hauled then-Energy Secretary Steven Chu into Congress for more than five hours of testimony. Then, a year later, Islamic militants attacked the U.S. Embassy in Benghazi, Libya, leaving three Americans dead. The attack spurred ten separate GOP-led investigations into the Obama administration.
None of the investigations ever really found substantive wrongdoing, but that didn’t stop the oversight from sucking up the political media industrial complex’s attention. “There was a deliberate communications strategy: Flood the zone and take advantage of the media’s competition with one another to break things,” Bardella explains. The recent advent of Politico and its thirst for microscoops had just upended D.C.’s media landscape, playing right into the committee’s hands. Republicans could milk four or five news cycles out of a single request for information with a formula that went something like this: “Step one, issue a voluntary document request; step two, threaten subpoena; step three, issue the subpoena,” Bardella says. Never mind that the coverage rarely asked hard questions about the validity of what was being investigated. “I don’t think reporters and Washington understood how irresponsible Republicans were willing to be,” Schultz says.
Boehner, by some measures, would come to regret his mandate as the colleagues he empowered made increasingly strident demands of Obama administration officials. The House held Attorney General Eric Holder in contempt of Congress during the Operation Fast and Furious investigation, but GOP lawmakers requested more — something Boehner waved off as illegitimate. Indeed, former Rep. Cliff Stearns (R-Fla.), who led the Solyndra investigation, said Boehner’s lack of support took the wind out of his investigation’s sails. “He said he felt we had too many contempt of Congresses in the offing, and ours wasn’t as important as other ones were,” Stearns recalls. “It’s the kind of thing that led to Boehner losing his speakership.”
The Solyndra investigation had been premised on Republicans arguing that political allies had been paid back for their investment in the bankrupt solar panel maker ahead of taxpayers. But GOP lawmakers could never prove that — and, in fact, the program made money and helped accelerate development in renewable energy companies, a 2014 report from NPR found.
The Boehner-era brake-pumping may be harder to find in this Congress. After groveling his way to the gavel, new House Speaker Kevin McCarthy isn’t in a position to be a check on much of anything — nor has he suggested any interest in restraint when it comes to investigating the Biden administration. The only thing that strikes McCarthy as too far have been the more than a dozen impeachment resolutions filed against Biden and various administration officials. “I think the country doesn’t like impeachment used for political purposes at all,” McCarthy told Punchbowl News in October.
Rep. Marjorie Taylor-Greene (R-Ga.), who will have her committee assignments reinstated after Democrats stripped them last Congress, says she wants to serve on the Oversight Committee — a request to which incoming chair Comer has signaled he welcomes.
Do Democrats stand a chance in this new era? Having the right messengers lead Democrats on key committees can help, veterans of the 2010s GOP investigations say. Bardella recalls then-minority leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) opting for the rare breach of Democratic seniority when she installed Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-Md.) as the ranking member of Oversight in 2011. “Cummings had a political mindset and knew how to communicate effectively — he was a perfect foil for Issa,” Bardella recalls. Last month, House Democrats chose Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), who was among the leaders of the House investigation into the January 6th insurrection, to lead Oversight, a choice Bardella lauded.
Another upside for Democrats, veterans says, is that the GOP continues to zero in on the culture wars. Ashley Etienne, who led communications for Cummings during that era, recalls Sandra Fluke, the Georgetown University student who GOP lawmakers did not allow to give testimony at their Oversight hearing on contraception. The GOP’s denial of Fluke’s testimony backfired. Wen Democrats gave her a chance to later testify in a standalone hearing, they earned nearly two weeks of positive news cycles — fueled, in part, on voters’ fears about the future of abortion rights. Bardella says Democrats should look to exploit the times Republicans try to hold hearings on matters like trans rights. “If they’re going after the LBGTQ community and the hospitals that treat them, Democrats can put a human face on what that looks like,” Bardella says. “If you have members of congress up there lambasting a patient telling that story, that’s not going to look good.”
And perhaps, most of all, the GOP inquiries seem more absurd than ever before. “At least with Benghazi and Fast and Furious, those are at least governing actions in question,” says a Democratic official working on oversight investigations. “When you cross the rubicon with ‘Dr Fauci collaborated with China to launch the pandemic’ or ‘Hunter Biden’s work overseas is why the strategic petroleum reserve is running out’ — these are just conspiracy theories.”
“Back then, we were more bipartisan — I don’t think we’d be bipartisan today,” Stearns says. “You lose your authenticity if it looks like a political witch hunt.”
Democrats are nevertheless taking the GOP’s ambitions seriously. The White House and House Democrats have kept an open line of communication on oversight preparations. Jeffries had been elected to lead House Democrats, in party, because of his discipline as a party messenger, a trait he highlighted when he served as a manager during the first Trump impeachment. They’re also preparing their own sort of counterattack: The Senate remains under Democratic control, and its leadership has nascent plans to keep the investigations into the Trump administration. “Hunter Biden’s laptop looks like nothing compared to what Jared and Ivanka did in the federal government,” Bardella says. “That needs to be spotlighted every day.”
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Bolsonaro supporters demonstrate against President Lula, outside Brazil’s National Congress in Brasília on Sunday. (photo: Adriano Machado/Reuters)
Assault on Presidential Palace, Congress Challenges Brazil's Democracy
Anthony Faiola and Marina Dias, The Washington Post
Excerpt: "Thousands of radical backers of far-right ex-president Jair Bolsonaro breached and vandalized Brazil’s presidential office building, Congress and Supreme Court on Sunday in scenes that hauntingly evoked the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection at the U.S. Capitol by supporters of President Donald Trump.
ALSO SEE: Brazil's President Lula Promises Prosecution in Aftermath of Insurrection
Thousands of radical backers of far-right ex-president Jair Bolsonaro breached and vandalized Brazil’s presidential office building, Congress and Supreme Court on Sunday in scenes that hauntingly evoked the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection at the U.S. Capitol by supporters of President Donald Trump.
The attack — the most significant threat to democracy in Latin America’s largest nation since a 1964 military coup — came a week after the inauguration of President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva to succeed Bolsonaro. It suggested a spreading plague of far-right disrupters in Western democracies, as hard-liners radicalized by incendiary political rhetoric refuse to accept election losses, cling to unfounded claims of fraud and undermine the rule of law.
Bolsonaristas occupied the National Congress building, many of them sitting or lying on the ground. A flag placed in front of the building read “intervention” — a reference to calls for the military to depose Lula, who defeated Bolsonaro in October.
Most wrapped themselves in the yellow and green of the Brazilian flag. Some shouted at police officers, “This is just the beginning” and “May God bless you and prevent you from acting against us patriots.”
Images broadcast by Globo TV showed smashed glass and protesters roaming the halls of the Planalto Palace, the office of the president. In an echo of the behavior of the U.S. insurrectionists, videos shared on social media showed Bolsonaro supporters taking trophies.
Protesters set off fireworks from the roof of Congress. Others waved the yellow and green jersey of the national soccer team — now a symbol of the far right — in the main chamber of the Supreme Federal Court. Bolsonaristas see the powerful court as an adversary.
Thousands more milled about a massive square similar to Washington’s National Mall, waving Brazilian flags and chanting, “God, fatherland, family and liberty.”
Videos shared on social media showed scores marching to the Praça dos Três Poderes — the Plaza of the Three Powers. One video, purportedly from the assault Sunday, appeared to show a group of protesters attacking a mounted police officer. A woman yells out, “Stop, stop!” A man says, “Guys, let the police officer go.”
Later Sunday, security forces fired tear gas in the plaza as they tried to reassert order. After nearly five hours of rioting, officials said, the attackers were cleared from the government buildings. Lula was in the presidential office Sunday evening to assess the damage himself.
A visibly angered Lula, addressing the nation Sunday evening, condemned the invaders as “fascists.”
“There is no precedent for this,” he said. “All the people [who stormed public buildings] will be found and punished.”
Bolsonaro, who has been in Orlando over the past week, condemned the invasions Sunday evening, hours after they began.
“Public protests, by law, are part of democracy,” he tweeted. “However, depredations and invasions of public buildings as occurred today, as well as those that were carried out by the left in 2013 and 2017, were outside the law.”
A reporter working for The Washington Post was assaulted during the riots. Marina Dias was interviewing a woman when protesters yelled at her, chased her, pushed her to the ground and kicked her repeatedly. The attackers pulled her hair and attempted to take her cellphone from her pants pocket. A navy officer entered the crowd and pulled her to safety.
The Union of Professional Journalists of the Brasília Federal District said at least eight journalists were attacked while reporting on the riots.
The assault underscored the challenge ahead for Lula as he seeks to lead a deeply divided nation polarized in the aftermath of the closest election in Brazilian history and poisoned by the global era of toxic politics.
Protesters launched the invasion around 2:30 p.m. local time. Justice Minister Flavio Dino said it would be met by security forces.
“This absurd attempt to impose the will by force will not prevail,” he tweeted. “The Government of the Federal District claims that there will be reinforcements. And the forces at our disposal are at work. I’m at the headquarters of the Ministry of Justice.”
The assault came amid what seemed to be a surge of Bolsonaro supporters arriving in Brasília over the weekend, and as invitations pledging free food and buses to the capital allegedly circulated on social media. The newcomers joined protesters camped out since election day in front of military headquarters to call for intervention. Many adhered to the belief that commanders would stop Lula from taking power last week. When their hopes were dashed, their anger appeared to reach a tipping point.
Police in the capital meanwhile appeared to relax security measures that had been imposed for inauguration day. Anderson Torres, the secretary of public security in the Brasília Federal District, was Bolsonaro’s justice minister. On Sunday, he condemned the rioters on Twitter but was fired by the state governor. Brazilian media reported that Torres was in Florida, but he said he was not with Bolsonaro. The Post could not independently confirm his whereabouts.
Torres told the Folha de São Paulo newspaper that he had not seen Bolsonaro during his Florida trip. “I didn’t come to the United States to meet Bolsonaro. I did not meet him at any time. I’m on holidays with my family. There was no conspiracy so that it [the insurrection] happened,” he said
Later Sunday, the president’s legal team called on the Supreme Court to issue a warrant for Torres’s arrest and demanded an investigation into the organization of the riots on social media. They called on cellular phone companies to keep records so geolocation could be used to identify rioters. They demanded the investigation and prosecution of all involved, including any members of the police. Ibaneis Rocha, governor of the Brasília Federal District, tweeted Sunday night that at least 400 people had been detained.
Dino said 40 buses used by rioters have been seized. He said authorities have “already discovered who paid for these buses.” Governors of other Brazilian states were dispatching security reinforcements to the capital, he said.
“There are still people on the internet talking about the continuation of these terrorist acts,” Dino said. “They will not succeed in destroying Brazilian democracy.”
The United States, European Union and Latin American countries were quick to condemn the insurrection. “The United States condemns any effort to undermine democracy in Brazil,” national security adviser Jake Sullivan tweeted. “President Biden is following the situation closely and our support for Brazil’s democratic institutions is unwavering. Brazil’s democracy will not be shaken by violence.”
The incident amounted to another uncanny parallel between Bolsonaro and Trump, his political lodestar. Pundits have warned for months of the possibility of a Jan. 6-style action here. For months before the election, Bolsonaro called Lula a corrupt “thief” and claimed without evidence that Brazil’s electronic voting machines were untrustworthy. Since his loss, he has condemned violent protest, but called the election result unfair and encouraged the protest camps outside military installations.
“This genocidal person … provoked this,” Lula said. “He encouraged the invasion of the three” branches of government.
Bolsonaro said he repudiated “the accusations, without evidence, attributed to me by the current head of the executive of Brazil.”
Robert Muggah, co-founder of the think tank Igarapé Institute in Rio de Janeiro, called the “explosion of mob violence” an “insurrection foretold.”
“The similarities of Brazilian far-right mobs storming Congress, the Supreme Court and Presidential Palace with the Jan. 6 insurrection of the Capitol are not coincidental,” he continued. “Like their MAGA counterparts, Bolsonaro supporters have been fed a steady diet of misinformation and disinformation for years, much of it modeled on the narratives peddled by far-right influencers in the U.S.”
The assault in Brasília appeared broader in scope than the attack on the U.S. Capitol. The buildings targeted represented all three branches of Brazil’s government. The Plaza of the Three Powers, Pritzker-prize winning architect Oscar Niemeyer’s 1950s vision of the future, are viewed domestically as symbols of Brazil.
Lula faces ranks of police who remain tacit backers of Bolsonaro, who encouraged heavy-handed police tactics during his tenure and stocked their senior ranks with loyalists. A sector of the police was accused during the election of setting up checkpoints in Lula strongholds to slow access to ballot boxes. On Sunday, the news outlet Estadao posted a photo of police on duty apparently buying coconut water as rioters assaulted the branches of Brazilian government.
“Unfortunately, the ones who have to take care of security in the Federal District are the Federal Police. And they did not,” Lula said Sunday.
Although the spark that lit the assaults on Sunday was unclear, Dino said on Wednesday he would move to clear the protest camps outside military headquarters in Brasília and across the country on Friday. No significant operations were launched that day.
There was little indication that authorities were prepared for the insurrection on Sunday. There was no evidence of an increased security presence at the buildings targeted.
Military police officers attempted to stop the rioters at the Planalto Palace with tear gas and other weapons but initially appeared far outnumbered.
By 5 p.m., security forces and riot police had managed to retake the Supreme Court, but some protesters remained in the parking garage, a court spokeswoman said. One judge, who spoke on the condition of anonymity given the sensitivity of developing events, said officials were still trying to assess the scope of the damage.
By 6:20 p.m., police had brought the Planalto Palace largely under control. Photos and videos provided to The Post by a member of the president’s team of the Planalto Palace showed extensive damage, including a painting cut out of a frame, broken mirrored-glass walls, shattered equipment, broken desks and defiled artwork.
The Congress and Supreme Court are both in recess. No lawmakers or judges were present. After the assault began, Lula left São Paulo state to return to Brasília.
On Sunday, protesters appeared most focused on the Planalto Palace, now occupied by Lula, the former president whose election to a third term just three years after walking out of a prison cell has piqued the ire of the Brazilian right.
In a farewell address live-streamed on Jan. 1, a teary Bolsonaro claimed his election loss was unfair but acknowledged that a new administration would take office Sunday. He condemned violent demonstrations aimed at overturning his loss, calling on his supporters to “show we are different from the other side, that we respect the norms and the constitution.”
But his supporters have heard his contradictory speeches as filled with dog whistles that appeared to call them to resist Lula. After the arrest last month of one prominent bolsonarista, accused of having “expressly summoned armed people to prevent the certification of elected” officials, others burned buses in the capital and attempted to storm the federal police headquarters. Authorities in eight states raided weapons caches and arrested suspects accused of “anti-democratic acts.”
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The New Mexico state senator Linda Lopez shows bullet holes in her garage door after her home was shot at last month. (photo: Albuquerque Journal/Rex/Shutterstock)
Police Investigate Shootings at New Mexico Officials’ Homes and Offices
Victoria Bekiempis, Guardian UK
Bekiempis writes: "New Mexico authorities are investigating at least five shootings apparently directed at the homes and offices of local elected officials, the Albuquerque police department said on Thursday."
Albuquerque police say houses and workplaces of state and county politicians have been hit by gunfire over the last month
New Mexico authorities are investigating at least five shootings apparently directed at the homes and offices of local elected officials, the Albuquerque police department said on Thursday.
The shootings occurred over approximately the past month and were directed at two county commissioners, two state senators and New Mexico’s new attorney general, according to KQRE News.
Detectives are investigating whether the shootings are related. Nobody was hurt but three homes were damaged.
The investigation comes as the US marks two years since the January 6 insurrection, when a mob of Trump supporters swarmed the US Capitol attempting to violently prevent members of Congress from certifying the election of Joe Biden to the presidency.
Security concerns for lawmakers have only intensified since then. The US Capitol police reported 9,625 threats and directions of interest – that is, actions or statements that cause concern – against members of Congress in 2021, in comparison with 3,939 in 2017.
Despite these concerns, Republicans fresh off their narrow majority win in the 2022 midterms have removed metal detectors that were installed outside the House chamber following the 2021 attack.
The first shooting in Albuquerque that forms part of the investigation was on 4 December, when an unknown person fired eight rounds at the residence of the county commissioner, Adriann Barboa, police said.
On 11 December, “more than a dozen gunshot impacts were identified on walls and the house” of former county commissioner Debbie O’Malley, and approximately eight shots were fired at the home of state senator Linda Lopez on 3 January. On Thursday, one shooting appeared to target state senator Moe Maestas’s law office.
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Relatives and neighbors at the site of a U.S. drone strike that killed 10 civilians in August 2021. (photo: Jim Huylebroek/NYT)
Military Investigation Reveals How the US Botched a Drone Strike in Kabul
Azmat Khan, The New York Times
Khan writes: "In the chaotic final days of the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan in August 2021, U.S. military analysts observed a white Toyota Corolla stop at what they believed was an Islamic State compound."
Documents obtained through a lawsuit reveal how biases led to the deadly August 2021 blunder, and that officials made misleading statements concealing their assessment of civilian casualties.
In the chaotic final days of the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan in August 2021, U.S. military analysts observed a white Toyota Corolla stop at what they believed was an Islamic State compound.
The Americans were already on edge. Three days earlier, a suicide bomber had killed scores of Afghans and 13 U.S. troops at a main gate of the Kabul airport. Now, officials had intelligence that there would be another attack there, and that it would involve a white Corolla.
They tracked the car around Kabul for the next several hours. After it pulled into a gated courtyard near the airport, they authorized a drone strike. Hours later, U.S. officials announced they had successfully thwarted an attack.
As reports of civilian deaths surfaced later that day, they issued statements saying they had “no indications” but would assess the claims and were investigating whether a secondary explosion may have killed civilians.
But portions of a U.S. Central Command investigation obtained by The New York Times show that military analysts reported within minutes of the strike that civilians may have been killed, and within three hours had assessed that at least three children were killed.
The documents also provide detailed examples of how assumptions and biases led to the deadly blunder.
Military analysts wrongly concluded, for example, that a package loaded into the car contained explosives because of its “careful handling and size,” and that the driver’s “erratic route” was evidence that he was trying to evade surveillance.
The investigation was completed a week and a half after the strike and was never released, but The New York Times has obtained 66 partially redacted pages of it through a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit against Central Command.
Central Command declined to provide additional comment beyond statements it had previously made about the strike. The Pentagon previously acknowledged that the strike was a “tragic mistake” that killed 10 civilians, and told The Times that a new action plan intended to protect civilians drew on lessons learned from the incident.
Among those killed was Zemari Ahmadi, a longtime aid worker and the driver of the car.
Responding to a description of the document released to The Times, Hina Shamsi, an American Civil Liberties Union lawyer representing families of victims, said the investigation “makes clear that military personnel saw what they wanted to see and not reality, which was an Afghan aid worker going about his daily life.”
The Attack
On Aug. 29, 2021, an American MQ-9 Reaper drone shot a Hellfire missile at a white Toyota Corolla in a neighborhood near the Kabul airport.
Within 20 minutes, multiple military officials and members of the strike team learned that analysts had seen possible civilian casualties in video feeds, according to their sworn statements for the investigation.
Two to three hours after the attack, analysts who had reviewed the footage frame by frame assessed that three children had been killed. An officer then shared that information with two top commanders in Afghanistan, Maj. Gen. Christopher Donahue, the ground force commander, and Rear Adm. Peter G. Vasely.
In sworn statements, six of nine witnesses described learning immediately after the strike that civilians were in the area and may have been killed.
Later that day, Central Command said in a statement that officials were “assessing the possibilities of civilian casualties” but had “no indications at this time.”
An update several hours later noted that powerful subsequent explosions may have caused civilian casualties but did not mention that analysts had already assessed three children were killed.
Three days later, Gen. Mark A. Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told reporters that the strike was “righteous” and had killed an ISIS facilitator as well as “others,” but who they were, “we don’t know. We’ll try to sort through all of that.”
Over the next several weeks, Pentagon officials continued to say that an ISIS target was killed in the strike, even as evidence mounted to the contrary.
On Sept. 10, a Times investigation based on video evidence and interviews with more than a dozen of Mr. Ahmadi’s co-workers and family members in Kabul found no evidence that explosives were present in the vehicle.
Mr. Ahmadi, who worked as an electrical engineer for a California-based aid group, had spent the day picking up his employer’s laptop, taking colleagues to and from work and loading canisters of water into his trunk to bring home to his family.
Officials insisted that their target had visited an ISIS “safe house,” but The Times found that the building was actually the home of Mr. Ahmadi’s boss, whose laptop he was picking up.
A week after the Times investigation was published, military officials acknowledged that 10 civilians had been killed and that Mr. Ahmadi posed no threat and had no connection to ISIS.
Tracking a White Toyota
A subsequent review led by the Air Force inspector general, Lt. Gen. Sami D. Said, remains classified. But the general acknowledged that confirmation bias — a tendency to look for, analyze or remember information in a way that supports an existing belief — was an important factor in how Mr. Ahmadi became a target.
The documents obtained by The Times offer specific examples of how confirmation bias led to errors, including the military’s conclusion that the car it was looking for was the one Mr. Ahmadi was driving.
According to the documents, U.S. intelligence reports on Aug. 29 indicated that an Islamic State affiliate known as ISIS-K was planning an imminent attack on the airport that could involve suicide bombers, “rockets on timers” in the back of a vehicle, and a white Toyota Corolla.
Surveillance aircraft began tracking the white Corolla that Mr. Ahmadi was driving after it stopped at an “established ISIS-K compound.” Drones followed the car to “a second building,” where they observed Mr. Ahmadi as he “carefully loaded” a “package” into the trunk. Analysts assessed the package to be explosives “based on the careful handling and size of the material.”
Over the next several hours, analysts watched as the car made stops and dropped off “adult males,” some of whom were carrying “bags or other box-shaped objects.” At one point, an analyst described how the car was “gingerly loaded with a box carried by five adult males.”
The investigation notes the car’s other movements that day, including that it entered a mall parking garage, that “bags” and “jugs” were unloaded from the trunk, and that it stopped at a Taliban checkpoint.
Analysts said the car followed an “erratic route” that was “consistent with ISIS-K directives to avoid close circuit cameras and pre-attack posture historically demonstrated by the group.”
By the time the car pulled into an open-air garage at a house enclosed by “high walls” about one mile from the airport, military officials were ready to authorize the strike.
A man who was seen opening and closing the gate for the car was also assessed to be a part of the threat. “I personally believed this to be a likely staging location and the moving personnel to likely be a part of the overall attack plot,” one official recounted to investigators. “That was my perception, and it was largely based on both someone immediately shutting the gate behind the vehicle and someone running in the courtyard.”
At this point, new intelligence indicated the airport attack would be delayed until the following day, according to one of the investigation’s interviewees, but military personnel were concerned that they could lose the target.
Thinking that the walls would limit the blast radius from reaching pedestrians on the street, the strike team launched a Hellfire missile at the vehicle. Shortly after impact, witnesses said they saw large secondary explosions, which helped confirm investigators’ belief that the vehicle contained explosives.
But the documents present a less definitive understanding of the source of the secondary explosion. “Conflicting opinions from experts regarding the secondary explosion makes it inconclusive regarding the source of the flame seen after the strike,” according to the report’s findings, which recommended further investigation.
Footage of the minutes after the strike obtained by The Times shows a fireball from the blast, which expands several seconds later. On Sept. 17, after additional review, military officials said the explosion was probably a propane or gas tank.
The investigation refers to an additional surveillance drone not under military control that was also tracking the vehicle but does not specify what it observed. The Times confirmed that the drone was operated by the C.I.A. and observed children, possibly in the car, moments before impact, as CNN had reported.
The military investigation includes recommendations for better coordination, but the documents do not mention that the C.I.A. drone observed children before impact.
“When confirmation bias was so deadly in this case, you have to ask how many other people targeted by the military over the years were also unjustly killed,” Ms. Shamsi said.
The investigation noted that a rocket attack at the airport did occur the next day, about 200 meters from the supposed “ISIS compound” where Mr. Ahmadi first stopped — the event that triggered the initial surveillance. Times journalists identified the car from which the rockets were launched as a white Toyota.
A year later, in August 2022, the Pentagon announced a plan for preventing civilian deaths in U.S. military operations that includes imposing a new system to reduce the risk of confirmation bias and misidentifying targets.
The Pentagon is still developing the policy, which incorporates training on mitigating cognitive bias and creates “civilian harm assessment cells.” It will also give the U.S. military more ways to respond to victims, in addition to condolence payments to survivors and family members of those harmed.
None of Mr. Ahmadi’s surviving relatives have received monetary assistance from the U.S. government as a result of the strike.
One of Mr. Ahmadi’s brothers, Emal Ahmadi, whose toddler Malika was also killed in the strike, arrived in the United States last week.
“I thought the U.S. government would welcome us, meet with us,” he said. “We are waiting for them.”
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Sunglingthanhg, aged 63, keeps an eye on the village of Haimual from his post. (photo: Aakash Hassan/The Observer)
On the Frontline With the Rebel Army Fighting Myanmar’s Brutal Junta
Aakash Hassan and Hannah Ellis-Petersen, Guardian UK
Excerpt: "Villagers-turned-pro-democracy fighters rely on ‘brothers and sisters’ in India for guns and food."
Villagers-turned-pro-democracy fighters rely on ‘brothers and sisters’ in India for guns and food
With a loaded cartridge holder strapped to her back and a shotgun gripped tightly in her hands, Rose Lalhmanhaih looks far older than her 17 years. Just two years ago, she was studying at school; now she is a rebel soldier on the frontlineof Myanmar’s revolutionary war. Only her nails, flecked with a bright purple polish, hint at the girl she once was.
Crouching behind sandbags and holding binoculars, Lalhmanhaih scans the dense scrub of the surrounding valley, then speaks decisively into her walkie talkie. “Clear … clear,” she says. A garrison of the Myanmar military lies only five miles away and an exchange of fire rings out now and then. But for today at least, the soldiers of the brutal junta regime will leave the tiny village of Haimual in Chin state in peace.
In February 2021 Myanmar’s military, known as the Tatmadaw, seized power in a coup d’etat, overthrowing the civilian government and imprisoning its leader, Nobel peace prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi. As the Tatmadaw began ruthlessly consolidating power, cracking down on political opponents and killing protesters, an armed insurgency, the People’s Defence Force (PDF), rose up fighting for democracy to be restored. There are about 60,000 PDF soldiers across the country, often fighting alongside other ethnic armies, and they are said to control around half the territory.
The battles being fought across the country by this guerrilla army have been dirty and bloody. Since the coup, more than 2,600 civilians have been killed and 16,500 have been arrested, as junta soldiers have raped and murdered civilians and bombed towns and cities. Protesters, activists and journalists have been tortured.
Zay-Lin-Oo, 32, who was a bomb engineer with the Tatmadaw before he deserted the army and fled to India last year, tells how he was ordered by senior officers to shoot at unarmed protesters and plant landmines that would kill civilians.
“When we would launch an operation against the rebels, as a trap we would plant bombs but I was ordered not to defuse them until after we had left the site,” he says. “The explosives would go off after we departed, and so many innocent civilians died because of this.”
In Haimual, Lalhmanhaih is the youngest fighter of the Mountain Eagle Defence Force (MEDF), a rebel group that is part of the PDF and consists of about three dozen men and two women from Haimual village.
The battle is deeply personal for this teenager. In August, her best friend and a fellow rebel soldier, 17-year-old Lalnuniuii, and Lalnuniuii’s 14-year-old brother, Lalruatmawia, were taken hostage by junta soldiers.
Lalhmanhaih had been with them during the ambush but was not armed, and could do nothing as her friends were dragged away by soldiers. Screams were heard through the night as the two were tortured. The next afternoon, villagers heard gunshots and saw flames rising from several houses as the junta soldiers finally abandoned the village. They found the bodies of the siblings partially buried in a pit.
A doctor over the border in India who later examined the bodies said Lalruatmawia had torture marks all over his body, while his sister had been raped several times and shot three times in the head at close range, injuries concurrent with widespread accounts of rape and sexual violence by junta soldiers.
“They must have been subjected to a lot of pain,” says their mother, Lalthantluangi, with a shudder. “Her body had bite marks all over. Her genitals were mutilated by those beasts.”
Lalnuniuii believed passionately in fighting the junta and would often post Instagram videos of herself dancing in her rebel uniform. In her diary, one of the last messages reads: “My future is People’s Defence Force … I will never surrender.”
Lalhmanhaih thinks of her best friend every morning when she wakes up in their makeshift bunker, puts on her uniform and loads her shotgun. “It still haunts me, that moment when she was separated from us,” she says. “I want to liberate my people and country from the barbaric military and take revenge for what they did to my best friend. She is always in my thoughts and it keeps me here defending my place.”
Almost a year ago, on the afternoon of 9 January, word spread in Haimual that government soldiers were on the way to raid the village. Almost all 180 households, mostly farmers and traders, began to flee in panic.
“People could not get any of their belongings, except the clothes we were wearing,” recalls Lalrin Dika, a villager. “We knew the military was going to kill us because the villagers have been against military rule.”
Later that day, smoke could be seen rising from the village as junta soldiers stormed in and burned down many of their houses. With the village only three miles west of the border with India, the villagers all crossed over the Tiau River into the Indian state of Mizoram, joining tens of thousands of Myanmar refugees who have escaped to India since the coup and are living in makeshift camps.
Although the India-Myanmar border is officially closed, the Mizo people of Mizoram share the same ethnic background as the Chin people of Myanmar and there is much sympathy for their plight and a willingness to help. Local authorities and border police have largely turned a blind eye to the waves of refugees and local people in Mizoram have welcomed them into their communities and schools. According to one local MP, more than 40,000 Myanmar refugees are now living across 60 camps in the Indian state.
“They are our brothers and sisters from the Chin province and that is why we give them food and shelter,” Zoramthanga, the chief minister of Mizoram, told the Observer.
But many in the village returned to Haimual to fight, having collected old hunting rifles from supportive people in Mizoram. Their old family homes, which now stand eerie and deserted, are surrounded by outposts manned by this rag-tag army and the silence is punctured only by the fighters on motorbike patrols.
Yet it is more than just their property they are protecting. This tiny village holds strategic importance, not just for the locals but for the entire pro-democracy insurgency of Myanmar. It secures a key supply line from India, through which food, medicine and weapons are smuggled illegally over the border and are keeping the insurgency alive.
One exiled Myanmar politician now living in the Mizoram state capital of Aizawl, who requested anonymity for security reasons, said he was among a group living in India who were strategising for the insurgency and sending weapons to help the rebel fighters.
A commander of the rebel group in Haimual, who goes by the nom de guerre Maria, said they were “completely dependent on the Indian side for everything. If the contact with the Indian side is broken, it will mean a big blow to the defence fighters”. As a precaution, they have laid explosives around the periphery of the village, ready to detonate at any sign of the junta.
The rebels also collect what they call “donations” from truckers carrying goods to and from India. “We take whatever they are willing to give us and most of them are generous,” he says. Most of the fighters in Haimual cross over to Mizoram to visit their families for one night a month.
However, as attention on the anti-junta fight in Myanmar has waned, supplies are beginning to dry up. Rebels have begun making their own guns and explosives with materials such as gelatine but many are fearful about sustaining their resistance in the future.
“We are fighting with these outdated shotguns against an army that has modern automated guns and other sophisticated weapons,” says 63-year-old Sunglingthanhg, the oldest fighter in the group, showing the rusted barrel of his gun.
Fewer than half the rebels have received a month of training on how to fight and only half have rifles. They also complain about the lack of coordination within the rebel groups, which has left them unclear as to how much territory is under PDF control.
In their rare moments of light relief, the rebel fighters play volleyball or card games and some can be found strumming a guitar, but nothing truly distracts them from their purpose. “We are fighting for democracy,” says Maria. “We will fight with whatever we have.”
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In this image made from Windsor, Va., Police video, a police officer speaks with Caron Nazario during a traffic stop, Dec. 20, 2020, in Windsor, Va. (photo: AP)
Trial Set to Begin for Black Soldier Suing Police Over Violent Stop
Associated Press
Excerpt: "A U.S. Army lieutenant who was pepper sprayed, struck and handcuffed by police in rural Virginia, but never arrested, will argue to a jury that he was assaulted and falsely imprisoned and that his vehicle was illegally searched."
AU.S. Army lieutenant who was pepper sprayed, struck and handcuffed by police in rural Virginia, but never arrested, will argue to a jury that he was assaulted and falsely imprisoned and that his vehicle was illegally searched.
Video of the 2020 traffic stop got millions of views the next year after Caron Nazario filed the federal lawsuit that is now being heard, highlighting fears of mistreatment among Black drivers and intensifying the scrutiny of the boundaries of reasonable, and legal, police conduct.
The episode also served as a grim signal to many Black Americans that military uniforms don't necessarily protect against abuse of authority by law enforcement.
The trial is scheduled to begin Monday in federal court in Richmond.
Video shows Windsor police officers Daniel Crocker and Joe Gutierrez pointing handguns at a uniformed Nazario behind the wheel of his Chevy Tahoe at a gas station. The officers repeatedly commanded Nazario to exit his SUV, with Gutierrez warning at one point that Nazario was "fixing to ride the lightning" when he didn't get out.
Nazario held his hands in the air outside the driver's side window and continually asked why he was being stopped.
Nazario also said: "I'm honestly afraid to get out."
"You should be," Gutierrez responded.
Nazario stayed in the vehicle. Gutierrez went on to pepper spray him through the open window. Once Nazario exited the SUV, the officers commanded him to get on the ground, with Gutierrez using his knees to strike Nazario's legs, the lawsuit states.
Since the traffic stop, Nazario has developed anxiety, depression and PTSD, according to his lawsuit. He has been unable to leave home at times due to "hypervigilance regarding the potential for harassment by law enforcement," court filings state.
A psychologist found that Nazario, who is Black and Latino, suffers from race-based trauma associated with violent police encounters, which can exacerbate injuries "in ways that do not commonly affect the white populations."
"The officers involved not only assaulted Mr. Nazario, but pointed their weapons directly at him and, at some point during the encounter, threatened to kill him," the suit alleges. "Mr. Nazario recalls that he thought he was going to die that evening."
Nazario is suing Crocker and Gutierrez. Crocker is still on the force, but Gutierrez was fired in April 2021, the same month Nazario filed his lawsuit.
The men deny ever threatening to kill Nazario. They contend that Nazario misconstrued Gutierrez's statement that Nazario was "fixing to ride the lightning." Gutierrez spoke those words while holstering his gun and drawing his Taser and was referencing his stun gun, not an execution, according to court filings.
Crocker and Gutierrez argue that they performed their duties within the law after Nazario failed to immediately pull over and refused to exit his vehicle. Plus, a federal judge already found they had probable cause to stop Nazario for an improperly displayed license plate, and to charge him with eluding police, as well as obstruction of justice and failure to obey.
"To the extent Mr. Nazario claims mental anguish or other psychological injuries, Mr. Nazario is still in the Virginia National Guard — there is no evidence he has been medically retired or otherwise discharged in connection with this incident," according to a trial brief filed by Gutierrez in late November. "In fact, shortly after the traffic stop, Mr. Nazario deployed to Washington, D.C. in support of the January 6, 2021 disturbance."
Nazario, a medical officer, said he arrived after the insurrection occurred, according to a deposition.
Besides Nazario's lawsuit, fallout from the traffic stop includes a lawsuit brought by the state attorney general that alleges Windsor discriminated against Black Americans. The small town is about 70 miles (110 kilometers) southeast of Richmond.
In August, a special prosecutor determined that Gutierrez should not be criminally charged but should be investigated for potential civil rights violations.
"Although I find the video very disturbing and frankly unsettling, Gutierrez's use of force to remove Nazario did not violate state law as he had given multiple commands for Nazario to exit the vehicle," special prosecutor Anton Bell said in his report.
U.S. District Judge Roderick C. Young also narrowed the scope of Nazario's lawsuit. In August, Young ruled that federal immunity laws shield Crocker and Gutierrez from Nazario's claims that they violated his constitutional protections against excessive force and unreasonable seizure, as well as Nazario's right to free speech by threatening him with arrest if he complained about their behavior.
Nazario can present claims under state law of false imprisonment and assault and battery to a jury, the judge ruled. The judge also found Crocker liable for illegally searching for a gun in Nazario's SUV, leaving the question of damages on that point to a jury. Nazario had a concealed-carry permit for the weapon.
The jury will also consider whether Gutierrez is liable for the illegal search. The former officer denies he knew Crocker was conducting the search.
Nazario's attorneys are expected to present evidence regarding Gutierrez's professional history, including an unrelated suspension without pay for excessive force.
That episode happened during a 2019 traffic stop while Gutierrez served as a sheriff's deputy in Isle of Wight County. Gutierrez drew his weapon on the driver during the two times the man exited his vehicle and held him at gunpoint for nearly four minutes until another officer arrived, according to court filings.
While trying to handcuff the man, Gutierrez grabbed him by his neck and "forced his face into the pavement while attempting to place him on his stomach," the findings stated. The man suffered a facial injury that required medical attention.
ADDED:
In December, two officers stopped U.S. Army Lt. Caron Nazario for not having a rear license plate on his new SUV, according to a police report. Officer Joe Gutierrez, whose termination was announced late Sunday night, pepper-sprayed Nazario. Gutierrez and former partner Daniel Crocker face a $1 million lawsuit, alleging a violation of constitutional rights.
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A bee sits on a flower budding from an almond tree. Three-quarters of crops require pollination. (photo: Amir Cohen/Reuters)
Global Pollinator Losses Causing 500,000 Early Deaths a Year – Study
Damian Carrington, Guardian UK
Carrington writes: "The global loss of pollinators is already causing about 500,000 early deaths a year by reducing the supply of healthy foods, a study has estimated."
Insect declines mean reduced yields of healthy foods like fruit and vegetables and increased disease in people
The global loss of pollinators is already causing about 500,000 early deaths a year by reducing the supply of healthy foods, a study has estimated.
Three-quarters of crops require pollination but the populations of many insects are in sharp decline. The inadequate pollination that results has caused a 3%-5% loss of fruit, vegetable and nut production, the research found. The lower consumption of these foods means about 1% of all deaths can now be attributed to pollinator loss, the scientists said.
The researchers considered deaths from heart disease, stroke, diabetes, and some cancers, all of which can be reduced with healthier diets. The study is the first to quantify the human health toll of insufficient wild pollinators.
The study was based on data from hundreds of farms across the world, information on yields and diet-related health risks and a computer model that tracks the global trade in food.
“A critical missing piece in the biodiversity discussion has been a lack of direct linkages to human health,” said Dr Samuel Myers, at Harvard University’s TH Chan School of Public Health and senior author of the study. “This research establishes that loss of pollinators is already impacting health on a scale with other global health risk factors, such as prostate cancer or substance use disorders.”
“But there is a solution out there in pollinator-friendly practices,” Myers said. These include increasing flower abundance on farms, cutting pesticide use, especially neonicotinoids, and preserving or restoring nearby natural habitats. “When these have been studied, they pay for themselves economically through increased production.” Nonetheless, the researchers said “immense challenges remain” in restoring pollinator populations globally.
The study, published in the journal Environmental Health Perspectives, assessed dozens of pollinator-dependent crops using data from the global farm study. It found that insufficient pollination was responsible for about a quarter of the difference between high and low yields.
The farm data was used to determine the drop in yield due to too few pollinators. “We estimated that the world is currently losing 4.7% of total production of fruit, 3.2% of vegetables, and 4.7% nuts,” the researchers said.
They then used an economic model to track how these losses would affect the diets of people across the globe. Finally, they used well-known data on how reductions of fruit, vegetables, legumes and nuts affect health to estimate the number of early deaths.
The researchers found the biggest impact was in middle-income countries, like China, India, Russia and Indonesia, where heart disease, strokes and cancers were already prevalent due to poor diets, smoking, and low levels of exercise. In rich nations, more people could still afford to eat healthily even if the price of the foods went up due to lower production, although the poorer people in those countries would still suffer.
Previous work by the team showed that most of the effects on health in a country were due to loss of pollinators in that country, rather than in other countries from which food was imported. The biggest drops in yield caused by insufficient wild pollinators were in low income countries. Food production there would benefit most from better wild pollination, but people’s health suffered less due to lower existing rates of heart disease and stroke.
The estimated number of deaths is conservative, the scientists said, as the study did not include the impact of the reduction of micronutrients such as vitamin A and folate in diets, or the health impact of lost income for farmers.
Prof David Goulson, at the University of Sussex, in the UK, who was not part of the study team, said: “Globally, we consume too much of the wind pollinated crops – wheat, rice, corn, barley – which are rich in carbs but relatively low in nutrients, leading to an epidemic of obesity and diabetes around the world. We do not eat enough fruit and veg, most of which requires insects for pollination – think apples, cherries, strawberries, squash, beans, tomatoes etc.”
Goulson said that declines in other insects, such as predators of crop pests, would also cut yields. Furthermore, poor health, lost work and disability due to poorer diets would also have large impacts on health services and economies, adding: “The overall impacts of declining biodiversity on crop production are likely to be far larger than measured in this study.
“The most concerning aspect of this study is that, since insect populations are continuing to decline, this lost crop yield is going to get worse into the future, while the human population is going to continue growing to at least 10 billion,” Goulson said. “The problems described here are likely to get much worse as the 21st century progresses.”
Myers said: “We’re transforming every one of the natural systems on the planet and we keep experiencing these surprises. For example, our earlier work showed how rising carbon dioxide levels are making our food less nutritious. So this pollinator study is important, not only for its own sake, but as an indication that there’s risk in completely transforming our natural life support systems.”
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