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"In the case of Russia's actions in Ukraine, we have examined the evidence. We know the legal standards and there is no doubt these are crimes against humanity … Let us be clear, Russian forces have pursued a widespread and systemic attack against a civilian population … Gruesome acts of murder, torture, rape, and deportation. Execution-style killings, beatings, and electrocution. Russian authorities have forcibly deported hundreds of thousands of people from Ukraine to Russia — including children."
There is no humanitarian relief organization in the Western World that would disagree. Perhaps the most cucial thing Harris said was,
"And I say to all those who have perpetrated these crimes, and to their superiors who are complicit in these crimes, you will be held to account."
What Is to Be Done?
Early in the invasion US President Biden’s stated objectives were to avoid World War III and not do anything to escalate the conflict. Not much to fear there if you are Vladimir Putin or his war planners.
In fact from the Biden Administration’s point of view there wasn’t even supposed to be a war. Their plan was to provide safe exit from Ukraine for Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy his cabinet members and their families. Thus conceding the war before it began.
One minor problem, they forgot to ask Zelenskyy and the Ukrainians. When they did finally ask, Zelenskyy famously replied, “The fight is here; I need ammunition, not a ride.” That’s why there is a war today and for the record it is a war the US and NATO surely did not, and do not want to participate in still.
The US and its NATO partners all say they support the Ukrainian resistance to the Russian invasion and they categorically condemn the crimes against humanity it has spawned. They all tout the list of weapons they have supplied to bolster Ukraine’s struggle to turn back the invaders.
However an objective military analysis would have to conclude that the weapons provided so far are better suited to produce a stalemate on the battlefield than an expulsion of Russian forces from Ukrainian lands and the communities in which the atrocities are being committed.
An argument for avoiding war can and arguably should always be made. The danger of course is that fear of war always seems to invite greater military aggression. A grinding, bloody slugfest in the center of Europe may seem to those at what seems to be a safe distance like a better alternative than a direct military engagement, but a war that does not end inevitably grows and does ever greater harm.
It’s great that the US wants to hold war criminals to account. How they would do that is unclear as the US refuses to recognize any international court. Presumably such a court would have to agree to prosecute only American adversaries.
In any case it isn’t very likely Russian Federation President Vladimir Putin or his close supporters will go before the Hague. However should the Russian Army be driven from Ukraine that could quite conceivably lead to the downfall of the Putin regime. It is what an accounting for these war crimes will most likely ultimately look like.
Neither the US nor its NATO allies are yet ready to commit to winning the war. Nothing else will do.
Marc Ash is the founder and former Executive Director of Truthout, and is now founder and Editor of Reader Supported News.
Reader Supported News is the Publication of Origin for this work. Permission to republish is freely granted with credit and a link back to Reader Supported News.
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Jimmy Carter, seen at home in Plains, Ga., in 2021, has lived longer than any other American president. (photo: Erin Schaff/NYT)
The 39th president has decided to forgo further medical treatment and will “spend his remaining time at home with his family,” the Carter Center announced.
“After a series of short hospital stays, former U.S. President Jimmy Carter decided to spend his remaining time at home with his family and receive hospice care instead of additional medical intervention,” the center said in a statement posted on Twitter. “He has the full support of his family and his medical team. The Carter family asks for privacy during this time and is grateful for the concern shown by his many admirers.”
The center did not elaborate on what conditions had prompted the recent hospital visits or his decision to enter hospice care. Mr. Carter has survived a series of health crises in recent years, including a bout with the skin cancer melanoma, which spread to his liver and brain, as well as repeated falls.
Jason Carter, one of Mr. Carter’s grandchildren and the chairman of the Carter Center’s board of trustees, said he had seen the former president and first lady on Friday.
“They are at peace and — as always — their home is full of love,” he wrote on Twitter.
Hospice is defined as care for terminally ill patients when the priority is not to provide further treatment but to reduce pain and discomfort toward the end of life. The former president lives with his wife, Rosalynn Carter, 95, in a modest ranch house that the couple built in Plains, Ga., in 1961.
Mr. Carter has defied illness and death for years, outlasting two presidents who followed him as well as his own vice president. He became the longest-living president in March 2019 when he passed former President George H.W. Bush, who died the previous November.
After Mr. Carter’s melanoma spread to his brain in 2015, he drew praise for announcing it publicly. Even as he underwent treatment, he continued to teach Sunday school at Maranatha Baptist Church in Plains, as promised. Within months, he announced that he was cancer-free.
In 2019, Mr. Carter fell at least three times, at one point breaking a hip and at another requiring 14 stitches. Each time he bounced back, even showing up for a Habitat for Humanity home building project shortly after one fall.
But he has slowly retreated from public life lately, making fewer and fewer appearances or statements. He could not attend President Biden’s inauguration in January 2021, when former presidents traditionally convene, but Mr. Biden made a pilgrimage to Plains in April of that year to pay his respects, the first sitting president to visit Mr. Carter at his Georgia home.
In one of his last public acts, Mr. Carter filed a brief last year supporting an appeal by conservation groups seeking to overturn a court decision permitting a gravel road to be built through the Izembek National Wildlife Refuge. He argued that the construction would undercut the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act, which he had signed into law. He was said to be working on that issue as recently as last month.
“My name is Jimmy Carter,” he wrote in that brief. “In my lifetime, I have been a farmer, a naval officer, a Sunday school teacher, an outdoorsman, a democracy activist, a builder, governor of Georgia and recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize. And from 1977 to 1981, I had the privilege of serving as the 39th president of the United States.”
Mr. Carter was a political sensation in his day, a new-generation Democrat who after a single term as governor of Georgia shocked the political world by beating a host of better-known rivals to capture his party’s presidential nomination in 1976, then ousting the incumbent Republican president, Gerald R. Ford, in the fall.
Over the course of four years in office, he sought to restore trust in government following the Vietnam War and the Watergate scandal, ushering in reforms that were meant to transform politics. He negotiated the landmark Camp David accords making peace between Israel and Egypt, an agreement that remains the foundation of Middle East relations.
But a sour economy and a 444-day hostage crisis in Iran in which 52 American diplomats were held captive undercut his public support, and he lost his bid for re-election to former Gov. Ronald Reagan of California in 1980.
He spent his post-presidency, however, on a series of philanthropic causes around the world, like building houses for the poor, combating Guinea worm, promoting human rights in places of repression, monitoring elections and seeking to end conflicts. His work as a former president in many ways came to eclipse his time in the White House, eventually earning him the Nobel Peace Prize and rehabilitating his image in the eyes of many Americans.
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Young people in front of a monument of the Soviet era in Yerevan, Armenia, on Feb. 2. (Tako Robakidze/WP)
Some had long opposed rising authoritarianism, and the invasion was a last straw. Others were driven by economic interest, to preserve livelihoods or escape the bite of sanctions. Then, last autumn, a military mobilization spurred hundreds of thousands of men to run.
Russian President Vladimir Putin’s war has set off a historic exodus of his own people. Initial data shows that at least 500,000, and perhaps nearly 1 million, have left in the year since the invasion began — a tidal wave on scale with emigration following the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution and the Soviet Union’s collapse in 1991.
Now, as then, the departures stand to redefine the country for generations. And the flood may still be in its early stages. The war seems nowhere near finished. Any new conscription effort by the Kremlin will spark new departures, as will worsening economic conditions, which are expected as the conflict drags on.
The huge outflow has swelled existing Russian expatriate communities across the world, and created new ones.
Some fled nearby to countries like Armenia and Kazakhstan, across borders open to Russians. Some with visas escaped to Finland, the Baltic states or elsewhere in Europe. Others ventured farther, to the United Arab Emirates, Israel, Thailand, Argentina. Two men from Russia’s Far East even sailed a small boat to Alaska.
The financial cost, while vast, is impossible to calculate. In late December, Russia’s Communications Ministry reported that 10 percent of the country’s IT workers had left in 2022 and not returned. Russia’s parliament is now debating a package of incentives to bring them back.
But there has also been talk in parliament of punishing Russians who left by stripping them of their assets at home. Putin has referred to these people as “scum” and said their exit would “cleanse” the country — even though some who left did not oppose him, or the war.
With the government severely restricting dissent, and implementing punishment for criticism of the war, those remaining in the depleted political opposition also faced a choice this year: prison or exile. Most chose exile. Activists and journalists are now clustered in cities such as Berlin and the capitals of Lithuania, Latvia and Georgia.
“This exodus is a terrible blow for Russia,” said Tamara Eidelman, a Russian historian who moved to Portugal after the invasion. “The layer that could have changed something in the country has now been washed away.”
While Ukrainian refugees were embraced in the West, many countries shunned the Russians, uncertain whether they were friends or foes, and whether, on some level, the entire country was culpable. Some nations have blocked arrivals by imposing entry restrictions or denying new visas, at times spreading panic among Russians already abroad, especially students.
Meanwhile, the influx of Russians into countries such as Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan, which have long sent immigrants to Russia, set off political tremors, straining ties between Moscow and the other former Soviet states. Real estate prices in those countries have shot up, causing tensions with local populations.
Nearly a year after the start of the invasion — and the new outflow of Russians — Washington Post journalists traveled to Yerevan and to Dubai for a close look at how the emigres are faring, and to ask if they ever plan to return. Yerevan, the capital of Armenia, a former Soviet republic, is a destination for Russians with lower financial mobility — an Orthodox Christian country where Russian is the second language. By contrast, pricey Dubai, in the Persian Gulf, is predominantly Muslim and Arabic-speaking, and attracts wealthier Russians seeking either glitz or business opportunity.
Yerevan
For many Russians choosing to flee, Armenia was a rare easy option. It is one of five ex-Soviet countries that allow Russians to enter with just a national ID — making it a popular destination for former soldiers, political activists and others needing a quick escape.
Given the shared religion and use of language, Russians typically do not face animosity or social stigma in Armenia. Obtaining residency permits is also straightforward, and living costs are lower than in the European Union.
Yerevan has attracted thousands of IT workers, young creatives and working-class people, including families with children, from across Russia. They have established new schools, bars, cafes and robust support networks.
In the courtyard of the “Free School” for Russian children, established in April, Maxim, a construction company manager, was waiting for his 8-year-old son, Timofey. The school started with 40 students in an apartment. Now, there are nearly 200 in a multistory building in the city center.
Maxim, whom The Post is identifying by only his first name for security reasons, flew to Yerevan from Volgograd to avoid the mobilization in September. “We left for the same reason everyone did: There was suddenly a real danger in the country for me and, above all, my family,” he said.
Year of war
The family has adapted seamlessly to Yerevan. Everyone around them speaks Russian. Maxim works remotely on projects in Russia. Timofey likes his school and is learning Armenian. Maxim said he is sure the family will not return to Russia.
“Perhaps we will move on somewhere else, maybe even to Europe if things start to normalize,” he said.
At a shelter on the outskirts of Yerevan, Andrei, 25, a former military officer from Russia’s Rostov region, said he was also adjusting to a new life after similarly fleeing conscription. “I did not want to be a murderer in this criminal war,” said Andrei, who is being identified by his first name for safety reasons.
Andrei works as a delivery driver and shares a modest room with two other men in a shelter set up by Kovcheg, a support organization for Russian emigrants. “Before the war, I never followed politics, but after the invasion, I started reading about everything,” Andrei said. “I feel so ashamed about what Russia has done.”
Meanwhile, at a co-working space downtown, Russian activist groups organize debates, political meetings and therapy sessions. Messages of support for Ukraine hang on the walls, along with the white-and-blue flag adopted by Russia’s opposition. At one meeting in late January, dozens of Russians were hunched over tables, writing letters to political prisoners in Russia.
“The more letters, the better,” said Ivan Lyubimov, 37, an activist from Yekaterinburg. “It’s important that they don’t feel they are alone.” He held up a cartoon of a smiling panda. To circumvent prison censorship, they must avoid writing anything political, but drawings are certain to be delivered.
Tanya Raspopova, 26, arrived in Yerevan last March, with her husband but without a plan, overwhelmed and frightened.
Then she heard that another emigre was seeking partners to set up a bar, a space where Russian expats could come together, and she wanted to help. Tuf, named after the pink volcanic rock common throughout Yerevan, opened its doors within a month.
They started with a neon-lit bar and kitchen on the ground floor, which soon expanded into a small courtyard. Then they opened up a second floor, then a third. Upstairs there is now a recording studio, a clothing boutique and a tattoo parlor. On a Wednesday night in January, the place was packed with young Russians and Armenians singing karaoke, drinking cocktails and playing ping-pong. “We have since created such a big community, a big family,” Raspopova said. “Tuf is our new home.”
Dubai
Russians are everywhere in Dubai: clutching Dior totes perched atop Louis Vuitton suitcases in the airport, walking around malls in tracksuits, and filming TikToks and Reels near the Burj Khalifa.
Russia’s rich and powerful have long traveled to Dubai, but it was just one of many hot spots. That changed when the war cut Russians off from the West.
Thousands have chosen the UAE, which did not join Western sanctions and still has direct flights to Moscow, as their new home. Russians enjoy visa-free travel for 90 days, and it is relatively easy to get a national ID, through business or investment, for a longer stay.
The high cost of living means there are no activists or journalists. Dubai is a haven, and the go-to playground, for Russian tech founders, billionaires under sanctions, unpenalized millionaires, celebrities, and influencers.
Shortly after the invasion, conversations in Moscow’s affluent Patriarch Ponds neighborhood turned to the best Dubai real estate deals, said Natalia Arkhangelskaya, who writes for Antiglyanets, a snarky and influential Telegram blog focused on Russia’s elite. A year later, Russians have ousted Brits and Indians as Dubai’s top real estate buyers, Russian-owned yachts dock at the marina, and private jets zigzag between Dubai and Moscow.
Russians can still buy apartments, open bank accounts and snag designer leather goods they previously shopped for in France.
“Dubai is built on the concept that people with money come here,” Arkhangelskaya said.
The UAE’s embrace of foreign business has lured a stream of Russian IT workers seeking to cut ties with Russia and stay linked to global markets. Start-ups seek financing from state-supported accelerators. Larger firms pursue clients to replace those lost to sanctions.
A 40th-floor apartment with stunning views in one of the Jumeirah Beach Residence towers is reserved for weekly meetups that are open to IT newcomers. On a windy January evening, the organizer, Ivan Fediakov, head of a consulting company, greeted guests in a black hoodie printed with “Everyone understands everything” — a catchphrase popularized by Alexey Pivovarov, a Russian journalist branded by Moscow as a foreign agent and whose YouTube channel has 3.5 million subscribers.
About a dozen people arrived to discuss opportunities in India, which has maintained ties with Russia despite the war. Most expressed bitterness about the Kremlin’s politics and a longing for Moscow when it was an aspiring global hub.
Alexandra Dorf, an IT entrepreneur, moved to Dubai with her two children in April. “No one knew what was going to happen next,” Dorf said.
“Borders can be shut abruptly,” she said. “A decision had to be made; you either stay or you go quickly.”
In 2022, Dorf severed all ties with Russia: She sold her apartment and car, and found a job in Dubai as a business development officer at an AI-focused company.
“For the first two months, you are constantly stressed. Your children have been torn out from their usual way of life, and you can’t enroll them into a school midyear,” she said. “But Dubai is a blooming hub.”
“The most important thing for me is to be able to develop international projects and to integrate my kids into a global community, so they grow up in a free environment,” she added.
Aside from techies, many middle-class Russians followed the money to Dubai — for hospitality jobs, to open beauty salons or simply to work remotely far from the warmongering motherland.
Artem Babinov, founder of a co-living space called Colife in Moscow, opened an office in Dubai days before the invasion, hoping to attract British finance specialists as customers. The war changed his plans, and he now rents dozens of properties as short-term housing, mainly to Russians in their 30s. “The community here is key,” Babinov said. “People just need other people.”
Third exodus
Like the White Russian emigres of the Bolshevik era and the post-Soviet immigrants of the 1990s, many of those leaving Russia because of the war in Ukraine are probably gone for good.
Eidelman, the Russian historian, noted that the passage of time only makes it harder to return home. “Every extra month leads people to get used to a different country,” she said. “They get a job there, their children go to school, they begin to speak a different language. The longer the war lasts — the longer the dictatorship in the country continues — the fewer people will return.”
But technology makes this exodus unlike its predecessors, guaranteeing that Russians abroad will remain connected to their past.
Matthew Rojansky, president of the Washington-based U.S. Russia Foundation, said the expats could become “a repository of relevant skills for a better, freer, modern Russia.” For now, though, Rojansky said, the outflow sends a clear message.
“It’s historic,” he said. “These people are voting with their feet. They are leaving because of what the Putin regime is doing.”
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The number of people in the U.S. who identify as Native American rose from 2010 to 2020. (photo: AP)
Birth rates among Native Americans don’t explain the massive rise in numbers. And there certainly is no evidence of an influx of Native American expatriates returning to the U.S.
Instead, individuals who previously identified as white are now claiming to be Native American.
This growing movement has been captured by terms like “pretendian” and “wannabe.”
Another way to describe this recent adoption of Native American identity is what I call “racial shifting.”
These people are fleeing not from political and social persecution, but from whiteness.
I spent 14 years researching the topic and interviewing dozens of race-shifters for my book “Becoming Indian.” I learned that while some of these people have strong evidence of Native American ancestry, others do not.
Yet nearly all of the 45 people who were interviewed or surveyed for the book believe they have Indigenous ancestry and that it means something powerful about who they are and how they should live their lives. Only a tiny – but troubling – number makes blatantly fraudulent claims to advance their own interests.
History repeats
The search for meaning that characterizes racial shifting is part of an old American story.
Since the days of the Boston Tea Party, when nearly 100 American colonists dressed in Native American garb before throwing 95 tons of British tea into the Boston Harbor, white Americans have distinguished themselves from Europeans by selectively adopting Native American imagery and practices.
Yet as historian Philip Deloria argued in his 1998 book, “Playing Indian,” something happened in American society in the 1950s and 1960s that allowed white Americans greater freedom to appropriate nonwhite identities. White Americans, often with the encouragement of the counterculture and later New Age movements, began to seek new meanings in Indigenous cultures.
Those shifts are apparently reflected in U.S. Census data. The Native American population started increasing at a dramatic rate in the 1960s, growing from 552,000 to 9.7 million in 60 years. Prior to then, the Native American population had been relatively stable.
Backlash against assimilation
What distinguishes contemporary racial shifting from these earlier forms of appropriation is that most race shifters see themselves not as white people who “play Indian,” but as long-unrecognized American Indians who have been forced by historical circumstances to “play white.”
Many argue, for example, that their families avoided anti-Indian policies like removal by blending into white society.
This gradual but fundamental shift over the last 60 years suggests a seismic upheaval in the American racial landscape.
Racial shifting is a rejection of the centuries-long process of assimilation, when different racial and ethnic groups were pressured to adopt white norms of behavior as a way of fitting into an American society that was defined by them. Racial hierarchies that consistently place whiteness at the top are now being challenged.
When speaking to me about their former white lives, racial shifters often described a period of sadness when they searched for meaning and connection. Only when they began to look to their family histories did they realize all that had been lost when their families assimilated into whiteness. As one woman from Missouri put it: “They forced us to be white, act white, live white, and that is a very, very degrading feeling.”
The genealogical and historical details might not always be verifiable, but the emotions are real enough. It makes perfect sense that once race shifters link their melancholy to assimilation, they try to ease their sadness by rejecting whiteness and reclaiming an Indigenous status.
Whiteness devalued
Part of what accounts for these new sentiments are significant changes in the public’s discussion about race.
In the wake of 1960s civil rights activism and debates about multiculturalism, whiteness has taken on increasingly negative connotations.
In my interviews with race shifters, for example, they frequently associated their former whiteness with racial and cultural emptiness.
As one woman put it: “We had an emptiness inside of us, that we did not know who we were or what we were.” They also associated whiteness with social isolation, unearned privilege and guilt over colonialism and slavery.
Today there is growing insecurity about what it means to be white in America. We see this being expressed in public debates about white fragility, affirmative action and colorblind policies. Of course, there’s still much security in being white: White privilege is an ongoing reality of American life, and something most white people and white racial shifters take for granted.
This shift from white to Indigenous self-identification is, I believe, fundamentally about a desire to leave behind the negative connotations of whiteness and move toward the material and symbolic values that now attach to Native American identity.
‘Attack on our sovereignty’
If you listen only to racial shifters, this growing trend could be seen as a progressive move that challenges the legacy of a racist system.
Yet the citizens of federally recognized tribes offer a different interpretation.
Most view anyone who self-identifies as Native American without being an enrolled citizen of a federally recognized tribe as a threat to tribal sovereignty. As Richard Allen, a former policy analyst with the Cherokee Nation, told me, “Not only is that an insult, but it’s also an attack on our sovereignty as Cherokee people, as the Cherokee Nation.”
Among American Indians, the term sovereignty is used to assert ongoing rights of political self-determination. Because tribes have the sovereign right to determine their own citizenry, American Indian identity is fundamentally a political status, not a racial one, a fact that is often overlooked in debates about Indigenous identity.
Racial shifters also undermine tribal sovereignty when they create alternative tribes for themselves outside the federal acknowledgment process. Most of these groups, such as the Echota Cherokee Tribe or the Southeastern Cherokee Confederacy, have emerged since the late 1970s.
The number of these new self-identified tribes is startling. Over the course of my research, I discovered 253 groups scattered across the U.S. that identify as some sort of Cherokee tribe.
This is a huge number considering that there are only 573 federally recognized tribes, three of which are Cherokee.
Racial shifting is a growing demographic trend that is creating confusion in the public sphere about who is Native American and who isn’t. But its threat is far greater than just social confusion.
Native Americans and their governments face thousands of race-shifters seeking to join their ranks. And as more and more people reject whiteness in favor of indigeneity, they do so at the expense of tribal sovereignty.
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Former President Trump addresses the crowd during a 2024 election campaign event in Columbia, S.C. (photo: Logan Cyrus/AFP/Getty Images)
In recent weeks, Smith has subpoenaed both former Vice President Mike Pence and then-White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, two figures with strong visibility into Trump’s actions leading up to and on the day of the deadly riot.
The Justice Department has also sought to pierce the attorney-client privilege connected to Trump’s lawyer in the Mar-a-Lago probe, Evan Corcoran, alleging he may have given legal advice in furtherance of a crime.
Approaching high-level targets is often a late-stage move for prosecutors, a sign the investigative stage of Smith’s Jan. 6 work could be winding down.
Meanwhile, the approach with Corcoran relays that the team will take an aggressive posture with anyone involved in the probe they believe may have committed criminal activity.
“We can draw a few conclusions from it that are fairly apparent. One is that Jack Smith is conducting a very aggressive investigation. Issuing a subpoena to an attorney is itself an aggressive step that requires high levels of supervisory approval of the United States Department of Justice,” said Renato Mariotti, a former federal prosecutor.
“I don’t think a prosecutor subpoenas Mike Pence unless they are far along in speaking to a number of other witnesses.”
The tactics are not without their challenges.
Pence has said he will challenge the subpoena, and it’s up to a federal judge to compel testimony from Corcoran.
Still, it’s a sign of progress in the dual probes, including with the Jan. 6 investigation, which has been perceived as presenting a much more complex case for any possible prosecution of Trump.
The documents case largely relies on showing willful retention of national defense information, something observers see as more straightforward given the lengthy battle to secure the return of classified records from Mar-a-Lago. The warrant to search the property also cited potential obstruction of justice.
Trump’s culpability for Jan. 6, however, is more complex, with possible statutes for prosecution requiring the demonstration of Trump’s intent.
“A lot of people believed that because the Mar-a-Lago case would be an easier case to prove that [Smith would] focus attention there and put the January 6 investigation on the back burner or put that second in line, and that has not been the case,” Mariotti said.
“I think it’s evidence that his investigation — at least to this Jan. 6 piece — is fairly far along.”
Danya Perry, a former federal prosecutor, said the moves also show the Mar-a-Lago probe into Trump has not been sidelined by the discovery of classified documents among the belongings of other former presidents.
“Obviously the special counsel has not decided to hang it up, which I think some people thought [he might] when news came out about a number of other former White House officials having classified documents,” Perry said.
“That side of the ledger, the classified documents side, it does seem to be focused on the potential obstruction issues given that he’s been trying to get testimony out of Corcoran.”
For his part, Pence is planning to roll out a novel legal strategy to sidestep the subpoena, one that hinges on his role on Jan. 6 as the presiding officer of the Senate.
His team is expected to argue that under his former position as president of the Senate, his work technically falls under the legislative branch, and he is therefore protected under the “speech and debate” clause of the Constitution, according to a source familiar with the former vice president’s plans.
Investigators likely want to speak to Pence about a number of meetings and conversations related to whether the then-vice president had the authority to buck his ceremonial duty to certify the election.
Mariotti says asking about more widely attended meetings they may have discussed with prior witnesses allows them to “test the veracity of what he says” before asking about conversations that were exclusive to the vice president and Trump.
“The ordinary course would be to interview all those other people, and then try to pursue Mike Pence with the knowledge that you already have from others,” he said.
But Perry warned that the Pence subpoena is no guarantee that Smith has completed his work talking to other witnesses.
“Jack Smith was probably aware that they’re going to invoke executive privilege. And so realized it would be a slog and so maybe wanted to get the ball rolling,” she said.
“Smith has certainly spoken with other witnesses,” she said, but could have initiated a subpoena sooner rather than later with the understanding that “it would be efficient for him to start a court battle now.”
Trump and his side have in some ways been just as aggressive in trying to push back against Smith’s investigations or shape the public narrative around them. The former president has routinely complained about Smith’s wife’s donations to Democratic candidates.
Trump’s team has said it will assert executive privilege over any potential testimony by Pence in the case, and it may seek to do the same should Meadows testify.
One former Trump White House official told The Hill that the former president’s team is confident that revelations that President Biden had classified documents at his home and office from his time as vice president will help shield Trump from possible charges in that matter, despite key differences in the Trump and Biden cases.
The former Trump official acknowledged Smith’s probe into Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election will likely hover over the former president until it concludes, and Democrats and even some Republicans backing other candidates are likely to wield it against Trump on the campaign trail.
But, the official argued, any suggestions that the investigation will end Trump’s candidacy or put him out of politics is just “wishcasting.”
Spokespeople for Trump’s 2024 White House campaign did not respond to requests for comment.
Perry said the process is likely to stretch into the campaign season.
“We’re just at the beginning, I think, of a bunch of fights that are going to play out in front of different courts and probably then travel up and down the court system,” she said, noting the potential for challenges from Pence, Trump and Meadows.
“They are going to play out over many, many months, if not longer,” she said.
“It’s not going to be lightning fast. It’s going to be more glacial.”
And the special counsel’s probes are not the only legal headache for Trump.
This week a judge allowed the partial release of a report compiled by a Georgia grand jury tasked with reviewing Trump’s interference in the state following the 2020 election.
Though the jurors determined the report should be released, Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis warned that doing so could compromise the proceedings for “multiple” future defendants in a case where charging decisions are “imminent.”
Fulton County Superior Court Judge Robert McBurney largely sided with Willis, determining that only the introduction and conclusion of the report should be released, along with one section discussing potential perjury that did not name any witnesses who appeared before the grand jury.
While the report’s three pages were slim on substantive details, they made two conclusions clear: There was no widespread fraud in the state that could have altered Trump’s loss there, and that at least one witness may have lied to the grand jury.
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Ron DeSantis signs Florida's 15-week abortion ban into law last year. (photo: Paul Hennessy/SOPA Images/REX/Shutterstock)
Doctors’ interpretation of state law prevents procedure, family tells Washington Post, despite baby’s fatal illness
Because of a new Florida law that bans abortion after 15 weeks except under certain circumstances, Deborah Dorbert has become one of many women having difficulty accessing necessary abortion procedures after the supreme court overturned the rights granted by the landmark 1973 Roe v Wade decision.
A report by the Washington Post chronicles how Dorbert and her husband, Lee Dorbert, are expecting their second child and have been told by doctors that the baby has been diagnosed with a fatal fetal abnormality known as Potter syndrome. But, they have said, the doctors could not perform an abortion because of their interpretation of a Florida law that took effect after the supreme court overturned Roe v Wade.
Potter syndrome is a rare condition related to a fetus’s development in the uterus. The syndrome is a result of abnormal kidney growth and function, which affects how much amniotic fluid surrounds the fetus during pregnancy.
It has been deemed a “doubly lethal diagnosis” because babies with malfunctioning kidneys can’t remove deadly toxins from their bodies and can in turn experience renal failure. Additionally, the absence of amniotic fluid in a womb causes a baby to be born without the ability to breathe.
According to Florida’s Reducing Fetal and Infant Mortality law, which was implemented last July, abortions are prohibited after 15 weeks of gestation, with a few exceptions, including one that would allow for a later abortion “if two physicians certify in writing that the fetus has a fatal fetal abnormality and has not reached viability”.
Last November, when the couple’s baby was diagnosed with the syndrome, a maternal fetal medicine specialist told the Dorberts that some parents choose to continue to full term while others opt to terminate the pregnancy through surgery or preterm labor.
The doctor added that he would consult with health system administrators regarding the new law, the Washington Post reports. The Dorberts eventually decided that they would like to terminate the pregnancy as early as they could because babies with the syndrome often die before they are born or end up suffocating within minutes or hours after their delivery.
Deborah Dorbert told the outlet that she recalled the specialist saying that the termination might be possible – but not until between 28 and 32 weeks.
Then, after the specialist consulted with health system administrators regarding the new law, the couple was told that they would have to wait to terminate the pregnancy until the 37th week of gestation – or near full term.
According to a text message Deborah Dorbert received from the coordinator at a maternal fetal medicine office that she visits often, the specialist made his determination after having legal administrators “look at the new law and the way it’s written”, the Washington Post reported.
“It’s horribly written,” the message added.
Despite the specialist telling the couple that other states had fewer restrictions on abortion access, the Dorberts told the Post that they were overwhelmed by travel costs and had only left their state a few times.
The couple, who have not learned the baby’s sex because its legs were crossed or the umbilical cord was in the way during each scan, eventually opted to provide palliative care to their child after the baby is born.
“That’s been very important to us, understanding that we do have that control back at least in some of these decisions,” Lee Dorbert told the Washington Post.
Nevertheless, the new law – which punishes physicians who violate it with penalties including license revocation, hefty fines and five years or more of jail time – has left the couple angry and frustrated.
“It makes me angry, for politicians to decide what’s best for my health,” Deborah Dorbert told the Washington Post. “We would do anything to have this baby.”
“We have never really understood,” Lee Dorbert said, adding: “We were told there was an exception … Obviously, [it’s] not enough of an exception in some cases.”
Despite the pain that the Dorberts and couples in similar situations are experiencing, the state’s Republican governor, Ron DeSantis, has maintained a staunch anti-abortion stance.
Earlier this month, DeSantis said that he would sign a six-week abortion ban if one passed.
“We’re for pro-life,” DeSantis said. “I urge the legislature to work, produce good stuff, and we will sign. That’s what I’ve always wanted to do.”
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Roger Houser's family has worked the land in Virginia's Shenandoah Valley for three generations. (photo: Ryan Kellman/NPR)
An energy company offered to lease Houser's property in rural Page County to build a solar plant that could power about 25,000 homes. It was a good offer, Houser says. More money than he could make growing hay and selling cattle.
"The idea of being able to keep the land as one parcel and not have it split up was very attractive," Houser says. "To have some passive income for retirement was good. And then the main thing was the electricity it would generate and the good it would do made it feel good all the way around."
But soon after he got the offer, organized opposition began a four-year battle against solar development in the county. A group of locals eventually joined forces with a nonprofit called Citizens for Responsible Solar to stop the project on Houser's land and pass restrictions effectively banning big solar plants from being built in the area.
Citizens for Responsible Solar is part of a growing backlash against renewable energy in rural communities across the United States. The group, which was started in 2019 and appears to use strategies honed by other activists in campaigns against the wind industry, has helped local groups fighting solar projects in at least 10 states including Ohio, Kentucky and Pennsylvania, according to its website.
"I think for years, there has been this sense that this is not all coincidence. That local groups are popping up in different places, saying the same things, using the same online campaign materials," says Michael Burger, executive director of the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law at Columbia University.
Citizens for Responsible Solar seems to be a well-mobilized "national effort to foment local opposition to renewable energy," Burger adds. "What that reflects is the unfortunate politicization of climate change, the politicization of energy, and, unfortunately, the political nature of the energy transition, which is really just a necessary response to an environmental reality."
Citizens for Responsible Solar was founded in an exurb of Washington, D.C., by a longtime political operative named Susan Ralston who worked in the White House under President George W. Bush and still has deep ties to power players in conservative politics.
Ralston tapped conservative insiders to help set up and run Citizens for Responsible Solar. She also consulted with a longtime activist against renewable energy who once defended former President Donald Trump's unfounded claim that noise from wind turbines can cause cancer. And when Ralston was launching the group, a consulting firm she owns got hundreds of thousands of dollars from the foundation of a leading GOP donor who is also a major investor in fossil fuel companies. It's unclear what the money to Ralston's firm was used for. Ralston has previously denied that Citizens for Responsible Solar received money from fossil fuel interests.
Ralston said in an email to NPR and Floodlight that Citizens for Responsible Solar is a grassroots organization that helps other activists on a volunteer basis. The group isn't opposed to solar, Ralston said, just projects built on farmland and timberland. Solar panels belong on "industrial-zoned land, marginal or contaminated land, along highways, and on commercial and residential rooftops," she said.
But her group's rhetoric points to a broader agenda of undermining public support for solar. Analysts who follow the industry say Citizens for Responsible Solar stokes opposition to solar projects by spreading misinformation online about health and environmental risks. The group's website says solar requires too much land for "unreliable energy," ignoring data showing power grids can run dependably on lots of renewables. And it claims large solar projects in rural areas wreck the land and contribute to climate change, despite evidence to the contrary.
People often have valid concerns about solar development. Like any infrastructure project, solar plants that are poorly planned and constructed can potentially harm communities. But misinformation spread by groups like Citizens for Responsible Solar is turning rural landowners unfairly against renewables, says Skyler Zunk, an Interior Department official under President Donald Trump and chief executive of Energy Right, a conservative-leaning nonprofit that supports solar projects that preserve ecosystems.
Analysts and industry participants say the prevalence of bad information is also increasing pressure on local officials who are often charged with approving renewable energy projects. Many are wary of proposed development because of the political blowback it can bring. "This type of misinformation is very difficult to dispel. And politicians are just afraid of getting engaged with it," says Ronald Meyers, director of the Renewable Energy Facility Siting project at Virginia Tech.
Getting projects built in the face of local opposition is among the biggest challenges wind and solar companies face. A 2022 report by the Sabin Center at Columbia University found 121 local policies around the country that are aimed at blocking or restricting renewable energy development, a nearly 18% increase from the year before.
Solar restrictions are gaining traction as the stakes for addressing climate change keep rising. Construction of more renewable energy is key to the country's plans to cut greenhouse gas pollution and avoid the worst damage from extreme weather in the years ahead.
"It's an enormous concern," says Alan Anderson, a lawyer in Kansas who represents renewable energy companies. "If we can't get projects permitted at counties or townships or whatever local level makes a decision, we can't do any of the goals we think we need to do for climate change."
From White House insider to local organizer
Susan Ralston launched Citizens for Responsible Solar to stop a project near her home in Culpeper, Va., about 70 miles southwest of Washington, D.C. She brought years of experience in the upper echelons of national conservative politics to her new role as a county-level organizer against rural solar.
Ralston served as special assistant to former President George W. Bush and as a top aide to Karl Rove in the White House. She resigned in 2006 when a congressional investigation found that she passed messages to Rove from her former boss, the disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff. The investigation did not accuse her of any wrongdoing.
After leaving the White House, Ralston started her own consulting firm, SBR Enterprises LLC. In 2012, she organized a fundraiser for Mitt Romney's presidential campaign that was hosted by GOP luminaries. She's currently listed as a senior adviser at a nonprofit that works to elect conservative women.
As she was setting up Citizens for Responsible Solar, Ralston got help from operatives who have worked behind the scenes with some of the most powerful people in conservative politics.
The treasurer of Citizens for Responsible Solar is Lisa Lisker. Lisker was treasurer for a campaign committee for J.D. Vance, who was elected last year as a Republican senator from Ohio. Her firm does financial consulting for Republican candidates and political committees to ensure that they comply with campaign finance laws.
When there's official paperwork that has to get to Citizens for Responsible Solar, it goes through a firm created by a lawyer named Jason Torchinsky. The same firm has been the registered agent for at least two dozen conservative organizations based in Virginia. One of them was a voter-focused group headed by Leonard Leo, who helped remake the federal judiciary through the Federalist Society. NPR and Floodlight haven't verified whether any of the conservative groups that use Torchinsky's firm as a registered agent have ties to Citizens for Responsible Solar.
Torchinsky is also a partner at a law firm that Bloomberg News once described as "a boutique outfit that specializes in advising organizations that want to participate in the electoral process without disclosing who's paying their bills."
Torchinsky has worked as a lawyer for Americans for Prosperity, an influential activist group that promotes conservative causes. And he's represented the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), an association of companies and Republican state legislators that has engineered and spread anti-climate messaging and draft legislation.
And Ralston's consulting firm, SBR Enterprises, got almost $300,000 from The Paul E. Singer Foundation between 2018 and late 2020 — the period when she was setting up Citizens for Responsible Solar. Paul Singer, the foundation's president, is chairman of the Manhattan Institute, a think tank that has criticized government support of renewable energy. His investment firm, Elliott Management, is the largest shareholder in the coal producer Peabody Energy Corp.
Ralston and the Singer Foundation declined to tell NPR and Floodlight what the money to SBR Enterprises was for. The foundation's tax filings say the firm was a "consultant for the foundation mission."
Ralston reportedly said to E&E News in 2019 that no money from fossil fuel interests went to Citizens for Responsible Solar. Since then, she has declined NPR and Floodlight's requests to identify the organization's sources of funding.
Lisa Graves, executive director of the progressive watchdog group True North Research, says Ralston has surrounded her group with "a national network of right-wing political activists who are very powerful, very, very plugged in."
Graves adds: "Having them invested in one way or the other in her agenda here is a sign that this is a key tactical component of the way that powerful right-wing donors or strategists want to attack solar."
Ralston didn't respond to subsequent emails seeking comment. Torchinsky and Lisker did not respond to repeated messages seeking comment.
Ralston was soon eyeing bigger fights
Around the time Ralston founded Citizens for Responsible Solar in Culpeper, Va., she got involved in debates over solar projects in other communities. One of the first places she went was the bedroom community of Spotsylvania, Va., tucked between Richmond and Washington, D.C. A solar company had purchased 6,350 acres of land there, and it was asking for approval to build the largest project east of the Rockies.
Greg Benton, a county supervisor at the time, was tasked with determining whether it would be a good thing for Spotsylvania. "I'm not a big energy person, one way or the other. I think solar will make a difference in helping the electric companies and helping the planet a little bit," Benton says. "I wanted to do right by the county with this project."
A Republican who had worked at the local sheriff's and fire departments, Benton spent months researching the project. He looked into concerns over stormwater management and fears that toxic materials like cadmium could be in the solar panels and leak out, hurting people or the environment. Benton found no major risks.
But he was soon overwhelmed by local activists who criticized the project's impact on the landscape and pushed issues that Benton says he'd debunked or addressed.
"I think initially they were concerned about it, and they had some legitimate concerns," he says. "I think it was from bad information. Just information that was not true, not factually based."
Ralston declined to discuss her relationship with activists in Spotsylvania. But she told E&E News in 2019 that she "worked closely" with residents there who opposed the project. "Their fight is much, much bigger," Ralston told E&E. "They don't have as much financial resources that I have."
After months of angry public hearings, Spotsylvania County ultimately approved the project in 2019. The loss in Spotsylvania was an early setback for Ralston. But her campaign was just getting started. Shortly after she formed Citizens for Responsible Solar, the solar company she was organizing against in Culpeper cited "community concerns" and withdrew its project application. Soon, Citizens for Responsible Solar grew in size and influence and spread beyond Virginia.
More local activists pitch "responsible solar"
Many grassroots activists today credit their success in stopping solar projects to Ralston. One of them is Kathy Webb. Webb says she learned that a company wanted to clear a forest for a solar plant near her home in Rowan County, N.C., days before local officials planned to vote. She sent out a flurry of emails to anyone she thought could help. Somehow, a message came back from Ralston.
Ask the county to delay the vote, Ralston told her. And get a lawyer. It worked, Webb says. The solar company scrapped its plan. "Susan guided us in the right direction and then helped us with information," she says. Ralston's advice "absolutely was part of us defeating it."
Soon, Webb was spreading Ralston's message throughout North Carolina. She runs the Facebook page Rowan County Citizens for Responsible Solar, where she posts material that's emailed out from Ralston's organization.
The reach of Citizens for Responsible Solar appears to extend across the U.S. On Facebook, at least two dozen groups and pages dedicated to defeating solar projects feature the same term: responsible solar. There's a Kansans for Responsible Solar and an Iowa for Responsible Solar. Ralston spoke at a fundraiser last year for a Kentucky-based group called Hardin County Citizens for Responsible Solar.
In her only substantive email to NPR and Floodlight, Ralston said she offers help to those who ask. While other groups might adopt the name "Citizens for Responsible Solar," she says they aren't "affiliated" with her organization.
Ralston's group has nurtured networks of activists who often work together across state lines. In testimonials, people from South Carolina to Maine say Citizens for Responsible Solar connected them with other activists and gave them resources to sway local officials.
In one Virginia county, for example, Citizens for Responsible Solar gave residents information about "the science and downsides" of solar. It then put one of those activists in touch with someone in New Jersey who was looking for information about the solar industry. And it connected people in Pennsylvania with John Droz, an activist who has spent years challenging mainstream climate science and trying to limit renewable energy development.
"Susan was a great resource for information and, probably more importantly, inspiration," says Jim Thompson, who runs an Ohio group called Against Birch Solar. "There's times, you know, you get down in the valleys, and you don't know that you're making a darned difference. And you reach out to people like Susan and share your frustration, maybe get some insight as to what you might be doing wrong."
Ralston didn't have contacts of her own in Ohio, Thompson says, so she made him part of her network. When people in Ohio reached out to Ralston, "then she would start sending them to me," Thompson says.
Ralston's growing influence has drawn criticism from renewable energy advocates across the political spectrum. Ray Gaesser is chair of the Iowa Conservative Energy Forum, which promotes renewable energy to drive economic growth. In 2021, he warned that Citizens for Responsible Solar — "a dark-money organization based in Virginia" — was meddling in local affairs.
Groups like Citizens for Responsible Solar "are operating from the same playbook featuring shared materials and draft petitions from national sources that originate thousands of miles from Iowa," Gaesser wrote in an op-ed in The Gazette newspaper in Iowa.
"Their mission is to kill new development," Gaesser said in the op-ed, "not to help develop common-sense ordinances."
Ralston's group has grown as the world grapples with how to swiftly cut greenhouse gas pollution that drives climate change. Big solar and wind projects on vast tracts of land are the cheapest and fastest way right now to add lots of energy without increasing greenhouse gases.
But Zunk, the former Trump administration official, says limiting global warming isn't driving development. Companies build solar projects because they make financial sense, he says. "They're not coming because of the Green New Deal," says Zunk. "They're not coming because of any government action."
The U.S. Energy Information Administration expects the amount of solar capacity added in America this year from big power plants will be more than double the current annual record.
All that growth means local land-use fights will keep flaring up.
The strategy Ralston uses has been the basis of many social movements. "There's often this hub and spoke model, and there are resources that are planted in different places," says Burger of the Sabin Center at Columbia University. What's noteworthy here, he says, is that "what people are advocating for is based on misinformation and is antithetical to, not only the public good, but to probably their own self-interest, in most instances."
Strategies to fight the wind industry have been turned against solar
Misinformation spreads easily online. It bounces around in echo chambers where dubious articles, videos and memes are posted and shared repeatedly. Longtime critics of the wind industry like John Droz cultivated opposition strategies that are now being used in the fight against solar, says Anderson, the renewable energy lawyer in Kansas.
"The geometric growth of misinformation by the same people posting to 50 different places, that method and that impact flows through to solar, just as it did to wind. The gathering of groups and creating a social unit so that people become emotionally and socially tied to the group is the same for solar as it was for wind," Anderson says. "Then it is just new talking points for the different technology."
When Ralston was setting up Citizens for Responsible Solar, Droz was one of the people she consulted.
Droz is a member of the CO2 Coalition, a nonprofit supported by fossil fuel magnate Charles Koch that promotes "the important contribution made by carbon dioxide to our lives and the economy." As a science adviser for a group of coastal North Carolina counties that promotes economic development, Droz helped stall state efforts to consider climate change in coastal planning.
A decade ago, Droz shared a memo for a national public relations campaign against wind power at a meeting of activists in Washington, D.C. The memo was aimed at undermining public support for the wind industry "in what should appear as a 'groundswell' among grassroots."
Droz's website provides model ordinances that activists like Ralston can use in their own communities. It also features a list of "solar energy concerns," including claims of environmental harm and the potential loss of farmland. Droz calls himself an "educator" and says his website is meant only to share information, adding that he doesn't get involved in debates outside of his own community.
"All I've tried to do is to provide the other side of the coin, sort of things here that aren't being told by state agencies or the federal government," he says.
A number of the concerns Droz raises are echoed on the website for Citizens for Responsible Solar. The information on Ralston's website is "extremely misleading and appears designed to be misinformation," says Meyers of Virginia Tech.
That includes claims that solar projects ruin the land they're built on. With the right practices, companies can improve local ecosystems, Meyers says, and farming can continue alongside power plants. He also says the group's warnings about hazardous waste from solar don't account for the fact that most solar panels aren't considered toxic and won't leach material.
Ralston didn't respond to subsequent emails seeking comment.
"I'm just saying that there are credible people who have expressed these concerns," Droz says of the information he puts out.
Farmers are caught in the middle of local solar battles
In Page County, Houser says he heard a lot of positive feedback at first when a solar company proposed building the project on his land. But then, he says, "local politics got involved."
He says: "Anybody can stand up in a public hearing and say anything, regardless of the facts or science or whatever."
At public hearings starting in 2018, some residents said the solar plant would create problems with stormwater runoff, ruin their views and harm property values, as well as the local tourism and agriculture industries. Others falsely claimed solar panels would poison the groundwater and cause cancer.
A year later, Page County rejected the project and put a moratorium on new development.
Things got more tumultuous from there. Urban Grid, the company that offered to lease Houser's property, resubmitted plans for the project in late 2020. And a group calling itself Page County Citizens for Responsible Solar created a Facebook page to organize local opposition. Ralston's organization applied pressure, too, saying it had hired a "prestigious law firm" to investigate the county's actions.
The battle finally ended in 2022. After Page County adopted a solar ordinance, Urban Grid abandoned Houser's project. The new law doesn't outright ban big solar plants, but it imposes so many restrictions that there's no place to build, says Peter Candelaria, chief executive of Urban Grid.
Candelaria says it was a missed opportunity, and not just for companies and landowners who stood to make money. The project on Houser's property could have generated millions of dollars for Page through land and equipment taxes, as well as payments under a siting agreement, he says. And the soil underneath the project could have been improved with regenerative land practices, Candelaria says, like grazing sheep around the panels.
Keith Weakley, a member of Page County's Board of Supervisors, says officials worried that big solar projects could hurt existing businesses without creating any long-term jobs.
Page County Citizens for Responsible Solar didn't respond to messages seeking comment.
With the chance to put up solar panels gone, Houser has been talking to a poultry company that wants his land. But the recent outbreak of bird flu put the plan on hold. "We're as efficient as we can be in our operation here, and we're as sustainable as we can be, and we take good care of the land. But we're running out of time," Houser says of the financial pressure farmers are under. "Everybody's faced with the same thing, every farm family."
Looking back, Houser doesn't know what he or Urban Grid could have done to get to a different outcome. "We just presented the facts," he says. "The anti-solar people took it on as a cause, and it became a movement of its own. In small-town politics, you can have a small group of people become very vocal and seem very influential."
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