Political Ponderings https://digitalalabamanews.com/political-ponderings/
Political Ponderings is a new column covering national, state and local political news and events through the Midterm Elections in November.
Last week recapped the Jan. 6 Committee hearings. This week includes coverage of the Supreme Court decision overturning Roe v. Wade and the FBI raid of former President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence.
Overturning Roe v. Wade
On Friday, June 24, 2022, the Supreme Court ended federal protection for the right to an abortion with the 6-3 ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization. The Dobbs decision overturned Roe v. Wade from 1973.
The majority opinion was written by Justice Samuel Alito and joined by Justices Clarence Thomas, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, Amy Coney Barrett and Chief Justice John Roberts.
Justices Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan were in the dissent.
“With sorrow — for this Court, but more, for the many millions of American women who have today lost a fundamental constitutional protection — we dissent,” the three liberal justices wrote.
The conservative court majority decision ended the protection of abortion as a fundamental right to privacy as outlined in the 14th Amendment and sent regulation of abortion to the state legislatures.
Alito’s opinion states that any state restrictions on abortion are valid to serve “legitimate state’s interests.”
Abortion is now illegal in all or most cases in 15 states across the U.S., with many of those states reverting to pre-Roe laws immediately following the Supreme Court ruling.
Wisconsin reverted back to its abortion ban passed in 1849, just one year after establishing its statehood.
Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers called a special legislature session in June to repeal the 173-year-old ban. The republican-controlled state senate adjourned the session after 15 seconds, despite objections from senate democrats.
Abortion rights are likely to be an important topic in Wisconsin and the country heading into the November elections and candidates are already heavily debating the issue.
Raid in Mar-a-Lago
Later in the summer, news of another event made headlines when the FBI conducted a raid on former President Trump’s residence in Mar-a-Lago.
On Aug. 8, the FBI entered the Florida mansion to search for classified documents that were suspected to be illegally taken from the White House when Trump left the office in January of 2021.
The FBI seized 33 boxes of evidence including over 100 documents with classifications ranging from “confidential” to “top secret” according to a CBS News report.
The FBI and the Department of Justice are now in a complicated legal battle with the former president. The case is ongoing and still developing.
Trump has claimed he declassified the documents in question before leaving the White House, even telling FOX News host Sean Hannity he could do so just by thinking it.
“You’re the president of the United States, you can declassify just by saying it’s declassified, even by thinking about it,” Trump said in an exclusive interview.
As the legal battle continues to unfold, Trump could face conviction for federal crimes.
Mohr can be reached at [email protected]
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Biden Faces Pressure To Waive Restriction As Ship Idles Off Puerto Rico Coast
Biden Faces Pressure To Waive Restriction As Ship Idles Off Puerto Rico Coast https://digitalalabamanews.com/biden-faces-pressure-to-waive-restriction-as-ship-idles-off-puerto-rico-coast/
President Biden faced growing pressure Monday to grant a federal waiver and allow a BP ship loaded with diesel fuel to access a port in Puerto Rico, where hundreds of thousands of hurricane-ravaged Americans remain without power.
Because the ship is not U.S.-owned, it has been idling off the island’s coast, awaiting a decision by the Biden administration on waiving the Jones Act, a century-old law backed by labor unions and key to the president’s “Made in America” agenda.
Despite mounting calls from the governor of Puerto Rico, local activists and members of Congress, the Biden administration did not grant the waiver required for the ship to dock Monday, raising concerns that the ship could soon leave the power-starved island behind.
White House officials said the Biden administration did not have the authority to simply suspend the Jones Act in Puerto Rico, citing a law passed by Congress in 2020 to crack down on broad waivers. Local officials said Biden had the power to issue one-time waivers that could still provide much-needed, temporary relief, but an administration official said that any exception would require careful consideration to ensure it is legal.
The debate highlights the challenge Biden faces as he balances competing appeals from two constituencies he has pledged to champion as president: labor unions and the residents of Puerto Rico.
As the labor movement defends the federal shipping restrictions and denounces calls to give foreign shippers special access to Puerto Rico, local officials and activists have long decried regulations that increase costs and make it more difficult to deliver essential goods to the island.
The Jones Act, part of a World War I-era shipping law, requires that goods shipped between points in the United States be carried on U.S.-flagged ships built and mostly owned by Americans. Under the act, which was intended to support a U.S. shipping industry for national defense purposes, territories such as Puerto Rico and far-flung states such as Hawaii can face fewer options for shipping goods.
As Puerto Rico continued to suffer from power outages and food shortages in the aftermath of Hurricane Fiona, a wide range of officials began to call on the federal government to intervene by waiving the Jones Act. The push came to a head Monday when Gov. Pedro Pierluisi announced that he had asked for federal relief in order for the offshore vessel to dock.
“I have requested the personal intervention of the Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security so that a ship contracted by a private supplier, loaded with diesel and located near Puerto Rico, can unload the fuel for the benefit of our people,” Pierluisi said Monday in a tweet.
Carmen M. Feliciano, executive director of the Puerto Rico Federal Affairs Administration, said that Pierluisi favored a temporary Jones Act exemption to facilitate the shipment of fuel to the island.
Officials also pressed their case at the White House, where four Puerto Rican lawmakers met on Monday with the administration’s liaison for Puerto Rican affairs, as well as other administration officials.
The Puerto Rican officials — three from the state’s House, one from its state Senate — asked for the administration to grant the Jones Act waiver and to bypass immigration restrictions to the island to allow high-skilled workers, said Tatito Hernández, the speaker of the island’s House.
Eight members of Congress, including New York Democrats Nydia M. Velázquez and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, wrote an open letter to Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas last week requesting the waiver. After news of the idling ship — first reported by television station Las Noticias T11 — began to circulate online Monday, Sens. Mike Lee (R-Utah) and Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) added their voices to the chorus of officials calling for the federal government to grant the reprieve.
“@WhiteHouse must immediately grant this Jones Act waiver and provide much-needed relief to the people of Puerto Rico,” Lee wrote on Twitter.
A Biden administration official, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations, said that any waivers of the act would have to go through a deliberative interagency process to determine legality. The kinds of broad waivers requested by some members of Congress would not be legally viable, the official said.
For one-off requests like the one sought for the BP ship, the Department of Homeland Security aims to complete the review process and provide a response within two days, the official said.
Waiver requests must show that the items being shipped are necessary for the national defense and cannot be otherwise obtained by U.S.-flagged vessels, officials said.
Labor unions, which have been among Biden’s strongest supporters, have opposed efforts to weaken or waive the Jones Act, including after natural disasters.
The American Maritime Partnership — a coalition that represents operators of U.S.-flagged vessels and unions covered by the Jones Act — wrote a letter to Mayorkas on Friday explaining why the Jones Act should not be waived in the aftermath of Hurricane Fiona.
The group said that domestic vessels were ready and available to support the recovery effort in Puerto Rico, with more than 2,000 containers positioned in the port of San Juan to provide supplies before the storm. The group’s president, Ku’uhaku Park, said that U.S.-flagged ships are providing Puerto Rico with essential goods for its recovery, adding that waiving the Jones Act would benefit foreign shippers rather than Puerto Ricans.
“There is no indication that American shipping capacity is insufficient to meet demand, and, therefore, no justification for a waiver of the Jones Act,” he said.
For his part, Biden has repeatedly voiced his support for the act, often winning the praise of unions for speaking out in favor of a law that some Democrats and Republicans have called antiquated.
Five days after his inauguration, Biden signed an executive order to promote “Made in America” policies, citing the Jones Act as one such law. Under Biden’s executive order, waivers of the Jones Act must be reviewed by the White House’s “Made in America” office.
In a “National Maritime Day” proclamation earlier this year, Biden cited his “unwavering support” for the Jones Act and praised the law for supporting hundreds of thousands of jobs. Earlier this year, he won praise from unions for rejecting calls to suspend the act in response to rising gas prices and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Still, Biden has previously suspended the Jones Act as president, including after a cyberattack on the Colonial Pipeline that led to gas shortages last year.
The White House pointed to other actions it has taken to support recovery efforts in Puerto Rico, where Fiona, which came ashore as a Category 1 hurricane and strengthened later, has devastated communities still struggling to rebuild after Hurricane Maria in 2017.
Biden approved a major disaster declaration for much of the island last week, and later directed his government to cover all of the costs for debris removal, search and rescue, power and water restoration, and shelter and food for one month. There are more than 1,000 federal officials on the island helping to restore power and providing other support, a White House official said.
Biden has repeatedly said he would bring the full force of the federal government to help Puerto Rico rebound. His actions are being closely watched by Puerto Ricans, particularly after President Donald Trump received poor marks from locals for his handling of Hurricane Maria. Trump angered residents by feuding publicly with local politicians, denigrating the island as corrupt and tossing paper towels at storm-ravaged Puerto Ricans during a visit in 2017.
Trump, however, did provide a temporary waiver of the Jones Act for the island in 2017, after facing increasing pressure and criticism of his stewardship of the storm.
By contrast, Biden has sought to showcase a more serious and collaborative approach, saying that he would provide the island with whatever it needed to recover.
“I promise you, it is a high priority,” he told supporters last week, according to a video captured by “The View” co-host Ana Navarro and posted on social media. “And from day one I was on the phone with the governor … Whatever he wants, we’re giving him everything he’s asked for and more.”
But more than a week after Fiona touched down, roughly 80 percent of the island’s water and sewer plants are without electricity, meaning they have to rely on their diesel-powered backup generators. That creates the immediate need for the fuel. Hernández, the House speaker, stressed that power outages on the island were responsible for more deaths following Hurricane Maria in 2017 than the storm itself.
“We have a ship full of diesel in the south waiting to enter the island. It’s right there, waiting for us — if they give us the waiver we’ll import it right away,” Hernández said. “A lot of people need oxygen, a lot of people need water, a lot of people need help … It’s really scary.”
As of Sunday, blackouts were still affecting key parts of the island — 95 percent of residents in Ponce; 88 percent of those in Mayaguez; and 84 percent of those in Arecibo, were suffering from power outages, according to information provided by the speaker’s office.
Against that backdrop, local officials called on the Biden administration to take additional action to provide relief. The storm has exposed long-standing concerns about the way the U.S. territory is treated under federal law.
Ramón Luis Nieves, who served in Puerto Rico’s state Senate and focuses on the island’s energy policy, said that the Jones Act also prevents Puerto Rico from buying liq...
Mobile Police May Be Training On Virtual Reality To Better Serve Those With Mental Illness
Mobile Police May Be Training On Virtual Reality To Better Serve Those With Mental Illness https://digitalalabamanews.com/mobile-police-may-be-training-on-virtual-reality-to-better-serve-those-with-mental-illness/
MOBILE, Ala. (WALA) – FOX10 News had an inside look at an innovative tool that could help Mobile Police better serve those with mental-health disorders. This was quite literally, a game changer.
Virtual reality headsets can be used for more than just gaming.
At the Mobile City Council meeting Tuesday morning, there’s a proposal to buy virtual reality headsets for officers. The tech would be used to simulate high-risk scenarios involving people with mental illnesses.
Officers would put on the headsets and immediately be immersed in the metaverse, a 3D world where they can, for example, try to stabilize someone who’s suicidal.
In the simulation, law enforcement is given three options. When they click their response, the simulation either intensifies or calms based on the answer. If a different response is preferred, there’s no harm no foul in the VR world.
The setting is described as a safe space for officers to be critiqued and learn.
“We can’t replace real-world scenarios, but when we are trying to train, we need to come as close as possible to real-world scenarios or crises,” said Commander Curtis Graves with MPD. “It’s something that really gives them the full benefit of experiencing a situation without having to go through with it in real-world.”
Mobile Police partnered with Altapointe Health, a mental healthcare service in Mobile County, on this project.
Dr. Cindy Gipson with Altapointe said this is a unique opportunity that no other police department has.
“We are trying to prevent the criminalization of the mentally-ill, so any tool we can provide for training, and to get officers engaged is really helpful,” said Dr. Gipson.
Nearly $50,000 will be proposed at the council meeting to buy 10 headsets and other technology.
Commander Graves said the money is coming from a grant to improve public safety.
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Bidens Student Loan Forgiveness Will Cost $400B New Estimate Says As White House Pushes Back WFIN Local News
Biden’s Student Loan Forgiveness Will Cost $400B, New Estimate Says, As White House Pushes Back – WFIN Local News https://digitalalabamanews.com/bidens-student-loan-forgiveness-will-cost-400b-new-estimate-says-as-white-house-pushes-back-wfin-local-news/
(WASHINGTON) — President Joe Biden’s federal student loan forgiveness plan will cost $400 billion over 10 years, according to a revised estimate this week from the Congressional Budget Office.
That’s a lower number than from one leading outside estimate, but the nonpartisan federal agency’s projection drew quick pushback from the White House, which is sensitive to criticism it is growing rather than reducing the government deficit.
In a letter sent Monday to North Carolina Republicans Sen. Richard Burr and Rep. Virginia Foxx following their inquiries into Biden’s announcement last month to forgive up to $20,000 in federal student loans, the CBO noted that the cost of pausing repayments through the end of 2022 will add an additional $20 million onto that $400 billion price tag.
That CBO estimate does not include the cost of another feature of Biden’s plan: lowering the maximum amount a borrower can pay back to 5% of their income, down from 10%. The nonpartisan Committee for Responsible Federal Budget estimates that would tack on $120 million.
The CBO score, which the agency estimates is “highly uncertain” due to components that include projections dependent on future economic conditions and on how future terms of loans might be modified, is slightly less than the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton Business School assessment that all three components of the forgiveness plan would cost about $605 billion.
Opponents of Biden’s student loan program — including some members of his own party — have insisted that the plan is impractical during a time of historic inflation rates and high gas prices, though the many Democratic supporters of the plan say it helps addresses education’s affordability issues.
The White House maintains that the cost of the student loan forgiveness plan pales in comparison to the president’s ability to foster debt reduction elsewhere.
The estimated loan cancellation price comes in higher than the $300 million amount that the Biden-backed Inflation Reduction Act is expected to reduce the federal deficit by, however. (An administration official noted to ABC News that, overall, the cash flow impact of debt cancellation will be very small in 2023 — about $21 billion.)
MORE: Biden’s student loan forgiveness policy: How to apply, who qualifies, moreIn a statement, a White House spokesman emphasized that the president is still likely to reduce the federal deficit this year, despite the outlay for debt forgiveness, and the spokesman compared that with a major tax cut under Biden’s predecessor Donald Trump.
“The Biden-Harris Administration’s student debt relief plan provides breathing room to tens of millions of working families. It gives people who have been struggling with student debt that shot they want at starting a business, buying that first home, or just having a slightly easier time paying the monthly bills,” Abdullah Hasan said. “It’s a stark contrast to the Trump tax bill, which ballooned the deficit by nearly $2 trillion and provided the vast majority of benefits to big corporations and the wealthiest individuals.”
The White House also circulated a memo pushing back on the CBO estimate, noting that it assumed a 90% participation rate in the forgiveness program — though similar, smaller-scale programs had much lower participation.
The White House memo challenged how the CBO arrived at $400 billion, suggesting that the agency’s own logic pegged the number at around $250 billion.
The debt cancellation program is expected to open for applications in October.
Copyright (C) 2022, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.
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Trump Nominee Is Voted Out As Head Of Inter-American Development Bank
Trump Nominee Is Voted Out As Head Of Inter-American Development Bank https://digitalalabamanews.com/trump-nominee-is-voted-out-as-head-of-inter-american-development-bank-2/
The Inter-American Development Bank, the hemisphere’s premier international lending institution, voted Monday to fire its president. Mauricio Claver-Carone was terminated following a unanimous recommendation by the 14-member executive board, the organization said.
The termination was first reported by Reuters.
In a statement, the IDB said Claver-Carone, whose term was set to expire in 2025, “will cease to hold the office of President of the Bank” effective Monday.
The statement did not refer to a well–publicized investigation into him. Two people familiar with the probe said it was the results of that investigation that led to the vote. The individuals spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak about the inner workings of IDB or the results of the investigator’s report, which has not been made public.
One of the individuals said investigators found evidence to conclude Claver-Carone had a relationship with a staff member who reported directly to him, and to whom he gave raises totaling more than 45 percent of base pay in less than one year. Claver-Carone’s leadership of the organization also resulted in employees fearing retaliation from him, the person said.
Vice President Reina Irene Mejía Chacón will lead the organization until a new president is elected, the statement said.
The Biden administration appeared to welcome Claver-Carone’s ouster.
A spokesperson for the Treasury Department said the United States “supports the dismissal of the IDB President.” The department said Claver-Carone’s “refusal to fully cooperate with the investigation, and his creation of a climate of fear of retaliation among staff and borrowing countries, has forfeited the confidence of the Bank’s staff and shareholders and necessitates a change in leadership.”
Claver-Carone had previously criticized the nature of investigation, saying in a statement to the Associated Press that the probe “failed to meet international standards of integrity that both the IDB and the region strive to exemplify.”
He had added: “In clear and direct contravention of IDB ethics rules, neither I nor any other IDB staff member has been given an opportunity to review the final investigative report, respond to its conclusions, or correct inaccuracies.”
In a statement after the vote, Claver-Carone also claimed without evidence that ousting him from his position would embolden China, the AP reported.
In June 2020, President Donald Trump announced the nomination of Claver-Carone, then a senior figure at the National Security Council whom the Trump administration credited with boosting private-sector investment in Latin America and the Caribbean. His election that September marked the first time the United States — by far the bank’s biggest donor — held the top position at the six-decade-old organization.
Claver-Carone’s defenders described him as a reformer leading a long-beleaguered organization rife with corruption. According to his biography on the IDB’s website, he had led “a comprehensive reform of the Bank’s business model” and was “overseeing a broad effort to improve operational efficiency, productivity and transparency to facilitate better results, impact and monitoring effectiveness.”
Critics describe him differently. Investigators said there was evidence he conducted an affair with a staffer at the National Security Council, which prompted one official to warn that it posed a counterintelligence security risk, the AP reported. The Biden administration — which has sought to reaffirm America’s relationship with multinational organizations — had indicated it was taking the allegations against Claver-Carone seriously.
Michael Shifter, former president of the Inter-American Dialogue think tank and an adjunct professor at Georgetown University, said Claver-Carone’s lack of high-level diplomatic expertise made him an unusual choice for the IDB role. “There was a basic question of how qualified was he, given his background,” Shifter said in an interview. “There was always a cloud, or at least a big question.”
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King Charles Bank Notes Wont Circulate Until Mid-2024
King Charles Bank Notes Won’t Circulate Until Mid-2024 https://digitalalabamanews.com/king-charles-bank-notes-wont-circulate-until-mid-2024/
Business|King Charles Bank Notes Won’t Circulate Until Mid-2024
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/26/business/king-charles-currency.html
The likenesses of King Charles III and Queen Elizabeth II will be in circulation simultaneously in Britain, the Bank of England said.
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Sept. 26, 2022Updated 10:06 p.m. ET
Currency emblazoned with the image of King Charles III is not expected to enter circulation until mid-2024, the Bank of England said in a statement released early Tuesday morning, though the portrait of the king to be featured on the bank notes will be revealed by the end of this year.
King Charles will appear on four bank notes — the £5, £10, £20 and £50 notes — and there will be no changes to those notes beyond replacing Queen Elizabeth II’s image with King Charles’s, according to the statement from the bank.
Queen Elizabeth’s image won’t disappear from the currency overnight. In keeping with guidance from the royal family to “minimize the environmental and financial impact of the change of monarch,” notes with Queen Elizabeth’s image on them will be removed from circulation only if they become “worn or damaged,” the bank said. New notes with King Charles’s image will be made to “replace worn bank notes and to meet any overall increase in demand for bank notes.”
A similar transition will occur with British coins featuring Queen Elizabeth. According to the Royal Mint, the process of producing and putting into circulation coins featuring the portrait of King Charles will take at least several months.
And the transition to the King Charles coins will be gradual. Coins bearing the effigy of Queen Elizabeth will stay in circulation as coins with King Charles on them are introduced. There are nearly 30 billion coins with Queen Elizabeth’s face on them, which, like the bank notes, will be replaced only once they are damaged or to meet a demand for more coins, according to a statement also on Tuesday from the Royal Mint.
“This means the coinage of King Charles III and Queen Elizabeth II will co-circulate in the U.K. for many years to come,” said Anne Jessopp, the chief executive of the Royal Mint.
While details have not been released about the image of King Charles that will appear on the coins, it must be approved by the Privy Council, a group of high-level advisers to the monarch.
On the coins that feature Queen Elizabeth, she faces to the right. Since the reign of Charles II in the 17th century, monarchs have faced in the opposite direction of their predecessors, with the exception of Edward VIII. The Royal Mint has not confirmed which way King Charles will face.
Queen Elizabeth’s death has raised questions about the use of her image on not just currency but also on everyday items — like ketchup bottles, stamps and mailboxes. Experts say replacing her image on these objects will not be a major expense compared with the overall cost of the monarchy.
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China's Flood Of New Electric Cars Cost 20% More To Insure Than Fuel-Powered Cars
China's Flood Of New Electric Cars Cost 20% More To Insure Than Fuel-Powered Cars https://digitalalabamanews.com/chinas-flood-of-new-electric-cars-cost-20-more-to-insure-than-fuel-powered-cars/
In China, new energy vehicles typically receive green license plates – which is often easier for residents to apply for versus the blue license plate of a traditional fuel-powered car.
Vcg | Visual China Group | Getty Images
BEIJING — While Chinese companies churn out new electric cars, local insurance firms think they’re more expensive to cover.
In general, the insurance premium for new energy cars — which includes electric — is about 20% higher than it would be for comparable traditional fuel-powered cars, said Wenwen Chen, director at S&P Global Ratings, who leads the firm’s research for China insurance.
Many factors go into determining pricing. But Chen said insurance companies find that the loss ratio — a measure of cost for insurers — tends to be higher for new energy vehicles than for internal combustion engine cars.
One of the main reasons she cited for a higher loss ratio is more accidents, especially more costly ones — since new energy vehicles often use parts that aren’t mass-produced yet.
In the U.S., insurance for electric cars also tends to be about 15% more expensive than that for combustion engine cars — primarily because electric cars in the U.S. tend to be luxury vehicles, according to Chase Gardner at Insurify, which compares car insurance rates in the U.S.
But repair costs are another reason for higher insurance prices, since “fewer places have the capability to service electric cars in the U.S.,” Gardner said. “Generally people who drive EVs end up paying lower maintenance costs over time. Again, the big question is, do you get into an accident?”
In the U.S., Insurify’s analysis of the U.S. market found there was no difference in accident rates among electric cars, hybrids and combustion engine cars.
But by official Chinese statistics, new energy vehicles in the country are more prone to fires than traditional fuel-powered ones. In the first quarter, 640 new energy vehicles reported fires, 32% higher than a year ago, according to the Ministry of Emergency Management’s Fire and Rescue Department.
That increase was far more than the 8.8% increase in fires for transportation vehicles overall, the ministry said. More recent figures weren’t available. The ministry didn’t respond to a CNBC request for comment.
For all of 2021, the ministry reported at least 3,000 new energy vehicle fires. It said the risk of fire was generally higher for such cars than for traditional vehicles, without disclosing specific figures.
The growing number of fires comes as the number of new energy vehicles has surged in China.
From January to August, 3.26 million new energy passenger cars were sold — more than double the same period last year and about 25% of all passenger cars sold in the country, according to the China Passenger Car Association. That share was about 15% last year.
In contrast, new energy vehicles remain a far smaller part of the U.S. auto market.
Hybrid, plug-in hybrid and electric vehicles accounted for 11% of light-duty vehicle sales in the U.S. in the fourth quarter of 2021, said the U.S. Energy Information Administration, citing data from Wards Intelligence. A more recent report wasn’t available. Light-duty vehicles also include pick-up trucks and vans.
A surge of new cars
China, home to the world’s largest auto market, has supported growth in new energy vehicles with policies that make it easier to get license plates, as well as subsidizing purchases.
For the first seven months of this year, tax exemptions for new energy vehicle purchases totaled 40.68 billion yuan ($5.9 billion) — and the equivalent of more than $1 billion in July alone, according to official figures. The tax administration said both amounts were more than twice what they were from a year ago.
Many Chinese companies have rushed to launch new energy vehicles, although it’s unclear what their specific accident risk is.
New energy vehicles tend to be simpler, especially in design, than internal combustion vehicles, said Cui Dongshu, secretary-general at the China Passenger Car Association.
Electric cars are based on a platform system, and certifying safety can be faster, he said, noting potential use of virtual testing scenarios, or the ability to test individual parts.
Read more about electric vehicles from CNBC Pro
In less than a year, Chinese telecommunications and smartphone giant Huawei partnered with automaker Seres to launch three new energy vehicles under the Aito brand. The cars are the first to use Huawei’s HarmonyOS operating system.
At a launch event in July, Huawei Consumer Business Group CEO Richard Yu boasted how quickly his team and Seres were able to conduct many vehicle safety tests in such a short period of time, to develop and launch two models in just over a year.
“In the hundred years of the auto industry, there’s no record of anyone doing it so fast before,” Yu said in Mandarin, translated by CNBC.
Two of the three cars have already reached consumers. Deliveries of the first model topped 10,000 units in just 87 days — an industry record for a new car brand, Huawei claimed in August.
Typically it takes three to four years for the manufacture and development of a car, said Helen Chai, consulting director at China Insights Consultancy. She said if the car is based on an existing one, a new model would only take two to three years.
She said the steps for developing and certifying a new energy vehicle and an internal combustion engine car are generally the same.
Other local players are quickly launching new models, although, notably, Tesla hasn’t.
For example, in the last 12 months, Nio began deliveries of its first electric sedan, launched a second sedan — and launched and delivered a new SUV.
Last year, Baidu and Geely announced the launch of their joint electric car project, Jidu. Next year, the first Jidu car is set to begin customer deliveries.
Huawei had no comment. Nio and Jidu did not respond to a CNBC request for comment.
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Maggie Hassan, Closet Democrat? – NH Journal https://digitalalabamanews.com/maggie-hassan-closet-democrat-nh-journal/
Sen. Maggie Hassan wants voters to know she’s a “fighter.” Hassan wants them to know she “delivers for New Hampshire.” But the is one thing she apparently doesn’t want them to know.
She’s a Democrat.
An NHJournal review of Hassan’s TV ads over the past three months found no reference to “Democrat Maggie Hassan” even a single time, either in the text or graphics. And while President Joe Biden is warning about “MAGA Republicans” posing a threat to democracy, Hassan has been running campaign ads bragging about “working with Republicans” while “taking on” Democrats and even “pushing Joe Biden.”
In fact, while she has brought up Republicans in both positive and negative contexts, Hassan’s only references to her own party and president are how she has worked against them.
It’s a telling strategy, political pros say, running contrary to the narrative that Democrats are on the rise and the GOP’s brand is fading under the impacts of former President Donald Trump and the abortion issue. If Democrats are doing so well, they ask, why isn’t Maggie Hassan running as one?
Instead, she is bombarding airwaves with the message that she’s “independent” and “bipartisan” — words that appear far more in her messaging than “Democrat” or Biden. In fact, in a single ad, the Hassan campaign calls her “independent” or “bipartisan” six times in 30 seconds.
Republicans are mentioned five times in three different Hassan ads. One released in response to the U.S. Supreme Court’s reversal of Roe v. Wade makes three references to “anti-choice Republicans.” However, the rest of her ads claim she has worked with GOP lawmakers on issues like the budget and prescription drug benefits.
At the same time, she disses Democrats. In one ad, she brags about “taking on members of my own party” without naming that party. In another, she notes that she was one of just two Democrats to oppose earmarks — a clear slight to the other members of her party.
The name “Joe Biden” is only mentioned once, as Hassan says she was “pushing” the president to open the strategic petroleum reserves.
“This is a classic move for most Senate candidates in a midterm to run away from the president of their party,” Andy Smith, a political science professor and director of the Survey Center at the University of New Hampshire, said. “It’s usually done with a nod, nod, wink, wink back to their party. Her hope is this diminishes the damage that Biden could do with his unpopularity in the state.”
Biden has a 41 percent approval rating in New Hampshire according to the UNH Survey Center’s Granite State Poll released last week. Hassan’s job approval has hovered around the same level, another sign her party affiliation may be a problem in November. And in the new Washington Post poll, Biden’s approval has fallen once again to 39 percent.
Based on her campaign messaging, Hassan appears to know it.
Asked if she would campaign with Biden in New Hampshire, Hassan has been careful to say the president is “welcome” in the state without making a commitment. And when Biden visited Portsmouth in April Hassan was notably absent from the platform, never appearing on stage with the president.
Polls show Hassan with a solid lead over Republican Don Bolduc, and she has millions more cash on hand than her underfunded opponent. Still, Smith said, Bolduc could be a tougher opponent than expected, particularly since neither Biden’s approval nor the economy are likely to improve between now and Election Day.
“This will be a competitive Senate race. It’s a good year for Republicans and the economy is not going to get much better,” Smith said.
“Bolduc has been caricatured a certain way in the national press. He’s not really a Trump guy. He ran and lost in a 2020 primary, and his opponent got the Trump endorsement,” Smith continued. “He’s good on the stump and, much like other Republicans, he’s walking that thin line not to antagonize Trump but not be too close to him for the general election, either.”
Bolduc’s other strength? He’s not a Democrat. A new ABC News poll of voters in competitive congressional districts — like the two in New Hampshire — found registered voters favor Republican candidates by 55 to 34 percent.
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Bills Would Curtail Objections At Future Jan. 6 Vote Counts
Bills Would Curtail Objections At Future Jan. 6 Vote Counts https://digitalalabamanews.com/bills-would-curtail-objections-at-future-jan-6-vote-counts-3/
WASHINGTON — Members of Congress have officially objected to the results in four of the last six presidential elections, a partisan practice that has been legal for over a century but became much more fraught after a violent mob of then-President Donald Trump’s supporters attacked the U.S. Capitol last year.
In an effort to prevent another Jan. 6, 2021, bills moving through the House and the Senate would make it harder to lodge those objections when Congress counts the electoral votes in a joint session after every presidential election. The move to curtail the objections is part of a larger effort to overhaul the 1800s-era Electoral Count Act and safeguard the integrity of the vote after Trump tried to persuade his Republican allies in Congress to vote against Democrat Joe Biden’s victory and overturn his 2020 defeat.
Under current law, only one member of the House and one member of the Senate has to challenge a state’s results to trigger votes on that state’s electors in each chamber. If a simple majority in each chamber votes to sustain the objection, that state’s votes can be thrown out.
The House and Senate bills would each raise that threshold substantially, with the House bill requiring a third of each chamber to object and the Senate bill requiring a fifth of each chamber to object. The House legislation, passed last week, would also lay out new requirements for the grounds for an objection.
“It is just too easy to trigger an objection when it only requires one person in each chamber,” says Maine Sen. Susan Collins, a Republican co-sponsor of the Senate version. Eleven GOP senators have signed on to the legislation, which is up for a vote in a Senate committee on Tuesday.
If the bills are consolidated into one measure that becomes law, it will do away with a tradition that has become increasingly popular as Congress has become more polarized.
Democrats have objected the last three times that Republicans were elected — twice against George W. Bush and once against Trump — but in each of those cases the Democratic candidate had already conceded the election.
The stakes were raised considerably in 2021, when Trump and his allies were actively trying to thwart Biden’s win, with a strategy to throw out Biden electors in Congress and the support of a violent mob that broke into the Capitol, interrupted the joint session and threatened the lives of lawmakers and Vice President Mike Pence.
House Administration Chairwoman Zoe Lofgren of California, the Democratic sponsor of the House bill with Republican Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming, said the bill would protect the voters’ will from “frivolous” objections and more sinister efforts.
“If you want to object to the vote, you better have your colleagues and the Constitution on your side,” Lofgren said just before the bill passed. “Don’t try to overturn our democracy.”
At the 2021 joint session, two GOP senators — Ted Cruz of Texas and Josh Hawley of Missouri — joined a larger group of House Republicans in objecting to Biden’s electoral votes in Arizona and Pennsylvania, two swing states that Trump had won in the 2016 election but lost in 2020. Both the House and the Senate voted to certify Biden’s win in those states in the hours after the rioters had injured police officers, rampaged through the Capitol and sent lawmakers running for their lives. But eight senators and almost 140 members of the House voted to sustain the objections.
Congress had only held such votes twice since the enactment of the Electoral Count Act 135 years ago. In 1969, two Democratic senators joined a member of the House to object to the vote of one elector in North Carolina during the certification of Republican Richard Nixon’s victory. In 2004, Democratic Sen. Barbara Boxer of California and Rep. Stephanie Tubbs Jones, D-Ohio, objected to President George W. Bush’s electors in Ohio over what they said were voting irregularities.
In both cases, the House and the Senate rejected the objections.
In several other instances, members of the House have lodged objections without the support of a senator. In 2000, several members of the Congressional Black Caucus objected to Bush’s electors in Florida after the Supreme Court had forced a halt to vote-counting in that state and decided the election. Vice President Al Gore, whom Bush had defeated, gaveled the objections down as he presided over the session.
In 2016, several Democrats stood and objected to Trump’s win over Democrat Hillary Clinton but no senator joined, and Vice President Joe Biden dismissed them. Like Gore, Clinton had already conceded defeat.
Members on both sides of the Capitol have been working on the revisions to the Electoral Count Act since the 2021 insurrection, saying the law’s vague language was not robust enough protection against Trump’s overt attempts to subvert the will of the people. The bills would also clarify that the vice president’s role is solely ceremonial and try to prevent states from creating slates of illegitimate electors, as Trump’s allies tried to do.
The House bill is more expansive than the Senate bill, and the two sides will eventually have to resolve their differences into a single measure. That includes the House language with new grounds for any objection, which would restrict the process even further.
Under the House legislation, no member could make an objection unless it fell under a strict set of parameters that relate to the Constitution — that the state is not validly a state, if the state submits too many electoral votes or if a candidate is not eligible, for example.
House Republicans argued against the legislation by saying it was a political attack on Trump, noting the frequent Democratic objections over the years. It only received nine Republican votes, all from members who are not returning to the House next year.
Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., responded that if lawmakers believed there had been too many objections in the past, “you should absolutely be supporting this legislation.”
Hawley, who was photographed raising a fist to pro-Trump protesters outside the Capitol ahead of last year’s joint session, said in an interview that he is “skeptical” of the effort to change a law that has been in place for so many years.
“My concern is that it’s going to look like to Republican voters that Democrats can object as much as often as they want,” the Missouri Republican said, noting the objections in 2000, 2004 and 2016.
“As soon as Republicans do, they change the law,” Hawley said. “I can promise you, that will be the perception.”
Still, 11 Republican senators have signed on to the Senate bill, enough to break a filibuster and pass the bill in the 50-50 Senate.
Pennsylvania Sen. Pat Toomey, who is retiring, was the latest GOP senator to sign on to the legislation last week.
“The poor drafting of the 1887 Electoral Count Act endangered the transition of power from one Administration to the next,” Toomey said when he announced his support.
“Unfortunately, in the over 100 intervening years, individual Democratic and Republican members of Congress have occasionally attempted to exploit the ambiguities in this law to cast doubt on the validity of our elections, culminating in the debacle of January 6, 2021,” he said. “It is past time Congress act.”
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DOJ Files Motion Against Peter Navarro To Produce Email Records From Time In White House
DOJ Files Motion Against Peter Navarro To Produce Email Records From Time In White House https://digitalalabamanews.com/doj-files-motion-against-peter-navarro-to-produce-email-records-from-time-in-white-house/
September 26, 2022 09:23 PM
The Department of Justice is requesting that the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia command former Trump White House adviser Peter Navarro to provide all email records from his time in the White House under the Presidential Records Act.
The attorneys involved in the court case wrote in a motion filed Monday that Navarro “wrongfully continues to possess” emails he sent on an unofficial email account.
EX-TOP TRUMP ADVISER RIPS ‘THIEVERY’ OF WHITE HOUSE DOCUMENTS DURING PRESIDENCY
“There is no genuine dispute of fact that Dr. Navarro used at least one unofficial email account to conduct official business, that those records are the property of the United States, and that Dr. Navarro has refused to return the records to the United States,” the motion states. “Indeed, his counsel has expressly admitted as much.”
The prosecutors wrote that while serving as a presidential adviser, Navarro used “at least one non-official email account, namely a ProtonMail account, to send and receive messages in the course of discharging his official duties.”
According to the motion, National Archives General Counsel Gary Stern wrote a letter to Navarro requesting the email records from his unofficial email that were not copied or forwarded to his official email but did not receive a response from Navarro despite numerous other voice messages.
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER
“There can be no genuine dispute that Dr. Navarro has wrongfully detained Presidential records, which, by statute, belong to the United States,” the motion stated.
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We're Calling It: This AL Hotel Concept Is The Next Big Thing
We're Calling It: This AL Hotel Concept Is The Next Big Thing https://digitalalabamanews.com/were-calling-it-this-al-hotel-concept-is-the-next-big-thing/
A completely enamoring, ultra-swanky hotel just opened quietly in Auburn, Alabama, bringing fine dining, rooftop revelry, and hands-on learning to this quaint SEC town. As I pulled into the sleek entrance to The Laurel Hotel & Spa, a crew of wide-smiling students swiftly took my bags and led me inside. “Students?” you might be thinking. I was intrigued, too.
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A hotel, spa, and restaurant run by students?! Can’t be.
Almost every guest-facing employee here is in a course lab getting academic credit. Students of Auburn’s Hospitality Management program get real-world experience by learning the intricacies of hospitality and hotel management through full immersion training at The Laurel Hotel & Spa. Culinary students are doing the same at the adjoining restaurant and eateries.
The first-of-its-kind luxury teaching hotel
The Laurel Hotel & Spa is part of Auburn University’s Tony & Libba Rane Culinary Science Center, a 140,000-square-foot building where learning and leisure collide. Undergraduate and graduate students looking toward careers in hospitality, events, cooking, baking, wine, and more get real experience working in every corner of the Rane Center. Equally remarkable, we, the public, can witness and enjoy the fruits of their labor.
They’ve uniquely blended serious academia with revenue-generating places to dine, sip, sleep, and relax. Image: T2 Photography
Beyond the hotel, there’s a teaching restaurant called 1856, a coffee roastery and café called [email protected], a multi-concept food hall called Hey Day Market, a two-story wine cellar, and — opening March 2023 — a microbrewery. It is the only hospitality management facility in the world with all these features.
An immersive experience for guests and students
Not only is it fascinating that the students interact with actual guests, but the guests also get to see the students in action. It was almost … trippy? Meta? (I’m grasping for a college-appropriate descriptor here) that mere steps from the hotel is a state-of-the-art culinary school.
Floor-to-ceiling windows show off cutting-edge food production laboratories with all the equipment needed to concoct, bake, and test anything. Image: T2 Photography
On my afternoon exploration, I watched a class learning the art of pasta making through one window and the master sommelier sorting the night’s wine pairing through another. There were just as many curious visitors and lucky locals roaming the halls as there were students and professional educators.
Take in this view of Samford Hall from the rooftop, your room, and the restaurant. Image: The Laurel Hotel & Spa
The rooftop: pool, garden, and views
The elevator’s first stop was not on my floor but the rooftop. I was greeted by a glass of champagne and a vibrant, 4,000-square-foot garden maintained by Auburn’s School of Agriculture. The garden plants — all edible save some pretty flowers — provide fresh and sustainable ingredients to the new culinary laboratory, 1856. They even infuse the delicious lemongrass into the lobby water and the restaurant’s after-dinner refresher.
I would have been shocked to see such a place on a roof had I not seen the rendering ahead of time. I was surprised it looked even more beautiful in real life. Image: T2 Photography
A few cabanas and giant lounge chairs line the heated infinity pool just next to the gardens. You can order cocktails, snacks, and more from your poolside oasis. There is also a world-class spa, fitness studio, and yoga pavilion to help combat the slightest inkling of boredom.
For game weekends and celebrations, you can rent a cabana with this view. Image: T2 Photography
Spacious rooms with futuristic amenities
The hotel comprises 16 luxurious rooms, 10 suites, and six privately owned residences. My night in one of the 750-ish-square-foot suites rivaled most four- and five-star hotel stays I’ve enjoyed.
These rooms are designed for entertaining on game weekends and beyond. Rendering: The Laurel Hotel & Spa
I opened the door to find that my suitcase had a new adornment: a leather engraved Laurel Hotel luggage tag with my name printed beneath the plastic view box. I snacked on an array of elaborate appetizers and opened a bottle of red in the kitchenette as I took in the view of Auburn’s red brick skyline. My suite had two smart TVs and another smaller one built into the bathroom mirror so that you don’t miss a single second of any game.
From check-in to check-out, everyone remembered my name and went to great lengths to make my stay perfect. Rendering: The Laurel Hotel & Spa
The bathroom had a massive soaking tub, can’t-take-them-off robes, slippers, and even perfume. The center was still undergoing some final construction (I stayed on night one of the hotel being open, after all), but I was never disrupted during sleeping hours. The remote-controlled blackout curtains enveloped my king bed into a cozy chamber of slumber.
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A $110 million facility, three years in the making
Hans van der Reijden (Founder and CEO of Ithaka Hospitality Partners) and Martin O’Neill, Ph.D. (Professor & Acting Department Head) gave me a thorough tour of the building. The architecture — all LEED-certified and natural-light-drenched — is breathtaking.
The edible garden benefits from its proximity to the elements and allows more disciplines to use the Rane Center. Rendering: The Laurel Hotel & Spa
“We wanted the students to be able to learn, cook, and test dishes with natural light around them,” Hans says. “We don’t want students to just run away from the building right after class, so we made many places for them to sit, chat, study, and relax.” Watch a timelapse of the center’s three-year construction.
1856 has brought fine dining to Auburn
I cannot remember a more delightful recent meal than the one I had at 1856, the teaching restaurant at The Rane Center. The giant-ceilinged room is modern and inviting, and sets the stage for some serious food. They call the concept a “culinary residence,” rotating the chef regularly. Swarms of young, attentive students stood at the ready. “Each student’s lab is the same four-hour ‘shift’ two days a week so that they can learn consistency and work with a regular team,” Hans says.
Almost the entire non-student staff is made up of some of the best in their fields, with overwhelming Michelin-starred experience among them. Image: Mason Erwin
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The open kitchen gives guests a clear view of Chef Tyler Lyne at work. Tyler and his team can watch each table progress through the courses on CCTV, ensuring each dish is timed to perfection. The wine pairings were poured generously by Master Sommelier Thomas Price. Yes, oenophiles, you read that correctly; they have a MASTER sommelier on staff. How big a deal is this? A huge one. Only 273 people in the world have garnered this title since it was established in 1969.
I love a tasting menu, but your buck has to have some bang. I want to leave feeling full and like I’ve been on a chef-led expedition where every part of the menu matters: the order, the presentation, the service, the pairings. 1856 blew me away. And it was their first dinner service ever. At $95 a person (wine pairings are another $95, or you can order drinks a la carte), 1856 will be the next buzziest reservation in the South, I’m calling it now.
All I can say is that I hope the Foie Apple is on the menu when you go. They’re changing the seven courses to nine soon, according to Hans. Image: Zoe Yarborough
I was admittedly bewildered to find all of these accolades … this glamour … in such a small Alabama town. And in a place run by college and graduate students. But I think that’s the point. There’s never been anything like it. As pleasantly surprised as guests are bound to be, there is another side to this coin.
Hans hopes that the students working and learning in this elegant, nurturing incubator will realize they can reach the upper echelon of dining and hospitality. They could land at Amanyara, St. Regis, Four Seasons. They could one day open up their own charming b&b or neighborhood eatery. This place is a self-fulfilling prophecy. It’s both a beacon of and a breeding ground for Southern hospitality. Reservations are now open here.
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Biden Praises Braves https://digitalalabamanews.com/biden-praises-braves/
By AAMER MADHANI and COLLEEN LONG
Associated Press
WASHINGTON – President Joe Biden said Monday the Atlanta Braves will be “forever known as the upset kings of October” for their improbable 2021 World Series win, as he welcomed the team to the White House for a victory celebration.
Biden called the Braves’ drive an “unstoppable, joyful run.” The team got its White House visit in with just over a week left before the 2022 regular season wraps up and the Major League Baseball playoffs begin again. The Braves trail the New York Mets by 1.5 games in the National League East but have clinched a wildcard spot for the MLB playoffs that begin Oct. 7. Chief Executive Officer Terry McGuirk said he hoped they’d be back to the White House again soon.
In August 2021, the Braves were a mess, playing barely at .500. But then they started winning. And they kept it up, taking the World Series in six games over the Houston Astros.
Biden called their performance of “history’s greatest turnarounds.”
“This team has literally been part of American history for over 150 years,” said Biden. “But none of it came easy … people counting you out. Heck, I know something about being counted out.”
Players lined up on risers behind Biden, grinning and waving to the crowd, but the player most discussed was one who hasn’t been on the team in nearly 50 years and who died last year: Hall of Famer Hank Aaron.
Hammerin’ Hank was the home run king for 33 years, dethroning Babe Ruth with a shot to left field on April 8, 1974. He was one of the most famous players for Atlanta and in baseball history, a clear-eyed chronicler of the hardships thrown his way – from the poverty and segregation of his Alabama youth to the racist threats he faced during his pursuit of one of America’s most hallowed records. He died in January at 86.
“This is team is defined by the courage of Hank Aaron,” Biden said.
McGuirk said Aaron, who held front office positions with the team and was one of Major League Baseball’s few Black executives, was watching over them.
“He’d have been there every step of the way with us if he was here,” McGuirk added.
The president often honors major league and some college sports champions with a White House ceremony, typically a nonpartisan affair in which the commander in chief pays tribute to the champs’ prowess, poses for photos and comes away with a team jersey.
Those visits were highly charged in the previous administration. Many athletes took issue with President Donald Trump’s policies and rhetoric on policing, immigration and more. Trump, for his part, didn’t take kindly to criticism from athletes or their on-field expressions of political opinions.
Under Biden, the tradition appears to be back. He’s hosted the NBA champion Milwaukee Bucks and Super Bowl champion Tampa Bay Buccaneers at the White House. On Monday he joked about first lady Jill Biden’s Philadelphia allegiances.
“Like every Philly fan, she’s convinced she knows more about everything in sports than anybody else,” he said. He added that he couldn’t be too nice to the Atlanta team because it had just beaten the Phillies the previous night in extra innings.
Press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre was later questioned about the team’s name, particularly as other professional sports teams have moved away from names – like the Cleveland Indians, now the Guardians, and the Washington Redskins, now the Commanders – following years of complaints from Native American groups over the images and symbols.
She said it was important for the country to have the conversation. “And Native American and Indigenous voices – they should be at the center of this conversation,” she said.
Biden supported MLB’s decision to pull the 2021 All-Star Game from Atlanta to protest Georgia’s sweeping new voting law, which critics contend is too restrictive.
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Oath Keepers Attorney Exchanged Texts With Andrew Giuliani About Election Fraud
Oath Keepers Attorney Exchanged Texts With Andrew Giuliani About Election Fraud https://digitalalabamanews.com/oath-keepers-attorney-exchanged-texts-with-andrew-giuliani-about-election-fraud/
September 26, 2022 08:36 PM
An attorney for the far-right Oath Keepers group exchanged text messages about election fraud with Andrew Giuliani, the son of former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, in November 2020.
The general counsel for the Oath Keepers, Kellye SoRelle, who has been charged in the Jan. 6 riot at the Capitol, said she was in touch with Andrew Giuliani while he was a White House public liaison assistant in the Trump administration. The texts were only related to allegations of election fraud and not the attack on the Capitol two months later, SoRelle said.
LAW ENFORCEMENT AND ELECTED OFFICIALS APPEAR ON OATH KEEPERS MEMBERSHIP LIST
“None of that was like, ‘Hey, we should go storm the Capitol,’” SoRelle told NBC News. “It was like, ‘We have this affidavit,’ or whatever.”
Andrew Giuliani, who recently ran for the Republican nomination for New York governor, confirmed the interaction and said his last contact with SoRelle was on Nov. 10, 2020, according to his phone records.
“Until you mentioned her, until I looked it up, it didn’t really ring a bell,” Andrew Giuliani told the outlet.
SoRelle additionally tried to send a text message to the White House in December, according to a new book by former Rep. Denver Riggleman (R-VA), and journalist Hunter Walker. However, the message failed to be delivered because it was sent to a White House switchboard line. For Riggleman, the connection between Andrew Giuliani and a member of the Oath Keepers was not surprising.
“The phone data my team compiled makes clear the militant aspect of the Capitol attack and high-level associates of the former president were inextricably linked together,” Riggleman said. “It is so important for the American people to be aware of the direct links between the Trump White House and militant groups including this newfound connection between Kellye Sorelle and a former White House aide.”
SoRelle was photographed with Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes outside the Capitol during the insurrection, along with several other leaders of the far-right militia. She has been charged with four counts, including conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding, obstruction of justice, obstruction of an official proceeding, and one misdemeanor count of entering and remaining in a restricted building or grounds, according to a three-page indictment. She has pleaded not guilty to all charges.
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER
Rhodes is expected to stand trial in a seditious conspiracy case with other members of the organization this week. It is expected to last six weeks. Several Oath Keepers have already pleaded guilty to seditious conspiracy.
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Appeals Court Blocks California Ban On For-Profit Prisons
Appeals Court Blocks California Ban On For-Profit Prisons https://digitalalabamanews.com/appeals-court-blocks-california-ban-on-for-profit-prisons/
SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) — A larger panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Monday again blocked California’s first-in-the-nation ban on for-profit private prisons and immigration detention facilities, finding that it is trumped by the federal government.
A three-judge appellate panel last year rejected the 2019 state law that would have phased out privately run immigration jails in California by 2028. The law would have undermined a key piece of the nation’s detention system for immigrants.
California Attorney General Rob Bonta had asked the larger appellate panel to reconsider a ruling.
The law signed by Gov. Gavin Newsom was one of many efforts to limit California’s cooperation with the federal government as then-President Donald Trump imposed hardline policies on immigration enforcement. But the Biden administration continued the U.S. government’s opposition to the law on constitutional grounds.
The 11-member appellate panel said the state law is preempted by the federal government under the U.S. Constitution’s “supremacy clause.” It sent the case back to the trial court for a decision on other legal arguments.
The Geo Group Inc., which operates two such facilities in California, sued to block the law. Neither Geo nor U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement immediately commented on the ruling.
“AB 32 would prevent ICE’s contractors from continuing to run detention facilities, requiring ICE to entirely transform its approach to detention in the state or else abandon its California facilities,” Circuit Judge Jacqueline Nguyen wrote for the panel’s eight-member majority. “California cannot exert this level of control over the federal government’s detention operations.”
Bonta wrote the law when he was in the state Assembly. His office said it is still reviewing the decision but is “deeply disappointed” by the decision. The law “was enacted to protect the health and welfare of Californians and recognized the federal government’s own documented concerns with for-profit, private prisons and detention facilities,” his office said in a statement.
Two of the eight judges agreed with Nguyen on only part of the majority’s ruling.
And three of the panel’s 11 members dissented from the majority ruling, with Chief Judge Mary Murguia holding that the law is valid “because it neither directly regulates nor discriminates against the federal government.”
Both she and Nguyen are appointees of President Barack Obama.
The Dignity not Detention Coalition, which sought the California law, in a statement called the Biden administration’s support for the lawsuit “another grim marker of the administration’s descent into Trumpian immigration policy.” It urged the administration and Congress to not only end the contracts but to entirely end funding for immigration detention.
Copyright 2022 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.
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Weather Updates: Storm Could Threaten Florida As A Major Hurricane
Weather Updates: Storm Could Threaten Florida As A Major Hurricane https://digitalalabamanews.com/weather-updates-storm-could-threaten-florida-as-a-major-hurricane/
SALINAS, P.R. — Hurricane Fiona deluged Puerto Rico with unrelenting rain and terrifying flash floods on Monday, forcing harrowing home rescues and making it difficult for power crews to reach many parts of the island.
Now the island is once again in darkness, five years after Hurricane Maria inflicted more damage on Puerto Rico than any other disaster in recent history.
While Fiona will be the direct culprit, Puerto Ricans will also blame years of power disruptions, the result of an agonizingly slow effort to finally give the island a stable grid. Hurricane Maria, a near-Category 5 storm, hit on Sept. 20, 2017, leaving about 3,000 dead and damaging 80 percent of the system. The last house was not reconnected to the system until nearly a year later. Hurricane Fiona, with far less ferocious winds, is the strongest storm to reach the island since.
Its copious rains on Sunday and Monday — more than 30 inches in some areas in southern Puerto Rico and its central mountainous region — caused the island’s vast lattice of canals and creeks to swell, turned entire streets into muddy rivers and forced the rescues of more than 1,000 people. At least one person died, while operating a generator, while another death was recorded in the Dominican Republic.
“I’ve never seen this in my life, not even in Maria,” said Ada Belmot Plaza, who had to be rescued by the Puerto Rico National Guard as waist-high floodwaters rose outside her daughter’s house in the El Coquí neighborhood of Salinas, on Puerto Rico’s southern coast.
Some Puerto Ricans said Hurricane Fiona took them by surprise, and many in the hardest-hit areas were still waiting for government help on Monday as neighbors came together to clear fallen trees from roads and remove debris from homes. Gov. Pedro R. Pierluisi urged people to stay indoors. He said he expected most electricity to be back up “in a matter of days.” By Monday morning, power had been restored to some 100,000 customers, out of 1.5 million.
The federal government paid $3.2 billion to patch up the island’s electrical grid in Hurricane Maria’s wake. But that was just to get the power back on; Congress earmarked an additional $10 billion to modernize the antiquated and inefficient system.
The Puerto Rico government and the fiscal board appointed by Congress to oversee the island’s finances required that the power transmission and distribution system be privatized after deeming the Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority, which is bankrupt but continues to run power generation, to be ineffective. Funds from the Federal Emergency Management Agency will finance any new upgrades.
In 2020, Puerto Rico awarded a 15-year contract to LUMA Energy, a private Canadian-American consortium, for a fixed annual fee of $115 million. After taking over in June of last year, the company quickly struggled with rolling summer blackouts. There was an islandwide outage in April, with no bad weather in sight.
And so, in the wake of Hurricane Fiona, most Puerto Ricans face the daunting prospect of spoiled food and medication, sticky nights and the other familiar risks and indignities of being plunged into darkness. They are somewhat better equipped this time because those who could afford generators bought them after the Hurricane Maria fiasco. But that came with its own dangers: Officials on Monday said a man died while trying to operate a generator. His wife suffered severe burns, but survived.
In the Dominican Republic, the storm killed at least one person, a 68-year-old man who was hit by a falling tree in the northern province of María Trinidad Sánchez, according to local media.
As Hurricane Fiona moved westward, it battered the eastern provinces of the Dominican Republic, home to one of the largest tourism industries in the Caribbean. Heavy rain and 90-mile-per-hour winds set off mudslides that shuttered resorts and damaged highways, officials said.
The storm is expected to pass near the islands of Turks and Caicos on Tuesday before strengthening at sea into a major hurricane — a Category 3 or higher — by Wednesday, the National Hurricane Center said. It is not forecast to approach the East Coast of the United States.
In Puerto Rico, overflowing waterways and the loss of power caused pumps to fail, leaving 70 percent of households and businesses that rely on the public water and sewer system without potable water.
Mr. Pierluisi said he had been coordinating with the White House to receive assistance. President Biden issued an emergency declaration on Sunday, unlocking federal funding and FEMA support. Mr. Biden called Mr. Pierluisi from Air Force One as the president flew back from the funeral of Queen Elizabeth II in London, according to the White House.
States also lined up to send mutual aid. New York said more than 100 Spanish-speaking members of the State Police would help clear streets, direct traffic and respond to other needs in Puerto Rico.
Most customers who had electricity on Monday, including a couple of hospitals, were in the San Juan metropolitan area, which was spared the worst of Hurricane Fiona’s rains.
The damage from Fiona’s floodwaters is expected to be vast — in the “billions,” Mr. Pierluisi estimated — a sobering reminder that a storm’s categorization under the Saffir-Simpson scale considers its maximum wind speeds, but not its rainfall or storm surge potential.
In the town of Cayey, residents had to clear out the mud after the La Plata River surged and almost completely submerged a two-story house. A temporary bridge erected over the Guaonica River in Utuado buckled, its demise captured on dramatic video as rushing waters and debris washed it away. The bridge was put up after Hurricane Maria to connect devastated neighborhoods in the area, and a new, permanent bridge was scheduled to go up in 2024.
In Santa Isabel, on the southern coast of the island, Itzamary Alvarado said she had more water in her house than during Hurricane Maria. Government officials, she said, should have given the public more warning about Hurricane Fiona, which had initially approached the island as a tropical storm.
“I think the government minimized what was going to happen,” Ms. Alvarado said. “I found out it was a hurricane at 11 a.m. on Sunday, so I left everything and ran to the supermarket. I had not prepared for a hurricane.”
For her and many others, the storm was a test of whether the government response to disasters would be better after Maria.
“We have been struggling for five years and see the same conditions from the government in the management of emergency situations,” Ms. Alvarado said. “It’s frustrating.”
But she suddenly had a sign that things were changing for the better: Trucks from Puerto Rico’s power company, LUMA, appeared on her street.
“A LUMA brigade just drove by my house,” she said. “I’ve never seen that before.”
Comparisons to Hurricane Maria were inevitable, from both residents and officials.
The island’s hospitals were running on backup generators, in stark contrast to 2017, when many lost power, damaging medical equipment and leaving hundreds of sick patients dangerously at risk. About 75 percent of cellphone towers were still functioning after the storm passed, compared with the near-total signal wipeout five years ago.
Mr. Pierluisi stressed that officials were still in the rescue-and-response phase of the emergency and had not begun to assess the scale of the damage, or determine the island’s path to recovery. Still, he said, the local government’s response had so far been “exemplary” compared with what happened after Maria.
“Maria served as a lesson, an exercise for our emergency response teams at all levels,” Mr. Pierluisi, a member of the pro-statehood New Progressive Party who took office in 2021, said in a news conference. “In terms of the coordination we’ve seen, there’s a big difference.”
Hurricane Maria, which struck within weeks of Hurricane Irma in 2017, laid bare the tenuous state of the island’s aging, poorly maintained infrastructure. Its powerful winds, with gusts exceeding 100 m.p.h., destroyed thousands of homes and wiped out the island’s agriculture and access to communications. Recovery was painfully sluggish, and the lack of potable water, fuel and food supplies in the wake of the storm prompted an exodus of tens of thousands of residents to the United States mainland.
Public fury bubbled up at the government’s response to the storm. In 2019, a grass-roots movement channeling the anger formed, fueling a popular uprising in 2019 that lasted 15 days and caused former Gov. Ricardo A. Rosselló to step down.
Puerto Ricans remain skeptical of their leaders’ abilities to respond to disasters. In Salinas on Monday, Ana Medina Cardona, 74, said government reconstruction contractors had repaired a section of her tin roof that was torn apart by Hurricane Maria.
On Sunday, rain started pouring through that repaired roof while she was home with her dog, Famy.
“It seems they didn’t do a great job, because water was coming down the walls,” Ms. Medina Cardona said. “This time around, it was even worse than in Maria.”
She waited in a shelter to hear if the water had receded enough for her to return home. But she was unconvinced it was her best option.
“If we can go back,” she said, “that also means going back there to a house without power.”
Reporting was contributed by Grace Ashford, Holga Enecia Pérez, Luis Ferré-Sadurní, Christine Hauser, Charo Henríquez, Anatoly Kurmanaev, Edgar Sandoval and Daniel Victor.
Correction:
Sept. 19, 2022
An earlier version of this article misstated the age of a man in the Dominican Republic who was killed during Hurricane Fiona. He was 68, not 60.
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Ian Strengthens Into A Hurricane As Florida Begins Evacuations And Cuba Braces For Possible Floods
Ian Strengthens Into A Hurricane As Florida Begins Evacuations And Cuba Braces For Possible Floods https://digitalalabamanews.com/ian-strengthens-into-a-hurricane-as-florida-begins-evacuations-and-cuba-braces-for-possible-floods/
With Hurricane Ian growing stronger and marching northward, Florida on Monday began ordering evacuations and preparing for possible floods.
Tornadoes are also possible late Monday and into Tuesday across the Florida Keys and the southern and central Florida Peninsula, according to the National Hurricane Center.
A mandatory evacuation order was issued Monday for some residents in Hillsborough County, on the westernmost part of the Florida Peninsula. Emergency shelters were opened in the county, which includes Tampa.
The latest on Hurricane Ian
By late Monday afternoon, Ian was moving northwest at 13 mph and about 155 miles southeast of the western tip of Cuba, with top sustained winds increasing to 100 mph.
Forecasters expect Hurricane Ian to hit Florida’s west coast as a major hurricane as early as Wednesday.
Cuba said it was evacuating 50,000 people in Pinar del Río province, had sent in medical and emergency personnel and taking steps to protect food and other crops in warehouses.
The center of the hurricane passed to the west of the Cayman Islands on Monday, but no major damage had been reported there.
Follow along for NBC News’ live coverage of Hurricane Ian
“We did not make this decision easily, but the storm poses a serious threat, and we must do everything we can to protect our residents,” County Administrator Bonnie Wise said.
A major hurricane has not directly hit the Tampa Bay area since 1921, said Rick Davis, a senior meteorologist with the National Weather Service’s Tampa office.
“The Tampa Bay area hasn’t seen this type of storm in decades, if not 100 years,” Davis said. “All the threats that hurricanes can have — we are definitely in the high-to-extreme category in all these threats.”
In coordination with Hillsborough officials, MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa, home to U.S. Central Command, has also announced a mandatory evacuation. The order is for “non-mission essential individuals” living in the westernmost part of the county, which includes uniformed service members, civilian employees and their dependents.
This evacuation is set to be completed by Tuesday afternoon.
Hernando County, about an hour north of Hillsborough, issued a voluntary evacuation order Monday for those living in low-lying areas and mobile homes. The order will become mandatory Tuesday morning. Shelters will also open Tuesday, and schools will be closed in the coastal county.
Manatee County, south of Hillsborough, also announced a mandatory evacuation for some residents that will go into effect Tuesday morning, according to a news release.
Tampa International Airport is bracing for “severe impacts” from the hurricane and could begin closing parts of its airfield and facilities as wind speeds increase. All airport operations will stop when sustained winds reach 50 mph.
Cuba, Cayman Islands in Ian’s path
Ian is expected to strengthen rapidly during the next day or so and become a major hurricane as it nears western Cuba, where it is expected to “produce significant wind and storm surge impacts.”
The storm, which by late Monday afternoon was about 155 miles southeast of the western tip of Cuba, has maximum sustained winds of 100 mph, with higher gusts, the hurricane center said.
A hurricane watch was issued along the west coast of Florida from north of Englewood to the Anclote River, including Tampa Bay, while a tropical storm warning is in place for the lower Florida Keys from Seven Mile Bridge to Key West, as well as Dry Tortugas Island.
The center of Ian is expected to pass near or west of the Cayman Islands on Monday and near or over western Cuba on Monday evening and early Tuesday, the hurricane center said.
“Ian will then emerge over the southeastern Gulf of Mexico on Tuesday, and pass west of the Florida Keys late Tuesday, and approach the west coast of Florida on Wednesday,” it said.
Preparing for heavy rain, flooding, storm surge
The hurricane is forecast to bring 8 to 15 inches of rain to central West Florida, 3 to 8 inches to the rest of the Florida Peninsula and 4 to 6 inches to the Keys.
“Heavy rainfall is expected to affect North Florida, eastern portions of the Florida Panhandle, and portions of the Southeast, and Mid Atlantic regions Friday and Saturday,” the hurricane center said. The rain could cause flash and urban flooding mid-to-late week in central Florida, as well as across the Florida Keys and the peninsula, through midweek.
Flooding and rising of streams and rivers over northern Florida and parts of the Southeast U.S. are also possible mid-to-late week.
“Regardless of Ian’s exact track and intensity, there is a risk of dangerous storm surge, hurricane-force winds, and heavy rainfall along the west coast of Florida and the Florida Panhandle by the middle of this week, and residents in Florida should ensure they have their hurricane plan in place,” it said.
In photos captured Sunday, residents in Tampa filled sandbags to help prevent against flooding ahead of the storm.
People fill their allotted 10 free sandbags to prepare for the storm’s arrival in Tampa, Fla., on Sunday.Luis Santana / Tampa Bay Times via Zuma Press
In Kissimmee, about an hour northeast of Tampa, a long line of shoppers waited outside a store in a race to stock up on supplies. A number of people carted several cases of water bottles out of the store.
Before the hurricane reaches Florida, it is predicted to pass near or west of the Cayman Islands before it moves over to western Cuba.
‘Pray and hope for the best’
“Life-threatening” storm surge and hurricane-force winds are expected to hit parts of western Cuba starting late Monday, with Ian expected to be at or near major hurricane strength by the time it nears the region.
Western Cuba could get anywhere from 6 to 16 inches of rain, the Cayman Islands might get 3 to 8 inches, and Jamaica could get an additional 1 to 3 inches, forecasters said. The rainfall may produce flash flooding and mudslides in higher-terrain areas over western Cuba.
Water levels along the coast of western Cuba could rise to as much as 9 to 14 feet above normal tide levels Monday night and early Tuesday.
A hurricane warning is in place for the Cuban provinces of Isla de la Juventud, Pinar del Río and Artemisa, while a tropical storm warning is in effect for the Cuban provinces of La Habana, Mayabeque and Matanzas.
Authorities in Cuba suspended school classes in Pinar del Rio Province and said they would start evacuations Monday in preparation for the storm.
The Cuban state media outlet Granma reported that authorities planned to start evacuating people from vulnerable areas early Monday in the far western province.
“Efforts to protect life and property should be rushed to completion,” the hurricane center warned.
Tropical storm warnings are in effect for Grand Cayman, while tropical storm watches are in place for Little Cayman and Cayman Brac.
Cayman Islands Premier Wayne Panton urged residents to get ready for the storm and to check in on neighbors.
He said that there was some uncertainty but that “history has taught us that we must prepare as best we can, and we must prepare for the worst and absolutely pray and hope for the best.”
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Worker Protests At Airports Spread Nationwide Over Staffing And Pay
Worker Protests At Airports Spread Nationwide Over Staffing And Pay https://digitalalabamanews.com/worker-protests-at-airports-spread-nationwide-over-staffing-and-pay/
Cashiers, baristas, bartenders, cooks and lounge attendants at San Francisco International Airport launched an open-ended strike Monday over staffing levels and wages, shutting down most of one of the nation’s busiest airport’s food concessions.
Flight attendants at United and Southwest airlines on Tuesday are expected to demonstrate at 21 airports around the United States, including Guam, as well as in London, to draw attention to workplace problems made worse by understaffing.
Across the country, flight attendants and airport workers are responding to a hailstorm of workplace issues related to pay and staffing levels. Airline travel during the pandemic recovery has been marred by hundreds of thousands of canceled and delayed flights, attacks on flight attendants and widespread desperation among airport workers and travelers.
While neither the strike by airport concession workers nor the protests by flight attendants are expected to disrupt air travel this week, they’re the latest signs of upheaval in the nation’s transportation sector, coming just weeks after rail workers narrowly averted a strike fueled in large part by nationwide labor shortages.
In the airline industry, the airlines and air traffic controllers keep pointing at each other, to fend off blame for disruptions as demand for air travel has rebounded. Airlines in particular are struggling to attract workers in a red-hot labor market where less-grueling jobs are easier to come by, and federal data shows that airlines are responsible for the high rate of cancellations. The air transportation industry is still down 54,000 workers compared to February 2020.
Lucinda To is among the 1,000 workers on strike at San Francisco International, where she has worked for 20 years. She prepares buffets, washes dishes and clears tables at restaurants and the United Club lounge for weary travelers. It is draining work that has only gotten harder this year, she said. With inflation at 40-year-highs, To said she has to work 60 hours a week at two food service jobs at the airport for $16.99 an hour to afford a two-bedroom unit in the Bay Area. Her mortgage is $2,800 a month.
“Right now, on my wage, I make so little that I couldn’t even buy one meal at this airport, where hamburgers are $22,” To said. “I need to work two jobs to support my family, and I’m always working double shifts.”
To, 61, regularly spends the night in her car at the airport, to save on gasoline and pass the time between shifts that stretch late into the night and start early the next day.
The strike at San Francisco International is expected to shut down “virtually every food and beverage outlet within the airport,” Unite Here Local 2 union leaders said, and the union is urging travelers to bring their own food. The food service workers are employed by more than 30 companies at 84 food and beverage outlets.
“The San Francisco International Airport advises travelers that a labor action by airport food workers is impacting staffing [at] restaurants and lounges,” said Doug Yankel, a spokesperson for the airport. “Some food and beverage outlets are closed, while others remain open with limited hours and offerings.”
Additional protests among food service workers are being planned, union officials said.
Flight attendants for United and Southwest will demonstrate on Tuesday amid drawn-out contract negotiations over wages, staffing levels and rescheduling of workers when flights are delayed or canceled. The protests will happen outside airports in Chicago, Denver, San Francisco, Atlanta, Los Angeles, Washington and other cities.
At United, flight attendants said their lives have been upended by cancellations and delays, which routinely force them to spend hours, unpaid, waiting on the phone with the airline’s scheduling services. Some attendants slept on cots in airports this summer because hotels were overbooked.
The workers said the delays are caused by understaffing within the scheduling division.
Scott Pejas, a United flight attendant in Chicago and president of his local chapter of the Association of Flight Attendants, said disruptions to schedules have become the norm for flight attendants.
“We are mentally and physically exhausted, because instead of getting rest, we’re on hold, on the phone, trying to find out where we’re going to spend the night or layover,” Pejas said. “Flight attendants will land somewhere at 10 p.m. and have to wait until 1 a.m. on the phone to find out where they’re going to sleep. We’re not getting rest.”
Joshua Freed, a spokesperson for United, said the company is eager to reach a contract agreement with the union to address flight attendants’ concerns.
“We’ve worked hard to reduce wait times for flight attendants to talk to a crew scheduler, including more hiring and adding digital options for some items,” he added.
Lynn Montgomery, the president of TWU Local 556, which represents 18,000 Southwest flight attendants nationwide, said flight disruptions have become so routine that “workers are constantly working outside their normal schedule.”
“I’ve never seen flight attendants so disheartened,” said Montgomery, who has also worked as a Southwest flight attendant for 30 years. “They feel like they’ve given and given, and the company isn’t giving back to them. It’s way more investor-focused these days than employee-friendly.”
A spokesperson for Southwest said the airline encouraged employees to express their opinions.
“Informational picketing is common during contract negotiations, and we do not anticipate any disruption in service resulting from the demonstration planned by off-duty flight attendants,” the spokesperson said.
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Trump Nominee Is Voted Out As Head Of Inter-American Development Bank
Trump Nominee Is Voted Out As Head Of Inter-American Development Bank https://digitalalabamanews.com/trump-nominee-is-voted-out-as-head-of-inter-american-development-bank/
The Inter-American Development Bank, the hemisphere’s premier international lending institution, voted Monday to fire its president. Mauricio Claver-Carone was terminated following a unanimous recommendation by the 14-member executive board, the organization said.
The termination was first reported by Reuters.
In a statement, the IDB said Claver-Carone, whose term was set to expire in 2025, “will cease to hold the office of President of the Bank” effective Monday.
The statement did not refer to a well–publicized investigation into him. Two sources familiar with the probe said it was the results of that investigation that led to the vote. The sources were not authorized to speak about the inner workings of IDB nor the results of the investigator’s report, which has not been made public.
One source said investigators found evidence to conclude Claver-Carone had a relationship with a staff member who reported directly to him, and to whom he gave raises totaling more than 45 percent of base pay in less than one year. Claver-Carone’s leadership of the organization also resulted in employees fearing retaliation from him, the source said.
Vice President Reina Irene Mejía Chacón will lead the organization until a new president is elected, the statement said.
The Biden administration appeared to welcome Claver-Carone’s ouster.
A spokesperson for the Treasury Department said the United States “supports the dismissal of the IDB President.” The department said Claver-Carone’s “refusal to fully cooperate with the investigation, and his creation of a climate of fear of retaliation among staff and borrowing countries, has forfeited the confidence of the Bank’s staff and shareholders and necessitates a change in leadership.”
Claver-Carone had previously criticized the nature of investigation, saying in a statement to the Associated Press that the probe “failed to meet international standards of integrity that both the IDB and the region strive to exemplify.”
He had added: “In clear and direct contravention of IDB ethics rules, neither I nor any other IDB staff member has been given an opportunity to review the final investigative report, respond to its conclusions, or correct inaccuracies.”
In a statement after the vote, Claver-Carone also claimed without evidence that ousting him from his position would embolden China, the AP reported.
In June 2020 President Donald Trump announced the nomination of Claver-Carone, then senior figure at the National Security Council whom the Trump administration credited with boosting private sector investment in Latin America and the Caribbean. His election that September marked the first time the United States — by far the bank’s biggest donor — held the top position at the six-decade-old organization.
Claver-Carone’s defenders described him as a reformer leading a long-beleaguered organization rife with corruption. According to his biography on the IDB’s website, he had led “a comprehensive reform of the Bank’s business model,” and was “overseeing a broad effort to improve operational efficiency, productivity and transparency to facilitate better results, impact and monitoring effectiveness.”
Critics describe him differently. Investigators said there was evidence he conducted an affair with a staffer at the National Security Council, which prompted one official to warn that it posed a counterintelligence security risk, the AP reported. The Biden administration — which has sought to reaffirm America’s relationship with multinational organizations — had indicated it was taking the allegations against Claver-Carone seriously.
Michael Shifter, former president of the Inter-American Dialogue think tank and an adjunct professor at Georgetown University, said Claver-Carone’s lack of high-level diplomatic expertise made him an unusual choice for the IDB role. “There was a basic question of how qualified was he, given his background,” Shifter said in an interview. “There was always a cloud, or at least a big question.”
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Far Right Preparing Army Of poll Watchers Eager To Find Proof Of Conspiracy Theories In 22 Vote
Far Right Preparing Army Of ‘poll Watchers’ Eager To Find Proof Of Conspiracy Theories In ’22 Vote https://digitalalabamanews.com/far-right-preparing-army-of-poll-watchers-eager-to-find-proof-of-conspiracy-theories-in-22-vote/
The coalition of MAGA election denialists like True the Vote’s Catherine Engelbrecht, MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell, MAGA army general Michael Flynn, and “constitutional sheriffs” leaders like Richard Mack and Arizona Sheriff Mark Lamb have been open about their plans: Organize an army of citizen “poll watchers,” backed by law enforcement, to monitor all polling places and ballot drop boxes in order to prevent a repeat of 2020.
“We will not let happen what happened in 2020,” Lamb told a Trump rally in Prescott.
Areeba Shah recently reported for Salon on the impact that Lamb’s campaign is having in Arizona, particularly in rural areas and among communities of color. The fact that an elected official in a position of authority is using that position to enforce an afactual and partisan conspiracist narrative—and that they are poised to threaten or intimidate those voters under color of law if deemed suspicious—is especially likely to discourage minority voters.
That prospect “makes it more difficult to break down the walls of voters that we’re talking to,” Natali Bock, co-executive director of Rural Arizona Action, told Shah. “There is a cynicism that takes root when you have these outlandish stories.”
Such “misinformation spreads like wildfire,” she added, “and instead of just being able to present facts, now we are have to do a lot of relationship building.”
Legislators in a number of states, including Arizona and Texas, have introduced legislation to expand the roles and powers of poll watchers while lowering the requirements to become one. At least 40 such bills have been introduced in 20 states, and some have become law. The Brennen Center for Justice reports that at least 33 bills have been introduced that “would give watchers more authority to observe voters and election officials, with fewer limitations on their actions at polling places and other locations, increasing the possibility of voter intimidation and harassment.”
“Sheriff Lamb is the continuation of every other [form of] voter suppression that has happened,” Bock said, “only now it’s the more dangerous form because he carries a badge and a gun and is seated at an elected position of power.”
Joining the sheriffs on these election front lines are number of fundamentalist Christian churches, such as the Spokane Valley, Washington, congregation led by Shea, a longtime figure in the region’s extremist right. Shea recently informed his flock that the church would be organizing training sessions for poll watchers, after asking them if they had watched 2000 Mules and receiving a strong response:
Well, I think it would be good if we had some folks that were certified, trained box-drop observers in Spokane County, how about you all? So Sept. 30, right here at 6:30 p.m., we’re gonna be training and certifying folks to go do that here in our community. Please show up, tell all the people you possibly can find to do it, because that is a long—we have the two weeks where the mail-in—we gotta go back to the in-person voting. Amen?
He also explained to the congregation why they were undertaking the program:
We also believe that we need to be going into every area of our culture, and one of those areas is elections. And one of those areas is watching drop boxes to make sure that, I don’t know, they don’t get stuffed with anything that’s not of God.
Other Washington far-right activists tried organizing a similar poll-watching exercise in King County, where Seattle is located, during the state’s July primary. Election denialists placed signs at ballot drop boxes warning people that their actions were being recorded on camera. The King County Sheriff’s Office opened an investigation into those actions at the behest of the county’s elections office.
Similar efforts are popping up around the country. An Arizona paramilitary group called the “Lions of Liberty” recently announced that it was planning an “Operation Drop Box,” under which they “plan on watching the ballot boxes throughout Yavapai County.” They also claim to have the support and cooperation of Yavapai County Sheriff David Rhodes: “Contact us and we’ll get in touch with Sheriff Rhodes who is already aware of what we are doing and will do what he can.”
In Michigan, where Barry County Sheriff Dar Leaf has been spearheading the election-denialist cause, a far-right coalition of “Patriots,” Tea Party activists, COVID denialists, and national groups like Turning Point USA have teamed up to form a “Michigan Election Protection Team.” Its aim is to turn out 5,000 poll watchers for the 2022 election.
Sharon Dolente, a senior adviser at Promote the Vote Michigan, told Shah that the presence of law enforcement to police elections can dissuade voters from casting their ballots, producing a “chilling effect” that can affect entire communities, particularly those who have been disenfranchises historically.
“There were many instances after the 2020 election where individuals who were questioning the result were only questioning the results specifically in Black and brown communities in the state of Michigan,” Dolente said. “I don’t think that’s an accident, right? I think that is a response to the political power and will those communities expressed, and it’s an effort to dampen that.”
Trump endorsed the poll watchers concept last month in an interview with Sean Hannity on Fox News. Hannity asked Trump if he planned to have poll watchers on Election Day with the “ability to monitor, to avoid fraud and cross check whether or not these are registered voters, whether or not there’s been identification to know if it’s a real vote from a real American?”
Trump answered: “We’re going to have everything. We’re going to have sheriffs and law enforcement and we’re going to have, hopefully, U.S. attorneys, and we’re going to have everybody, and attorney generals, but it’s very hard.”
Kristen Clarke, president and executive director of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, told NBC News that Trump’s threat is “an old and familiar tactic pulled right from the Jim Crow playbook and often specifically targeted at Black voters and voters of color. This voter suppression scheme is intended to intimidate voters and cause a chilling effect on the electorate” and “would likely run afoul of laws that prohibit intimidation of voters.”
Clarke added that her group “will use every tool in our arsenal to block thinly veiled efforts aimed at discouraging participation by eligible voters this election season.”
“The specter of law enforcement at the polls is already enough to discourage people from going to the polls,” observed Devin Burghart of the Institute for Research and Education on Human Rights. “Moreover, the threat of surveillance of polling places and drop boxes proposed by groups like True the Vote is meant to intimidate voters, particularly people of color, and deter them from casting ballots.”
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Joe Kent Seeks Election On America First Agenda Thats What I Stand For
Joe Kent Seeks Election On ‘America First Agenda, That’s What I Stand For’ https://digitalalabamanews.com/joe-kent-seeks-election-on-america-first-agenda-thats-what-i-stand-for-2/
By Isabel Vander Stoep / For The Reflector
Working for the CIA, former Green Beret Joe Kent lived about as covert a life as one can. Now, by the endorsement of former President Donald Trump, the Republican candidate from Yacolt has been thrust into the public eye.
Well over a year ago now, Kent was roused to candidacy by Republican incumbent Jaime Herrera Beutler’s vote to impeach Trump after the Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol.
Long before the filing deadline last May, he and candidates Heidi St. John and Wadi Yakhour held a pact that the former president’s endorsement of one would spur the other two to drop out of the race.
While the promise was not kept by St. John, Kent secured the endorsement and later punched his ticket to the Nov. 8 general election when he came up over Herrera Buetler, ending her service after six terms representing Washington’s 3rd Congressional District. His opponent is Marie Gluesenkamp Perez, D-Washougal.
After holding phone town halls with the former president and making multiple appearances on Fox News with Tucker Carlson, Kent is coming to grips with massive changes to his life in rural Clark County, where he lives with his two sons, 7-year-old Colt and 5-year-old Josh.
“Initially it was hard. But I mean, we’re in very odd times right now, very, I think, desperate times. I was able to kind of put that aside. And I feel passionately about what I’m doing and the issues that I stand for and the movement I’m a part of,” he said, later describing that movement as an “‘America First’ agenda, that’s what I stand for.”
‘Galvanized’
Asking Kent, 43, a Gold Star husband who’s traveled the world, to summarize his life story is asking for a Washington November without rain.
He grew up in Portland as a Boy Scout who loved visiting Mount St. Helens. His grandparents fought in World War II, giving him interest in war history from childhood.
In 1993, “savage combat” of the Black Hawk Down incident shocked and inspired him, he said.
He enlisted in the U.S. Army in 1998 and was stationed at Fort Lewis. During the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon, he was in training for the Special Forces.
“The mentality coming from the ‘80s and ‘90s, a lot of us thought, ‘Oh man, the guys that got to go spend that early phase in Afghanistan, that’s going to be it. That’s going to be our Panama, Grenada or Mogadishu and we’re not going to go to war for another 10, 15 years.’ So, I was definitely galvanized (by 9/11). There’s some real threats out there. I wanted our country to take them seriously,” he said.
His service as a Green Beret often meant spending half his year deployed and the other half in training, he said, until 2018.
“Then, retired on a Friday and swore in with the CIA on Monday as a CIA paramilitary operations officer,” he said, calling that wing of the agency the “pointy edge of covert operations.”
He primarily worked out of the Middle East, speaking Arabic and training partner forces to take out terrorists.
In Baghdad in 2007, he briefly met Shannon Smith, who was serving on an intelligence team of Navy SEALs. The next time they met in 2013, the two served in a small unit together and bonded quickly, Kent recalled.
He was 33 when they met the second time. In the following two years, they were married and had their first child.
While he always thought of the Pacific Northwest as home, the duo intended on raising their children overseas, going from embassy to embassy and combining family life with service to their country, Kent said.
As Trump was making his rise toward the presidency in 2015-16, Kent said he was one of the few to take him seriously early on. When Trump talked foreign policy and immigration on the debate stage, Kent said, “he went for the throat of the Bush foreign policy.”
But Kent’s desire to be involved in policymaking didn’t come until 2019, when his wife was killed by a bombing in Syria.
Resolved to stop being “shot at for a living” and after meeting Trump during a tribute to Shannon and others who were killed, Kent had a lot to say.
“And whoever will listen to me, I’ll do my best to contribute to the conversation,” he said.
Joe Kent’s style
In his “old life,” as he referred to it, Kent’s neighbors never knew where he was. Now, he spends his time talking to everyone, be it on podcasts, TV or during in-person town halls. He’s also engaged to be married.
He recognized Trump is the guy with the mean tweets, “for lack of a better term,” and no doubt a polarizing figure.
“My style is not that at all. If they come to my town halls, and I think if they get to know me, you’ll see that difference,” Kent said, adding later that because of his military background, he could see how people might mistake him as stoic. “But I try and do enough unscripted media where people can actually see me.”
When the Clark County candidate thinks of the “America First” agenda, he imagines energy independence, strict immigration policy and spending federal dollars on law enforcement in the 3rd district with the goal of knocking out crime. He has previously proposed ending all legal and illegal immigration besides immigration through marriage and ending the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program.
He is anti-abortion, calling abortion a “sacrament of the Democrat religion right now,” in his interview with The Reflector.
And, maybe more than anything, he’s against what he calls “establishment” Republicans, consistently joining those lambasting Herrera Beutler as a “RINO,” Republican in Name-Only, for her impeachment vote.
He said he doesn’t mind when people call him far-right, “because that typically means you’re not an establishment Republican. I personally don’t think I’m extreme.”
He’s taken a firm stance on the 2020 presidential election, saying it was stolen from Trump, and even speaking at a rally in Washington, D.C. in support of those accused of storming the Capitol, calling them “political prisoners,” as reported by The New York Times.
Asked what he would say to those who agree with his platform up until his claims of widespread election fraud, Kent said in the 3rd district he doesn’t believe it’s actually a hot-button issue “in the way the media thinks.”
Pointing to the cumulative 41.99% of the vote split between him, St. John and candidate Vicki Kraft in the primary, he said, “Vicki and I both would say it’s rigged and stolen. Heidi said there’s major problems with the election. With our base right now, there’s a lot of people that have major issues with election integrity.”
The question of how Kent will bridge the gap and earn the votes from supporters of Herrera Beutler remains. He previously told The Reflector he thinks voting for Herrera Beutler is no different from voting for a Democratic candidate, and further, that the Democratic Party simply does not have moderate candidates anymore.
“I think folks just have to recognize what the stakes are. And unfortunately, I hate to say it this way, but they have to decide which side they’re going to be on. Because there’s no middle. You can’t be a wishy-washy person now as you’re either with what’s going on with the current administration or you’re going to fight it. And that’s it,” Kent said.
A big district, a young man’s game
In his office in Vancouver, Kent’s campaign manager, Ozzie Gonzalez mans the door. Energetic and intense, the 22-year-old graduated from Camas High School a few years ago and began working for the campaign after Kent filed for office.
Gonzalez says the campaign hired 12 staffers over the summer and half returned to college in the fall.
Kent said it was an honor to have young folks on his team. He felt with COVID-19, Gen-Z has been forced to grow up fast, relating that to his young adulthood around the time of Sept. 11.
“(Campaigning) is definitely a young man’s game,” Kent said. “Being able to run around the district a whole bunch and still have the energy to keep up with everything.”
In a district spanning parts of Thurston County and encompassing Clark, Lewis, Cowlitz, Pacific, Wahkiakum and Skamania counties, the landscape and its people are diverse. The Chehalis, Columbia and Willapa River Basins are all firmly within its political lines, as are the Gifford Pinchot National Forest and Mount St. Helens.
A long list of environmental issues face the district.
Kent and Gluesenkamp Perez alike want their potential stints in Congress to be defined by championing problems for rural Washingtonians, and both have a focus on increasing family wage jobs, reducing crime and supporting commercial fishermen, loggers and recreators.
Ultimately, Kent believes it’s these issues and relationships that earned him a shot at the general.
“I think we won the election because we knocked on doors, went out and talked to people, and then town halls. If people come and experience that, they’re going to see who I am,” he said.
The top vote-getter this November will serve a two-year term and will make a $174,000 yearly salary.
For more on the candidates, visit the online voters’ guide at clark.wa.gov/sites/default/files/2022-06/2022ClarkCoun tyPrimaryVP-WEB_0.pdf. To register to vote, head to voter.votewa.gov/WhereToVote.aspx or call 564-397-2345 to find registration nearest you. The general election will be held on Tuesday, Nov. 8.
The League of Women Voters of Clark County will hold a debate between the two 3rd Congressional District candidates at 2 p.m., Saturday, Oct. 15, at the downtown Vancouver public library at 901 C St., Vancouver.
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Police Respond To Reports Of Shots Fired Early Sunday Morning In Downtown Auburn
Police Respond To Reports Of Shots Fired Early Sunday Morning In Downtown Auburn https://digitalalabamanews.com/police-respond-to-reports-of-shots-fired-early-sunday-morning-in-downtown-auburn/
LAUREN JOHNSON
Early Sunday morning, the Auburn Police Department received a call that gunshots were heard in downtown Auburn, near SkyBar.
Police received the call around 1:50 a.m. and responded to the scene.
Auburn Assistant Police Chief Clarence Stewart said no one was injured, and during the investigation, police were not able to locate any physical evidence.
People on the rooftop lounge of SkyBar said after they heard shots, policeman across the street from the club jumped out of his car and ran over to Toomer’s Corner.
“I was at the top of SkyBar when I heard three loud noises,” said Will Cathcart, an Auburn student. “My friend asked me if that was gunshots, but I didn’t know. A few minutes later, the employees told us we had to go inside and were running around pretty frantically. We were there for about 30 minutes before we decided to leave.”
Stewart said the APD had already increased its presence downtown before this weekend.
“Capt. Joseph Morris has increased patrol activity in the downtown area, to include marked units, unmarked units, foot patrol and bike officers,” Stewart said of the head of APD’s patrol division. “We encourage the public to continue to work with us in keeping our community safe.”
Stewart said the ramped-up police presence has to do with the increase in crime across the country and the amount of people in the downtown Auburn area on a football weekend.
“We want our community to be safe because we have a lot of people coming to town and a huge student population in the downtown area,” Stewart said.
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Trump Claims Media Ignored Death Of North Dakota Teen Because He Was Republican
Trump Claims Media Ignored Death Of North Dakota Teen Because He Was Republican https://digitalalabamanews.com/trump-claims-media-ignored-death-of-north-dakota-teen-because-he-was-republican/
WILMINGTON, N.C. — Former President Donald Trump claimed national media outlets ignored a fatal crash in North Dakota where the driver allegedly said he hit an 18-year-old because the teenager was Republican.
Trump weighed in Friday night, Sept. 23, during a rally in Wilmington on the Sept. 18 death of Cayler Ellingson. Shannon Joseph Brandt, 41, of Glenfield, North Dakota, hit the Grace City, North Dakota, teenager with a vehicle after a street dance in McHenry, North Dakota, according to state troopers.
Brandt told the North Dakota Highway Patrol he hit Ellingson that Sunday morning because of a political argument, a criminal complaint said. Specifics of the argument were not disclosed in the complaint, but Brandt reportedly told dispatchers Ellingson was part of a Republican extremist group. Brandt claimed Ellingson called several people to come after him, the complaint said.
18-year-old Cayler Ellingson
Submitted Photo
Ellingson’s funeral was Monday. A GoFundMe account has raised about $52,000 for expenses.
Brandt’s claims have sparked criticism from well-known Republicans across the country, including questions about why the defense was charged with criminal vehicular homicide instead of murder. Both are felony charges, but murder carries a life sentence. Criminal vehicular homicide is punishable by up to 20 years in prison.
Some also have asked why Brandt was released on a $50,000 bond.
The Foster County State’s Attorney’s Office declined to comment to The Forum on why it charged Brandt with criminal vehicular homicide. A message left for Judge James Hovey, who set Brandt’s bond, was not returned.
Trump pointed at journalists covering his rally in North Carolina, saying they should be ashamed of themselves for not publishing stories about the crash.
“Not one mainstream media network has even mentioned this horrible crime,” Trump said. “Think of it the other way. Supposing a MAGA person ran down somebody on the other side. It would be the biggest story you’d ever seen. It’s a disgrace.”
Shannon Brandt, 41, had his first court appearance via zoom from the Stutsman County Jail Monday, Sept. 19.
WDAY
The Forum first reported the crash on Sept. 18, and followed up last week with details about the incident after the Foster County State’s Attorney’s Office filed criminal charges on Sept. 19. InForum first published details of the complaint on Sept. 19.
Several national media outlets, including Fox News, CNN, the Associated Press and Washington Post, picked up on the story after InForum.
The Forum also was the first to report that state troopers were skeptical the crash was politically motivated. No evidence supports Brandt’s claims about Ellingson, including that the teenager called people to go after the motorist.
Brandt made the statements when he was allegedly drunk, and it’s not uncommon for people to say things to cover up a crime, Highway Patrol Capt. Bryan Niewind said. Highway Patrol said it continues to investigate the case.
Trump said Ellingson was targeted and killed in cold blood for being a proud Republican. The former president didn’t mention Brandt by name, but he called the motorist a maniac and a “radical left, stupid person.”
The Forum has been unable to contact Brandt. His attorney, Mark Friese, declined to comment.
“At my direction, Shannon will not be answering questions or making any statement except in court proceedings,” Friese said in a statement to The Forum. “Although I would like to answer your questions, it would be inappropriate for me to make any comment now — a family and community are mourning. It is also premature to comment because I have not had an opportunity to fully investigate the background.”
April Baumgarten joined The Forum in February 2019 as an investigative reporter. She grew up on a ranch 10 miles southeast of Belfield, N.D., where her family raises Hereford cattle. She double majored in communications and history/political science at the University of Jamestown, N.D.
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Trump Claims Media Outlets Ignore Ellingson's Death Says Teen Died Because He Was Republican
Trump Claims Media Outlets Ignore Ellingson's Death, Says Teen Died Because He Was Republican https://digitalalabamanews.com/trump-claims-media-outlets-ignore-ellingsons-death-says-teen-died-because-he-was-republican/
WILMINGTON, N.C. — Former President Donald Trump claimed national media outlets ignored a fatal crash in North Dakota where the driver allegedly said he hit an 18-year-old because the teenager was Republican.
Trump weighed in Friday night, Sept. 23, during a rally in Wilmington on the Sept. 18 death of Cayler Ellingson. Shannon Joseph Brandt, 41, of Glenfield, North Dakota, hit the Grace City, North Dakota, teenager with a vehicle after a street dance in McHenry, North Dakota, according to state troopers.
Brandt told the North Dakota Highway Patrol he hit Ellingson that Sunday morning because of a political argument, a criminal complaint said. Specifics of the argument were not disclosed in the complaint, but Brandt reportedly told dispatchers Ellingson was part of a Republican extremist group. Brandt claimed Ellingson called several people to come after him, the complaint said.
18-year-old Cayler Ellingson
Submitted Photo
Ellingson’s funeral was Monday. A GoFundMe account has raised about $52,000 for expenses.
Brandt’s claims have sparked criticism from well-known Republicans across the country, including questions about why the defense was charged with criminal vehicular homicide instead of murder. Both are felony charges, but murder carries a life sentence. Criminal vehicular homicide is punishable by up to 20 years in prison.
Some also have asked why Brandt was released on a $50,000 bond.
The Foster County State’s Attorney’s Office declined to comment to The Forum on why it charged Brandt with criminal vehicular homicide. A message left for Judge James Hovey, who set Brandt’s bond, was not returned.
Trump pointed at journalists covering his rally in North Carolina, saying they should be ashamed of themselves for not publishing stories about the crash.
“Not one mainstream media network has even mentioned this horrible crime,” Trump said. “Think of it the other way. Supposing a MAGA person ran down somebody on the other side. It would be the biggest story you’d ever seen. It’s a disgrace.”
Shannon Brandt, 41, had his first court appearance via zoom from the Stutsman County Jail Monday, Sept. 19.
WDAY
The Forum first reported the crash on Sept. 18, and followed up last week with details about the incident after the Foster County State’s Attorney’s Office filed criminal charges on Sept. 19. InForum first published details of the complaint on Sept. 19.
Several national media outlets, including Fox News, CNN, the Associated Press and Washington Post, picked up on the story after InForum.
The Forum also was the first to report that state troopers were skeptical the crash was politically motivated. No evidence supports Brandt’s claims about Ellingson, including that the teenager called people to go after the motorist.
Brandt made the statements when he was allegedly drunk, and it’s not uncommon for people to say things to cover up a crime, Highway Patrol Capt. Bryan Niewind said. Highway Patrol said it continues to investigate the case.
Trump said Ellingson was targeted and killed in cold blood for being a proud Republican. The former president didn’t mention Brandt by name, but he called the motorist a maniac and a “radical left, stupid person.”
The Forum has been unable to contact Brandt. His attorney, Mark Friese, declined to comment.
“At my direction, Shannon will not be answering questions or making any statement except in court proceedings,” Friese said in a statement to The Forum. “Although I would like to answer your questions, it would be inappropriate for me to make any comment now — a family and community are mourning. It is also premature to comment because I have not had an opportunity to fully investigate the background.”
April Baumgarten joined The Forum in February 2019 as an investigative reporter. She grew up on a ranch 10 miles southeast of Belfield, N.D., where her family raises Hereford cattle. She double majored in communications and history/political science at the University of Jamestown, N.D.
Read More…
False Claims Threats Fuel Poll Worker Sign-Ups For Midterms
False Claims, Threats Fuel Poll Worker Sign-Ups For Midterms https://digitalalabamanews.com/false-claims-threats-fuel-poll-worker-sign-ups-for-midterms-2/
ATLANTA — Outraged by false allegations of fraud against a Georgia elections employee in 2020, Amanda Rouser made a vow as she listened to the woman testify before Congress in June about the racist threats and harassment she faced.
“I said that day to myself, ‘I’m going to go work in the polls, and I’m going to see what they’re going to do to me,’” Rouser, who like the targeted employee is Black, recalled after stopping by a recruiting station for poll workers at Atlanta City Hall on a recent afternoon. “Try me, because I’m not scared of people.”
About 40 miles north a day later, claims of fraud also brought Carolyn Barnes to a recruiting event for prospective poll workers, but with a different motivation.
“I believe that we had a fraudulent election in 2020 because of the mail-in ballots, the advanced voting,” Barnes, 52, said after applying to work the polls for the first time in Forsyth County. “I truly believe that the more we flood the system with honest people who are trying to help out, it will straighten it out.”
Barnes, who declined to give her party affiliation, said she wants to use her position as a poll worker to share her observations about “the gaps” in election security and “where stuff could happen afterwards.”
Nearly two years after the last presidential election, there has been no evidence of widespread fraud or manipulation of voting machines. Numerous reviews in the battleground states where former President Donald Trump disputed his loss to President Joe Biden have affirmed the results, courts have rejected dozens of lawsuits filed by Trump and his allies, and even Trump’s own Department of Justice concluded the results were accurate.
Nevertheless, the false claims about the the 2020 presidential contest by the former president and his supporters are spurring new interest in working the polls in Georgia and elsewhere for the upcoming midterm elections, according to interviews with election officials, experts and prospective poll workers.
Like Rouser, some aim to shore up a critical part of their state’s election system amid the lies and misinformation about voting and ballot-counting. But the false claims and conspiracy theories also have taken hold among a wide swath of conservative voters, propelling some to sign up to help administer elections for the first time.
The possibility they will play a crucial role at polling places is a new worry this election cycle, said Sean Morales-Doyle, an election security expert at The Brennan Center for Justice.
“I think it’s a problem that there may be people who are running our elections that buy into those conspiracy theories and so are approaching their role as fighting back against rampant fraud,” he said.
But he also cautioned that there are numerous safeguards to prevent a single poll worker from disrupting voting or trying to manipulate the results.
The Associated Press talked to roughly two dozen prospective poll workers in September during three recruiting events in two Georgia counties — Fulton County, which includes most of Atlanta and where more than 70 percent of voters cast a ballot for Biden, and Forsyth County north of Atlanta, where support for Trump topped 65 percent.
About half said the 2020 election was a factor in their decision to try to become a poll worker.
“We don’t want Donald Trump bullying people,” said Priscilla Ficklin, a Democrat, while taking an application at Atlanta City Hall to be a Fulton County poll worker. “I’m going to stand up for the people who are afraid.”
Carlette Dryden said she showed up to vote in Forsyth County in 2020 only to be told that she had already cast a mail-in ballot. She said elections officials let her cast a ballot later, but she suspects someone fraudulently voted in her name and believes her experience reflects broader problems with the vote across the country.
Still, she said her role was not to police voters or root out fraud.
“What I’m signing up to do is to help others that are coming through here that may need assistance or questions answered,” she said.
Georgia was a focus of Trump’s attempts to undo his 2020 election defeat to Biden. He pressured the state’s Republican secretary of state in a January 2021 phone call to “find” enough votes to overturn Biden’s victory in the state and seized on surveillance footage to accuse the Black elections worker, Wandrea Moss, and her mother, Ruby Freeman, of pulling out suitcases of fraudulent votes in Fulton County. The allegation was quickly knocked down, but still spread widely through conservative media.
Moss told the House Jan. 6 committee that she received death threats and racist messages.
At a farmer’s market in the politically mixed suburb of Alpharetta north of Atlanta, Deborah Eves said she was concerned about being harassed for working at a voting site but still felt compelled to sign up.
A substitute teacher and Democrat, Eves visited a recruiting booth set up by Fulton County officials next to stands selling single origin coffee, honey and empanadas.
“I feel like our government is ‘we the people, and ’we the people’ need to step up and do things like poll working so that we can show that nobody’s cheating, nobody’s trying to do the wrong thing here,” she said.
Allison Saunders, who worked at a voting site for the first time during the state’s May primary, said she believes Moss and Freeman were targeted because they are Black. Saunders, a Democrat, was visiting the farmer’s market with her son.
“More people that look like me need to step up and do our part,” said Saunders, who is white. “I think it’s more important to do your civic duty than to be afraid.”
Threats after the 2020 election contributed to an exodus of full-time elections officials around the country. Recruiters say they have not seen a similar drop in people who have previously done poll work — temporary jobs open to local residents during election season. But some larger counties around the country have reported that they are struggling to fill those positions.
Working the polls has long been viewed as an apolitical civic duty. For first-time workers, it generally involves setting up voting machines, greeting voters, checking that they are registered and answering questions about the voting process.
Elections staff in the U.S. generally do not vet the political views of prospective poll workers deeply, although most states have requirements that seek to have a mix of Democratic and Republican poll workers at each voting location.
Forsyth County’s elections director, Mandi Smith, said she was not worried about having people who believe the last presidential election was fraudulent serve as poll workers. The county provides training that emphasizes the positions are nonpartisan and that workers must follow certain rules.
“It’s a very team-driven process, as well, in the sense that there are multiple poll workers there and you are generally not working alone,” she said.
Ginger Aldrich, who attended the county’s recruiting event, said she knows people who believe the last election was stolen from Trump. Their views made her curious about what she described as the “mysterious” aspects of the voting process, such as where ballots go after they leave the voting site.
“There’s going to be some people that are unscrupulous, and they are going to spend all this time figuring out how to beat the system,” said Aldrich, who is retired.
While she believes there is fraud in elections, she said she was willing to use her experience as a poll worker to try to convince people that there were no problems in her county with the midterm elections.
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Putin Grants Citizenship To Edward Snowden Who Exposed U.S. Surveillance
Putin Grants Citizenship To Edward Snowden, Who Exposed U.S. Surveillance https://digitalalabamanews.com/putin-grants-citizenship-to-edward-snowden-who-exposed-u-s-surveillance/
Russian President Vladimir Putin granted citizenship on Monday to Edward Snowden, a former security consultant who leaked information about top-secret U.S. surveillance programs and is still wanted by Washington on espionage charges.
The decree signed by Putin covered 72 foreigners, but Snowden was the most prominent. Russia granted him asylum in 2013 after he fled the United States to avoid prosecution.
The 39-year-old Snowden, who considers himself a whistleblower, was granted permanent residency in Russia in 2020, and his lawyers said at the time that he was applying to obtain a Russian passport without renouncing his U.S. citizenship.
His lawyer, Anatoly Kucherena, told the state-run news agency RIA Novosti on Monday that his wife, Lindsay Mills, is now applying for Russian citizenship. Mills joined Snowden in Moscow in 2014. They were married in 2017. Snowden tweeted Monday night that they were parents to two boys.
After years of separation from our parents, my wife and I have no desire to be separated from our SONS.
After two years of waiting and nearly ten years of exile, a little stability will make a difference for my family. I pray for privacy for them—and for us all. https://t.co/24NUK21TAo pic.twitter.com/qLfp47uzZ4
— Edward Snowden (@Snowden) September 26, 2022
Kucherena said Snowden would not be subject to the partial military mobilization that Putin decreed last week to help Russia’s flagging war in Ukraine. Only men with previous military experience are supposed to be called up — though there have been widespread reports of summonses going to many others — and Snowden has never served in the Russian army.
White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre referred questions about his new status to the prosecutors seeking his extradition. “Since I believe there have been criminal charges brought against him, we would point you to the Department of Justice for any specifics on this,” Jean-Pierre said.
Snowden’s revelations, published first in The Washington Post and the Guardian, were among the most consequential intelligence breaches in U.S. history. He disclosed the existence of the National Security Agency’s collection of millions of Americans’ phone records, a program later found by a federal appeals court to be unlawful and since shuttered.
He also revealed details of industry collaboration with NSA intelligence-gathering in a separate program. Those disclosures greatly damaged the intelligence community’s relationship with the American tech industry.
In 2017, Putin said in a documentary made by American director Oliver Stone that Snowden was “not a traitor” for leaking government secrets.
“He didn’t betray the interests of his country,” Putin said. “Nor did he transfer any information to any other country, which would have been pernicious to his own country or to his own people. The only thing Snowden does, he does publicly.”
The NSA, Justice Department and Office of the Director of National Intelligence declined to comment Monday on Snowden’s new status. But Sue Gordon, a former principal deputy director of national intelligence, said his acceptance of Russian citizenship “takes away any illusion that what he was doing [through his disclosures] was to help America.”
“I do think it’s a very questionable decision,” she continued, “knowing what we know about what Russia perpetrates, to become a Russian citizen right now. I think it diminishes any patriotic argument that he might have made back then.”
Snowden explained his decision to seek dual citizenship on Twitter in 2020.
“After years of separation from our parents, my wife and I have no desire to be separated from our son. That’s why, in this era of pandemics and closed borders, we’re applying for dual US-Russian citizenship,” he wrote.
“Lindsay and I will remain Americans, raising our son with all the values of the America we love — including the freedom to speak his mind. And I look forward to the day I can return to the States, so the whole family can be reunited,” he added.
James R. Clapper, a former director of national intelligence, acknowledged Monday that the bulk phone records collection was one area where “we probably should have been more transparent” given the program’s focus on Americans.
“But he exposed so much else that damaged foreign intelligence capabilities that had nothing to do with so-called domestic surveillance,” Clapper said.
Said Clapper: “What a great time to become a Russian citizen.”
Karen DeYoung and Ellen Nakashima contributed to this report.
War in Ukraine: What you need to know
The latest: Russian President Vladimir Putin announced a “partial mobilization” of troops in an address to the nation on Sept. 21, framing the move as an attempt to defend Russian sovereignty against a West that seeks to use Ukraine as a tool to “divide and destroy Russia.” Follow our live updates here.
The fight: A successful Ukrainian counteroffensive has forced a major Russian retreat in the northeastern Kharkiv region in recent days, as troops fled cities and villages they had occupied since the early days of the war and abandoned large amounts of military equipment.
Annexation referendums: Staged referendums, which would be illegal under international law, are set to take place from Sept. 23 to 27 in the breakaway Luhansk and Donetsk regions of eastern Ukraine, according to Russian news agencies. Another staged referendum will be held by the Moscow-appointed administration in Kherson starting Friday.
Photos: Washington Post photographers have been on the ground from the beginning of the war — here’s some of their most powerful work.
How you can help: Here are ways those in the U.S. can help support the Ukrainian people as well as what people around the world have been donating.
Read our full coverage of the Russia-Ukraine crisis. Are you on Telegram? Subscribe to our channel for updates and exclusive video.
Read More…
Mississippi Man Sentenced For Ambush Shooting In Pickens County
Mississippi Man Sentenced For Ambush Shooting In Pickens County https://digitalalabamanews.com/mississippi-man-sentenced-for-ambush-shooting-in-pickens-county/
TUSCALOOSA, AL — A Columbus, Mississippi man will serve 25 years in prison for shooting a Pickens County man who was an extended family member in August 2020.
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24th Judicial Circuit District Attorney Andy Hamlin announced on Monday that Eric Daniel Jennings, 38, pleaded guilty to the first-degree assault of a 38-year-old Ethelsville man on the morning on Aug. 30, 2020 after he crossed state lines with the intent to shoot the man.
Find out what’s happening in Tuscaloosawith free, real-time updates from Patch.
Hamlin said Jennings walked the final two miles to the residence after the truck he was driving broke down. He then reportedly sat in the victim’s truck and waited for him to leave for work around 4:30 a.m. that morning.
Jennings then shot the victim multiple times, before following him and shooting into the victim’s house until he ran out of ammunition.
Find out what’s happening in Tuscaloosawith free, real-time updates from Patch.
“This was a premeditated ambush,” Hamlin said. “The victim in this case came very close to losing his life. The evidence was strong and compelling. I’m glad we were able to take this offender off the streets. It seems lost in this day and time that the way that you combat violent crime is by sending the offender to prison. That’s where dangerous people belong.”
Have a news tip or suggestion on how I can improve Tuscaloosa Patch? Maybe you’re interested in having your business become one of the latest sponsors for Tuscaloosa Patch? Email all inquiries to me at ryan.phillips@patch.com
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Putin Ally Teases Secret Meetings That Could Destroy America
Putin Ally Teases Secret Meetings ‘That Could Destroy’ America https://digitalalabamanews.com/putin-ally-teases-secret-meetings-that-could-destroy-america/
Belarusian Minister of Foreign Affairs Vladimir Makei disclosed on Monday that he attended a series of confidential meetings with European and American leaders on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly last week.
“Those were meetings with Europeans and Americans. They asked us to keep our conversations confidential,” Makei said, according to Belarusian state news agency Belta.
The foreign minister of Belarus, a key ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s even as Russia wages war in Ukraine, declined to elaborate on the substance of the meetings. Makei only alluded vaguely to the idea that the meetings would be damaging to the United States should their contents leak out into the public eye.
“Belarus has probably reached such a potential that the information about the meeting… might destroy even such a superpower as the United States,” Makei said.
The mysterious meetings come on the heels of a series of defeats for Russia on the battlefield in Ukraine, in which Ukrainian forces were able to push back Russia’s military from key regions in the south and northeast. The faltering approach has been followed in quick succession by some of Russia’s key international trading partners, including China and India, publicly chastising Moscow for the way Putin has been conducting the war.
And although Belarus has been an ally of Putin for years now, the Belarusian leader, Alexander Lukashenko, has long held a set of precarious relationships with other nations on the world stage.
Belarus is in a “union” partnership with Russia in which the two nations work to enmesh their militaries, trade, and more, and the country has allowed Russian forces to stage attacks on Ukraine from Belarusian territory. But Lukashenko has expressed a distaste for the war in some instances, complaining that it has lagged in recent months. Historically, he has frequently adopted a view independent of Russia’s, diplomats who previously served in Belarus tell The Daily Beast.
After the mysterious meetings, Lukashenko traveled to Russia to meet with Putin Monday. There, he and Putin have been lambasting Europeans for how their governments have been treating Russia and Belarus.
“If Europe finished seething, it must pause and think. I am not speaking about those across the ocean,” Lukashenko said, alluding to the fact that he is concerned about Europe, not countries like the United States, according to Belta. “I have already told Europeans three times that their future is with us, with Russia, which has everything they need.”
“No one will tolerate being looked down upon. Neither Belarus nor Russia, a giant country,” Lukashenko added.
Putin chimed in, urging Europeans to “respect” Russia and Belarus.
It was not clear what the Americans and Europeans discussed with the Belarusian foreign minister that could be so damaging, or if it affected the conversation with Putin on Monday. The State Department did not immediately return a request for comment.
Makei’s conversation about the private meetings is likely an effort to show the world stage that Belarus has other relationships with other countries beyond Russia—and that they still maintain leverage—Ken Yalowitz, a former U.S. ambassador to Belarus, told The Daily Beast.
“Belarus right now really is in Putin’s pocket… But Lukashenko, believe it or not, does not like to be seen or viewed as a total Russian doll, a total Russian puppet,” Yalowitz said. Lukashenko “doesn’t want to be, you know… totally in the Russian camp.”
It’s “a signal that Belarus is looking for a little bit of wiggle room,” Yalowitz said. Belarus “is looking to try to see if relationships can be improved with the West.”
During other meetings, the Belarusian envoy discussed bilateral relations and global security, Makei said.
“We discussed ways of strengthening our bilateral relations, global security in an absolutely friendly, constructive manner. It was, indeed, a conversation of friends or partners,” Makei said.
Makei was slated to hold bilateral meetings with diplomats from Europe, Latin America, and Southeast Asia as well.
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ROBERT L. MARONIC: Should The President Have A Historian In Chief At The White House?
ROBERT L. MARONIC: Should The President Have A “Historian In Chief” At The White House? https://digitalalabamanews.com/robert-l-maronic-should-the-president-have-a-historian-in-chief-at-the-white-house/
When I was in high school I often associated the British monarchy with the “despotic” King George III and his “oppressive” rule over the thirteen original colonies until the final de facto British defeat at Yorktown, Virginia on October 19, 1781. Later, as a Roanoke College undergraduate in the late 1970s and mid-1980s, especially after taking an interesting sophomore-level survey course in British history (1603- present), my views slowly began to change.
I learned that many well-to-do colonial Americans, especially New England Yankees, showed a lot of ingratitude in not paying their fair share of taxes in 1764 (Sugar Act) and 1765 (Stamp Act) extending to the Intolerable Acts (1774) in order to pay down the huge military debt incurred against the French and their Indian allies during the French and Indian War (1754-63) or Seven Years War (1756-63). I also learned that taxation without elective representation was a legitimate American complaint in resisting British taxation.
I learned that merciful Major General Robert Ross’ burning of the White House, U.S. Capitol and three other major federal buildings on August 24, 1814 was in direct retaliation, but not proportional for the American looting and burning of the Canadian Parliament in the capital city of York (Toronto) the previous year on April 27, 1813. I surprisingly learned that Queen Victoria was a rather attractive young woman in 1843, and how it was the British Royal Navy who ultimately enforced the Monroe Doctrine during the nineteenth century.
I learned that the U.K. abolished slavery, and compensated their slave owners when they emancipated 800,000 African slaves in the Caribbean from Jamaica to Trinidad along with other slaves in South Africa and Canada on August 1, 1834. Unfortunately, the slaves were never compensated. I learned that Abraham Lincoln later emulated the British in the District of Columbia on April 16, 1862, but was unsuccessful in the state of Delaware because self-righteous and hypocritical Radical Republicans in Congress and the Delaware state legislature opposed him.
I honestly never had any interest in the British monarchy in the twentieth century except for King Edward VIII’s abdication on December 10, 1936 thanks to my mother’s fascination with the subject until I became an admirer of Princess Diana after watching her televised wedding on July 29, 1981. Her beauty, smile, fashion, compassion, and her outward maternal affection shown toward her two sons William and Harry greatly intrigued me. I became a semi-Dianaphile. Why King Charles III eventually divorced her in 1996 to marry Queen Consort Camilla was truly beyond my understanding. I am truly looking forward to the accession of King William V.
As a teenage congregant at St. John’s Episcopal church in Hagerstown, Maryland I always knew that Queen Elizabeth II was the head or “Supreme Governor” of the Church of England and “Defender of the Faith.” One of her major ecclesiastical responsibilities was to appoint or remove the Archbishop of Canterbury, who also headed the worldwide Anglican Communion of “over 85 million people in over 165 countries” along with her frequent duty of “appointing archbishops, bishops, and deans on the advice of the prime minister.”
Despite this knowledge, I was theologically and politically neither for nor against the queen in the 1970s and 1980s. I was neither an Anglophile nor an Anglophobe. However, I fully understood that the U.S. had inherited the British Empire with Pax Americana replacing Pax Britannica after 1945, and wondered if the U.K. was about to live through another long Elizabethan era, which it eventually did for seventy years from 1952 to 2022.
My previous hunch was later confirmed when Queen Elizabeth II’s mother, the 101-year-old Queen Mother, died on March 30, 2002. She truly had staying power like her eldest daughter Elizabeth, who died on September 8, and lived to be ninety-six.
I once privately met the former British Prime Minister Harold Wilson (1964-70; 1974-76) at Hollins University in October 1987 before a Green Drawing Room reception in Main Hall, and briefly talked to him in an adjacent hallway after he had given an evening lecture earlier in the Jesse DuPont Chapel. I especially remember asking him how upset London was after President Ronald Reagan ordered the invasion of the British Commonwealth nation of Grenada on October 25, 1983. I do not remember his exact answer, but he was less than thrilled about Reagan’s decision not to consult London before invading the island country. We talked briefly about a few other topics relating to his lecture, but I mainly remember him as a down-to-earth and friendly man.
It was only during the early second administration of President Bill Clinton (1997 to 2001) that I truly began to realize how much of a potential resource of political wisdom and knowledge Queen Elizabeth II was to all her prime ministers and vice versa during their weekly private meetings. Of course, the queen was also quite knowledgeable about international affairs from her frequent trips to “more than 100 countries,” diplomatic visits to “more than 150 visits to Commonwealth nations” and thousands of diplomatic audiences in London since 1952.
From February 6, 1952 until January 20, 1997, Queen Elizabeth II consulted weekly with nine prime ministers: Winston Churchill (1951-1955), Anthony Eden (1955-1957), Harold MacMillan (1957-1963), Alec Douglas-Home (1963-1964), Harold Wilson (1964-1970; 1974-1976), Edward Heath (1970-1974), James Callaghan (1976-1979), Margaret Thatcher (1979-1990) and John Major (1990-1997).
During and after Clinton’s administration the queen consulted with six additional prime ministers: Tony Blair (1997-2007), Gordon Brown (2007-2010), David Cameron (2010-2016), Theresa May (2019-2019), Boris Johnson (2019-2022) and Liz Truss (2022-present). I am confident that most of her prime ministers greatly benefited from her vast knowledge and advice in both domestic and foreign policy as she benefited from them.
What the U.S. needs is not a king or queen, but an eminent American historian or an esteemed elder statesman or stateswoman, whom the president could permanently consult with for an hour or more per week much like how Britain’s fifteen prime ministers consulted Queen Elizabeth II from 1952 to 2022. Of course, this person would have a salary, pass a security test, etc., and would preferably be a distinguished American historian possessing a vast repository of American history for both good and bad.
This person could privately and confidentially advise the president on both domestic and foreign policy outside of the jurisdiction of the Oval Office, West Wing and Cabinet. This sharing of historic knowledge between the president and his advisor could be especially helpful to a future president without much legislative or executive experience (Trump), someone with an engineering background (Hoover and Carter), a former governor with little foreign policy expertise (Bush 43) or just someone, who needs a nonpartisan second opinion for greater historical perspective (all of them). This person would have been especially valuable giving advice to President George W. Bush before he invaded Afghanistan in 2001 and Iraq in 2003.
Plus, the United States unlike Communist China does not play the “long game” rather well either politically or economically with a typical American CEO’s constant focus on short term profits. The U.S. Foreign Service is a prime example where diplomats are routinely and constantly transferred from one country to another every two to three years. This is a major hindrance to diplomatic expertise regardless of the country.
In regard to “human intelligence,” the military, irrespective of branch, still regards foreign language expertise as mostly the domain of an enlisted person and not an officer. It was also only after September 11, 2001 that college students could use their federal financial aid to study abroad. The Taliban and Al-Qaeda quickly changed that myopic attitude. A historical advisor or historian in chief could definitely provide a “long game” perspective and a valuable second opinion on foreign policy.
I suspect that my proposal would require Congressional legislation in which the House of Representatives or Senate would have to determine the job description for such a position requiring Senate confirmation. I personally would prefer this person to be an expert in American history regardless of age or gender such as someone like the deceased David McCullough, Victor Davis Hanson or Ron Chernow and certainly not a former K Street-lobbyist lawyer and Wall Street sharpie similar to the current “Counselor to the President.”
The White House already has an overabundance of self-serving and self-aggrandizing lawyers and opportunists, who are far more interested in their own careers, book deals, personal financial gain, etc. than the country’s best interest. Our next president whether Republican or Democrat could definitely use a historical advisor or historian in chief, especially to avoid future wars in our increasingly interdependent world.
As the British royal (Anglo-Norman) motto of “Honi soit qui mal y pence” states, “shamed be whoever thinks ill of it.”
– Robert L. Maronic
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Mobile Baykeeper Sues Alabama Power Over Coal Ash In Mobile-Tensaw Delta
Mobile Baykeeper Sues Alabama Power Over Coal Ash In Mobile-Tensaw Delta https://digitalalabamanews.com/mobile-baykeeper-sues-alabama-power-over-coal-ash-in-mobile-tensaw-delta/
The battle over storing coal ash on the banks of the Mobile River, in one of Alabama’s most ecologically sensitive and unique areas, is heading to federal court.
Environmental group Mobile Baykeeper filed a lawsuit today against Alabama Power Company, arguing that the utility’s plans to cover in place coal ash ponds at the James M. Barry Electric Generating Plant, about 25 miles north of Mobile, would “leach pollutants into public waters of the United States and of Alabama indefinitely,” and would be in violation of the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act, and federal coal rules enacted in 2015.
The Mobile-Tensaw Delta is an area of largely undeveloped swamp and river delta that feeds into Mobile Bay and the Gulf of Mexico. It’s been called “America’s Amazon” for its biodiversity and the huge number of wildlife species found in the bayous, swamps and streams. National conservation group American Rivers named the Mobile River as the third most endangered river in the country earlier this year, citing the coal ash at Plant Barry as the primary threat.
Mobile Baykeeper argues that keeping coal ash laden with pollutants so close to one of the state’s most valuable natural resources is not only a bad idea, but is also in violation of environmental laws.
“The Mobile-Tensaw River Delta and Mobile Bay are of incalculable value to Coastal Alabama,” Cade Kistler, Baykeeper at Mobile Baykeeper said in a news release announcing the lawsuit. “These waters are the bedrock of the economy, quality of life, and environment in the region. Alabama Power’s plan to leave its 21 million tons of coal ash on the banks of the Mobile River, delta, and just upstream of Mobile Bay allows groundwater pollution to continue indefinitely and puts Coastal Alabama at risk of a catastrophic spill like those that have happened in Tennessee and North Carolina.”
Mobile Baykeeper is represented in the case by the Southern Environmental Law Center and Richard Moore, a Trump-appointed former U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Alabama, who has called Alabama Power’s coal ash plan “a travesty.”
Alabama Power spokesperson Alyson Tucker said the company does not comment on pending legal matters as a matter of practice.
In the past, Alabama Power has defended its decision to cover in place the coal ash at Plant Barry and elsewhere, saying that method of storing coal ash is much cheaper than the other option — digging the coal ash out and moving it to a lined landfill, farther from the river.
“After extensive study and third-party analysis, Alabama Power has chosen the option to safely and securely seal its coal ash sites, including Plant Barry,” the company said last year. “To choose the best plan, we employed the experience of multiple independent firms with deep expertise in civil engineering projects that protect the environment and natural resources. These firms concluded that sealing our coal ash sites in place is a safe and effective option that our engineering plans go beyond their requirements of the law.”
Alabama Power got approval from the Alabama Department of Environmental Management last year to cover its coal ponds at Plant Barry in place, as it plans to do with all of its old coal ash lagoons. The cost of that cleanup is expected to be $3.3 billion for cover-in-place, and the company says excavation and removal would be much more costly.
The current plan is for the ash at Barry to be dewatered, compacted into a smaller area, with a larger buffer between the ash material and the river, and covering it with a synthetic liner similar to those used at modern landfills. However, the ash will not be lined from the bottom, and the Baykeeper argues that pollutants from the coal ash, including arsenic, lead, selenium and other toxins, will continue to leech into the groundwater
Alabama Power has already paid hefty fines in the past from coal ash pollutants entering groundwater.
The group provided a formal notice of intent to sue in July, as required by the Act, and filed the lawsuit today in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Alabama.
Barry Brock, Director of the Southern Environmental Law Center’s Alabama office, said that while utilities in Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina and Georgia have announced plans to excavate coal ash ponds in low-lying or coastal areas, Alabama Power has stuck to its initial determination to cover the ash in place.
“Plant Barry is the only coal ash lagoon of a major utility left in a low-lying coastal area of the Southeast that is not already cleaned up or on track to be recycled or removed to safe storage, away from waterways,” Brock said in a news release. “It is past time that Alabama Power faced up to the fact that leaving wet, polluting coal ash on the banks of the Mobile River is not a long-term solution — it’s a disaster.”
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Biden Announces New Travel Rules To Fight 'unnecessary Hidden Fees' | CNN Politics
Biden Announces New Travel Rules To Fight 'unnecessary Hidden Fees' | CNN Politics https://digitalalabamanews.com/biden-announces-new-travel-rules-to-fight-unnecessary-hidden-fees-cnn-politics/
Timothy Clary/AFP/Getty Images
CNN —
President Joe Biden announced new rules Monday requiring airlines and travel sites to be more transparent about additional fees customers could be charged, fighting what he called “unnecessary hidden fees” that were “weighing down family budgets.”
Under the proposed rule, airlines and travel sites “would have to disclose up front – the first time an airfare is displayed – any fees charged to sit with your child, for changing or canceling your flight, and for checked or carry-on baggage,” according to a draft news release by the Department of Transportation shared with CNN.
Biden argued that the new regulations would lead to increased competition between carriers.
“Capitalism without competition isn’t capitalism,” he said. “It’s exploitation.”
For example, Biden said, some airlines were charging fees for families with children to sit together. Some carriers were charging customers flight change fees – even for flights canceled by the airline.
“They cancel on you, and you have to pay a fee to rebook,” Biden said. “Come on, man. It’s just simply not fair. It’s not fair.”
Biden’s comments came during a meeting of the White House Competition Council. Biden said the group was also looking at lowering or eliminating bank overdraft fees and cell phone carrier termination fees.
Passengers deserve to know the true cost of their flights before they buy a ticket, Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said in a statement on Sunday.
“This new proposed rule would require airlines to be transparent with customers about the fees they charge, which will help travelers make informed decisions and save money,” he said.
Airlines for America, a trade group that represents major US air carriers, told CNN in a statement: “A4A member passenger airlines – which are fierce competitors – already offer transparency to consumers from first search to touchdown. US airlines are committed to providing the highest quality of service, which includes clarity regarding prices, fees and ticket terms.”
“A4A passenger carriers provide details regarding the breakdown of airfares on their websites, providing consumers clarity regarding the total cost of a ticket. This includes transparency regarding taxes and government fees on airline tickets, which account for more than 20% of many domestic one-stop, roundtrip tickets.”
Tens of thousands of flight cancellations and delays this summer prompted Buttigieg to direct the Department of Transportation to publish a new online dashboard to allow passengers to find comparative information on what each of the large US airlines provides to passengers when delays or cancellations are caused by factors within the airlines’ control. Several major US carriers updated their policies in response to calls from DOT for more transparency. Airlines have struggled with staffing shortages and summer weather.
Monday’s meeting was the third gathering of the White House Competition Council, which was formed last fall and is charged with promoting competition across the US economy and lowering costs for American families. The group consists of eight Cabinet members and the chairs of seven independent agencies.
Meeting participants included Buttigieg, Secretaries Janet Yellen of Treasury, Lloyd Austin of Defense, Tom Vilsack of Agriculture, Xavier Becerra of Health and Human Services, Director of the Office of Management and Budget Shalanda Young and Chair of the Council of Economic Advisers Cecilia Rouse.
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