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Key Moments From Donald Trump https://digitalalabamanews.com/key-moments-from-donald-trump/ Donald Trump spoke at a rally in Michigan on Saturday night to bolster Republican candidates in the state. The former president began with a message of support for those affected by Hurricane Ian before quickly moving on to some of his often-mentioned issues, including repeating his baseless claims about the 2020 election being stolen from him. Speaking at the Macomb County Community College Sports and Expo Center in Warren for about an hour and 40 minutes, Trump hit out at the FBI for executing a search warrant at his Mar-a-Lago home and called the House select committee investigating the January 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol “sick, sick, people.” He also had praise for Ginni Thomas, wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, and teased a 2024 run for the White House. Here, Newsweek rounds up some key moments from the rally. Former President Donald Trump speaks during a Save America rally on October 1, 2022 in Warren, Michigan. Trump has endorsed Republican gubernatorial candidate Tudor Dixon, Secretary of State candidate Kristina Karamo, Attorney General candidate Matthew DePerno, and Republican businessman John James ahead of the November midterm election. EMILY ELCONIN/GETTY Hurricane Ian “Before we begin, I want to send our profound sympathy and our immense support to everyone back in Florida, Georgia, the Carolinas, who are struck by this brutal wrath of the hurricane. Not a good hurricane, this was a big one,” Trump said. “We just wanna say hello to everybody in that area and we wanna say we love you very much and we do… please know our hearts are with you and our prayers are with you.” ‘Great woman’ Trump praised Ginni Thomas after she reiterated her belief that the 2020 election was stolen earlier this week. “As we talk about and think of the rigged and stolen election of 2020—the presidential election, rigged and stolen—I would like to thank a great woman named Ginni Thomas. Do you know Ginni Thomas? Great woman,” he said. “She says that she still believes the 2020 election was stolen… She didn’t say, ‘Uh well, I’d like not to get involved, of course it was a wonderful election’… She didn’t wilt under pressure like so many others that are weak people and stupid people, because once they wilt, they end up being a witness for a long time.” ‘Cheat like dogs’ Trump lashed out at Democrats, saying they can only win elections when they cheat. “The way they win is to cheat in elections. They cheat like dogs,” he said. At another point in his remarks, he said the greatest threat to the U.S. are the “sick, sinister, and evil people from within our country.” He added: “You know the people I’m talking about, you see them all the time lie, disinformation, cheat, steal.” Trump goes all in on his war against democracy by claiming that Democrats can only win elections when they cheat, “The way they win is to cheat in elections they cheat like dogs.” Trump then called for same day only voting with paper ballots and the elimination of early voting. pic.twitter.com/VfSBPDWIbL — Sarah Reese Jones (@PoliticusSarah) October 2, 2022 ‘Even after birth’ Trump suggested that “radical” Democrats support abortion “even after birth.” “The radical Democrats believe in abortion and really right from the moment of birth, and even after birth. You can’t let this happen,” he said. “There’s no country in the world that wants what these crazy people want. They are radical. They want to rip babies from the wombs.” Gretchen Whitmer Trump slammed Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, who was a critic of his during his presidency “Michigan, you need to dump this wild-eyed extremist Gretchen Whitmer and put Tudor Dixon in the governor’s mansion,” Trump said. “Gretchen Whitmer is one of the most radical, most sinister governors in America, you know that. She cruelly imposed the most brutal lockdowns in the entire country, causing Michigan to lose more jobs than any other state in the union.” Letitia James Trump continued to attack New York attorney general Letitia James, who recently filed a lawsuit accusing Trump and his company of fraud. At Saturday’s rally, Trump called her “racist” and “one of the worst” attorneys general in the country. At one point, he also played a video featuring clips of commentators criticizing James. ‘Heading for the exits’ Paul Egan, a reporter with the Detroit Free Press, reported that there appeared to be “ample” standing room in the venue minutes before Trump began speaking. Egan added that there was a “steady stream of attendees heading for the exits since about the 15-minute mark of this now hour-long and ongoing speech.” Read More…

Polls Put Lula On Brink Of Comeback Victory Over Bolsonaro In Brazil https://digitalalabamanews.com/polls-put-lula-on-brink-of-comeback-victory-over-bolsonaro-in-brazil/ Brazil’s former leftwing president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva is on the brink of an astonishing political comeback, with polls suggesting he is poised to defeat his far-right rival Jair Bolsonaro in Sunday’s election. Eve of election polls suggested Lula was within a whisker of securing the overall majority of votes that would guarantee him a first-round victory against Brazil’s radical incumbent, whose calamitous Covid response, assault on the Amazon and foul-mouthed threats to democracy have alienated more than half of the population. “I’m going to win these elections so I can give the people the right to be happy again. The people need, deserve and have the right … to be happy once more,” Lula, 76, told journalists on Saturday during a visit to São Paulo – one of the election’s three key battlegrounds, alongside the states of Rio de Janeiro and Minas Gerais. José Roberto de Toledo, a political columnist for the news website UOL, said Lula would undoubtedly come out on top when 156 million citizens voted in what is considered Brazil’s most important election in decades. Pollsters give the leftist veteran a 14-point lead over Bolsonaro, the hardline nationalist who retains the support of about a third of voters, including many evangelical Christians and members of Brazil’s largely white social elites. But Toledo feared Lula might fall just short of the 50% required to avoid a fractious runoff against Bolsonaro on 30 October, opening the door to a month of uncertainty and political violence. “I think what’s more likely is that there will be a second round,” Toledo said, warning of “terrible” consequences if that occurred, given the wave of attacks and murders that had marred the lead-up to the election. “If there’s a second round it will be much worse than it has been thus far. It would mean four weeks of gore,” Toledo warned, adding: “I hope I’m wrong.” If Lula does prevail, it would represent a once unthinkable political resurrection for a former factory worker and union leader who became Brazil’s first working-class president in 2002. Lula stepped down after two terms in 2010 with approval ratings close to 90%. But the following decade saw the Workers’ party (PT) he helped found embroiled in a tangle of corruption scandals and accused of plunging Brazil into a brutal recession. Lula’s apparently irremediable downfall was cemented in 2018 when he was jailed on corruption charges and barred from running in that year’s election, which Bolsonaro went on to win. Lula’s 580-day imprisonment seemed a melancholy end to a fairytale life that saw him rise from rural poverty to become one of the world’s most popular leaders. But Lula was freed in late 2019 and his convictions were quashed on the grounds that he was unfairly tried by Sérgio Moro, a rightwing judge who later took a job in Bolsonaro’s cabinet. Lula, who first sought the presidency in 1989, announced his sixth presidential run in May, vowing to beat Bolsonaro by staging “the greatest peaceful revolution the world has ever seen”. A Lula victory would represent the latest in a series of triumphs for a resurgent Latin American left, which saw the ex-guerrilla Gustavo Petro claim power in Colombia in June and the former student leader Gabriel Boric elected Chile’s president last December. Since 2018, leftists have taken power across the region, from Argentina to Peru and Mexico. Lula supporters are thrilled by their leader’s rebirth and his pledges to wage war on poverty and hunger in a country where 33 million people struggle to eat. During his two terms, Lula won international plaudits for using a commodities boom to bankroll welfare programmes that helped tens of millions escape poverty. “After he left power everything went to shit,” said Iracy Batista, a 58-year-old homemaker who was among thousands of supporters at a recent Lula rally in Rio. “Lula’s one of the people, just like us … All Bolsonaro knows how to do is swear at people,” agreed her friend, Clélia Maria da Silva. Environmental and Indigenous activists are hopeful that Lula, who has pledged to fight deforestation and stamp out illegal gold mining, will halt the assault on the Amazon that has unfolded under Bolsonaro. “With Bolsonaro we die, with Lula we live,” said the Indigenous rights group Opi, which was co-founded by the recently murdered activist Bruno Pereira. Such optimism is tempered by nerves over how Bolsonaro, a former soldier notorious for admiring dictators such as Chile’s General Augusto Pinochet, will react if he loses. Some fear the Trump-admiring populist could try to incite turmoil similar to the 6 January insurrection in the US. Bolsonaro has repeatedly questioned Brazil’s electronic voting system and refused to confirm whether he will accept defeat. Steven Levitsky, a Harvard University Latin America specialist and the author of How Democracies Die, said he was troubled by the possibility of violence or upheaval in the coming days and weeks. “In the US, one factor that prevented us from sliding into an even deeper crisis is that the armed forces were unambiguously not going to intervene on Trump’s behalf. I think the military will also not intervene in Brazil, but it’s less certain,” he said. Challenged over whether he was plotting a coup during a televised debate on Thursday, Bolsonaro declined to respond. He has painted the election as a battle between the upstanding Christian right and the evil and corrupt heretic left and has claimed, without evidence, that Lula will close churches if elected. Benedita da Silva, a PT congresswoman and Lula ally, said such divisive rhetoric and an explosion of fake news meant it was crucial the election be decided now. “We can’t afford to drag this out any more … Are we going to have another month of agony and all this insanity that he provokes?” she asked. “This country’s democracy is at stake … it is our duty to win on 2 October.” For all the pre-election angst, Levitsky said there was also cause for optimism over the resilience of Brazil’s young democracy, reestablished in 1985 after 21 years of military rule. “People add Brazil to the list of cases of democratic back-sliding in recent years like the Philippines and Indonesia, El Salvador, India and Hungary. But it’s not,” he said. “Brazilians elected an autocrat – maybe the most egregiously autocratic of all the autocratic leaning presidents that have been elected in recent years. But so far Brazilian democracy has held … Four years after the election of Bolsonaro, Brazilian democracy is not dead. That’s good news.” Read More…

TRUMP ON THE STUMP: Former President Rallies In Michigan https://digitalalabamanews.com/trump-on-the-stump-former-president-rallies-in-michigan/ CLICK TO HEAR COMMENTS FROM MARQUETTE GOP DOREEN TALAKO https://media.socastsrm.com/wordpress/wp-content/blogs.dir/1906/files/2022/10/doreen.mp3 Former President Donald Trump rallied in Michigan Saturday night, trying to drum up support for Michigan’s Republican gubernatorial, attorney general, and secretary of state candidates ahead of next month’s mid-term and statewide elections. A standing-room (and sitting-room) only crowd packed into Macomb Community College’s sports arena in downstate Warren for the 102-minute long speech. Trump touted his spending for a new Soo Lock, and for the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative in the speech. “Without me, you wouldn’t have had that money,” Trump said. “They didn’t want to give it to you, the Democrats. We fought for Michigan. We won for Michigan. And this November, we’re going to fight and win for Michigan once again.” Trump says Michigan Republicans need to mobilize on November to “sweep these three women (Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, Attorney General Dana Nessel, and Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson) the hell out of office”. The Republican candidates, Tudor Dixon for governor, Matt DePerno for attorney general, and Kristina Karamo for secretary of state, are all trailing in the polls. “Frankly, your vote is the only thing that can stop it,” the former president pleaded. “So on November 8th, Michigan patriots have to shatter every record. Because they cheat like hell, these people. They cheat like hell.” And Trump was just getting started. “You have to defy every prediction,” he said. “You have to swamp the Gretchen Whitmer and the radical Democrats with a colossal Red Republican Wave.” Trump says everything costs more under Democratic President Joe Biden, and he highlighted that as a reason to vote Republican “in every single race on the entire ticket in November”. “Since I left office, the average Michigan family is paying over $107 per month for food,” Trump said. “Think of that. Seventy-eight dollars more per month for housing. Two hundred and 75 dollars more for transportation on a monthly basis.” The former president, as he has done in multiple other appearances across the country, teased a possible 2024 presidential election run. “I ran twice, and I won twice,” Trump said, referring to his 2016 win over Democrat Hillary Clinton and his 2020 race against Joe Biden that he still believes was stolen from him through widespread fraud. “And now, we just might have to do it again! First, we need a big Republican wave in November, And then, well, I’ll just say, you’ll be really happy (with his decision on a 2024 run).” The Radio Results Network was the only Upper Peninsula reporter on hand for the event, which also included speeches from Michigan Republicans and conservative advocates. Besides RRN News, the Upper Peninsula was also represented at Saturday night’s Republican rally by Marquette County Republican Party Chair Doreen Talako. “We all need to vote red, period,” Talako said. “We need to bring people to their senses and vote for Republicans. “We need to support these (statewide) candidates both financially and get out, and go door-to-door, and make phone calls. The only way we’re going to win is if we spread the word.” “Is there anything you’d rather be doing on a late Saturday night than going to a Trump rally,” Trump asked the cheering crowd. Talako answered with a big “no”. She says she has been at 15 Trump rallies, and added: “the energy level is always extremely high. Everybody has a good time here. There’s never any problems.” Besides the photos you see here, there are many more on our Radio Results Network Facebook page. Read More…

LEE: No Woman No Cry https://digitalalabamanews.com/lee-no-woman-no-cry/ Everything’s going to be alright. The people of Auburn — the persistent people of Auburn — striped the stadium. A father and a daughter with an orange-and-blue bow in her hair lined the railing on the ramp, expecting another wild LSU rivalry game and getting one. A husband helped his wife with a cane down the steps in section 11 before the game, and the fine people of Auburn cleared the way with a smile. The sun shined in Auburn, until the sun went down, when two students waved flags behind the tubas above the band, the American flag and the AU, during another raucous game under the lights in the loveliest village. Fall is coming and the people of Auburn love the fall: The leaves will turn brown and fall, skidding across the street on a chilly, windy day, and this will make them happy. They’ll still throw football. They’ll still tailgate. The boys know they only get so many of these days every year, and the girls already have their outfits planned through the Arkansas game. Everything’s going to be alright. Auburn will move on soon without Bryan Harsin. If his players have had a special bond with him, it’ll come out, and they’ll always have each other’s number. If he was a prick, it’ll come out. If he was a prick as a result of problems and pressures in his life, the fine people will help him, and we’ll learn and we’ll grow and we’ll know life is about more than football — it’s about the people we share football with. I try not to speak for others in this space, but: Allen Greene, if this gets to you, you would be welcome at any tailgate in Auburn, offered food and a drink and a squeeze on your shoulder and a, “How you doing?” Auburn is moving forward but there’s a reason coaches keep their houses in Auburn, because the fine people of Auburn move forward together. Moving forward means change and improvement and tough conversations: This demagogue garbage has got to go. Next time, there’s no sense splintering yourselves, demanding obedience to some coach just to feed some stupid old idea of dictatorship. The Junction Boys are dead and those days are long gone. Auburn must not be so bitter to their own: If that’s the legacy Bo Nix leaves at Auburn — that next time they’ll be nicer, that next time they won’t think so much of the Auburn Family that they hold one of the Auburn Family’s own to such impossible standards — then I think he’d be OK with that legacy. Anders Carlson is not having a senior season as good as his brother, and that’s OK. It’s OK. On that ramp, after an unfortunate turn of momentum at the end of the first half, a woman threw up her hands in exasperation and said, “Auburn’s gonna Auburn.” Auburn’s gonna Auburn, and everything’s gonna be alright. The fine, persistent people of Auburn push forward together. Be the first to know Get local news delivered to your inbox! Read More…

Trump – Who Wrecked His Own Airline – Used His Grand Rally Final To Bashing The Industry In A Bizarre Diatribe: 'The Hell They Don't Know What They're Doing' – The Bharat Express News https://digitalalabamanews.com/trump-who-wrecked-his-own-airline-used-his-grand-rally-final-to-bashing-the-industry-in-a-bizarre-diatribe-the-hell-they-dont-know-what-theyre-doing-the-bharat-express-n/ Former President Donald Trump speaks at a Save America rally on Oct. 1, 2022 in Warren, Michigan. Trump has backed Republican governor candidate Tudor Dixon, Secretary of State nominee Kristina Karamo, Attorney General’s candidate Matthew DePerno and Republican businessman John James ahead of November’s midterm elections.Photo by Emily Elconin/Getty Images Trump targeted the airline industry at a Republican campaign rally in Michigan on Saturday. “We are a nation whose once-respected airports are a dirty, busy mess,” he said. Trump was at the rally to support GOP candidates Tudor Dixon, Matt DePerno and Kristina Karamo. Former President Donald Trump beat up the airline industry during a campaign rally in Michigan on Saturday. Trump visited Macomb County to support Republican candidates, including Tudor Dixon, who is running against Democratic administration Gretchen Whitmer. Dixon, a Trump-backed candidate, is currently trailing Whitmer in the latest polls. During the hour-long speech, Trump addressed his usual list of grievances and also thanked conservative activist Ginni Thomas for telling the House Select Committee on Jan. 6 that they believed the 2020 election had been stolen from him. At the conclusion of his speech, Trump attempted to perform a dramatic lecture on a piece of music vaguely linked to QAnon. After talking for a few minutes about violent crime, he took an abrupt detour to pick airlines and airports, saying those who work in commercial aviation have no idea when flights will arrive on time. “We are a nation whose once-respected airports are a filthy, overcrowded mess where you sit for hours and then be told the plane won’t take off,” Trump said. “It’s a country where ticket prices are skyrocketing. They don’t have the pilots to fly the plane. They don’t want or seek qualified air traffic controllers. And they don’t know what the hell they are doing,” he said. Last summer was a chaotic time for air travel as thousands of flights were canceled or delayed due to high demand and staff shortages. Trump has criticized the industry before. In 2019, after an Ethiopian Airlines flight crashed and killed 157 people, he tweeted that airlines have “become far too complex to fly” and that “pilots are no longer needed, but rather computer scientists from MIT,” according to MSNBC. Conversely, he has also taken credit for positive news from the airline industry. When a report showed that there were zero fatalities in commercial passenger jets in 2017, Trump attributed it to his own doing, tweeting: “Since taking office I have been very strict on commercial aviation. Good news – it was just reported that there are Zero deaths in 2017, the best and safest year ever!” Trump’s interest in aviation may stem from his brief stint as an airline owner. In 1989, he raised $365 million to buy the Eastern Air Shuttle, which consisted of 21 Boeing 727s that Trump spent $1 million each to renovate. After 18 months, Trump lost more than $125 million but claimed he hadn’t lost money on the shuttle, telling The Boston Globe: “I’m smart. I left at a good time.” The news channel reported that, after missing a $1.1 million interest payment, Trump asked Citibank to defer future payments. Because he had influence over his creditors, Trump was no longer responsible for the $245 million in loans, and of the $135 million he personally guaranteed, at least $100 million was waived, according to the outlet. He ran away from it in 1992. Trump representatives did not respond to Insider’s request for comment. Read the original article on Business Insider Read More…

The Scariest Part Of The Proud Boys Isn’t The Violence https://digitalalabamanews.com/the-scariest-part-of-the-proud-boys-isnt-the-violence/ The Proud Boys, a group that HuffPost reporter Andy Campbell calls “a far right street gang hell-bent on political violence for GOP causes,” are known for immersing themselves in, and being instigators of, political violence, but according to Campbell, author of We Are Proud Boys, that’s not the scariest thing about them. “While they were on this parade of violence, they’re also building these relationships in the GOP, and positioning themselves as Trump’s de facto enforcement arm,” Campbell explains to The New Abnormal podcast host Andy Levy in this bonus episode. “They wanted to do what crusty old white Republicans won’t do and get out in the street and fight. And the GOP, especially the Trumpian GOP, was ready to embrace that because Trump loves having people in the street for him, especially if they’re fighting for him.” America got an unseasoned taste of this when Trump called out the group by name during a 2020 debate and Andy Levy wonders how the former president even found out about them. “Roger Stone was a huge part of it,” says Campbell. “I mean, he has been friends with [Proud Boys leader] Enrique Tarrio since back in, at least, 2017, and he admitted to me in an interview that he had been advising the Proud Boys politically as Enrique Tario pushes them to become more political, run for office, throw their weight behind GOP officials who share their ideology.” That ideology, Campbell points out, is still rooted in white supremacy. Yet the group is so normalized, which he sees as a very bad sign. Want to keep closer tabs on the far-right? Subscribe to the Fever Dreams podcast, hosted by right-wing Daily Beast reporters Kelly Weill and Will Sommer, on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and Stitcher. “I honestly think that it is an entire machine that sort of normalizes this. You have the GOP embracing the Proud Boys. You have far-right media not only celebrating them, but continuously blaming Antifa. I mean, Tucker Carlson still maintains that Antifa did Jan. 6. And so you have this whole machine supporting it, and that ends up translating to everyday Americans also supporting it,” adds Campbell. “I was talking to a reporter, he told me about his time in DC right before Jan. 6, and he said he could see the shift from just Trump rhetoric, just Fox News rhetoric to everyday people when he got punched in the face by a Proud Boy in December before Jan. 6 and he looked out into the crowd of just regular MAGA folks and a woman who he said could have been his mom turns to him and says, ‘You deserved that.’” Speaking of Jan. 6, Campbell also explains to Andy Levy how the group members charged with sedition are actually turning on one another. But that doesn’t mean the group is getting any weaker. Plus! In this episode, actor Paul F. Tompkins, known for There Will Be Blood and BoJack Horseman, explains why he stays away from politics in comedy, and that the MAGA-aligned actors who complain about being blackmailed aren’t being shut out—they just suck. Listen to this episode or other episodes of The New Abnormal podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon and Stitcher. Read More…

News Live: Telangana CM KCR Unveils Mahatma Gandhi Statue At Gandhi Hospital In Hyderabad https://digitalalabamanews.com/news-live-telangana-cm-kcr-unveils-mahatma-gandhi-statue-at-gandhi-hospital-in-hyderabad/ Home National News Live: Telangana CM KCR unveils Mahatma Gandhi statue at Gandhi Hospital in Hyderabad updated: Oct 02 2022, 13:10 ist Track live news updates from India and from the rest of the world right here with DH. 13:09 Congress has become only a brother-sister party: JP Nadda Nation is paramount for us. At the same time, if it has the ability to take local aspirations along, it is in the Bharatiya Janata Party and no other party is like it. All parties have shrunk, Congress has become only a brother-sister party.We are fortunate that we are the biggest party in the world. BJP is a party of ideas, we did not change colors for the chair. Our aim is- Sabka Saath, Sabka Vikas, Sabka Vishwas and everyone’s effort. 12:40 One terrorist killed in the encounter that started at the Baskuchan area of Shopian, Kashmir One terrorist killed in the encounter that started at the Baskuchan area of Shopian. Search operation going on. Further details shall follow.Killed terrorist identified as Naseer Ahmad Bhat of Nowpora Baskuchan Shopian, linked with LeT terror outfit. Incriminating materials, arms & ammunition incl AK rifle recovered. He was involved in several terror crimes & recently escaped from an encounter: ADGP Kashmir 12:39 Assam CM Himanta Biswa Sarma pays tribute to Mahatma Gandhi on Gandhi Jayanti 12:11 Telangana CM KCR unveils Mahatma Gandhi statue at Gandhi Hospital in Hyderabad 11:22 Bihar CM Nitish Kumar and Deputy CM Tejashwi Yadav pay floral tributes to Mahatma Gandhi 11:21 Gangster Lawrence Bishnoi’s aide Deepak Tinu brought in private vehicle by police to Mansa’s CIA staff office escaped from custody early today Gangster Lawrence Bishnoi’s aide Deepak Tinu, brought in private vehicle by police on remand from Kapurthala jail to Mansa’s CIA staff office escaped from custody early today. Accused Deepak had to be probed in connection with Siddhu Moosewala murder case: Mansa Police 11:20 A threat email warning of a bomb on an IndiGo flight was received at Mumbai airport yesterday. During the inspection of the flight, nothing was found. Further investigation underway: Mumbai Police 10:11 Injured arrives hospital in Kanpur after a tractor-trolley overturned and fell into a pond near a village in Kanpur district 10:10 Delhi Lt Governor VK Saxena pays homage to Mahatma Gandhi on the occasion of his birth anniversary, at Rajghat in New Delhi Credit: PTI Photo 10:09 Delhi Dy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia pays homage to Mahatma Gandhi on the occasion of his birth anniversary, at Rajghat in New Delhi Credit: PTI photo 10:07 Congress interim President Sonia Gandhi pays homage to Mahatma Gandhi on the occasion of his birth anniversary, at Rajghat in New Delhi Credit: PTI Photo 10:06 Vice-chairman of Gandhi Smriti Vijay Goel pays homage to Mahatma Gandhi on the occasion of his birth anniversary, at Rajghat in New Delhi Credit: PTI Photo 10:04 Rahul Gandhi visits Khadi Village Industries at Badnavalu in memory of Bapu. 10:03 Encounter has started at the Baskuchan area of Shopian. Police and security forces are on the job. Further details shall follow: J&K Police 09:35 Rahul Gandhi offers floral tribute to Mahatma Gandhi statue at Khadi Gramodyog, Karnataka 09:30 EAM S Jaishankar performs aarti, takes part in Navratri festivities in Gujarat 09:22 Day 25 of Bharat Jodo Yatra under way Day 25 of #BharatJodoYatra is Gandhi Jayanti as well. Today morning @RahulGandhi is at a Khadi Cooperative in Badanavalu village near Mysuru, that started production in 1932. The Mahatma came to this village in 1927 and in 1932 as well, and helped establish the cooperative. pic.twitter.com/pXMHQhKWeL — Jairam Ramesh (@Jairam_Ramesh) October 2, 2022 09:19 India records 3,375 new Covid19 cases; active caseload at 37,444 09:06 We’re deeply concerned by China’s aggressive, escalatory, and destabilising military activities in the Taiwan Strait and elsewhere in the Indo-Pacific: US Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III 08:47 UN chief Guterres urges people to shun violence on Mahatma Gandhi’s 153rd birth anniversary 08:44 Kaziranga National Park & Tiger Reserve opens for tourists for the season 2022-23 from today 08:25 President Droupadi Murmu pays tribute to Mahatma Gandhi 08:12 Vice President Jagdeep Dhankar pays tribute to Mahatma Gandhi 08:09 Rahul Gandhi offers tributes to Mahatma Gandhi 08:07 08:06 PM Modi pays tribute to Mahatma Gandhi on birth anniversary Paying homage to Mahatma Gandhi on #GandhiJayanti. This Gandhi Jayanti is even more special because India is marking Azadi Ka Amrit Mahotsav. May be always live up to Bapu’s ideals. I also urge you all to purchase Khadi and handicrafts products as a tribute to Gandhi Ji. pic.twitter.com/5icVnnRwwd — Narendra Modi (@narendramodi) October 2, 2022 08:02 At least 127 dead in Indonesia football match violence At least 127 people died at a football stadium in Indonesia late Saturday when fans invaded the pitch and police responded with tear gas, triggering a stampede, officials said. Read more 08:01 Trump likely to announce 2024 presidency bid within weeks Former President Donald Trump “wants his old job back” and will announce within weeks his run for the presidency in 2024. Trump is eager to get back to the White House, and wants to announce his 2024 run in the coming weeks. Read more Read More…

Putin Has Left The World No Other Option But Regime Change https://digitalalabamanews.com/putin-has-left-the-world-no-other-option-but-regime-change/ Vladimir Putin must go. His demented Kremlin speech Friday, during a ceremony in which he feebly asserted Russia was annexing portions of Ukraine, made the strongest case for the necessity of regime change in Moscow that any world leader has yet to make. But it has been clear the Russian dictator must be removed from office for a long time now. It has been clear because Putin’s actions and rhetoric demonstrate day in and day out that Ukraine can never be secure as long as he remains in office. It has been clear because none of Russia’s neighbors can be secure with a megalomaniacal lunatic next door who speaks of Russian empire and constantly threatens to rewrite the borders of sovereign states. It has been clear because the world can’t be stable as long as the man who controls the planet’s largest stockpile of nuclear weapons is one whose power is unchecked at home, who shows such contempt for both international law and human decency, and whose ambitions are so untethered to reality. Justice also requires that Putin leave office. He is a serial war criminal, one of the worst the world has seen in the modern era. He has laid waste to a sovereign nation. He is responsible for the deaths of tens of thousands. He has embraced the language and practice of genocide. His armies have committed war crimes. Mass graves attest to his brutality. What is more, his crimes are not limited to the human suffering he has unleashed upon Ukraine. Other violations of fundamental laws and myriad atrocities can be traced to decisions he has made—from Russia’s leveling of Grozny in Chechnya to Russia’s active support for and participation in horrors in Syria; from the invasion of Georgia to Putin’s murderous campaign against dissidents within his own country. Putin, for years, has provided evidence not only to international prosecutors but to every sentient being on the planet that he is not a legitimate leader. He does not deserve to be swathed in the protections normally accorded to foreign heads of state. He has no more claim on them than did past monsters—from Hitler to Saddam to Gadhafi, from Pol Pot to Milosevic. The dead of Bucha and Melitipol or Izyum make that case with their absence. So do the victims of Russian torture, of bombed hospitals, schools and train stations, of mass kidnapping, and of unceasing terror being visited by Russian missiles, artillery and troops upon innocents—victims of the misfortune of living next door to one of history’s most repulsive miscreants. No one could listen to Putin’s rambling Friday rant and draw any conclusion other than the fact that the longer Putin remains in office, the greater the damage he will do. Russian President Vladimir Putin with Ukrainian regional separatist leaders attends the annexation ceremony of four Ukrainian regions at the Grand Kremlin Palace, Sept. 30, 2022 in Moscow, Russia. Contributor/Getty Images If the absurd spectacle of a “signing ceremony” asserting Russian control of Ukrainian territory featuring Kremlin stooges and nationalistic chants did not chill observers to the bone, then Putin’s belligerent language condemning “the enemy” in the West and his intimations that he might be within his rights to use nuclear weapons certainly should. He mocked international law. He condemned U.S. “satanism.” He called on Ukraine to negotiate but said that the fate of “Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson” was not on the table, that they would be parts of Russia “forever.” When President Joe Biden said of Putin in May, “For God’s sake, this man cannot remain in power,” it was followed by a swift “clarification” from the White House that the president “was not discussing Putin’s power in Russia, or regime change.” But as we have gradually come to learn, Biden’s seemingly spontaneous comments on crucial issues of international policy to which he has devoted decades of study—whether they concern Putin or Taiwan—are not gaffes. They instead are expressions of common sense, acknowledgements of reality that diplomats may wish were unspoken, that cannot be the “official” policy of the U.S., but that are signs that the president understands clearly the reality on the ground and U.S. interests. That is good because tiptoeing around the threat posed by Putin, hoping that accommodating him would lead to moderation in his behavior certainly has not worked. Indeed with every respectful, restrained response to Putin’s aggression or abuses, we have only seen an escalation of his offenses. The “measured” responses to his aggression of the Bush or the Obama years did not work. Nor did the slavering obsequiousness of former President Donald Trump. Indeed, the ostpolitik of Angela Merkel and the vacillations of French President Emmanuel Macron and other European leaders have actually aided and empowered Putin. No doubt Putin’s allies—like the talking heads at Fox News, the leaders of the MAGA caucus on Capitol Hill, and Putinistas across Europe—will warn that to even speak of the need to remove Putin from office will provoke him, perhaps even lead him to unleash nuclear weapons in Ukraine or against the West. How do we know that? Because that was the response to Biden’s moment of public honesty and realism on this issue. Many others, including some well-respected foreign policy experts, suggested we should not “corner” Putin with a public stance demanding his removal. Some of those experts correctly observe that the U.S. has a checkered history seeking regime change. They argue that there are no good alternatives to Putin, and so getting rid of him might produce an even worse outcome, whether that is the chaos associated with a leadership void or a more dangerous leader. But go back and listen to his Friday speech. It makes clear that we are well past the point where the dangers of his remaining in power are greater than the dangers that might be caused by his fall. Further, removing the world’s autocrats and thug heads of state has actually not generally produced worse successors. That was certainly true in the cases of Hitler, Mussolini, Milosevic, Pol Pot, and many others. “ …tiptoeing around the threat posed by Putin, hoping that accommodating him would lead to moderation in his behavior certainly has not worked. ” Next, acknowledging that Putin must go is not the same as making regime change a matter of public policy. For governments it can (and largely should) remain an unexpressed goal. That said, certain sanctions imposed on Russia should remain in place until Russia changes key policies and positions that are indelibly associated with Putin, which in effect will mean until Putin is gone. Certain defensive postures of the west should remain in place until the threat from Russia has abated. We can do more than we currently are to help covertly support Russia’s opposition, especially those whose values align with ours. Perhaps most importantly, we can ensure that any sort of lasting Russian victory in Ukraine is not an option and that Putin’s terms will never be met, his aggression never rewarded. With such policies, we can actively encourage the people of Russia to recognize that their country will not have a future as long as Putin remains in power. Putin is assisting on this front. By undertaking a massive military conscription campaign, one that may call up as many as 1 million troops, who will then be under-equipped, under-trained, and likely victims of a war they did not seek against neighbors who are not in any ways their enemies, he has already lit the fuse on a potential national backlash. Millions and millions of Russians will increasingly feel the pain and loss associated with Putin’s war in ways that they did not before, in ways that Russian propaganda cannot hide or dress up. Protests in Russia are already growing bolder. Celebrities and business leaders are speaking out more clearly. How long will it be before the security services that surround and protect Putin begin to see the fact that he is a threat to their well-being, to their lives, to the futures of their families? Accepting the reality that Putin must go is just common sense at this point. Recognizing that reality, we should embrace policies that encourage the conditions that will make it come to pass. We should also prepare for the consequences of such a change and make sure to send Moscow the message that Russia’s neighbors and the community of nations welcome a more responsible Russia—while also making clear that we are ready to defend ourselves against one that makes the mistake of continuing (or making worse) Putin’s policies. As for making the case to the Russian people that they must act, we need not do that. Putin, with speeches like Friday’s and self-inflicted catastrophes like Ukraine, is already doing that far more persuasively than we could hope to do. Read More…

Storm Updates: Florida Death Toll Climbs As Ian Dumps Rain On The Mid-Atlantic https://digitalalabamanews.com/storm-updates-florida-death-toll-climbs-as-ian-dumps-rain-on-the-mid-atlantic/ FORT MYERS, Fla. — As Hurricane Ian charged toward the western coast of Florida this week, the warnings from forecasters were growing more urgent. Life-threatening storm surge threatened to deluge the region from Tampa all the way to Fort Myers. But while officials along much of that coastline responded with orders to evacuate on Monday, emergency managers in Lee County held off, pondering during the day whether to tell people to flee, but then deciding to see how the forecast evolved overnight. Peak storm surge forecast Peak storm surge forecast Peak storm surge forecast The delay, an apparent violation of the meticulous evacuation strategy the county had crafted for just such an emergency, may have contributed to catastrophic consequences that are still coming into focus as the death toll continues to climb. Dozens have died overall in the state, officials said, as Ian, downgraded to a post-tropical cyclone, moved through North Carolina and Virginia on Saturday, at one point leaving nearly 400,000 electricity customers in those states without power. About 35 of Florida’s storm-related deaths have been identified in Lee County, the highest toll anywhere in the state, as survivors describe the sudden surge of water — predicted as a possibility by the National Hurricane Service in the days before the storm hit — that sent some of them scrambling for safety in attics and on rooftops. Lee County, which includes the hard-hit seaside community of Fort Myers Beach, as well as the towns of Fort Myers, Sanibel and Cape Coral, did not issue a mandatory evacuation order for the areas likely to be hardest hit until Tuesday morning, a day after several neighboring counties had ordered their most vulnerable residents to flee. By then, some residents recalled that they had little time to evacuate. Dana Ferguson, 33, a medical assistant in Fort Myers, said she had been at work when the first text message appeared on her phone Tuesday morning. By the time she arrived home, it was too late to find anywhere to go, so she hunkered down with her husband and three children to wait as a wall of water began surging through areas of Fort Myers, including some that were well away from the coastline. “I felt there wasn’t enough time,” she said. Ms. Ferguson said she and her family fled to the second floor, lugging a generator and dry food, as the water rose through their living room. The 6-year-old was in tears. Kevin Ruane, a Lee County commissioner and a former mayor of Sanibel, said the county had postponed ordering an extensive evacuation because the earlier hurricane modeling had shown the storm heading farther north. “I think we responded as quickly as we humanly could have,” he said. Gov. Ron DeSantis and his state emergency management director also said the earlier forecasts had predicted the brunt of the storm’s fury would strike farther north. “There is a difference between a storm that’s going to hit north Florida that will have peripheral effects on your region, versus one that’s making a direct impact,” Mr. DeSantis said at a news conference on Friday in Lee County. “And so what I saw in southwest Florida is, as the data changed, they sprung into action.” But while the track of Hurricane Ian did shift closer to Lee County in the days before it made landfall, the surge risks the county faced — even with the more northerly track — were becoming apparent as early as Sunday night. At that point, the National Hurricane Center produced modeling showing a chance of a storm surge covering much of Cape Coral and Fort Myers. Parts of Fort Myers Beach, even in that case, had a 40 percent chance of a six-foot-high storm surge, according to the surge forecasts. Lee County’s emergency planning documents had set out a time-is-of-the-essence strategy, noting that the region’s large population and limited road system make it difficult to evacuate the county swiftly. Over years of work, the county has created a phased approach that expands the scope of evacuations in proportion to the certainty of risk. “Severe events may require decisions with little solid information,” the documents say. The county’s plan proposes an initial evacuation if there is even a 10 percent chance that a storm surge will go six feet above ground level; based on a sliding scale, the plan also calls for an evacuation if there is a 60 percent chance of a three-foot storm surge. Along with the forecasts on Sunday night, updated forecasts on Monday warned that many areas of Cape Coral and Fort Myers had between a 10 and a 40 percent chance of a storm surge above six feet, with some areas possibly seeing a surge of more than nine feet. Over those Monday hours, neighboring Pinellas, Hillsborough, Manatee, Sarasota and Charlotte counties issued evacuation orders, while Sarasota County announced that it expected evacuation orders to be in effect for the following morning. In Lee County, however, officials said they were waiting to make a more up-to-date assessment the following morning. “Once we have a better grasp on all of that dynamic, we will have a better understanding about what areas we may call for evacuation, and, at the same time, a determination of what shelters will be open,” the Lee County Manager, Roger Desjarlais, said on Monday afternoon. But forecasters with the National Hurricane Center were growing more explicit in their warnings for the region. In a 5 p.m. update on Monday, they wrote that the highest risk for “life-threatening storm surge” was in the area from Fort Myers to Tampa Bay. “Residents in these areas should listen to advice given by local officials,” the hurricane center wrote. New modeling showed that some areas along Fort Myers Beach were more likely than not to see a six-foot surge. Mr. Ruane, the county commissioner, said that one challenge the county faced was that the local schools had been designed to be shelters and that the school board had made the decision to keep them open on Monday. By the following morning, at 7 a.m. on Tuesday, Mr. Desjarlais announced a partial evacuation order but emphasized that “the areas being evacuated are small” compared with a previous hurricane evacuation. The county held off on further evacuations, despite a forecast that showed potential surge into areas not covered by the order. Officials expanded their evacuation order later in the morning. By the middle of the afternoon, Lee County officials were more urgent in their recommendation: “The time to evacuate is now, and the window is closing,” they wrote in a message on Facebook. Katherine Morong, 32, said she had been prepared earlier in the week to hunker down and ride out the storm based on the guidance from local officials. The sudden evacuation order on Tuesday morning left her scrambling, she said, as she set out in her car in the rain. “The county could have been more proactive and could have given us more time to evacuate,” she said. On the road toward the east side of the state, she said, she was driving through torrents of rain, with tornadoes nearby. Joe Brosseau, 65, said he did not receive any evacuation notice. As the storm surge began pouring in on Wednesday morning, he said, he considered evacuating but realized it was too late. He climbed up a ladder with his 70-year-old wife and dog to reach a crawl space in his garage. He brought tools in case he needed to break through the roof to escape. “It was terrifying,” Mr. Brosseau said. “It was the absolute scariest thing. Trying to get that dog and my wife up a ladder to the crawl space. And then to spend six hours there.” Some residents said they had seen the forecasts but decided to remain at home anyway — veterans of many past storms with dire predictions that had not come to pass. “People were made aware, they were told about the dangers and some people just made the decision that they did not want to leave,” Mr. DeSantis said on Friday. Joe Santini, a retired physician’s assistant, said he would not have fled his home even if there had been an evacuation order issued well before the storm. He said that he had lived in the Fort Myers area most of his life, and that he would not know where else to go. “I’ve stuck around for every other one,” he said. The water rushed into his home around dusk on Wednesday night, and on Friday, there was still a high-water mark about a foot above the floor — leaving Mr. Santini a little stunned. “I don’t think it’s ever surged as high as it did,” he said. Lee County is now an epicenter of devastation, with mass destruction at Fort Myers Beach, the partial collapse of the Sanibel Causeway and entire neighborhoods reduced to rubble. With water mains broken, the county utilities agency has advised residents to boil their water. President Biden said on Friday that the destruction from the storm was likely to be among the worst in U.S. history. “It’s going to take months, years to rebuild,” he said. Lauren Sweeney, Nicholas Bogel-Burroughs and Mitch Smith contributed reporting. Kirsten Noyes contributed research. Read More…

Prairie View A&M Wins The State Fair Classic https://digitalalabamanews.com/prairie-view-am-wins-the-state-fair-classic/ The Grambling State defense had no answer for Prairie View A&M’s run-heavy approach, as PVAMU rushed its way to a 34-14 victory in the State Fair Classic. Ahmad Antoine led the way for Prairie View A&M, accumulating a team-high 92 rushing yards to set the tone. PVAMU put an emphasis on valuing the ball, as they did not commit any turnovers all game. PVAMU’s pass rush overwhelmed Grambling’s line, totaling four sacks. Attendance at the State Fair Classic was announced at 53,921. We’ll have to wait until Oct. 8 to see how each team responds. PVAMU will be looking for another win against Southern, coached by Eric Dooley. Meanwhile, the road awaits Grambling State next weekend. It will head to Huntsville, AL next, for a matchup against 1-4 Alabama A&M. Prairie View A&M wins the State Fair Classic Read More…

Hurricane Ian's Recovery Will Be A 'marathon Not A Sprint': Brian Trascher https://digitalalabamanews.com/hurricane-ians-recovery-will-be-a-marathon-not-a-sprint-brian-trascher/ The Daily Beast Putin Has Left the World No Other Option But Regime Change Photo Illustration by Erin O’Flynn/The Daily Beast/GettyVladimir Putin must go.His demented Kremlin speech Friday, during a ceremony in which he feebly asserted Russia was annexing portions of Ukraine, made the strongest case for the necessity of regime change in Moscow that any world leader has yet to make.But it has been clear the Russian dictator must be removed from office for a long time now.It has been clear because Putin’s actions and rhetoric demonstrate day in and day out that Ukraine c The Daily Beast Putin Suffers Most Humiliating Ukraine Defeat Yet ILYA PITALEVMoscow celebrated the annexation of huge swathes of Eastern Ukraine Friday but President Vladimir Putin’s party was wrecked by a lightning counter-attack that may have trapped thousands of his men in a key city supposedly now part of Russia. “This is the will of millions of people,” Putin said at a glitzy ceremony in front of high-ranking Russian diplomats still in the country. “People living in Luhansk, Donetsk, Kherson region and Zaporizhzhia region are becoming our compatriots for NextShark Trump’s self-described ‘love letters’ to Kim Jong-un seized from Mar-a-lago have been published Letters exchanged between North Korean leader Kim Jong-un and former U.S. President Donald Trump between April 2018 and August 2019 have recently been published. “I am ready to work with your excellency with all my heart and devotion,” Kim said in a letter dated April 1, 2018, nearly six weeks before he first met Trump at the Singapore Summit. On the same day, Trump responded that he was “happy to meet” Kim to “drastically” improve relations between their respective governments. The Hill Five takeaways from the Abbott-O’Rourke debate showdown in Texas Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) and Democratic candidate Beto O’Rourke traded barbs and sought to paint each other as inherently out of touch with the state in their first and only televised debate on Friday evening. The debate — hosted by Nexstar Media Group, which also owns The Hill — gave the candidates an opportunity… The Daily Beast ‘You Guys Should Go to Jail’: Concussion Expert Rages After Dolphins QB Is Hospitalized Kareem Elgazzar/ReutersA neuroscientist who specializes in concussions called for the Miami Dolphins’ medical staff and coaches to be fired after quarterback Tua Tagovailoa was hospitalized with a brutal head injury during a game against the Cincinnati Bengals Thursday night. Tagovailoa’s head hit the ground with such force during the second quarter that his hands and arms appeared to seize up. He had to be stretchered off the field. He was discharged from a hospital on Thursday night and return Reuters Ukraine troops say they take key town, Putin ally mulls possible nuclear response KYIV (Reuters) -Ukrainian troops said on Saturday they had taken the key bastion of Lyman in occupied eastern Ukraine, a stinging defeat that prompted a close ally of President Vladimir Putin to call for the possible use of low-grade nuclear weapons. The capture came just a day after Putin proclaimed the annexation of four Ukrainian regions – including Donetsk, where Lyman is located – and placed them under Russia’s nuclear umbrella, at a ceremony that was condemned by Kyiv and the West as an illegitimate farce. The Hill The Memo: Michigan appears set to deliver a blow to Trump Former President Trump is headed to Michigan on Saturday for the latest in a series of campaign rallies. But the event, to be held in Warren, will only sharpen questions about whether Trump’s influence is backfiring against the GOP in general election campaigns. The most prominent candidate Trump has backed in the Wolverine State, conservative… Associated Press Russia withdraws troops after Ukraine encircles key city After being encircled by Ukrainian forces, Russia pulled troops out Saturday from an eastern Ukrainian city that it had been using as a front-line hub. It was the latest victory for the Ukrainian counteroffensive that has humiliated and angered the Kremlin. Russia’s withdrawal from Lyman complicates its internationally vilified declaration just a day earlier that it had annexed four regions of Ukraine — an area that includes Lyman. Read More…

Brazil Elections 2022: It https://digitalalabamanews.com/brazil-elections-2022-it/ Brazil is set to vote today to choose their president, a third of the federal senators, and all members of chamber of deputies, along with 27 governors and state legislatures. In the presidential race incumbent far-right president Jair Bolsonaro– often called the ‘Trump of the Tropics’- and former president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva are the two front-runners so far. The elections come at a time when Brazil’s economy is still reeling under the impact of the Covid pandemic exacerbated by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Here’s everything you need to know about Brazil elections 2022: How does the election work in Brazil? Voting is compulsory in Brazil for everyone literate and aged between 18 and 70. People aged 16 to 17 or older than 70 or who cannot read or write can their votes if they wish to. If no candidate in the presidential elections receives over 50 per cent votes, there will be runoffs on October 30. Read more: Brazil President, in UK, fumes at fuel prices. It’s an election pitch Who are the presidential candidates in Brazil? Current president Jair Bolsonaro who took office in January 2019 after being a deputy for the state of Rio de Janeiro for 27 years is running for elections this time as well. During his term, Jair Bolsonaro has cut taxes, increased support for the military, loosened gun ownership laws, and weakened environmental regulations. Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, a former union leader, is running for the president position for the sixth time and is said to be leading pre-election polls. He has also been the president of Brazil from 2003 to 2010. Read more: Bolsonaro ‘less civilized, bad copy of Trump’: Brazil leader amid elections What are the main issues in Brazil ahead of elections? Brazil has been severely impacted by the Covid pandemic making economic management one of the major issues in these elections in addition to public health. The country is also in the midst of increasing inflation owing to the invasion of Ukraine by Russia. ABOUT THE AUTHOR When not reading, this ex-literature student can be found searching for an answer to the question, “What is the purpose of journalism in society?” Read More…

GoLocalProv | News | Whitcomb: They’re Not Overpaid; Media Herd Mentality; Socialist Sunshine State https://digitalalabamanews.com/golocalprov-news-whitcomb-theyre-not-overpaid-media-herd-mentality-socialist-sunshine-state/ Sunday, October 02, 2022 Robert Whitcomb, Columnist View Larger + Robert Whitcomb, columnist No man is an island, Entire of itself, Every man is a piece of the continent, A part of the main. GET THE LATEST BREAKING NEWS HERE — SIGN UP FOR GOLOCAL FREE DAILY EBLAST If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less. As well as if a promontory were. As well as if a manor of thy friend’s Or of thine own were: Any man’s death diminishes me, Because I am involved in mankind, And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; It tolls for thee. ‘’No Man is an Island,’’ by John Donne (1572-1631), English poet, scholar and Anglican priest “I’ve always loved the autumn. Trees bleed amber, the sun moves south to sink into the river. For several of these seasons you were here…. I can hardly claim to be alone. nevertheless, of all whom autumn’s new russet brocades are draping, none is you.’’ — From “Riverside Park,’’ by Rachel Hadas (born 1948) “It was another Vermont house, white, of course, with long and narrow windows like New England faces.’’ — John Knowles, in his 1959 novel A Separate Peace View Larger + PHOTO: Karen Wargo Fall foliage brings out a range of emotions, from a sense of calm and acceptance of the passage of time, to being exhilarated by the colors, to sadness. It can also bring out anger if you’re stuck in a leaf-peeper traffic jam in the countryside. Maybe you’d better stay home and put bulbs in the ground. Raises Are Right GOPQ Rhode Island gubernatorial candidate Ashley Kalus has predictably bashed Gov. Dan McKee’s proposal, which he’s partly walked back on, to increase the salaries of department directors by as much as 43 percent. There haven’t been increases in pay for these posts since 2015. But Mr. McKee should have done more research on how to implement pay raises for cabinet officers. His idea was that base salaries would rise to $200,000 from $140,000 for the director of the state Department of Health, and to $160,473 from $135,000 for the folks running the departments of Business Regulation, Behavioral Healthcare, Environmental Management and Human Services. View Larger + GOP Gubernatorial Candidate Ashley Kalus PHOTO: GoLocal Ms. Kalus denounced the plan for the raises, telling NBC 10 News: “58% of Americans live paycheck to paycheck. And to put it in context, we’re in Providence right now, the median household income is $49,000 a year. He’s talking about $60,000 raises in some cases. It’s completely out of touch with what’s going on.’’ But in fact, people running large, complex and frequently crisis-embroiled state agencies are usually underpaid considering the nature of these usually thankless jobs. They’d be paid far more for doing jobs of similar complexity and importance in the private sector. By the way, it may be a sign of our civic values that the highest paid state employee last year was University of Rhode Island men’s basketball coach David M. Cox, who earned $715,188.  He’s since been fired. His successor, Ryan “Archie” Miller, is set to receive  $9.5 million in a five-year contract. URI football coach James M. Fleming took in a measly $274,007 last year. I’m sure we’ll eventually find out how much income Ms. Kalus, who seems to have some degree of residency in Illinois, Florida and Rhode Island (the foundation for a presidential campaign?), took in for managing a since-canceled COVID testing and vaccination contract between the Ocean State and her Doctors Test Centers. View Larger + Governor McKee surrounded by the press after signing cannabis legislation PHOTO: GoLocal Press Poverty Timothy Buckley, Massachusetts Gov. Charlie Baker’s chief of staff, is right when he complains that the shrinkage of the corps of news-media people is worsening the herd-mentality problem in journalism. Reporters who have survived the slashing of journalistic resources in the past two decades are too few and too busy to do what they should be doing: looking at a wide and ever-changing range of topics and being leery of the conventional wisdom (which in my experience is usually wrong). And Mr. Buckley noted to Commonwealth Magazine that the news-resource crisis leads to less analysis and nuance in coverage overall. Consider the recent 30-day closure of the MBTA Orange Line for repairs was presented as though it could be as catastrophic as a hurricane. Smaller outlets followed the big ones, most notably The Boston Globe and public radio, in seeing the shutdown as perhaps, in The Globe’s phrase, “a new circle of hell.’’  In fact, the shutdown, during which the T offered commuters alternative options – mostly buses – caused much less disruption than the apocalyptic warnings had suggested.   Another result of the shrinkage of what used to be usually called “the press corps’’ (not so many presses anymore!) is that far fewer things are watched. It’s easier to just report on what everyone else is covering, taking the lead from the big boys. And yet, as Bill Kreger, a long-departed editor of mine at The Wall Street Journal, once told me: “What may turn out to be the biggest story of the year may start out as three paragraphs at the bottom of page 11.’’ We need far more local news outlets, be they print or online. But the old ad-based business model continues to falter. xxx In a  happier report on the news business, my GoLocal colleague Rob Horowitz reports that the use of social media as a source for news has stalled, and for good reason. He writes: “It is the case that some of the plateauing of social media as a source for news is a result of a general slowing in the growth of the use of social media generally. But that is only part of the story.  The increased awareness of the amount of disinformation and misinformation available on and spread through social media has resulted in social media becoming a less trusted source of news than other media platforms.  This distrust is a major reason for the curbing of social media’s growth as a source for news.  {Russia and other malign dictatorships have long used social media as a tool for undermining their foes and propping up the likes of people like Trump who are likely to collaborate with them.} A Reuters Institute study found that the “levels of trust in news on social media, search engines, and messaging apps is consistently lower than audience trust in information in the news media more generally.’’ Good. Hit this link: More Socialism for Sunshine State You might hear fewer complaints in Florida about “socialism’’ for a while as federal aid pours into the Sunshine State in the wake of Hurricane Ian. (A few people might remember that, as a new Florida congressman in 2013, now GOPQ Gov. Ron DeSantis voted against a federal relief package for New York and New Jersey in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy, which hit the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic states in late 2012, killing more than 100 Americans.) That was then….  Anyway, much of the help for Florida will go to assist rich folks,  many of whom are self-proclaimed “conservatives,’’ who tend to live where people most want to live in the Sunshine State – along the water. (Poorer folks usually live inland, in depressing towns many of which evoke a sort of flat Appalachia.) The closer you get to the water, the higher the real estate prices and the more danger of destruction. Sounds paradoxical but it really isn’t because of the financial protection afforded by public policies in disasters. When will the Feds and coastal states get serious about rigorously discouraging people from having homes in flood zones as ocean levels rise? To do that would require confronting the politically powerful residents and developers there. When Mother Nature damages or destroys such properties taxpayers get some of the bill to fix or replace them. I wonder what will happen to the overwhelmed and very fraud-vulnerable property-insurance sector in Florida as tens of billions of dollars of claims roll in over the next month. Insurers have been leaving the state in recent years amidst warnings of more global-warming-induced storms and floods threatening its too densely developed coasts. And will GOPQ Gov. Ron DeSantis and the state’s legislature be forced to raise taxes to keep the state’s own insurance program, and thus the real-estate-development bonanza, going? For decades, people have flocked to coasts, as they have to scenic but increasingly fire-prone forest areas in parts of the West. We need to think more about how much we’re willing to pay so that people can stay there. Hit this link for maps of population growth in Florida. Meanwhile, in such states as Michigan and Vermont, authorities are starting to make infrastructure upgrade and expansion plans to absorb what may become millions of climate refugees from the South and West over the next couple of decades. Hit this link: And this link for an amusing and useful look at how concentrations of wealth affect the quality of life in such localities as Palm Beach and Martha’s Vineyard: Cleansing Every now and then, we need recessions, though they can be painful for many. They put the brakes on inflation and inflationary expectations and in some industries, such as restaurants, make it easier to hire. Recessions, of course, are caused in part by higher interest rates engineered by the Federal Reserve Board aimed at reducing demand and, thus, price pressures. A recession cleans out much speculative froth. Some of the benefits of recessions can include lower prices across the board, higher savings rates, a stronger dollar making it cheaper to travel abroad, and being able to buy more stocks at cheaper prices (and await the market recovery). And petrostate dictatorships such as Ru...

Trump Likely To Announce His 2024 Presidential Run Within Weeks https://digitalalabamanews.com/trump-likely-to-announce-his-2024-presidential-run-within-weeks/ Stating this, Kellyanne Conway, his 2016 campaign manager and close ally, said she had advised him to wait until after the midterms in November, according to Business Insider. . Speaking on Friday with CBS News, Conway was asked whether Trump would announce his candidacy after the midterm elections and before Thanksgiving. “Well, he would like to,” said Conway, as per CBS News. “He’s as active as anybody in these midterm elections. That’s important to the calculus also, Catherine, because we have the most ironic, if not unprecedented situation right now,” Conway continued. “We have a president, a current president, whose party doesn’t really want him to campaign with them.” Trump will assess the timing of his announcement after the midterms, which take place on November 8, Conway said. “I will tell you why he wants to run for president,” she said. “Donald Trump wants his old job back.” In July, Conway described Trump as “champing at the bit” to announce his third presidential bid. Speaking to CBS News, she said she advised him to wait until right after the midterms. House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy also said he lobbied the former president not to announce a 2024 presidential run before the midterms. “My point to him has always (been), ‘Let’s go win ’22,'” McCarthy told reporters at the Capitol in July. That same month, a top Republican strategist told Insider that a pre-midterm announcement from Trump would be a “train wreck for the party” and “a complete mess.” Meanwhile, how Democrats, who aren’t named Joe Biden, are running for president – without running for president. Joe Biden plans to seek reelection in 2024, even though voters are souring on him. Democrats aren’t expected to primary Biden, but questions linger about a backup plan. Would-be candidates have been seeking the national spotlight. President Joe Biden has been clear that he plans to run for a second term in 2024. His political team is even getting ready for a spring reelection announcement, according to the Washington Post. But that hasn’t stopped the “will he really?” chatter, particularly after a New York Times poll found that 61 per cent of Democrats said they hoped someone other than Biden would be their nominee in 2024, largely because of his age and job performance. Democratic insiders are questioning whether Biden, 79, can mount a vigorous campaign in 2024 – especially if former President Donald Trump decides to run again. Despite the doubts, Biden is not expected to face a primary challenge given that it would alienate other people in the party as well as the donor class, said Mark Jones, Rice University (Houston, Texas) political science professor and Baker Institute fellow, the Insider said. “The norm is that you do not challenge a sitting president from your party,” Jones said. “That’s a major political faux pas. It either isn’t done, or if it is done it’s done more for political ambition – not to actually win, but to put the spotlight on yourself for other reasons.” A key factor helping Biden’s staying in power is Trump. The New York Times poll found that Biden would be favoured to win in another contest against Trump. “The belief is that if Biden beat Trump before, he can beat him again,” Jones said. If a Democrat were to try to primary Biden – and weaken him in the process – then that person would be blamed if a Republican, even Trump, were to win in 2024. But none of these factors rule out politicians’ making under-the-radar moves. If Biden somehow reverses his plans, that’ll mean the party will need to find a backup. Some ways that candidates begin to test the field through “invisible primaries” are by campaigning for other Democrats to build loyalty, particularly in swing districts. They also may appear at events in potential early voting states and offer noncommittal responses about whether they’ll support Biden in 2024, said Shawn Donahue, a University at Buffalo (New York) assistant professor of political science. Other ways are through grabbing headlines through weighing in on national debates, holding leadership roles in the party, and raising huge sums particularly from out-of-staters. In the case of governors interested in the White House, they’ll need to crush the opposition if they’re up for reelection this year, in November, the Insider said. “There will be a host of people who want to be waiting in the wings so the moment Biden says he’s not running they can sort of jump in,” Jones said. Even if Biden doesn’t change his mind, 2028 isn’t much further off. There are 15 politicians who are taking actions or gaining interest that might position them for a 2024 White House run if Biden changes his mind. And this includes the three top contenders, VP Kamala Harris, Florida Governor Gavin Newsom and senator Elizabeth. –IANS ashe/shs Read More…

Trump Appointed Florida Judge May Be Removed From Mar-A-Lago Case https://digitalalabamanews.com/trump-appointed-florida-judge-may-be-removed-from-mar-a-lago-case/ Please try another search Credit: © Reuters. Former federal prosecutor Robert Katzberg made the case that US District Judge Aileen Cannon’s continued interference in the work being done by special master Raymond (NS:) Dearie in the matter of government documents allegedly stolen by Donald Trump could lead to the 11th US Circuit Court of Appeals stepping in and taking the case from her, media reports here said. Earlier in the week, the Trump-appointed Cannon gave Donald Trump’s legal team an assist by ruling that they did not need to comply with an order from Dearie and reply in a filing whether they believe the FBI agents lied about documents recovered at the former president’s Mar-a-Lago resort almost two months ago. As Katzberg sees it, the Department of Justice could appeal, which they did late Friday, and that they may have a compelling case to ask for Cannon’s removal — although such moves rarely occur. Adding that the 11th Circuit has already stepped in to curb some of Cannon’s excesses, Katzberg claimed it might be open to stepping in in a more forceful way. “The 11th US Circuit Court of Appeals has already filed a stinging opinion that contains ample criticism of Cannon to quote in support,” he wrote. “Appeals courts are hesitant to remove judges from a case, but here, there is a clear record of questionable decisions that have stymied an extremely significant criminal investigation and, per the DOJ, undermined national security. Under these unusual circumstances, reassignment might well be an appropriate solution,” he said. –IANS ash/pgh Read More…

Trump Goes After Gretchen Whitmer, Thanks Ginni Thomas At Michigan Rally https://digitalalabamanews.com/trump-goes-after-gretchen-whitmer-thanks-ginni-thomas-at-michigan-rally/ October 02, 2022 12:43 AM Former President Donald Trump took repeated aim at Democratic political foes and heaped praise on loyal Republicans as he stumped for GOP candidates in Michigan Saturday evening. The 45th president held one of his signature “Save America” rallies in Warren, Mich., located just north of Detroit, to campaign for the state’s GOP gubernatorial candidate Tudor Dixon as she tries to oust incumbent Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, whom she trails in the polls. While in office, Whitmer was a frequent thorn in Trump’s side. Their widely reported feud escalated during the COVID-19 pandemic, when the Democrat became a vocal critic of Trump’s handling of the crisis. The former president slammed Whitmer on multiple fronts, going after her position on abortion, her handling of rising crime, and her own COVID-19 response. “Michigan, you need to dump this wild-eyed extremist Gretchen Whitmer and put Tudor Dixon in the governor’s mansion,” Trump told the crowd at the Macomb County Community College Sports & Expo Center. “The first step to restoring public safety is defeating the radical Democrats this November and that starts with trouncing Whitmer.” TRUMP STAFFER ‘STUFFED COPIES OF PHOTOS’ OF HUNTER BIDEN INTO AIR CONDITIONING UNIT: BOOK Focusing on her handling of the pandemic, he said: “Don’t forget the only one that benefited was her husband. Her husband was a big beneficiary. Gretchen Whitmer is one of the most radical most sinister governors in America, you know that she cruelly imposed the most brutal lockdowns in the entire country, causing Michigan to lose more jobs than any other state in the union.” Whitmer was far from the only Democrat who faced Trump’s ire Saturday evening. The former president spent some of his nearly two hour speech going after New York Attorney General Letitia James’s civil suit against him, even presenting a video midway through his remarks of clips of prominent legal analysts on both sides of the aisle questioning the legitimacy of her efforts. He called James “racist” and described her as “one of the worst” attorneys general in the nation. He also mocked Vice President Kamala Harris over her North Korea gaffe this week, when she mistakenly touted the U.S. “alliance with the Republic of North Korea” while speaking from Korea’s Demilitarized Zone. Trump was touting his rising poll numbers in the wake of the FBI search of his Mar-a-Lago estate in August, when he said: “We’re beating Kamala Harris, the North Korea sympathizer. She’s a sympathizer. We’re beating her by 10 points. Now she likes North Korea, and I think that was one of the worst mistakes of all. Can you imagine? They’re standing on the border, North Korea’s over there shooting off missiles as she’s speaking. They shut out two missiles.” As for the aftermath of the FBI search, Trump pulled no punches when discussing the matter, claiming the bureau and the Justice Department treated him differently than previous presidents of both parties. Offering a new excuse for his own handling of classified materials, he claimed that prior U.S. heads of state had also mishandled documents but faced no legal ramifications. “You have to see, Bush had a warehouse, Bush Sr. had a warehouse. Crooked Hillary Clinton deleted 33,000 emails, many of which were classified. Hillary Clinton [and] Bill Clinton lost a lot of stuff. Obama- didn’t they say 33 million pages of stuff? God where is it? What happened?” Regarding Republicans, Trump made particular note of Ginni Thomas, the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, who testified to the House Jan. 6 select committee this week that she still maintained her belief that the 2020 election was stolen through widespread voter fraud. CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER Trump told the crowd he would like to “thank a great woman named Ginni Thomas…for her courage and strength,” and for telling the panel “that she still believes the 2020 election was stolen.” “She didn’t say, ‘Oh, well, I’d like not to get involved. Of course it was a wonderful election,'” the former president explained, “She didn’t wait and sit around and say ‘Well, let me give you a maybe a different answer that I’ve been saying for the last two years now.’ She didn’t wilt under pressure, like so many others that are weak people and stupid people because once they wilt, they end up being a witness for a long time. She said what she thought, she said what she believed in.” “Too many Republicans are weak, and they’re afraid and they better get strong fast,” he continued. Read More…

Bryan Harsin Assesses Job Security After Auburn’s Latest Setback Against LSU https://digitalalabamanews.com/bryan-harsin-assesses-job-security-after-auburns-latest-setback-against-lsu/ Bryan Harsin was left searching for answers but determined to forge onward after another letdown for his program. This one? A 21-17 loss to SEC West rival LSU in which Auburn let a 17-point first-half lead slip away. It was the type of loss that has become commonplace for Auburn under Harsin, who is now 9-9 as the program’s head coach, including 3-2 overall and 1-1 in SEC play this season as the team wraps up its season-opening five-game homestand. Read more Auburn football: What Bryan Harsin said about Auburn’s 21-17 loss to LSU Rewinding Auburn’s 21-17 loss to LSU Instant analysis: Auburn blows 17-point lead at home against LSU Following his team’s latest setback, Harsin was asked if he’s confident he will finish this season as Auburn’s head coach, as the schedule does not let up after the team wrapped its season-opening homestand. Auburn travels to No. 1 Georgia next week and then to No. 14 Ole Miss (primed to move into the top-10 following a win against Kentucky in Week 5) the following week. “That’s my job, every day, is to show up and make sure that I’m prepared and that we get this football team prepared,” Harsin said. “That doesn’t change, whatsoever, and I told the team that. That’s always been how I’ve approached each and every day of every job I’ve had. That’ll be no different. Tomorrow we have things we’ve got to get better at, and win or lose, you’re always going to find ways to improve as a football team; you have to. That’s really what it comes down to. That’s how I’ll approach each and every day, and our players know that, and everybody on our staff knows that, and that’s always been the mentality that we have.” Auburn’s stagnation under Harsin — with blown double-digit leads in five straight SEC games and woeful second-half offensive efforts in eight straight games against Power 5 competition — has increased the pressure on the embattled second-year head coach, whose already-warm seat has gotten considerably hotter in the last three weeks. Since starting last season 6-2, Auburn has gone 3-7 in its last 10 games under Harsin. That includes just 1-6 against Power 5 competition, with the lone win coming last week in overtime against Missouri, which lost on an unforced fumble just shy of the goal line in overtime. “The program’s right where it’s at now,” Harsin said when asked to assess the program through his first 18 games. “I mean, that’s really — you know, what happens, what happened in the past — I mean, we can focus on now. That’s what you have to do. That’s always our focus. We can’t go back and change. The records are what they are, but we can’t go back and change those now. What do we do moving forward, that’s really what it comes down to. And that’s the message to our team and our staff, and that’s always, win or lose, that has to be the focus, alright? Because you have a lot of football left to play. And for our guys, they signed up to go out there and play all these games. We all did. “And if you take all of what you did in the past, good or bad, and you lean on that too much, it’s going to affect you in the future. And so we’ve got to just keep learning from this one. What do we do now? What did we do well in this game, and what are the things we have to do better?” Harsin is under contract through Dec. 31, 2026, on a six-year deal worth an average of $5.25 million per year. If he is fired without cause before the end of his contract, Harsin will be owed 70 percent of the remaining value on the deal. “It’s life; it’s the same thing: Control what you can, right?” Harsin said. “That’s really what it comes down to. It’s the same message you tell your players, and the same things you learned over your career as a player and a coach and all the things you do I think just as a person in whatever profession you’re in; like, control what you can, alright?” Tom Green is an Auburn beat reporter for Alabama Media Group. Follow him on Twitter @Tomas_Verde. If you purchase a product or register for an account through one of the links on our site, we may receive compensation. Read More…

‘Move Forward’: UAB Penalties And Miscues Again Costly In Consecutive Loss To Rice https://digitalalabamanews.com/move-forward-uab-penalties-and-miscues-again-costly-in-consecutive-loss-to-rice/ The UAB football team has plenty of reason to complain about a missed call early in its conference opener but did nothing to rectify it as one foot forward seemed to come with 10 steps back. The Blazers stopped a would-be touchdown on the initial possession of the game, the replay booth missing an obvious downed runner before crossing the goal line, but could not get out of their own way as inopportune penalties and a lapse of awareness resulted in a 28-24 loss to Rice, Saturday, Oct. 1, at Rice Stadium in Houston, Texas. UAB is unable to avenge last year’s loss to the Owls and falls to 2-2 on the season and 0-1 in conference play. “We battled from the very beginning to the end, our players came out here and played their tails off,” UAB interim head coach Bryant Vincent said. “At the end of the day – turnovers, turnovers, turnovers. In Division 1 football, those are costly and critical. If we don’t turn the football over, we’re really good. When we do we give the other team opportunities to beat us.” “We’ve got a team that cares about each other,” he added. “We’ve got a team that’s going to stick together and we’ve got a team that’s going to respond. We have no other choice. We’ve got to put this all behind us and we’ve got to move forward to Middle Tennessee (State).” Rice opened the game with possession, marching 74 yards to the UAB 4-yard line in 10 plays, and converted a fourth-and-goal when officials ruled Ari Broussard had broken the plane of the goal line. According to instant replay, Broussard was brought down shy of the goal line but a first-time officiating crew ruled the play a touchdown and the replay booth confirmed the call despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary. Still, the Blazers managed to build a 17-7 lead going into the break despite being penalized 6 times for 48 yards in the first half. UAB was ultimately flagged 12 times for 116 yards, six fouls coming by way of offensive holding. The infractions stalled UAB drives, costing the Blazers points, while the defense was surprisingly called for only two penalties. “You’re always going to face adversity, you’re always going to face tough times,” Vincent said. “Everything is not going to work out exactly the way you want it, and regardless of what it is, you got to stick together and you got to move forward. We’ve got to go to the next play, we’ve got to go to the next series and we’ve got to go to the next game. Life is going to throw you a lot of curves and at the end of the day, you’ve got to handle adversity. It strengthens you or weakens you.” The Blazers received the second-half kickoff but reserve linebacker Reise Collier was flagged for a late hit out-of-bounds, a targeting call was not upheld by review. UAB began its possession at the 13-yard line against an angry Rice defensive unit that forced the Blazers into a three-and-out. The Owls flew quickly down the field, amassing 50 yards on 8 plays, and cut the UAB lead to 17-14 on a 3-yard run by Broussard. Disaster struck the Blazers on their ensuing drive as Hopkins threw a simple swing pass that was bobbled and dropped by DeWayne McBride on the second play of the possession. The pass was behind Hopkins and ruled a fumble, not a Blazer aware enough to chase the ball down, and Rice’s Treshawn Chamberlain scooped it up for a 4-yard fumble return touchdown and a 21-17 lead midway through the third quarter. “We’ve probably run 20 B-swings (this season),” Vincent said. “Probably two to three a game and it’s never been a problem, but tonight obviously it was and that’s something we got to get corrected.” The Blazers put together a grueling and balanced drive, capping it with a 28-yard touchdown pass from Hopkins to Trea Shropshire. Rice responded with an ever grittier possession, however, and Dean Connors scored the go-ahead touchdown on a 6-yard pass from TJ McMahon to take the final 28-24 margin of victory. The Owls were aided by a roughing the passer call on 3rd-and-9 inside the red zone. Hopkins would twice lead the Blazers back into Rice territory in the final nine minutes of action. An incomplete pass turned the ball over on downs on UAB’s initial opportunity and Hopkins was sacked three consecutive times to end the game. Despite back-to-back losses to Rice, the goals for UAB are still intact but must find its discipline and identity quickly with two home games before hitting the road to Western Kentucky and FAU. “There’s a lot of football left and a lot of things can happen,” Vincent said. “We’ve got to continue to move forward and get better. We’ve got seven conference games left and we need to take them one at a time. One day at a time, one game at a time. There’s nothing else we can do about this (loss) except learn from it and move forward.” If you purchase a product or register for an account through one of the links on our site, we may receive compensation. Read More…

Venezuela Frees 7 Jailed Americans In Exchange For Maduro Family Drug Smugglers https://digitalalabamanews.com/venezuela-frees-7-jailed-americans-in-exchange-for-maduro-family-drug-smugglers/ CARACAS, Venezuela — The Venezuelan government freed seven Americans detained in the country, including five oil executives, in exchange for two family members of President Nicolás Maduro jailed in the United States on drug convictions since 2015. The swap, the largest arranged by President Biden’s administration, came after months of secret talks. The president approved the exchange a few weeks ago, according to senior administration officials, but it took time to work through the mechanics, which unfolded Saturday when planes left from the United States and from Venezuela carrying the prisoners to an unnamed third country where the swap took place. The exchange underscored efforts by the Biden administration since the February invasion of Ukraine by Russia to improve the tattered relationship with Venezuela as an alternative source of oil. In March, U.S. and Venezuelan officials discussed the possibility of easing sanctions on oil exports from Venezuela. Those freed Saturday were Jorge Toledo, Tomeu Vadell, Alirio Zambrano, Jose Luis Zambrano, Jose Pereira, Matthew Heath and Osman Khan. All are U.S. citizens except Pereira, a lawful permanent U.S. resident. Vadell, the Zambrano brothers and Pereira were employees of Houston-based Citgo who were attending a meeting in 2017 in Venezuela when they were seized by masked agents who burst into their conference room. Heath, a former U.S. Marine corporal, was arrested on what the United States called “specious” weapons charges in 2020. Khan, a Florida man was arrested in January. “One never prepares for these things. we are shocked,” Veronica Vadell Weggeman, daughter of Tomeu Vadell, told The Washington Post in message, confirming the news came as a surprise for the family. “We are super grateful that President Biden was able to bring it home.” The two Venezuelans known as the “narco nephews,” Efraín Campo and Francisco Flores, nephews of Venezuela’s first lady, Cilia Flores, were arrested in Haiti in 2015 in a Drug Enforcement Administration drug operation after attempting to smuggle cocaine into the United States. In 2017, they were sentenced to 18 years in prison after being convicted. A senior administration official said Biden made “the difficult decision” to grant clemency to the two men. “Today, we celebrate that seven families will be whole once more,” Biden said in a statement. “To all the families who are still suffering and separated from their loved ones who are wrongfully detained — know that we remain dedicated to securing their release.” Among those held are WNBA star Brittney Griner and security consultant Paul Whelan, both of whom remain detained in Russia despite ongoing negotiations for their release. Also on Saturday, Iran released an Iranian-American businessman, Siamak Namazi, jailed seven years ago during a visit to Tehran, and his aging father, Baquer Namazi, according to a statement from the United Nations. Senior administration officials told reporters those released “seemed stable but obviously they’re happy, they’re overjoyed to be heading home to their loved ones,” they said. Venezuela released its own statement soon after confirming the news, saying it acted for “humanitarian reasons.” The statement also confirmed that “two young Venezuelans unfairly imprisoned” in the United States were freed as part of talks that started in March of this year between both governments. “It became clear in the course of negotiations, that the release of two Venezuelans was essential to securing the release of these Americans,” the U.S. officials said. This appears to be another step toward normalizing years of turbulent diplomatic relations between the socialist country and the United States. In March, two Americans were freed following a visit to Caracas by a high-level U.S. delegation, the first one after the United States cut off diplomatic relations in 2019 after President Donald Trump’s administration recognized Juan Guaidó, then the National Assembly president, as interim president. Yet, Guaidó has little practical authority in the country and little influence outside. He acknowledged to The Post in November that if the United States were to withdraw its support, “it would be difficult for us to face a dictatorship of these characteristics.” The opposition, now heavily divided, has tried to restart a negotiation process with the Maduro government on several occasions, the last one in 2021, then interrupted by the arrest and later extradition of businessman Alex Saab. Saab, a Colombian businessman considered a diplomat by Venezuela’s government, was extradited to the United States facing money laundering charges. Since then, Venezuela has been heavily invested in his release. Viser reported from Washington. Read More…

After Hurricane Ian Took Everything, One Hard-Hit Block Banded Together https://digitalalabamanews.com/after-hurricane-ian-took-everything-one-hard-hit-block-banded-together/ SAN CARLOS ISLAND, Fla. — Nearly everyone at Joe Fernandez’s place lost everything in the storm. Many lived in the RV parks and mobile home communities clustered along Main Street on this small patch of land between Fort Myers and Estero Island. The water to the north is known as Hurricane Bay, and for one terrifying stretch this week the line between land and sea blurred. Ian, one of the most fearsome hurricanes to ever hit the country, turned this patch of southwest Florida into an epicenter of devastation. And it left many who live here with no place to go. No place but Joe Fernandez’s. The motor sport shop became a shelter first, then a food pantry. By Friday night, it turned into a place to process, to grieve. A place to find strength and fellowship. Most at the impromptu gathering didn’t evacuate, and they swapped stories of survival over cans of hard seltzer and a bottle of Jack Daniel’s. Their accounts are harrowing and hard to fathom: Twenty people huddled in a small apartment on the second floor of one of just a few two-story buildings while water climbed the steps. The sight of boats lifted from the nearby marina slamming onto houses in the storm surge. The sound of trapped residents pounding on windows as their homes flooded. Close calls and heroic rescues. “This was some ‘Walking Dead’ type of apocalypse,” Fernandez, 32, said. “This is what it feels like.” Every disaster tests the mettle of a community, and while authorities dealt with the gargantuan task of rescuing the stranded and finding the dead, many residents were forced to help each other. All along Ian’s destructive path, people banded together, sharing generators, fuel and medicine, emptying their cupboards and warming freezers for collective cookouts. Often, in the wake of such catastrophes, fraying nerves and petty crimes receive outsize attention. But reports of fights at the gas pump or a looted store overshadow a much more common characteristic of a hurricane’s aftermath: the tightening threads of a neighborhood’s social fabric. Residents swap insurance tips and help each other clear debris; they knock on doors and pass out water. And this sort of camaraderie is even more important in vulnerable areas. Places home to the elderly or people without the means to evacuate. When a massive storm like Ian hits, neighbors in places like San Carlos Island are almost always the first responders. San Carlos Island doesn’t have the glitzy, towering beach resorts like some of its neighbors. It’s home to snowbirds, service industry workers and a large commercial shrimping industry. Patrons of its waterside tiki bars can dock their boats outside and drink barefoot, and those that live there year-round are on a first-name basis. A hurricane separated the island from mainland Florida in the 1920s and it’s now considered part of the town of Fort Myers Beach, which has emerged as a ground zero in Ian’s aftermath. Fernandez has run Alls In Custom fixing up boats and bikes on the island for five years. He’s originally from Cuba, and he and his older brother, Yunior, left the island as children during the 1994 exodus. They were among the thousands who departed on rafts and boats after Fidel Castro said anyone who wanted to leave the island was free to flee. The siblings were apprehended about a dozen miles from Key West and held at Guantanamo Bay Naval Base. They’ve now spent more time in the United States than they did in Cuba, and Fernandez treats his San Carlos neighbors like extended family. Leaving the island was never a question — even in the thick of the storm. Yunior recalled driving to his brother’s home when they lost contact and trying to convince him to join him at a safer spot inland. He refused. “Any other person would’ve been like, ‘Let’s go,’” Yunior, 37, said. “But he was like just, ‘Do me a favor, bring back propane, bring back water. I’m gonna stay here and feed my friends.’” As the floodwaters receded, Fernandez had a sense the community would need to rely on each other. The shop where he modified speedboats, four-wheelers and motorcycles with shimmering paint jobs and ornate designs was ruined by nearly 10 feet of floodwater. But he had a couple generators. He set them up and began inviting people over. Utilizing what wasn’t ruined in the storm, he put together a phone charging station and a couple hoses, providing residents two essentials services they had lost when the power and water went out: a way to check in on friends and a place to shower. He cracked open his freezer and began cooking sausage, chicken and fish. Hot meals had also been in short supply. “I don’t care about the material stuff — I don’t know how I’m going to get it back, but …” he said, trailing off. Soon enough his neighbors began to emerge — navigating through cracked streets and piles of debris to come together around his grill. They hugged. Once in a while someone cracked a joke, a bid to find some much needed comedic relief. But little by little, the reality of their ordeal began to sink in. “All my people are accounted for,” Mike Smith said, pausing to blink back tears. “But it’s setting in, man.” The 46-year-old tallied his losses: the boat where he slept, the boat where he fished, his truck with $3,000 in tools for the contracting business he had just started. “These guys are all my adopted family, I guess you can say,” he said, looking around. “Everybody here lost everything, literally lost everything.” A few feet away, Christian Day worked the grill. It was a familiar spot for Day, a chef at an upscale restaurant in a Marriott nearby, but unusual conditions. For one, he didn’t have any spices. Another neighbor named Erika walked down the road to her home, where she, Day and more than a dozen other people, several cats and a dog rode out the storm together. She returned with three jars: “Salt, pepper and Erika’s essence,” she said. “Same as in Emeril’s essence, except I’m not paying five bucks for it.” Day described struggling through the ripping water in the middle of the storm and helping haul open a door to save someone trapped in a laundry room. The friends and neighbors squeezed together in patio chairs around a kitchen table and hoped their second-story refuge was high enough. Later, when Day returned to his home off Main Street, he found a boat crashed through his living room. A runaway boat hit Deborah Barton’s house, too, but that’s all she knows. She hasn’t been able to find her fifth-wheel RV since. “It’s either under the boat or in the mangroves,” she said. Barton, 54, works at a bar on the island and has lived here for 23 years. She doesn’t have much of her own to give, but has been passing out water and canned goods to those who need them more. There are a lot of snowbirds on the island, she said, “but it’s also full of locals.” “Servers, bartenders, everybody that lives down here, that’s what you’re seeing right now,” Barton said. “We all pull together and try to help each other no matter what.” *** Several people at the cookout noted that they had not yet seen law enforcement or emergency response teams in their neighborhood, although rescue helicopters buzzed overhead, likely conducting missions in Sanibel Island, west of Fort Myers Beach, which was cut off from the mainland when Ian collapsed the only connecting bridge. “We don’t count on the government, we hope the government comes through, but honestly, they’re rescuing people from Sanibel,” Barton said. “They’re pulling bodies out of the water. That’s their first priority, they’re still rescuing.” She was in group texts with other locals, everyone checking in with one or two words: Alive. Alive. Homeless, alive. An urban search and rescue team eventually arrived Saturday. Fernandez didn’t seem surprised that authorities went to other areas first: “You realize anything that’s tourism, it’s getting aid, it’s getting helped,” he said. “This is where everything gets stuck.” People came and went on Friday, bringing gas and browsing the makeshift market set up on shelves in front of his shop. They carried dry socks, big cans of black beans, packets of ramen, tampons and hydrogen peroxide. Fernandez’s dogs — three pit bulls and a Rottweiler — picked at scraps from the grill. His parrot, Marcos, wore the week’s stress most visibly, squawking and ruffling patchy feathers. Sitting on a salvaged picnic table, Fernandez called out to people passing by, inviting them in for roast pork. “These people,” he said, “they need something to lean on.” Read More…

Food Fight: Annual Contest Between Alabama, Auburn Benefits Food Banks https://digitalalabamanews.com/food-fight-annual-contest-between-alabama-auburn-benefits-food-banks/ For the 29th year, a food drive designed to help reduce hunger in the state will harness the competitive spirit between Auburn University and the University of Alabama. Student leaders from both schools, Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey and Aubie, AU’s tiger mascot, and Big Al, UA’s elephant mascot gathered Friday on the steps of the state Capitol in Montgomery to mark the beginning of the 2022 food drives. In Tuscaloosa, the food drive goes by the name of Beat Auburn Beat Hunger, while in Auburn the drive is known as the Beat Bama Food Drive. Participants can make donations of canned and nonperishable foods in red barrels spread across the UA campus and the Tuscaloosa area through Nov. 17. Monetary donations can also be made at the West Alabama Food Bank’s website, westalabamafoodbank.org. Food collection barrels will also be set up throughout the Auburn community. The Auburn food drive benefits the Food Bank of East Alabama. Online donations can be made at auburn.givepulse.com/event/290076-29th-Annual-Beat-Bama-Food-Drive. Last year, Auburn and Alabama teamed up to collect more than 600,000 pounds of food to fight food insecurity in the state, the largest amount of food ever collected in the competition. Auburn won the 2021 competition, collecting 352,389 pounds of food, compared to UA’s 319,437 pounds. The winner of this year’s food drive will be announced Nov. 18, in advance of the Iron Bowl, the annual Alabama-Auburn rivalry football game, scheduled for Nov. 26 at Bryant-Denny Stadium in Tuscaloosa. The Alabama and Auburn food drives have combined to raise 7.6 million pounds of food since the friendly competition began in 1994. Founded in 1994, this will be the 29th year that University of Alabama students wage the friendly competition against students at Auburn University to raise money and donations leading up to the Iron Bowl. The winner of the competition will be announced Nov. 18. Read More…

Food Fight: Annual Contest Between Alabama, Auburn Benefits Food Banks https://digitalalabamanews.com/food-fight-annual-contest-between-alabama-auburn-benefits-food-banks-2/ For the 29th year, a food drive designed to help reduce hunger in the state will harness the competitive spirit between Auburn University and the University of Alabama. Student leaders from both schools, Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey and Aubie, AU’s tiger mascot, and Big Al, UA’s elephant mascot gathered Friday on the steps of the state Capitol in Montgomery to mark the beginning of the 2022 food drives. In Tuscaloosa, the food drive goes by the name of Beat Auburn Beat Hunger, while in Auburn the drive is known as the Beat Bama Food Drive. Participants can make donations of canned and nonperishable foods in red barrels spread across the UA campus and the Tuscaloosa area through Nov. 17. Monetary donations can also be made at the West Alabama Food Bank’s website, westalabamafoodbank.org. Food collection barrels will also be set up throughout the Auburn community. The Auburn food drive benefits the Food Bank of East Alabama. Online donations can be made at auburn.givepulse.com/event/290076-29th-Annual-Beat-Bama-Food-Drive. Last year, Auburn and Alabama teamed up to collect more than 600,000 pounds of food to fight food insecurity in the state, the largest amount of food ever collected in the competition. Auburn won the 2021 competition, collecting 352,389 pounds of food, compared to UA’s 319,437 pounds. The winner of this year’s food drive will be announced Nov. 18, in advance of the Iron Bowl, the annual Alabama-Auburn rivalry football game, scheduled for Nov. 26 at Bryant-Denny Stadium in Tuscaloosa. The Alabama and Auburn food drives have combined to raise 7.6 million pounds of food since the friendly competition began in 1994. Founded in 1994, this will be the 29th year that University of Alabama students wage the friendly competition against students at Auburn University to raise money and donations leading up to the Iron Bowl. The winner of the competition will be announced Nov. 18. Read More…

Opponents Pile On Republican Rosendale In US House Debate https://digitalalabamanews.com/opponents-pile-on-republican-rosendale-in-us-house-debate/ BILLINGS, Mont. (AP) — U.S. Rep. Matt Rosendale was slammed over his opposition to aid for Ukraine and votes against federal projects that could benefit Montana, during a live Saturday night debate in eastern Montana’s U.S. House race that showed deep policy divisions between the Republican and challengers Democrat Penny Ronning and independent Gary Buchanan. Rosendale responded to the twin barrage by saying he was sent to Washington to represent the views of Montana — “not to just sign off on a piece of legislation so that they can get a crumb off the table.” Both Ronning and Buchanan characterized Rosendale as undermining Montana’s best interests, including with votes against Ukraine and infrastructure improvements such as Montana’s Milk River irrigation project. “The embarrassment continues — yesterday he voted against providing military assistance, once again, to Ukraine,” Buchanan said. He was referring to a spending bill that advanced on Friday with bipartisan support and included money for the war-torn country. Ronning, a former Billings city council member and longtime advocate for stronger human trafficking laws, accused Rosendale of voting “against almost every piece of legislation when it comes to helping Montanans.” Since his 2020 election, Rosendale has quickly aligned with the extreme right wing of the GOP. He was one of just three lawmakers who voted against the House’s initial resolution in support of Ukraine after it was attacked by Russia. And he was among the 14 Republicans voting against the Juneteenth federal holiday to commemorate the end of slavery in the U.S. In explaining the votes, Rosendale has said he wanted the southern border secured rather than sending money to Ukraine and claimed Juneteenth was an attempt “to replace the Fourth of July.” He entered the race in January considered the frontrunner in a district that leans decidedly Republican, and easily fended off three challengers in the June primary. Ronning won a two-way Democratic primary against Skylar Williams of Billings with 58% of the vote. Democrat Mark Sweeney, a former state senator who died after ballots were already finalized with his name on them, drew 18%. A week after the primary, Buchanan and his supporters had gathered enough petitions to get him onto the ballot. His entry injected an unexpected dynamic in the race when Buchanan picked up endorsements from former Republican Gov. Marc Racicot and former Democratic gubernatorial candidate Dorothy Bradley. In August he was endorsed by the AFL-CIO and Montana Federation of Public Employees — a surprise move by unions that have frequently supported Democrats. Yet with no public polling in the race, it’s unknown how deep his support runs, or if he’s more likely to draw traditionally Republican or Democratic voters and at numbers sufficient to harm Ronning or even Rosendale. During the televised debate in Great Falls hosted by MTN News, Buchanan said Democrats and Republicans alike overspend at the national level. Ronning criticized his close ties to the banking industry, and she split with both Buchanan and Rosendale in her support of the student loan forgiveness program announced in August by the Biden administration. “Stop electing millionaires,” she said. “They don’t live like the rest of us live.” Rosendale said his re-election would help shield the nation against more excessive spending by Democrats. “We’ve seen over the last 20 months how the Democrats’ single-party rule has all but ruined our country,” Rosendale said. “We have higher interest rates. We have higher crime rates, we have higher grocery bills. We have high higher fuel bills.” Libertarian candidate Sam Rankin is also on the ballot for November but was not invited to Saturday’s debate because organizers said he did not meet criteria based on fundraising and other factors. November’s election is the first since Montana gained a second congressional seat due to population growth recorded in the 2020 census. A Democrat has not been elected to represent Montana in the House since 1994. Over the last decade, Republicans have taken every statewide and federal elected office in Montana except the U.S. Senate seat held by Democrat Jon Tester. In 2018 Rosendale failed to unseat Tester despite more than $20 million from outside groups spent on Rosendale’s behalf and four visits to Montana by former President Donald Trump to stump for the Republican. Trump had a personal grudge against Tester after the Democrat derailed Trump’s Veteran Affairs nominee by exposing misconduct allegations. As the general election campaign got underway, Rosendale had a major cash advantage with just over $1 million versus $10,100 for Ronning and $69,000 for Buchanan as of June 30, according to Federal Election Commission data. Rankin had just $100 remaining after putting more than $20,000 of his own money into the race. Read More…

Venezuela Swaps Prisoners With US In Hint Of Thawing Relations https://digitalalabamanews.com/venezuela-swaps-prisoners-with-us-in-hint-of-thawing-relations/ Venezuela has freed seven imprisoned Americans in exchange for the US releasing two nephews of President Nicolás Maduro’s wife who had been jailed for years on narcotics convictions. The swap of the Americans, including five oil executives held for nearly five years, follows months of back-channel diplomacy by senior US officials – secretive talks with a major oil producer that took on greater urgency after sanctions on Russia put pressure on global energy prices. President Joe Biden said in a statement: “These individuals will soon be reunited with their families and back in the arms of their loved ones where they belong. “To all the families who are still suffering and separated from their loved ones who are wrongfully detained – know that we remain dedicated to securing their release.” The deal amounts to an unusual gesture of goodwill by Maduro as the socialist leader looks to rebuild relations with the US after vanquishing most of his domestic opponents. While the White House has denied any change in policy towards Venezuela is afoot, the freeing of Americans could create political space for the Biden administration to ease crippling oil sanctions on Venezuela if Maduro shows progress in on-again, off-again talks with his opponents. “I can’t believe it,” said Cristina Vadell, the daughter of Tomeu Vadell, one of the freed Americans. Holding back tears of joy on her 31st birthday, she said: “This is the best birthday present ever. I’m just so happy.” The transfer took place on Saturday in the Caribbean island of St Vincent and Grenadines, which is ruled by an ally of Maduro, three people in Venezuela briefed on the matter said on condition of anonymity. The prisoners arrived from their respective locations in separate planes, the Biden administration said. Those freed include five employees of Houston-based Citgo – Vadell, Jose Luis Zambrano, Alirio Zambrano, Jorge Toledo and Jose Pereira – who were lured to Venezuela right before Thanksgiving in 2017 to attend a meeting at the headquarters of the company’s parent, state-run-oil giant PDVSA. Once there, they were hauled away by masked security agents who burst into a Caracas conference room. The men were convicted of embezzlement in 2021 in a trial marred by delays and irregularities and sentenced to between eight years and 13 years in prison for a never-executed proposal to refinance billions in the oil company’s bonds. Also released was Matthew Heath, a former US Marine corporal from Tennessee who was arrested in 2020 at a roadblock in Venezuela, and a Florida man, Osman Khan, who was arrested in January. The state department had regarded all the men as wrongfully detained. To facilitate a deal, Biden granted clemency for Franqui Flores and his cousin Efrain Campo, nephews of “First Combatant” Cilia Flores, as Maduro calls his wife. The men were arrested in Haiti in a Drug Enforcement Administration sting in 2015 and convicted the following year in New York in a highly charged case that cast a hard look at US accusations of drug trafficking at the highest levels of Maduro’s administration. Referring to the men only as Venezuelans “unjustly imprisoned” in the US, the Maduro government said in a statement that it “welcomes the outcome of these talks and hopes for the preservation of peace and harmony with all the nations of our region and the world”. ‘A win’ for US and Venezuela The Biden administration has been under pressure to do more to bring home the roughly 60 Americans it believes are held hostage abroad or wrongfully detained by hostile foreign governments. While much of the focus is on Russia, where the US has so far tried unsuccessfully to secure the release of WNBA star Brittney Griner and another American, Paul Whelan, Venezuela has been holding the largest contingent of Americans suspected of being used as bargaining chips. At least four other Americans remain detained in Venezuela, including two former Green Berets – Luke Denman and Airan Berry – involved in a slapdash attempt to oust Maduro in 2019, and two other men – Eyvin Hernandez and Jerrel Kenemore – who, like Khan, were detained for allegedly entering the country illegally from neighbouring Colombia. Saturday’s swap came together quietly over several months of backchannel talks. In July, Maduro officials upped the ante in meetings in Caracas with Roger Carstens, the special presidential envoy for hostage affairs, and ambassador James Story, who heads the Venezuela affairs unit in neighbouring Colombia. It substitutes for the US embassy the Trump administration shuttered in 2019 to protest against Maduro’s reelection in what was widely seen as a sham election. In exchange for freeing the nephews and insider businessman Alex Saab, Maduro was willing to release all Americans, a US official briefed on the outreach told the Associated Press. In the end, Saab – Venezuela considers him a diplomat and US prosecutors a corrupt regime enabler – was never seriously considered, according to the US official, who insisted on anonymity to discuss the talks. Unlike the nephews, who were arrested as a result of a drug sting and are halfway through 18-year sentences, Saab bitterly fought his extradition to the US from Cape Verde, where he was arrested in 2020 during a stopover en route to Iran. He is now awaiting trial in Miami federal court on charges of siphoning off millions in state contracts. Still, it’s unclear if the prisoner release will lead to a broader thaw in relations. The Biden administration is constrained in its engagement with Maduro, especially in the battleground state of Florida, where Latino voters whose families fled authoritarian rule in Cuba and Venezuela hold major sway. “Another Biden appeasement that will result in more anti-US dictators taking more innocent Americans hostage in the future,” Republican senator Marco Rubio said on Twitter about Saturday’s exchange. In the past six months the US has struck similar deals with Russia, and more recently with the Taliban, but a senior Biden administration official played down any suggestion that it was caving to hostage-takers, saying such exchanges remain “extraordinarily rare”. The official, who spoke to reporters on condition of anonymity under ground rules set by the administration, also pointed to a recent executive order that sought to impose new costs on countries that jail Americans without cause. Meanwhile, many Maduro supporters remain distrustful of the US “empire”, recalling the Trump administration’s decision to impose sanctions on a Venezuelan governor who brokered the release of another American, Joshua Holt, in 2018. However, some longtime Venezuela watchers say they’re hopeful this time will be different. A visit to Caracas in March by Juan Gonzalez, the top national security council adviser on Latin America, was itself a remarkable gesture towards a leader whom the US considers illegitimate and has indicted on narco-terrorism charges. The Biden administration has also promised to review sanctions if Maduro can point to progress in talks with opponents that had been taking place in Mexico which are aimed at creating fairer conditions for 2024 presidential elections “President Biden did the right thing,” said Caleb McCarry, a former Republican staffer who met recently with Maduro in a bid to free Americans and improve bilateral relations. “This is serious diplomacy and can only help put the Mexico negotiations back on track. It’s a win for the families, the American people and the Venezuelan people.” Read More…

Trump Defends 'great Woman' Ginni Thomas After Jan. 6 Testimony – KESQ https://digitalalabamanews.com/trump-defends-great-woman-ginni-thomas-after-jan-6-testimony-kesq/ By Gabby Orr Former President Donald Trump praised the “courage and strength” of Ginni Thomas at a rally Saturday, days after the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas met with congressional investigators about her efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election. In a four-and-a-half hour meeting with investigators on Thursday, Thomas discussed her marriage to the conservative justice, claiming in an opening statement obtained by CNN that she “did not speak with him at all about the details of my volunteer campaign activities.” Thomas, who attended Trump’s “Stop the Steal” rally on January 6, 2021 landed on the radar of the House select committee investigating the attack on the US Capitol after text message exchanges she had with then-White House chief of staff Mark Meadows about election fraud claims surfaced during the ongoing congressional probe. Thomas had “significant concerns about fraud and irregularities in the 2020 election. And, as she told the Committee, her minimal and mainstream activity focused on ensuring that reports of fraud and irregularities were investigated,” her attorney Mark Paoletta said after her closed-door testimony. During a campaign appearance in Michigan, Trump claimed that Thomas told the House panel “she still believes the 2020 election was stolen,” commending her because “she didn’t wilt under pressure.” “Do you know Ginni Thomas?” the former President polled the crowd. “She didn’t say, ‘Oh, well I’d like not to get involved. Of course, it was a wonderful election.’ It was a rigged and stolen election. She didn’t wait and sit around and say, ‘Well let me give you maybe a different answer than [what] I’ve been saying for the last two years.’” “No, no,” Trump continued, “She didn’t wilt under pressure like so many others that are weak people and stupid people… She said what she thought, she said what she believed in.” Thomas, who has previously criticized the House probe into January 6, has long been a prominent fixture in conservative activism — even becoming a persistent annoyance to some Trump White House officials as she tried to install friends and allies into senior administration roles throughout his presidency. She and her husband attended a private lunch with Trump and his wife Melania at the White House shortly after the 2018 midterms, though CNN has previously reported that her direct interactions with the former President were fairly limited beyond that meeting. But on Saturday, Trump praised Thomas as “a great woman,” comparing her to countless former aides and allies who have admitted in their own depositions with the House panel that they themselves didn’t believe Trump’s claims about voter fraud following the 2020 election. Thomas said she “never spoke” with her husband about “any of the legal challenges to the 2020 election,” addressing ethical questions that were raised in the wake a Supreme Court ruling last year on a January 6-related case. Thomas and Meadows texted repeatedly about overturning the election results. Democratic Rep. Bennie Thompson, who chairs the committee, said that Thomas did confirm during her testimony that she still believes the election was stolen, adding that “at this point we are glad she came in.” The-CNN-Wire & © 2022 Cable News Network, Inc., a Warner Bros. Discovery Company. All rights reserved. Read More…

Trump At Center Of Oath Keepers Leader’s Defense https://digitalalabamanews.com/trump-at-center-of-oath-keepers-leaders-defense/ Rhodes charged for role in Jan. 6 siege; trial begins Monday By Associated Press Published: October 1, 2022, 6:52pm 3 Photos FILE – Stewart Rhodes, founder of the Oath Keepers, speaks during a rally outside the White House in Washington, June 25, 2017. In his trial in the violent Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol, attorneys for the leader of the Oath Keepers extremist group will mount an unusual defense with former President Donald Trump at its center. Defense attorneys are poised to argue that Rhodes can’t be found guilty of seditious conspiracy because everything he did was in preparation for orders he anticipated coming down from the Republican president. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh, File) (Associated Press files) Photo Gallery WASHINGTON — The defense team in the Capitol riot trial of the Oath Keepers leader is relying on an unusual strategy with Donald Trump at the center. Lawyers for Stewart Rhodes, founder of the extremist group, are poised to argue that jurors cannot find him guilty of seditious conspiracy because all the actions he took before the siege on Jan. 6, 2021, were in preparation for orders he anticipated from the then-president — orders that never came. Rhodes and four associates are accused of plotting for weeks to stop the transfer of presidential power from the Republican incumbent to Democrat Joe Biden, culminating with Oath Keepers in battle gear storming the Capitol alongside hundreds of other Trump supporters. Opening statements in the trial are to begin Monday. Rhodes intends to take the stand to argue that he believed Trump was going to invoke the Insurrection Act to call up a militia to support him, his lawyers have said. Trump didn’t do that, but Rhodes’ team says that what prosecutors allege was an illegal conspiracy was “actually lobbying and preparation for the President to utilize” the law. It’s a novel legal argument in a trial that’s one of the most serious cases coming out of the Capitol attack. “This is an incredibly complicated defense of theory, and I don’t think that it’s ever played out in this fashion in American jurisprudence,” said one of Rhodes’ lawyers, James Lee Bright. The Insurrection Act gives a president broad authority to call up the military and decide what shape that force will take. Trump did float that kind of action at other points in his presidency. To succeed with this line of defense, Bright would have to convince a jury that Rhodes was waiting on the go-ahead from the president, which could be a major hurdle. Rhodes’ lawyers have argued that Trump could have called up a militia in response to “what he perceived as a conspiracy to deprive a class of persons in several states of their voting rights.” Rhodes published an open letter on the Oath Keepers’ website in December 2020 urging Trump to use the Insurrection Act to “‘stop the steal’ and defeat the coup.” If Rhodes testifies, he could face intense questioning from prosecutors, who say his own words show the Oath Keepers would act no matter what Trump did. Bright said Rhodes, a Yale Law School graduate, understands the risks of testifying but has insisted since the first day they met that he be able to “speak his piece.” Rhodes and his associates — Kelly Meggs, Thomas Caldwell, Jessica Watkins and Kenneth Harrelson — are the first Jan. 6 defendants to be tried for seditious conspiracy, a rarely used, Civil War-era charge that can be difficult to prove. The defense would have to convince the jury that the Oath Keepers really intended to defend the government, not use force against it, said David Alan Sklansky, a former federal prosecutor who’s now a professor at Stanford Law School. “If you think you are plotting to help protect the government, there is an argument that that means you don’t have the required guilty mindset that’s necessary in order to be guilty of seditious conspiracy,” he said. Court records show the Oath Keepers repeatedly warning of the prospect of violence if Biden were to become president. The group amassed weapons and stationed armed “quick reaction force” teams at a Virginia hotel in case they were needed, prosecutors say. The Columbian is becoming a rare example of a news organization with local, family ownership. Subscribe today to support local journalism and help us to build a stronger community. Read More…

CPAC Backpedals On Pro-Russia Tweet As Some U.S. Conservatives Back Putin https://digitalalabamanews.com/cpac-backpedals-on-pro-russia-tweet-as-some-u-s-conservatives-back-putin/ Prominent Republicans are digging in against American support for Ukraine despite Russia’s threats to use nuclear weapons and evidence of mass graves and war crimes facilitated by Moscow. The Conservative Political Action Conference on Friday tweeted — and then hours later deleted — a message that called on Democrats to “end the gift-giving to Ukraine” while featuring a fluttering Russian flag. The tweet also referred to “Ukraine-occupied territories,” appearing to legitimize Russian President Vladimir Putin’s claims to annex provinces based on a referendum that the U.S. and allies view as illegal. CPAC chairman Matt Schlapp on Saturday said the tweet did not clear the normal approval process because he was traveling for a conference in Australia. “Due to my travel into a distant time zone it was never approved per usual,” he said in a text message. In a statement, CPAC expressed support for Ukraine but maintained opposition to American aid for the embattled country. “We must oppose Putin, but American taxpayers should not be shouldering the vast majority of the cost,” the statement said. “The tweet belittled the plight of the innocent Ukrainian people.” CPAC has repeatedly flirted with pro-Putin views in recent years, including hosting pro-Russian Hungarian prime minister Victor Orban at a Dallas conference in August. CPAC is not alone among American conservatives in opposing Ukrainian aid despite Putin’s invasion. Fox News host Tucker Carlson has alleged U.S. sabotage for leaks in a Russian gas pipeline to Europe, baseless claims that have earned him airtime on Russian state television. Former president Donald Trump also posted a message on his Truth Social platform offering himself as a negotiator for the conflict. At a Trump rally in Michigan on Saturday, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) reiterated her opposition to U.S. aid to Ukraine and said Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky should negotiate a peace settlement with Russia. “We have so many problems here at home, I cannot even think about sending our money over to fund a proxy war with Russia,” she said in an interview. “Zelensky doesn’t run the United States government. He is not our president, but for some reason Joe Biden bends over every single time. … The American people don’t care about that war over there.” At the Michigan rally, Trump suggested he could have prevented Putin from invading Ukraine. “That war would never ever have happened if I were president and it didn’t happen,” Trump said. Many Republicans have followed Trump’s lead in waffling on Putin, whom Trump avoided condemning and sided with over his own intelligence agencies in doubting Russian interference in the 2016 election. Relations with Ukraine became partisan during Trump’s first impeachment, after he tried to use U.S. aid to Ukraine to pressure Zelensky to announce an investigation into Biden and his son Hunter’s business dealings in the country. Read More…

AP News Summary At 9:30 P.m. EDT https://digitalalabamanews.com/ap-news-summary-at-930-p-m-edt/ 129 dead after fans stampede to exit Indonesian soccer match MALANG, Indonesia (AP) — Panic at an Indonesian soccer match after police fired tear gas to stop brawls left 129 dead, mostly trampled to death. Police said Sunday that several brawls between supporters of the two rival soccer teams were reported inside the stadium after the Indonesia premier league game ended with Persebaya beating Arema 3-2. East Java’s police chief says the fighting prompted riot police to fire tear gas, causing panic among supporters. Hundreds ran to an exit gate in an effort to avoid the tear gas. Some suffocated in the chaos and others were trampled. More than 300 have been rushed to nearby hospitals for their injuries. But many of them died on the way and during a treatment. Russia withdraws troops after Ukraine encircles key city KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — After being encircled by Ukrainian forces, Russia has pulled troops out from an eastern Ukrainian city that it had been using as a front-line hub. It was the latest victory for the Ukrainian counteroffensive that has humiliated and angered the Kremlin. The city of Lyman was a key transportation hub for the Russian front line. A day earlier Moscow had annexed as part of Russia. Kyiv has retaken vast swaths of territory beginning in September. With Lyman recaptured, Ukraine can now push further into the occupied Luhansk region, one of the four regions that Russia annexed Friday. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and his military have vowed to keep fighting to liberate all regions from Russian control. Ian leaves dozens dead as focus turns to rescue, recovery FORT MYERS, Fla. (AP) — Dozens of Florida residents left their flooded and splintered homes by boat and by air as rescuers continued to search for survivors in the wake of Hurricane Ian. In South Carolina and North Carolina, authorities were surveying the damage on Saturday from Ian’s blow. The death toll from the storm grew to nearly three dozen, with deaths reported in Cuba, Florida and North Carolina. The storm has since weakened as it rolled into the mid-Atlantic, but not before it washed out bridges and piers. It also hurdled massive boats into buildings onshore and sheared roofs off of homes, leaving hundreds of thousands without power. Ian shows the risks and costs of living on barrier islands SANIBEL ISLAND, Fla. (AP) — Experts say that Hurricane Ian is shining a spotlight once again on the vulnerability of the nation’s barrier islands and the increasing cost of people living on them. Florida’s Sanibel Island was hard hit by the storm. Homes were destroyed. Two people have been confirmed dead. And Sanibel’s lone bridge to the mainland collapsed. Barrier island communities like Sanibel anchor tourist economies that provide crucial tax dollars. But the cost of rebuilding them is often high because they’re home to many high-value properties. Jesse Keenan is a real estate professor at Tulane University. He questions whether such communities can keep rebuilding as hurricanes become more and more destructive from climate change. Russia blindfolds, detains Ukraine nuclear plant chief KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Ukraine’s nuclear power provider says Russian forces blindfolded and detained the head of Europe’s largest nuclear power plant hours after Moscow illegally annexed a swath of Ukrainian territory. In a possible attempt to secure Moscow’s hold on the newly annexed territory, Russian forces seized the director-general of the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant, Ihor Murashov, around 4 p.m. Friday. Russian President Vladimir Putin on Friday signed treaties to absorb Luhansk, Donetsk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions of Ukraine, including the area around the nuclear plant. The International Atomic Energy Agency said Saturday that Russia told it that “the director-general of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant was temporarily detained to answer questions.” Venezuela swaps 7 jailed Americans for Maduro relatives WASHINGTON (AP) — Venezuela’s government has freed seven Americans imprisoned in the South American country in exchange for the release of two nephews of President Nicolás Maduro’s wife who had been jailed for years by the United States on drug smuggling convictions. The swap of the Americans, including five oil executives imprisoned for nearly five years, is the largest trade of detained citizens that the Biden administration has ever carried out. It amounts to an unusual gesture of goodwill by Maduro as he looks to rebuild relations with the U.S. after vanquishing most of his opponents and follows months of secretive talks, including repeated visits to Venezuela over the last year by Washington’s top hostage negotiator. Trump at center of Oath Keepers novel defense in Jan. 6 case WASHINGTON (AP) — The defense team in the Capitol riot trial of the Oath Keepers leader is relying on an unusual strategy with Donald Trump at the center. Lawyers for Stewart Rhodes are poised to argue that jurors cannot find him guilty of seditious conspiracy because all the actions he took before the riot were in preparation for orders he anticipated from the then-president. But those orders never came. Rhodes and four associates are accused of plotting for weeks to stop the transfer of presidential power, culminating with Oath Keepers in battle gear storming the Capitol alongside hundreds of other Trump supporters on Jan. 6, 2021. Opening statements in the trial are set to begin Monday. Supreme Court poised to keep marching to right in new term WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court begins a new term on Monday at a time of diminished public confidence and justices sparring openly over the institution’s legitimacy. The court seems poised to push American law to the right on issues of race, voting and the environment. Back in June, the conservative majority overturned nearly 50 years of constitutional protections for abortion rights. Now, the court is diving back in with an aggressive agenda that appears likely to split the six conservative justices from the three liberals. Joining the nine-member court is new Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, the court’s first Black woman. GOP attacks Georgia’s Abrams on voting as judge rejects suit ATLANTA (AP) — Republicans are using the defeat of a voting suit brought by a group founded by Georgia Democrat Stacey Abrams to attack her legitimacy as a voting rights advocate. They say a judge’s rejection on Friday of the last remaining claims in a suit brought by Fair Fight Action shows that Abrams was wrong all along to claim that she lost the 2018 Georgia governor’s race to Republican Brian Kemp because of voter suppression by Kemp. But Abrams is far from backing down from her position, and says she won a number of victories that made elections fairer. Her advocacy has also helped make voting rights a defining issue for Black voters in Georgia. What the war in Ukraine means for Asia’s climate goals NEW DELHI, India (AP) — Most Asian countries are prioritizing keeping the country running, no matter the energy source. For rich countries like South Korea or Japan, this means a foray into nuclear energy as an option. For China and India, whose energy needs are enormous, it implies relying on dirty coal power in the short term. But developing countries with finances already strained due to the pandemic, the war is having a disproportionate impact, said Kanika Chawla, of United Nation’s sustainable energy unit. How Asian countries choose to go ahead would have far-reaching consequences: To choose between doubling down on clean energy or deciding to not phase out fossil fuels immediately. Copyright 2022 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. Be the first to know Get local news delivered to your inbox! Read More…

Guajardo, South Alabama Earn Redemption At Louisiana https://digitalalabamanews.com/guajardo-south-alabama-earn-redemption-at-louisiana/ Saturday was redemption day, both for Diego Guajardo individually, and South Alabama’s football program as a whole. Guajardo drilled a 43-yard field goal as time expired to give the Jaguars a 20-17 victory at Louisiana at Cajun Field. It was South Alabama’s first-ever victory in Lafayette, and first over the Ragin’ Cajuns in seven years. RELATED: South Alabama’s DJ Thomas-Jones sent to hospital after collapsing on sideline “Big plays in big moments, and that’s the thing this program has to do to take the next step forward,” South Alabama coach Kane Wommack said. “We took a huge step forward today.” South Alabama (4-1, 1-0 Sun Belt Conference) blew a 17-7 lead in the fourth quarter, but got the ball back with 42 seconds left after Louisiana (2-3, 0-2) tied the game on Ben Wooldridge’s 1-yard touchdown pass to Ben Migl. A 21-yard run by La’Damian Webb and Carter Bradley passes of 12 yards to Caullin Lacy and Jalen Wayne got the ball to the Louisiana 26 with 3 seconds remaining. That brought on Guajardo, who beat Bowling Green with a last-second field goal last season, but missed two extra points and a late field goal in a 20-18 loss to Louisiana in Mobile. This time, the junior from Daphne drilled the ball straight through the uprights for a walk-off win. “That was big, that was long overdue,” Guajardo said. “I’ve been dreaming of, preparing myself for this moment for a whole year. The whole team — offense, defense, special teams — did their job. We executed when we needed it.” Guajardo kicked a 38-yard field goal in the third quarter to put the Jaguars up 10-7, then Bradley’s 3-yard touchdown run made it a 17-7 game with 12:53 remaining. The Ragin Cajuns had not scored any offensive points all day at that point, but began chipping away at the South Alabama defense. A 51-yard field goal by Kenneth Allmandares pulled the Ragin’ Cajuns to within 17-10 with 7:43 to play. After South Alabama went three-and-out and punted, Wooldridge drove Louisiana 84 yards in 17 plays, converting four times on third down before Migl stretched the ball across the goal line and Allmandares hit the extra point to tie it. “They wore down on us,” said safety Devin Voisin, who had his first career interception earlier in the game. “We were out there quite a bit. We had a lot of miscues, big penalties. … We think we’re one of the best defenses in the conference. We were executing (before the final drive). We were locked in.” Webb ran for 75 yards on 22 carries for South Alabama, while Lacy caught five passes for a career-best 112 yards. Wayne had four grabs for 55 yards, while Bradley threw for 245 on 18-for-41 passing. South Alabama outgained Louisiana 361 yards to 276 and went 12-for-21 on third down. The Jaguars are 4-1 after five games for the first time as an FBS program. “It’s a great feeling going into a bye week at 4-1,” Wommack said, “and knowing that our best football is still ahead of us. Our best football has to be ahead of us. We’re doing some great things, but great teams don’t stay great unless they get better as the season goes along.” The game was tied 7-7 at halftime after a mistake-filled first half. Both teams turned the ball over twice, including a South Alabama interception on which cornerback Darrell Luter fumbled the ball right back to Louisiana. South Alabama also had several dropped passes, including one on fourth-and-6 in Louisiana territory. Bradley was called for intentional grounding at the UL 34, pushing the Jaguars out of scoring range. The Ragin’ Cajuns scored the game’s first points on Eric Garror’s 69-yard punt return at the 7:15 mark of the first quarter. Garror, who played his high school ball at McGill-Toolen Catholic School in Mobile, victimized his hometown team to give Louisiana an early lead. South Alabama tied the game on Webb’s 1-yard run with 2:54 left in the second quarter. The Jaguars missed an opportunity for more points late in the half, when Bradley was picked off inside the 20. Louisiana also did itself no favors, as Allmandares missed a pair of first-half field goals. His 29-yard miss kept the game scoreless late in the first quarter, his 41-yard miss on the final play of the second kept it a 7-7 game at the half. South Alabama has an open date next week before hosting Louisiana-Monroe on Oct. 15. If you purchase a product or register for an account through one of the links on our site, we may receive compensation. Read More…

Trump Appointed Florida Judge May Be Removed From Mar-A-Lago Case | News Room Odisha https://digitalalabamanews.com/trump-appointed-florida-judge-may-be-removed-from-mar-a-lago-case-news-room-odisha/ Former federal prosecutor Robert Katzberg made the case that US District Judge Aileen Cannon’s continued interference in the work being done by special master Raymond Dearie in the matter of government documents allegedly stolen by Donald Trump could lead to the 11th US Circuit Court of Appeals stepping in and taking the case from her, media reports here said. Earlier in the week, the Trump-appointed Cannon gave Donald Trump’s legal team an assist by ruling that they did not need to comply with an order from Dearie and reply in a filing whether they believe the FBI agents lied about documents recovered at the former president’s Mar-a-Lago resort almost two months ago. As Katzberg sees it, the Department of Justice could appeal, which they did late Friday, and that they may have a compelling case to ask for Cannon’s removal — although such moves rarely occur. Adding that the 11th Circuit has already stepped in to curb some of Cannon’s excesses, Katzberg claimed it might be open to stepping in in a more forceful way. “The 11th US Circuit Court of Appeals has already filed a stinging opinion that contains ample criticism of Cannon to quote in support,” he wrote. “Appeals courts are hesitant to remove judges from a case, but here, there is a clear record of questionable decisions that have stymied an extremely significant criminal investigation and, per the DOJ, undermined national security. Under these unusual circumstances, reassignment might well be an appropriate solution,” he said. –IANS Read More…