Trump Fan In Clown Wig Threatens To Kill All Democrats In A Dairy Queen
Trump Fan In Clown Wig Threatens To Kill All Democrats In A Dairy Queen https://digitalalaskanews.com/trump-fan-in-clown-wig-threatens-to-kill-all-democrats-in-a-dairy-queen/
A man who believes former President Donald Trump is still president stormed a Dairy Queen and threatened to kill all democrats. (Photo by Mario Tama / Getty Images)
A former President Donald Trump supporter from Pennsylvania was arrested after storming a Dairy Queen with a loaded handgun while wearing a clown wig.
During the incident, he claimed he was going to “kill all the Democrats because Trump was still president.”
Jan Stawovy, a 61-year-old from Hunker, Pennsylvania, told police who confronted him that he “talked to God” and was a “prophet” who was working undercover with the Pennsylvania State Police on a drug sting operation.
He also told officers that he was working to “restore Trump as president” according to the affidavit reviewed by local TV station WTAJ.
Stawovy was arrested and police subsequently found two more loaded handguns in his car along with 62 rounds of ammunition.
Stawovy is now facing multiple felony charges including making terroristic threats and carrying a concealed firearm without a license, according to online court documents reviewed by VICE News. A date for his arraignment has not been set.
It is unclear exactly what triggered Stawovy’s actions on Saturday, but a review of his Facebook page shows that in recent weeks his behavior has become increasingly erratic. Stawovy had previously raised the possibility of a “civil war” breaking out in 2024 and had boosted lies about the 2020 election being stolen.
On Saturday, hours before the incident in Dairy Queen, Stawovy posted an image showing two letters he had received from two local churches barring him from attending their services anymore after disruptive behavior.
In one letter, the pastor of a local church outlined that Stawovy had arrived at a service on Sep. 4 wearing “a clown costume and full makeup [which] frightened many of our congregants.”
In the wake of Trump’s election loss in November 2020, Stawovy was immediately convinced that the former president had won. “Good morning. Good Tithings. Guns. God. And 4 years of President Trump!!!!,” Stawovy wrote on Dec.1, 2020. He has posted multiple pro-Trump messages since the election loss as well as multiple memes about gun control and protecting the 2nd amendment.
Stawovy has also posted some QAnon-linked videos referencing the “great awakening” and “deep state” plots to deny Trump the presidency. He has also shared posts from a number of high-profile figures within the QAnon community, including former Trump lawyer Lin Wood and evangelical pastor Greg Locke, who has repeatedly preached QAnon conspiracies from the pulpit.
On Aug. 7 this year, hours before the FBI searched Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home, Stawovy posted: “Civil War in 2024?”
Trump’s increasingly violent rhetoric and embrace of violent conspiracies like QAnon have led to a number of attacks from his supporters. In the hours after he demonized the FBI for searching his home, one armed supporter attacked an FBI field office in Cincinnati.
And on Sunday, a Michigan man who believed QAnon conspiracies Trump’s lies about the 2020 election shot and killed his wife and critically injured his daughter.
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Judge Unseals Additional Portions Of Mar-A-Lago Affidavit
Judge Unseals Additional Portions Of Mar-A-Lago Affidavit https://digitalalaskanews.com/judge-unseals-additional-portions-of-mar-a-lago-affidavit/
September 14, 2022September 14, 2022
By ERIC TUCKER, Associated Press
WASHINGTON (AP) — A federal judge Tuesday unsealed additional portions of an FBI affidavit laying out the basis for a search of former President Donald Trump’s Florida home, showing that agents earlier obtained a hard drive after issuing a subpoena for surveillance footage recorded inside Mar-a-Lago.
A heavily redacted version of the affidavit was made public last month, but the Justice Department requested permission to show more of it after lawyers for Trump revealed the existence of a June grand jury subpoena that sought video footage from cameras in the vicinity of the Mar-a-Lago storage room.
“Because those aspects of the grand jury’s investigation have now been publicly revealed, there is no longer any reason to keep them sealed (i.e. redacted) in the filings in this matter,” department lawyers wrote.
The newly visible portions of the FBI agent’s affidavit show that the FBI on June 24 subpoenaed for the footage after a visit weeks earlier to Mar-a-Lago in which agents observed 50 to 55 boxes of records in the storage room at the property. The Trump Organization provided a hard drive on July 6 in response to the subpoena, the affidavit says.
The footage could be an important piece of the investigation, including as agents evaluate whether anyone has sought to obstruct the probe. The Justice Department has said in a separate filing that it has “developed evidence that government records were likely concealed and removed from the Storage Room and that efforts were likely taken to obstruct the government’s investigation.”
The Justice Department has been investigating the holding of top-secret information and other classified documents at Mar-a-Lago after Trump left the White House. FBI agents during their Aug. 8 search of the home and club said they recovered more than 11,000 documents and 1,800 other items, including roughly 100 with classification markings.
Separately Tuesday, the Justice Department again urged U.S. District Aileen Cannon to lift her hold on core aspects of the investigation. Cannon last week granted the Trump team’s request for an independent arbiter to review the seized documents and weed out from the investigation any records that may be covered by claims of executive or attorney-client privilege.
She also ordered the department to halt its review of the records pending any further court order or the completion of a review by the yet-to-be-named special master. The department urged Cannon last week to put her order on hold and told the judge Tuesday that its investigation would be harmed by a continued delay of its ability to scrutinize the classified documents.
“The government and the public unquestionably have an interest in the timely enforcement of criminal laws, particularly those involving the protection of highly sensitive information, and especially where, as here, there may have been efforts to obstruct its investigation,” the lawyers wrote.
The Trump team on Monday urged the judge to leave her order in place. His lawyers raised questions about the documents’ current classification status and noted that a president has absolute authority to declassify information, though they pointedly did not say that Trump had actually declassified anything.
____
Follow Eric Tucker on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/etuckerAP
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Stock Market Today: Dow Futures Waver After Inflation-Fueled Rout
Stock Market Today: Dow Futures Waver After Inflation-Fueled Rout https://digitalalaskanews.com/stock-market-today-dow-futures-waver-after-inflation-fueled-rout/
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Last Updated: Sep 14, 2022 at 9:15 am ET
Follow The Wall Street Journal’s full markets coverage.
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The Premise Poll: Liz Cheney Receives Nearly 20% Support In Three-Way Contest With Biden Trump
The Premise Poll: Liz Cheney Receives Nearly 20% Support In Three-Way Contest With Biden, Trump https://digitalalaskanews.com/the-premise-poll-liz-cheney-receives-nearly-20-support-in-three-way-contest-with-biden-trump/
In head-to-head matchup with Biden, Cheney leads 58% to 42%, while Biden and Trump remain in virtual dead heat without Cheney in the race
SAN FRANCISCO, Sept. 14, 2022 /PRNewswire/ — Premise, the global on-demand insights company based in San Francisco, today disclosed the results of its latest Premise Poll, which surveyed more than 1,500 Premise app contributors across the country. The poll shows that, in a three-way race with President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump, Representative Liz Cheney (R-WY) receives 19% of the hypothetical vote. Under the same survey question, Biden registered 36% support and Trump registered 45% support.
Notably, if Cheney were to receive 19% of the vote in a presidential election, it would be the most support a third-party presidential candidate has received since former President Theodore Roosevelt received 27.4% of the vote in 1912 running as a member of the Progressive Party.
This iteration of the Premise Poll also revealed:
In a head-to-head matchup, Trump and Biden are in a virtual dead-heat, with Trump receiving 51% support and Biden receiving 49% support, mirroring Premise’s survey from July.
In a head-to-head contest between Biden and Cheney, Cheney wins by the landslide margin of 58% to 42%.
Among Democratic voters, Biden leads Cheney 61% to 39%. However, Cheney carries a 2/3 majority of independent voters (67% to 33%) and overwhelms him among Republican voters by a four-to-one margin (80% to 20%).
Under Premise’s generic party preference question, respondents have moved significantly toward the Democratic party. 52% of Premise Poll respondents believe that Congress should remain under Democratic control and 48% believe the Republicans should become the majority party in Congress.
In the previous Premise Poll, 53% of respondents favored the Republican Party, whereas 47% of respondents favored the Democratic Party.
There is little change among Premise Poll respondents when it comes to candidate preferences in a potential 2024 Republican presidential primary. 64% favor Trump’s renomination, which is more than four times higher than Florida Governor Ron DeSantis’ support (15%).
Former Vice President Mike Pence is lagging further behind in the Premise Poll, coming in at 7%.
On the Democratic side, President Biden’s support for potential re-election remains tight. 53% of respondents believe that he should not run for re-election.
Among Democratic respondents, 51% believe that he should let another member of his party run for president. Among independent respondents, 62% believe that Biden should step aside after his current term.
If Biden does not run for re-election, Vice President Kamala Harris is the most popular potential Democratic candidate in 2024 (34%), with former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton coming in second (18%).
California Governor Gavin Newsom and Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg are virtually tied in third (9% and 8%, respectively)
The full results of this Premise Poll can be found here.
Disclosure of Polling Methodology
These results are based on responses from 1,572 Americans collected between September 2nd and September 5th via the Premise smartphone application. Premise randomly sampled its opt-in panel members, stratified on Age, Gender, Region and Education, based on the 2019 American Community Survey (ACS). The results are weighted by Age, Gender, Region, and Education benchmarked against the 2019 ACS estimates. Respondents were compensated for their participation.
About Premise
Premise is an on-demand insights company. Its technology mobilizes communities of global smartphone users to source actionable data in real-time, cost-effectively, and with needed visibility. In more than 135 countries and 37 languages, Premise finds Data for Every Decision. To learn more, please visit www.premise.com.
SOURCE Premise
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MyPillow CEO Trump Ally Mike Lindell Says FBI Issued Subpoena Seized Phone At A Hardee
MyPillow CEO, Trump Ally Mike Lindell Says FBI Issued Subpoena, Seized Phone At A Hardee https://digitalalaskanews.com/mypillow-ceo-trump-ally-mike-lindell-says-fbi-issued-subpoena-seized-phone-at-a-hardee/
MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell, a prominent Donald Trump supporter, said the FBI seized his cellphone and he was handed a subpoena from a Colorado grand jury on Tuesday while he was in a Hardee’s parking lot in Minnesota.
Lindell, who founded MyPillow in 2004, has been a key ally for Trump and has continued to try to overturn the 2020 election by pushing baseless claims about conspiracy theories. In May, he was been banned from Twitter for a second time after attempting to use a new account. Lindell’s original account was permanently banned earlier in the year after he continued to perpetuate claims that Trump won.
On his podcast, “Frank Speech: The Lindell Report,” Lindell detailed how he was issued the subpoena while waiting for his food and he was questioned about a Colorado clerk, Tina Peters, who is being charged in what prosecutors say was a “deceptive scheme” to breach voting system technology used across the country. Lindell said the papers he was served labeled it an “official criminal investigation of a suspected felony” with the use of a federal grand jury.
Anti-vaxxer, election denier: And, in Michigan, perhaps secretary of state
Critics call it intimidation: Virginia’s GOP attorney general sets up ‘election integrity unit.’
Lindell said he was also questioned about his connection to Doug Frank, an Ohio educator who claims voting machines have been manipulated.
Lindell said on the podcast: “Cars pulled up in front of us, to the side of us and behind us and I said, ‘These are either bad guys or the FBI.’ Well, it turns out they were the FBI. …I want to say this for the record, they were pretty nice guys. None of them had an attitude.”
In a separate interview with ABC News, Lindell said three cars with federal agents pulled in front of his vehicle while he was parked at the fast-food restaurant and handed him the search warrant for his cellphone. “I’ve been to many jails,” Lindell told the outlet. “I’m not scared to go to jail. I’m trying to save my country.”
“Without commenting on this specific matter, I can confirm that the FBI was at that location executing a search warrant authorized by a federal judge,” FBI spokeswoman Vikki Migoya told The Associated Press.
Contributing: The Associated Press.
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Justice Department Criminal Investigation Now Touches Nearly All Efforts To Overturn 2020 Election For Trump
Justice Department Criminal Investigation Now Touches Nearly All Efforts To Overturn 2020 Election For Trump https://digitalalaskanews.com/justice-department-criminal-investigation-now-touches-nearly-all-efforts-to-overturn-2020-election-for-trump/
(CNN)Justice Department criminal prosecutors are now examining nearly every aspect of former President Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election — including the fraudulent electors plot, efforts to push baseless election fraud claims and how money flowed to support these various efforts — according to sources and copies of new subpoenas obtained by CNN.
The investigation is also stretching into cogs of the sprawling Trump legal machine that boosted his efforts to challenge his electoral loss — with many of the recipients of 30-plus subpoenas that were issued in recent days being asked to turn over communications with several Trump attorneys.
The sweeping effort has many in Trump world concerned about the potential legal significance of being caught up in a federal investigation.
The flurry of investigative activity has involved seizure warrants, including one served to Trump counsel Boris Epshteyn for his phone, according to multiple people familiar with the matter. Epshteyn remains close to the former President and his political and fundraising operation.
The widening pool of recipients of subpoenas also includes prominent Trump deputies, such as his former White House adviser Dan Scavino, who continued to work for Trump after he left office.
The subpoena language and activity bring together the seemingly far-flung parts of the DOJ investigation.
The Justice Department previously obtained grand jury testimony, conducted searches and nabbed extensive documents about rally organization and fundraising, about efforts in and around the White House to pressure then-Vice President Mike Pence to block certification of the election results, and about the fake electors. This new round of subpoenas drills down with more specific requests about the baseless claims of mass election fraud that were being peddled to legislators, law enforcement and others.
In one of the new subpoenas viewed by CNN, along with demands for communications with a lengthy list of Trump-world figures and fake electors, the investigators ask for documents related to the raising and spending of money. Prosecutors are interested in the financing around the January 6 rally, bids to challenge the results and the Trump-aligned political organization formed after the election to push fraud claims.
The assistant US attorneys signing the subpoenas are working as part of the team led by prosecutor Thomas Windom in the DC US Attorney’s Office, according to court records and multiple people familiar with the investigation. Two DC US Attorney’s Office supervisors appear on the subpoenas as well, indicating the latest sweep serves both the ongoing fake elector probe and the prosecution office’s larger mission to target planning of violence before January 6, according to the sources familiar with the team’s work.
The subpoenas also ask for the recipients to identify all methods of communication they’ve used since fall 2020 and to turn over to DOJ anything the House select committee investigating January 6, 2021, has demanded — whether they cooperated with the House panel or not.
“They’re now encompassing individuals closer and closer to the President to learn more and more about what the President knew and when he knew it,” David Laufman, an attorney and former federal prosecutor, said Monday on CNN’s “Erin Burnett OutFront.”
There are no public indications that the DOJ’s January 6 probe is overlapping with the federal investigation into the handling of classified documents from Trump’s White House and seizure of materials from Mar-a-Lago. However, the latest developments in the 2020 election investigation come as the documents probe has already put Trump allies on high alert for potential legal exposure.
While those around Trump have brushed off the congressional investigation into the riot on January 6 as political, there is a palpable shift in demeanor when it comes to the Department of Justice probe, as allies and advisers recognize the significance of being looped into a federal investigation, according to multiple people in Trump’s orbit. The Trump-world figures now swept up in the investigation claim the department is on a fishing expedition that is impeding on privileged communications.
“It’s all very distressing to me as an American and as a prominent attorney for Donald Trump,” said Bruce Marks, an attorney whose communications are of interest to investigators, according to the recently issued subpoenas.
Marks took issue with DOJ seeking any of his communications with the campaign, claiming that those exchanges should be confidential under attorney-client communications principles. (The DOJ has used teams and additional court sign-offs to filter out privileged communications collected in other recent January 6 investigative steps, and not all communications records of attorneys are necessarily privileged.)
Notorious for leaking, a usually verbose Trump world has also fallen virtually silent in the wake of dozens of grand jury subpoenas being sent in recent days. Some subpoenaed have spent the last several days scrambling to find the right lawyers and understand the scope of what the Department of Justice is seeking from them. Others, already entangled in other Trump investigations, know the drill — keep quiet until the dust settles.
An aggressive new phase as a pre-election quiet period starts
The burst of investigative activity came just as the Justice Department runs into its so-called 60-day rule, an internal policy that discourages prosecutors from taking public steps in cases that stand to influence a coming election.
Previously, investigators sought any records of interactions with a set of a dozen Trump officials, largely lawyers and those working with the fake electors including Rudy Giuliani, Epshteyn and John Eastman.
But the latest subpoenas also ask for communications with new names: high-profile right-wing Trump lawyers Sidney Powell and Cleta Mitchell, as well as Marks, a lawyer based in Philadelphia who assisted with Trump’s election appeals and in an attention-grabbing court case where Giuliani tried and failed to throw out all of Pennsylvania’s electoral votes.
Marks told CNN on Tuesday that he was among Trump’s lawyers after the election and was reporting to and communicating frequently with Giuliani and Epshteyn over text messages and emails about post-election efforts. Epshteyn was assisting Giuliani in much of his attempts to block the vote outcome electing Joe Biden.
The warrant served to Epshteyn, seeking his phone, is another signal of how the probe has escalated.
In June, the Justice Department seized the phone of Eastman, the Trump attorney who spearheaded the far-fetched legal theory that Pence could hold up Congress’ certification of Biden’s win. Federal investigators also that month searched the home of an ex-DOJ official, Jeffrey Clark, who was at the center of Trump efforts to pressure the department to support his plots.
Prosecutors’ willingness to obtain a warrant for Epshteyn’s phone hints that they see the campaign strategist — who is currently an adviser to Trump — as playing an integral role in Trump’s 2020 election machinations. When the agents seized and imaged his phone, they also served him a subpoena for documents, according to some of CNN’s sources.
Epshteyn did not respond to CNN’s requests for comment about the search of his phone. The New York Times was first to report the seizure of his phone.
The wider net the department is now casting is also evident in the types of Trump-world figures who received the latest round of subpoenas. They include former campaign manager Bill Stepien and Sean Dollman, who worked for Trump’s 2020 presidential campaign as chief financial officer, as well as Scavino, Trump’s former deputy chief of staff and an architect of Trump’s social media presence.
Also receiving a subpoena was Bernard Kerik, a former New York City police commissioner who worked with Giuliani to find evidence of voter fraud in the weeks following the 2020 election, as did Women for America First, the pro-Trump group that organized the rally that preceded the Capitol attack.
Kerik was approached by a handful of agents who tried to ask him questions, which he refused to answer and so they handed him a subpoena, a person familiar with the episode said. The agents asked if he would be willing to talk with an attorney present. Eventually the agents handed him the document.
This story has been updated with additional details.
CNN’s Zachary Cohen contributed to this report.
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Russia's War In Ukraine | CNN https://digitalalaskanews.com/russias-war-in-ukraine-cnn-2/
Analyst: This is why Zelensky’s Izium visit is important
01:57
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky thanked the country’s military “for saving our people, our hearts, children and future,” during a visit to the newly liberated city of Izium in Kharkiv region on Wednesday.
In a sign that Kyiv’s sustained military offensive is working, Zelensky said 8,000 square kilometers of land has been recaptured since the beginning of the month.
Two of the main electricity lines supplying part of Kharkiv region have been restored,
Ukraine’s state energy operator said, following a retaliatory Russian strike on a local facility that left many without power.
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen says she will visit Kyiv on Wednesday, adding that the bloc’s “solidarity with Ukraine will remain unshakeable.”
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky visited newly liberated Izium on Wednesday — five days after the Ukrainian forces took back control of the northeastern region of Kharkiv.
Ukraine’s counteroffensive continues to liberate swathes of territory from Russia’s occupation, with most of this reclaimed land is in the country’s northeast and south, according to Zelesnky.
Take a look at the map of control as it stands currently:
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky says he is shocked by what he has seen on his visit to the newly liberated Izium district in Kharkiv.
“What we see is shocking, although we have already seen this in Bucha [near Kyiv], in the first de-occupied territories. Likewise, destroyed buildings, killed people,” he told journalists during the visit. “Unfortunately, this is part of our history today. And this is part of the modern Russian nation – what they did.”
He thanked foreign governments for sending investigators and prosecutors to Ukraine to investigate alleged human rights abuses by occupying forces.
“We all understand that this process takes time … I am sure, there will be verdicts for all this, there will be a tribunal. I don’t doubt it for a second,” he said.
He also expressed confidence that all occupied areas would eventually return to Ukraine.
“We should send signals to our people who, unfortunately, are still under occupation. And my signal to the people in Crimea: we know that these are our people, and it is a terrible tragedy that they have been under occupation for more than eight years. We will return there. I don’t know when exactly. But we have plans,” Zelensky said.
If you’re just joining us, here’s what you need to know about the latest developments in Russia’s war in Ukraine.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky visited newly liberated Izium: Ukrainian forces took back control of the northeastern region of Kharkiv on Saturday. Zelensky thanked the military Wednesday and observed a minute of silence to honor those who had been lost in the war.
Izium’s liberation is a huge strategic blow to Russia’s military assault in the east as it had become an important hub for Moscow to launch attacks southward into the Donetsk region and Kupyansk.
About 8,000 square kilometers (3,088 square miles) of territory has been liberated by Ukrainian forces so far this month, according to Zelensky. Most of this reclaimed land is in the country’s northeast and south, he added.
The counteroffensive is, however, slowing down: Ukraine is liberating swathes of territory from Russia’s occupation in the east, but presidential military adviser Oleksiy Arestovych says the country’s counteroffensive has “slowed down slightly because most of the Ukrainian forces are fighting to capture the city of Lyman, to open our way into the Luhansk region. We will intensify our strikes and liberate new territories in a different way,” he told CNN’s Becky Anderson in an interview.
Lyman, an important rail hub, is roughly 60 kilometers (37 miles) west of the strategically important Ukrainian city of Severodonetsk.
The US says Russian forces retreated back across the border: “We’ve seen a number of Russian forces, especially in the northeast, in the Kharkiv region, cross over the border back into Russia as they’ve retreated from the Ukrainian counter-offensive,” Pentagon press secretary Brig. Gen. Pat Ryder told reporters during a briefing Tuesday. But Russian forces still “do exist en masse in Ukraine,” he added.
But Russia has been trying to gain ground in other parts of Ukraine: The Ukrainian military’s General Staff said Ukrainian units had successfully repelled Russian attacks around the city of Bakhmut, while Russian artillery and air force are pounding settlements near the front lines across Donetsk. There was also Russian mortar and tank fire in the Zaporizhzhia region, the General Staff said.
Looting claims: The military claimed that in the south, around the city of Polohy, Russian troops were also stealing private cars. And in Nova Kakhovka, in the Kherson region, Russians “began to massively remove furniture and household appliances from temporarily abandoned settlements.” CNN is unable to confirm the military’s claims, but there has been widespread evidence of looting in Kharkiv and other previously occupied Russian areas.
Russian shelling killed at least two people and injured six in Mykolaiv: The head of the region’s civil military administration provided this update, adding that educational institution, infrastructure facilities and residential buildings were damaged in the southern port city near the Black Sea on Wednesday. Ukrainian officials claim that they’ve taken back about 500 square kilometers of territory in the south so far, along the borders of Mykolaiv and Kherson.
“I want to thank you for saving our people, our hearts, children and future,” Zelensky said as he visited Izium on Wednesday.
(Zelensky telegram channel/Ukraine Government)
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky visited newly liberated Izium in the northeastern region of Kharkiv on Wednesday, five days after the country’s forces recaptured the city.
Photographs on the Facebook page of an army unit showed Zelensky at a ceremony in the main square to raise the Ukrainian flag over the city’s administrative building. Hanna Maliar, the Deputy Minister of Defense, was also present.
“Earlier, when we looked up, we always looked for the blue sky. Today, when we look up, we are looking for only one thing – the flag of Ukraine,” Zelensky said in a post on the presidential Telegram channel.
“Our blue-yellow flag is already flying in the de-occupied Izium. And it will be so in every Ukrainian city and village. We are moving in only one direction – forward and towards victory.”
“I want to thank you for saving our people, our hearts, children and future,” Zelensky said, according to a statement released on the Presidential website.
“It has been extremely difficult for you in recent months. Therefore, I ask you to take care of yourselves, because you are the most valuable asset we have,” he said.
“It may be possible to temporarily occupy the territories of our state. But it is definitely impossible to occupy our people, the Ukrainian people,” he said.
There was a minute’s silence at the ceremony to remember those who had been lost during military operations.
Ukrainian forces took back control of Izium on Saturday, marking a huge strategic blow to Russia’s military assault in the east.
Izium, which sits near the border between the Kharkiv and Donetsk regions, was under Russian occupation for over five months and became an important hub for the invading military.
Moscow was using Izium as a launching pad for attacks southward into the Donetsk region and Kupyansk, some 30 miles to the north of Izium, as a rail hub to resupply its forces.
Russia’s collapse in northeastern Ukraine sparked fury from Putin loyalists, who condemned the Kremlin’s abandonment of Kharkiv in a rare display of stinging criticism.
CNN’s Ivana Kottasová, Tim Lister, Yulia Kesaieva, Denis Lapin, Josh Pennington and Victoria Butenko contributed reporting.
A power substation is seen destroyed by a Russian missile strike in Kharkiv on September 12.
(Vyacheslav Madiyevskyi/Ukrinform/Abaca/Sipa/Associated Press)
Two of the main electricity lines supplying part of Kharkiv region have been restored, Ukraine’s energy supplier said Wednesday, following a Russian strike on a local facility that left many without power.
“Repair crews of NPC Ukrenergo have already restored the operation of two main lines supplying Kharkiv and the Kharkiv region. Work on other lines continues and will continue until complete,” the post from Ukrainian state energy company Ukrenergo read.
According to Ukrenergo, which operates the nation’s high-voltage transmission lines, energy supply was restored across the Kharkiv region late on Tuesday. CNN cannot independently verify the claim.
The entire region of Kharkiv was without electricity after the backup power line supplying settlements “failed,” the Deputy Head of the Office of the President of Ukraine Kyrylo Tymoshenko said on Tuesday, citing “insidious shelling by Russian (forces)” as the cause.
Last week, Ukrainian forces ruptured Russian defenses and recaptured swathes of territory in the east, marking a colossal blow for Moscow.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said Russia responded on Sunday with missile strikes that hit large parts of eastern Ukraine including the Kharkiv power and heating plant, killing one employee and damaging critical infrastructure.
In early February, Russian President Vladimir Putin touched down in Beijing to a warm welcome from Chinese leader Xi Jinping, as the two strongmen put on a show of unity for the world at the Winter Olympics.
The summit, in which the pair touted their ever-growing ties and railed against NATO expansion, was held three weeks before Putin ordered his tanks into Ukraine. While it is not known if the topic of war came up during their conversations, one thi...
Mike Lindell The CEO Of My Pillow & Outspoken Donald Trump Supporter Says FBI SEIZED His Phone
Mike Lindell – The CEO Of My Pillow & Outspoken Donald Trump Supporter – Says FBI SEIZED His Phone https://digitalalaskanews.com/mike-lindell-the-ceo-of-my-pillow-outspoken-donald-trump-supporter-says-fbi-seized-his-phone/
“Cars pulled up in front of us, to the side of us and behind us and I said, ‘These are either bad guys or the FBI.’ Well, it turns out they were the FBI,” Lindell revealed during his struggling online show, The Lindell Report, Tuesday night.
“He goes, ‘Well, I got some bad news … he goes, ‘We’re taking your cellphone. We have a warrant for your cellphone,” Lindell continued. “I want to say this for the record, they were pretty nice guys. None of them had an attitude.”
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More Than Half Of Republican Senate Nominees Have Rejected Cast Doubt Upon Or Tried To Overturn The 2020 Election Results KVIA
More Than Half Of Republican Senate Nominees Have Rejected, Cast Doubt Upon Or Tried To Overturn The 2020 Election Results – KVIA https://digitalalaskanews.com/more-than-half-of-republican-senate-nominees-have-rejected-cast-doubt-upon-or-tried-to-overturn-the-2020-election-results-kvia/
By Daniel Dale, CNN
More than half of the Republican nominees for the 35 US Senate seats being contested in the 2022 midterms have challenged the legitimacy of the 2020 election — rejecting, raising doubts about or taking steps to overturn President Joe Biden’s victory.
A CNN analysis found that at least 19 of this year’s Republican nominees have contested or refused to affirm the 2020 results. The list includes five incumbent senators and 11 other candidates who have at least a reasonable chance of winning in November.
The success of election deniers in Republican Senate primaries around the country — from the southern border to the northern border; in swing states, conservative states and liberal states; among established officeholders and first-time candidates — is yet more evidence of the broad support among party voters for former President Donald Trump’s lie that the election was stolen.
The 19 Republican Senate nominees on this list of election deniers and doubters join at least 11 Republican nominees for state secretary of state and at least 22 Republican nominees for governor. US senators generally have less power over elections than secretaries of state and governors do, but they do have the power to object to certifying electoral votes, to write and vote on election legislation, and sometimes to hold hearings and issue subpoenas on election issues.
Not all election deniers are alike. Some of the Senate candidates on the list have made formal attempts to reverse the will of the American people — for example, by voting to reject the congressional certification of electoral votes Biden won — while others have made false claims from the sidelines. Some of the candidates have aggressively spread specific conspiracy theories; others have evasively complained of “irregularities” and refused to answer directly when asked whether Biden was legitimately elected.
We will update the list if we find evidence that additional Senate nominees should be included. (There has been little media coverage of some longshot nominees, like Bob McDermott of Hawaii and Gerald Malloy of Vermont.) Here is the rundown as it stands in mid-September now that the primary elections have concluded.
Alabama: Katie Britt
Alabama Republican nominee Katie Britt told NBC News in May 2022 that she would have objected to the 2020 election results if she had been in the Senate on January 6, 2021. The next month, she told Fox: “I’ve said many times that there were major problems with the 2020 election, and we have to make sure that we uphold the integrity and security of our elections. I’ve called for a forensic audit to make sure we get to the bottom of it and that people can have faith in our electoral process.”
AL.com reported in March 2022 that Britt would not go so far as to agree that the election was “stolen,” but Britt also didn’t reject that false notion. Instead, she responded indirectly, saying: “I believe that there was fraud. I think you have to have a forensic audit. You have to give people peace and clear confidence that their vote is going to matter the next time.”
Britt is the former chief of staff to outgoing Sen. Richard Shelby and former chief executive of the Business Council of Alabama. Her Democratic opponent is Will Boyd, a pastor who once served as a city councilman in Illinois.
Britt’s campaign did not respond to a request for comment for this article.
Arizona: Blake Masters
Arizona Republican nominee Blake Masters has been explicit in declaring that “the 2020 election wasn’t free or fair.” In an ad Masters released in November 2021, early in the Republican primary, he said, wrongly, “I think Trump won in 2020.”
The rest of the ad was more subjective; Masters argued that Trump would have won in a “fair fight” without supposed anti-Trump media bias, “big tech” suppression of a late-election story about Biden’s family, and some states having changed their rules to allow for easier mail-in voting. But Masters’ ad-opening claim that Trump actually did win is plain false.
Masters, a venture capitalist, has also made or promoted other false claims about the 2020 election. Two days after the election, Masters chided the media for supposedly declining to investigate claims about ballots being cast in the names of dead people in some Democratic-dominated cities; the claims appeared dubious from the start, and media outlets were investigating them — and debunking them. In September 2021, Masters echoed one of Trump’s favored conspiracy theories, falsely declaring that opinion polls that showed Biden with big leads during the 2020 campaign were “designed to suppress the Trump vote.”
At a campaign event in June 2022, Masters spoke supportively of the baseless suggestion that there is mass cheating in the vote-counting process. He said he couldn’t prove his father wrong when his father told him that, if Masters were to win his Senate race by 30,000 votes against Democratic incumbent Sen. Mark Kelly, “I think that they’ll find 40,000 for Mark Kelly.” Masters added, “I think there’s always cheating, probably, in every election. The question is, what’s the cheating capacity? I don’t know exactly how many illegal and legal votes each of Trump and Biden got in 2020, but I look at all the signs, I look at things going wrong…”
At the end of the Republican primary in early August, Masters’ campaign website claimed that “if we had had a free and fair election, President Trump would be sitting in the Oval Office today.” After Masters won the primary, CNN’s KFile team reported, that language was removed from the site and replaced with this vague declaration: “We need to get serious about election integrity.”
Masters’ campaign did not respond to a request for comment for this article.
California: Mark Meuser
Earlier this year, California Republican nominee Mark Meuser told television station KPIX 5 of the 2020 election: “There are so many irregularities about this election that I do not feel any American who looks at it can have confidence that they know what the actual results are.”
Meuser, a lawyer who was trounced in a California secretary of state election in 2018 and in a state Senate election in 2012, is making a longshot challenge to incumbent Democratic Sen. Alex Padilla, who beat him in the 2018 secretary of state race. Meuser’s campaign did not respond to a request for comment for this article.
Georgia: Herschel Walker
Herschel Walker, the Georgia Republican nominee and a former football star, has made a variety of wild false claims about the 2020 election.
In a tweet on January 6, 2021, after the Capitol was attacked by pro-Trump rioters, Walker said he wanted Trump to get to the bottom of “who stole this election.”
In late 2020 and early 2021, Walker falsely declared he could “guarantee you” that Biden “didn’t get 50 million people voting for him” (in fact, more than 81 million people voted for Biden), promoted a baseless conspiracy theory about Dominion Voting Systems technology and another conspiracy theory about imaginary vote-stealing software, said Georgia should refuse to certify Biden’s victory Georgia victory because of “serious Election Fraud,” wrongly alleged “Country wide election fraud,” and proposed that all votes in Georgia, Arizona, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Nevada and Wisconsin be tossed out and that these seven states — six of which were won by Biden — “vote again.”
In May 2022, Walker told reporters that “I don’t know” whether Biden was lawfully elected and that there were “problems” with what happened in the election, The New York Times reported.
Walker is challenging incumbent Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock. Walker’s campaign did not respond to a request for comment for this article.
Kentucky: Rand Paul
Incumbent Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul voted to certify Biden’s victory on January 6, 2021, noting that “it was never intended by our founders that Congress have the power to overturn state-certified elections.”
But Paul has also made false claims about the 2020 election. He declared at a Senate hearing in December 2020: “The fraud happened. The election in many ways was stolen.” As a supposed example, Paul said, “We can’t just say, ‘Oh, 4,000 people voted in Nevada that were non-citizens, and we’re just going to ignore it. We’re going to sweep it under the rug.’” There is no evidence of thousands of non-citizens voting in Nevada; an investigation by the office of Nevada’s secretary of state, a Republican, later found that fraud wasn’t proven by the data that Republican activists had cited to make this allegation.
Three days after the election in November 2020, Paul tweeted that while it is usually difficult for “voter fraud in absentee voting” to affect the outcome of an election, there were many more mail ballots than usual this time. (Again, voter fraud didn’t affect the outcome.) Paul went further later that month, falsely claiming on Twitter, “When the media says no evidence of widespread fraud, perhaps they mean no evidence, if you look the other way…” (He linked to an article that did not demonstrate fraud.) In another November 2020 tweet, Paul asked people to “decide for yourself” whether so-called “data dumps” late on the night of the election — in reality, just votes being counted and publicly reported — represented fraud or statistical anomalies.
Paul has also made a subjective argument that state officials acted improperly by changing election rules without approval from state legislators. Paul spokesperson Kelsey Cooper said in an email to CNN in August 2022: “Senator Paul voted to accept the state certified electors consistent with the constitutional mandate that state...
Post Politics Now: Biden Headed To Detroit To Highlight Investment In Electric Vehicles
Post Politics Now: Biden Headed To Detroit To Highlight Investment In Electric Vehicles https://digitalalaskanews.com/post-politics-now-biden-headed-to-detroit-to-highlight-investment-in-electric-vehicles/
Today, President Biden is headed to Detroit to tour the North American International Auto Show and tout his administration’s investments in electric vehicles, including funding to build a network of chargers across the country that was included in the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law that he signed last year. The trip is part of stepped-up travel in advance of the midterms to highlight his party’s agenda.
On Tuesday, voters in three states — New Hampshire, Rhode Island and Delaware — went to the polls, marking the end of this year’s nominating process. A closely watched GOP Senate primary in New Hampshire has yet to be called by the Associated Press, but early Wednesday, state Senate President Chuck Morse conceded the race to retired U.S. Army Brig. Gen. Don Bolduc.
Your daily dashboard
8:45 a.m. Eastern time: Biden departs the White House en route to Detroit. White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre will brief reporters aboard Air Force One. Listen live here.
11:15 a.m. Eastern: Biden tours the auto show in Detroit.
Noon Eastern: House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) holds a weekly news conference. Watch live here.
1:45 p.m. Eastern: Biden delivers remarks on electric vehicles in Detroit. Watch live here.
3:10 p.m. Eastern: Biden attends a Democratic National Committee reception in Detroit.
Got a question about politics? Submit it here. After 3 p.m. weekdays, return to this space and we’ll address what’s on the mind of readers.
On our radar: Key infrastructure nominee to testify before Senate committee
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The Senate’s Environment and Public Works Committee will consider the Biden administration’s pick to fill the long-vacant top job at the Federal Highway Administration on Wednesday, weighing a nominee who will play a key role in overseeing the infrastructure law and fixing the nation’s roads and bridges.
The Post’s Ian Duncan reports that Biden has selected Shailen Bhatt, a former head of the Colorado and Delaware transportation departments who also served at the U.S. Transportation Department during the Obama administration. Per Ian:
Analysis: Republicans struggle over what it means to be ‘pro-life’ post Dobbs
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In the months since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in June, antiabortion candidates and lawmakers are undecided on what it means to be “pro-life.”
Writing in The Early 202, The Post’s Leigh Ann Caldwell and Theodoric Meyer note that immediately after the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision, many Republicans celebrated and touted their antiabortion credentials, pushing aggressive bans. But as evidence grew that the ruling was costing them politically, particularly with women voters, many have tried to soften their views by scrubbing their websites of past hard-line stances or amending their positions on when abortion should be made illegal — all while maintaining their “pro-life” identification.
On our radar: Biden to announce $900 million in funding for electric vehicle chargers
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President Biden is headed to Detroit on Wednesday to tour the North American International Auto Show and tout his administration’s investments in electric vehicles, including funding to build a network of chargers across the country that was included in the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law he signed last year.
In his remarks, Biden will announce the first allocation of $900 million to build chargers, the White House said. The infrastructure law includes $7.5 billion to build a national network of 500,000 electric vehicle chargers, according to a White House fact sheet previewing the event.
The latest: Sen. Hassan attacks Bolduc as N.H. GOP race remains uncalled
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The Associated Press has yet to declare a victor in New Hampshire’s Republican Senate primary, but early Wednesday, state Senate President Chuck Morse conceded the race to retired U.S. Army Brig. Gen. Don Bolduc, saying the party needs to focus on defeating Sen. Maggie Hassan (D-N.H.) in November.
Hassan, meanwhile, is already on the attack against Bolduc.
In a statement early Wednesday, Hassan said the general election campaign would be “a clear contrast between my record of delivering for the people of New Hampshire and Don Bolduc’s radical, backward-looking agenda.”
The latest: A blow to McCarthy in New Hampshire’s 1st District
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The result in New Hampshire’s 1st Congressional District on Tuesday was a blow to House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.).
The Post’s Colby Itkowitz and David Weigel report that Karoline Leavitt, an ex-member of the Trump White House press team who ran as an “America first” insurgent against the Washington establishment, defeated Matt Mowers, a former Trump aide backed by McCarthy, according to the Associated Press.
Per our colleagues:
Leavitt, who has emphasized her false claim that the 2020 presidential election was rigged, will face Rep. Chris Pappas (D) in a race seen as a key battlefront in the fight for control of the House.
Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.), the House Republican Conference chair, supported Leavitt, her former staffer. At 25, Leavitt would be the youngest woman ever elected to Congress if she wins in the fall.
New Hampshire was one of three states where voters went to the polls on Tuesday, marking the end of this year’s nominating process, along with Rhode Island and Delaware. The primaries allowed voters a final chance to choose party standard-bearers after months of fierce intraparty battles that highlighted divisions on both sides over policy, personality and ideology, among other things.
The latest: In Delaware, McKee prevails in competitive Democratic gubernatorial primary
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In Rhode Island on Tuesday, Gov. Dan McKee (D), who replaced Gina Raimondo after she was appointed to Biden’s Cabinet to lead the Commerce Department, defeated business executive Helena Foulkes in a competitive Democratic primary.
McKee had been dogged by a scandal over a $5 million contract awarded to a political adviser’s consulting firm, which became the subject of an FBI probe, The Post’s Colby Itkowitz and David Weigel report. Foulkes received a late assist from House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), who came to the state to campaign for her Sunday.
The latest: Russia spent millions on secret global political campaign, U.S. intelligence finds
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Russia has secretly funneled at least $300 million to foreign political parties and candidates in more than two dozen countries since 2014 in an attempt to shape political events beyond its borders, according to a new U.S. intelligence review.
The Post’s Missy Ryan reports that Moscow planned to spend hundreds of millions of dollars more as part of its covert campaign to weaken democratic systems and promote global political forces seen as aligned with Kremlin interests, according to the review, which the Biden administration commissioned this summer. Per Missy:
On our radar: A surge of federal hate-crime prosecutions this year
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When Matt Greenman heard about a pro-Palestinian rally in Manhattan in April, he grabbed an Israeli flag, met the demonstrators on 42nd Street and marched ahead of them, wearing the flag like a cape.
His counterprotest didn’t last long, reports The Post’s David Nakamura. Moving toward the sidewalk, investigators say, he was attacked by Saadah Masoud — a founding member of Within Our Lifetime, a Palestinian activist group — who punched him and dragged him across the pavement, causing a concussion.
Per Dave:
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Abortion Ken Starr And The Boston Marathon | Daily Skimm
Abortion, Ken Starr, And The Boston Marathon | Daily Skimm https://digitalalaskanews.com/abortion-ken-starr-and-the-boston-marathon-daily-skimm/
A National Ban
The Story
There’s now a bill in Congress to ban abortion on the national level.
Tell me.
Yesterday, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) intro’d legislation that would ban abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy. There would be exceptions in instances of rape, incest, and if the mother’s life is in danger. And states with stricter laws could keep their bans. But the proposed nationwide cutoff — which Graham pitched as a way to combat “late-term abortions” — comes before many fetal anomalies are discovered around the 20-week mark. Graham apparently said he didn’t know if his bill would allow for abortions in those cases.
How are people reacting?
Anti-abortion activists have been calling for a law like this. And some Republicans have supported an earlier version putting the cutoff at 20 weeks. But yesterday’s bill comes less than 60 days before midterms — and after Kansas voters rejected an anti-abortion measure. Now, some Republicans in the Senate are distancing themselves. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) says this issue should be handled at the state level. And other key members in the GOP have outright rejected it. But the Hill isn’t the only place with an abortion update…
Tell me more.
Yesterday, West Virginia lawmakers passed one of the most strict abortion bans in the country. If signed, abortions will be banned except in cases of medical emergencies. There are also exceptions for rape and incest victims, who have until eight weeks of pregnancy…but only if they report the assault within 48 hours of getting an abortion. Now, the bill goes to Gov. Jim Justice (R-WV) to sign it. One state Dem said the language of the law could lead to “maternity deserts” as doctors might worry they could be prosecuted.
theSkimm
Graham’s abortion bill didn’t receive the warm welcome he was probably hoping for. But the mixed reaction shows how much of a divide there is in the Republican Party over the issue…weeks before Election Day.
And Also…This
Who people are remembering…
Ken Starr. Yesterday, the former independent counsel died of complications from surgery. He was 76. In the 1990s, Starr became a household name for leading the Whitewater investigation into former President Bill Clinton. The years-long investigation started with a focus on real estate transactions and ultimately led to the second-ever impeachment trial in American history. In 1998, his 445-page Starr Report crashed gov servers because of millions of downloads — and was known for detailed descriptions of sex acts between the president and former White House intern Monica Lewinsky. Starr was also part of former President Donald Trump’s legal team during his 2020 impeachment trial and helped Jeffrey Epstein get a plea deal in 2008. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) remembered Starr as a “brilliant litigator.” Lewinsky said his death brought up ”complicated feelings.”
Where tensions are high…
Armenia and Azerbaijan. Earlier this week, clashes erupted between the two former Soviet countries along the border — killing nearly 100 troops from both sides. It marked the worst bout of fighting between the two since 2020, over the disputed territory of Nagorno-Karabakh. Russia later brokered a cease-fire that put an end to the fighting and Azerbaijan occupied the region. Now, both sides are blaming each other for provoking the attacks and world leaders are worried that this conflict could further escalate. Turkey, Russia, and the US are all calling for an end to it. And Russia’s attempt to broker another cease-fire hasn’t gone anywhere.
Where there are concerns…
San Francisco. Earlier this week, a woman sued the city after her DNA from a rape kit was used to arrest her for an unrelated crime. In February, it came out that the police department hadn’t just been saving DNA samples from the assailants…it was also storing the samples of victims. For years. And keeping those samples to test them against a database of other crimes. SF’s district attorney dropped the property crime charges against the woman whose DNA was collected from a 2016 rape kit…even though she was the victim, not the assailant. Now, she says she’s been “re-victimized” by an “unconstitutional” practice used by the police department. The state is moving to ban using rape DNA for unrelated cases, and it awaits Gov. Gavin Newsom’s (D-CA) signature.
PS: If you need this, contact the National Sexual Assault Hotline here or by calling 1-800-656-HOPE.
What’s not looking up…
The economy. Yesterday, the Labor Dept reported an 8.3% jump in the Consumer Price Index from last August. The CPI measures the average price of things like food, clothing, and housing. Despite gas prices slowly dropping, the CPI was higher than expected. It was bad news for the stock market, which then suffered its biggest drop since June 2020. The market shock came the same day that President Biden celebrated his Inflation Reduction Act — which, despite the name, isn’t expected to bring down prices anytime soon. And has Republicans asking, ‘what’s there to celebrate?’ Now, the Fed’s expected to hike interest rates by 75 basis points when they meet next week. But economists worry that another interest rate increase could tip the country into a recession.
Who’s trying to force a relationship…
Twitter. Yesterday, Twitter shareholders voted overwhelmingly to approve Elon Musk’s $44 billion takeover deal. The message: cuffing season started early.
Who’s got people saying ‘retweet’…
Gisele Bündchen wanting her husband to be “more present.”
What’s stepping up its inclusivity…
The Boston Marathon.
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Chad Blair: Has Trumps Big Lie Gained Traction In Hawaii?
Chad Blair: Has Trump’s Big Lie Gained Traction In Hawaii? https://digitalalaskanews.com/chad-blair-has-trumps-big-lie-gained-traction-in-hawaii/
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Russia-Ukraine At A Glance: What We Know On Day 203 Of The Invasion
Russia-Ukraine At A Glance: What We Know On Day 203 Of The Invasion https://digitalalaskanews.com/russia-ukraine-at-a-glance-what-we-know-on-day-203-of-the-invasion/
Ukraine has set its sights on freeing all territory occupied by invading Russian forces after driving them back in a speedy counteroffensive in the north-east. In an address on Tuesday evening, Ukraine president Volodymyr Zelenskiy said about 8,000 sq km (3,100 square miles) have been liberated so far, apparently all in the north-eastern region of Kharkiv. “Stabilisation measures” had been completed in about half of that territory, Zelenskiy said, “and across a liberated area of about the same size, stabilisation measures are still ongoing”.
Ukrainian presidential adviser Oleksiy Arestovych held out the prospects of building on the gains made over the weekend in the Kharkiv region by moving on the eastern province of Luhansk. “There is now an assault on Lyman and there could be an advance on Siversk,” Arestovych said. The pro-Russian leader of the Donetsk People’s Republic denied the claims and said in a video post that Lyman remains in their hands, saying “the situation has been stabilised.”
However, the frontline in eastern Ukraine is approaching the borders of territory claimed by the self-proclaimed pro-Russian separatist Luhansk People’s Republic (LPR) according to Andrey Marochko, a senior LPR military commander.
The general staff of Ukraine’s armed forces warned that Russian forces were continuing to loot as they withdrew from occupied territories. On a stretch of highway heading into Russian territory, Ukrainian officials spotted civilian vehicles with licence plates from the Kharkiv region, driven by Russian military and weighed down with looted belongings. In the south, there were reports of Russian occupants breaking the gates of private garages and taking cars, as well as removing furniture.
Russia has probably used Iranian-made uncrewed aerial vehicles in Ukraine for the first time, Britain’s defence intelligence said on Wednesday, after Kyiv reported downing one of the UAVs – a Shahed-136 – on Tuesday. The device is a “one-way attack” weapon, the MoD said, and has been used in the Middle East. The shooting down of the drone near the frontline in Ukraine suggests that Russia is using the weapons as a tactical weapon rather than a strategic one targeting military installations deeper into Ukrainian territory.
Western sanctions on Russia are having a real impact and are there to stay, the European Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, said on Wednesday, stressing that the European Union’s solidarity with Ukraine would be “unshakeable”. “This is the time for us to show resolve, not appeasement,” she said. “We are in it for the long haul.”
Von der Leyen also sent a strong signal over European Union expansion, saying the European Union is not complete without Ukraine, Moldova, Georgia and western Balkan countries. “You are part of our family, you are the future of our union. Our union is not complete without you,” she said.
Russian oil and gas revenues have fallen to their lowest for almost a year, despite a big rise in prices.
Pope Francis, at a summit of religious leaders in Kazakhstan, has said that God does not guide religions towards war in what appears to be an implicit criticism of Russian Orthodox Patriarch Kirill, who has backed the invasion of Ukraine.
US president Joe Biden said it was hard to tell if Ukraine had reached a turning point in the six-month war. Asked about the situation on Tuesday, he said: “It’s clear the Ukrainians have made significant progress,” he said. “But I think it’s going to be a long haul.”
The White House said the United States is likely to announce a new military aid package for Ukraine in “coming days”.
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14-Year-Old Charged With Murder In Killing Of Philadelphia Employee At Playground
14-Year-Old Charged With Murder In Killing Of Philadelphia Employee At Playground https://digitalalaskanews.com/14-year-old-charged-with-murder-in-killing-of-philadelphia-employee-at-playground/
(CNN)A 14-year-old boy has been charged with murder in connection with the shooting death of a woman at the Philadelphia playground where she worked, city officials confirm.
The teenager was charged with murder and other offenses related to the Friday shooting of Parks and Recreation employee Tiffany Fletcher at the Mill Creek Recreation Center in West Philadelphia, Police Commissioner Danielle Outlaw said.
Fletcher, 40, was “caught in the crossfire” of a shootout with the 14-year-old and at least one other individual, police said.
District Attorney Larry Krasner confirmed that the teenager is being charged as an adult, but officials did not disclose his name during a news conference on Monday.
CNN has reached out to the Defender Association of Philadelphia to determine whether they are representing the teenager.
Outlaw said officers heard multiple gunshots on Friday around 1:30 p.m. in the area of the recreation center and saw people running from the playground when they responded to the scene.
After she was shot, Fletcher ran to an area business where workers attempted to tend to her wounds. Officers transported Fletcher to a nearby hospital, but she died later that evening, Outlaw said.
The 14-year-old boy was arrested after a brief chase, and a 9mm “ghost gun” was recovered in a nearby trash can, Outlaw said.
Authorities also found 12 fired shell casings at the scene. It’s still unknown what led to the shootout and authorities are still searching for other suspects involved.
Victim stepped up when city faced staff shortage, commissioner said
Fletcher agreed in the spring to work as a pool maintenance attendant when the city, like many others, was facing a shortage of staff at its pools, and agreed to stay on at Mill Creek Recreation Center after the pool season ended, according to Parks and Recreation Commissioner Kathryn Ott Lovell, who called Fletcher “a beloved member of the staff.”
“Tiffany answered the call each day to serve children and families in her community and to make her three children and her family proud,” Ott Lovell said.
The recreation center had just opened at 1 p.m. that day. Four other employees were present at the center when the shooting took place, according to Ott Lovell.
“Words alone cannot express the outrage, hurt, and sadness that all of us feel. Dedicated, passionate, and driven — Tiffany Fletcher was just doing her job outside Mill Creek Rec Center in West Philadelphia when — in a brazen and unconscionable act of violence — she was struck by crossfire in the middle of the day,” Mayor Jim Kenney said.
Jean Washington, Fletcher’s niece, called her aunt a “wonderful mother…aunt, sister, daughter.”
“I want justice for her children. They deserve their mom. For peace, we need justice,” Washington said.
“Inexcusable, deeply disheartening, horrible” level of gun violence, district attorney says
Philadelphia has been experiencing an increase in gun violence, DA Krasner said. Last week, the city recorded 11 homicides from September 3-9, he said.
Additionally, there have been 384 recorded homicides this year in the city as of Sunday, marking an increase of 4% for the same time period last year, Krasner said.
“It’s extremely important that we understand that we’re dealing with an inexcusable, deeply disheartening, horrible level of gun violence within the city of Philadelphia that is increasingly affecting children,” Krasner said.
The city’s mayor also commented on the surge in violence, calling the recent number of incidents “outrageous” and “simply unacceptable.”
“It’s just unfathomable to think of how many lives were impacted by gun violence and my deepest sympathies go out to the loved ones of everyone affected,” Kenney said.
Kenney said the ongoing violence near recreation centers and schools was one of the reasons the city now offers a $10,000 reward for any information leading to the arrest and conviction of someone who fires a weapon within 500 feet of a school, recreation center or library.
“Our playgrounds, our parks, our rec centers should be safe and sacred places in our communities,” Ott Lovell said.
CNN’s Tanika Gray, Jessica Prater, Zenebou Sylla and Theresa Waldrop contributed to this report.
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EU Court Upholds Antitrust Ruling Against Google Trims Fine To $4.12 Billion
EU Court Upholds Antitrust Ruling Against Google, Trims Fine To $4.12 Billion https://digitalalaskanews.com/eu-court-upholds-antitrust-ruling-against-google-trims-fine-to-4-12-billion/
The European Union flag is seen with Google’s logo.
Jaap Arriens | NurPhoto | Getty Images
The European Union’s General Court on Wednesday upheld an antitrust ruling against Google’s parent company Alphabet but reduced its fine to 4.125 billion euros ($4.12 billion) from 4.34 billion euros.
The dispute between Google and the EU courts is over whether it uses the Android operating system to quash competition, and was initiated against the company in 2015.
The court said it “largely confirms the European Commission’s decision that Google imposed unlawful restrictions on manufacturers of Android mobile devices and mobile network operators to consolidate the dominant position of its search engine.”
In a statement provided to CNBC, Google said, “We are disappointed that the Court did not annul the decision in full. Android has created more choice for everyone, not less, and supports thousands of successful businesses in Europe and around the world.”
The initial fine was issued by the European Commission in 2018 and was the largest ever received by Google. It said that around 80% of Europeans used Android and that Google gave an unfair advantage to its apps, such as Chrome and Search, by forcing smartphone makers to pre-install them in a bundle with its app store, Play.
Google contends that Android phones compete with Apple phones, which use its iOS operating system, and that using Android still allows consumers a choice of phone maker, mobile network operator and the opportunity to remove Google apps and install others.
In Wednesday’s judgment, the General Court said the new fine was “appropriate in view of the significance of the infringement.”
It highlighted that Google’s business model “is based first and foremost on increasing the numbers of users of its online search services so that it can sell its online advertising services,” whereas Apple focuses on the sale of higher-end smart mobile devices.
Google argues that this allows it to keep the majority of its services free.
The company can still appeal the ruling in the EU’s highest court.
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Ryan Courts Black Voters Vance Prepares For Trump Visit As Polls Show Tight U.S. Senate Race Ohio Capital Journal
Ryan Courts Black Voters, Vance Prepares For Trump Visit As Polls Show Tight U.S. Senate Race – Ohio Capital Journal https://digitalalaskanews.com/ryan-courts-black-voters-vance-prepares-for-trump-visit-as-polls-show-tight-u-s-senate-race-ohio-capital-journal/
Two months from election day, recent polling indicates a close U.S. Senate race. Democrat Tim Ryan and Republican J.D. Vance are eager to spin those results to their advantage. But outside observers caution that poll and others might overstate Democrats’ position.
A tight race… or is it?
The Suffolk University/USA Today poll puts the race at “a pure toss up” with 47% of respondents favoring Ryan to Vance’s 46%. Another 6% percent remain undecided, and the poll has a 4.4% margin of error.
“J.D. Vance has yet to completely unify his Republican base while Tim Ryan has solidified support among Democrats and is competitive among independents,” Suffolk political research center director David Paleologos said in a press release. “Ryan is even winning a small slice of Republicans and those who say they want the upcoming election to change the direction that President Joe Biden is leading the nation.”
That looks like great news for Ryan in a state where the GOP has maintained a durable advantage in recent statewide races. Meanwhile, Vance’s campaign argues Ryan’s summer ad blitz only got him to even odds.
Kyle Kondik from Sabato’s Crystal Ball has seen the race trending in Ryan’s direction. They’ve moved their race forecast from Likely Republican to Leans Republican. But as the name implies, Kondik still thinks Vance has at least a slight advantage.
“At the end of the day I think Vance is favored in the race, but I feel like it’s become more competitive over the summer, as opposed to less.”
The New York Times’ Nate Cohn took a bit of wind out Democrats’ sails this week as well. He noted Democrats appear to be doing well in states like Ohio, North Carolina and Wisconsin — states where polling in recent cycles overestimated Democratic strength.
That track record is enough to give Kondik pause. He allowed it’s possible surveys are discounting Republicans again, but he cautioned, “just because a poll has been wrong before you can’t assume it will be right or wrong or what have you in the future.”
It’s also worth noting the same Suffolk University poll shows Gov. Mike DeWine with a substantial lead in the gubernatorial contest.
Vance campaign trail
After a weekend trading barbs with Jennifer Lawrence, J.D. Vance kicked off the week in Cuyahoga County to help open a Republican party campaign office. After a slow summer, he’s beginning to ramp up — and insisting to wavering supporters that everything is under control.
In his keynote speech to full crowd , Vance acknowledges his campaign’s relative lack of TV ads. “My whole strategy, just to be direct with you and be clear, was to save our resources to when I think people are really paying attention. And that’s right now.” pic.twitter.com/qEmIKBetDV
— Andrew Tobias (@AndrewJTobias) September 7, 2022
This weekend, he gets a boost with the return of former President Donald Trump. It’s the second time this campaign season that Trump has visited to prop up his endorsed candidates. The former president’s backing was crucial for Vance’s primary win, and the campaign is likely hoping for a repeat.
Trump isn’t the only national figure to stop by to try to help shore up Vance’s bid and perhaps burnish his own political reputation as well: Late last month Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis campaigned with Vance outside of Youngstown as well.
Ryan campaign trail
Tim Ryan’s week started with a pair of events specifically geared to Black voters as well as a third about addressing the opioid crisis.
African Americans constitute about 12% of Ohio’s population. But because they favor Democrats so heavily, maximizing turnout in the Black community is a perennial concern for Democratic campaigns. More to the point, it’s table stakes for a party billing itself as concerned with equity to present an agenda to help systematically disadvantaged communities.
But in his ads, at least, Ryan focuses his appeal on workers generally and union members specifically. There’s little if any reference to race.
Speaking after a Black voters’ roundtable in Dayton, though, he argued his campaign is showing up in minority communities and making a concerted pitch to their needs and interests. He pointed to infrastructure dollars to remove lead in water pipes and local government funding in the American Rescue Plan.
“We’ve been doing this all along and really trying to not just hit the traditional — like, we’re going to talk about economics. We’re going to talk about small business. We’re going to talk about wealth creation, wealth building in the Black community,” he explained.
Still there were murmurs of agreement when Dayton city councilman Chris Shaw cautioned Ryan on his campaign’s bid for independents and centrist Republicans. From the outset, Ryan has pitched himself as a Democrat a Republican could vote for. He has repeatedly distanced himself from his own party and President Biden in an attempt to build his own “exhausted majority” coalition.
Shaw actually doesn’t fault the strategy. He praised Ryan for going on the attack in a recent ad, and argued it’s smart for him hew to the center. The problem, he warned, is that sliver in the middle might not be enough come Election Day.
“He’s telling the truth, and I respect that, I respect the hell out of that,” Shaw said. “But I just want (an) understanding that it’s about motivating folks to get out and vote — don’t forget that piece of it.”
“Traditionally a lot of folks from minority communities have been left out in the cold in that way,” he said. “And I mean, that’s the fear, right?”
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Dan Cox Was A Backbench Md. Lawmaker. Then The Pandemic Hit.
Dan Cox Was A Backbench Md. Lawmaker. Then The Pandemic Hit. https://digitalalaskanews.com/dan-cox-was-a-backbench-md-lawmaker-then-the-pandemic-hit/
Long before Donald Trump elevated his primary bid for governor, Del. Dan Cox was a polite backbencher in the Republican super-minority, building his reputation in Annapolis as a thoughtful yet inflexible lawyer whose legislation rarely passed.
Cox (R-Frederick) held the door for Democratic colleagues, earnestly suggested an acerbic GOP friend pick up “How to Win Friends and Influence People” — and championed bills often far outside Maryland’s political mainstream.
“He was on the typical freshman path, finding his way,” said House Minority Leader Jason C. Buckel (R-Allegany), who supported Cox’s primary opponent. Then, “Dan’s sense of self and sense of himself as legislator really changed.”
The pandemic fueled Cox’s political trajectory. He said he never considered running for governor in heavily Democratic Maryland before his fight against shutdowns, mask restrictions and vaccine mandates focused his ambition and rallied supporters.
“I had no plans, never even crossed my imagination,” said Cox, 48. His record of passing two bills, tacking on a few amendments to others and casting votes on the fringe of his own party would not normally portend a shot at the state’s top job. Neither would calling the 2020 election of President Biden “stolen” in a deeply Democratic state, nor attending a conference in Gettysburg, Pa., this spring that promoted QAnon theories.
But now he’s at the top of the GOP ticket, waging an uphill campaign against a Democratic opponent who has outraised him 10 to 1. Cox’s record as a one-term state lawmaker illustrates what he did — and tried to do — when he had a position of power.
A constitutional lawyer by training, Cox summarizes his legislative philosophy as “power to the people” by curtailing government’s influence — though he supports the government’s protection of what he calls natural rights, including those of fetuses and parents.
Over four years, he introduced 14 bills that would restrict or roll back access to abortion and offered multiple additional budget amendments to strip state funding for low-income women seeking the procedure. He sought to make concealed-carry permits available to all handgun owners who wanted one for self-defense. He pushed for tax cuts big and small. And he voted with just two other Annapolis lawmakers to keep an old law that makes spousal rape legal.
Alongside bills about black bear hunting, sex offenders’ homes, alternative treatments for soldiers with PTSD and remembering Pearl Harbor, Cox heavily emphasized parental rights both in custody battles and in the classroom or school board meetings. Well before he launched a long-shot run that drew Trump’s endorsement, he proposed limits to executive power for public health emergencies.
Asked if he would push similar antiabortion proposals as governor, Cox said, “I do have a consistent and transparent record of service to the people of Maryland, whereas my opponent, Wes Moore, has no record.” (Moore, the Democratic nominee, is an author and former nonprofit executive who has not held public office.)
Cox pushed to limit distribution of drugs for medical abortions, add informed-consent requirements, let medical providers refuse to perform abortions and ban the procedure altogether after a heartbeat is detected.
Three times, he pushed bills to outlaw abortions of fetuses diagnosed with Down syndrome, allowing for exceptions for cases of rape or incest. He challenged colleagues in a hearing to “look in the mirror. … Is the person looking back at you perfect? … What if your flaws were identifiable through a DNA test? … Would you be here given your imperfections?”
“He is a devout Christian man who tries to make decisions based off of what he thinks God is calling him to do,” said Del. Lauren C. Arikan (R-Harford), who serves alongside Cox on the Judiciary Committee. “He’s very thoughtful and kind.”
Arikan’s office neighbors Cox’s, and she echoed colleagues who said privately that even in disagreement he was unfailingly polite. She said it’s in contrast to her approach. “I rub people the wrong way all day, every day,” she said, and laughed recalling how Cox gently recommended she read Dale Carnegie’s 1936 self-help classic on winning friends.
Like many freshmen, Cox’s legislative victories have been rare. When he successfully amended a bill exempting orchards and farmers markets from a ban on plastic bags in 2020, his colleagues broke out into applause. Once during a marathon committee hearing, in 2019, he tacitly acknowledged the futility of his bill that would require at least two school employees to carry guns, drawing laughs by saying, “I’m hesitant to get into my full testimony and just ask you to pass it and we’ll be done.”
The two bills Cox did get passed came in his first year, in 2019. One set up a task force to review all criminal and civil violations in Maryland code looking for collateral consequences. The other requires the national hotline for human trafficking to be posted prominently near marriage license clerks in courthouses.
He said recently that he pitched the latter bill after a constituent came to his office, weeping about being a trapped in a seven-year marriage to her trafficker. But when it came to other marquee human trafficking laws that advocates pushed, Cox was in a small minority who voted against them.
He was one of 21 lawmakers to vote against raising the minimum marriage age from 15 to 17. In at interview, he said a pregnant 16-year-old should be allowed to marry the father.
Cox was one of five members of the House of Delegates to vote against a “safe harbor” bill that forbids prosecuting child sex-trafficking victims for prostitution. He said he was convinced that the prosecutions protected children and that police needed the “tool in the toolbox” as leverage to persuade victims to help “catch the pimps” because nothing else would overcome the children’s fear of the traffickers.
“Every single police officer that testified, to my recollection, in front of our committee indicated that they do not ever mistreat a minor in the prosecution of prostitution,” he said.
He pressed for bills regardless of whether he could get them enacted by Democrats, because he viewed his role partly as a spokesperson for the people who elected him.
“I’m not going to back down from what my constituents need,” Cox said, referring to his rural district near the Pennsylvania border that voted for Trump by 10 percentage points in 2020. “And so we’re going to have hearings and public hearings. That’s the beauty of the legislative process, to make sure that my constituents’ voices are heard.”
Colleagues on both sides of the aisle described him as principled and didactic. But his policy choices drew more attention than his colleagues’, particularly after the pandemic.
By the time Trump took note in the fall of 2021, Cox had used pandemic outrage to elevate his platform online, tapping into a national vein of conservative grievance about governmental overreach.
It started weeks into the pandemic, in May 2020, when he unsuccessfully sued Gov. Larry Hogan, a fellow Republican, in federal court over the scope and duration of pandemic-related shutdowns. By then, Maryland was reporting about 950 cases per day, 1,250 people had died, and vaccines were still more than six months from emergency approval.
This year, with Trump and Cox sharing Hogan as a political foe, Cox made what historians have called the first serious effort to impeach a Maryland governor. (Republicans joined Democrats in unanimously voting it down in committee.)
Cox’s low profile shifted. His social media following swelled in 2020 and beyond as he joined other organizations to become a leading voice against stay-at-home orders that shuttered business and churches. His advocacy and its contrast to Hogan, he said, prompted people to ask him to consider running for governor.
“It began in a simple way of simply advocating for common-sense understandings that if we’re going to have Walmart and big box stores open and liquor stores, that we certainly can have small businesses open and churches open with similar standards,” Cox said. “I think it just demonstrates the beauty of the American system that sometimes we’re required by the people to step up and do more than what we had anticipated. And hopefully it’s all for the better of everyone.”
In his law practice, Cox took on work challenging pandemic restrictions, filing lawsuits on behalf of businesses, private citizens and organizations against public officials in Charles, Montgomery, Anne Arundel and Harford counties. All were ultimately dismissed.
In 2021 and more so in 2022 after he’d declared he was running for governor, Cox began to speak out more and file more legislation that sent a signal to the conservative base, colleagues say. Cox sought to forbid coronavirus vaccine mandates and introduced legislation to let people collect unemployment benefits if they were fired for refusing to get vaccinated. (“No jabs for jobs” is a campaign promise to voters.)
“He was pleasant and seemed, you know, fairly normal as far as ordinary social interactions go,” said David Moon, a liberal Democrat from Montgomery County. “But over the course of the four-year term, I would say he definitely started doing some of these hot-button issues. I don’t recall him doing ‘don’t say gay’ bills when he first got here, but certainly that’s what he was doing towards the end.”
Moon said that based on his experience with Cox in the General Assembly, he has been telling Democrats not to take him for granted in the election. “He’s obviously a Trump-molded conservative firebrand at this point, but my read on it is he seems like a bit of a calculating guy,” Moon said.
“It’s very easy to put him into a caricature … as not a formidable, strategic mind,”...
How A Spreader Of Voter Fraud Conspiracy Theories Became A Star
How A Spreader Of Voter Fraud Conspiracy Theories Became A Star https://digitalalaskanews.com/how-a-spreader-of-voter-fraud-conspiracy-theories-became-a-star/
In 2011, Catherine Engelbrecht appeared at a Tea Party Patriots convention in Phoenix to deliver a dire warning.
While volunteering at her local polls in the Houston area two years earlier, she claimed, she witnessed voter fraud so rampant that it made her heart stop. People cast ballots without proof of registration or eligibility, she said. Corrupt election judges marked votes for their preferred candidates on the ballots of unwitting citizens, she added.
Local authorities found no evidence of the election tampering she described, but Ms. Engelbrecht was undeterred. “Once you see something like that, you can’t forget it,” the suburban Texas mom turned election-fraud warrior told the audience of 2,000. “You certainly can’t abide by it.”
Ms. Engelbrecht was ahead of her time. Many people point to the 2020 presidential election as the beginning of a misleading belief that widespread voter fraud exists. But more than a decade before Donald J. Trump popularized those claims, Ms. Engelbrecht had started planting seeds of doubt over the electoral process, becoming one of the earliest and most enthusiastic spreaders of ballot conspiracy theories.
From those roots, she created a nonprofit advocacy group, True the Vote, to advance her contentions, for which she provided little proof. She went on to build a large network of supporters, forged alliances with prominent conservatives and positioned herself as the leading campaigner of cleaning up the voting system.
Now Ms. Engelbrecht, 52, who is riding a wave of electoral skepticism fueled by Mr. Trump, has seized the moment. She has become a sought-after speaker at Republican organizations, regularly appears on right-wing media and was the star of the recent film “2,000 Mules,” which claimed mass voter fraud in the 2020 election and has been debunked.
She has also been active in the far-right’s battle for November’s midterm elections, rallying election officials, law enforcement and lawmakers to tighten voter restrictions and investigate the 2020 results.
Image
Ms. Engelbrecht, center, has claimed that she witnessed rampant voter fraud, while providing little evidence.Credit…Michael F. McElroy for The New York Times
“We’ve got to be ready,” Ms. Engelbrecht said in an interview last month with a conservative show, GraceTimeTV, which was posted on the video-sharing site Rumble. “There have been no substantive improvements to change anything that happened in 2020 to prevent it from happening in 2022.”
Her journey into the limelight illustrates how deeply embedded the idea of voter fraud has become, aided by a highly partisan climate and social media. Even though such fraud is rare, Mr. Trump and his allies have repeatedly amplified Ms. Engelbrecht’s hashtag-friendly claims of “ballot trafficking” and “ballot mules” on platforms such as Truth Social, Gab and Rumble.
Misleading memes about ballot boxes have soared. The term “ballot mules,” which refers to individuals paid to transport absentee ballots to ballot boxes, has surfaced 326,000 times on Twitter since January, up from 329 times between November 2020 and this January, according to Zignal Labs, a media insights company.
In some places, suspicions of vote tampering have led people to set up stakeouts to prevent illegal stuffing of ballot boxes. Officials overseeing elections are ramping up security at polling places.
Voting rights groups said they were increasingly concerned by Ms. Engelbrecht.
She has “taken the power of rhetoric to a new place,” said Sean Morales-Doyle, the acting director of voting rights at the Brennan Center, a nonpartisan think tank. “It’s having a real impact on the way lawmakers and states are governing elections and on the concerns we have on what may happen in the upcoming elections.”
Some of Ms. Engelbrecht’s former allies have cut ties with her. Rick Wilson, a Republican operative and Trump critic, ran public relations for Ms. Engelbrecht in 2014 but quit after a few months. He said she had declined to turn over data to back her voting fraud claims.
“She never had the juice in terms of evidence,” Mr. Wilson said. “But now that doesn’t matter. She’s having her uplift moment.”
Cleta Mitchell, Ms. Engelbrecht’s former attorney and now a lawyer for Mr. Trump, and John Fund, a conservative journalist, told Republican donors in August 2020 that they could no longer support Ms. Engelbrecht. They said that her early questions on voting were important but that they were confounded by her recent activities, according to a video of the donor meeting obtained by The New York Times. They did not elaborate on why.
“Catherine started out and was terrific,” said Ms. Mitchell, who herself claims the 2020 election was stolen from Mr. Trump. “But she got off on other things. I don’t really know what she’s doing now.”
Mr. Fund added, “I would not give her a penny.”
Others said the questions that Ms. Engelbrecht raised in “2,000 Mules” about the abuse of ballot drop boxes had moved them. In July, Richard Mack, the founder of a national sheriff’s organization, appeared with her in Las Vegas to announce a partnership to scrutinize voting during the midterms.
“The most important right the American people have is to choose our own public officials,” said Mr. Mack, a former sheriff of Graham County, Ariz. “Anybody trying to steal that right needs to be prosecuted and arrested.”
Image
Richard Mack, the founder of a national sheriff’s organization, has announced a partnership with Ms. Engelbrecht.Credit…Adam Amengual for The New York Times
Ms. Engelbrecht, who has said she carries a Bible and a pocket Constitution as reminders of her cause, has scoffed at critics and said the only misinformation was coming from the political left. She said she had evidence of voting fraud in 2020 and had shared some of it with law enforcement.
“I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been through this exercise and how my words get twisted and turned,” she said in a phone interview.
Ms. Engelbrecht has said she was just a P.T.A. volunteer and small-business owner with no interest in politics until the 2008 election of President Barack Obama. Concerned about the country’s direction, she volunteered at the polls. Her critique of the voting system caught the attention of the Tea Party, which disdains government bureaucracy.
In 2009, Ms. Engelbrecht created the nonprofit King Street Patriots, named after the site of the 1770 Boston Massacre, which fueled colonial tensions that would erupt again with the Tea Party uprising three years later. She also formed True the Vote. The idea behind the nonprofits was to promote “freedom, capitalism, American exceptionalism,” according to a tax filing, and to train poll watchers.
Conservatives embraced Ms. Engelbrecht. Mr. Fund, who wrote for The Wall Street Journal, helped her obtain grants. Steve Bannon, then chief executive of the right-wing media outlet Breitbart News, and Andrew Breitbart, the publication’s founder, spoke at her conferences.
True the Vote’s volunteers scrutinized registration rolls, watched polling stations and wrote highly speculative reports. In 2010, a volunteer in San Diego reported seeing a bus offloading people at a polling station “who did not appear to be from this country.”
Civil rights groups described the activities as voter suppression. In 2010, Ms. Engelbrecht told supporters that Houston Votes, a nonprofit that registered voters in diverse communities of Harris County, Texas, was connected to the “New Black Panthers.” She showed a video of an unrelated New Black Panther member in Philadelphia who called for the extermination of white people. Houston Votes was subsequently investigated by state officials, and law enforcement raided its office.
“It was a lie and racist to the core,” said Fred Lewis, head of Houston Votes, who sued True the Vote for defamation. He said he had dropped the suit after reaching “an understanding” that True the Vote would stop making accusations. Ms. Engelbrecht said she didn’t recall such an agreement.
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“It was a lie and racist to the core,” Fred Lewis, head of Houston Votes, said of Ms. Engelbrecht’s comments of the group.Credit…Ilana Panich-Linsman for The New York Times
Her profile rose. In 2012, Politico named her one of the 50 political figures to watch. In 2014, she became a right-wing hero after revelations that the Internal Revenue Service had targeted conservative nonprofits, including True the Vote.
Around that time, Ms. Engelbrecht began working with Gregg Phillips, a former Texas public official also focused on voting fraud. They remained largely outside the mainstream, known mostly in far-right circles, until the 2020 election.
After Mr. Trump’s defeat, they mobilized. Ms. Engelbrecht campaigned to raise $7 million to investigate the election’s results in dozens of counties in Wisconsin, Georgia, Pennsylvania and Arizona, according to a lawsuit by a donor.
The donor was Fred Eshelman, a North Carolina-based drug company founder, who gave True the Vote $2.5 million in late 2020. Within 12 days, he asked for a refund and sued in federal court. His lawyer said that True the Vote hadn’t provided evidence for its election fraud claims and that much of Mr. Eshelman’s money had gone to businesses connected with Ms. Engelbrecht.
Mr. Eshelman, who withdrew the suit and then filed another that was dismissed in April 2021, did not respond to requests for comment. Ms. Engelbrecht has denied his claims.
In mid-2021, “2,000 Mules” was hatched after Ms. Engelbrecht and Mr. Phillips met with Dinesh D’Souza, the conservative provocateur and filmmaker. They told him that they could detect cases of ballot box stuffing based on two terabytes of cellphone geolocation data that they had bought and matched with video surveillance footage of ballot ...
Four Takeaways From New Hampshire And Rhode Island Primaries | CNN Politics
Four Takeaways From New Hampshire And Rhode Island Primaries | CNN Politics https://digitalalaskanews.com/four-takeaways-from-new-hampshire-and-rhode-island-primaries-cnn-politics/
CNN —
While New Hampshire, Rhode Island and Delaware held their primaries Tuesday, results of the most anticipated race of the night were still up in the air as of early Wednesday morning. Votes were still being counted in New Hampshire’s Republican primary for US Senate, where the candidate the GOP’s establishment had attempted to defeat held a narrow lead in the race to take on Democratic Sen. Maggie Hassan. The race is the final puzzle piece as 2022’s primary calendar wrapped up, with the eight-week sprint to November’s midterm elections now underway.
Don Bolduc, a retired Army brigadier general and election denier who has embraced Trump’s approach to politics, led state Senate President Chuck Morse as of early Wednesday morning. If he ends up winning the race, he would join a list of candidates national Republicans worry won’t be able to appeal to the broader November electorate.
The stakes are high, with a Senate split 50-50 on the line and Republican candidates in Arizona, Georgia, Ohio and Pennsylvania also struggling. The GOP had hoped that New Hampshire, where Hassan won by just 1,000 votes six years ago, would be added to the list of battleground states in November.
Meanwhile, the fields were set for two of New England’s most competitive House races on Tuesday, as well – including one in New Hampshire, where a Trump White House aide who has also parroted his lies about election fraud defeated an establishment-backed candidate, further complicating the GOP’s efforts to win control of the House.
Here are four takeaways from the final night of 2022’s primary season:
The Republicans’ hopes of winning a Senate majority could hinge on the outcome of a razor-tight primary in New Hampshire.
Morse is backed by establishment Republicans, including moderate Gov. Chris Sununu, and has been boosted by a super PAC aligned with Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, which pumped more than $4 million into the race in an attempt to stop Bolduc from winning the primary.
Bolduc aligned himself closely with former President Donald Trump. He said he “concurred with Trump’s assessment” about the 2020 election – that is, Trump’s lie that President Joe Biden’s victory came as a result of widespread fraud.
“I signed a letter with 120 other generals and admirals saying Trump won the election, and damn it, I stand by” that letter, Bolduc said in an August primary debate.
Bolduc has also called Sununu, the Republican governor who national figures attempted to recruit into the race, “a Chinese communist sympathizer.” He has said he would repeal the 17th Amendment to the US Constitution, which requires states to directly elect their senators, and raised the prospect of abolishing the FBI.
What was missing from New Hampshire’s primary was Trump. His decision not to endorse any candidate was a departure from Trump’s approach to most Senate primaries this year.
Hassan won by just 1,000 votes in 2016, and Republicans have seen New Hampshire as a potential pick-up opportunity in their bid for control of a Senate currently split evenly between 50 Democrats and 50 Republicans.
Mimicking Trump’s brash style and parroting his election denialism again proved more potent in a Republican primary than embracing the policy substance of his tenure in the White House.
That’s the lesson from the Republican primary in New Hampshire’s 1st District, where 25-year-old political newcomer Karoline Leavitt, a former Trump aide who more closely mimicked the brand of politics that has defined Trump’s orbit of political acolytes, defeated Matt Mowers, another former Trump administration official but one who was more cautious on issues like the lie that the 2020 election was stolen from the former President.
Mowers fully embraced aspects of Trump’s tenure. His website was full of positions that defined the former President, and Mowers touted the fact that Trump endorsed him in his failed attempt to win the seat in 2020.
Rhetorically and stylistically, however, the two were dramatically different.
Where Mowers had “confidence in New Hampshire elections,” Leavitt said she believed “the 2020 election was undoubtedly stolen from President Trump.” Where Mowers suggested hearings to determine whether President Joe Biden should be impeached, Leavitt unequivocally said the President should be impeached. And where Mowers said he “supports science” when asked about the newly rolled out coronavirus vaccine, Leavitt said it was “none of your business.”
Mowers’ restraint effectively opened the door for someone like Leavitt to win over Republican primary voters in New Hampshire, many of them who still support the former President.
As polls showed Leavitt rising in the closing days, outside groups like the House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy-aligned Congressional Leadership Fund and Defending Main Street spent millions on ads looking to help Mowers beat back the challenge from the right. But the money was largely for not – and now Republicans are saddled with a more complicated nominee in a race against Rep. Chris Pappas, one of the most vulnerable Democrats in the country.
Leavitt is one of the first Gen Z candidates to ever win a primary.
The field is set for what’s expected to be one of New England’s most competitive congressional races this fall, after Rhode Island state treasurer Seth Magaziner won the 2nd District’s Democratic primary, CNN projected.
He is now set to face Republican Allan Fung, the Cranston mayor, in the district where long-time Rep. Jim Langevin is retiring. Langevin, a Democrat, has won his races without serious competition since 2001, and President Joe Biden won there by 14 percentage points in 2020. But Republicans believe the seat is winnable.
Fung was the Republican candidate for governor in 2014 and 2018, losing twice to former Gov. Gina Raimondo but performing well in the district, which covers the western half of the state.
Magaziner defeated Sarah Morgenthau, who was the director of the Peace Corps Response under former President Barack Obama; David Segal, who once served in the state legislature and ran a failed congressional race in 2010; and Joy Fox, who worked as communications director for Langevin and Raimondo.
One of the least popular governors in the country, Rhode Island’s Dan McKee faced four primary challengers as he seeks his first full, elected term in office.
But McKee, who took over as governor last year when Raimondo left the job to join the Biden administration, is no stranger to tough primaries – he almost lost his bid for renomination as lieutenant governor in 2018.
In the end, though, despite being weighed down by a federal investigation into the controversial awarding of a state contract to a firm with ties to an old ally – an episode in which McKee has denied any wrongdoing – he emerged from the packed field, likely benefiting from a split among the anti-incumbent vote.
Both of his closest rivals, former CVS executive Helena Foulkes and Secretary of State Nellie Gorbea, ran as reformers with pledges to clean up government. Foulkes, who promised not to run for reelection if she didn’t revitalize Rhode Island schools, was endorsed by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.
The race was a bust for progressive favorite Matt Brown, the Bernie Sanders-endorsed former secretary of state, who trailed the leaders four years after losing a primary challenge to Raimondo.
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Asian Shares Extend Global Rout Yen Perks Up On Intervention Hints
Asian Shares Extend Global Rout, Yen Perks Up On Intervention Hints https://digitalalaskanews.com/asian-shares-extend-global-rout-yen-perks-up-on-intervention-hints/
An electronic stock quotation board is displayed inside a conference hall in Tokyo, Japan November 1, 2021. REUTERS/Issei Kato
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Nikkei tumbles 2.3%, S&P 500 futures stabilise
Dollar falls 0.6% on yen on news of rate check from BoJ
2-yr U.S. yields scale new 15-yr high of 3.8040%
U.S. yield curve remains deeply inverted
SYDNEY, Sept 14 (Reuters) – Asian stocks tumbled on Wednesday as U.S. data dashed hopes for an immediate peak in inflation, although the dollar paused its relentless run against the yen as Japan gave its strongest signal yet it was unhappy with the currency’s sharp declines.
Data on Tuesday showed the headline U.S. consumer price index gained 0.1% on a monthly basis versus expectations for a 0.1% decline. In particular, core inflation, stripping out volatile food and energy prices, doubled to 0.6%. read more
Wall Street saw its steepest fall in two years, the safe-haven dollar posted its biggest jump since early 2020, and two-year Treasury yields, which rise with traders’ expectations of higher Fed fund rates, jumped to the highest level in 15 years.
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The stock rout is set to hit European markets, with the pan-region Euro Stoxx 50 futures , German DAX futures and FTSE futures off more than 0.7%.
In Asia, MSCI’s broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan (.MIAPJ0000PUS) fell 2.2% on Wednesday, dragged lower by a 2.4% plunge in resources-heavy Australia (.AXJO), a 2.5% drop in Hong Kong’s Hang Seng index (.HSI) and a 1.5% fall in Chinese bluechips (.CSI300).
Japan’s Nikkei (.N225) tumbled 2.6%.
After a heavy equity selloff overnight, both the S&P 500 futures and Nasdaq futures rose 0.2%.
“Markets have reacted violently to what I would consider to be a modest miss in U.S. CPI,” said Scott Rundell, chief investment officer at Mutual Limited.
“Futures have stabilised, so we might see a dead-cat bounce tonight.”
Financial markets now have fully priced in an interest rate hike of at least 75 basis points at the conclusion of the Fed’s policy meeting next week, with a 38% probability of a super-sized, full-percentage-point increase to the Fed funds target rate, according to CME’s FedWatch tool.
A day earlier, the probability of a 100 bps hike was zero.
“USD rates are now pricing in a Fed funds rate of 4.25% by end-2022 (75bps, 75bps, 25bps for the remaining three meetings). Decent odds of a 4.5% peak early 2023 is also reflected,” said Eugene Leow, senior rates strategist at Deutsche Bank.
“While resilient growth and slowing inflation can make for a better risk taking environment, the U.S. economy now looks too hot still. With no clear signs of the labour market slowing and inflation still problematic, a downshift from the Fed looks set to be delayed again.”
The strength of the U.S. dollar had pressured the rate sensitive Japanese yen close to its 24-year low at 149.96 yen before giving up some of the gains on news that the Bank of Japan has conducted a rate check in apparent preparation for currency intervention. read more
Yen-buying intervention is rare. The last time Japan intervened to support its currency was in 1998, when the Asian financial crisis triggered a yen sell-off and rapid capital outflows.
Earlier in the day, Japanese Finance Minister Shunichi Suzuki said that currency intervention was among options the government would consider. read more
The dollar now hovered at 143.7 yen , down 0.6% for the day.
Many traders remained doubtful that intervention was imminent, but the jump in the yen pointed to rising nerves. The timing of the BOJ’s move also suggests that 145 per dollar will be an important level for markets and the authorities.
The two-year U.S. Treasury yield scaled a new 15-year high of 3.8040% on Friday before retreating to 3.7629%, and its curve gap with the benchmark 10-year yields widened to around 34 basis points, compared with just 16 basis points a week ago.
The yield curve inversion is usually treated as a warning of recession.
The 10-year Treasury note yield held steady at 3.4178%.
Oil prices edged lower on Friday. U.S. crude settled down 0.6% at $86.82 per barrel and Brent eased by a similar margin at $92.65.
Gold was slightly higher. Spot gold was traded at $1703.02 per ounce.
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Reporting by Stella Qiu; Editing by Stephen Coates, Ana Nicolaci da Costa and Sam Holmes
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Seroepidemiology Of Neospora Caninum In Boran Cattle | VMRR
Seroepidemiology Of Neospora Caninum In Boran Cattle | VMRR https://digitalalaskanews.com/seroepidemiology-of-neospora-caninum-in-boran-cattle-vmrr/
Introduction
Neospora caninum is a protozoan intracellular parasite that significantly causes reproductive disorders in dairy industries.1,2 N. caninum causes abortion and stillbirth in cattle2 and neonatal neuromuscular diseases in dogs.3,4 Dogs are the definitive hosts of N. caninum that shed oocysts in their feces.4 Cattle and other domestic animals are intermediate hosts and acquire the infections via ingestion of feed or water contaminated with oocysts of the parasite.2 The major routes of transmission are horizontal and vertical routes, and lactogenic route is also suspected.4,5
Neospora caninum is the most serious cause of economic losses in dairy industries worldwide.6 It is highly abortifacient in cattle, where the risk of abortion is three to seven times higher in infected cows and as high as 7.4 folds in congenitally infected heifers.4 Similarly, N. caninum was found attributable for 12.5–16% proportions of all the annual bovine abortions in several countries.7,8 Even though there was no firm evidence about N. caninum infection in humans, detections of genetic materials and antibodies in humans and primates could suggest a zoonotic potential of neosporosis.9–11
N. caninum is distributed worldwide; however, it is more prevalent in warm climates and humid areas than in cold and dry regions.10 Primarily, the epidemiology of neosporosis is associated with the presence of definitive hosts.2 A large number of serological surveys revealed that neosporosis is highly prevalent in dairy cattle worldwide.1 In Ethiopia, N. caninum antibody was detected in dairy cattle in urban, peri-urban, and commercial production systems.18,26,30 Asmare et al reported a seroprevalence ranging from 13.3% to 23.8% in dairy cattle of selected milk shed areas in Ethiopia,12–14 and it was identified as the leading cause of abortion followed by bovine viral diarrhea virus and Brucella species in dairy cattle of urban and peri-urban smallholder production systems in Ethiopia.13 However, data on the epidemiology and potential risk factors of N. caninum in pastoral cattle production settings were uncovered. Reproductive inefficiency significantly affects the social security and livelihoods of the pastoralists. In Borana pastoral community, cattle play a pivotal role in the livelihoods as a source of milk and immediate cash income. Cats and dogs are also an integral part of livestock for protection against predators and rodents.15 Particularly, dogs are used as the second herdsman and kept with cattle at grazing land and watering points. Knowledge of the epidemiology of N. caninum in a pastoral setting is important for a better understanding of the impact of the disease and the implementation of the management practices that decrease the risk of exposure of cattle. Therefore, the present study aimed to provide the first insight into the seroprevalence and associated risk factors of N. caninum exposure among the pastoral cattle in the Teltelle district of Borana zone.
Materials and Methods
Descriptions of the Study Area
Teltelle district is one of the 13 districts of Borana zone located at the southernmost tip of Ethiopia as shown in Figure 1. Teltelle has 23 administrative peasant associations (PA), of which it has 12 PA inhabited by pure pastoralists, and the remaining 11 PA are dominated by agro-pastoralists. “Kolla” agro-climatic is dominant with latitude ranging from 500 to 1420 meters above sea level. Distinct bimodal rainfall varying from 400 to 650mm is received from September to November (short rainy season) and March–May (long rainy season) annually, whereas the annual temperature ranges from 17 to 34°C. Teltelle district is sparsely populated with 72,476 human populations, and their livelihoods rely almost on livestock husbandry and to some extent crop production. Due to the scarcity of water and pasture during recurrent droughts in the district and the surroundings, the tension of animal mobility across the Kenyan border is very high. The livestock components in the area are cattle, goats, sheep, camel and equines. The numbers of livestock of the district are 215,918 cattle, 170,055 goats, 76,785 sheep, 2646 camels, and 9201 donkeys.16
Figure 1 Map of Ethiopia showing the location of the study areas. This map was developed from Ethiopian’s administrative boundaries shapefile 2021 using QGIS version 3.1.1.2.
Study Population, Study Design, and Procedures
The study population was Boran cattle aged greater than 3 years and managed under a pastoral production system. A cross-sectional study was conducted from October 2020 to May 2021. A multistage sampling method was applied to select 6 peasant associations from the district, and then, the random selection was used to select 8 herds having a minimum of 4 female animals aged ≥3 years.
The optimal sample size to establish the seroepidemiology of N. caninum was computed using the formula designated for diagnostic kits with predetermined sensitivity and specificity.17
Where n = the required sample size, Pexp = expected prevalence, Se = test sensitivity, Sp = test specificity, d = desired absolute precision. Accordingly, 188 sample size was determined optimum to detect the minimum expected seroprevalence of 13.3% reported by Asmare et al14 with 5% precision by considering the predetermined sensitivity (98.7%) and specificity (99.5%) described for ID Screen® Neospora caninum Indirect ELISA kit.18
Blood Sample Collection
About 10mL of blood samples were collected from the jugular vein of cattle using plain vacutainer tubes. Samples were kept at room temperature until the serum was decanted. Each sample was then decanted into labeled cryovials and transported in an icebox containing icepack to the National Veterinary Institute laboratory (NVI), Bishoftu. The samples were kept at −20°C until serological examination.
Serology Procedure
The serological test was undertaken for the presence of anti-N. caninum antibodies using indirect ELISA (ID.vet Innovative diagnostics, ID Screen® Neospora caninum Competition, and Montpellier, France) according to the manufacturer’s instructions. Positive and negative controls were included in each test, and an animal was considered infected if the serum was presented with an optical density (OD) of greater than 50%. The validity of serological tests was checked by the mean value of positive control OD (0.350) and the ratio of mean values of positive and negative controls OD (3).
Questionnaire Survey
A questionnaire survey was conducted to gather information about the potential risk factors of N. caninum using a semi-structured questionnaire. Data on physiological risk factors (age, body condition score, gestation status, and the number of parity) and history of reproductive disorders (abortion, dystocia, retained placenta, stillbirth, infertility, repeated breeding, and neonatal mortality) were considered the hypothesized risk factors for N. caninum infection. Similarly, information on the risk factors on the management and community practices (herd size, type of dog feed, type of dog housing, disposal way of fetal membrane, and the status of barn hygiene) as well as environmental factors (ecology, source of water, presence of dog and wild felid contacts with the animals) were collected.
Statistical Analysis
Data generated from laboratory investigation and questionnaire survey were recorded in a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet (Microsoft Corporation), coded, and analyzed using R software version 3.6.2. The association of the risk factors with seropositivity of N. caninum at the animal level was analyzed using Firth’s bias reduced logistic regression analysis.19 An ordinary logistic regression model was used to measure the association of the risk factors with seropositivity of N. caninum at the herd level. The association of risk factors was screened out by univariate logistic regression analysis and variables with P-value 0.25 (maximum likelihood ratio test) were offered to the final multivariable model. The risk factors having a P-value 0.05 were considered statistically significant. Multicollinearity and goodness of fit of the models were checked using variance inflation factor (VIF) and Hosmer and Lemeshow tests.
Results
Seroprevalence of N. caninum
In this study, from 180 animals tested, antibodies against N. caninum were detected in 5% (95% CI: 1.816–8.184) of animals. Similarly, the seroprevalence of N. caninum in herds with at least one positive animal was 14.6% (95% CI: 4.598–24.567) from the 48 herds examined.
Physiological Risk Factors
In this study, higher seroprevalence was recorded in animals aged ≥8 years (6.67%; 95% CI = 0.657–9293.418; P = 0.244) compared to other age groups; however, this difference was not statistically significant as shown in Table 1. Although not statistically significant (P = 0.260), higher seroprevalence was found in pregnant cattle (19.35%) compared to non-pregnant (2.01%). Similarly, higher seropositivity was recorded in animals with the number of parity ≥5 (6.67%) followed by parity 3–4 (5.66%) and parity 0–2 (4.46%), but the difference was not statistically significant (P = 0.456) as shown in Table 1.
Table 1 Univariable Logistic Regression Analysis for Physiological Factors and Clinical Disorders Associated with N. caninum Infection
Environmental Risk Factors
Higher seroprevalence was found in animals managed in lowland (6.79%) as compared to midland (3.89%); however, no statistically significant difference (P = 0.265) as shown in Table 2. Similarly, significantly higher seroprevalence (P = 0.012) was recorded in animals in which water sources were from wells (10.34%) compared to pipe water (2.45%). The odds of acquiring N. caninum exposure were 9 times higher in animals that drank well water than those that drank piped water (AOR = 9; ...
The World And Everything In It: September 14, 2022 https://digitalalaskanews.com/the-world-and-everything-in-it-september-14-2022/
WORLD Radio – The World and Everything in It: September 14, 2022
On Washington Wednesday, the implications of the Biden administration reviving the Iran nuclear deal; on World Tour, the latest international news; and a seminary student who is serving God in an ordinary way. Plus: commentary from Janie B. Cheaney, and the Wednesday morning news.
MARY REICAHRD, HOST: Good morning!
The Biden administration wants to revive the nuclear deal with Iran. But some who once supported it are now sounding the alarm.
NICK EICHER, HOST: That’s ahead on Washington Wednesday.
Also today, WORLD Tour.
Plus, quitting seminary to serve God.
And WORLD commentator Janie B. Cheaney on the ties that bind.
REICHARD: It’s Wednesday, September 14th. This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Mary Reichard.
EICHER: And I’m Nick Eicher. Good morning!
REICHARD: Time now for news. Here’s Kent Covington.
KENT COVINGTON, NEWS ANCHOR: Ukraine » In eastern Ukraine …
AUDIO: [War]
Many Russian troops are on the run as Ukrainian forces advance.
The counteroffensive has produced major gains and dealt a stunning blow to Moscow’s military prestige.
U.S. National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said Tuesday …
KIRBY: Clearly there’s a sense of momentum here by the Ukrainian armed forces. And so what we’re going to do is continue to support them as best we can.
Ukraine’s border guard services said the army took control of Vovchansk — a town just 2 miles from Russia. It was seized on the first day of the war.
Ukrainian officials released footage showing their forces burning Russian flags and inspecting abandoned, charred tanks.
Inflation » Lower gas costs slowed U.S. inflation for a second straight month in August, but most other prices kept rising. PNC Bank senior economist Kurt Rankin said that includes housing.
RANKIN: Not just the price of houses but services to maintain a home, utilities, appliances, basically the cost of home ownership.
Consumer prices rose 8.3% from a year earlier and 0.1% from July.
But the jump in “core” prices, which exclude volatile food and energy costs, was especially worrisome.
It was worse than expected and ignited fear that the Federal Reserve will have to boost interest rates more aggressively, raising the risk of a sharp economic downturn.
Railroad labor dispute » And with inflation still historically high, the White House says it would be extremely bad timing for a railroad strike.
The Biden administration and business groups are pressuring freight railroads and their unions to settle a contract dispute before Friday’s looming strike deadline.
Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre …
PIERRE: A shutdown would have a tremendous impact on our supply chains, ripple effects into our overall economy, on American families. A shutdown is not acceptable.
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce says halting rail deliveries of U..S goods right now would be a—quote—“economic disaster.”
The White House says President Biden and members of his cabinet were in touch with the unions and railroads this week as part of their efforts to avoid a strike.
The Association of American Railroads trade group estimated that shutting down the railroads would cost the economy $2 billion a day.
King Charles N. Ireland » In Belfast on Tuesday …
AUDIO: [Gun salute]
A gun salute to the newly crowned King Charles III.
AUDIO: [Gun salute]
His visit to Northern Ireland was the second stop on his tour of the UK.
A crowd gathered outside Hillsborough Castle to greet King Charles and the queen consort.
Queen’s coffin arrives in London » Meantime, a hearse carrying Queen Elizabeth II’s coffin made its way slowly through the drizzly streets of London. Large windows in the specially outfitted vehicle displayed the coffin, covered with a wreath and a royal flag.
Londoners lined the streets to catch a glimpse.
And outside Buckingham Palace…
AUDIO: [Crowd]
A crowd greeted its arrival.
The coffin remained at the palace overnight. Today, a procession will transport it to the Palace of Westminster where the queen will lie in state beginning this afternoon.
Twitter whistleblower » On Capitol Hill Tuesday, Twitter’s former head of security turned whistleblower told a Senate panel …
ZATKO: Twitter leadership is misleading the public, lawmakers, regulators, and even its own board of directors.
Peter Zatko charged that his former employer is not telling the truth about its cybersecurity weaknesses, among other things.
Zatko likened Twitter’s cyber-defenses to an unlocked door and said the company’s put users’ data at risk.
He told the Senate Judiciary Committee that Twitter ignored warnings from its engineers …
ZATKO: Because key parts of leadership lacked the competency to understand the problem, but more importantly, their executive incentives led them to prioritize profits over security.
He also charged that Twitter had intelligence agents from China and India on its payroll.
Twitter fired Zatko months ago and has disputed his allegations.
Separately on Tuesday, Twitter shareholders voted overwhelmingly to approve the sale of the company to billionaire Elon Musk, though Musk is currently trying to back out of that deal.
I’m Kent Covington. Straight ahead: The latest on efforts to revive the Iran nuclear deal.
Plus, serving God in ordinary ways.
This is The World and Everything in It.
MARY REICHARD, HOST: It’s September 14th, 2022 and we’re glad to have you along for today’s edition of The World and Everything in It. Good morning, I’m Mary Reichard.
NICK EICHER, HOST: And I’m Nick Eicher. It’s Washington Wednesday.
At the White House, reviving the Iran nuclear deal remains a top priority.
But Republicans as well as the prime minister of Israel continue to warn against it.
President Biden and European partners in the original 2015 deal say it was a mistake for President Trump to withdraw from that agreement.
REICHARD: Yet European leaders have also begun to doubt that Iran is negotiating in good faith.
Leaders in Tehran are now demanding that the UN drop its probe into several nuclear sites.
And both Secretary of State Tony Blinken and the foreign policy chief of the European Union say they’re now less confident that efforts to revive the deal will succeed.
EICHER: Joining us now is Andrea Stricker. She is a Research Fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. She’s also co-author of multiple books on nuclear weapons programs.
REICHARD: Andrea, good morning!
ANDREA STRICKLER, GUEST: Good morning. Thanks so much for having me.
REICHARD: Glad to have you. First of all, how close is Iran to being able to build a nuclear weapon?
STRICKER: Well, according to the International Atomic Energy Agency, the IAEA, that’s the UN nuclear watchdog, they just issued a report that says Iran has enough enriched uranium to make weapons grade uranium for at least three nuclear weapons within one month and five total within four months. And we assess that they could use that weapons grade uranium to explode a crude nuclear device within six months or so in a demonstration test, and probably one to two years to put it on a missile.
REICHARD: From what we know publicly, what is Iran demanding in these nuclear talks?
STRICKER: Well, Iran is demanding guarantees that the United States will not back out of the nuclear deal again, and if it does, that they would get certain concessions, guarantees of revenue ties with businesses in order to gain the benefits of the nuclear deal if they were promised. And then they’re also circling back to a repeated demand that the IAEA close its investigation into undeclared Iranian nuclear work. And they’ve been investigating Iran’s activities since 2018. And they want this closed, likely because they have more to hide. There was evidence in an archive that Israel stole from Tehran in 2018 that’s the basis of the IA’s investigation that the regime is likely continuing covert atomic weaponization work. And so the IA pulling on these threads, that would potentially lead to other questions that Iran doesn’t want to answer. So those are just some of the issues that they’re focused on.
REICHARD: And what’s the Biden administration and European partners willing to offer in return?
STRICKER: They’ve tried to make various guarantees to Iran such as that there would be some sort of year and a half or even longer wind down period for businesses, if a future U.S. administration will leave the deal. They also gave technical guarantees that Iran could reconstitute its nuclear program more quickly so it would be able to keep certain equipment in-country but in storage, and that would give it a leg-up if Washington left the deal again. They’ve also offered to lift many Trump administration terrorism sanctions against Iran. So they’ve put a very sweet deal on the table. I think we have to question why the regime is not accepting it. I think perhaps the supreme leader may want to just go it alone. He may want to continue laying additional nuclear facts on the ground, and not have to make a deal with the West. But time will tell.
REICHARD: Some European leaders are now openly questioning Iran’s motives in these talks, voicing doubt that Tehran is negotiating in good faith. Do you think more nations might sign on to a maximum pressure approach if they’re convinced that Iran is just gaming the system?
STRICKER: I think we’ll see a very slow pivot back to pressure. We’ve heard that the U.S. and the E3 countries are potentially at the end of their rope over Iran’s latest demands. But maybe they’re just pretending to be. There are also reports out today that Iran may be waiting to reach a deal until after the U.S. midterm elections in November because Congress would have to review the deal. And they want to see who’s going to be in Congress a...
House Panel Asks National Archives To Determine If Trump Retains Sensitive Govt Records
House Panel Asks National Archives To Determine If Trump Retains Sensitive Govt Records https://digitalalaskanews.com/house-panel-asks-national-archives-to-determine-if-trump-retains-sensitive-govt-records/
Washington: The chair of a US House of Representatives committee has asked the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) to determine whether former President Donald Trump still possesses sensitive government records.
On Tuesday, House Oversight Committee Chairwoman Carolyn Maloney sent a letter to acting Archivist of the US Debra Steidel Wall to express concern that “sensitive presidential records may remain out of the control and custody” of the federal government, reports Xinhua news agency.
“In light of the serious risk that Trump may still be retaining sensitive government records at Mar-a-Lago or his other properties, I urge NARA to seek a personal certification from Donald Trump that he has surrendered all presidential records that he illegally removed from the White House after leaving office,” Maloney, a Democrat from New York, wrote.
The Department of Justice (DOJ) is investigating whether Trump mishandled presidential and government records — some of them allegedly highly classified — when and after leaving office.
Federal agents searched Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence in Palm Beach, Florida, on August 8 and seized 33 groups of items, including documents bearing classification markings, according to court filings.
Trump’s attorneys and the DOJ are fighting in court about how those seized materials should be reviewed and used.
The former President has lambasted the Mar-a-Lago “raid” as well as the DOJ probe and denied any wrongdoing.
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Thousands Weigh In On New Title IX Rules https://digitalalaskanews.com/thousands-weigh-in-on-new-title-ix-rules/
Higher education associations generally like Education Secretary Miguel Cardona’s new regulations for Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 but want more clarity about how the changes would be carried out, as well as more time to put policies in place.
“It is critical that the final regulations are sufficiently flexible to be effectively implemented across diverse institutions, reflect a sensible level of simplicity, and provide clarity about federal expectations for institutions and their community members,” the American Council on Education wrote in a letter to the U.S. Department of Education on behalf of nearly 50 organizations, including the Association of American Universities and NASPA: Student Affairs Administrators in Higher Education.
The letter was one of more than 235,000 comments sent to the department about its proposed regulations during the 60-day comment period, which closed Monday. Comments came from a range of associations and advocacy organizations as well as parents, grandparents, students and others.
The department will review the comments before releasing a final set of regulations for Title IX, a law aimed at protecting students in all levels of education from sex-based discrimination. When the Title IX rules were overhauled during the Trump administration, the department’s Office for Civil Rights needed nearly a year and a half to review more than 124,000 public comments on the issue and finalize the regulations that went into effect August 2020.
Cardona proposed significant changes to those regulations earlier this summer that would once again change how colleges investigate reports of sexual assault, make it easier for victims to report sexual harassment, end the requirement for live hearings and expand protections for LGBTQ+ students, among other changes.
The proposed regulations also would expand the definition of sexual harassment to include unwelcome conduct that’s “sufficiently severe or pervasive.” The current sexual harassment standard is unwelcome conduct that’s deemed “severe, pervasive, and objectively offensive.”
Critics have said the changes would roll back due process rights for those accused of sexual misconduct.
ACE said in its letter that the organization and the signing associations supported provisions rolling back the requirement for live hearings and cross-examinations by advisers as well as the flexibility offered to institutions via other changes such as allowing campuses to use an informal resolution process.
“The current regulations, revised in 2020 during the Trump administration, have been problematic and in many cases have turned campus disciplinary processes into adversarial court-like tribunals,” ACE wrote in its letter.
The National Women’s Law Center said in a news release that the proposed rules were “a step in the right direction” but urged the Biden administration to go further, including by requiring colleges to use the preponderance-of-the-evidence standard in Title IX investigations, which means the evidence shows that it’s more likely than not that the allegations are true. The current proposal allows colleges to use the higher clear-and-convincing standard if it’s used in all other comparable proceedings.
“We appreciate that the Department of Education is taking steps to undo the previous administration’s harmful changes to the Title IX regulations by proposing new regulations to effectuate the law’s broad and remedial purpose, as Congress intended when it passed Title IX in 1972,” the NWLC wrote in a letter signed by 189 advocacy organizations. “At the same time, we note that the department’s proposed regulations do not reach far enough in protecting against sex discrimination in education.”
The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, a free speech organization, said in its formal comment that the proposed rules are “a significant step backwards” from the current regulations, and that they are unconstitutional. The organization took issue with the decision to eliminate the live hearing requirement, the changes to how harassment is defined and allowing a single investigator to investigate and adjudicate complaints.
FIRE predicted in its letter that if the proposed changes were carried out, they would lead to “another spike in expensive-to-defend Title IX litigation—most of which would be avoided if schools were instead required to comply with the current regulations’ protections for free speech and due process.”
“FIRE also questions the wisdom, necessity, and justification for replacing the 2020 Title IX regulations, which have been in effect for less than two years,” the letter says. “For much of that time, many students were absent from campus due to COVID-19. Given the short and unusual tenure of the current regulations, it is impossible to believe that the department has already amassed sufficient data to demonstrate a need for this comprehensive overhaul.”
Gender Identity Protections Controversial
Not all the submitted comments were posted by Tuesday, but many of the recent submissions focused on one of more controversial aspects of the new regulations: the expansion of protections against sex-based discrimination and harassment to include sexual orientation and gender identity. The proposal follows a wave of states adopting laws governing access to sports programs and educational facilities for transgender students and limiting discussions about sexual orientation and gender identity in the classroom.
The department is planning to issue a separate notice of proposed rules governing transgender students’ involvement in sports.
A coalition of 17 Republican state attorneys general, led by Montana’s Austin Knudsen, argued in a letter that the new definition for sex discrimination exceeds the department’s statutory authority, could eliminate single-sex facilities and could deny female athletes an equal athletic opportunity, among other ramifications. Knudsen’s letter makes similar points to many of the recent comments.
“With this proposal, the rule would make it unlawful for a school to deny participation in any education program or activity consistent with a student’s ‘gender identity,’” the letter says. “These changes constitute a stunning affront to the purpose of Title IX, which is to provide equal access to education and prohibit denial of education benefits and opportunities on the basis of sex. ‘Sex’ means what it has meant since the beginning of time: the immutable fact of being male or female.”
Knudsen also argued in the letter that the expanded definition of sexual harassment and other changes to the Title IX regulations could chill free speech on college campuses and negatively affect academic freedom as well as campus life.
“When combined with the department’s proposed changes to the current due process protections, the proposed rule will chill protected speech—allowing unscrupulous students and ideologically biased bureaucrats to weaponize Title IX against those with whom they disagree on hotly contested issues of political, societal, religious, and moral importance,” Knudsen wrote.
Under the proposed regulations, preventing someone from participating in an educational program or activity consistent with their gender identity would violate Title IX. Colleges and universities that receive federal funding are allowed to separate students on the basis of sex in limited circumstances as long as such treatment doesn’t cause more than de minimis, or insignificant, harm.
“The proposed rule’s inclusion of this new de minimis harm standard, which is not defined and has no basis in the statutory text, will result in significant confusion for campuses,” ACE wrote in its letter.
ACE recommended that the department delete the de minimis harm standard from the final regulations. At a minimum, ACE wants more information about the types of facilities that must be made accessible consistent with an individual’s gender identity, how the rule would apply to sex-separated living facilities and housing assignments, and the application of this standard in other sex-segregated programs and activities.
Over all, ACE is hoping that this round of Title IX changes will “stop the churn of perpetually changing rules.”
“We sincerely hope the current regulatory effort will put an end to the costly and confusing changes in regulatory requirements that have marked the last decade,” the ACE letter says. “We urge the department to adopt this three-part focus on flexibility, simplicity, and clarity as its lodestar while it considers comments to the [notice of proposed rule making] and refines the proposed regulations. A final rule that provides a more flexible regulatory structure and takes into account these values will make future swings of the regulatory pendulum less likely.”
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Wisconsin Judge Refuses To Suspend Absentee Ballot Ruling
Wisconsin Judge Refuses To Suspend Absentee Ballot Ruling https://digitalalaskanews.com/wisconsin-judge-refuses-to-suspend-absentee-ballot-ruling/
MADISON, Wis. (AP) — A Wisconsin judge on Tuesday sided with Republicans and declined to suspend his ruling from last week that state law does not allow election clerks to fill in missing information on witness certification envelopes that contain absentee ballots.
The ruling was expected to be quickly appealed by Democrats, who raised the concern that voters will face “whiplash” with potentially changing rules after absentee ballots are sent next week. The case is expected to ultimately end up before the conservative-controlled Wisconsin Supreme Court, but it’s unclear whether there could be a ruling before the midterm election that’s just eight weeks away.
The lawsuit is the latest move by Republicans to tighten restrictions on absentee voting in the swing state where Democratic Gov. Tony Evers and Republican Sen. Ron Johnson are on the ballot in November.
Waukesha County Circuit Judge Michael Aprahamian on Sept. 7 granted GOP motions and ordered that the state’s bipartisan elections commission to revoke its guidance to clerks telling them they can fill in missing information on the witness certificate.
He declined on Tuesday to put that ruling on hold, as requested by the Wisconsin Elections Commission, the Waukesha County Democratic Party and the League of Women Voters of Wisconsin.
The judge said in denying the stay request that the Republican Party of Waukesha County that brought the lawsuit, as well as the Legislature, have a much stronger likelihood of success than do Democrats.
Jeffrey Mandell, attorney for the Waukesha County Democratic Party, argued that the stay should be issued to avoid creating “voter whiplash” with changing guidelines for accepting absentee ballots so close to the election. He noted that the guidance has been in effect for the past 12 statewide elections.
But the judge rejected that argument, saying the guidance in question only affects what clerks and local election officials can do with a ballot, not instructions to voters on what information needs to be on the ballot certificate.
“I don’t think that whiplash argument holds any sway,” Aprahamian said.
The Wisconsin Elections Commission published guidance in 2016 telling clerks they could fill in missing address information, known as ballot curing. The practice was unchallenged until after Donald Trump’s narrow loss in 2020 when nearly 1.4 million voters cast absentee ballots and COVID-19 vaccines weren’t available yet.
The judge ruled that Wisconsin’s 1,800-plus local elections officials do not have the authority under the law to modify absentee ballot certificates, nor does the state elections commission have the right to order that they take that action.
The Wisconsin Elections Commission voted 4-1 Tuesday afternoon to withdraw its 2016 guidance on ballot curing.
Democratic Commissioner Ann Jacobs voted no because Aprahamian’s order did not explicitly say to completely withdraw the 2016 guidance.
“I don’t think we need to take steps we’re not ordered to take,” said Jacobs, who proposed a measure that would declare the commission’s old guidance illegal without withdrawing it. Jacobs argued this would allow the guidance to spring back into effect should a higher court overturn Tuesday’s ruling. Her proposal was rejected in a 3-2 vote.
Democratic Commissioner Mark Thomsen was not at Tuesday’s meeting, giving the group’s Republican members a majority.
After the initial ruling last week, clerks were rushing to interpret what the decision meant for which ballots they could accept.
Steven Kilpatrick, attorney for the elections commission, said the court’s action prevents the commission from telling clerks what constitutes an address that can be accepted on an absentee ballot witness certificate.
“Now there is nothing for the clerks to be guided by,” Kilpatrick said. “That results in uncertainty as to what a complete address is and increases the risk that some ballots will not be counted, without the fault of the elector.”
The judge on Tuesday said he made no decision on what constitutes an address and no one has asked him to rule on what happens to ballots with an incomplete address. The only issue before him was whether the guidance directing clerks to add missing information was legal, the judge said.
Clerks only address problems on the witness certificate, which doubles as an envelope, and not the ballot itself.
___
This story was corrected to reflect that the elections commission is scheduled to meet Tuesday afternoon, not Wednesday.
___
Associated Press reporter Harm Venhuizen contributed to this report.
___
For more AP coverage of the midterm elections: https://apnews.com/hub/2022-midterm-elections
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Judge Unseals More Sections Of Mar-A-Lago Search Affidavit
Judge Unseals More Sections Of Mar-A-Lago Search Affidavit https://digitalalaskanews.com/judge-unseals-more-sections-of-mar-a-lago-search-affidavit/
WASHINGTON (AP) — A federal judge Tuesday unsealed additional portions of an FBI affidavit laying out the basis for a search of former President Donald Trump’s Florida home, showing that agents earlier obtained a hard drive after issuing a subpoena for surveillance footage recorded inside Mar-a-Lago.
A heavily redacted version of the affidavit was made public last month, but the Justice Department requested permission to show more of it after lawyers for Trump revealed the existence of a June grand jury subpoena that sought video footage from cameras in the vicinity of the Mar-a-Lago storage room.
“Because those aspects of the grand jury’s investigation have now been publicly revealed, there is no longer any reason to keep them sealed (i.e. redacted) in the filings in this matter,” department lawyers wrote.
The newly visible portions of the FBI agent’s affidavit show that the FBI on June 24 subpoenaed for the footage after a visit weeks earlier to Mar-a-Lago in which agents observed 50 to 55 boxes of records in the storage room at the property. The Trump Organization provided a hard drive on July 6 in response to the subpoena, the affidavit says.
The footage could be an important piece of the investigation, including as agents evaluate whether anyone has sought to obstruct the probe. The Justice Department has said in a separate filing that it has “developed evidence that government records were likely concealed and removed from the Storage Room and that efforts were likely taken to obstruct the government’s investigation.”
The Justice Department has been investigating the holding of top-secret information and other classified documents at Mar-a-Lago after Trump left the White House. FBI agents during their Aug. 8 search of the home and club said they recovered more than 11,000 documents and 1,800 other items, including roughly 100 with classification markings.
Separately Tuesday, the Justice Department again urged U.S. District Aileen Cannon to lift her hold on core aspects of the investigation. Cannon last week granted the Trump team’s request for an independent arbiter to review the seized documents and weed out from the investigation any records that may be covered by claims of executive or attorney-client privilege.
She also ordered the department to halt its review of the records pending any further court order or the completion of a review by the yet-to-be-named special master. The department urged Cannon last week to put her order on hold and told the judge Tuesday that its investigation would be harmed by a continued delay of its ability to scrutinize the classified documents.
“The government and the public unquestionably have an interest in the timely enforcement of criminal laws, particularly those involving the protection of highly sensitive information, and especially where, as here, there may have been efforts to obstruct its investigation,” the lawyers wrote.
The Trump team on Monday urged the judge to leave her order in place. His lawyers raised questions about the documents’ current classification status and noted that a president has absolute authority to declassify information, though they pointedly did not say that Trump had actually declassified anything.
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Republicans Think Trump Will Be A Midterm Kingmaker. Democrats Like Me Think He May Be A Spoiler
Republicans Think Trump Will Be A Midterm Kingmaker. Democrats Like Me Think He May Be A Spoiler https://digitalalaskanews.com/republicans-think-trump-will-be-a-midterm-kingmaker-democrats-like-me-think-he-may-be-a-spoiler/
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The post-Labor Day Weekend sprint to the November midterms is officially on. The general election matchups are set and the contours of the election have taken shape. With less than two months to go, one thing is remarkably clear: while former President Donald Trump is not on the ballot, his candidates and policies certainly are.
Not in recent history have we had a president, both as the incumbent and out of office, so willing to engage high-risk, low-reward, competitive political primaries.
As he faces an uncertain future, one would expect that the only former president to have his home raided by the FBI would be trying to win friends and influence enemies. Instead, he has decided to declare war against his own appointees such as FBI Director Chris Wray, former Secretary of Transportation Elaine Chao, former Attorney General Bill Barr, and others—even the architect of his legislative wins and three successful Supreme Court appointments, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell.
FILE – Former President Donald Trump (James Devaney/GC Images)
Meanwhile, his decision to weigh-in on primary battles certainly tipped the scales among the MAGA base. But among centrist and independent voters, who actually decide general elections, his endorsement in battleground state races seems to be dragging many of them down with precious few weeks left in the midterm cycle.
DEMOCRATS OUTPACING REPUBLICANS BY TENS OF THOUSANDS OF ABSENTEE BALLOT REQUESTS IN KEY MIDTERM STATE
In November, the whole ballgame is independent voters, a group Trump has struggled with in the past. In 2020, Trump lost these voters by 9 points. Many GOP nominees tripped over themselves to secure Trump’s endorsement — clearly a wise strategy for primary elections. However, you can bet Democrats will effectively tie those challengers to the unpopular former president.
2022 was supposed to be the year the GOP would easily win back control from a 50-50 senate but, with just two months to go, Republican prospects are dimming for the Party shaped in Donald Trump’s image.
Many forget that Republicans lost two senate seats in the 2016 election even though Donald Trump swept surprisingly into office. In 2018, Republicans netted two seats, but lost seats in the key swing states of Arizona and Nevada (winning back seats in solid-red Montana, Indiana, Missouri, and trending-red Florida). And with Trump on the ballot in 2020, Democrats won the presidency and took back the Senate, winning Arizona, Colorado, and two seats in Georgia. The only upper-chamber seat to flip to Republicans that year: ruby-red Alabama.
WHAT’S AT STAKE FOR REPUBLICANS, DEMOCRATS IN MIDTERMS NOW THAT PRIMARY ELECTION SEASON IS OVER
2022 was supposed to be the year the GOP would easily win back control from a 50-50 senate but, with just two months to go, Republican prospects are dimming for the Party shaped in Donald Trump’s image.
His primary-endorsed Senate candidates in Arizona, Ohio, and Pennsylvania are vastly underperforming their Democratic rivals in both polling and fundraising. In fact, many of these races would not even be competitive for my Party had Trump not given his endorsement.
That is not to say that all Trump-endorsed candidates will fail this November. The former president often makes it a habit of endorsing candidates who are already going to win in the Fall, and then claims credit for their success. Candidates like State Rep. Russell Fry in South Carolina, who defeated incumbent Rep. Tom Rice in a Republican primary, and Harriett Hageman, who beat Rep. Liz Cheney in Wyoming, will certainly be joining the 118th Congress.
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Ultimately, even as history tells us that the party in the White House should lose seats this year, candidates matter. Democrats like Rep. Tim Ryan in Ohio and Sens. Rafael Warnock and Mark Kelly are running much ahead of their Republican rivals because they are better candidates who know their states far better.
Sen. Raphael Warnock, D-Ga., questions Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen during the Senate Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs Committee hearing in Dirksen Senate Office Building in Washington May 10, 2022 in Washington, D.C. ((Photo by Tom Williams-Pool/Getty Images))
Depending on November’s results, Republicans will have to face a reckoning as a party: will they continue to pledge fealty to Donald Trump and support his hand-picked candidates or will they realize that independent voters matter and that politics is a game of addition, not subtraction. The latter has worked quite well for Republican Governors Asa Hutchinson, Brian Kemp, Phil Scott, Larry Hogan, and Glenn Youngkin. It’s also worked for Sens. Susan Collins and Mitt Romney.
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They say that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result. 2022 will test the veracity of that theory.
There is no question that former President Donald Trump is a GOP primary kingmaker but come November when that supposed Red Wave hits a solid blue wall of Democrats and Independents, he may very well end up this election’s spoiler for the Republicans.
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Kevin Walling is a Democratic campaign strategist, former Biden 2020 campaign surrogate, vice president at HGCreative. Follow him on Twitter @KevinPWalling.
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Peltola Sworn Into Office As Alaskas New U.S. Representative
Peltola Sworn Into Office As Alaska’s New U.S. Representative https://digitalalaskanews.com/peltola-sworn-into-office-as-alaskas-new-u-s-representative/
U.S. Rep. Mary Peltola, D-Alaska, embraces Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, after speaking on the floor of the House after Peltola took the oath of office on Tuesday, Sept. 13, 2022 in Washington, D.C. At right is Sen. Dan Sullivan, R-Alaska. (Screengrab from U.S. House livestream)
WASHINGTON — Mary Peltola was sworn in Tuesday to the U.S. House, becoming the first Alaska Native to serve in Congress and the first woman to hold Alaska’s lone seat in the House of Representatives.
Peltola, a Democrat, won an August special election to serve out the rest of Republican Rep. Don Young’s term. Young died in March, after holding the seat for nearly five decades.
On Tuesday afternoon, she lined up with two other special election winners from New York. They raised their right hands and took the oath of office from Speaker Nancy Pelosi.
In her first speech on the House floor, Peltola said she is humbled to be the first Alaska Native elected to Congress, “but to be clear, I am here to represent all Alaskans.”
“It is the honor of my life to represent Alaska, a place my elders and ancestors have called home for thousands of years,” said Peltola, who is Yup’ik.
[Photos from the day Mary Peltola became Alaska’s U.S. representative]
A reception following the swearing-in hosted by the Alaska Federation of Natives near the Capitol drew hundreds from Alaska and Washington, D.C., including an emotional Interior Secretary Deb Haaland, Republican U.S. Sen. Lisa Murkowski and Alaska Native leaders from across the state.
In their words of congratulations for Peltola, they emphasized the historic nature of the day as Peltola became the first Alaska Native in Congress — and almost certainly the first person to speak Yup’ik on the House floor — and also one determined to continue the legacy of her Republican predecessor and make friends on both sides of the political aisle.
Introducing her on the House floor following her swearing-in, Democratic House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer of Maryland called Young “a giant” and said Peltola was “cut from the same cloth.”
“The people of Alaska lost a representative who has served them with great ability, energy, courage and commitment for half a century,” said Hoyer, adding that Peltola, like Young, is “someone who believes fundamentally in pragmatism, independence and putting Alaska’s unique needs first.”
Just after being sworn on the floor of U.S. House of Representatives, Rep. Mary Peltola stands with family members and Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi for a ceremonial swearing-in at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C., on September 13, 2022. (Marc Lester / Anchorage Daily News) (Marc Lester/Anchorage Daily News)
Peltola laid our her priorities in Congress: lowering the cost of living, investing in child care, growing the economy, ensuring Alaska remains “a global leader” in resource development and protecting Alaska fisheries.
Before speaking on the House floor, she embraced Democrat Sharice Davids of Kansas, one of the first Native American women elected to the U.S. House. After she was done speaking, she immediately embraced Murkowski, a Republican, who stood behind her along with Sen. Dan Sullivan, R-Alaska, and several other U.S. House members.
Her swearing-in was followed by a ceremony presided over by Pelosi, D-California. In the ceremonial swearing-in, her husband Gene “Buzzy” Peltola Jr. held the Bible, as Peltola was flanked by her seven children, two grandchildren and two sisters.
Peltola’s youngest daughter, Nora, later said she was proud of her mother as she watched her make history. She also loved the excuse to get together with all of her siblings, who flew in from across the country, for the first time since 2019. None of them had been to Washington, D.C. before.
Peltola wore a walrus tusk ivory necklace given to her by her husband and ivory earrings from her mother. Peltola, her daughters, sisters and granddaughters wore mukluks made in Bethel, where she’s from.
Immediately after the ceremony, Peltola cast her first votes on three non-controversial bills. Peltola voted in favor of all three, which passed with bipartisan support.
Peltola will serve only for the four remaining months of Young’s term. She is also running in the November election that determines who will hold the House seat for the full two-year term that begins in January. She faces two Republicans, former Gov. Sarah Palin and businessman Nick Begich, and Libertarian Chris Bye.
Peltola arrived in Washington, D.C., on Sunday after a trip to Bethel, her hometown. On Monday she received her official congressional pin and the keys to Young’s old office — one of the biggest in the House — that she will inhabit for the next four months. She also named five members of her staff, including Alex Ortiz, Young’s former chief of staff.
A former state lawmaker who represented the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta in the state House for a decade ending in 2009, Peltola previously chaired the state Bush Caucus that brings together lawmakers representing communities off the road system. More recently she was the director of the Kuskokwim River Inter-Tribal Fish Commission working on subsistence fishery issues and food security in the region. She has made fish policy and her support of abortion access hallmarks of her congressional campaign, which she launched in April, two weeks after her predecessor’s death.
Rep. Mary Peltola speaks on the floor of the House after taking the oath of office on Tuesday, Sept. 13, 2022 in Washington, D.C. (Office of the Speaker)
Peltola requested to join the House Natural Resources and Transportation and Infrastructure Committees — the two committees Young chaired. Formal committee assignments have not been announced by her office.
‘In her own mukluks’
Rep. Mary Peltola, left, wears traditional footwear during the ceremony.(Marc Lester / Anchorage Daily News)
At the reception following the swearing-in ceremony, Interior Secretary Haaland, on the verge of tears, spoke for several minutes to the crowd of hundreds, many of whom had flown from Alaska.
“I know firsthand what representation means. What it means to people, what it means to the person who’s doing the representing, what it means to our country, quite frankly. Because nobody knows a Native community like somebody who’s from that community” she said.
Rep. Mary Peltola, left, is cheered and hugged as she makes her way through a crowd at a reception with many Alaskans hosted by the Alaska Federation of Natives in Washington, D.C. on Tuesday. (Marc Lester / Anchorage Daily News)
Haaland praised Peltola’s “pro-fish” campaign message, which has drawn attention from some D.C. politicians intrigued by the significance of fish to Alaskans.
“I think that’s a House speech for the ages, because everyone in this room probably understands that it’s not just fish. It’s subsistence, it’s history, it’s culture, it’s tradition, it’s family, it’s everything that the Alaska Native people stand for. And I just want you to know how genuinely happy I am for every single one of you,” she said, her voice breaking with emotion, drawing applause.
“Like many indigenous people, when I was younger, it didn’t even occur to me that indigenous women could grace the halls of Congress,” Haaland said. “Breaking glass ceilings … it’s not for the faint of heart.”
“Every single Native woman in this country wants Congresswoman Peltola to succeed. And she can absolutely rely on me for that as well,” Haaland said.
Haaland thanked Murkowski for “being front and center” when Peltola was sworn in. Murkowski, who is running for re-election this year to the U.S. Senate, has drawn criticism from hardline Alaska Republicans for her support of Haaland.
U.S. Interior Sec. Deb Haaland hugs Rep. Mary Peltola at the AFN reception. (Marc Lester / Anchorage Daily News)
Murkowski called it “a happy day for our country.” Her enthusiasm toward Peltola’s swearing-in transcended the party line that divides them. Sullivan, the other Republican representing Alaska in the U.S. Senate, did not appear at the reception.
“I can’t tell you how proud I am as an Alaskan woman to have stood with Mary as she delivered her first speech, her maiden speech on the floor of the U.S. House Representatives as the congresswoman for all Alaska,” Murkowski said, referencing Young’s campaign slogan: the congressman for all Alaska.
“We are so so so privileged that somebody from the beginnings that Mary has, has seen that there is a path for her, that she can deliver to the people and the place that she loves, in a way with sincerity and honesty,” Murkowski said. “Congresswomen Peltola — isn’t that lovely to say? — she might not use as colorful words and vocabulary as our dear beloved former Congressman Don Young. But she is every inch a feisty fighter and is going to be there for her people and her state that she loves.”
Pelosi made an appearance at the reception, saying the swearing-in “was so glorious because when she was recognized and took the oath, the first person who ran up to her was one of the first Native American woman to serve in Congress.”
That was Rep. Davids, who was also at the reception, briefly serving as the unofficial photographer for Peltola, taking pictures of her as hundreds of attendees swarmed to exchange a few words and commemorate the evening in a photograph.
Rep. Sharice Davids of Kansas and U.S. Interior Secretary Deb Haaland hug at the party honoring Rep. Mary Peltola hosted by the Alaska Federation of Natives. (Marc Lester / Anchorage Daily News)
Davids and Haaland were the first Native American women in Congress.
“When Deb and I got elected, I remember a couple of the things that we talked about: one of them was that we’re the first two Native women in Congress, but we definitely are not going to be the last,” D...
Prevalence And Risk Factors Of Childhood Asthma: India | JAA
Prevalence And Risk Factors Of Childhood Asthma: India | JAA https://digitalalaskanews.com/prevalence-and-risk-factors-of-childhood-asthma-india-jaa/
Introduction
Asthma is a chronic lung illness marked by reversible airway blockage caused by inflammation of the lungs’ airways and tightness of the muscles around them. The recent Global Initiative for Asthma (GINA) guidelines defined asthma as “a heterogeneous disease, usually characterized by chronic airway inflammation.” Respiratory symptoms such as wheezing, shortness of breath, chest tightness, and cough, as well as fluctuating expiratory airflow limitation, are the characterizations of asthma.1
In asthmatics, severe symptoms can develop due to several triggers like cigarette and other smoking, moulds, pollen, dust, animal dander, exercise, cold air, domestic and industrial goods, air pollution, and infections.2 Both genetic and environmental factors combine and interact to explain the higher asthma rates in some communities. Often, these other factors may cause a disparity, with race or ethnicity being the factor that is easier to detect between different populations.3
The diagnosis of asthma is a clinical one as there is no standardized definition of the type, severity or frequency of symptoms. Asthma is a common condition producing a significant workload for general medical practice and hospital admissions.4 Although there are many shared features in the diagnosis of asthma in children and adults, the differential diagnosis, the natural history of wheezing illnesses, the ability to perform specific investigations, and their diagnostic value are all influenced by age.
Worldwide more than 300 million people have asthma. Among children, it is one of the top 20 chronic conditions for the global ranking of disability-adjusted life years, with a mortality rate ranging from 0.0–0.7 per 100,000.5 In India, the prevalence of asthma was reported to be ranging from 2% to 23% which may be due to the enormous geographical and environmental variations across the country.6 In a recent study, it was found as 10.4% in Assam.7
Asthma in children causes recurrent respiratory symptoms of wheezing, cough, difficulty breathing and chest tightness and can lead to chronic asthma if not treated adequately. Childhood asthma may increase school absenteeism, decrease active participation in work and thus significantly impair the quality of life of the affected child.
Despite advanced understanding and therapeutic strategies, a dramatic increase in prevalence, morbidity and mortality of childhood asthma has been noted in recent years8,9 necessitating a further understanding of asthma pathogenesis for efficient asthma management. Although many research works are happening in different parts of India, minimal research has been conducted in this underdeveloped region of the north-eastern part of India.
The present study was conducted in the state of Assam, a northeast part of India. The population of Assam constitutes various racial stocks, of which 12.45% belong to the tribal communities like Bodo, Kachari, Karbi, Miri, Mishimi, Rabha, etc. The rural zones are scattered in most of the areas of this region. The state is well known for its biodiversity. Agriculture, primarily rice, tea and pulses, contributes to more than a third of Assam’s income and employs about 69% of the workforce. The state produces 50% of India’s tea production. The other profitable agribusinesses include Pig Farming, Dairy farming, and Fishery businesses involving the rural population. Agriculture, tea, oil and natural gas, coal, and limestone are the major industrial areas. The state’s vast ethnic and geographic variation is significantly attributed to the diverse disease dynamics and pathogenesis factors.
GMCH is a leading tertiary referral centre in this region, and the attending patients belong to the entire North-eastern regions of India, comprising both rural and urban populations. Most patients were from lower socioeconomic status and had low education levels. Childhood asthma is a commonly encountered problem in the paediatric department in the hospital.
The study aims to assess the various socio-demographic and environmental factors influencing the causation of childhood asthma among patients aged 3–12 years attending the paediatric department of GMCH.
Materials and Methods
The retrospective case-control study was conducted in the anatomy department, in collaboration with the department of paediatrics, GMCH, Assam, from April 2013 to March 2017 to investigate childhood asthma’s socio-demographic and environmental factors among paediatric patients aged 3–12 years.
An unmatched case-control study was conducted with 150 cases and 150 controls selected at a 1:1 ratio to study the various factors of childhood asthma. Clinically diagnosed asthma patients of 3–12 years attending outdoor and indoor department of paediatrics were selected as cases, while controls were patients of the same age group preferably residing in a similar environment free from respiratory diseases and having no history of asthma.
The sample size was determined using WinPepi version 11.65. Baseline survey data reveals that childhood asthma ranges from 1 to 4% in India. Therefore, assuming the proportion of childhood asthma as 1% and equal group sizes among cases and controls, the study would require a total sample size of 274 to achieve a power of 80% for detecting a two-way difference in proportions of 4% between the two groups with a 5% level of the significance.
Further assuming about 10% of non-respondent due to following up loss or noncompliance, it was reasonable to draw a sample of 300 constituting 150 cases and 150 controls.
A predesigned and pretested proforma was used to collect data. Written informed consent was obtained from all the legal guardians of the study participants. Data on different socio-demographic and environmental variables were collected. Housing types are defined as
Pucca housing if both walls and roof are made up of bricks, cement, and stones; Katcha housing is made up of wood, mud, straw and dry leaves and Semi pucca housing if the house is made with brick walls and thatched roof or a house with tinned roof mud walls and concrete floor. Socioeconomic status was accessed on a modified Kuppuswamy scale (2014).
Participants’ personal history on the mode of delivery, history of birth asphyxia, type of feeding, history of food allergy, history of mother’s addiction, family history of asthma, atopy or allergy and family history of smoking or passive smoking were also documented. Any family members residing in the same dwelling were considered about family smoking history. Disease severity was classified based on prescribed treatment step as per GINA guidelines for descriptions of participants in epidemiological studies and clinical trials, considering patients prescribed Step 2 treatments as having mild asthma, those prescribed Step 3–4 treatments as having moderate asthma and that prescribed step-5 treatment as having severe asthma.
Inclusion and exclusion criteria: The literature suggests paediatric cases should be included for up to 18 years. Still, in GMCH, most cases attending the Paediatric Department were up to 12 years of age. Furthermore, around puberty, a disease outgrows place for childhood asthma. So, the age group selected for the study was 3–12 years. Clinically diagnosed asthma patients in the age group of 3–12 years who consented to participate in the study during the study period were included as cases. Children of 3–12 years free from respiratory diseases, preferably residing in a similar environment, who gave consent to participate in the study were selected as controls.
Children of 0–3 years were excluded from the study, as a child presenting with wheeze in this age group is not chronic enough to diagnose it as asthma. Also, Children in the relevant age group and their guardians who failed to consent to participate in the study were excluded.
Statistical analysis: Differences in proportions were analyzed using the χ2 test. Binary logistic regression was used to the significant parameters of Univariate analysis, and Wald χ 2 test was used to measure the independent contribution of exposure.
Ethical approval: The ethical clearance was taken from the ethics committee of the institute, viz., Institutional Ethics Committee of GMCH, Guwahati, Assam and India, before collecting the data vide ref: No: 233/2018/215.
Results
Out of the total 112,323 patients attending the paediatric department during the study period, 18.88% were respiratory patients. Among the paediatric patients in the age group 3–12 years, 2.96% were asthmatic. Most childhood asthma cases were reported during the autumn months of September and October (Figure 1).
Figure 1 Month-wise distribution of patients (OPD+IPD).
Symptomatic Profile of the Selected Cases
The present case-control study recruited 150 childhood asthma cases and 150 controls. The mean (±standard deviation) age of the study participants was 8.38(±2.69) years. Cough and difficulty in breathing were the most common clinical symptom in the cases. The majority (77.3%) of cases had episodic asthma attacks, and only 8.7% of cases had severe asthma. The preponderance of the cases was reported during the autumn season (30%). Almost 38% of cases reported the occurrence of the symptoms at night-time (Table 1).
Table 1 Symptomatic Analysis of the Selected Asthma Cases (n=150)
As per the respondents’ perceptions, cold drinks (82.7%), ice cream (71.6%), and exposure to dust (35%) were the common precipitating factors of asthma. Almost 19.3% of the cases reported school absenteeism due to the disease.
Socio-Demographic and Environmental Factors of Childhood Asthma
The participants’ mean age (standard deviation) was 8.34(2.69) years. Most cases belonged to the age group 7–12 years and were males. The study participants were primarily Hindu and non...
