Digital Arkansas News

Georgia Voting Equipment Breach At Center Of Tangled Tale https://digitalarkansasnews.com/georgia-voting-equipment-breach-at-center-of-tangled-tale/ This Jan. 7, 2021, image taken from Coffee County, Ga., security video, appears to show Cathy Latham (center, long turquoise top), introducing members of a computer forensic team to local election officials. Latham was the county Republican Party chair at the time. The computer forensics team was at the county elections office in Douglas, Ga., to make copies of voting equipment in an effort that documents show was arranged by attorney Sidney Powell and others allied with then-President Donald Trump. (Coffee County, Georgia via AP) ATLANTA (AP) — The tale of breached voting equipment in one of the country’s most important political battleground states involves a bail bondsman, a prominent attorney tied to former President Donald Trump’s attempts to overturn the 2020 presidential election and a cast of characters from a rural county that rarely draws notice from outsiders. How they all came together and what it could mean for the security of voting in the upcoming midterm elections are questions tangled up in a lawsuit and state investigations that have prompted calls to ditch the machines altogether. Details of the unauthorized access of sensitive voting equipment in Coffee County, Georgia, became public last month when documents and emails revealed the involvement of high-profile Trump supporters. That’s also when it caught the attention of an Atlanta-based prosecutor who is leading a separate investigation of Trump’s efforts to undo his loss in the state. Since then, revelations about what happened in the county of 43,000 people have raised questions about whether the Dominion Voting Systems machines used in Georgia have been compromised. The public disclosure of the breach began with a rambling phone call from an Atlanta-area bail bondsman to the head of an election security advocacy group involved in a long-running lawsuit targeting the state’s voting machines. According to a recording filed in court earlier this year, the bail bondsman said he’d chartered a jet and was with a computer forensics team at the Coffee County elections office when they “imaged every hard drive of every piece of equipment.” That happened on Jan. 7, 2021, a day after the violent insurrection at the U.S. Capitol and two days after a runoff election in which Democrats swept both of Georgia’s U.S. Senate seats. The trip to Coffee County, about 200 miles south of Atlanta, to copy data and software from elections equipment was directed by attorney Sidney Powell and other Trump allies, according to deposition testimony and documents produced in response to subpoenas. Later that month, security camera footage shows, two men who have participated in efforts to question the results of the 2020 election in several states spent days going in and out of the Coffee County elections office. The footage also shows local election and Republican Party officials welcoming the visitors and allowing them access to the election equipment. The video seems to contradict statements some of the officials made about their apparent involvement. The new information has made Coffee County, where Trump won nearly 70% of the vote two years ago, a focal point of concerns over the security of voting machines. While there is no evidence of widespread problems with voting equipment in 2020, some Trump supporters have spread false information about machines and the election outcome. Election security experts and activists fear state election officials haven’t acted fast enough in the face of what they see as a real threat. The copying of the software and its availability for download means potential bad actors could build exact copies of the Dominion system to test different types of attacks, said University of California, Berkeley computer scientist Philip Stark, an expert witness for the plaintiffs in the voting machines lawsuit. “This is like bank robbers having an exact replica of the vault that they’re trying to break into,” he said. Stark said the risks could be minimized by using hand-marked paper ballots and rigorous audits. Dominion says its equipment remains secure. Marilyn Marks, executive director of the Coalition for Good Governance, the group that sued over the state’s voting machines, said the state has been slow to investigate. She was on the receiving end of the phone call from the bail bondsman. The state, she said, has been “repeatedly looking the other way when faced with flashing red lights of serious voting system security problems.” State officials say they’re confident the election system is safe. All Coffee County election equipment that wasn’t already replaced will be swapped out before early voting begins next month, the secretary of state’s office said Friday. State officials also noted they were deluged by false claims after the 2020 election. “In retrospect, you can say, well what about this, this and this,” said Gabriel Sterling, a top official in the Georgia secretary of state’s office. “In real time, no, there was no reason to think that.” In late January 2021, a few weeks after the computer forensics team visited, security video shows a secretary of state’s office investigator arriving at the Coffee County elections office. He and the elections supervisor walk into the room that houses the election management system server. Seconds later, Jeff Lenberg, who has been identified by Michigan authorities as being part of an effort to gain access to voting machines there, is seen walking out of that room. Asked whether Lenberg’s presence in the room with sensitive election equipment raised concerns for the investigator, secretary of state’s office spokesperson Mike Hassinger said the investigator was looking into an unrelated matter and didn’t know who Lenberg was. Security video also showed another man, Doug Logan, at the office in mid-January. Logan founded a company called Cyber Ninjas, which led a discredited review of the 2020 election in Maricopa County, Arizona. In May 2021, Coffee County’s new elections supervisor raised concerns with the secretary of state’s office after finding Logan’s business card by a computer. The election supervisor’s concerns were referred to an investigator, but he testified that no one ever contacted him. Hassinger said the secretary of state’s office responds to allegations when they are raised but that “information about unauthorized access to Coffee County’s election equipment has been kept hidden” by local officials and others. Much of what is known was uncovered through documents, security camera video and depositions produced in response to subpoenas in the lawsuit filed by individual voters and the election security advocacy group. The suit alleges Georgia’s touchscreen voting machines are not secure and seeks to force the state to use hand-marked paper ballots instead. The recently produced evidence of a breach wasn’t the first sign of problems in Coffee County, which caused headaches for state election officials in the hectic weeks following the 2020 election. It’s likely that turmoil helped opened the door for Trump’s allies. In early December 2020, the county elections board declined to certify the results of a machine recount requested by Trump, saying the election system had produced inaccurate results. A video posted online days later showed the former county elections supervisor saying the elections software could be manipulated; as she spoke, the password to the county election management system server was visible on a note stuck to her computer. At the end of December, Cathy Latham, the Coffee County Republican Party chair who also was a fake elector for Trump, appeared at a state legislative committee hearing and made further claims that the voting machines were unreliable. Within days of that hearing, Latham said, she was contacted by Scott Hall, the bail bondsman, who had been a Republican observer during an election recount. Latham testified in a deposition that Hall asked her to connect him with the Coffee County elections supervisor (who later was accused of falsifying timesheets and forced to resign). A few days later, on Jan. 7, Hall met with a computer forensics team from data solutions firm SullivanStrickler at the Coffee County elections office. The team copied the data and software on the election management system server and other voting system components, a company executive said in a deposition. The company said it believed its clients had the necessary permission. Invoices show the data firm billed Powell $26,000 for the day’s work. “Everything went smoothly yesterday with the Coffee County collection,” the firm’s chief operating officer wrote to Powell in an email. “Everyone involved was extremely helpful.” Copyright 2022 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission. Read More Here

LETTER TO THE EDITOR: Biden Is Wrong On Many Things – Odessa American https://digitalarkansasnews.com/letter-to-the-editor-biden-is-wrong-on-many-things-odessa-american/ Biden recently called Trump supporters, and by inference, Republicans “semi-Fascists.” Well, here is the definition of Fascism: a governmental system ruled by a dictator having complete power, forcibly suppressing opposition and . criticism, regimenting all industry and commerce, etc.” Fascism was established by Benito Mussolini during WWII. Now, consider that the Democratic Party is continually trying to suppress our 1st Amendment rights of free speech, free PEACFUL assembly, and freedom of religion. They also continually attack our 2nd Amendment right to “keep and bear arms.” They are trying to force trans-genderism on us, even though science (legitimate science, that is) knows beyond doubt that there are only two genders. All the surgery, and hormonal treatments in the world will not change a biologic gender. Their only result is a surgically-altered individual, who is still a male or female genetically! And, the Democrats are trying to force us to accept homosexuality, and pedophilia. Their view is that those are normal, just different. As a Christian, I am completely against those ideas! They also support child murder, otherwise known as abortion. The Democrats also have refused to condemn violence and riots such as happened in Minneapolis, Portland, Seattle, New York, and many other cities. In many cases, various members of our House and Senate actively called for more riots and violence. And, as far as “suppressing” things, just look at how they are trying to censor conservative viewpoints and speech in the media. Remember, even Zuckerburg of Facebook admitted that the FBI told him to downplay and ignore posts about Hunter Biden’s criminal activity. They are also trying to pack the Supreme Court with puppet justices who will do nothing but prate the Democratic line. Also, they want to eliminate the Electoral College, and go with strictly the popular vote. That may sound good on the face of it, but, without the Electoral College, every national election would be controlled by about five states: California, New York, Ohio, Florida, and Texas. People may not realize it, but Los Angeles county alone, has about 10 million people. That is more than the population of 43 of the states! Now, consider that the Republican Party has constantly supported both the 1st, and 2nd Amendments. They are against transgenderism. homosexuality, “woke-ism”, and in favor of Christianity. They support school choice, home schooling, and keeping talk about sex and gender out of elementary schools. Elementary schools should be about nothing but teaching kids to read, write, and do math. Save the social commentary for the upper grades, and even then, stick strictly to the science, not indoctrination. After comparing the two parties, tell me which one more closely fits the definition of Fascism! Thanks, Sandy Milner Odessa Read More Here

If Pandemic Over, Biden Must Stop Forgiving Student Debt https://digitalarkansasnews.com/if-pandemic-over-biden-must-stop-forgiving-student-debt/ Columns Sep 24, 2022 Marc A. Thiessen Syndicated columnist Twitter handle: @marcthiessen Marc A. Thiessen, syndicated columnist WASHINGTON — President Biden declared that “the pandemic is over” and now is trying to walk it back. Little wonder: With just a few words in a “60 Minutes” interview, Biden completely undermined his administration’s legal justification for student loan forgiveness. The nonpartisan Penn Wharton Budget Model estimates that Biden’s loan forgiveness plan will cost between $605 billion and $1 trillion. Congress has not authorized him to spend any of that. So where does the president get the authority to unilaterally spend up to 1$ trillion? He claims to find it in the Heroes Act — a law passed after the 9/11 attacks to help those Americans called up to active military service not default on their student loans. The law provides “the Secretary of Education with specific waiver authority to respond to a war or other military operation or national emergency” (my emphasis). In an August memo explaining the legal basis for Biden’s student loan forgiveness plan, Education Department general counsel Lisa Brown claimed that emergency authority includes a “national emergency, such as the present COVID-19 pandemic.” This is absurd. The Heroes Act explicitly states that it is intended to help the “hundreds of thousands of Army, Air Force, Marine Corps, Navy, and Coast Guard reservists and members of the National Guard [who] have been called to active duty or active service.” It authorizes the secretary of education to forgive or modify their loans in response to a “national emergency, regardless of the location at which such active duty service is performed.” There is no way to read this law as justifying debt relief for an entire class of individuals who never wore the uniform. Biden is not even trying to conform with the intent of the law – by, for example, perhaps extending loan forgiveness to first responders and front-line medical workers who risked their lives during the covid-19 pandemic. He’s driving a steam engine right through the plain text of the law and providing mass debt forgiveness for those who did not serve in any capacity in a national emergency – and using the pandemic as justification. But now that Biden has declared the pandemic “over,” his justification for abusing this law has evaporated. Walking through the Detroit Auto Show, Biden told CBS correspondent Scott Pelley, “If you notice, no one’s wearing masks. Everybody seems to be in pretty good shape.” He said, “We still have a problem with covid. We’re still doing a lotta work on it. But the pandemic is over.” That means what his administration’s lawyers called a “national emergency, such as the present COVID-19 pandemic,” is no longer “present.” And if the pandemic is no longer present, neither is the legal basis for using it to forgive student loans. Of course, consistency has never been Biden’s strong suit. In the spring, his administration announced it was lifting Title 42 — the Trump-era public health order that allows border officials to turn away illegal migrants in order to prevent the spread of covid-19 — because Biden’s Centers for Disease Control and Prevention declared it was “no longer necessary” since we now have “an increased availability of tools to fight COVID-19” and “97.1% of the U.S. population lives in a county identified as having ‘low’ COVID-19 Community Level.” In other words, Biden effectively declared the pandemic emergency over for illegal migrants at the border, but then a few months later invoked it to justify student loan forgiveness. Then he (again) declared the pandemic “over” — even as his administration submits an emergency request to Congress for $27 billion in pandemic spending before the end of the year. The formal pandemic emergency declaration expires on Oct. 13, unless Biden extends it for an additional three months. If he fails to do so, then not only will he no longer have legal justification for student debt forgiveness, but he will also lose the basis for other pandemic-justified social spending – such as the emergency Medicaid expansion, which the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimates added to the program some 13 million Americans who would otherwise make too much money to qualify, at a cost of nearly $10 billion a month. So, in all likelihood, Biden will follow his declaration that the pandemic is “over” by soon extending the pandemic emergency declaration. Because if Republicans regain the majority in just one house in November, the ability to pass Democrats-only spending bills will evaporate – which means the pandemic emergency will be all Democrats have left to continue their miasma of fiscal profligacy. EDITOR’S NOTE: Follow Marc A. Thiessen on Twitter, @marcthiessen. Today’s breaking news and more in your inbox Read More Here

Friday’s Arkansas High School Football Scores https://digitalarkansasnews.com/fridays-arkansas-high-school-football-scores-3/ Alma 41, Clarksville 14 Arkadelphia 49, Nashville 12 Ashdown 49, Waldron 0 Batesville 34, Nettleton 28 Bauxite 41, Dover 12 Beebe 20, Morrilton 14, OT Benton 56, El Dorado 28 Bentonville 45, Har-Ber 17 Bigelow 45, Mountainburg 6 Bismarck 49, Jessieville 14 Blytheville 38, Harrisburg 0 Booneville 75, Hackett 46 Brinkley 70, KIPP Blytheville 0 Bryant 41, Fort Smith Northside 10 Cabot 37, Jonesboro 6 Camden Fairview 42, Hot Springs Lakeside 14 Camden Harmony Grove 31, Drew Central 6 Carlisle 42, Bearden 0 Cedar Ridge 22, Rose Bud 20 Centerpoint 50, Two Rivers 0 Central Arkansas Christian 21, Little Rock Hall 19 Charleston 41, Greenland 6 Conway 42, Little Rock Southwest 0 Cutter-Morning Star 22, Subiaco Academy 6 DeSoto 60, Columbus Christian, Miss. 32 Delta Academy, Miss. 34, West Memphis Christian 26 Des Arc 28, Earle 24 Dierks 39, Lafayette County 8 East Poinsett County 46, Clarendon 44 Elkins 28, Gravette 14 England 42, Baptist Prep 21 Fayetteville 42, Bentonville West 28 Fordyce 49, Barton 48 Fouke 13, Junction City 12 Fountain Lake 51, Marshall 26 Gentry 49, Huntsville 13 Glen Rose 54, Paris 7 Gosnell 48, Highland 14 Greenwood 63, Van Buren 21 Hamburg 19, Dumas 13 Harding Academy 45, Stuttgart 13 Harmony Grove 42, Clinton 21 Harrison 21, Farmington 14 Hazen 46, Hampton 0 Hector 42, Westside-Johnson County 16 Hope 45, De Queen 19 Izard County 36, Midland 22 Lake Hamilton 41, Siloam Springs 7 Lavaca 41, Cedarville 10 Lincoln 42, Green Forest 12 Little Rock Catholic 42, Searcy 21 Little Rock Parkview 33, Hot Springs 21 Lonoke 60, Riverview 20 Magazine 35, Decatur 0 Magnolia 41, Texarkana 8 Manila 18, Piggott 6 Mansfield 18, West Fork 14 Marion 34, Greene County Tech 8 Marked Tree 53, Marianna Lee 0 McCrory 36, Cross County 0 Mineral Springs 60, Foreman 20 Monticello 53, Helena-West Helena 20 Mountain Pine 62, Marvell 6 Mountain View 30, Genoa Central 12 Newport 44, Quitman 26 North Little Rock 53, Little Rock Central 8 North Sunflower Academy, Miss. 58, Marvell Academy 14 Osceola 44, Corning 6 Ozark 50, Berryville 15 Perryville 44, Yellville-Summit 6 Pine Bluff 26, Maumelle 0 Pocahontas 28, Rivercrest 21 Pottsville 44, Mayflower 14 Poyen 36, Murfreesboro 0 Prairie Grove 48, Pea Ridge 31 Prescott 42, Gurdon 7 Pulaski Academy 49, Little Rock Christian 26 Pulaski Mills 34, White Hall 32 Pulaski Robinson 59, Watson Chapel 20 Rison 51, Dollarway 0 Rogers 35, Fort Smith Southside 7 Russellville 38, Mountain Home 28 Salem 50, Atkins 0 Sheridan 49, Jacksonville 0 Shiloh Christian 55, Dardanelle 0 Southside Batesville 36, Forrest City 0 Spring Hill 33, Hermitage 8 Springdale 40, Rogers Heritage 28 Star City 34, DeWitt 7 Strong 42, Dermott 20 Trumann 34, Jonesboro Westside 8 Valley View 42, Paragould 0 Walnut Ridge 56, Palestine-Wheatley 2 Warren 40, McGehee 26 West Memphis 35, Sylvan Hills 16 Woodlawn 44, Parkers Chapel 8 Wynne 59, Brookland 27 POSTPONEMENTS AND CANCELLATIONS Magnet Cove vs. Danville, ccd. WebReadyTM Powered by WireReady® NSI Read More…

Hubert David Glenn https://digitalarkansasnews.com/hubert-david-glenn/ Hubert David Glenn, age 95, of Fayetteville, AR, formerly of El Dorado, AR, passed away peacefully at his home on Thursday, September 22, 2022. Hubert Glenn, the son of William and Sarah Daniels Glenn, was born on April 4, 1927 in Wesson, Arkansas. During WWII, Hubert served in the United States Coast Guard as an electronics technician. Upon discharge from the military, Hubert began working in the electronics industry, where he was met with an opportunity for business ownership that eventually led him to open Glenn’s Marine in El Dorado. Through his business practices, Hubert became known as a man of loyalty, honesty, and dedication to his countless customers. For many years, Hubert was an active member of First Assembly of God in El Dorado where he served faithfully and was loved by many in the congregation. He also remained firm in his commitment to serve with Gideons International for much of his life. You would have been hard pressed to find a more dedicated fisherman than Hubert Glenn. He could catch a fish when there were none to be caught and was happiest out on the water in a boat! Above all, Hubert will be remembered for his gentle spirit and the kindness he shared with those he met along the way in his 95 years of living a life well spent. Hubert was preceded in death by his parents; his sisters Mildred Tullis and Ruth Thompkins; brothers Otis, Albert and Raymond Glenn; and his wife of 70 years and childhood sweetheart Betty Paul Edwards Glenn. Survivors are sons Ron Glenn (Barbara) of Fayetteville, AR; Mark Glenn (Nancy) of Bossier City, LA; and Paul Glenn (Tia) of El Lago, TX; grandchildren Paige Arnold, Allison Townley, Adam Jones, Lynlee Critz, Bethany Aman, and Nolan Glenn along with 12 great grandchildren. The family will receive friends on Sunday, September 25, 2022 from 1:00 to 3:00 pm at Young’s Funeral Home. Entombment will follow on Monday, September 26 at 11:00 am at Arlington Memorial Park. Memorials may be made to Gideons International (www.gideons.org/donate) or to the First Assembly of God Church Missions Fund, 2225 West Hillsboro Street, El Dorado, Arkansas 71730. Condolences and memories may be shared at www.youngsfuneralhome.com Read More Here

A Time Of National Crisis https://digitalarkansasnews.com/a-time-of-national-crisis/ To the editor: I must state that I am quite pleased that President Joe Biden has, finally, elected to promote a more aggressive and honest approach in his recent calling out of the Trump MAGA Republicans, stating that the Trump-led MAGA movement is an “existential threat to democracy” in our great country, and that such extremism “threatens the very foundation of our republic,” in order to specifically address his grave concerns that such “semi-fascism” and “authoritarianism” poses the greatest threat to our democracy since the American Civil War. Is it not, indeed, quite troubling that even after more than a year and a half following their failed coup attempt on our nation’s capitol, former President Donald Trump continues to use hateful and very provocative rhetoric in order to continue to charge up his base, and state that he was the actual winner of the 2020 U.S. presidential election, which he decisively lost, as verified by all election professionals, concluding that the election actually was, perhaps, the most fair and honest election in our nation’s history. However, the facts, obviously, do little to discourage the former president and his minions from continuing, in spite of all of the evidence to the contrary, to question the legitimacy of the electoral process and literally all departments of the federal government, as well as the national media, as being somehow corrupt for the priority of service being to the American people, and for their not prioritizing their unquestioned allegiance to him (Trump) above all else. As the irrational, hateful rhetoric continues unabashed by Trump and his MAGA sycophants, I fear that it might well be possible for further acts of violence, such as what occurred on Jan. 6, 2021, against our nation, of which we must be aware and mindful, and address such areas of grave concern, as has President Biden recently, and have numerous others as well, and no longer tend to ignore such a real and present threat to our cherished way of life, hoping that such will eventually fade away. These are certainly among the most challenging and concerning times that our nation has faced in its glorious history. Hopefully, better days will, soon, be ahead for all of us. Richard Hord Martins Ferry Today’s breaking news and more in your inbox Read More Here

Time For Education https://digitalarkansasnews.com/time-for-education/ To the editor: A recent letter included me in its mish-mash salad of words. Let’s do some education on a few subjects. Republican voter suppression is strong on Native American reservations in North Dakota, South Dakota, Montana and New Mexico because they don’t have street addresses, polling places and have taken away drop boxes. Georgia has purged 1.5 million voters and closed 214 polling places. Florida, Texas, New York, North Carolina and Virginia also have done huge purges. Let’s not forget Ohio is so gerrymandered and they won’t draw fair maps. Cheating is the only way the Republicans can win. Personal attacks on me and other women in our group show much. All of the name-calling makes it sound like a 5-year-old throwing a tantrum. The obsession with degrading women is beyond normal. If there is reincarnation, maybe the writer will come back as Aunt Esther. I just saw that Trump played the Q Anon nut’s song when he came to Youngstown last week and was wearing the Q pin. He’s combining extreme Christian nationalism and conspiracy theorists into a cult. He is promoting lies, hate, violence, attacks on the truth and us-against-them. Calling the press, FBI, DOJ and branches of government corrupt because they are investigating him. Isn’t this what Mussolini and Hitler did? He also said “the storm is coming.” Signaling to his cult to be ready for violence again as he did when attempting a coup. So, when you vote for J.D. Vance, you are supporting this cult. He is the author of “Hillbilly Elegy” — why the poor and uneducated support Trump. Trump stole top secret documents and lied about having them — a severe threat to our national security. He said he’d exonerate those in prison that violently stormed our Capitol, committing an insurrection and crimes against our country and calling them patriots because they listened to him. He stacked the most important courts with judges who are bending for him. This is not about politics anymore. It’s about a desperate mentally unstable man that wants to be a lawless dictator. Remember Jim Jones? He claimed to be a pastor but was actually an atheist. So, when you vote for Trump Republican minions, keep in mind they are taking away voting rights, women’s rights, gerrymandering the courts with far-right judges with no term limits, taking history books out of libraries (freedom of speech), human rights and future generations will be suppressed. They do support armed citizens carrying guns on our streets. I doubt this is what the majority of the people want. What happened to integrity, respect for our laws and Constitution and doing what is right for the people? The real Republicans are silent and won’t stand up to this threat. What will happen to our land of the free? Our Democracy is at risk. Linda Caputo Steubenville Today’s breaking news and more in your inbox Read More Here

We Finally Agree With Donald Trump On This One https://digitalarkansasnews.com/we-finally-agree-with-donald-trump-on-this-one/ rally “We have to keep our country gay,” Donald Trump stammered at a campaign rally in North Carolina on Friday. Clearly reading from a teleprompter, Trump misread the canned words sent his way. “Remember I was going to say, I was going to use an expression,” he said. “We have to keep our country gay, puh, puh, but it’s not, I mean, for some reason, it’s not great anymore.” Twitter leapt, of course. Trump was at the rally in Wilmington, N.C., to support Republican Senate candidate Ted Budd, a congressman who’s stated the pro-LGBTQ+ Equality Act, currently awaiting a vote in the Senate, was “the triumph of cancel culture over facts, reason, and empirical knowledge.” The cheering audience didn’t seem to be affected by the fact that Trump, his company, and his children were sued this week by the New York attorney general, who accuses the Trump Organization of massive fraud. Trump also faces a possible indictment for allegedly stealing top-secret classified documents and lying to the FBI about having them. He also is being investigated by the Justice Department for possibly instigating the January 6, 2021 insurrection at the Capitol, and faces another possible indictment in Georgia for trying to overturn his loss there in 2020. Among other legal threats, Trump also faces lawsuits from people involved with the Capitol riot and from writer E. Jean Carroll, who accuses him of rape. Read More Here

Trump Lawyers Argue To Limit White House Aides’ Testimony To Jan. 6 Grand Jury https://digitalarkansasnews.com/trump-lawyers-argue-to-limit-white-house-aides-testimony-to-jan-6-grand-jury-2/ Lawyers for former president Donald Trump have entered a high-stakes legal battle seeking to limit the scope of former top White House aides’ testimony to a federal grand jury that is investigating efforts to overturn the 2020 elections, according to people familiar with the matter. The action sets up a potentially precedent-setting struggle that could affect the Justice Department’s investigation of the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol attack, and address the scope of a former president’s assertion of executive or attorney-client privilege to preserve the confidentiality of advisers’ communications. The specific contours of the fight, reported first by CNN, are unclear. One person familiar with the matter said that the dispute concerned the testimony of two top aides to former vice president Mike Pence — his former chief of staff, Marc Short, and former counsel, Greg Jacob. The men appeared before the grand jury in July and answered some, but not all, questions, based on Trump’s assertion of privilege, people familiar with the matter said. Grand jury matters are typically secret. However, the case spilled into light after Trump attorneys M. Evan Corcoran, John P. Rowley III and Timothy C. Parlatore were seen at federal court in Washington on Thursday with no publicly scheduled matters, along with a lead Jan. 6 federal prosecutor, Thomas Windom. A person with knowledge of the matter said Trump’s representatives were present for a Jan. 6-related proceeding. The people spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss an ongoing criminal investigation. Trump’s attorneys and a spokesman for the U.S. attorney’s office in D.C. said they could not comment on grand jury matters. Efforts to reach representatives for Short or Jacobs were not immediately successful Friday night. A dispute over executive privilege and compelling a witness’s testimony before a grand jury would typically be heard by Chief U.S. District Judge Beryl A. Howell in Washington. While Howell has in the past moved quickly, any appeal to the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia would probably extend through the end of the year, and the arguments would be unlikely to be made public before then. A spokeswoman for Howell did not respond to a request for comment. In most fights over executive privilege — which are often between Congress and the executive branch — both sides usually compromise and settle their differences rather than risk a precedent-setting defeat for either branch of government. But the stakes of the criminal investigation into Trump’s actions during the presidential transition after he lost reelection in November 2020 may make negotiation more difficult. The Justice Department is questioning witnesses about conversations with Trump, his lawyers and others in his inner circle who sought to substitute Trump allies for certified electors from some states Joe Biden won, people familiar with the matter have said. Prosecutors have asked hours of detailed questions about meetings Trump led in December 2020 and January 2021 and his pressure on Pence to overturn the election. Those lines of inquiry are separate from the investigation into classified documents recovered from Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home — though that case, too, has produced legal fighting over issues of executive and attorney client privilege. Both Short and Jacob have unique windows into those events. Both were with Pence on Jan. 6 at the Capitol. They testified with Pence’s approval before a House select committee conducting a parallel investigation, although the former vice president declined to do so himself. Jacob also told the committee that two days before the riot, private Trump attorney John Eastman conceded that the plot to have Pence help overturn the election was illegal. In other legal proceedings, attorneys for Trump have defended executive privilege claims, warning that rulings to the contrary could damage the presidency by weakening the confidentiality afforded to the conversations of top presidential advisers. They have argued that allowing a sitting president to waive executive privilege of a predecessor unilaterally also could politicize and defeat the purpose of the privilege. However, Trump’s legal options to withhold testimony may have been limited by a string of court decisions since Jan. 6. Courts have long held that White House claims of executive or attorney-client privilege are easier to overcome when the information is sought in a criminal proceeding rather than by Congress. The standard for prosecutors is whether they can show a witness is likely to possess information important to the criminal probe not readily available otherwise. And even though lawmakers must meet a higher bar, courts since January have sided with Congress and rejected an attempt by Trump to withhold thousands of pages of White House communications and records from the House Jan. 6 committee, and a similar effort by Eastman to do so claiming attorney-client confidentiality. Read More Here

In A Contentious Debate, GOP Secretary Of State Candidate Mark Finchem, Admits To Being Interviewed By The U.S. Dept. Of Justice And Congressional Panel Investigating The Jan.6 Insurrection – Northeast Valley News https://digitalarkansasnews.com/in-a-contentious-debate-gop-secretary-of-state-candidate-mark-finchem-admits-to-being-interviewed-by-the-u-s-dept-of-justice-and-congressional-panel-investigating-the-jan-6-insurrection-northeas/ Finchem was in Washington, D.C. on Jan. 6 and took part in the Stop the Steal march to the Capitol—Finchem has reportedly been subpoenaed by the Select Committee to Investigate the Jan.6 Attack on the U.S. Capitol Candidates for Arizona’s office of Secretary of State,  Adrian Fontes (D) and Mark Finchem (R) squared off in a debate Thursday night with Finchem, a Trump endorsed candidate— corralling questions around “proof” he had that the 2020 presidential election was invalid. Finchem, a staunch denier of the 2020 election despite the countless audits that have ultimately served to reaffirm Joe Biden’s win over Donald Trump—continued to veer back to the 2020 election in what could be described as a personal mission. The GOP candidate was also among those present for the Jan. 6 insurrection march of Stop the Steal—where Finchem said he had a “book of evidence” which he hoped to deliver to “two congressional members of my constitutionally elected congressional caucus.” However, five days after the events of the Jan 6. insurrection, Finchem released a statement claiming that the evidence book was for former Vice President Mike Pence. The Republican candidate also revealed Thursday night that he “was interviewed by the Department of Justice as well as the J6 commission, as a witness,”—it has been widely reported that Finchem was also subpoenaed by the Select Committee to Investigate the Jan. 6 Attack on the U.S. Capitol. Finchem has reportedly declined comment on whether he complied with that subpoena. Finchem circled back to questions surrounding his claims of voter fraud. “We’ve got the evidence; the media has refused to look at it.” Finchem said. Both Maricopa and Yuma counties election results, Finchem claimed, were “irredeemable” citing the film ‘2000 Mules’, a “documentary” by conservative commentator Dinesh D’Souza. That film, much like the audits in Arizona, also failed to provide any “concrete, verifiable evidence of widespread voter fraud in the 2020 election,” Reuters said in an extensive fact-check of the film. Finchem also touted the website ‘open.ink’ which allegedly houses over “three terabytes of information that speaks to not just video but documentation,” Finchem said Thursday night. However, the website whose slogan is “freedom of information”, is not freely distributed without requiring users to sign-up in order to access their account—one that requires receiving an email first. The Washington Post reported in August that once users to this “free” site have access to their account, they are prompted to upgrade from the default subscriber level in order to access more of the site. In response to Finchem’s claims, Fontes (D) continued to uphold the integrity of the 2020 election and question the integrity of the deniers that continue to question it. “What we now have is an entire set of fiction that has somehow managed to make a lot of money for some people outside of the regular norms that we expect. This is a chaotic way of re-addressing a political loss.” Fontes said. Both candidates laid out potential solutions for what they thought would best rectify the voting process in America. Finchem believes that the federal government should have no business in attempting to reform elections—even though voting is a basic fundamental right of electing federal government officials. “I think the federal government needs to butt out of states’ rights,” he said. “It is the legislature who names the time, place, and manner of the election not the federal government.” Fontes responded by citing the United States Constitution. “I think Article I Section Four of the Constitution of the United States of America would disagree with Mr. Finchem’s assertion about who is charged with the time, place, and manner of elections.” Article I Section Four of the Constitution states; “The Times, Places and Manner of holding Elections for Senators and Representatives, shall be prescribed in each State by the Legislature thereof; but the Congress may at any time by Law make or alter such Regulations, except as to the Places of choosing Senators.” As for mail-in-voting, Fontes said that an important part of the Secretary of State’s role is ensuring all voters “have the choice of how they want to vote.” Fontes accused Finchem of wanting to “kill” mail-in voting, something Finchem has been reportedly critical of in the past. “Mr. Finchem wants to strip Arizona citizens of their capacity to vote by mail.” Fontes said. When asked if he wanted to rid Arizonans of mail-in voting, Finchem didn’t specifically respond to the question. “What I want doesn’t matter,” Finchem said. Finchem then followed up his response by saying,  “I don’t care for mail-in voting. That’s why I go to the polls.” A large majority of Arizonans prefer the vote by mail because it has proven to be secure and helpful to the voting process. Ironically, Finchem’s remark is an odd backpedal since mail-in voting was championed by conservatives in Arizona. Data shows that mail in voting is both widespread and popular in the state with 89% of voters casting ballots by mail in the 2020 general election. “This is not just an honored tradition in this great state,” Fontes said. “It was created by his party decades ago. It is a secure, accountable, and economical system.” Read More Here

Trump Aides Form New Fundraising Committee https://digitalarkansasnews.com/trump-aides-form-new-fundraising-committee/ New York – Former President Donald Trump’s aides are creating a new Political Action Committee (known in English as “Super PACs”) that will be the main tool for pumping money into November’s elections and if he decides it will. Could be an important part of their campaign infrastructure. To run as a presidential candidate in 2024. The election campaign committee, called MAGA Inc., will replace the existing Super PAC without the usual restrictions, reports online newspaper Politico. Documents for the new committee were filed with the Federal Election Commission on Friday. MAGA stands for Make America Great Again, which has been Trump’s motto since the beginning of his political career. Trump is under pressure on many fronts. The Justice Department is criminally investigating hundreds of confidential documents found at his Mar-A.Lago estate in Palm Beach, Florida, and state and federal officials are probing his attempts to reverse the 2020 election result he won. Democrat Joe Biden. This week, New York State Attorney General Letitia James launched a civil lawsuit accusing Trump and the company that names him of decades of fraudulent accounting to mislead banks. There are less than two months left for the November 8 midterm election, when several Republican candidates are struggling to raise money to campaign against the well-funded Democrats. “President Trump is committed to saving America, and Make America Great Again, Inc. will ensure that is achieved at the ballot box in November and beyond,” said spokeswoman Taylor Budovich, the organization’s executive director. Other members of the committee will be Republican strategist Chris LaCavita, pollster Tony Fabrizio and communications advisers Steven Cheung and Alex Pfeiffer. Until now, Pac Save America – which is subject to very strict fundraising and spending rules and is under investigation – has been their main political vehicle. Super PACs can raise funds without limits and spend them independently, but cannot coordinate directly with missions. The former president is notorious with his own money, and his officials have declined to say how much he plans to spend in November’s election or how much he wants to transfer from his Save America PAC, which ended August with over $90 million. in its treasury. The Associated Press reported that their partners are discussing the possibility of moving at least part of those funds to a new or reformed Super PAC, though financial experts disagree on the legality of such transfers. Read More Here

Trump Lawyers Argue To Limit White House Aides’ Testimony To Jan. 6 Grand Jury https://digitalarkansasnews.com/trump-lawyers-argue-to-limit-white-house-aides-testimony-to-jan-6-grand-jury/ Lawyers for former president Donald Trump have entered a high-stakes legal battle seeking to limit the scope of former top White House aides’ testimony to a federal grand jury that is investigating efforts to overturn the 2020 elections, according to people familiar with the matter. The action sets up a potentially precedent-setting struggle that could affect the Justice Department’s investigation of the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol attack, and address the scope of a former president’s assertion of executive or attorney-client privilege to preserve the confidentiality of advisers’ communications. The specific contours of the fight, reported first by CNN, are unclear. One person familiar with the matter said that the dispute concerned the testimony of two top aides to former vice president Mike Pence — his former chief of staff, Marc Short, and former counsel, Greg Jacob. The men appeared before the grand jury in July and answered some, but not all, questions, based on Trump’s assertion of privilege, people familiar with the matter said. Grand jury matters are typically secret. However, the case spilled into light after Trump attorneys M. Evan Corcoran, John P. Rowley III and Timothy C. Parlatore were seen at federal court in Washington on Thursday with no publicly scheduled matters, along with a lead Jan. 6 federal prosecutor, Thomas Windom. A person with knowledge of the matter said Trump’s representatives were present for a Jan. 6-related proceeding. The people spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss an ongoing criminal investigation. Trump’s attorneys and a spokesman for the U.S. attorney’s office in D.C. said they could not comment on grand jury matters. Efforts to reach representatives for Short or Jacobs were not immediately successful Friday night. A dispute over executive privilege and compelling a witness’s testimony before a grand jury would typically be heard by Chief U.S. District Judge Beryl A. Howell in Washington. While Howell has in the past moved quickly, any appeal to the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia would probably extend through the end of the year, and the arguments would be unlikely to be made public before then. A spokeswoman for Howell did not respond to a request for comment. In most fights over executive privilege — which are often between Congress and the executive branch — both sides usually compromise and settle their differences rather than risk a precedent-setting defeat for either branch of government. But the stakes of the criminal investigation into Trump’s actions during the presidential transition after he lost reelection in November 2020 may make negotiation more difficult. The Justice Department is questioning witnesses about conversations with Trump, his lawyers and others in his inner circle who sought to substitute Trump allies for certified electors from some states Joe Biden won, people familiar with the matter have said. Prosecutors have asked hours of detailed questions about meetings Trump led in December 2020 and January 2021 and his pressure on Pence to overturn the election. Those lines of inquiry are separate from the investigation into classified documents recovered from Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home — though that case, too, has produced legal fighting over issues of executive and attorney client privilege. Both Short and Jacob have unique windows into those events. Both were with Pence on Jan. 6 at the Capitol. They testified with Pence’s approval before a House select committee conducting a parallel investigation, although the former vice president declined to do so himself. Jacob also told the committee that two days before the riot, private Trump attorney John Eastman conceded that the plot to have Pence help overturn the election was illegal. In other legal proceedings, attorneys for Trump have defended executive privilege claims, warning that rulings to the contrary could damage the presidency by weakening the confidentiality afforded to the conversations of top presidential advisers. They have argued that allowing a sitting president to waive executive privilege of a predecessor unilaterally also could politicize and defeat the purpose of the privilege. However, Trump’s legal options to withhold testimony may have been limited by a string of court decisions since Jan. 6. Courts have long held that White House claims of executive or attorney-client privilege are easier to overcome when the information is sought in a criminal proceeding rather than by Congress. The standard for prosecutors is whether they can show a witness is likely to possess information important to the criminal probe not readily available otherwise. And even though lawmakers must meet a higher bar, courts since January have sided with Congress and rejected an attempt by Trump to withhold thousands of pages of White House communications and records from the House Jan. 6 committee, and a similar effort by Eastman to do so claiming attorney-client confidentiality. Read More Here

QAnon Follower Who Chased Officer Convicted In Jan. 6 Trial https://digitalarkansasnews.com/qanon-follower-who-chased-officer-convicted-in-jan-6-trial-2/ WASHINGTON – An Iowa man was convicted Friday of charges that he led a crowd of rioters in chasing a U.S. Capitol police officer up a staircase and accosting other officers guarding the Senate, one of the most harrowing scenes of the mob’s attack that day. A federal jury deliberated for roughly four hours before convicting Douglas Jensen of felony charges that he obstructed Congress from certifying the Electoral College vote on Jan. 6, 2021, and that he assaulted or interfered with police officers during the siege. Jensen was convicted on all counts, including a charge that he engaged in disorderly conduct inside the Capitol while carrying a folding knife in his pocket. During the trial’s closing arguments, a prosecutor accused Jensen of “weaponizing” rioters by taking the lead in chasing Capitol Police Officer Eugene Goodman up a staircase. A reporter’s video of the confrontation went viral. “The defendant wasn’t just leading the mob. He was weaponizing it,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Hava Mirell told jurors. “He knew he had the numbers, and he was willing to use them.” Jensen, a construction worker from Des Moines, Iowa, was wearing a T-shirt with a large “Q” expressing his adherence to the QAnon conspiracy theory. One of the most memorable images from the Jan. 6 attack captured Jensen with his arms extended as he confronted a line of police officers near the Senate chambers. “Go arrest the vice president,” Jensen told one of the officers, according to prosecutors. QAnon has centered on the baseless belief that former president Donald Trump was secretly fighting a Satan-worshipping cabal of “deep state” enemies, prominent Democrats and Hollywood elites. Jensen believed the conspiracy theory’s apocalyptic prophesy that “The Storm” was coming and would usher in mass arrests and executions of Trump’s foes, including Vice President Mike Pence. Pence was presiding over the Senate on Jan. 6 as a joint session of Congress was convened to certify U.S. President Joe Biden’s 2020 electoral victory. Before the riot, Trump and his allies spread the falsehood that Pence somehow could have overturned the election results. After scaling the outer walls of the Capitol, Jensen climbed through a broken window to enter the building. Prosecutors said Jensen learned from a friend’s text message that Pence was about to certify the election results. “That’s all about to change,” Jensen replied. Jensen didn’t testify at his trial, which started Tuesday. Goodman was a key witness for prosecutors. Before running upstairs, Goodman approached Jensen and other rioters with his hand on his gun. Fearing for his life, Goodman retreated upstairs and found backup from other officers guarding an entrance to the Senate, where senators were being evacuated, according to prosecutors. At least 880 people have been charged with Capitol riot-related federal crimes. About 400 of them have pleaded guilty. Juries have convicted eight Capitol riot defendants after trials. None of the defendants who had jury trials was acquitted of any charges. Sentences for the rioters have ranged from probation for low-level misdemeanor offenses to 10 years in prison for a man who used a metal flagpole to assault an officer. Read More Here

Joe Biden Hits Another Year-High Approval Rating In New Poll, Thanks To Women https://digitalarkansasnews.com/joe-biden-hits-another-year-high-approval-rating-in-new-poll-thanks-to-women/ President Joe Biden has just hit another high-water mark in his approval rating this year, riding a surge of support from women, according to a new poll. An Emerson College poll released Friday found that 45% of voters said they approve of Biden’s performance — a 3-percentage-point increase since last month. Forty-nine percent disapprove of his performance, which is a 2-point dip from the last time around. Biden’s approval increase “appears to be largely driven by women voters,” noted Spencer Kimball, the executive director of Emerson College Polling. Since July, women voters’ approval of Biden has jumped 10 points, from 39% to 49%, Kimball noted. The findings are the latest evidence that the U.S. Supreme Court’s revocation of constitutional abortion rights, to the joy of Republicans, could be a key factor in the midterm elections, especially in light of widespread anger among female voters. Other polls are finding similar results for Biden. A Politico-Morning Consult survey, published Wednesday, found that 46% of all respondents approve of the job Biden is doing — his highest level since December in that poll. His approval hit 45% in the latest NBC News poll, his highest since last October. The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research found that support for Biden recovered from a low of 36% in July to 45% earlier this month — driven in large part by a rebound in support from his own party. During a few bleak summer months, when gas prices peaked and lawmakers appeared deadlocked on legislation, it appeared Democrats were facing the possibility of blowout losses against the Republicans in the midterms. In the Emerson poll, a significant segment of those surveyed (39%) ranked the economy as the most important issue in their vote, followed by threats to democracy (15%) and access to abortion (10%). As far as presidential candidates in 2024, 45% said they’d vote for Biden and 44% would go for Trump. That’s within the polls’ margin of error. Six percent would vote for someone else, and 5% are undecided. Read More Here

Trump Rally Security Tells Supporters To Stop The QAnon Finger Raising https://digitalarkansasnews.com/trump-rally-security-tells-supporters-to-stop-the-qanon-finger-raising/ Security personnel at Donald Trump’s rally on Friday night in Wilmington, North Carolina, attempted to get MAGA-loving supporters to lower their raised arms and single finger, which signifies their allegiance to the far-right conspiracy theory QAnon. “Confirmed with people at Trump rally who held 1 finger up that they meant it as a symbol of QAnon’s ‘Where We Go One We Go All,’” PBS News correspondent Lisa Desjardins tweeted from the event. “Security staff here fanned out and told people to take down their fingers.” The reporter noted that she had spoken with one rally-goer who has raised a finger representing ‘WWG1WGA’ who was “furious” over being told to lower his arm. “That’s my Constitutional right!” the rally-goer told Desjardins. A Trump spokesperson didn’t return The Daily Beast’s request for comment on Friday night. The rally controversy follows Trump sharing a video post on Truth Social late Thursday night “filled with references” to QAnon. One longtime Trump adviser told The Daily Beast on Friday: “Q stuff is so bizarre,” while adding that Trump sees it as a “controversial” media topic and as an opportunity to “gin up outrage.” Read More Here

GOP Candidate Jokes About Kidnapping Plot Against Michigan Governor https://digitalarkansasnews.com/gop-candidate-jokes-about-kidnapping-plot-against-michigan-governor/ One of the highest-profile domestic terrorism cases in recent memory is now, according to a Trump-backed Republican gubernatorial candidate in Michigan, a punchline. In 2020, federal officials interrupted a kidnapping plot that targeted Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer (D), leading to criminal charges against six people and convictions for two of them last month. Whitmer’s rival in the November general election referenced the plot Friday, drawing laughter from supporters. Twice. At one event, the Republican challenger, Tudor Dixon, said, “The sad thing is Gretchen will tie your hands, put a gun to your head and ask if you’re ready to talk. For someone so worried about being kidnapped, Gretchen Whitmer sure is good at taking business hostage and holding it for ransom.” Dixon drew applause and laughter with the line, according to video posted online by a reporter in attendance. She spoke while standing in front of a backdrop that read “Michigan Families United,” an organization that says it advocates for “a family-friendly agenda” for the state. At another event on Friday, Dixon said that when Whitmer appeared with President Biden at an auto show in Detroit recently, her facial expression appeared to say, “I’d rather be kidnapped by the FBI,” CNN reported. Later, she added: “I think when you’re being attacked every day, you have to have a little levity in things — we can still have fun.” Dixon made the remarks as she was joined on the campaign trail by former president Donald Trump’s son, Donald Trump Jr., and top adviser Kellyanne Conway. The former president, who endorsed Dixon right before her August primary, will hold a rally with Dixon and other candidates in the state Oct. 1. Maeve Coyle, a spokeswoman for Whitmer’s campaign, said in a statement, “Threats of violence … are no laughing matter,” adding that “the fact that Tudor Dixon thinks it’s a joke shows that she is absolutely unfit to serve in public office.” The comments come amid a backdrop of growing concerns by Democrats that Republican rhetoric is stoking threats of political violence, particularly against federal officials after a court-ordered search of Trump’s Florida home for classified government documents he stored there. Even before a mob of Trump supporters attacked the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, as Congress was certifying Biden’s victory in the presidential election, Michigan had seen its top government office overtaken by armed protesters. In April 2020, Michigan’s Capitol was stormed by protesters with guns who said they wanted the state to lift safety measures put in place during the pandemic. “A handful of them, wearing camouflage fatigues with semiautomatic rifles slung over their shoulders, watched ominously from the gallery above the Senate chamber as the elected officials did their work,” the New York Times reported. Less than six months later, the FBI charged six men with planning to kidnap Whitmer, and several others with plans to attack law enforcement officials, overthrow the government and ignite a civil war. One person in the group, Adam Fox, spoke about needing “200 men” to storm the Capitol building in Lansing, Mich., and take hostages, including Whitmer, according to prosecutors. Fox said they would try Whitmer for “treason” before the election in November, they said. Fox and another defendant, Barry Croft Jr., were convicted by a federal jury on two charges of conspiracy, one related to the kidnapping scheme and another to obtain and use a weapon of mass destruction. The men face life in prison. At the time, Michigan Senate Majority Leader Mike Shirkey (R) condemned the suspects on Twitter, writing: “A threat against our Governor is a threat against us all.” He added: “We condemn those who plotted against her and our government. They are not patriots.” A spokesman for the Democratic Governors Association called Dixon’s comments on Friday “dangerous.” He added that the remarks are “utterly disqualifying for the role of Michigan governor.” Read More Here

NPR’s News Chief Announces Unexpected Departure After Four Years https://digitalarkansasnews.com/nprs-news-chief-announces-unexpected-departure-after-four-years/ The top news executive at NPR announced Friday that she is leaving the organization, an unexpected departure that coincides with a shake-up in the nonprofit media giant’s management structure. Nancy Barnes, who took over NPR’s newsroom in 2018 as senior vice president and editorial director of the broadcasting and digital news operation, said she will leave the organization later this fall. She did not announce new plans, but said in a note to staff on Friday that she will “pursue other journalistic endeavors.” Her decision came hours after NPR’s chief executive, John Lansing, announced the creation of a new position that will oversee all of NPR’s programming — trademark news programs such as “All Things Considered” as well as podcasts and non-news programming such as “Wait Wait … Don’t Tell Me.” The new chief content officer position would have effectively created another tier of management over Barnes, who previously reported directly to Lansing. Barnes and Lansing did not respond to requests for comment. A highly regarded newspaper editor at the Houston Chronicle and Minneapolis Star Tribune, Barnes took over NPR’s newsgathering operations from an interim manager following the resignation of Michael Oreskes in 2017 amid multiple allegations of sexual harassment. NPR said it would conduct a search for Barnes’s successor, who will become the fourth person to run NPR’s news operations in the past five years. She leaves at a time of growing financial pressure on NPR, a nonprofit organization that is funded by primarily by fees from noncommercial radio stations and corporate sponsorships. For fiscal year 2021, NPR had revenue-after-expenses of $16.9 million — a swing from a deficit of $14.1 million the year before. Officials have indicated that the organization was hit hard by the pandemic, with daily listening and corporate support falling as fewer people listened to news reports while working from home. At one point in mid-2020, NPR imposed unpaid, week-long furloughs on most of its newsroom employees. Lansing announced the new chief content officer position in a staff memo Friday morning. Barnes announced her resignation that afternoon. She wrote in an internal memo that there is “increasingly overlap between the news and [non-news] programming divisions” and that she supported Lansing’s decision to add a new chief content officer. She called her departure “bittersweet.” NPR’s news division currently employs 481 people. The programming division employs an additional 183. Barnes supervised NPR’s coverage of the 2020 presidential election, the pandemic, social unrest following the murder of George Floyd and the Russian military invasion of Ukraine. She also created a climate desk, a disinformation team and a breaking news investigations team. She said she would remain on the job through the 2022 midterm elections. NPR won its first Pulitzer Prize under Barnes last year, in audio reporting, for an investigative podcast series called “No Compromise” about gun rights activists. A second NPR-produced series, “Throughline: Soleimani’s Iran,” about the assassination of Iranian Maj. Gen. Qasem Soleimani, was a finalist for a Pulitzer last year. Read More Here

‘Armed And Dangerous’ Suspect In Manhunt Caught https://digitalarkansasnews.com/armed-and-dangerous-suspect-in-manhunt-caught/ JONESBORO, Ark. (KAIT) – A man who multiple police agencies had been searching for after they said he had stolen a firearm has been caught. At 8:32 p.m., Craighead County Chief Deputy Justin Rolland said a man took off from police when officers tried to stop him for a stolen firearm. Rolland said he wrecked his car east of Monette on Highway 18. At 8:48 p.m., Rolland said the suspect had been caught in the same area. Multiple agencies including the Jonesboro Police Department, Brookland Police Department, and Arkansas State Police were involved in the search. Copyright 2022 KAIT. All rights reserved. Read More Here

Voting Equipment In Georgia To Be Replaced After 'unauthorized Access' https://digitalarkansasnews.com/voting-equipment-in-georgia-to-be-replaced-after-unauthorized-access/ ATLANTA —  Georgia’s secretary of state on Friday announced plans to replace election equipment in one county following “unauthorized access” to the equipment that happened two months after the 2020 election. A computer forensics team hired by allies of then-President Trump traveled to Coffee County, about 200 miles southeast of Atlanta, on Jan. 7, 2021. A company representative has said the team made complete copies of the election management system server and other election system components. Later that month, two men who have been involved in efforts to discredit the 2020 election results also spent hours inside the elections office with access to the equipment. Trump and his supporters pushed false claims about certain voting machines after he lost his bid for reelection. Authorities have said there was no evidence of widespread problems with voting equipment. Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger said an investigation into the unauthorized access to the equipment by former Coffee County election officials continues. “Anyone who broke the law should be punished to its full extent,” Raffensperger said in a news release. “But the current election officials in Coffee County have to move forward with the 2022 election, and they should be able to do so without this distraction.” Footage from security cameras shows “former election officials in Coffee County permitting access by unauthorized individuals to equipment that under Georgia law should have been secured,” the news release said. The footage was produced in response to subpoenas issued by plaintiffs in a long-running lawsuit against state election officials that claims the state’s touchscreen voting machines aren’t secure. The county’s election management server and central scanner workstation were previously replaced in June 2021, officials have said. The county will receive 100 new touchscreen voting machines, 100 printers, 10 precinct scanners, 21 tablets used to check in voters and new flash cards and thumb drives to be installed and tested before early voting begins next month. Marilyn Marks, executive director of the Coalition for Good Governance, a plaintiff in the voting machine lawsuit, said the election management server and central scanner workstation should also be replaced. She said that’s because they were used with the other potentially contaminated equipment in elections since their replacement last year. Separately, election officials in the state’s most populous county, in and around Atlanta, said Friday that they had fired a worker after learning that “personally identifiable information was shared with an individual outside the organization,” news outlets reported. “The individual responsible for the incident no longer works with Fulton County,” the county said in a news release. “Fulton County is committed to the safety and security of all citizens and employees. Each individual affected by this incident will be notified and will receive credit monitoring services.” Read More Here

Budd Embraces Trump, Abortion Opposition In NC Senate Race https://digitalarkansasnews.com/budd-embraces-trump-abortion-opposition-in-nc-senate-race/ Published Friday, Sept. 23, 2022 | 6:36 p.m. Updated 17 minutes ago RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) — In competitive races across the U.S., Republican candidates are distancing themselves from their party’s most controversial policies and people — namely, abortion and former President Donald Trump — as Election Day approaches. Not Ted Budd. The North Carolina GOP Senate nominee is leaning into support for abortion restrictions and amity with the former Republican president as Democrats fight for an elusive victory in the Southern swing state. Democratic optimism remains tempered given the state’s recent red tilt, but Democratic officials believe Budd, a low-profile congressman who emerged as the GOP’s Senate nominee largely because of Trump’s backing, gives them a real chance at flipping a seat — and holding the balance of power in Washington — this fall. Disregarding his critics, Budd appeared alongside Trump at a rally in Wilmington Friday night, where the former president praised the candidate as “a conservative, America First all-star in Congress” and urged his supporters to turn out to vote. Budd, in turn, thanked Trump for returning to the state. The Budd campaign was eager to welcome Trump when the former president’s team called, according to adviser Jonathan Felts. “Trump won North Carolina twice, and an in-person rally is helpful,” Felts said, suggesting Trump would help drive turnout, especially “with unaffiliated and/or undecided voters concerned about the economy.” Others aren’t so sure. “The more Trump emerges, the more Trump is in the news, the better for Democrats,” said David Holian, a political science professor at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. Indeed, Trump remains overwhelmingly popular with Republican voters but is less appealing to the moderates and independents who often decide swing-state elections. Trump’s national favorable ratings have been roughly even with, or worse than, President Joe Biden’s in recent weeks. Still, some North Carolina Democrats are far from confident in a state where they have suffered painful losses in recent years. Democratic skepticism comes despite the apparent strength of their Senate nominee, former state Supreme Court Chief Justice Cheri Beasley, who has a decided fundraising advantage, a record of outperforming other Democrats in statewide elections and a moderate message. She would be the state’s first Black senator if elected. Yet Beasley is also running against negative perceptions of her party. Trump’s rise has fueled a growing sense among some voters in North Carolina, along with those in many other states, that the national Democratic Party has lost touch with the daily struggles of the working class and similar voting blocs. The Democratic-controlled Congress’ focus on climate change, for example, hasn’t helped inspire voters like Talmage Layton, a 74-year-old farmer from Durham. Layton said he doesn’t know whether a North Carolina Democrat can make a difference on Capitol Hill in lowering gas prices or pushing back against climate change policies that other Democrats have embraced. “That’s not anything against Cheri Beasley,” Layton said after a recent meeting with Beasley. “I’m a registered Democrat, and I would have no problem voting for a Democrat. But they’ve got to think about the little guy here.” Not long ago, it looked as if the Democratic Party was poised to take over North Carolina politics. In 2008, Obama carried the state, becoming the first Democrat to do so since 1976, and Democrat Kay Hagan upset GOP Sen. Elizabeth Dole. Political experts predicted the Democratic Party would step to dominance as a result of increasing urbanization and out-of-state liberals moving in for tech jobs in the Raleigh-Durham and Charlotte regions. But Republicans took over the state legislature for the first time in over 140 years following the 2010 election and retained it thanks to support from exurban and rural voters and favorably drawn districts. A decade later, Trump became a two-time North Carolina winner, though he won the 2020 election by just 1 percentage point. While Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper managed to win reelection in 2020, Beasley was one of the party’s casualties. She lost a bid to remain chief justice to a Republican rival by just 401 votes. Her near-miss turned her into a rising candidate in the race to succeed retiring GOP Sen. Richard Burr. In one sign of strength, Beasley has consistently raised more money than Budd. And she appears to be generating momentum by seizing on abortion to energize women and independents, relying on the same playbook Democrats have used elsewhere. Budd, meanwhile, has been outspoken in his opposition to abortion. He co-sponsored a House version of a national 15-week abortion ban introduced by Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham that even Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell distanced himself from. “My opponent has been in Congress for six years, and every opportunity he’s had to vote for North Carolina, he’s voted against us,” Beasley charged after meeting with farmers at a produce market in Durham before Graham’s bill introduction. Meanwhile, Republicans in competitive elections in states like Iowa, Minnesota, Nevada and Arizona have distanced themselves from their rigid anti-abortion stances in recent weeks. Others have stripped their websites of references to Trump or his favorite talking points. In Virginia, a Republican House candidate removed a Trump reference from her Twitter bio. In New Hampshire, Republican Senate nominee Don Bolduc abruptly reversed himself last week when asked about Trump’s false claims that the 2020 election was stolen. After spending much of the last year echoing Trump’s lies, Bolduc told Fox News he had done more research and concluded, “The election was not stolen.” Meanwhile, Budd’s campaign refused this week to say whether he would accept the 2022 election results, having already voted to block certification of the 2020 election. Such positions will almost certainly appeal to Trump’s base, but political operatives say Budd needs sizable support from moderate, independent voters to be successful. Unaffiliated voters this year surpassed Democrats to become the largest bloc of registered voters in the state. “Regardless of what your faith background is, you’re dealing with skyrocketing energy prices. You’re dealing with high grocery costs. You’re dealing with high crime. You’re dealing with economic uncertainty,” Budd said after speaking to pastors recently in Greenville. “And so I want to make life better for all North Carolinians and people in our country by the things that I support.” As Budd has struggled to keep pace with Beasley’s fundraising, outside groups have come to his aid. The McConnell-aligned Senate Leadership Fund and the National Republican Senatorial Committee have spent $17.3 million combined on advertising opposing Beasley, according to Federal Election Commission filings. The Senate Majority PAC, which supports Democratic candidates, and the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee have spent close to $4 million in North Carolina while investing far more in high-profile contests in states like Pennsylvania and Arizona. “We’re committed to making sure voters continue seeing and hearing the truth about Ted Budd,” Senate Majority PAC spokesperson Veronica Yoo said. An arm of the pro-abortion-rights EMILY’s List announced this month spending $2.7 million to criticize Budd on abortion as well. During a recent stop at Perkins Orchard in Durham, Beasley chatted with farmers who gathered around picnic tables and near fresh pumpkins for sale. Some said afterward they were glad to see her interest in their plight. Jason Lindsay, 34, a first-generation Black farmer from Rocky Mount, said he’s been frustrated with the divisive political environment but is encouraged by Beasley. “Her temperament here today gave me the first sign of hope that I’ve had in a long time,” he said. ___ Peoples contributed from New York. Read More Here

QAnon Follower Who Chased Officer Convicted In Jan. 6 Trial https://digitalarkansasnews.com/qanon-follower-who-chased-officer-convicted-in-jan-6-trial/ WASHINGTON (AP) — An Iowa man was convicted Friday of charges that he led a crowd of rioters in chasing a U.S. Capitol police officer up a staircase and accosting other officers guarding the Senate, one of the most harrowing scenes of the mob’s attack that day. A federal jury deliberated for roughly four hours before convicting Douglas Jensen of felony charges that he obstructed Congress from certifying the Electoral College vote on Jan. 6, 2021, and that he assaulted or interfered with police officers during the siege. Jensen was convicted on all counts, including a charge that he engaged in disorderly conduct inside the Capitol while carrying a folding knife in his pocket. During the trial’s closing arguments, a prosecutor accused Jensen of “weaponizing” rioters by taking the lead in chasing Capitol Police Officer Eugene Goodman up a staircase. A reporter’s video of the confrontation went viral. “The defendant wasn’t just leading the mob. He was weaponizing it,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Hava Mirell told jurors. “He knew he had the numbers, and he was willing to use them.” Jensen, a construction worker from Des Moines, Iowa, was wearing a T-shirt with a large “Q” expressing his adherence to the QAnon conspiracy theory. One of the most memorable images from the Jan. 6 attack captured Jensen with his arms extended as he confronted a line of police officers near the Senate chambers. “Go arrest the vice president,” Jensen told one of the officers, according to prosecutors. QAnon has centered on the baseless belief that former President Donald Trump was secretly fighting a Satan-worshipping cabal of “deep state” enemies, prominent Democrats and Hollywood elites. Jensen believed the conspiracy theory’s apocalyptic prophesy that “The Storm” was coming and would usher in mass arrests and executions of Trump’s foes, including Vice President Mike Pence. Pence was presiding over the Senate on Jan. 6 as a joint session of Congress was convened to certify President Joe Biden’s 2020 electoral victory. Before the riot, Trump and his allies spread the falsehood that Pence somehow could have overturned the election results. After scaling the outer walls of the Capitol, Jensen climbed through a broken window to enter the building. Prosecutors said Jensen learned from a friend’s text message that Pence was about to certify the election results. “That’s all about to change,” Jensen replied. Jensen didn’t testify at his trial, which started Tuesday. Goodman was a key witness for prosecutors. Before running upstairs, Goodman approached Jensen and other rioters with his hand on his gun. Fearing for his life, Goodman retreated upstairs and found backup from other officers guarding an entrance to the Senate, where senators were being evacuated, according to prosecutors. At least 880 people have been charged with Capitol riot-related federal crimes. About 400 of them have pleaded guilty. Juries have convicted eight Capitol riot defendants after trials. None of the defendants who had jury trials was acquitted of any charges. Sentences for the rioters have ranged from probation for low-level misdemeanor offenses to 10 years in prison for a man who used a metal flagpole to assault an officer. Read More Here

More Arkansans Are Driving With Expired Tags https://digitalarkansasnews.com/more-arkansans-are-driving-with-expired-tags/ In Little Rock, 11% of tickets issued last month were for expired tags, and the state says thousand more are breaking the law. LITTLE ROCK, Arkansas — More people have been driving around with expired temporary tags. It’s illegal and could mean you will face hundreds of dollars in penalties if caught. In Little Rock, 11% of tickets issued last month were for expired tags, and the state said that thousands more are breaking the law. “We see cars that are a year past due, 3 months past due, 8 months past due. How are they getting away with it,” asked Scott Hardin, Department of Finance and Administration spokesperson. Out of the more than 2 million cars that are registered in Arkansas, 27,000 are with expired temporary tags. The Department of Finance and Administration has noted that they’ve seen a significant increase this year. The DFA saw between 14,000 and 16,000 cars with expired temporary tags in the past few years. In 2022, that number jumped to 27,000, which was 12,000 more than the previous year. There was a reason for that— the COVID stimulus checks. “When those direct checks went to Arkansans and hit bank accounts and checks were in the mail, we saw people go directly to car lots, and then we would see the sales tax on motor vehicles go up immediately,” said Hardin. In Arkansas, you must pay sales tax when you buy a new car. In central Arkansas, if you buy a new car priced at $30,000, the sales tax will be roughly $2,000.  But let’s say that you didn’t register that car and don’t get your permanent license plate for the car— the penalties and fines will rack up. The state will add a 10% penalty on the sales tax, which could take your $2,000 dollars to $2,200. If you get a ticket in the city of Little Rock for an expired tag the fine will be $240. Ultimately, you’re gambling with your wallet and the odds of being pulled over for the expired tag. “What are the odds that one, an officer gets behind you, two, decides to pull you over, three writes a citation… it’s just a matter of odds and numbers,” said Hardin. According to Little Rock’s traffic court, if you get a ticket for an expired tag and get it corrected before your court date, the ticket will then be dismissed. Read More…

Fact Check: White House Corrects Inaccurate Biden Boast About Gas Prices – ABC17NEWS https://digitalarkansasnews.com/fact-check-white-house-corrects-inaccurate-biden-boast-about-gas-prices-abc17news/ By Daniel Dale During a campaign-style Friday speech at a Democratic National Committee event in Washington, President Joe Biden boasted about the three-month decline in gas prices and about the unemployment rate. But he used inaccurate figures on both subjects. Gas prices Biden said: “Gas prices — I know I got criticized for going into the stockpile. But guess what? Gas prices are down, $1.30 a gallon. And in 41 states plus the District of Columbia, the average gasoline price is less than $2.99.” Facts First: Biden’s claim about average gasoline prices was false, as the White House acknowledged by correcting the official transcript after CNN inquired about the claim on Friday afternoon. In fact, zero states have an average price under $2.99 per gallon, figures from GasBuddy and the American Automobile Association show. As the correction notes, Biden got a key digit wrong: 41 states and the District of Columbia have an average price under $3.99, not $2.99. Biden has correctly used the $3.99 figure in previous remarks, and it’s good when a White House is willing to correct inaccuracies. But the price of gas is one of the most important numbers in politics. Even if the President made an inadvertent error this time, his incorrect remark was televised live on CNN and MSNBC. The national average price for regular gasoline is $3.689, according to AAA. The unemployment rate Biden said: “We have a 3.7% unemployment rate, the lowest in 50 — more than 50 years.” Facts First: The 3.7% unemployment rate is low by historical standards, but it’s not the lowest in 50 years or in more than 50 years. In fact, the monthly rate was lower than 3.7% — either 3.6% or 3.5% — nine times in 2019 and early 2020, during former President Donald Trump’s tenure, plus five times during Biden’s own presidency. A White House official noted Friday that on at least five previous occasions this month, Biden has correctly said that the current unemployment rate is “near” a 50-year low. (Before the Trump era, the rate hadn’t been as low as 3.5% since 1969.) By claiming this time that the 3.7% rate is the lowest in more than 50 years, though, Biden not only erased the recent uptick from 3.5% to 3.7% but erased the performance of the pre-pandemic economy under his Republican predecessor. The-CNN-Wire & © 2022 Cable News Network, Inc., a Warner Bros. Discovery Company. All rights reserved. Read More Here

Youngkin Wants A Better Measuring Stick For Va. Schools. What’s His Plan? https://digitalarkansasnews.com/youngkin-wants-a-better-measuring-stick-for-va-schools-whats-his-plan/ RICHMOND — It sounds like good news: Despite the intense challenges of the coronavirus pandemic, 89 percent of Virginia’s public K-12 schools are fully accredited, compared with 92 percent in the 2019-2020 school year. But Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R), who won the office last year by railing against extended school closures under Democrat Ralph Northam, greeted the accreditation findings that were announced this week with intense skepticism — and a call for scrapping the way Virginia evaluates schools. “This broken accountability system fails to provide a clear picture of the academic achievement and progress of our schools to parents, teachers, and local school divisions,” he said in a written statement issued Thursday evening, as he campaigned for a Republican gubernatorial candidate in Kansas. Youngkin’s rationale for doubting the ratings: They are based on pass rates for state standardized tests known as Standards of Learning, or SOLs, and those scores fell last year. But his push for a new accreditation system is also part of his broader effort to declare that the state’s schools need a rescue. He’s combated school mask mandates, critical race theory, “divisive” lessons, liberal transgender policies and sexually explicit books assigned without a parent’s permission. That battle cry helped the political newcomer win the Executive Mansion and could fuel a 2024 bid for the White House. A hectic out-of-state political travel schedule that this week alone took him to Kansas and Texas has fed buzz about a possible run. Youngkin’s superintendent, Jillian Balow, cast doubt on the test results even as she announced the findings. “The school ratings we are releasing today fail to capture the extent of the crisis facing our schools and students,” she said in a written statement. She noted that accreditation had barely dipped from three years ago “despite significant declines in achievement on Standards of Learning tests in reading, math and science.” The state made provisions, in budget language approved by Youngkin, to help schools weather the post-pandemic slide in SOL scores without losing accreditation. The accreditation process always allows schools to average the past three years of SOL test scores, if needed, to even out occasional dips. The amendment allowed schools to average their most recent SOL results with scores from the two years before the pandemic. “We intentionally put in language to save people from having to use covid data” alone, said Del. Carrie E. Coyner (R-Chesterfield), a House Education Committee member who sponsored the amendment and said she was “not surprised” that accreditations held fairly steady as a result. But she also said she agrees with Youngkin’s call to revamp the accreditation system to provide “a more accurate flashlight” on student proficiency. Youngkin’s response has upset some Democrats, who noted that Virginia’s schools are consistently rated among the nation’s best. Del. Schuyler VanValkenburg (Henrico), a public high school teacher, tweeted a link to a WalletHub study ranking them fourth. “He’s going to ride in on his horse and fix everything because our school system is so broken,” said Sen. Mamie E. Locke (D-Hampton), a member of the Senate Education and Health Committee. Atif Qarni, who was education secretary under Northam, defended the accreditation standards as the “nuanced” product of careful study and cooperation between two Democratic governors and the Trump administration. “He manufactured that there’s this crisis in public education,” said Qarni, “So whenever there are facts that show that’s not the case, he’s going to push back on that.” But some Republicans steeped in state education policy say Youngkin has a point. “The system was not built in a way to provide a true assessment of proficiency,” said Del. Glenn R. Davis (R-Virginia Beach), chairman of the House Education Committee. Virginia’s accreditation standards were revamped after Congress passed the Every Student Succeeds Act in 2015, a bipartisan bill that directed every state to update their accreditation standards, Qarni said. Virginia began working on its update under then-Gov. Terry McAuliffe (D) and wrapped up the process in 2018 under Northam, who got the required sign-off from President Trump’s education secretary, Betsy DeVos. “This was not a hot issue,” Qarni said. The main change delivered by the updated standards: Schools would be rated not just on overall pass rates, but on improved performance among certain subgroups, such as English language learners, special education students or low-income students. “In the older system, if a school division had 70 percent pass reading and math SOLs, then they were fine,” Qarni said. “In the new system, it became more nuanced. … If you demonstrate that some subgroups doing well, you would get credited.” While Qarni said the old system masked stubborn failures among students with special needs, Youngkin and some other Republicans see it the other way around — that the current one is masking failures in overall performance by giving schools credit for making progress with certain sets of special-needs students. If a school loses accreditation, state officials get involved, reviewing lesson plans, requiring more reports and, if improvements aren’t made, the state can take over and operate the school. Davis described the current accreditation system as “smoke and mirrors.” “You can actually fall off on proficiency and increase on growth and it would look good,” he said. Davis wants the state to continue tracking overall proficiency as well as growth among special-needs subgroups, but he thinks that the numbers should be presented separately and that growth should not be used to “artificially inflate” a school’s rating. Youngkin has tasked Balow and state Education Secretary Aimee Guidera with coming up with a system for evaluating schools that will give Virginia “the most transparent and accountable education system in the nation.” Administration officials could not say Friday what that system would look like. Balow in an interview said growth and proficiency should not be lumped together because it does not adequately measure the learning loss that students are facing across Virginia. She pointed to state assessments and national test scores that reflect historic learning losses in core subjects in math and reading, arguing that the data evidently shows students have substantially struggled. “It’s not that we want to say schools are doing poorly,” Balow said. “But we certainly want to make sure that we’re seeing every student in an accreditation rating and that we’re giving communities as well as school divisions an opportunity to dig deeper into their data and say, ‘What do we need to do to improve?’” Read More Here

Court Crushes Trump, Rules Investigation Can Resume https://digitalarkansasnews.com/court-crushes-trump-rules-investigation-can-resume/ A federal appeals court has ruled that the Department of Justice can resume its probe of the classified documents seized from Mar-a-Lago. The decision upends the attempt to delay the investigation until the appropriate items could be returned to Trump and until the Trump team had a chance to prove the documents in question were ordered declassified. Two of the three judges that made this decision to put a stop to the delay were appointed by Trump himself. They wrote, “for our part, we cannot discern why the Plaintiff would have an individual interest in or need for any of the one hundred documents with classification markings.” The special master that was appointed in this case also doesn’t seem to have any patience for the antics of Trump’s legal team which refuses to present evidence that the FBI was mistaken about the documents. Trump clearly had no business handling the documents he had in his possession and the attempts at delaying consequences for his actions don’t seem to be working. The David Pakman Show is a news and political talk program, known for its controversial interviews with political and religious extremists, liberal and conservative politicians, and other guests. Missed an episode?  Check out David Pakman on our Youtube Channel  anytime or visit the show page for the latest clips. #FreeSpeechTV is one of the last standing national, independent news networks committed to advancing progressive social change.  #FSTV is available on Dish, DirectTV, AppleTV, Roku, Sling and online at freespeech.org  #davidpakmanshow classification markings classified documents Department Of Justice FBI federal appeal Mar-a-Lago Plaintiff The David Pakman Show Trump Read More Here

Hurricane Fiona: Canada Braces For 'historic, Extreme Event' https://digitalarkansasnews.com/hurricane-fiona-canada-braces-for-historic-extreme-event/ Media caption, Hurricane Fiona rips through the Caribbean Residents along Canada’s Atlantic Coast have been warned by officials to brace for impact as Hurricane Fiona heads north after pummelling Bermuda. The Canadian Hurricane Centre warned that Fiona – expected to reach Canada’s shores by Saturday morning – could be “a historic, extreme event”. Authorities have warned of potential coastal flooding, power outages and dangerous driving conditions. At least eight people in Fiona’s path through the Caribbean have died. Canadian forecasters said late on Friday that Fiona was packing maximum sustained winds could hit 120 mph (195km/h), though this is projected to decrease as it makes landfall. “It’s going to be a bad one,” Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said Friday. “We encourage everyone to stay safe and to listen to the instructions of local authorities and hang in there for the next 24 hours.” Tropical storm warnings have been issued for the Atlantic provinces of Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island, Newfoundland and New Brunswick, as well as in parts of Quebec. The country’s eastern region could receive up to 10in (25cm) of rain, increasing the risk of flash flooding. In Nova Scotia, shelters have been prepared in Halifax and Cape Breton – where the storm is projected to make landfall – for people to take cover ahead of the storm. “We have been through these types of events before, but my fear is, not to this extent,” said Amanda McDougall, mayor of Cape Breton Regional Municipality. “The impacts are going to be large, real and immediate.” Severe hurricanes in Canada are rare, as storms lose their energy once they hit colder waters in the north and become post-tropical instead. But pressure in the region is predicted to be historically low as Hurricane Fiona hits, making way for a heavier storm. Nova Scotia was last battered by a tropical cyclone in 2003 with Hurricane Juan, a category two storm that killed two people and heavily damaged structures and vegetation. Meteorologist Bob Robichaud warned on Friday afternoon that Fiona will be bigger than Juan, and stronger than 2019’s Hurricane Dorian, which also reached the shores of Nova Scotia. “It is certainly going to be a historic, extreme event for Atlantic Canada.” Image source, Getty Images Image caption, Workers remove fallen trees from the highway in the northeast of the Dominican Republic after Hurricane Fiona on 21 September Heavy rain and winds lashed Bermuda early on Friday, forcing schools and offices to close, before the hurricane – now a category three storm – headed north. Fiona had already wreaked havoc on Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic earlier this week, with many still left without power or running water. A sick four-month-old infant whose mother was unable to get to the hospital due to blocked roads is among up to four casualties in Puerto Rico. A death was also recorded on the French island of Guadeloupe. Florida also faces a hurricane threat after a separate tropical cyclone formed in the Caribbean Sea. Tropical Depression Nine is in its early stages and is moving on a path that could bring it to Florida next week as Hurricane Hermine, according to the US National Hurricane Center. Read More Here

Little Rock Nine 65th Anniversary: Community Coming Together To Celebrate History https://digitalarkansasnews.com/little-rock-nine-65th-anniversary-community-coming-together-to-celebrate-history/ Thursday kicks off multiple days of commemorative events for the 65th anniversary of the Little Rock Nine’s integration of Central High School. Author: 5newsonline.com Published: 6:10 PM CDT September 23, 2022 Updated: 6:10 PM CDT September 23, 2022 Read More…

Donors Spending Millions On Trump's Legal Battles https://digitalarkansasnews.com/donors-spending-millions-on-trumps-legal-battles/ By Bernd Debusmann Jr BBC News, Washington Image source, Getty Images As Donald Trump’s legal woes mount, donors and the Republican party have paid millions in dollars of his legal fees. His newest legal headache saw him and three of his children hit with a fraud lawsuit, which alleges they lied about the value of property “by billions”. Financial data shows that he has already spent more than $1m (£890,000) of donations fighting the case in 2022. Mr Trump has denied any wrongdoing. The latest lawsuit, announced by New York state Attorney General Letitia James, was the culmination of a long-running civil investigation which began in 2019. Funded by supporters’ donations Millions of dollars spent combatting these charges have come from Mr Trump’s Save America political action committee (PAC) – which takes donations from Trump supporters across the country – Federal Election Commission (FEC) filings show. Save America has paid more than $1.12m this year alone to law firms hired to defend Mr Trump in the New York case. As a so-called “Leadership PAC”, it can use money to pay for expenses that cannot be funded by campaign committees, such as some personal travel or some leadership expenses. The website of Save America’s Joint Fundraising Committee – which contributes both to Save America and a second Trump PAC, Make America Great Again – makes no mention of legal bills, saying only that “the future of our Country [sic] is at stake and President Trump is calling on all Patriots to join his fight to Save America”. Of the $1.12m spent, more than $942,000 has gone to the firm of Alina Habba, a New Jersey-based attorney who has doubled as a Trump spokeswoman. Another lawyer, New York-based Alan Futerfas, received nearly $185,000 in July. Mr Futerfas is representing Mr Trump’s children – Don Jr, Ivanka, and Eric – in the New York fraud case. It is unclear how much of his own money Mr Trump has spent on his legal cases. One donor told the BBC the idea of funding the lawsuits didn’t bother him at all. “In my opinion, he can do whatever he wants with the money,” said Rom Solene, a Republican from Arizona. “The non-stop nonsense and antics being conducted by the Democrats on a man who no longer holds political office shows the extent to which the Democrats are willing to go to persecute a political opponent. Not to mention, it shows how much the Democrats and other Washington insiders fear Mr Trump.” The fraud investigation is just one of several expensive legal challenges facing the former president, however. The other cases include: A criminal investigation into possible property crimes, which is linked to the civil fraud case in New York. The state attorney general referred evidence to federal prosecutors and the Internal Revenue Service. The Manhattan District Attorney’s office is also investigating. Allegations Mr Trump mishandled classified documents, which saw FBI agents search his Mar-a-Lago property on 8 August. He is also being investigated for obstruction of justice. The chief prosecutor of Georgia’s Fulton County is investigating potential state election crimes related to efforts to overturn the 2020 election. Part of this revolves around a phone call, in which the former president told a top state election official to “find 11,780 votes”. A congressional committee has accused Mr Trump of inciting “an insurrection” when his supporters ransacked the Capitol on 6 January 2021. There have been no charges arising from this investigation, which is ongoing. Various lawsuits by police officers who have accused Mr Trump of inciting the 6 January attack in which they suffered injuries. In August alone, Mr Trump spent more than $3.8m on legal fees in the wake of the FBI’s search of his Palm Beach estate, Mar-a-Lago, the bulk of which – about $3m – went to a nearby Florida firm. Smaller amounts went to lawyers involved in his other legal issues, including a Georgia investigation into whether he and his allies tried to illegally overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election. But there is no indication the former president’s method of settling his legal bills violates any statute. Erin Chlopak, a campaign finance expert at the Campaign Legal Center, a Washington DC-based non-profit, told the BBC that legal expenses often fall into a “grey area”, where it is left up to the Electoral Commission to decide if the expense is “personal” or whether it would exist “irrespective of a person’s status as a candidate or officeholder, in which case the money can be used”. “That’s a real problem in campaign finance law,” Ms Chlopak said. “We’ve seen that not just in the context of legal expenses, but in even more blatant personal uses, like personal travel, dining out at expensive restaurants and staying in hotels.” In Mr Trump’s case, Ms Chlopak added, the subject is complicated by the array of legal issues he is currently facing. Media caption, New York attorney general Letitia James wants the Trumps to repay $250m that she says was illegally obtained “The results of applying the same standard would likely be different in circumstances related to business dealing that has nothing to do with one’s status as a former president, as opposed to actions that someone took based on their status as an officeholder.” In the past, the Republican National Committee (RNC) has also helped pay for some of Mr Trump’s legal bills, including some related to the New York attorney general’s investigation. In late August, however, Politico reported that the RNC would not pay legal fees related to the Mar-a-Lago search – and that it would completely stop paying legal fees if Mr Trump were to formally announce his intention to run for president in 2024. Ms Chlopak noted that the RNC is free to use funds as it sees fit. While he has hinted at the prospect, Mr Trump is yet to announce that he’ll run for the White House again in 2024. Read More Here

Costco Makes Decision About $1.50 Hot Dog-And-Soda Combo As Inflation Soars https://digitalarkansasnews.com/costco-makes-decision-about-1-50-hot-dog-and-soda-combo-as-inflation-soars/ A top Costco Wholesale executive confirmed the big-box retailer has no plans to change the price of its $1.50 hot dog-and-soda combo at its stores despite months of decades-high inflation. Costco CFO Richard Galanti reiterated the cheap price point on the fan-favorite deal would stay in place during the company’s fourth-quarter earnings call on Thursday. An analyst asked whether Costco was adjusting prices in other parts of its business to maintain sales margins for its hot dog-and-soda deal and other value offerings. “Lightning just struck me,” Galanti joked when the combo was mentioned. He added that higher-margin businesses such as gas and travel sales help Costco maintain its value deals. “Those things help us be more aggressive in other areas, or as you mentioned, hold the price on the hot dog and the soda a little longer – forever,” Galanti added. Costco and other retailers have hiked prices over the last year, passing along the higher costs of commodities and goods to consumers. Inflation has slightly declined in recent months but was still hovering at a hotter-than-expected 8.3% in August. Costco’s $1.50 combo deal is here to stay. AFP via Getty Images Costco has hiked prices on some items due to inflation. Getty Images Galanti estimated that price inflation at Costco was about 8% during the fourth quarter, with increases “a little higher on the food and sundries side.” Costco doesn’t have any immediate plans to hike its membership fees, according to the executive. Annual membership dues at the retailer currently start at $60. Costco has no immediate plans to hike membership fees. SOPA Images/LightRocket via Gett Still, Galanti noted that membership price increases were likely at some point in the future. Costco has generally hiked its fees roughly every five to six years. “Our view is, is we are confident in our ability to do so and at some point, we will. But it’s a question of when, not if,” Galanti said. Despite the inflationary environment, Costco topped analysts’ expectations in the fourth quarter. The retailer posted quarterly revenue $72.09 billion and earnings per share. Costco beat earnings expectations for the fourth quarter. SOPA Images/LightRocket via Gett But shares still fell more than 4% in trading Friday after executives noted a decline in gross margins. Costco executives have famously avoided hiking prices in their food courts, especially for the hot dog-and-soda combo, regardless of changes in the economy. In July, Costco CEO Craig Jelinek delivered a one-word answer when asked on CNBC whether prices changes were being considered for the deal. “No,” he said. Read More Here

NC Democrats Voice Concerns Ahead Of ‘Save America’ Rally In Wilmington – WWAYTV3 https://digitalarkansasnews.com/nc-democrats-voice-concerns-ahead-of-save-america-rally-in-wilmington-wwaytv3/ WILMINGTON, NC (WWAY) –  Dozens of state and local democrats gathered at 1898 Memorial Park, in opposition to the platforms and ideals of Representative Ted Budd and former President Donald Trump ahead of Friday’s “Save America” rally. The North Carolina Democratic Party donning the phrase “This Budd’s Not for North Carolina” on the podium at a news conference. Speakers included 7th Congressional District Democratic Party Chair Sonya Bennetone-Patrick, as well as candidates for the state and national level. They all expressed concerns about Budd’s vote to overturn the 2020 election results last year. “Congressman Budd and North Carolina Republicans standing with Trump today, are a direct threat to our democracy, and if elected, will continue to put the American values that so many veterans fought for in danger,” said Marcia Morgan, District 7 candidate for N.C. Senate. They also spoke against his response regarding the insurrection of the country’s capital on January 6. “The violent attacks on our capital on January 6, showed us that our democracy is not guaranteed, but Ted Budd, –he called it nothing, he said it was just patriots standing up,” said Amy Block Deloach, candidate for N.C. House District 20. Speakers also urging people to vote in the upcoming election . “They’re voices are going to be heard, as we promote affordable housing. Our children attending safe public schools, every school should have a resource officer,– every school should have a resource officer! They should be utilizing technology to keep our children and our teachers safe. Human rights and dignity are on the ballot,” said Charles Graham, congressional candidate for District 7. “In November, the dignity of the united states is on the ballot, and the world is listening. We the people can make the change,” said Sonya Bennetone-Patrick, NC Democratic Party 7th Congressional District Chair. Democratic representatives from New Hanover and Brunswick counties were also at the  press conference, providing information on what will be on the November election ballot. Read More Here