Thousands Evacuated In Washington State As 66 Large Fires Burn In U.S.
Thousands Evacuated In Washington State As 66 Large Fires Burn In U.S. https://digitalarkansasnews.com/thousands-evacuated-in-washington-state-as-66-large-fires-burn-in-u-s/
Firefighters in Ramsey Crossing, California, tackling the Mosquito Fire on Sept. 15. The biggest fire in California this year has burned nearly 76,800 acres and has been active for 39 days, but it’s now 95% contained. Photo: Eric Thayer/Getty Images
Authorities in southwest Washington ordered evacuations for thousands of homes as a wind-driven wildfire rapidly grew on Sunday.
The big picture: There’s an unusually high number of wildfires burning in the Pacific Northwest, Intermountain West and Canada, as much of the Western United States faces “above normal temperatures and minimum relative humidity,” per the National Inter Agency Fire Center.
Photo: National Weather Service Seattle/Twitter
There are “record high temperatures, dry weather, wildfire concerns and air quality issues across the Pacific Northwest continues,” according to the National Weather Service.
By the numbers: Washington’s Nakia Creek Fire, near Camas, east of Vancouver, which prompted Sunday’s evacuation orders is one of 66 large fires in the U.S., according to the NIFC.
The Clark Emergency Services Agency expanded evacuation zones in response to the fire Sunday, affecting 35,000-40,000 homes, KGW reports.
Zoom in: Smoke from that Washington wildfire in eastern Clark County that’s razed some 2,000 acres was “visible throughout the metropolitan area that Vancouver shares with Portland, Oregon,” AP notes.
An air quality advisory remained in place for Metro Vancouver and the Fraser Valley in southwestern British Columbia due to wildfires in Washington and Canada, per a Metro Vancouver tweet Sunday evening.
Photo: BC Wildfire Service/Twitter
Zoom out: 24 large fires were burning in Idaho, 22 in Montana, 13 in Washington and five in Oregon on Sunday, per NIFC data.
California and South Dakota each reported one large fire.
Context: Scientific research shows climate change is a key factor in wildfire risk.
Much of the U.S. West is in the grip of a climate change-driven drought, which has exacerbated fire risk, per Axios’ Andrew Freedman.
What we’re watching: “An upper ridge indicative of anomalous warmth will move across the Northwest over the next several days, in stark contrast to the cold in the eastern two-thirds of the country,” per a National Weather Service outlook update on Sunday night.
“Highs in the 70s and 80s in the Pacific Northwest will be 15-25 degrees above average, and potentially record setting through midweek,” the NWS added.
Editor’s note: This is a breaking news story. Please check back for updates.
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AP News Summary At 2:39 A.m. EDT https://digitalarkansasnews.com/ap-news-summary-at-239-a-m-edt/
Ukraine: Explosions rock Kyiv a week after Russian strikes
KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Explosive-laden suicide drones have struck Ukraine’s capital as families were preparing to start their week, the blasts echoing across Kyiv and sending people scurrying to shelters. Kyiv city Mayor Vitali Klitschko said the capital’s central Shevchenko district was hit, damaging several apartment blocks and setting fire to a non-residential building. There was no immediate word on casualties. The drones’ intended targets weren’t immediately clear but Russian strikes over the past week have hit infrastructure, including power facilities. Witnesses posted videos of drones buzzing across bright morning skies over Kyiv and of what sounded like gunshots of people trying to shoot them down.
Ukrainians’ resilience persists despite new Russian barrage
KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — The resilience by Ukrainians in Russia’s nearly 8-month-old war continues to be unwavering, despite a rise in the past week in attacks that have been seen as President Vladimir Putin’s vengeful response to an explosion that damaged a Moscow-built bridge in Crimea on Oct. 8. Russian missiles and Iranian-made drones struck at least 10 regions across the country two days later, targeting critical infrastructures in major urban centers, leaving 19 dead and more than 100 wounded. But the more the Kremlin threatens to make the upcoming winter intolerable, the more Ukrainians seem to unite in their intent to defeat Putin.
For Biden and Trump, 2022 is 2020 sequel — and 2024 preview?
WASHINGTON (AP) — This year’s midterm elections are playing out as a strange continuation of the last presidential race — and a potential preview of the next one. Donald Trump refused to exit the stage after his defeat and has spent months raging against Joe Biden. That’s reshaping downballot campaigns that normally function as a simple referendum on the incumbent president. The result is an episode of political shadowboxing with little precedent, as the current president and his immediate predecessor crisscross the country in support of their party’s candidates. But polls suggest voters have little appetite for a rematch.
Most say voting vital despite dour US outlook: AP-NORC poll
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Former DOJ Official Says Trump's Reaction To The January 6 Panel Is Starting To Look Like The Makings Of An Insanity Defense
Former DOJ Official Says Trump's Reaction To The January 6 Panel Is Starting To Look Like The Makings Of An Insanity Defense https://digitalarkansasnews.com/former-doj-official-says-trumps-reaction-to-the-january-6-panel-is-starting-to-look-like-the-makings-of-an-insanity-defense/
Former DOJ official Neal Katyal commented on Donald Trump’s 14-page response to the DOJ.
Katyal said he did not think the response would help Trump unless he was trying to plead insanity.
He said Trump’s response was “evidence” of an insanity plea.
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Neal Katyal, a former Justice Department official, thinks former President Donald Trump’s written response to the House panel’s intention to subpoena him looks like an insanity defense.
Katyal — a law professor and an Obama-era acting solicitor general — made an appearance on NBC on Sunday, three days after the House panel investigating the Capitol riot unanimously voted to subpoena Trump. The subpoena will compel the former president to cooperate with the committee or be held in contempt of Congress and referred to the DOJ for prosecution — much like Trump allies Steve Bannon and Peter Navarro.
In response to the decision, Trump sent a document to the panel that started off with the sentence, “THE PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION OF 2020 WAS RIGGED AND STOLEN!” and contained multiple baseless claims of election fraud. It also included four photos of the crowd near the Washington Monument on January 6, 2021.
“Yeah, so, this is a 14-page screed, Jonathan, that’s very hard to follow. But it does seem to dig the hole in deeper for Donald Trump,” Katyal told MSNBC host Jonathan Capehart.
“I can’t see it in any legal way helping him unless he is trying to go for the insanity defense, of which this paper seems, you know, to be some evidence of,” Katyal added.
Katyal added that he thought it was a “pretty fanciful” idea that Trump would just give in and testify to the panel because of the congressional subpoena.
“I mean, this is a man who took the Fifth Amendment more than 400 times the last time he was questioned under oath. And I doubt he’s suddenly become eager to testify,” Katyal said.
Katyal was referencing Trump’s deposition in New York in August during New York Attorney General Leticia James’ probe of the Trump Organization’s business practices, during which he pleaded the Fifth more than 440 times and only answered a question about what his name was.
Katyal also added that he thinks Attorney General Merrick Garland will indict Trump, seeing as there is overwhelming evidence to do so and “no contrition whatsoever” on Trump’s part.
A representative at Trump’s post-presidential press office did not immediately respond to Insider’s request for comment.
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GOP Hopefuls Turn To Pence To Broaden Appeal Before Election
GOP Hopefuls Turn To Pence To Broaden Appeal Before Election https://digitalarkansasnews.com/gop-hopefuls-turn-to-pence-to-broaden-appeal-before-election-3/
NEW YORK (AP) — In Donald Trump’s assessment, Mike Pence “committed political suicide” on Jan. 6, 2021.
By refusing to go along with the former president’s unconstitutional push to overturn the results of the 2020 election, Pence became a leading target of Trump’s wrath and a pariah in many Republican circles.
But the final weeks of the intensely competitive 2022 election suggest the former vice president’s fortunes have shifted as he lays the groundwork for his own potential campaign for the White House in 2024.
The man who was booed last year at a conservative conference is now an in-demand surrogate for Republican candidates, including some who spent their primaries obsessively courting Trump’s endorsement, in part by parroting Trump’s election lies.
Pence has been traveling the country, holding events and raising millions for candidates and Republican groups, including signing fundraising solicitations for party committees.
For some campaigns in tight races, Pence is seen as something of a neutralizing agent who can help broaden their appeal beyond Trump’s core base of support. That includes Arizona, with a key Senate race on Nov. 8 and what is expected to be a hotly contested stop in the 2024 presidential campaign.
Last week, Pence endorsed Senate nominee Blake Masters, who has struggled to pivot from the primary to win over moderates in a state where one-third of voters are registered independents.
“He takes a little bit of the edge off Masters with a lot of voters,” veteran GOP strategist Scott Reed said. “You know Masters is new to this, first time candidate, said some silly things he probably regrets during the campaign.”
Yet the endorsements can seem jarring given that Pence has spent much of the past year pushing back on Trump’s election lies, which spurred the violent mob that descended on the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, while Pence was trying to preside over the formal congressional certification of Joe Biden’s presidential victory. Pence and members of his family had to be rushed to safety and held for hours in an underground loading dock as the marauders roamed the hallways, some chanting, “Hang Mike Pence!” and erected a makeshift gallows outside.
Masters, during the primary, baselessly denied the 2020 results, recording a video in which he said he thought Trump had won. Masters claimed on his website that, “if we had had a free and fair election, President Trump would be sitting in the Oval Office today.”
Trump said when he endorsed Masters in June: “Blake knows that the “Crime of the Century” took place, he will expose it and also, never let it happen again.”
Pence made no mention of that in Phoenix on Tuesday.
“What I came here to Arizona to say is not only is Blake Masters the right choice for the United States Senate, the people of Arizona deserve to know Blake Masters may be the difference between a Democrat majority in the Senate and a Republican majority in the Senate,” Pence said.
Pence, along with Masters and Gov. Doug Ducey, took just three questions, two of them from conservative websites. When a television reporter noted that Masters has questioned the 2020 election, a spokesman for Masters cut him off before he could finish his question.
Masters is not the only election denier Pence has endorsed or assisted.
Two days after the Masters event, Pence was in Georgia headlining a fundraiser for Burt Jones, the nominee for lieutenant governor. Jones not only embraced Trump’s claims of widespread election fraud and called for a statewide investigation into the 2020 race, but also signed on to be one of his state’s fake alternate electors — a scheme that is now under criminal investigation.
Last month, Pence campaigned in New Hampshire for Senate nominee Don Bolduc, a retired Army general who also spent his primary campaign telling voters the 2020 race was stolen from Trump.
Marc Short, a longtime Pence adviser, declined to set a red line for candidates Pence would and would not endorse.
“It’s more about making sure that he’s being a team player where he needs to be,” he said. “I think as a lot of these candidates look to solidify the party behind them, Pence can be helpful.”
There is no evidence of any widespread fraud or manipulation of voting machines in the 2020 election, underscored by repeated audits, court cases and the conclusions of Trump’s own Department of Justice. Still, support of false election claims run deep among GOP candidates this year.
Short said Pence was happy to support candidates who had moved past 2020, as he has urged the party to do.
“If people sort of acknowledged a mistaken position before, he certainly wants to reward that,” said Short. “I think he wants to help conservatives first and foremost, but if people who were elected are now adopting new position about the events of Jan. 6,” he said, “then that’s a positive.”
Reed, the Republican strategist, said he wasn’t surprised by the candidates Pence had chosen to back.
“He’s a big picture party guy. And it doesn’t surprised me that he’s hustling as hard as he is for people who may not be 100% Pencers,” Reed said. “By doing these kinds of events,” he added, “they’re going to take another look at him if he decides to run.”
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The News Isnt Objective And It Shouldnt Be | Opinion | The Harvard Crimson
The News Isn’t Objective — And It Shouldn’t Be | Opinion | The Harvard Crimson https://digitalarkansasnews.com/the-news-isnt-objective-and-it-shouldnt-be-opinion-the-harvard-crimson/
A few weeks back, The Crimson held its first News-Editorial social in recent memory. I bring this up not to reminisce on the bacchanalia that may or may not have ensued, but rather to point out the significance of the event, the announcement of which brought with it joking cries to “tear down this wall.” The reason for this reaction was not a belated response to the death of Mikhail Gorbachev, but rather a wisecrack meant to poke fun at the institutional norm that defines the daily activities of The Crimson: the News-Editorial wall.
This (non-physical) wall separates the personnel and work of the News Board — which is devoted to objective, unbiased journalism — and the Editorial Board, which opines on topics. This strict separation is one of many structures put in place to ensure that The Crimson remains an objective source of news for the general public.
But, if not torn down outright, the wall and the goal of objective journalism it exists to attain needs to be reconsidered.
Firstly, objective journalism is impossible to begin with.
The Crimson, when deciding what news to cover, inherently makes a decision about what information is newsworthy. For example, this newspaper’s extensive coverage of the sexual harassment allegations and subsequent investigation against Professor John L. Comaroff reflects its judgment that abuses of power are so important to expose that every twist and turn of the situation merits coverage. This is uncontroversial in this case, but it is still an implicit value judgment.
The reason news organizations can never be truly objective is because their purpose is not just to give information to the public, but to construct a narrative that shows why it matters. Former Crimson editor and “father of modern journalism” Walter Lippmann ’10 wrote that “The function of news is to signalize an event, the function of truth is to bring to light the hidden facts, to set them into relation with each other, and make a picture of reality on which men can act.” In constructing these narratives, news organizations are inherently making judgments about what sort of narrative is useful to the public.
That truly objective journalism is an unattainable ideal is not a unique claim, though. Many believe that even if newspapers will never be unbiased, objectivity remains an ideal worth seeking. Yet objectivity is still a flawed goal.
In pursuit of objectivity, journalists follow a set of industry norms built up over time that defines what is newsworthy. As Jay Rosen, a professor of journalism at NYU, put it, newsworthiness becomes like “a machine that nobody remembers how it was built.” In so refusing to make a conscious, agential decision about what constitutes newsworthiness, newspapers attempt to absolve themselves of responsibility and give readers the false impression that they are merely showing them reality.
But newspapers aren’t ethereal mirrors that offer, to quote Rosen, a “view from nowhere.” Like it or not, they play an active role in society, and failure to recognize that leads them to have problematic effects on the very news they report.
Take the Trump presidency. Whenever mainstream organizations reported on an outrageous, bombastic action by Trump, they were relying on the implicit judgment that a bombastic president was newsworthy. In doing so, they incentivized Trump to continue acting this way to dominate the news cycle. But did it have to be that way? As Ezra Klein has wondered on his podcast, what if the bar for covering Trump was that he had to “produce policy plans and say something worth covering as opposed to acting like an insult comic dog”?
In 1976, economist Robert Lucas published a paper that later became known as the Lucas critique. The idea was as follows: If economic models rely on the optimal actions of agents and the policy recommendations that they make inevitably change the economic structure and therefore agents’ optimal actions, then the recommendation itself becomes invalid. From then on, actors like the Fed needed to anticipate how the public would react to their actions in order to properly administer policy.
News organizations should do the same. In some sense, to pursue objectivity at all, they must be self-conscious of their non-objective role in society.
Where do these critiques leave journalism? At first, it seems like the only alternative to objectivity is subjectivity. But journalism can retain its mission of creating informed, active members of society without attempting to be objective in the strictly-defined present sense.
After Paris was liberated during WWII, Albert Camus advanced a new view on the ideal role of news organizations with his newly-founded newspaper, Combat. Camus argued that newspapers should embrace the fact that they need to make critical judgments to construct effective narratives. This “critical journalism” would then enable citizens to participate in society by making informed judgments. Most importantly, newspapers should be completely transparent about their critical mission.
Newspapers today should heed Camus and Lucas. It’s impossible for them to avoid making value judgments about the stories they publish. Instead, they should make concrete what their priorities are (Democracy? Civil Rights?), publicly acknowledge these priorities, and be honest with themselves about the role they play in the narrative. This is the only way that news organizations can fulfill their true purpose, to provide citizens with the information necessary to become active and productive members of society.
Manuel A. Yepes ’24, an Associate Editorial Editor, is a Social Studies concentrator in Cabot House.
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Pound Moves Higher After Mini-Budget U-Turns https://digitalarkansasnews.com/pound-moves-higher-after-mini-budget-u-turns/
Image source, Reuters
By Michael Race & Annabelle Liang
Business reporters, BBC News
The pound has moved higher after the UK government made a series of U-turns as it abandoned tax cutting policies announced in last month’s mini-budget.
Sterling gained around 0.9% to trade above $1.12 in Monday trading.
On Friday, Prime Minister Liz Truss sacked Kwasi Kwarteng as chancellor and said the mini-budget “went further and faster than markets were expecting”.
The mini-budget announced by Mr Kwarteng on 23 September had been blamed for causing turmoil in the financial markets. The pound slumped to a record low of $1.03 and UK government bond prices also fell sharply.
The UK government bond market is due to reopen at 08:00 BST (07:00 GMT). It will be the first time since the Bank of England ended its emergency support on Friday.
The shift in the government’s economic policies and market turmoil in recent weeks has led to Goldman Sachs downgrading the UK’s economic growth.
The investment bank revised its 2023 UK economic output forecast from a 0.4% drop to a 1% contraction.
Goldman said it expected a “more significant recession in the UK” in part due to “significantly tighter financial conditions” and the planned higher corporation tax rate from next April.
Meanwhile, analysts at the EY Item Club said “high energy prices, elevated inflation, rising interest rates and global economic weakness” meant the UK economy was “expected to be in recession until the middle of 2023”.
A recession is defined by the economy shrinking for two three-month periods – or quarters – in a row.
However, EY said the risk of a severe downturn had been reduced by the government’s energy bills support for households and businesses, meaning that it will not be as bad as previous recessions.
The economic forecasting group has significantly downgraded its previous summer forecast which estimated the economy would grow by 1% in 2023.
“There’s no doubt the UK economy faces a difficult period ahead, with global headwinds adding to domestic pressures,” said Hywel Ball, EY UK chair.
“The silver lining is that the government’s intervention on energy bills is expected to limit the extent of the downturn, while ONS data suggests that households have access to a larger cushion of pandemic savings than previously thought.”
The EY Item Club said it expects inflation to peak at just below 11% in October, lower than previous predictions because of the government’s intervention on energy bills. Currently, inflation is running at 9.9%.
EY warned average annual inflation is still expected to outpace annual average wage increases until 2024, with household real incomes likely to decline over the next 12 months to the greatest extent since the 1970s.
Consultancy Pantheon Macroeconomics said the prime minister’s decision to appoint Mr Hunt as chancellor had “done little to shrink the risk premium embedded in UK assets”.
“Households and businesses, therefore, are still facing a huge increase in their borrowing costs,” analysts said.
They added the forthcoming real-terms reduction in government spending looked “set to be bigger than in the 2010s”.
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WATCH: Jeremy Hunt – Hard decisions ahead
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Multiple Car Crash Leads To Homicide Investigation In Kansas City North
Multiple Car Crash Leads To Homicide Investigation In Kansas City, North https://digitalarkansasnews.com/multiple-car-crash-leads-to-homicide-investigation-in-kansas-city-north/
ROAD. IT HAPPENED AT A REALLY BUSY INTERSECTION, AND IN BROAD DAYLIGHT. AFTER 3 P.M. YOU CAN SEE MULTIPLE CARS INVOLVED IN THIS INCIDENT. ONE OF THEM WITH A VISIBLE BULLET HOLES IN THE SIDE. A BUSY INTERSECTION, SO A LOT OF PEOPLE HAVE BEEN STANDING AROUND TRYING TO SEE WHAT HAPPENED. WE KNOW ONE MAN IS DEAD. ANOTHER PERSON IS IN THE HOSPITAL IN CRITICAL CONDITION. POLICE SAY THEY ARE NOT SURE WHERE THE SHOOTING HAPPENED. THEY KNOW THIS IS WHERE IT ENDED. AN ACCIDENT WITH MULTIPLE OTHER CARS. THAT MAKES THIS ONE OF TWO DIFFERENT CRISES. KCP’S — KCPD SAYS ANOTHER WENT DOWN THE ROAD OR THEY FOUND EVIDENCE. WE WANT THE PUBLIC’S HEALTH — HOW. PARTICULARLY HERE, THERE ARE PEOPLE STOPPING THE EAT LUNCH, SHOPPING BEFORE THE GAME, THIS IS WHEN THE GAME STARTED. MAYBE THEY WERE TRYING TO GET ITEMS IN THE AREA. WE ARE ASKING FOR ANYONE WHO SAW ANYTHING TO GIVE US A CALL. MULTIPLE UNITS ARE HERE. THE CRASH INVESTIGATION UNIT AND CRIME SCENE INVESTIGATORS. KCPD SAYS THEY DO NOT HAVE ANY INFORMATION ON THIS ASPECT. WHICH IS WHY THEY NEED THE PUBLIC’S HEL
Multiple car crash leads to homicide investigation in Kansas City, North
One man is dead, and another person is in the hospital in critical condition.
Police are opening a homicide investigation in the busy area of Northeast Vivion Road and North Oak. Officers responded to a reported shooting around 3:30 p.m. and arrived to a crash involving multiple vehicles, just north of the intersection. In one of the vehicles, officers found two victims suffering from apparent gunshot wounds. Both were transported to local hospitals. One of the victims, an adult male, died. Another person is in the hospital in critical condition. KCPD said they don’t know where the shooting happened. They just know it ended near the intersection of Vivion and North Oak, at the scene of the crash. KCPD also said there is another crime scene where they found more evidence. Multiple units are investigating, including the crash investigation unit. Right now, they don’t have any information on the suspect. KCPD stressed the importance of the public’s help in cases like this. “We definitely want the public’s help in this case, as we do all our cases, but particularly here,” KCPD’s Donna Drake said. “There’s people stopping to eat lunch. There are people shopping before the game. I mean, this is right around the time the game was starting, maybe they were trying to get some last-minute items in the area. So, we’re asking for anyone who saw anything to give us a call.”
KANSAS CITY, Mo. —
Police are opening a homicide investigation in the busy area of Northeast Vivion Road and North Oak.
Officers responded to a reported shooting around 3:30 p.m. and arrived to a crash involving multiple vehicles, just north of the intersection.
In one of the vehicles, officers found two victims suffering from apparent gunshot wounds.
Both were transported to local hospitals. One of the victims, an adult male, died. Another person is in the hospital in critical condition.
KCPD said they don’t know where the shooting happened. They just know it ended near the intersection of Vivion and North Oak, at the scene of the crash.
KCPD also said there is another crime scene where they found more evidence.
Multiple units are investigating, including the crash investigation unit.
Right now, they don’t have any information on the suspect. KCPD stressed the importance of the public’s help in cases like this.
“We definitely want the public’s help in this case, as we do all our cases, but particularly here,” KCPD’s Donna Drake said. “There’s people stopping to eat lunch. There are people shopping before the game. I mean, this is right around the time the game was starting, maybe they were trying to get some last-minute items in the area. So, we’re asking for anyone who saw anything to give us a call.”
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GOP Hopefuls Turn To Pence To Broaden Appeal Before Election
GOP Hopefuls Turn To Pence To Broaden Appeal Before Election https://digitalarkansasnews.com/gop-hopefuls-turn-to-pence-to-broaden-appeal-before-election-2/
FILE – Former Vice President Mike Pence gestures as he addresses the Convocation at Liberty University, Sep. 14, 2022, in Lynchburg, Va. By refusing to go along with former president Donald Trump’s unconstitutional push to overturn the results of the 2020 election, Pence became a leading target of Trump’s wrath and a pariah in many Republican circles. But in the final weeks of an intensely competitive midterm election, Pence’s fortunes may be shifting. He’s an in-demand surrogate for Republican campaigns, including from some candidates who have spent much of the year hugging Trump and parroting his lie that the election was stolen. (AP Photo/Steve Helber, File)
NEW YORK (AP) — In Donald Trump’s assessment, Mike Pence “committed political suicide” on Jan. 6, 2021.
By refusing to go along with the former president’s unconstitutional push to overturn the results of the 2020 election, Pence became a leading target of Trump’s wrath and a pariah in many Republican circles.
But the final weeks of the intensely competitive 2022 election suggest the former vice president’s fortunes have shifted as he lays the groundwork for his own potential campaign for the White House in 2024.
The man who was booed last year at a conservative conference is now an in-demand surrogate for Republican candidates, including some who spent their primaries obsessively courting Trump’s endorsement, in part by parroting Trump’s election lies.
Pence has been traveling the country, holding events and raising millions for candidates and Republican groups, including signing fundraising solicitations for party committees.
For some campaigns in tight races, Pence is seen as something of a neutralizing agent who can help broaden their appeal beyond Trump’s core base of support. That includes Arizona, with a key Senate race on Nov. 8 and what is expected to be a hotly contested stop in the 2024 presidential campaign.
Last week, Pence endorsed Senate nominee Blake Masters, who has struggled to pivot from the primary to win over moderates in a state where one-third of voters are registered independents.
“He takes a little bit of the edge off Masters with a lot of voters,” veteran GOP strategist Scott Reed said. “You know Masters is new to this, first time candidate, said some silly things he probably regrets during the campaign.”
Yet the endorsements can seem jarring given that Pence has spent much of the past year pushing back on Trump’s election lies, which spurred the violent mob that descended on the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, while Pence was trying to preside over the formal congressional certification of Joe Biden’s presidential victory. Pence and members of his family had to be rushed to safety and held for hours in an underground loading dock as the marauders roamed the hallways, some chanting, “Hang Mike Pence!” and erected a makeshift gallows outside.
Masters, during the primary, baselessly denied the 2020 results, recording a video in which he said he thought Trump had won. Masters claimed on his website that, “if we had had a free and fair election, President Trump would be sitting in the Oval Office today.”
Trump said when he endorsed Masters in June: “Blake knows that the “Crime of the Century” took place, he will expose it and also, never let it happen again.”
Pence made no mention of that in Phoenix on Tuesday.
“What I came here to Arizona to say is not only is Blake Masters the right choice for the United States Senate, the people of Arizona deserve to know Blake Masters may be the difference between a Democrat majority in the Senate and a Republican majority in the Senate,” Pence said.
Pence, along with Masters and Gov. Doug Ducey, took just three questions, two of them from conservative websites. When a television reporter noted that Masters has questioned the 2020 election, a spokesman for Masters cut him off before he could finish his question.
Masters is not the only election denier Pence has endorsed or assisted.
Two days after the Masters event, Pence was in Georgia headlining a fundraiser for Burt Jones, the nominee for lieutenant governor. Jones not only embraced Trump’s claims of widespread election fraud and called for a statewide investigation into the 2020 race, but also signed on to be one of his state’s fake alternate electors — a scheme that is now under criminal investigation.
Last month, Pence campaigned in New Hampshire for Senate nominee Don Bolduc, a retired Army general who also spent his primary campaign telling voters the 2020 race was stolen from Trump.
Marc Short, a longtime Pence adviser, declined to set a red line for candidates Pence would and would not endorse.
“It’s more about making sure that he’s being a team player where he needs to be,” he said. “I think as a lot of these candidates look to solidify the party behind them, Pence can be helpful.”
There is no evidence of any widespread fraud or manipulation of voting machines in the 2020 election, underscored by repeated audits, court cases and the conclusions of Trump’s own Department of Justice. Still, support of false election claims run deep among GOP candidates this year.
Short said Pence was happy to support candidates who had moved past 2020, as he has urged the party to do.
“If people sort of acknowledged a mistaken position before, he certainly wants to reward that,” said Short. “I think he wants to help conservatives first and foremost, but if people who were elected are now adopting new position about the events of Jan. 6,” he said, “then that’s a positive.”
Reed, the Republican strategist, said he wasn’t surprised by the candidates Pence had chosen to back.
“He’s a big picture party guy. And it doesn’t surprised me that he’s hustling as hard as he is for people who may not be 100% Pencers,” Reed said. “By doing these kinds of events,” he added, “they’re going to take another look at him if he decides to run.”
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Biden Turning To Trump-Era Rule To Expel Migrants https://digitalarkansasnews.com/biden-turning-to-trump-era-rule-to-expel-migrants/
WASHINGTON — Two years ago, candidate Joe Biden loudly denounced President Donald Trump for immigration policies that inflicted “cruelty and exclusion at every turn,” including toward those fleeing the “brutal” government of socialist Nicolas Maduro in Venezuela.
Now, with increasing numbers of Venezuelans arriving at the U.S.-Mexico border as the Nov. 8 election nears, Biden has turned to an unlikely source for a solution: his predecessor’s playbook.
Biden last week invoked a Trump-era rule known as Title 42 — which Biden’s own Justice Department is fighting in court — to deny Venezuelans fleeing their crisis-torn country the chance to request asylum at the border.
The rule, first invoked by Trump in 2020, uses emergency public health authority to allow the United States to keep migrants from seeking asylum at the border, based on the need to help prevent the spread of COVID-19.
Under the new Biden administration policy, Venezuelans who walk or swim across America’s southern border will be expelled and any Venezuelan who illegally enters Mexico or Panama will be ineligible to come to the United States. But as many as 24,000 Venezuelans will be accepted at U.S. airports, similar to how Ukrainians have been admitted since Russia’s invasion in February.
Mexico has insisted that the U.S. admit one Venezuelan on humanitarian parole for each Venezuelan it expels to Mexico, according to a Mexican official who was not authorized to discuss the matter publicly and spoke condition of anonymity. So if the Biden administration paroles 24,000 Venezuelans to the U.S., Mexico would take no more than 24,000 Venezuelans expelled from the U.S.
The Biden policy marks an abrupt turn for the White House, which just weeks ago was lambasting Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, both Republicans, for putting Venezuelan migrants “fleeing political persecution” on buses and planes to Democratic strongholds.
“These were children, they were moms, they were fleeing communism,” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said at the time.
Biden’s new policy has drawn swift criticism from immigrant advocates, many of them quick to point out the Trump parallels.
“Rather than restore the right to asylum decimated by the Trump administration … the Biden administration has dangerously embraced the failures of the past and expanded upon them by explicitly enabling expulsions of Venezuelan migrants,” said Jennifer Nagda, policy director of the Young Center for Immigrant Children’s Rights.
The administration says the policy is aimed at ensuring a “lawful and orderly” way for Venezuelans to enter the U.S.
Why the turnaround?
For more than a year after taking office in January 2021, Biden deferred to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which used its authority to keep in place the Trump-era declaration that a public health risk existed that warranted expedited expulsion of asylum-seekers.
Members of Biden’s own party and activist groups had expressed skepticism about the public health underpinnings for allowing Title 42 to remain in effect, especially when COVID-19 was spreading more widely within the U.S. than elsewhere.
After months of internal deliberations and preparations, the CDC on April 1 said it would end the public health order and return to normal border processing of migrants, giving them a chance to request asylum in the U.S.
Homeland Security officials braced for a resulting increase in border crossings.
But officials inside and outside the White House were conflicted over ending the authority, believing it effectively kept down the number of people crossing the border illegally, according to senior administration officials.
A court order in May that kept Title 42 in place due to a challenge from Republican state officials was greeted with quiet relief by some in the administration, according to officials who spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity to discuss internal discussions.
The recent increase in migration from Venezuela, sparked by political, social and economic instability in the country, dashed officials’ hopes that they were finally seeing a lull in the chaos that had defined the border region for the past year.
By August, Venezuelans were the second-largest nationality arriving at the U.S. border after Mexicans. Given that U.S. tensions with Venezuela meant migrants from the country could not be sent back easily, the situation became increasingly difficult to manage.
So an administration that had rejected many Trump-era policies aimed at keeping out migrants, that had worked to make the asylum process easier and that had increased the number of refugees allowed into the U.S. now turned to Title 42.
It brokered a deal to send the Venezuelans to Mexico, which already had agreed to accept migrants expelled under Title 42 if they are from Guatemala, Honduras or El Salvador.
All the while, Justice Department lawyers continue to appeal a court decision that has kept Title 42 in place. They are opposing Republican attorneys general from more than 20 states who have argued that Title 42 is “the only safety valve preventing this Administration’s already disastrous border control policies from descending into an unmitigated catastrophe.”
Under Title 42, migrants have been expelled more than 2.3 million times from the U.S. after crossing the country’s land borders illegally from Canada or Mexico, though most try to come through Mexico.
The administration had announced it would stop expelling migrants under Title 42 starting May 23 and go back to detaining and deporting migrants who did not qualify to enter and remain in the U.S. — a longer process that allows migrants to request asylum in the U.S.
“We are extremely disturbed by the apparent acceptance, codification, and expansion of the use of Title 42, an irrelevant health order, as a cornerstone of border policy,” said Thomas Cartwright of Witness at the Border. “One that expunges the legal right to asylum.”
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Power Goes Out In Downtown Little Rock; Fire Suspected
Power Goes Out In Downtown Little Rock; Fire Suspected https://digitalarkansasnews.com/power-goes-out-in-downtown-little-rock-fire-suspected/
Little Rock firefighters respond to smoke from the parking deck at 124 Scott St. in downtown Little Rock late Sunday. The power was out for traffic lights and buildings in the surrounding area. (Arkansas Democrat-Gazette/Michael Hoge)
A power outage in downtown Little Rock late Sunday, possibly caused by a nearby fire, affected the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette and KATV, Channel 7, along with more than 170 other customers, according to Entergy Arkansas’ online outage map.
Little Rock firefighters responded to a manhole fire near West Second Street and Broadway around 10:30 p.m., spokesman Capt. Jason Weaver said. He could not say whether that caused the outages.
Entergy’s site showed that power went down in the area around 10:37 p.m. Sunday and was expected to return around 2 a.m. today.
An Entergy spokesperson could not provide more details on the cause of the outage by midnight and referred to the online outage map for further information.
The manhole fire definitely caused smoke to drift across the downtown area, Weaver said. Fires related to manholes can sometimes disrupt electricity lines.
Entergy personnel would work with firefighters if the fire was related to the electrical grid, Weaver said, but he wasn’t able to say if firefighters had been in contact with Entergy in the area.
Entergy Arkansas’ outage map of Downtown Little Rock is shown in this screenshot taken at 12:11 a.m. Monday, Oct. 17, 2022. Entergy estimated that 171 customers in Pulaski County were without power at that hour. (Entergy Arkansas courtesy photo)
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Asia Shares Ease, Major Test Looms For UK Bonds https://digitalarkansasnews.com/asia-shares-ease-major-test-looms-for-uk-bonds/
https://tmsnrt.rs/2zpUAr4
Nikkei down 1.4%, S&P 500 edges up after slide
Focus on gilts as BoE buying ends, Truss future in doubt
Dollar near 149 yen, market wary of intervention
SYDNEY, Oct 17 (Reuters) – Asian share markets slipped on Monday following another drubbing for Wall Street as investors braced for a further drastic tightening in global financial conditions, with all the risks of recession that brings.
Concerns about financial stability added to the corrosive mix with all eyes on UK bonds, now that the Bank of England’s (BoE’s) emergency buying spree is over.
Prime Minister Liz Truss’ decision to fire her finance minister might help reassure investors, but her own fate is unclear with media reporting Tory lawmakers will try and replace her this week.
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BoE Governor Andrew Bailey warned over the weekend that interest rates might now have to rise by more than thought just a couple of months ago.
“The BoE was doing emergency bond-buying that’s technically identical to QE with one hand, while furiously raising the policy rate with the other,” said analysts at ANZ in a note.
“Monday’s market action will provide a test, not only for the survival of Truss’ low-tax vision, but also her political future.”
Sterling was quoted up 0.4% at $1.1219 , but off the early high with trading sparse in Asia. FTSE futures fell 0.5%, and EUROSTOXX 50 futures 0.6%.
MSCI’s broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan (.MIAPJ0000PUS) eased 1.2% and back toward last week’s 2-1/2 year low.
Japan’s Nikkei (.N225) shed 1.4% and South Korea (.KS11) 0.1%. Chinese blue chips (.CSI300) dipped 0.4% ahead of GDP data due on Tuesday.
S&P 500 futures edged up 0.4% after Friday’s sharp retreat, while Nasdaq futures added 0.3%.
While the S&P is an eye-watering 25% off its peak, BofA economist Jared Woodard warned the slide was not over given the world was transitioning from two decades of 2% inflation to a time of something more like 5% inflation.
“$70 trillion of ‘new’ tech, growth, and government bond assets priced for a 2% world are vulnerable to these secular shifts as ‘old’ industries like energy and materials surge, reversing decades of under-investment,” he wrote in a note.
“Rotating out of 60/40 proxies and buying what is scarce – power, food, energy – is the best way for investors to diversify.”
INTERVENTION WATCH
A red-hot U.S. consumer price report and rising inflation expectations have markets fully expecting the Federal Reserve to hike rates by 75 basis points next month, and likely by the same again in December.
A host of Fed policymakers are speaking this week, so there will be plenty of opportunity for hawkish headlines. The earnings season also continues with Tesla Inc (TSLA.O), Netflix (NFLX.O) and Johnson & Johnson (JNJ.N) reporting, among others.
Goldman Sachs Group Inc (GS.N) also reports this week and the WSJ reported the investment bank plans to restructure its biggest businesses into three divisions.
In China, the Communist Party Congress is expected to grant a third term to President Xi Jinping, while there could be a reshuffle of top economic roles as incumbents are near retirement age or term-limits.
In currency markets, the dollar remains king as investors price in U.S. rates peaking around 5%.
The yen has been particularly hard hit as the Bank of Japan sticks to its super-easy policy, while authorities refrained from intervention last week even as the dollar sped past the 148.00 level to 32-year peaks.
Early Monday, the dollar was up at 148.73 yen and heading for the next target at 150.00.
The euro was holding at $0.9733 , having put in a steadier performance last week, while the U.S. dollar index eased a fraction to 113.20 .
The rise of the dollar and global bond yields has been a drag for gold, which was stuck at $1,648 an ounce .
Oil prices were trying to bounce, after sinking more than 6% last week as fears of a demand slowdown outweighed OPEC’s plans to cut output.
Brent firmed 64 cents to $92.27 a barrel, while U.S. crude rose 55 cents to $86.16 per barrel.
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Reporting by Wayne Cole; Editing by Himani Sarkar, Ana Nicolaci da Costa and Muralikumar Anantharaman
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
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Biden Turning To Trump-Era Rule To Expel Venezuelan Migrants
Biden Turning To Trump-Era Rule To Expel Venezuelan Migrants https://digitalarkansasnews.com/biden-turning-to-trump-era-rule-to-expel-venezuelan-migrants-2/
WASHINGTON (AP) — Two years ago, candidate Joe Biden loudly denounced President Donald Trump for immigration policies that inflicted “cruelty and exclusion at every turn,” including toward those fleeing the “brutal” government of socialist Nicolas Maduro in Venezuela.
Now, with increasing numbers of Venezuelans arriving at the U.S.-Mexico border as the Nov. 8 election nears, Biden has turned to an unlikely source for a solution: his predecessor’s playbook.
Biden last week invoked a Trump-era rule known as Title 42 — which Biden’s own Justice Department is fighting in court — to deny Venezuelans fleeing their crisis-torn country the chance to request asylum at the border.
The rule, first invoked by Trump in 2020, uses emergency public health authority to allow the United States to keep migrants from seeking asylum at the border, based on the need to help prevent the spread of COVID-19.
Under the new Biden administration policy, Venezuelans who walk or swim across America’s southern border will be expelled and any Venezuelan who illegally enters Mexico or Panama will be ineligible to come to the United States. But as many as 24,000 Venezuelans will be accepted at U.S. airports, similar to how Ukrainians have been admitted since Russia’s invasion in February.
Mexico has insisted that the U.S. admit one Venezuelan on humanitarian parole for each Venezuelan it expels to Mexico, according to a Mexican official who was not authorized to discuss the matter publicly and spoke condition of anonymity. So if the Biden administration paroles 24,000 Venezuelans to the U.S., Mexico would take no more than 24,000 Venezuelans expelled from the U.S.
The Biden policy marks an abrupt turn for the White House, which just weeks ago was lambasting Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, both Republicans, for putting Venezuelan migrants “fleeing political persecution” on buses and planes to Democratic strongholds.
“These were children, they were moms, they were fleeing communism,” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said at the time.
Biden’s new policy has drawn swift criticism from immigrant advocates, many of them quick to point out the Trump parallels.
“Rather than restore the right to asylum decimated by the Trump administration … the Biden administration has dangerously embraced the failures of the past and expanded upon them by explicitly enabling expulsions of Venezuelan migrants,” said Jennifer Nagda, policy director of the Young Center for Immigrant Children’s Rights.
The administration says the policy is aimed at ensuring a “lawful and orderly” way for Venezuelans to enter the U.S.
Why the turnaround?
For more than a year after taking office in January 2021, Biden deferred to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which used its authority to keep in place the Trump-era declaration that a public health risk existed that warranted expedited expulsion of asylum-seekers.
Members of Biden’s own party and activist groups had expressed skepticism about the public health underpinnings for allowing Title 42 to remain in effect, especially when COVID-19 was spreading more widely within the U.S. than elsewhere.
After months of internal deliberations and preparations, the CDC on April 1 said it would end the public health order and return to normal border processing of migrants, giving them a chance to request asylum in the U.S.
Homeland Security officials braced for a resulting increase in border crossings.
But officials inside and outside the White House were conflicted over ending the authority, believing it effectively kept down the number of people crossing the border illegally, according to senior administration officials.
A court order in May that kept Title 42 in place due to a challenge from Republican state officials was greeted with quiet relief by some in the administration, according to officials who spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity to discuss internal discussions.
The recent increase in migration from Venezuela, sparked by political, social and economic instability in the country, dashed officials’ hopes that they were finally seeing a lull in the chaos that had defined the border region for the past year.
By August, Venezuelans were the second-largest nationality arriving at the U.S. border after Mexicans. Given that U.S. tensions with Venezuela meant migrants from the country could not be sent back easily, the situation became increasingly difficult to manage.
So an administration that had rejected many Trump-era policies aimed at keeping out migrants, that had worked to make the asylum process easier and that had increased the number of refugees allowed into the U.S. now turned to Title 42.
It brokered a deal to send the Venezuelans to Mexico, which already had agreed to accept migrants expelled under Title 42 if they are from Guatemala, Honduras or El Salvador.
All the while, Justice Department lawyers continue to appeal a court decision that has kept Title 42 in place. They are opposing Republican attorneys general from more than 20 states who have argued that Title 42 is “the only safety valve preventing this Administration’s already disastrous border control policies from descending into an unmitigated catastrophe.”
Under Title 42, migrants have been expelled more than 2.3 million times from the U.S. after crossing the country’s land borders illegally from Canada or Mexico, though most try to come through Mexico.
The administration had announced it would stop expelling migrants under Title 42 starting May 23 and go back to detaining and deporting migrants who did not qualify to enter and remain in the U.S. — a longer process that allows migrants to request asylum in the U.S.
“We are extremely disturbed by the apparent acceptance, codification, and expansion of the use of Title 42, an irrelevant health order, as a cornerstone of border policy,” said Thomas Cartwright of Witness at the Border. “One that expunges the legal right to asylum.”
A separate lawsuit from the American Civil Liberties Union also is trying to end Title 42, an effort that could render the administration’s proposal useless.
“People have a right to seek asylum – regardless of where they came from, how they arrive in the United States, and whether or not they have family here,” said ACLU lawyer Lee Gelernt.
Long reported from Los Angeles. Associated Press writer Elliot Spagat in San Diego contributed to this report.
___
Follow AP’s coverage of immigration at https://apnews.com/hub/immigration
Copyright 2022 KMVT. All rights reserved.
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Gullible Crowds Eat Up Trump Lies https://digitalarkansasnews.com/gullible-crowds-eat-up-trump-lies/
This content is a column and reflects the opinion of the writer. To learn how this is different than an article, click here.
My general policy is to ignore Donald Trump’s rallies, in part because his narcissistic freak shows are merely a cry for help. But mostly because his lies mount up with such rapidity that it’s impossible to knock them all down.
But one particular defilement does peeve me greatly. It definitely rates a fact-check before it’s inevitably forgotten. It concerns a deceased president who’s not here to defend himself.
Dick Polman’s column is distributed
by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.
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Trump Posts Anti-Semitic Warning That US Jews Have To Get Their Act Together
Trump Posts Anti-Semitic Warning That “US Jews Have To Get Their Act Together” https://digitalarkansasnews.com/trump-posts-anti-semitic-warning-that-us-jews-have-to-get-their-act-together/
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On Sunday morning, former President Donald Trump criticized “US Jews” for not being more “appreciative” of his support for Israel.
In the post on his platform Truth Social, he warned: “US Jews have to get their act together and appreciate what they have in Israel – Before it is too late!”
While Trump did not elaborate on his threat, world famous pianist Igor Levit, himself the target of anti-Semitic death threats, retweeted an image of Trump’s post with the caption, “Before it is too late.”
“No President has done more for Israel than I have,” Trump declared. “Somewhat surprisingly, however, our wonderful Evangelicals are far more appreciative of this than the people of the Jewish faith, especially those living in the US.”
Trump has consistently polled poorly with American Jews, especially among the working class and younger sections who do not share his affinity for Israel’s oppression of the Palestinian people or his fascistic politics.
Trump boasted, “Those living in Israel, though, are a different story–Highest approval rating in the World.” He claimed he could “easily be P.M.!”
Yaakov Katz, editor-in-chief of the Jerusalem Post, responded to Trump’s attack on Twitter, writing, “Nothing to see here. Just a former US president using threatening language about American Jews at a time when antisemitism is on a global rise.”
Last week in Bondi, Australia, neo-Nazi fliers were distributed throughout the Jewish neighborhood, with a QR code and instructions for only “white” people to scan it. If scanned, the code takes users to the National Socialist Network, an Australian fascist group.
The Australian Jewish News reported that in the nearby suburb of Rose Bay during the same week the fliers were distributed, “parents were confronted with a Nazi swastika found drawn on a wall outside a Jewish-run daycare.”
Responding to Trump’s threat on Sunday, Jonathan Greenblatt, CEO and national director of the Anti-Defamation League, said in statement, “We don’t need the former president, who curries favor with extremists and anti-Semites, to lecture us about the US-Israel relationship.”
In September, the ADL released a report titled “Hate in the Sunshine State: Extremism & Antisemitism in Florida, 2020-2022.” The report noted that from January 2020 to August 2022, the ADL Center on Extremism “recorded over 400 instances of white supremacist propaganda distribution in Florida.” It added that “Ninety-five of these incidents” featured “antisemitic language or symbols, targeted Jewish institutions, or both.”
The study also reported that in Florida, “antisemitic hate crimes have risen 300 percent since 2012.”
This shocking rise in anti-Semitic hate crimes has taken place in part under fascistic Republican Governor Ron DeSantis, who took office in January of 2019 and has sought to position himself as a more polished 2024 presidential alternative to Trump. DeSantis has refused to denounce neo-Nazi elements operating in his state.
Trump’s threat against “US Jews” is the latest in a series of openly anti-Semitic statements by Republican politicians and operatives in recent weeks.
In September, Pennsylvania gubernatorial candidate Doug Mastriano attacked his Jewish Democratic opponent, Josh Shapiro, for sending his children to Jewish parochial schools, which he called “elite” and “privileged.”
Less than three weeks later, prior to bringing Mastriano onstage at an October 1 rally, Jack Posobiec, a Republican operative, January 6 conspirator and acolyte of Roger Stone, told the audience, “Just like Josh Shapiro, its all about power. Power for them. At the end of the day, it’s money and power… these scumbags.”
Invoking fascist conspiracy theories that Jewish people control the world, Posobiec spoke of a “dark alliance” between “Josh Shapiro and politicians like him.” He claimed that Shapiro and others want to “take minors… from the foster system” and put them in a “program for gender transition therapy.”
A week later at a “Save America” rally in Mesa, Arizona, self-identified Christian nationalist and QAnon adherent Marjorie Taylor Greene incited political violence and invoked the neo-Nazi “Replacement Theory.” This fascist doctrine, repeated frequently on right-wing talk radio and Fox News’ Tucker Carlson show, argues that politicians or activists who defend immigrants are part of a Jewish-communist plot to “replace” White Christians with “inferior stock” from Africa, South America and Asia.
In her speech, Greene said that “Joe Biden’s five million illegals are on the verge of replacing you… your jobs, and replacing your kids in school… they are also replacing your culture.”
Another Trump acolyte, Ye (formerly Kanye West) has taken to spewing anti-Semitic filth on a regular basis. The pro-Trump rapper sat down with Tucker Carlson for a multi-hour interview earlier this month, during which he said, “I prefer my kids knew Hanukkah than Kwanzaa. At least it will come with some financial engineering.”
That Trump and the “Make America Great Again” movement are increasingly promoting overt anti Semitism is a significant expression of the transformation of the Republican Party into a fascist organization.
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Whistleblower Complaint Claims Trump Media Company Committed 'fraudulent Misrepresentations'
Whistleblower Complaint Claims Trump Media Company Committed 'fraudulent Misrepresentations' https://digitalarkansasnews.com/whistleblower-complaint-claims-trump-media-company-committed-fraudulent-misrepresentations/
A former executive has claimed to the government that Donald Trump’s eponymous media company — which sources say is under federal investigation — committed “fraudulent misrepresentations” regarding possible mergers with two other firms as it sought to raise money.
The complaint from Will Wilkerson, a former executive at Trump Media & Technology Group (TMTG), alleges federal securities law violations were committed by TMTG and several company officials, as well as Benessere Capital Acquisition Corporation (BENE) and Digital World Acquisition Corporation (DWAC).
BENE and DWAC had been considered or are being used as investor vehicles to potentially take TMTG public, a move which would also ensure a reported $1 billion in further financing from other investors, should the deal close.
Wilkerson’s complaint, filed in August and obtained this weekend by ABC News, alleges “fraudulent misrepresentations concerning the attempted mergers between these companies [Trump’s firm, BENE and DWAC] in violation of federal securities laws.”
More specifically, Wilkerson claims in his complaint that DWAC and Trump’s media company “had substantive communications” about merging before DWAC was a public company itself, violating regulations by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).
The SEC and federal prosecutors in the Southern District of New York are investigating Trump’s company, according to sources familiar with the matter.
Both agencies declined to comment to ABC News.
Neither of the SPACs named in the complaint immediately responded to requests for comment.
In a statement, TMTG’s legal team touted the company’s work so far — such as its launch on multiple platforms and its millions of users — while pushing back on what it described as “knowingly false and defamatory statements” in a Washington Post article on Saturday in which Wilkerson spoke about his whistleblower complaint and his time as a TMTG executive.
Wilkerson was fired last week as senior vice president of operations after the Post sent questions to Trump based on his account, the paper reported.
DWAC first acknowledged in December that the SEC was probing its merger with TMTG and was seeking related documents.
DWAC also indicated in June that it was aware of a federal grand jury investigation in the Southern District of New York.
Former President Donald Trump speaks at the Conservative Political Action Conference 2022 in Orlando, Fla., Feb. 26, 2022.
Chandan Khanna/AFP via Getty Images, FILE
The whistleblower complaint states that DWAC was substituted as the SPAC to merge with Trump’s company, TMTG, because a deal with BENE “could not sufficiently capitalize TMTG at a valuation that was acceptable to President Trump” and others involved.
BENE’s CEO would have also made “less money” than if the CEO used his other, newer SPAC, according to the complaint.
“For these reasons, the parties agreed to substitute BENE for DWAC” in a merger, the whistleblower complaint reads.
Wilkerson’s complaint was first reported last week by The Miami Herald. TMTG launched last year and is the umbrella company for Truth Social, the platform Trump uses since being banned by most major social media websites in the wake of the Jan. 6 insurrection.
Wilkerson also claimed to The Post in its Saturday report that TMTG co-founder Andy Litinsky was booted from the board because he would not hand over shares of the company to the former president’s wife, former first lady Melania Trump, when Donald Trump asked him to do so.
The Post published a copy of an email that Wilkerson shared with them, apparently sent by Litinsky in March, in which Litinsky refers to Donald Trump’s alleged demand that he transfer his shares and his belief that being removed from the board was retaliation against him.
The Post reported that it was not known whether Litinsky ultimately relinquished his shares.
Speaking with the Post, Wilkerson attacked the leadership of TMTG CEO Devin Nunes, a former California lawmaker.
In its statement, TMTG defended Nunes, saying he was hired by Donald Trump “to create a culture of compliance and build a world-class team to lead Truth Social.”
The Post’s story was “rife with knowingly false and defamatory statements and other concocted psychodramas,” the company said. “We will consider republication of such statements to be legally-actionable evidence of reckless disregard for the truth.”
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Bernie Sanders: Democrats Should Have The https://digitalarkansasnews.com/bernie-sanders-democrats-should-have-the/
October 16, 2022 10:53 PM
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) said Sunday that Democrats should have the “guts” to court voters who supported former President Donald Trump in 2016 and 2020 through policies that benefit the working class.
Sanders made the comments after being asked during an appearance on NBC’s Meet the Press about his own efforts to appeal to those voters during his two presidential runs. Host Chuck Todd noted that a majority of Republican voters think the 2020 election was stolen before asking if those individuals were too far gone to bother campaigning for.
BERNIE SANDERS URGES DEMOCRATS TO FOCUS ON MORE THAN ABORTION IN MIDTERM ELECTIONS
“Look, I think there are some extreme right-wing voters who are racists, who are sexists, who are homophobes, xenophobes. No, I don’t think you’re going to ever get them,” the Vermont senator began. “But I also think there are millions of people in this country, working-class people who look at Washington and they say: ‘You know what? I’m falling further and further behind. I can’t afford health care. I can’t afford to send my kids to college. I can’t afford the outrageous costs of prescription drugs. Who is listening to me?'”
What voters need, Sanders argued, “is a Democratic Party that has the guts to stand up to them and say: ‘Yeah, we’re going to take on the greed of the insurance companies, and the drug companies, and Wall Street.’ And I think if we do that, some of those people — I’m not saying all — will say, ‘You know what? I’m going to stand with the Democratic Party because on these economic issues, they’re far preferable to right-wing Republicans.'”
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER
Despite being one of the most progressive senators in the Democratic caucus, Sanders made rural outreach a major focus during both of his presidential campaigns. Democrats in general have seen their numbers plummet in rural counties nationwide in recent decades, especially in state-wide and presidential contests. Sanders’ prescription for this was to radically increase his campaign’s efforts in rural communities, though that was not enough to win him the Democratic nomination.
With regard to his policy proposals, the senator has pushed his party to move on a host of social spending and health care programs while Democrats hold their majorities in both the House and Senate.
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Trial For AR Law Banning Gender-Affirming Health Care For Minors Starts Monday
Trial For AR Law Banning Gender-Affirming Health Care For Minors Starts Monday https://digitalarkansasnews.com/trial-for-ar-law-banning-gender-affirming-health-care-for-minors-starts-monday/
Trans pride flags flutter in the wind at a gathering to celebrate International Transgender Day of Visibility, March 31, 2017 at the Edward R. Roybal Federal Building…
Trans pride flags flutter in the wind at a gathering to celebrate International Transgender Day of Visibility, March 31, 2017 at the Edward R. Roybal Federal Building in Los Angeles, California. International Transgender Day of Visibility is dedicated to celebrating transgender people and raising awareness of discrimination faced by transgender people worldwide. / AFP PHOTO / Robyn Beck (Photo credit should read ROBYN BECK/AFP via Getty Images)
by: Anna Darling
Posted: Oct 16, 2022 / 09:53 PM CDT
Updated: Oct 16, 2022 / 09:53 PM CDT
FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. (KNWA/FOX24) — The trial of Arkansas’ controversial gender-affirming health care law starts on Monday.
Four Arkansas families, along with the support of the ACLU, are challenging the State of Arkansas over a law passed in 2021 that bans gender-affirming health care for minors. The law mans hormonal treatment or surgery that would align with the preferred gender for people under the age of 18.
This is the first law of its kind to come from a state legislature in the U.S. In August, an 8th Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a ban on the law, meaning transgender minors can still get this health care if they choose to at this time.
State Representative Robin Lundstrum from District 87 here in Northwest Arkansas authored the bill that then became law. She said people under 18 shouldn’t be making decisions this big about their health care.
While the ACLU said this should be a private decisions made between families and their doctors.
“A child shouldn’t be abused by being castrated, both chemically and surgically,” she said. “All we’re saying is let them grow up, because the long term consequences are pretty severe.”
“Our clients have a strong case because denying trans youth the health care they need is not only unconstitutional, it’s also cruel,” said Holly Dickson from the ACLU of Arkansas.
No matter the outcome of the trial, both sides expect it to be appealed to the 8th Circuit. This case could very well make it all the way to the Supreme Court.
The trial is set to begin in U.S. District Judge James Moody’s court in Little Rock on Monday at 9:15 a.m.
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Pennsbury High School Inducts Inaugural Class Of Hall Of Fame
Pennsbury High School Inducts Inaugural Class Of Hall Of Fame https://digitalarkansasnews.com/pennsbury-high-school-inducts-inaugural-class-of-hall-of-fame/
What do two well-respected major network news correspondents, an esteemed, Tony-award nominated actor, a NASA scientist and leading authority on the human response to spaceflight, and a former Philadelphia Eagle all have in common? They are alumni of the Pennsbury School District in Fairless Hills, Pennsylvania.
On Thursday, October 13, Pennsbury High School welcomed back Robert Costa, Class of 2004, Hallie Jackson, Class of 2002, Richard Kind, Class of 1974, Mark Shelhamer, Class of 1977, and Troy Vincent, Class of 1988, as they are inducted into the Pennsbury High School Hall of Fame.
This distinguished group of alumni is the inaugural class of the Pennsbury High School Hall of Fame.
They were recognized during a daytime assembly which was attended by juniors and seniors and livestreamed to the rest of the student body. Costa, Jackson, Kind, Shelhamer, and Vincent were introduced by Pennsbury High School student ambassadors and had the opportunity to address students and talk about their experiences in Pennsbury and beyond.
The Pennsbury High School Hall of Fame was created to honor those graduates who have demonstrated excellence in their chosen careers.
The Pennsbury High School Hall of Fame wall, located in the main office lobby at Pennsbury High School West, has been constructed to honor the inductees. Wooden plaques with black brass plates adorn the wall identifying each inductee, their year of graduation, and accomplishments. Each year a new plaque will be added to recognize five additional Pennsbury High School graduates. Inductees must have graduated at least ten years ago to be considered for this honor.
About the Inductees
Robert Costa
Robert Costa, Class of 2004 Robert Costa is the Chief Election & Campaign Correspondent for CBS News, where he covers national politics and American democracy. Based in Washington D.C., he is a regular on “CBS Evening News with Norah O’Donnell,” “CBS Mornings,” and CBS’s popular weekend program, “Sunday Morning,” where he has interviewed high-profile personalities ranging from Congresswoman Liz Cheney to rapper Killer Mike.
Before joining CBS News in 2022, Costa and legendary journalist Bob Woodward co-wrote “Peril,” which was published by Simon & Schuster. The book documented the tumultuous transition between the Trump presidency and the Biden presidency and was a #1 New York Times bestseller.
It was also cited in numerous subpoenas issued by the House committee investigating the January 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol. Prior to working with Woodward, Costa served as the moderator and managing editor of “Washington Week” on PBS from 2017 to 2020.
The primetime weekly news program, which features in-depth discussions with top reporters, is one of the longest-running shows on television. From 2014 to 2021, Costa was a national political reporter at The Washington Post, where he worked with colleagues on numerous investigations and covered Congress, the White House, and national campaigns.
He also served as a lead host of “Post Live,” the Post’s live interview series featuring newsmakers such as Senator Bernie Sanders, Vice President Mike Pence, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, and actress Jane Fonda.
From 2015 to 2020, Costa was also a political analyst for NBC News and MSNBC, appearing on “Morning Joe,” “Meet the Press,” and “The 11th Hour,” among many other programs. Costa holds a bachelor’s degree, with honors, from the University of Notre Dame, where he is a former trustee and a master’s degree in politics from the University of Cambridge.
While at Pennsbury, he was an active member of the speech and debate team, the student television station PHS-TV and served in student government. He also worked to book musical acts for Pennsbury’s world-famous prom and landed performances by Maroon 5, Eve 6, and John Mayer.
Hallie Jackson
Hallie Jackson, Class of 2002 Hallie Jackson is the senior Washington correspondent for NBC News, covering the biggest stories from our nation’s capital, and hosts the 3:00 p.m. hour of “MSNBC Reports” as well as “Hallie Jackson NOW” at 5:00 p.m. on NBC News NOW.
Jackson is also a fill-in anchor for “NBC Nightly News” and “Today.” Jackson’s work is featured across all NBC News and MSNBC platforms and NBCNews.com. In February 2020, Jackson co-moderated the NBC News and MSNBC Democratic presidential debate in Las Vegas, Nevada, the most watched Democratic presidential debate in history, with nearly 20 million viewers.
Previously, Jackson was the Chief White House Correspondent for NBC News, covering President Donald Trump’s administration from the inauguration through the impeachment trial and the 2020 election.
Jackson traveled with the president for every key international trip, including the summits with Kim Jong Un and the anniversary of D-Day in Normandy. In 2021, Jackson became the host of the 3:00 p.m. hour on MSNBC, where she brings well-sourced updates and breaks down key developments from Washington.
She previously hosted the 10:00 a.m. hour on MSNBC since 2017. While reporting on the 2016 campaign trail, Jackson consistently broke developments in the election cycle and scored exclusive interviews with several GOP candidates, including Donald Trump, Senator Ted Cruz, Senator Marco Rubio, and Ben Carson. Before covering politics for the network, Jackson reported from the Los Angeles bureau of NBC News for a year.
Prior to joining the network in 2014, Jackson was a national correspondent for Hearst Television in Washington, D.C., providing daily coverage of political and national events for its 26 affiliates across the country. She has also worked for WFSB-TV in Hartford, Connecticut, and was a general assignment reporter for WBOC-TV in Salisbury, Maryland.
Jackson, a native of Yardley, Pennsylvania, graduated from Johns Hopkins University with a bachelor’s degree in political science.
Richard Kind
Richard Kind, Class of 1974 Richard Kind was born on November 22, 1956, in Trenton, New Jersey. He was later raised in Bucks County, where he graduated from Pennsbury High School in 1974.
He went on to attend Northwestern University as a pre-law major before a friend of his father’s persuaded him to give acting a try.
In 1983, he joined Second City Mainstage after being a member of the Practical Theater Company, an improv comedy group founded by Julia Louis-Dreyfus and Brad Hall, among others.
Kind performed in several resident stage productions. Kind is best known for his work on sitcoms. In 1992, he was cast in the recurring role of Dr. Mark Devanow on Mad About You. His character appeared less frequently in later seasons because Kind was also playing the role of Paul Lassiter on Spin City.
In addition to starring in the Amazon Prime Video original series Red Oaks, and HBO’s Luck, he has had guest spots on numerous television shows, including Two and a Half Men, and The Goldbergs, and recurring roles on Curb Your Enthusiasm and Gotham.
Movie credits include The Producers, A Serious Man, The Station Agent, and 2013’s Oscar winner for Best Picture, Argo. Kind’s voice is equally as recognizable as his expressive face. He has lent his voice to several animated films: Bing Bong in Inside Out, Molt in A Bug’s Life, and Van in Cars and Cars 2. You can also hear him on episodes of the animated television series Dora, the Explorer, The Penguins of Madagascar, and American Dad.
Richard Kind was nominated for a Tony award for Best Featured Actor in a Play for his performance as Marcus Hoff in the 2013 Broadway production of The Big Knife.
George Clooney is a close personal friend of Mr. Kind’s and was the best man at Mr. Kind’s wedding. Mr. Kind has three children and currently resides in the Upper West Side of Manhattan in New York City.
Mark Shelhamer
Mark Shelhamer, Class of 1977 Mark Shelhamer was born in Trenton, New Jersey and raised in Fairless Hills, Pennsylvania.
Mark attended the Pennsbury School District, graduating from Pennsbury High School in 1977.
While at Pennsbury High School, he concentrated on math and science, but also played drums in the concert, marching, and jazz bands. He attended Drexel University where he earned both a bachelor’s and master’s degree in electrical engineering, while doing biomedical research at Temple University’s medical school. After finishing his master’s degree at Drexel, he attended the Massachusetts Institute of Technology for biomedical engineering and earned his Doctorate in 1990.
It was at MIT that he was introduced to the fascinating world of human spaceflight, and performed research on the astronaut crews of two space shuttle missions. He also had his first taste of weightlessness in the NASA parabolic flight aircraft known as the Vomit Comet, which provide short periods of zero-G for research.
This started an addiction to being weightless that remains to this day. It was at MIT that he also met his wife Jennifer Wiseman, now the chief scientist for the Hubble Space Telescope. Mark went on to Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore to further his research, and remain there 32 years later, where he is a professor in the school of medicine.
He runs the Human Spaceflight Lab and a larger initiative known as the Bioastronautics at Hopkins. In 2013, he took leave from Johns Hopkins to serve as Chief Scientist of the NASA Human Research Program, where he coordinated the entire NASA research effort to maintain human health and performance for missions to the moon and Mars.
Since then, he continues to do reasearch, consults for NASA, the FAA, and the Commerical Spaceflight Federation, and is an adjunct faculty member at George Washington University.
Mark is best known for his pioneering work on a multidisciplinary approach to human spaceflight, including the Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo programs. He is a leading ...
Stock Futures Rise Slightly After A Rollercoaster Week
Stock Futures Rise Slightly After A Rollercoaster Week https://digitalarkansasnews.com/stock-futures-rise-slightly-after-a-rollercoaster-week/
Traders on the floor of the NYSE, Aug. 4, 2022.
Source: NYSE
Stock futures edged higher in overnight trading Sunday as investors awaited big earnings reports to roll in.
Futures on the Dow Jones Industrial Average gained about 50 points. S&P 500 futures and Nasdaq 100 futures both inched 0.3% higher.
The S&P 500 just came off its fourth negative week in five with a 1.6% loss last week. A hotter-than-expected inflation reading stoked wild price swings in the markets as investors readjusted their expectations for the Federal Reserve’s coming rate hikes.
“As inflation remains elevated for longer and the Fed hikes further, the risk increases that the cumulative effect of policy tightening pushes the U.S. economy into recession, undermining the outlook for corporate earnings,” Mark Haefele, CIO at UBS Global Wealth Management, said in a note.
Meanwhile, the third-quarter earnings season has kicked off. Investors are monitoring if corporate America will have any significant downward revisions to their outlooks in the face of stubbornly high inflation and the economic slowdown.
Bank of America is slated to report Monday before the bell, while Goldman Sachs will release numbers Tuesday morning. JPMorgan and Wells Fargo reported solid results last week, while Morgan Stanley’s equity trading revenue disappointed.
Many notable technology names are also reporting this week, including Netflix, Tesla and IBM. Johnson & Johnson, United Airlines, AT&T, Verizon and Procter & Gamble are other big companies on investors’ radar.
CNBC Pro: As market volatility persists, Wall Street analysts say to sell these stocks
Stocks worldwide have taken a beating this year, and major indexes remain deep in negative territory.
As investors weigh whether to sell or stay invested, CNBC Pro screened almost 1,500 large and mid-cap global stocks and found a number of major companies with sell or underweight ratings.
CNBC Pro subscribers can read more here.
— Ganesh Rao
CNBC Pro: Nearing retirement? How to allocate your portfolio right now, according to the pros
Despite the volatility in markets, asset managers say it’s important to remain invested if you’re nearing retirement.
But how should one allocate funds, bearing in mind unsettled markets, a shorter investing horizon and the need for retirees to have some liquidity?
CNBC Pro asks the experts for their views.
Pro subscribers can read more here.
— Weizhen Tan
CNBC Pro: Morgan Stanley’s Mike Wilson flags a key risk to earnings — and names the stocks to avoid
Morgan Stanley’s U.S. equity team, led by Michelle Weaver and Mike Wilson, says there’s a key risk to earnings on the horizon.
The investment bank named several stocks it believes will be most impacted in the next 3-6 months, and which could see downside to their share prices in the same period.
Pro subscribers can read more here.
— Zavier Ong
A relief rally could be close?
Last Thursday, the market pulled off a historic intraday reversal that saw the S&P 500 end the day up 2.6% after losing more than 2% earlier. It marked the fifth largest intraday reversal from a low in the history of the S&P 500, and it was the fourth largest for the Nasdaq Composite, according to SentimenTrader.
The dramatic rebound gave some investors confidence that a more lasting comeback could be on the horizon.
“Markets have attempted a rally several times in recent weeks with no success, though the impressive reversal on Thursday is an indication that a relief rally may be near given the excess degree of pessimism priced into markets,” said Mark Hackett, Nationwide’s chief of investment research.
Hackett noted that institutional investors have remained on the sidelines, while retail investors continued to be in buy-the-dip mode, with positive fund flows in seven-consecutive weeks.
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January 6 Committee Member Says Panel Will Ask Former Secret Service Agent To Testify Again | CNN Politics
January 6 Committee Member Says Panel Will Ask Former Secret Service Agent To Testify Again | CNN Politics https://digitalarkansasnews.com/january-6-committee-member-says-panel-will-ask-former-secret-service-agent-to-testify-again-cnn-politics/
Washington CNN —
Rep. Zoe Lofgren, a member of the House select committee investigating the January 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol, told CNN on Sunday the panel will ask former Secret Service Assistant Director Tony Ornato to testify again.
“We’re in a position in the very near future to call the witnesses from the Secret Service back in for a few additional questions,” the California Democrat told CNN’s Pamela Brown on “CNN Newsroom,” explaining that the panel had wanted to “get through all the documentary evidence … over a million documents,” which they’ve now done.
The House select committee has made clear it believes Ornato was a central figure who could provide valuable information about former President Donald Trump’s movements and intentions leading up to and on January 6.
Not only did Ornato once run Trump’s detail, but he also made the unprecedented move of joining White House staff as the deputy chief of staff in December 2019 on a temporary assignment and eventually returned to the Secret Service to run its training program.
To this point, Ornato has met with the panel on two occasions – in January and March – as part of its investigation.
It’s not clear whether Ornato will end up testifying related to the claims from Cassidy Hutchinson, an aide to former Trump White House chief of staff Mark Meadows. Hutchinson specifically testified that Ornato had told her about Trump lashing out in anger and lunging at a member of his protective detail as he demanded to be taken to the Capitol on January 6.
Lofgren said Sunday she could not expand further on Rep. Pete Aguilar’s comments during Thursday’s public hearing that the committee is examining a potential attempt to obstruct testimony related to that incident.
“It’s not just about the incident, but the testimony – and I will say, we have, broadly, questions about the advice given to some witnesses, and whether all the witnesses were completely candid with the committee, and that’s something that we’re interested in, and I think the Department of Justice will be very interested in,” Lofgren said.
Asked Sunday who else from the Secret Service would be called back to testify, Lofgren also mentioned the head of Trump’s Secret Service detail, Robert Engel, “and a few others,” but did not specify whom.
“We want to make sure that we’re getting the straight story. Some of the testimony received doesn’t seem to align with some of the documents, so we have a need to understand that better from them,” she said.
This story has been updated with additional information Sunday.
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Massive Fire Breaks Out In Irans Notorious Evin Prison
Massive Fire Breaks Out In Iran’s Notorious Evin Prison https://digitalarkansasnews.com/massive-fire-breaks-out-in-irans-notorious-evin-prison/
BEIRUT — A massive fire broke out Saturday night in Iran’s notorious Evin prison, which holds hundreds of dissidents and has detained hundreds more during the past month of street protests.
Iran’s state news agency IRNA reported that eight people were injured in the fire and that it was under control by Sunday morning, while citing officials who insisted there was no link between the blaze and the recent demonstrations. Later on Sunday, Mizan, the judiciary channel, said four prisoners from the financial crimes ward had died of asphyxiation from smoke in Ward 7 and that 61 were injured. Ten were taken to the hospital, of whom four were in dire condition, Mizan reported.
Videos shared on social media showed large plumes of smoke rising from the facility, which sits at the foot of the Alborz Mountains in the capital, Tehran. The sound of automatic gunfire could be heard in some of the videos, while others showed a nearby highway filled with cars unleashing an unrelenting thrum of horns, seemingly in protest.
Iran’s semiofficial Fars and Tasnim news agencies reported that the unrest began when prisoners convicted of financial crimes in two sections, Wards 6 and 7, got into an altercation, leading other prisoners to take advantage of the disarray and set fire to a workshop and a warehouse full of clothes.
Fars reported that a number of prisoners had prepared weapons to take on guards, indicating that the fire was planned. The agency said that in the midst of the chaos, some prisoners attempted to escape, entering a minefield north of the prison, which led to explosions.
Tasnim aired footage of one of its reporters touring the prison, purportedly after the fire had broken out, to prove that order had been restored. He pauses in front of a clock and points at the time, 2:06, presumably in the morning, as apparent proof that the flames were contained not long after they started.
Evin has been the site of some of the worst abuses of the Islamic Republic, with many prisoners detailing extensive psychological and physical torture inside. At least one wing of the prison is controlled by the intelligence branch of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, and another wing is run by the Intelligence Ministry.
Families of inmates outside the prison were tear-gassed earlier in the day Saturday, and roads heading there were blocked by nightfall, according to the Center for Human Rights in Iran, a New York-based advocacy group. An ambulance and bus were sent to Evin to transfer wounded prisoners to a hospital, the group reported.
Among the prisoners at Evin are Siamak Namazi, an Iranian American businessman who was arrested in 2015, as well as journalists and political prisoners.
“We are following reports from Evin Prison with urgency,” State Department spokesman Ned Price tweeted Saturday. “We are in contact with the Swiss as our protecting power. Iran is fully responsible for the safety of our wrongfully detained citizens, who should be released immediately.”
Videos posted online showed people in neighborhoods around Evin chanting “Death to the dictator,” while others showed riot police on motorcycles heading to the prison.
On Sunday, Namazi’s lawyer Jared Genser tweeted that Namazi was safe and has contacted his family. After the fire broke out, Genser had on Saturday appealed to President Biden to “bring American hostages home.”
Genser also said that Namazi was placed in solitary confinement after riots, purportedly “for his own safety.” For Namazi to be “back w/the #IRGC in solitary is a living nightmare,” Genser added, referring to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. “He spent 2 years being tortured there.”
The government has cracked down against protesters since demonstrations swept the country nearly a month ago. Internet in the region has been severely disrupted in the past two weeks, along with the cellular network, leaving many in the dark and people abroad scrambling to piece together how violence is unfolding.
The protests were sparked by the death of Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old woman, in the custody of the “morality police” on Sept. 16. The Iranian government’s response was quick and deadly: An order issued by the country’s highest military body on Sept. 21 gave directions to “severely confront troublemakers and anti-revolutionaries,” according to a leaked document obtained by Amnesty International and reviewed by The Washington Post.
Dehghanpisheh reported from Phoenix.
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Former GOP Governor Claims Both Parties https://digitalarkansasnews.com/former-gop-governor-claims-both-parties/
October 16, 2022 08:54 PM
Former North Carolina Gov. Pat McCrory (R) argued Sunday that voters in both parties were “running away” from President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump and instead wanted other 2024 choices.
McCrory, who recently joined NBC News after losing his state’s GOP Senate primary to Rep. Ted Budd (R-NC), appeared on the network’s Meet the Press for a panel discussion on the 2024 presidential election. McCrory said that in his view, voters were unhappy with both the Democrat and Republican presidential incumbents, and that
“Democrats don’t want Biden or [Vice President Kamala] Harris either, and Republicans frankly don’t want Trump,” the former governor said. “And they’re the ones trying to consume the TV time.”
ONLY ONE-THIRD OF REGISTERED VOTERS WOULD RE-ELECT BIDEN: POLL
Republican candidate for U.S. Senate, former Gov. Pat McCrory delivers a concession speech to voters, Tuesday, May 17, 2022, in Charlotte, N.C. (AP Photo/Matt Kelley)
Matt Kelley/AP
A Republican himself, McCrory argued that there are other GOP candidates that would actually be able to defeat Biden, which Trump was unable to in 2020.
“There are about 20 Republican candidates for the presidency that are running right now who really believe this too, and they can’t say it, because they don’t want to upset the core 30% who are with Trump regardless,” McCrory said.
“And, by the way, the Democrats are running away from Biden in this election too. They do not want- the Democrats don’t want Biden on the stage,” McCrory said.
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER
McCrory’s analysis comes the same day that a Fox News poll revealed only a third of registered voters are considering re-electing Biden. The 46th president also appeared to have lost independent voters, with 54% opting to vote for another candidate. Only 13% said they were set on a second term for the president.
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New Video: Roger Stone Says Trump Will Get His 'Brains Beat In' If He Runs Again
New Video: Roger Stone Says Trump Will Get His 'Brains Beat In' If He Runs Again https://digitalarkansasnews.com/new-video-roger-stone-says-trump-will-get-his-brains-beat-in-if-he-runs-again/
Republican political operative Roger Stone is seen in new documentary footage threatening to support Donald Trump’s second impeachment and saying the former president would lose if he tried to run again in 2024.
“I’m done with this president,” Trump’s longest-serving political adviser says on a phone call in the clip, reportedly filmed on Jan. 20, 2021. “I’m going to public supporting impeachment. I have no choice.”
“He has to go. Run again! You’ll get your fucking brains beat in,” he adds. It’s not clear who he was on the phone with.
Trump was impeached for a second time on Jan. 13, 2021, for inciting the riot on the U.S. Capitol. His Senate trial, which ultimately acquitted him, began the following month.
The footage was released on Saturday by Danish filmmaker Christoffer Guldbrandsen, whose team was granted permission to shadow Stone for more than two years, including during the months when Stone was working behind the scenes to aid Trump’s attempt to overturn the 2020 election.
The Danish team’s documentary about that effort, “A Storm Foretold,” is slated for release later this year.
Guldbrandsen told the Daily Beast the footage was from President Joe Biden’s Inauguration Day after Stone learned he would not be receiving a second presidential pardon to protect him from legal fallout over the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection.
Stone was already pardoned once by Trump in December 2020. He had been sentenced to 40 months in prison for multiple felonies, including witness tampering, lying to Congress, and obstructing the House investigation into possible collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia in 2016, but Trump commuted his sentence before it even began.
In another clip of Stone’s angry phone conversation released on Friday, he’s seen ranting about Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner and calling Ivanka Trump an “abortionist bitch.”
Guldbrandsen said Stone made the call in a car in Fort Lauderdale, Florida.
Stone has called that video “fake” but admitted he is “not a fan” of Kushner or the former first daughter.
Stone’s cellphone rant was recently subpoenaed by the House Jan. 6 committee but was not played at its Thursday hearing.
This article originally appeared on HuffPost and has been updated.
Related…
Roger Stone Calls Video Of Him ‘Fake,’ But Says He Really Doesn’t Like Ivanka Trump
Roger Stone Blasts ‘Abortionist B***h’ Ivanka Trump After Failure To Win Jan. 6 Pardon
What The Jan. 6 Committee Has Accomplished So Far
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Wallows At JJ's Live In Fayetteville AR Loud Hailer Magazine
Wallows At JJ's Live In Fayetteville, AR – Loud Hailer Magazine https://digitalarkansasnews.com/wallows-at-jjs-live-in-fayetteville-ar-loud-hailer-magazine/
The alternative-indie band from Los Angeles, Wallows, packs the house in Fayetteville, Arkansas as their North American tour comes to an end.
In March of this year, Wallows released their sophomore album, Tell Me That It’s Over. Since the release, the band has been touring across North America and has hit a few locations in Europe. After their return to the states, they began part two of their North American tour. The band consists of three members – Dylan Minnette (vocals/guitar/drums), Braeden Lemasters (vocals/guitar), and Cole Preston(drums/vocals/guitar). Touring with them are long-time friends, Danny Ferenbach (keys/trumpet), Blake Morell (bass), and Kevin Grimmett (guitar/keys).
Supporting the headlining band was Empath. The four-member crew is made up of Catherine Elicson (vocals/guitar), Garrett Koloski (drums), Emily Shanahan (synthesizer), and touring artist Johnny (bass). Empath just recently released their second album, Visitor, with synthesizer Randy Coon. The band started at 7:30 PM and warmed up the crowd despite their thirty-minute set.
Three minutes before show time, “Heaven or Las Vegas” by Cocteau Twins filled the venue with suspense as fans anticipated Wallows’ first steps on stage. The band opened with their 2017 debut single “Pleaser.” They then transitioned into “Dig What You Dug” from their 2020 EP Remote, which Lemasters explained was requested by one of the many fans he had met on their day off the day before. Not long after, Minnette and Preston swap places for their performance of “Quarterback,” another track from Remote.
After their performance of fan favorite “1980s Horror Film” from their first EP Spring, they had technical difficulties and picked a fan to choose a song to play instead of the one they planned. The fan picked “Ground,” also a track from their EP Spring. Following was “Let the Sun In,” in which Ferenbach performed his infamous trumpet solo and completed the performance of the entirety of Spring. Fans went crazy for the slowed rendition of their 2018 single “Underneath the Streetlights in the Winter Outside Your House.”
The band “ended” the show with the final track from their latest album, Tell Me That It’s Over. They left the stage only to return after Arkansas residents called the hogs. When Minnette returned to the stage, he asked the crowd to call them again and fans replied, “Wooo Pig Sooie! Razorbacks!” They performed “Marvelous” and then began to play their popular single “Are You Bored Yet?” but were interrupted because Preston’s drum pad stopped working. While he tried to find the source of the problem, Lemasters took it into his own hands to distract everyone. He started to strum One Direction’s “What Makes You Beautiful” as fans began to sing the words. Still stalling for time, he also began to play One Direction’s “One Thing.” To both, fans began to freak out while experiencing a rare crossover. Eventually, they solved the problem and closed the show with “Are You Bored Yet?”
Later this year, the band will headline their first trip to Australia and will return to Europe in 2023. They also confirmed a few slots at different festivals in South America and will be opening for Blink-182 at two shows in Peru and Mexico.
WALLOWS
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EMPATH
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JJ’S LIVE
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Mass Shooting Nightmare Arrives In Raleigh On The Doorstep Of A Peaceful Neighborhood
Mass Shooting Nightmare Arrives In Raleigh, On The Doorstep Of A Peaceful Neighborhood https://digitalarkansasnews.com/mass-shooting-nightmare-arrives-in-raleigh-on-the-doorstep-of-a-peaceful-neighborhood/
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Raleigh shooting coverage
Seven people were shot in Raleigh, NC, near the Neuse River Greenway Trail. Five were killed, including a Raleigh police officer. Check back for the latest updates from The N&O’s breaking news team.
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They were going to start looking to buy their own place early next year, somewhere on the outskirts of town, somewhere with a bigger and nicer yard. For three years, Tracey Howard and his wife had been renting in the Hedingham neighborhood in east Raleigh, but they wanted a home of their own. That was the dream.
Friday afternoon, though, there was a bullet hole in the mailbox next to his driveway and a police car idling in the street, an officer keeping watch. Television reporters jockeyed to put microphones and cameras in Howard’s face while he tried to explain his stolen future, and a dream that now will never come true.
“Things don’t seem real,” he said, staring into a void while he sat on his front porch. “Nothing seems real.”
Howard, 57, had gone to the store a day earlier to buy light bulbs and when he returned his wife was on that same porch, bleeding from gunshots, their dog shot dead at her feet. Nicole Connors was one of five people killed among seven shot after neighbors say Austin Thompson, a teenager dressed in camouflage, ambushed his community.
Tracey Howard stands on the porch of his home in the Hedingham neighborhood at 5355 Sahalee Way after talking with the media on Oct. 14. His wife Nicole Connors and their dog were killed on the porch a day earlier. Howard was running an errand at the time of the shooting that killed five people, including his wife and an off-duty police officer. Robert Willett rwillett@newsobserver.com
From several accounts, Thompson, 15, terrorized his neighborhood and the greenway that runs parallel to it. The rampage began late Thursday afternoon, an evil defiling the beauty of an enviable mid-October day when the gun blasts first echoed on Sahalee Way. The shooter then made his way across the fairway of a golf course and onto the Neuse River Greenway, a popular biking and walking trail, where the horror continued.
Days later, the carnage from Raleigh’s deadliest mass shooting is only beginning to come into focus, the emotional toll just starting to be understood. What began as the most idyllic of North Carolina autumn days — the air tinged with a brisk cool, the leaves turning, the State Fair starting — turned into what Gov. Roy Cooper described as a nightmare come true.
“Tonight terror has reached our doorstep,” he said Thursday, after Raleigh Mayor Mary-Ann Baldwin fought her cracking voice and shaking hands to deliver a statement of her own. “The nightmare of every community has come to Raleigh.”
In a country where gun violence never stops, where gunmen have killed elementary school children in their classrooms; where people have died en masse at concerts and nightclubs and movie theaters; where the names of places like Newtown and Aurora and Columbine and Uvalde conjure memories of the horrors that happened there, Raleigh joined a dreaded club. It’s one no city aspires to but whose membership feels sadly inevitable.
The shootings in east Raleigh are the 531st mass shooting in America in 2022, according to gunviolencearchive.org, a website that tracks mass shootings in which at least four people are shot “in a single incident.” Five-hundred and thirty-two people died in those 531 shootings, according to the website, and 2,221 people were injured, including the two who were shot, and as of Saturday midday survived, in Raleigh.
Newtown and Uvalde taught us that elementary schools aren’t immune to this carnage. Las Vegas showed us the same thing about an outdoor concert. In Aurora it was a movie theater; at Highland Park, outside of Chicago, it was a Fourth of July parade.
Raleigh’s lesson proved as frightening as any: Not even our neighborhoods are safe havens. Not even one’s own porch.
After a candlelight vigil outside the Hedingham clubhouse Saturday, Oct. 15, 2022, attendees look at a memorial for those killed and wounded in a mass shooting in the Hedingham neighborhood in Raleigh, N.C., on Thursday. Ethan Hyman ehyman@newsobserver.com
The thin line between life, death in Hedingham
The house Howard and Connors shared is two doors down from where the alleged killer lived. Four others died Thursday: Thompson’s own brother, James Thompson, 16; Susan Karnatz, 49; Mary Marshall, 34; and off-duty officer Gabriel Torres, 29, who was killed while leaving for his shift with the Raleigh Police Department.
Howard learned on Friday that his wife had returned home the previous afternoon and gone inside to prepare to walk Sami, their dog. They’d stepped on the porch, Connors and the dog, when a neighbor from across the street walked over to talk. That’s when the shooting began.
A 911 call released later recorded a witness seeing only the neighbor, Marcille “Lynn” Gardner, lying in the driveway. Then the caller, a woman, noticed another victim.
“Oh, no,” she said, distraught. “I didn’t see the person on the porch.”
Calls to police and accounts from neighbors a day later spoke to the thin line between life and death in Hedingham on Thursday. If people happened to be outside — perhaps walking or about to walk their dog, or going for a jog, or playing golf, or bicycling on the greenway — they stood at risk of becoming a target.
At 5:21 p.m. Thursday, a bicyclist called Raleigh police to report that he found a woman unconscious on the trail, near a suspension bridge. “Oh my God! She’s bleeding,” he said. Her little dog was there too, he said.
Within minutes he realized another woman was down and ran to see what he could tell police.
“Oh my God, there is another person.”
But if they happened to be gone at a given time, the way Howard had been gone when he left for the store, they’d spared themselves without knowing it.
Howard thought about that, too, how if he’d been home he likely would have been out on the porch, next to his wife, when the gunman began firing. It was no consolation. He sounded haunted that he hadn’t been there.
“This is my life now,” said Howard, and he could barely get the words out to describe Connors. They’d been married five years. Howard first fell in love with her smile, then her kindness, and then he went to the store Thursday and came home and their time together suddenly was a memory.
Police officers work the scene of a shooting in Raleigh, N.C., Thursday, Oct. 13, 2022. Travis Long tlong@newsobserver.com
The mourning radiated from his porch to the surrounding streets, down along the greenway and throughout Raleigh, which had suffered days like this — the North Hills shooting in 1972; another spree shooting that killed four in 1975 — but not in a long time. At the entrance of Hedingham, the flags flew at half-staff and they did throughout the state after a Friday morning order from Cooper.
After a candlelight vigil outside the Hedingham clubhouse Saturday, Oct. 15, 2022, attendees look at a memorial for those killed and wounded in a mass shooting in the Hedingham neighborhood in Raleigh, N.C., on Thursday. Ethan Hyman ehyman@newsobserver.com
At the State Fair on Friday morning, Steve Troxler, the North Carolina commissioner of agriculture, called for a moment of silence. President Joe Biden released a statement in which he said, “Jill and I are grieving with the families in Raleigh, North Carolina, whose loved ones were killed and wounded in yet another mass shooting in America.”
“Enough,” Biden went on. “We’ve grieved and prayed with too many families who have had to bear the terrible burden of these mass shootings.” He asked God “to grant the wounded the strength to recover in Raleigh.”
Here, though, the recovery had yet to begin. Grief remained in its earliest stages. A church near the neighborhood organized a candlelight vigil, scheduled for Saturday afternoon at the Hedingham clubhouse, to mourn the dead. Even those who’d escaped physical harm, who hadn’t lost loved ones, carried fresh wounds reminding them of their mortality, or of how quickly lives could change. Some wondered: Had they, too, been close to death? Had their families?
Raleigh Police officers walk door to door checking on residents in the Hedingham neighborhood and Neuse River Trail area in Raleigh after 5 people were shot and killed Thursday, Oct. 13, 2022. Travis Long tlong@newsobserver.com
‘It’s a scary world’
Lavarius Thompson, who lives steps away from where it appears the carnage began, usually works out in his open garage but he decided to rest Thursday. If he hadn’t, he could’ve been a target. He’d moved to the neighborhood in part because he found it to be safer than where he grew up in South Florida. In Hedingham, he said, he’d discovered “the best sleep I’ve had in years.”
Yet Thursday night there was no sleep. Thompson, no relation to the alleged shooter, stayed up until 5 a.m. talking with a neighbor, two friends consoling each other.
“It ain’t just here, man,” Thompson said about his young neighbor’s incomprehensible attack. “It’s everywhere. Every time you turn the corner, somebody’s just — somebody’s just got violence on their mind.”
Also nearby, it had been a long night, too, for Joe Biunno and his wife and daughter. Biunno stayed up until morning and sat on his back porch, keeping watch even after police announced, four hours after the massacre began, that the suspect was in custody.
“I just didn’t trust it,” said Biunno, who emerged from his house Friday morning and walked his dogs near the edge of the police tape blocking the street. “There could’ve been more guys.”
One fear had spawned another: He didn’t want to send his daughter to school.
She’s a sophomore at Knightdale Hig...
Arkansas Storm Team Weather Blog: Little Rock To See Earliest Freeze Ever!
Arkansas Storm Team Weather Blog: Little Rock To See Earliest Freeze Ever! https://digitalarkansasnews.com/arkansas-storm-team-weather-blog-little-rock-to-see-earliest-freeze-ever/
LITTLE ROCK, Ark. – The big cool-down that we have been forecasting for more than a week is here! But what was looking like a few days of below-average temperatures has turned into historic cold for mid-October.
Temperatures will be dropping each day through Wednesday. Monday will be cooler with temperatures in the 60s. Tuesday will be cold with lows in the 30s and highs in the 50s. Wednesday morning will be the coldest with two records set to fall!
The first record that Little Rock is forecast to break Wednesday, is the daily record low. The old record is 33° set back in 1989, and the forecast is 32°.
The second and more significant record is Little Rock’s earliest freeze on record. The old record is Oct. 20, set in 1989. Wednesday is the 19th, so we would break that record by just one day.
This cold is way ahead of schedual! Little Rock’s average first 32° temperatures is not until Nov. 14. For northern Arkansas, it’s just a week or so earlier than normal.
This winter-like chill will be short lived. Temperatures will shoot back into the 70s and 80s by the weekend.
– Meteorologist Alex Libby
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Somalia Drought: The Moment A Two-Year-Old Dies From Hunger
Somalia Drought: The Moment A Two-Year-Old Dies From Hunger https://digitalarkansasnews.com/somalia-drought-the-moment-a-two-year-old-dies-from-hunger/
Image source, BBC/ Ed Habershon
Image caption,
Hawa, seen here holding her daughter Ubah and with her son Abdiwali lying on the bed, says he had been growing weaker for weeks before they came to get help
By Andrew Harding
BBC News, Dollow
After two days in a small Somali hospital, Abdiwali Abdi seemed to be groping his way towards some sort of recovery.
The two-year-old still weighed just 4.6kg (10lb 2oz) – not much more than a healthy newborn. But he had the energy to moan now, and his mother, Hawa, sat beside him on the bed, in the border town of Dollow, breastfeeding her two-month-old daughter and making hopeful plans to return to their makeshift camp on the dusty outskirts.
“It’s encouraging,” said Fatuma Mohammed, a senior nurse and administrator from Kenya, as she paced around the 17-bed stabilisation ward, with its 17 infants all wrestling with malnutrition, and with the various diseases that keep it company here on the dry, thorny plains of southern Somalia, as the country grapples with its worst drought in 40 years.
“We don’t have food to feed him, but our neighbours have been helping us,” said Hawa, 22, watching her son closely. He’d been growing weaker for weeks, with a fever and diarrhoea, before they finally came to seek help.
The district hospital in Dollow – a dusty little border town in south-western Somalia – has been quietly assisting children like Abdiwali for years. Funded by the UK government, and others, it has built up a network of community workers who provide basic medical support, not just in town, but deep into the contested countryside, where the militant Islamist group al-Shabab controls many villages.
But today, following a fifth failed rainy season, Dollow is being overwhelmed by a surge of new arrivals. Tens of thousands of families like Abdiwali’s – their cattle dead and their farms parched – have gathered in crowded informal settlements, hoping to find food and safety.
“We’re talking about hundreds of thousands of lives [at stake] and people are dying now. We don’t have enough resources to support them,” said Abdulkadir Mohamed, from the Norwegian Refugee Council, watching more families arrive at one of the larger camps.
Image caption,
Doctors wrapped Abdiwali in a thermal blanket to try to raise his body temperature
At the hospital, nearly 100 women sat in the midday heat, nursing malnourished infants, waiting for them to be weighed and assessed.
“It’s going to be really bad here. We’re expecting things to get worse – we’re expecting a formal declaration [of famine] very soon,” said Pamela Wasonga, who runs the hospital’s nutrition programme on behalf of an Irish charity, Trocaire.
The United Nations is warning that 6.7 million people will need food aid in Somalia in the coming months – about 40% of the population.
Overnight, Abdiwali’s condition deteriorated. Soon after nine the next morning, his temperature fell sharply, and two Somali doctors quickly wrapped him in a thermal blanket made of foil. Two beds away, an 18-month-old girl was getting the same, urgent treatment.
“We’re really worried. These children cannot control their temperatures very well. That’s why we never put on the [ceiling] fans in the stabilisation centres. If the child warms up, then the survival rate is higher,” said Ms Mohammed, as a doctor rested a thermometer under Abdiwali’s limp arm.
By now, the boy’s father, Kerad Adan, 28, had arrived at the hospital, and was pacing nervously around the bed.
Before this new drought, the family had been quite well off, with four children, 40 cows and a thatched home near the town of Qansax Dheere, 200km (125 miles) south of Dollow.
But that region, Bay, lies at the centre of the current drought, and, two months ago, the last of the family’s cattle – the source of all their wealth – died. Soon after that, the parents decided to pack up a few belongings on a donkey cart and head north with the family, trekking for six days. Al-Shabab militants tried to stop them leaving the town but settled for confiscating Mr Adan’s mobile phone, smashing it in front of him.
Suddenly the doctors clustered around Abdiwali. One of them used two fingers to press, repeatedly, on his chest, hoping to stimulate a heartbeat. His colleague moved closer to look into the child’s unmoving eyes. The parents stood quietly at the foot of the bed.
And then, at 10:13 on an overcast morning, it was over.
“The heartbeats have gone,” whispered Ms Mohammed, now watching Abdiwali’s mother as she slumped onto the bed and began to cry.
“We’ve been able to rescue quite a lot of babies. But probably things are getting worse now,” said Ms Mohammed, in the manner of someone who has seen such scenes many times.
“It’s so sad and painful when you witness something that can be prevented and can be corrected very easily,” said the hospital’s head doctor, Ali Shueb.
Within minutes, Abdiwali’s father was on the phone, alerting relatives, and planning a funeral, that afternoon.
“Everyone must die, at some time,” he said, quietly, as if to himself.
Image source, BBC/ Ed Habershon
Image caption,
Abdiwali’s parents Hawa and Kerad Adan, the day after losing their son
An ambulance reversed up the narrow lane outside the hospital, and Abdiwali’s parents climbed onboard, the father carefully clutching his son’s body, wrapped in a heavy piece of material, in both hands.
Later, Pamela Wasonga showed visitors the hospital’s well-stocked pharmacy and small laboratory. She first came to Somalia from her home in Kenya during its last famine, in 2011, and has been here ever since, confident that much has changed since then, and that the steady work of the past decade was paying off.
“I think the continuity of service that has been here all along has probably averted a very, very much worse situation. There are more [international] organisations now on the ground, and more local organisations who are able to reach remote and hard to reach areas,” she said.
And yet, just as another famine looms, the hospital has – perhaps temporarily – lost half its international funding as a result of delays caused by political upheavals in the capital, Mogadishu.
Worse still is growing evidence that a distracted world has been slow to recognise the scale of the catastrophe now unfolding in Somalia, with new data showing less than half the humanitarian funding required to respond to the drought is currently in place.
The UK, for instance, provided over £200 million ($223 million) in humanitarian assistance during Somalia’s last serious drought in 2017. This year it is spending less than a quarter of that.
“We ask the world… not to lose focus on Somalia. Somalia needs help now. If we don’t get it, we are heading for a catastrophe, for sure,” said Ms Wasonga.
Image source, BBC/ Ed Habershon
Image caption,
Abdiwali was buried on the far edge of the Ladan camp
By the time the ambulance reached the far edge of Ladan camp, on the eastern outskirts of town, a crowd had gathered outside the family’s tent.
Flurries of wind whipped up spirals of thick dust. Jerry cans of water were brought in to wash the child’s body. Someone had already bought a special piece of white linen for the burial. Then two neighbours, shovels slung over bony shoulders, set off towards a fenced-off scrap of wasteland to dig a grave. They chose a spot between two other small, child-sized piles of earth.
An hour later, Hawa arrived at the cemetery. By tradition, women do not attend burials. But she and her mother had made it clear they would not be kept away, and so they sat, with a few other women, perhaps 20 metres from the graveside.
“You tried your best.” “You have other children.” The women quietly passed around words of sympathy and encouragement, while Abdiwali’s father took turns with the other men, swinging a pickaxe into the hard, dry earth.
A short prayer followed, then the burial itself. Then Abdiwali’s parents walked back towards their new home, as the wind blew in across the plain, and scraps of rags and litter shook on a thousand, bone-dry, thorn bushes.
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Reuters US Domestic News Summary | Politics https://digitalarkansasnews.com/reuters-us-domestic-news-summary-politics-5/
Following is a summary of current US domestic news briefs.
Biden calls testimony, video from Jan. 6 committee hearing ‘devastating’
U.S. President Joe Biden described as “devastating” testimony and video from a Jan. 6 committee hearing two days ago, featuring congressional leaders in tense phone calls with Pentagon and White House officials during the assault on the U.S. Capitol. Biden was speaking to reporters during a stop at an ice cream shop in Oregon as he campaigned for Tina Kotek, who is running for governor of the state.
Biden, campaigning for Oregon’s Kotek, warns about Trump’s impact on states
U.S. President Joe Biden warned that former President Donald Trump’s hold on the Republican Party would spill into state government on Saturday during an event to boost Democrat Tina Kotek in Oregon’s tight race for governor. Biden, who is finishing a western travel swing that included stops in Colorado and California, came to Oregon in part to help Kotek, who supporters hope will keep the governorship in Democratic hands in a state the president won handily in 2020.
Herschel Walker and Raphael Warnock trade blows in Georgia U.S. Senate debate
Democratic U.S. Senator Raphael Warnock and Republican challenger Herschel Walker sparred over a range of issues from abortion and policing to personal integrity on Friday, as a key Georgia contest that could help determine control of the Senate came to a head in a contentious televised debate. Walker, a one-time football star and political novice backed by former President Donald Trump, sought to brand the incumbent as a rubber stamp for Democratic President Joe Biden’s agenda, which Republicans have painted as responsible for inflation, crime and other social ills.
Biden arrives in Oregon as Democratic hold on governorship is threatened
U.S. President Joe Biden arrived in Oregon on Friday to rally support for the Democratic gubernatorial candidate, who is in danger of losing in a state where a Republican has not been elected governor since 1982. The race for the governorship pits Democrat Tina Kotek against Republican Christine Drazan and an independent candidate, Betsy Johnson, a former Democrat who is financially backed by Nike co-founder Phil Knight. All three women are former state legislators. Incumbent Governor Kate Brown, a Democrat, cannot run for re-election because of term limits.
U.S. President Joe Biden to visit Philadelphia month-end – White House
U.S. President Joe Biden will travel to Philadelphia on Oct. 28 for a reception hosted by the Pennsylvania Democratic Party, the White House said on Saturday. Biden would be accompanied by Vice President Kamala Harris. There were no further details. The visit would come ahead of the high-stakes Nov. 8 mid-term elections that would determine control of the U.S. Congress.
Obama to stump for Democrats in three states ahead of high-stakes Nov. 8 election
Former U.S. President Barack Obama will campaign for Democratic Party candidates in Georgia, Michigan and Wisconsin later this month ahead of the Nov. 8 midterm elections that will determine control of the U.S. Congress. Obama will stump for candidates for federal and state offices, appearing in Atlanta on Oct. 28 before traveling to Detroit and Milwaukee on Oct. 29, his office said on Saturday.
Police arrest suspect in California serial killings
Police in Stockton, California said on Saturday they have arrested a man suspected of killing six people in a string of murders that have rocked the area in Northern California. Thanks to tips and investigative work, authorities were able to watch a man and stop him while he was driving in the city in the early hours of Saturday morning, Stockton Police Chief Stanley McFadden said.
Biden to campaign for DeSantis rival Crist in November Florida trip
U.S. President Joe Biden will take on a potential 2024 presidential rival, Florida’s Governor Ron DeSantis, in a November campaign event for the Democratic candidate for governor, Charlie Crist. The White House said on Sunday that Biden will travel to Fort Lauderdale, Florida on Nov. 1 to attend a reception for Crist, a former governor and member of Congress who is trailing in polls behind the popular Republican incumbent.
Former WSJ reporter says law firm used Indian hackers to sabotage his career
A former Wall Street Journal reporter is accusing a major U.S. law firm of having used mercenary hackers to oust him from his job and ruin his reputation. In a lawsuit filed late Friday, Jay Solomon, the Journal’s former chief foreign correspondent, said Philadelphia-based Dechert LLP worked with hackers from India to steal emails between him and one of his key sources, Iranian American aviation executive Farhad Azima.
U.S. moves to dismiss price-fixing case against two former Pilgrim’s Pride execs
The U.S. Justice Department on Sunday moved to dismiss an antitrust indictment against two former Pilgrim’s Pride Corp executives who were the remaining defendants in a conspiracy prosecution that has failed to secure any convictions. Federal prosecutors asked U.S. District Judge Daniel Domenico to dismiss the case against Jason McGuire, who was a former executive vice president of sales at Pilgrim’s Pride, and Timothy Stiller, a former general manager.
(This story has not been edited by Devdiscourse staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
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Biden Turning To Trump-Era Rule To Expel Venezuelan Migrants LimaOhio.com
Biden Turning To Trump-Era Rule To Expel Venezuelan Migrants – LimaOhio.com https://digitalarkansasnews.com/biden-turning-to-trump-era-rule-to-expel-venezuelan-migrants-limaohio-com/
FILE – Venezuelan migrants wait for a bus to take them north, at the Northern Bus Station Thursday in Mexico City. President Joe Biden last week invoked a Trump-era rule known as Title 42, which Biden’s own Justice Department is fighting in court, to deny Venezuelans fleeing their crisis-torn country the chance to request asylum at the border.
Eduardo Verdugo | AP File Photo
” href=”https://www.limaohio.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/129936744_web1_129936744-562ae06a692745538f6c7b0ba16015f7.jpg”
FILE – Venezuelan migrants wait for a bus to take them north, at the Northern Bus Station Thursday in Mexico City. President Joe Biden last week invoked a Trump-era rule known as Title 42, which Biden’s own Justice Department is fighting in court, to deny Venezuelans fleeing their crisis-torn country the chance to request asylum at the border.
Eduardo Verdugo | AP File Photo
WASHINGTON, D.C. (AP) — Two years ago, candidate Joe Biden loudly denounced President Donald Trump for immigration policies that inflicted “cruelty and exclusion at every turn,” including toward those fleeing the “brutal” government of socialist Nicolas Maduro in Venezuela.
Now, with increasing numbers of Venezuelans arriving at the U.S.-Mexico border as the Nov. 8 election nears, Biden has turned to an unlikely source for a solution: his predecessor’s playbook.
Biden last week invoked a Trump-era rule known as Title 42 — which Biden’s own Justice Department is fighting in court — to deny Venezuelans fleeing their crisis-torn country the chance to request asylum at the border.
The rule, first invoked by Trump in 2020, uses emergency public health authority to allow the United States to keep migrants from seeking asylum at the border, based on the need to help prevent the spread of COVID-19.
Under the new Biden administration policy, Venezuelans who walk or swim across America’s southern border will be expelled and any Venezuelan who illegally enters Mexico or Panama will be ineligible to come to the United States. But as many as 24,000 Venezuelans will be accepted at U.S. airports, similar to how Ukrainians have been admitted since Russia’s invasion in February.
Mexico has insisted that the U.S. admit one Venezuelan on humanitarian parole for each Venezuelan it expels to Mexico, according to a Mexican official who was not authorized to discuss the matter publicly and spoke condition of anonymity. So if the Biden administration paroles 24,000 Venezuelans to the U.S., Mexico would take no more than 24,000 Venezuelans expelled from the U.S.
The Biden policy marks an abrupt turn for the White House, which just weeks ago was lambasting Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, both Republicans, for putting Venezuelan migrants “fleeing political persecution” on buses and planes to Democratic strongholds.
“These were children, they were moms, they were fleeing communism,” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said at the time.
Biden’s new policy has drawn swift criticism from immigrant advocates, many of them quick to point out the Trump parallels.
“Rather than restore the right to asylum decimated by the Trump administration … the Biden administration has dangerously embraced the failures of the past and expanded upon them by explicitly enabling expulsions of Venezuelan migrants,” said Jennifer Nagda, policy director of the Young Center for Immigrant Children’s Rights.
The administration says the policy is aimed at ensuring a “lawful and orderly” way for Venezuelans to enter the U.S.
Why the turnaround?
For more than a year after taking office in January 2021, Biden deferred to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which used its authority to keep in place the Trump-era declaration that a public health risk existed that warranted expedited expulsion of asylum-seekers.
Members of Biden’s own party and activist groups had expressed skepticism about the public health underpinnings for allowing Title 42 to remain in effect, especially when COVID-19 was spreading more widely within the U.S. than elsewhere.
After months of internal deliberations and preparations, the CDC on April 1 said it would end the public health order and return to normal border processing of migrants, giving them a chance to request asylum in the U.S.
Homeland Security officials braced for a resulting increase in border crossings.
But officials inside and outside the White House were conflicted over ending the authority, believing it effectively kept down the number of people crossing the border illegally, according to senior administration officials.
A court order in May that kept Title 42 in place due to a challenge from Republican state officials was greeted with quiet relief by some in the administration, according to officials who spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity to discuss internal discussions.
The recent increase in migration from Venezuela, sparked by political, social and economic instability in the country, dashed officials’ hopes that they were finally seeing a lull in the chaos that had defined the border region for the past year.
By August, Venezuelans were the second-largest nationality arriving at the U.S. border after Mexicans. Given that U.S. tensions with Venezuela meant migrants from the country could not be sent back easily, the situation became increasingly difficult to manage.
So an administration that had rejected many Trump-era policies aimed at keeping out migrants, that had worked to make the asylum process easier and that had increased the number of refugees allowed into the U.S. now turned to Title 42.
It brokered a deal to send the Venezuelans to Mexico, which already had agreed to accept migrants expelled under Title 42 if they are from Guatemala, Honduras or El Salvador.
All the while, Justice Department lawyers continue to appeal a court decision that has kept Title 42 in place. They are opposing Republican attorneys general from more than 20 states who have argued that Title 42 is “the only safety valve preventing this Administration’s already disastrous border control policies from descending into an unmitigated catastrophe.”
Under Title 42, migrants have been expelled more than 2.3 million times from the U.S. after crossing the country’s land borders illegally from Canada or Mexico, though most try to come through Mexico.
The administration had announced it would stop expelling migrants under Title 42 starting May 23 and go back to detaining and deporting migrants who did not qualify to enter and remain in the U.S. — a longer process that allows migrants to request asylum in the U.S.
“We are extremely disturbed by the apparent acceptance, codification, and expansion of the use of Title 42, an irrelevant health order, as a cornerstone of border policy,” said Thomas Cartwright of Witness at the Border. “One that expunges the legal right to asylum.”
A separate lawsuit from the American Civil Liberties Union also is trying to end Title 42, an effort that could render the administration’s proposal useless.
“People have a right to seek asylum – regardless of where they came from, how they arrive in the United States, and whether or not they have family here,” said ACLU lawyer Lee Gelernt.
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