Month: June 2022

A Britain-based group says its latest study of worldwide free expression rights shows only 15% of the global population lives where people can receive or share information freely.

In its 2022 Global Expression Report, Article19, an international human rights organization, said that in authoritarian nations such as China, Myanmar and Russia, and in democracies such as Brazil and India, 80% of the global population live with less freedom of expression than a decade ago.

The report said authoritarian regimes and rulers continue to tighten control over what their populations see, hear and say.

While mentioning Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Russian President Vladimir Putin, the report singles out China’s government for “exerting ultimate authority over the identities, information and opinions” of hundreds of millions of people.  

The annual report examines freedom of expression across 161 countries using 25 indicators to measure how free each person is to express, communicate and participate in society, without fear of harassment, legal repercussions or violence. It creates a score from zero to 100 for each country.

This year, the report ranks Denmark and Switzerland tops in the world, each with scores of 96. Norway and Sweden each have scores of 94, and Estonia and Finland both scored 93. The study said the top 10 most open nations are European.

Article 19 ranks North Korea as the most oppressive nation in the world with a score of zero. Eritrea, Syria and Turkmenistan had scores of one, and Belarus, China and Cuba had scores of two.   

The United States ranked 30th on the scale. In 2011, it was 9th in the world. The U.S. has seen a nine-point drop in its score, putting the country on the lower end of the open expression category. It was globally ranked in the lowest quartile in 2021 in its scores for equality in civil liberties for social groups, political polarization and social polarization, and political violence.

The report said that over the past two decades, there have been more dramatic downward shifts in freedom of expression around the world than at any time. Many of these occur as the result of power grabs or coups, but many more nations have seen an erosion of rights, often under democratically elected populist leaders.

Article 19 takes its name from the article under the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which states, “Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.”
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The U.S. Supreme Court sided with President Joe Biden on Thursday as he seeks to end a hardline immigration policy begun under his predecessor Donald Trump that forced tens of thousands of migrants to stay in Mexico to await U.S. hearings on their asylum claims.

The justices, in a 5-4 ruling authored by Chief Justice John Roberts, overturned a federal appeals court decision requiring Biden to restart Trump’s “remain in Mexico” policy after the Republican-led states of Texas and Missouri sued to maintain the program. The ruling is a victory for Biden, who appealed the lower court’s decision, and his plan to implement a more “humane” approach at the southern border.

Trump’s administration adopted the policy, formally called the “Migrant Protection Protocols,” in 2018 in response to an increase in migration along the U.S.-Mexican border, changing longstanding U.S. practice. It prevented certain non-Mexican migrants, including asylum seekers fearing persecution in their home countries, from being released into the United States to await immigration proceedings, instead returning them to Mexico.

Biden suspended the “remain in Mexico” policy in January 2021 shortly after taking office and acted to rescind it five months later. Roughly 68,000 people fell under the policy from the time it took effect in 2019 until Biden suspended it.

At issue in the case was the meaning of a provision of a 1996 U.S. immigration law that stated that U.S. officials “may return” certain immigrants to Mexican territory pending immigration proceedings. Texas and Missouri have said this provision must be used because the United States lacks detention space for migrants.

Biden’s administration said the provision was clearly discretionary and the lower court’s decision meant that “every presidential administration, in an unbroken line for the past quarter century, has been in open violation” of the law.

Administrations prior to Trump’s presidency had used the provision sparingly.

The Biden administration said lower courts are unacceptably interfering with the historically broad authority that U.S. presidents have held over immigration and foreign affairs.

For migrants not posing a security risk, immigration law separately allows their release into the United States for humanitarian reasons or “significant public benefit” pending a hearing, a practice that officials have followed for decades.

Biden’s fellow Democrats and immigration advocates criticized Trump’s policy, saying migrants stuck in Mexican border cities have faced kidnappings and other hazards.

The number of migrants caught crossing the U.S.-Mexico border has reached record highs recently. Republicans have criticized Biden’s immigration policies and contend that the “remain in Mexico” policy effectively deterred unlawful migration.

After a judge ruled in favor of Texas and Missouri, reinstating the program, the Supreme Court last August refused the Biden administration’s request to block that decision while it appealed.

The New Orleans-based 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in December that because the government lacks the capacity to detain all migrants eligible for admission pending a hearing, it must maintain “remain in Mexico.”

The decision was issued on the final day of rulings for the court’s current nine-month term.
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A team searching a Mississippi courthouse basement for evidence about the lynching of Black teenager Emmett Till has found the unserved warrant charging a white woman in his 1955 kidnapping, and relatives of the victim want authorities to finally arrest her nearly 70 years later.

A warrant for the arrest of Carolyn Bryant Donham — identified as “Mrs. Roy Bryant” on the document — was discovered last week by searchers inside a file folder that had been placed in a box, Leflore County Circuit Clerk Elmus Stockstill told The Associated Press on Wednesday.

Documents are kept inside boxes by decade, he said, but there was nothing else to indicate where the warrant, dated Aug. 29, 1955, might have been.

“They narrowed it down between the ’50s and ’60s and got lucky,” said Stockstill, who certified the warrant as genuine.

The search group included members of the Emmett Till Legacy Foundation and two Till relatives: cousin Deborah Watts, head of the foundation; and her daughter, Teri Watts. Relatives want authorities to use the warrant to arrest Donham, who at the time of the slaying was married to one of two white men tried and acquitted just weeks after Till was abducted from a relative’s home, tortured, killed and dumped into a river.

“Serve it and charge her,” Teri Watts told the AP in an interview.

Keith Beauchamp, whose documentary film The Untold Story of Emmett Louis Till preceded a renewed Justice Department probe that ended without charges in 2007, was also part of the search. He said there’s enough new evidence to prosecute Donham.

Donham set off the case in August 1955 by accusing the 14-year-old Till of making improper advances at a family store in Money, Mississippi. A cousin of Till who was there has said Till whistled at the woman, an act that flew in the face of Mississippi’s racist social codes of the era.

Evidence indicates a woman, possibly Donham, identified Till to the men who later killed him. The arrest warrant against Donham was publicized at the time, but the Leflore County sheriff told reporters he did not want to “bother” the woman since she had two young children to care for.

Now in her 80s and most recently living in North Carolina, Donham has not commented publicly on calls for her prosecution. But Teri Watts said the Till family believes the warrant accusing Donham of kidnapping amounts to new evidence.

“This is what the state of Mississippi needs to go ahead,” she said.

District Attorney Dewayne Richardson, whose office would prosecute a case, declined comment on the warrant but cited a December report about the Till case from the Justice Department, which said no prosecution was possible.

Contacted by the AP on Wednesday, Leflore County Sheriff Ricky Banks said: “This is the first time I’ve known about a warrant.”

Banks, who was 7 years old when Till was killed, said “nothing was said about a warrant” when a former district attorney investigated the case five or six years ago.

“I will see if I can get a copy of the warrant and get with the DA and get their opinion on it,” Banks said. If the warrant can still be served, Banks said, he would have to talk to law enforcement officers in the state where Donham resides.

Arrest warrants can “go stale” due to the passage of time and changing circumstances, and one from 1955 almost certainly wouldn’t pass muster before a court, even if a sheriff agreed to serve it, said Ronald J. Rychlak, a law professor at the University of Mississippi.

But combined with any new evidence, the original arrest warrant “absolutely” could be an important stepping stone toward establishing probable cause for a new prosecution, he said.

“If you went in front of a judge you could say, ‘Once upon a time a judge determined there was probable cause, and much more information is available today,’” Rychlak said.

Till, who was from Chicago, was visiting relatives in Mississippi when he entered the store where Donham, then 21, was working on Aug. 24, 1955. A Till relative who was there, Wheeler Parker, told AP that Till whistled at the woman. Donham testified in court that Till also grabbed her and made a lewd comment.

Two nights later, Donham’s then-husband, Roy Bryant, and his half-brother, J.W. Milam, showed up armed at the rural Leflore County home of Till’s great-uncle, Mose Wright, looking for the youth. Till’s brutalized body, weighted down by a fan, was pulled from a river days later in another county. His mother’s decision to open the casket so mourners in Chicago could see what had happened helped galvanize the building civil rights movement of the time.

Bryant and Milam were acquitted of murder but later admitted the killing in a magazine interview. While both men were named in the same warrant that accused Donham of kidnapping, authorities did not pursue the case following their acquittal.

Wright testified during the murder trial that a person with a voice “lighter” than a man’s identified Till from inside a pickup truck and the abductors took him away. Other evidence in FBI files indicates that earlier that same night, Donham told her husband at least two other Black men were not the right person.
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The House committee investigating the Jan. 6 insurrection issued a subpoena Wednesday to former White House counsel Pat Cipollone, who is said to have stridently warned against former President Donald Trump’s efforts to try to overturn his election loss.

It’s the first public step the committee has taken since receiving the public testimony of Cassidy Hutchinson, the onetime junior aide who accused Trump of knowing his supporters were armed on Jan. 6 and demanding that he be taken to the U.S. Capitol that day.

Cipollone, who was Trump’s top White House lawyer, is said to have raised concerns about the former president’s efforts to overturn his 2020 election defeat and at one point threatened to resign. The committee said he could have information about several efforts by Trump allies to subvert the Electoral College, from organizing so-called alternate electors in states Biden won to trying to appoint as attorney general a loyalist who pushed false theories of voter fraud.

Cipollone has been placed in key moments after the election by Hutchinson as well as by former Justice Department lawyers who appeared for a hearing the week before.

Hutchinson said Cipollone warned before Jan. 6 that there would be “serious legal concerns” if Trump went to the Capitol with the protesters expected to rally outside.

The morning of Jan. 6, she testified, Cipollone restated his concerns that if Trump did go to the Capitol to try to intervene in the certification of the election, “we’re going to get charged with every crime imaginable.”

And as the insurrection went on, she says she heard Meadows tell Cipollone that Trump was sympathetic to rioters wanting to hang then-Vice President Mike Pence.

“You heard it,” Meadows told Cipollone, in her recollection. “He thinks Mike deserves it. He doesn’t think they’re doing anything wrong.”

Reps. Bennie Thompson, a Democrat, and Liz Cheney, a Republican, the chairman and vice chairman of the committee, said in their letter to Cipollone that while he had given the committee an “informal interview” on April 13, his refusal to provide on-the-record testimony made their subpoena necessary.

Rep. Adam Kinzinger, a Republican who sits on the committee, said last week that Cipollone told the committee he tried to intervene when he heard Trump was being advised by Jeffrey Clark, a former Justice Department official who wanted to push false claims of voter fraud. Federal agents recently seized Clark’s cell phone and conducted a search of his Virginia home.

Clark had drafted a letter for key swing states that was never sent but would have falsely claimed the department had discovered troubling irregularities in the election. Cipollone was quoted by one witness as having told Trump the letter was a “murder-suicide pact.”
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Pfizer Inc. and partner BioNTech said on Wednesday they signed a $3.2 billion deal with the U.S. government for 105 million doses of their COVID-19 vaccine, which could be delivered as soon as later this summer. 

The deal includes supplies of a retooled omicron-adapted vaccine, pending regulatory clearance, according to Pfizer. 

Drugmakers have been developing vaccines to target the omicron variant that became dominant last winter. 

The average price per dose in the new deal is over $30, a more than 50% increase from the $19.50 per dose the U.S. government paid in its initial contract with Pfizer. 

Some of the vaccine earmarked for adults included in the contract will be in single-dose vials, which are more expensive to manufacture but reduce waste of unused shots from open vials. 

“We look forward to taking delivery of these new variant-specific vaccines and working with state and local health departments, pharmacies, healthcare providers, federally qualified health centers, and other partners to make them available in communities around the country this fall,” U.S. Department of Health and Human Services official Dawn O’Connell said in a statement. 

Advisers to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration on Tuesday recommended a change in the design of COVID-19 booster shots for this fall in order to combat more recently circulating variants of the coronavirus. 

The U.S. government also has the option to purchase up to 195 million additional doses, bringing the total number of potential doses to 300 million, the companies said. 

The new contract should boost 2022 vaccine sales for Pfizer and BioNTech, which share profits from the shots. Pfizer has forecast COVID-19 vaccine sales of $32 billion this year. Analysts, on average, have forecast 2022 sales of around $33.6 billion for the shots. 

The U.S. government has distributed close to 450 million doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine in the United States since it was first authorized in December 2020, according to data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. More than 350 million of those doses have been administered. 

Because the Biden administration was unable to line up more COVID-19 funding from Congress earlier this month, it was forced to reallocate $10 billion of existing funding to pay for additional vaccines and treatments. 

According to the Department of Health and Human Services, the money to pay for doses in this new contract comes from that funding.
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An international task force created in March to put pressure on Russia to end its war in Ukraine has blocked more than $30 billion worth of funds and property owned by Russian oligarchs, the group announced on Wednesday. 

In addition to seizing yachts and luxury homes, the task force, known as Russian Elites, Proxies and Oligarchs (REPO), has frozen about $300 billion worth of Russian Central Bank assets, REPO members said in a joint statement. Ukraine is seeking the frozen funds for its reconstruction.

“REPO’s work is not yet complete,” the statement said. “In the coming months, REPO members will continue to track Russian-sanctioned assets and prevent sanctioned Russians from undermining the measures that REPO members have jointly imposed.”

The U.S.-led task force was created on March 17 with the purpose of confiscating the assets of Russian individuals and entities that have been sanctioned in connection with Russia’s February 24 invasion of Ukraine. In addition to the United States, its members include Australia, Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and the European Commission.

Since the start of the invasion, the U.S. Treasury Department has imposed sanctions on hundreds of entities and individuals close to Russian President Vladimir Putin.

In the latest move on Tuesday, the Treasury Department announced sanctions against 70 Russian entities, many deemed critical to Russia’s defense capabilities, and 29 Russian individuals. 

As part of the U.S. pressure campaign on Russia, the U.S. Justice Department launched Task Force KleptoCapture in March. Working with foreign partners, the task force has seized assets owned by Russian oligarchs worth hundreds of millions of dollars.

In April, Spanish authorities, at the request of the Justice Department, seized a super yacht owned by Russian billionaire Viktor Vekselberg. 

In May, Fijian authorities seized a $300 million yacht owned by another sanctioned oligarch, Suleiman Kerimov. The 106-meter luxury Amadea arrived in San Diego Bay on Monday, the Justice Department said.

Ukrainian officials say they want to take possession of the frozen Russian assets, including hundreds of billions of dollars in Russian Central Bank reserves, to fund reconstruction in Ukraine.  

Last month, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said the cost of rebuilding his country’s economy and infrastructure could run up to $600 billion.

Several European countries have backed Ukraine’s call, while the Justice Department has asked Congress for authority to transfer some of the proceeds of oligarch assets to Ukraine.  
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R. Kelly has been sentenced to 30 years in prison for using his R&B superstardom to subject young fans to systematic sexual abuse. 

U.S. District Judge Ann Donnelly imposed the sentence at a courthouse in Brooklyn. The sentence capped a slow-motion fall for the singer-songwriter, 55. He remained adored by legions of fans even after allegations about his abuse of young girls began circulating publicly in the 1990s.

A Brooklyn federal court jury last fall found Kelly, 55, guilty of racketeering and other counts at a trial that was seen as a signature moment in the #MeToo movement. 

Outrage over Kelly’s sexual misconduct with young women and children was fueled in part by the widely watched docuseries “Surviving R. Kelly,” which gave voice to accusers who wondered whether their stories were previously ignored because they were Black women. 

Kelly, born Robert Sylvester Kelly, manipulated millions of fans into believing he was someone other than the man the jury saw, one accuser told the court Wednesday. 

Victims “have sought to be heard and acknowledged,” she said. “We are no longer the preyed-on individuals we once were.” 

Another woman, sobbing and sniffling as she spoke, said Kelly’s conviction renewed her confidence in the legal system. 

“I once lost hope,” she said, addressing the court and prosecutors, “but you restored my faith.” 

The woman said Kelly victimized her after she went to a concert when she was 17. 

“I was afraid, naive and didn’t know how to handle the situation,” she said, so she didn’t speak up at the time. 

“Silence,” she said, “is a very lonely place.” 

Kelly kept his hands folded and eyes downcast as he listened. “He’s strong, and we are going to get through this,” defense lawyer Jennifer Bonjean said on her way into court.

Donnelly determined that federal guidelines allowed for a sentence of up to life in prison. Kelly’s lawyers sought 10 years or less. 

They argued in court papers he should get a break in part because he “experienced a traumatic childhood involving severe, prolonged childhood sexual abuse, poverty and violence.” 

As an adult with “literacy deficiencies,” the star was “repeatedly defrauded and financially abused, often by the people he paid to protect him,” his lawyers said. 

The hitmaker is known for work including the 1996 hit “I Believe I Can Fly” and the cult classic “Trapped in the Closet,” a multipart tale of sexual betrayal and intrigue. 

Allegations that Kelly abused young girls began circulating publicly in the 1990s. He was sued in 1997 by a woman who alleged sexual battery and sexual harassment while she was a minor, and he later faced criminal child pornography charges related to a different girl in Chicago. A jury there acquitted him in 2008, and he settled the lawsuit. 

All the while, Kelly continued to sell millions of albums.
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Known as America’s “Last Frontier,” Alaska conjures up thoughts of polar bears, subzero temperatures and expansive areas of little-explored terrain around the Arctic Circle.

Alaska’s often harsh environment makes year-round living difficult at best, with some areas accessible only by boat or aircraft.

The state is more than double the size of Texas with a population about the size of Washington, D.C.

Yet despite the geographic and environmental challenges, the U.S. military has staked its claim there since the 1860s, when the U.S. bought the territory from Russia and nearly a century before Alaska became a U.S. state.

In the last decade, the military has redoubled its efforts in the far north, investing billions of dollars upgrading air and missile defenses while completely revamping the foundational structure of its Army forces.

At Eielson Air Force Base, near the Arctic Circle, the Air Force just added 54 of the nation’s new F-35 stealth fighter jets. The jets, perched at the top of the world, are prepared to respond to conflicts anywhere in the northern hemisphere.

The base operates year-round, even in skin-burning minus 50-degree weather, when airmen can withstand the frigidity for only minutes at a time.

In warmer weather, the base hosts multiple Red Flag Alaska exercises: war games for thousands of American troops to train in combat-like situations with allies from around the globe.

At Clear Space Force Station, about 160 kilometers southwest of Eielson, the U.S. Space Force, Alaska Air National Guard and members of the Missile Defense Agency monitor threats in space, including North Korean intercontinental ballistic missile launches.

In December, the Clear station team received a new tool in their missile-tracking arsenal, the Long Range Discrimination Radar, or LRDR, which officials say is the most sophisticated ground-based radar on the globe, capable of seeing farther than other ground-based radars while simultaneously differentiating among multiple small objects.

At Fort Greely, an Army garrison about 120 km south of Eielson, a team of soldiers protects 40 ICBM-killing weapons known as Ground Based Interceptors in silos deep underground. The U.S. recently added 20 silos there, which will house new and improved anti-ICBM weapons known as Next Generation Interceptors around 2028.

At the Army’s Fort Wainwright, near the Arctic Circle, and Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson near in the state’s largest city, Anchorage, soldiers this month were assigned a new identity, transforming from a hodgepodge structure under the U.S. Army Alaska flag to the newly resurrected 11th Airborne Division. The “Arctic Angels,” as they’re called, vow to “regain” American dominance in the Arctic.

VOA visited each of these military locations to get a first-hand look at the new upgrades in action, hidden in plain sight deep within the remote Alaskan wilderness.

 
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WASHINGTON, June 29 (Reuters) – The U.S. Supreme Court on Wednesday widened the power of states over Native American tribes and undercut its own 2020 ruling that had expanded Native American tribal authority in Oklahoma, handing a victory to Republican officials in that state.

The court ruled 5-4 in favor of Oklahoma over the state’s attempt to prosecute Victor Castro-Huerta, a non-Native American convicted of child neglect in a crime committed against a Native American child – his 5-year-old stepdaughter – on the Cherokee Nation reservation.

The change of course only two years after the previous ruling in a case called McGirt v. Oklahoma was made possible by conservative Justice Amy Coney Barrett’s appointment to the court by Republican former President Donald Trump to replace the late liberal Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Conservative Justice Neil Gorsuch, as he did in 2020, joined with the court’s liberal bloc in favor of Native American interests, but its expanded conservative majority meant that this time he was in the minority.

A state court threw out Castro-Huerta’s conviction, saying the Supreme Court’s ruling in the McGirt case deprived state authorities of jurisdiction in his case and gave responsibility to federal courts.

As a result of the McGirt ruling, about 3,600 cases every year in Oklahoma were set to fall under federal instead of state jurisdiction.

In the McGirt decision, the Supreme Court recognized about half of Oklahoma – much of the eastern part of the state – as Native American reservation land beyond the jurisdiction of state authorities. That ruling, criticized by Governor Kevin Stitt and other Republicans, meant that many crimes on the land in question involving Native Americans would need to be prosecuted in tribal or federal courts.

The state already prosecutes crimes committed in the affected land in which no Native Americans are involved. Tribal courts handle crimes committed by and against Native Americans.

Tribes had welcomed the McGirt ruling as a recognition of their sovereignty. The Supreme Court in January rejected Oklahoma’s request to outright overturn it.

Castro-Huerta was convicted in state court of neglecting his stepdaughter, who has cerebral palsy and is legally blind, and sentenced to 35 years in prison. The Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals last year threw out that conviction because of the 2020 precedent. Castro-Huerta by then was already indicted for the same underlying offense by federal authorities, transferred to federal custody and pleaded guilty to child neglect.

He has not yet been sentenced.

There are 574 federally recognized tribes in total, although some states have very little tribal land. The population of Native Americans and Alaska Natives combined in the United States is 3.7 million, according to the 2020 U.S. Census.
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A rare Republican who supports abortion rights found success in Colorado in the first primary elections held since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, while New York’s first female governor positioned herself to become a major voice in the post-Roe landscape.

In Illinois, Democrats helped boost a Republican gubernatorial candidate loyal to former President Donald Trump in the hopes that he would be the easier candidate to beat in November. And in at least two states, election deniers were defeated, even as pro-Trump lightning rods elsewhere won.

Takeaways from the latest round of primary elections:

Abortion on the ballot

The abortion debate consumed the nation this week, but there was no race where it mattered more than Colorado’s Republican primary for the U.S. Senate, where businessman Joe O’Dea became one of the only abortion-rights-supporting Republican in the nation to win a statewide primary this year.

O’Dea beat back a stiff challenge from state Rep. Ron Hanks, a Trump loyalist who opposed abortion with no exceptions for rape, incest or the life of the mother.

O’Dea will face Democratic Sen. Michael Bennet in November, and if he wins, he would become just the third Senate Republican — and the only male — to support abortion rights.

He said he backs a ban on late-term abortions and government funding of abortions but that the decision to terminate a pregnancy in the initial months is “between a person and their God.”

Democrats had spent at least $2.5 million on ads designed to boost O’Dea’s opponent by promoting, among other things, that he was “too conservative” for backing a complete abortion ban.

Democrats hoped that the Roe decision would give them an advantage in several swing states, including Colorado. But, at least for now, O’Dea’s victory would seem to complicate the Democrats’ plans.

A win for Trump or for the democrats?

In the final weeks of a campaign, Trump once again attached himself to a Republican who was leading the race. This time, it was farmer Darren Bailey in Illinois, who easily cruised to the GOP nomination in the governor’s race.

But while Trump can add Bailey to his endorsement record, Democrats are betting that his victory may be short-lived.

Bailey now goes on to face Democratic Gov. J.B. Pritzker in the November general election, which is just what Pritzker and his allies wanted. Pritzker, the billionaire heir to the Hyatt hotel fortune, and the Democratic Governors Association spent heavily on advertising to help Bailey win the GOP nomination. Among other things, the ads reminded the state’s Democratic-leaning electorate that he is “100% pro-life.”

It’s a risky gamble. While Bailey may look like an easier opponent in the general election, it’s feasible that he could ride a red wave — if it materializes — to the Illinois governor’s mansion. Pritzker’s predecessor in office was a Republican.

Bailey showed off political acumen by besting the early Republican front-runner Richard Irvin, the mayor of Illinois’ second-largest city, Aurora. Irvin lost despite being the beneficiary of a staggering $50 million investment from billionaire Ken Griffin. Irvin, who is Black, refused to say whether he voted for Trump and largely avoided talking about abortion, delivering the kind of moderate message that could have cut across ideological lines in a general election.

Instead, Republicans nominated Bailey, a Trump loyalist who reads from Bible verses in campaign videos and proudly touts his anti-abortion policies in a state Trump lost by 17 percentage points in 2020.

Hochul’s opportunity

The scandals of the men around her did not derail New York Democratic Gov. Kathy Hochul, who overcame primary challengers on the right and left to win her first election test as the state’s chief executive.

Now, Hochul, New York’s first female governor, is positioned to emerge as a leading voice in the Democratic Party as it navigates the post-Roe landscape.

The low-profile Hochul stepped into one of the nation’s most prominent governorships last fall after Andrew Cuomo resigned in the midst of a sexual harassment scandal. She had promised to restore New Yorkers’ faith in their government, only for her handpicked lieutenant governor to be arrested this spring in a federal corruption probe.

Hochul was either “consistently shamefully out of the loop, or shamefully enabling through her inaction,” charged one of her primary challengers, New York City’s elected public advocate, Jumaane Williams.

The attack ultimately didn’t land in the primary. But don’t expect such criticism to disappear as the race for New York governor enters its next phase.

Rep. Lee Zeldin emerged from a crowded Republican field to earn the GOP nomination for governor. He defeated Andrew Giuliani, the son of New York City’s former mayor Rudy Giuliani, among others.

And while Hochul has a serious reelection test ahead, look for her to step into the national spotlight as the abortion debate rages.

The Democratic governor said in recent days that New York would be a “safe harbor” for those seeking abortions.

Election deniers go down

They celebrated their allegiance to Trump’s baseless conspiracy theories on the campaign trail. But on Tuesday night, a handful of these so-called election deniers had nothing to cheer about.

In Colorado, Republican voters did not reward secretary of state candidate Tina Peters for championing Trump’s lies about election fraud. She was bested by Pam Anderson, a former county clerk who previously led the state clerks’ association and defends the state’s mail-in elections system.

Some officials in both parties worried that Peters would win the primary. That’s even after Peters, the Mesa County clerk, was indicted for a security breach spurred by conspiracy theories related to the 2020 presidential election. The state GOP had called on her to suspend her campaign.

Now, Anderson, not Peters, will take on incumbent Democratic Secretary of State Jena Griswold, who’s led the national fight against 2020 election deniers.

Elsewhere in Colorado, Senate candidate Hanks had also promoted lies about the last presidential election. In addition to being an outspoken opponent of abortion rights, he had attended the “Stop the Steal” rally that preceded the attack on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

And in Mississippi, Trump loyalist Michael Cassidy lost a runoff election to incumbent Rep. Michael Guest, who had voted to create an independent commission to investigate the Jan. 6 attack. Cassidy said in campaign speeches that Guest had done nothing to stop “the persecution of Jan. 6 political prisoners.”

Lighting rods win

Two Republicans familiar with controversy tested for the first time whether Republican voters deemed them too extreme to go back to Congress. They both prevailed.

First-term Rep. Mary Miller, who campaigned alongside Trump over the weekend, defeated five-term Rep. Rodney Davis, who was considered more moderate. The primary victory all but ensures Miller will return to Congress for another term given the heavy Republican advantage in her 15th Congressional District, which is the most Republican district in the state.

Miller won just days after describing the Supreme Court’s reversal of Roe v. Wade as a victory for white life.'' A spokesperson later said she had intended to say the decision was a victory for aright to life.”

Miller is no stranger to provocative statements. Soon after joining the House, Miller quoted Adolf Hitler, saying he was right to say that “whoever has the youth has the future.”

And in Colorado, Trump loyalist Lauren Boebert defeated a moderate state representative who had run a primary campaign focused on Boebert’s extremism. It didn’t work.

Boebert’s controversial moves are many. She vowed to carry a handgun on the House floor. She faced calls for her censure last year after being caught on video making Islamophobic comments about Minnesota Rep. Ilhan Omar. And she heckled President Joe Biden in his first State of the Union address.

But after winning her primary, she is almost certain to return to Congress for another two years. Her GOP-leaning 3rd Congressional District in western Colorado became even more Republican after redistricting.

A Roe shift in Nebraska?

Nebraska’s low-profile special election to fill the remainder of former Rep. Jeff Fortenberry’s term was not supposed to be close. Republicans have held the district for nearly 60 years.

Yet Republican Mike Flood defeated Democrat Patty Pansing Brooks by only 4 percentage points on Tuesday.

The specific cause of the margin wasn’t immediately unclear, although there was evidence of higher turnout in one Democratic-leaning county that could be related to the Roe decision.

Heading into election day, Flood appeared to have a strong edge in the district, which includes Lincoln, parts of suburban Omaha and dozens of smaller, more conservative towns. The district has nearly 68,000 more Republicans than Democrats and hasn’t elected a Democrat to the House since 1964.

What happened? Lancaster County, home to the state capital and the University of Nebraska, offers some clues.

In 2020, Fortenberry won the district by nearly 22 percentage points, but he lost Lancaster County by less than 1 percentage point. In Tuesday’s special election, the Republican Flood lost Lancaster County by more than 13 percentage points.

In the end, the swing wasn’t enough to move a heavily-Republican district, but Democrats could look to the results for hope that the Roe decision will be a significant motivator for the Democratic base.

Incidentally, Fortenberry was sentenced to two years of probation on Tuesday for lying to the FBI. Flood and Pansing Brooks are expected to face off again in the November general election.
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The midterm primary season entered a new, more volatile phase on Tuesday as voters participate in the first elections since the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision revoking a woman’s constitutional right to an abortion jolted the nation’s politics.

In Colorado’s Republican U.S. Senate primary, voters are choosing between businessman Joe O’Dea and state Rep. Ron Hanks. O’Dea backs a ban on late-term abortions but is otherwise the rare Republican who supports most abortion rights. Hanks backs a ban on the procedure in all cases.

Meanwhile, in the Republican race for governor in Illinois, Darren Bailey, a farmer and state senator endorsed by former President Donald Trump over the weekend, wants to end the state’s right to abortion except for instances in which the mother’s life is in danger. He doesn’t support exceptions for rape or incest. His opponent, Richard Irvin, the first Black mayor of Aurora, has said he would allow abortions in instances of rape, incest or when the mother’s life is at risk.

Both races are unfolding in states where abortion remains legal. Democrats have sought to elevate both Hanks and Bailey, betting that they have a better chance of winning the fall campaign if they’re competing against Republicans they could portray as extreme. In Colorado, Democrats have spent more than $2 million boosting Hanks’ candidacy. In Illinois, the sums have been vastly higher, with Democrats spending at least $16 million against Irvin and to boost Bailey as the nominee against Gov. J.B. Pritzker.

The strategy carries risks, especially if the magnitude of the GOP’s expected gains this fall becomes so significant that Democrats lose in states such as Illinois and Colorado, which have become strongholds for the party. But at a moment when Democrats are confronting voter frustration over inflation and rising gas prices, the focus on abortion may be their best hope.

“It’s a very inviting target, to go after a Republican candidate whose position is no exceptions,” said Dick Wadhams, a former chairman of the Colorado GOP who has worked for anti-abortion candidates in the past. “I do think the repeal of Roe v Wade may embolden more candidates to go in that direction.”

“A lot of opportunity, but a lot of peril”

Beyond Colorado and Illinois, elections are being held in Oklahoma, Utah, New York, Nebraska, Mississippi and South Carolina. Tuesday marks the final round of multi-state primary nights until August, when closely watched races for governor and U.S. Senate will unfold in Arizona, Wisconsin, Florida, Missouri and other states

And while Tuesday’s primaries are the first to happen in a post-Roe landscape, they will offer further insight into the resonance of Trump’s election lies among GOP voters.

In Oklahoma, one of the nation’s most conservative senators, James Lankford, won his primary challenge from evangelical pastor Jackson Lahmeyer, amid conservative anger that Lankford hasn’t supported Trump’s election claims.

In Utah, two Republican critics of Trump are targeting Sen. Mike Lee, accusing the two-term senator of being too preoccupied with winning the former president’s favor and helping him try to overturn the 2020 presidential election. In Mississippi, Rep. Michael Guest, a Republican who bucked Trump to vote for an independent Jan. 6 commission, faces a challenge from Michael Cassidy, a former Navy pilot.

Also in Colorado, indicted county clerk Tina Peters, who has been barred by a judge from overseeing elections in her home county in the western part of the state, is running for the GOP nomination for the state’s top elections post by contending she’s being prosecuted for uncovering a grand conspiracy to steal the 2020 election from Trump. She faces Pam Anderson, a former county clerk and critic of Trump’s election lies, for the nomination to challenge Democratic Secretary of State Jena Griswold in November.

Republicans worry that Peters, who is being prosecuted by a Republican district attorney for her role in a security breach in her county’s election system, would drag down the entire ticket if she becomes the nominee. The GOP has lost almost every statewide race since 2014 but hopes public disenchantment with President Joe Biden gives them an opening.

“There’s a lot of peril on June 28 for Republicans,” Wadhams said. “A lot of opportunity, but a lot of peril as well.”

Other GOP opportunities in the state come in the newly created congressional swing seat north of Denver, where four Republican candidates are competing to face state Rep. Yadira Caraveo, the only Democrat running in the primary. Heidi Ganahl, the lone statewide elected Republican as a member of the University of Colorado’s board of regents, faces Greg Lopez, a former mayor in suburban Denver, in the contest for the GOP nomination to face Democratic Gov. Jared Polis.

Also in Colorado, firebrand Rep. Lauren Boebert faces moderate state Sen. Don Coram in the Republican primary in the western part of the state. In Colorado Springs, Republican Rep. Doug Lamborn, who faces regular primary challenges, this time is fighting back state Rep. Dave Williams, who failed to get the phrase “Let’s Go Brandon,” code for an obscenity against President Joe Biden, added to his official name on the ballot.

Voter seeks candidate who shares “our values”

Other than the governor’s race primary, Illinois also features two, rare incumbent vs. incumbent congressional primaries as a result of House districts being redrawn during last year’s redistricting. Democratic Reps. Sean Casten and Marie Newman will compete in a Chicago-area seat. And GOP Rep. Rodney Davis, one of the last moderates in the Republican caucus, faces Trump-backed Rep. Mary Miller, who at a rally with the former president this weekend described the Supreme Court decision as “a victory for white life.” A spokesman said she meant to say “right to life.”

In the smaller towns of Illinois, conservative voters were hankering for a change. Toni Block, 80, of McHenry, about 45 miles northwest of Chicago, voted for Bailey in the gubernatorial primary.

“He’s got all the good things that we need to get back to,” Block said. “Not only is he a Trump supporter, he has our values.”

In New York, Democratic Gov. Kathy Hochul, who became the state’s chief executive last fall when Andrew Cuomo resigned during a sexual harassment scandal, is fighting off primary challenges from the left and center. New York City’s elected public advocate, Jumaane Williams, contends Hochul hasn’t been active enough on progressive issues while Long Island Rep. Tom Suozzi blasts her for being too liberal on crime.

On the Republican side, Rep. Lee Zeldin is the frontrunner in a crowded gubernatorial primary field that includes Andrew Giuliani, the son of former New York mayor and Trump confidant Rudolph Giuliani. Trump has not made an endorsement in the race.
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This week, the Group of Seven leaders launched a $600 billion global infrastructure initiative they say will compete with China’s Belt and Road Initiative. VOA White House correspondent Anita Powell reports from Telfs, Austria, with reporting from Patsy Widakuswara in Washington.
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It is a mantra that fans of American cop shows around the world can recite by heart.

“You have the right to remain silent,” a police officer advises a suspect under arrest. “Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law. You have a right to an attorney. If you can’t afford an attorney, one will be provided to you.”

The so-called “Miranda warning,” routinely administered by American law enforcement since the 1960s, came into the national spotlight last week when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that police officers can’t be sued for not advising detained suspects of their right to remain silent during an interrogation.

To be clear, the ruling doesn’t remove the requirement that police “Mirandize” suspects before questioning them. It does, however, shield officers from civil liability if they fail to do so, potentially reducing their incentive to comply.

“That’s the sense in which this is a setback for the full promise of Miranda,” Brett Max Kaufman, senior staff attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union, said of the court’s 6-3 ruling June 23 in the case known as Vega v. Tekoh.

The case stemmed from the interrogation of a suspect by a Los Angeles police officer in 2014.

Terence Tekoh, a nursing assistant, was accused of sexually assaulting a female patient at a hospital. Sheriff’s Deputy Carlos Vega questioned Tekoh without reading him the Miranda warning and obtained a written apology.

Prosecutors later used the statement to charge Tekoh with sexual assault. But after a jury acquitted him, Tekoh sued Vega and others for damages under a civil rights statute known as Section 1983. The law allows individuals to sue state officials over “deprivation” of constitutional rights and privileges.

The key question before the Supreme Court was whether failure to read the Miranda warning constitutes a violation of the U.S Constitution’s Fifth Amendment that could be litigated under Section 1983.

Writing for the majority, Justice Samuel Alito said it did not.

“In sum, a violation of Miranda does not necessarily constitute a violation of the Constitution,” Alito wrote, adding that a Miranda violation is not grounds for bringing a lawsuit under Section 1983.

Instead, a defendant’s “remedy” is to have his or her statement excluded at trial. But Justice Elena Kagan, writing for the three dissenting liberal justices, noted that “sometimes such a statement will not be suppressed.”

“And sometimes, as a result, a defendant will be wrongly convicted and spend years in prison,” she wrote.

The ruling brought criticism from civil rights groups.

“After today, people can no longer sue law enforcement for purposefully violating their Miranda right, resulting in officers acting with impunity for their unlawful actions,” said Jon Greenbaum, chief counsel for the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, in a prepared statement.

Enshrined in a landmark 1966 Supreme Court case known as Miranda v. Arizona, the “Miranda warning” was designed to prevent coercive police interrogative tactics.

Brought by Enresto Miranda, an Arizona man convicted of rape and kidnapping based on a forced confession, the case exposed widespread police use of coercive tactics and even violence to obtain incriminating evidence from suspects.

“There had been a lot of Fifth Amendment violations taking place,” said John Malcolm, vice president for the Institute for Constitutional Government at the Heritage Foundation. “Sometimes you were literally being beaten to get confessions but that was not really most of what was going on. People were being tricked into confessing. They were being told that they really didn’t have a right to have counsel.”

“And the court determined in its infinite wisdom that as a matter of fundamental fairness people needed to know what their rights were before they would find themselves unwittingly giving them up without that knowledge,” Malcolm told VOA.

Siding with Miranda, the Supreme Court ruled that the Constitution’s Fifth Amendment required that police officers must advise “the defendant of the right to remain silent and the right to speak with an attorney before the interrogation started.”

That started what has since become a mandatory law enforcement practice in the United States. The U.S. is not the only country with Miranda rights. According to the Federation of American Scientists, 108 countries and jurisdictions have some version of the Miranda warning enshrined in their legal systems.

 
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Former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson told U.S. lawmakers Tuesday that then-President Donald Trump became increasingly angry and volatile about his 2020 reelection loss, testifying that he agreed with rioters at the U.S. Capitol on January 6 last year when they called for the hanging of then-Vice President Mike Pence for refusing to block the election outcome.

Hutchinson said that as some of the thousands of Trump supporters at the Capitol chanted “Hang Mike Pence!” Trump told her boss, White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, “Mike deserves it.”

She quoted Meadows as saying that Trump “doesn’t think (the anti-Pence protesters were) doing anything wrong.”

Trump supporters had erected a gallows on the National Mall within eyesight of the Capitol, although Pence’s security detail rushed him to safety as the mayhem raged. Some rioters came within about 12 meters of reaching him.

Later, Trump tweeted that “Mike Pence didn’t have the courage” to block Congress from certifying that Democrat Joe Biden had defeated Trump in the 2020 election. But it was not until more than an hour later that Trump finally told his supporters in a video message to leave the Capitol, after earlier ignoring pleas from family members, including his daughter Ivanka, a White House aide, and other advisers to publicly call off the riot.

WATCH THE HEARING:

Hutchinson, who worked in an office just steps from Trump’s Oval Office, said she learned from Anthony Ornato, a Meadows aide responsible for coordinating Trump’s security detail, that the then-president, after a rally near the White House before the mayhem at the Capitol, attempted to grab the wheel of his limousine from a Secret Service agent and demanded to go to the Capitol to join his supporters.

Trump had told thousands of supporters at the rally that he would join them in walking to the Capitol, but his security detail had determined it was too dangerous and instead drove him back to the White House.

Hutchinson said she was told by Ornato that, once in the limousine, Trump was “under the impression … he thought they were going to the Capitol” and was “very, very angry” when he realized they were not.

“I’m the ‘effing’ president, take me to the Capitol,” Trump demanded, according to Ornato’s recounting of the incident to Hutchinson.

She testified that Ornato told her Trump grabbed the steering wheel but was pushed away by his chief security agent, Bobby Engel.

“Sir, you need to take your hand off of the steering wheel, we’re going back to the West Wing, we’re not going to the Capitol,” Hutchinson said, quoting Ornato’s retelling of what Engel told Trump.

“Mr. Trump then used his free hand to lunge toward Engel and when Mr. Ornato recounted the story to me, he motioned to his clavicles,” Hutchinson testified.

Earlier that day, according to Hutchinson, Trump had been informed that many of the supporters whom he was urging to march to the Capitol were armed and equipped with body armor. Hutchinson said the president was angered that the Secret Service was using magnetometers to check for weapons at the entrance to the rally and confiscating those it found. Trump reportedly said he wasn’t in any danger and complained that keeping people out of the rally made the crowd look smaller.

More than a month before, on Dec. 1, 2020, then Attorney General William Barr, the country’s top law enforcement official, had told the Associated Press that Justice Department investigators had not found evidence of election fraud sufficient to overturn Biden’s victory. Trump lost more than five dozen election lawsuits claiming fraud.

Hutchinson said Trump was furious when told of Barr’s remark to the AP reporter. She learned of his anger when she encountered a White House valet cleaning Trump’s private dining room next to the Oval Office.

Trump, she said, had thrown his lunch against a wall, shattering a plate and splattering ketchup on the wall.

Hutchinson said that both Meadows and a Trump attorney, former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, sought pardons for their roles in trying to keep Trump in power.

But Trump, while pardoning other aides for their possible crimes before leaving office, did not act on the requests from Meadows or Giuliani, nor on similar demands from a half-dozen Republican congressmen Hutchinson said had requested pardons.

Hutchinson’s testimony came in the House of Representatives committee’s sixth hearing this month, with two more set for mid-July.

One of those hearings is set to detail the involvement of right-wing extremists in the insurrection at the Capitol and the other to explore what Trump was doing at the White House as he watched the riot unfold on television for more than three hours, ignoring all entreaties to tell the rioters to leave the Capitol.

Previously, an array of witnesses, in taped testimony and in person before the panel, have described how Trump and his allies sought to pressure Pence, the Justice Department and state officials to upend the congressional certification of the election results on January 6, 2021.

At the rally before the insurrection at the Capitol, Trump urged his supporters to “fight like hell” to block congressional approval of Biden’s victory.

About 2,000 of Trump’s supporters stormed past law enforcement officials into the Capitol, ransacking congressional offices, vandalizing the building and scuffling with police. More than 800 have subsequently been charged with offenses and more than 300 have pleaded guilty or been convicted in trials. Sentences have ranged from a few weeks in prison to more than four years.

In the United States, presidents are effectively chosen in separate elections in each of the 50 states, not through the national popular vote. Each state’s number of electoral votes is dependent on its population, with the biggest states holding the most sway. The rioters who stormed the Capitol tried to keep lawmakers from certifying Biden’s eventual 306-232 victory in the Electoral College.

At the heart of Trump’s effort to stay in power was an audacious plan espoused by Giuliani and conservative lawyer John Eastman to get legislatures in states Trump narrowly lost to appoint new electors supporting him to replace the official ones favoring Biden.

While the House committee cannot bring criminal charges, the Department of Justice is closely monitoring the hearings to determine whether anyone, Trump included, should be charged with illegally trying to reverse the outcome of the 2020 presidential election.

Last week, FBI agents raided the Washington-area home of a former assistant attorney general, Jeffrey Clark, who wanted Trump to name him attorney general in the last month of his presidency so he could advance Trump’s erroneous claims of vote fraud, which were at odds with Barr’s conclusion.

Trump appeared willing to make the Clark appointment but backed off when top Justice Department officials said Clark, an environmental lawyer, was not qualified to be the country’s top law enforcement official and threatened to quit en masse if he were named.

In addition, FBI agents, in a separate encounter in the southwestern state of New Mexico, seized the cell phone of Eastman.

A prosecutor in Atlanta, the capital of the state of Georgia, has convened a grand jury to probe Trump’s effort to overturn the vote in that state. Trump asked the state’s top election official, Brad Raffensperger, to find him 11,780 votes — one more than Biden defeated him by — out of 5 million ballots.

The investigative panel has heard testimony that key Trump aides told him he had lost the election and that there were minimal voting irregularities, not enough to overturn Biden’s Electoral College victory.

In addition, Trump was told it would be illegal for Pence to unilaterally block Biden’s victory as Pence presided over the congressional Electoral College vote count. Trump privately and publicly demanded the vice president block certification of Biden’s victory and to this day contends he was cheated out of another White House term.
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President Joe Biden’s administration added five companies in China to a trade blacklist on Tuesday for allegedly supporting Russia’s military and defense industrial base, flexing its muscle to enforce sanctions against Moscow over its invasion of Ukraine.

The Commerce Department, which oversees the trade blacklist, said the targeted companies had supplied items to Russian “entities of concern” before the February 24 invasion, adding that they “continue to contract to supply Russian entity listed and sanctioned parties.”

The agency also added an additional 31 entities to the blacklist from countries including Russia, UAE, Lithuania, Pakistan, Singapore, the United Kingdom, Uzbekistan and Vietnam, according to the Federal Register entry. However, of the 36 total companies added, 25 had China-based operations.

“Today’s action sends a powerful message to entities and individuals across the globe that if they seek to support Russia, the United States will cut them off as well,” Undersecretary of Commerce for Industry and Security Alan Estevez said in a statement.

The Chinese embassy in Washington did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Three of the companies in China accused of aiding the Russian military, Connec Electronic Ltd., Hong Kong-based World Jetta, and Logistics Limited, could not be reached for comment. The other two, King Pai Technology Co., Ltd and Winninc Electronic did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Hong Kong is considered part of China for purposes of U.S. export controls since Beijing’s crackdown on the city’s autonomy.

Blacklisting of firms means their U.S. suppliers need a Commerce Department license before they can ship to them.

The United States has set out with allies to punish Russian President Vladimir Putin for the invasion, which Moscow calls a “special operation,” by sanctioning a raft of Russian companies and oligarchs and adding others to a trade blacklist. 

While U.S. officials had previously said that China was generally complying with the restrictions, Washington has vowed to closely monitor compliance and rigorously enforce the regulations.

“We will not hesitate to act, regardless of where a party is located, if they are violating U.S. law,” Assistant Secretary of Commerce for Export Administration Thea Rozman Kendler said in the same statement.
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