Month: August 2023

Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas is acknowledging that he took three trips last year aboard a private plane owned by Republican megadonor Harlan Crow. 

It’s the first time in years that Thomas has reported receiving hospitality from Crow. In a report made public Thursday, the 75-year-old justice said he was complying with new guidelines from the federal judiciary for reporting travel. 

The filing comes amid a heightened focus on ethics at the high court that stems from a series of reports revealing that Thomas has for years received undisclosed expensive gifts, including international travel, from Crow, a wealthy businessman and benefactor of conservative causes. Crow also purchased the house in Georgia where Thomas’s mother continues to live and paid for two years of private school tuition for a child raised by Thomas and his wife, Ginni. 

The Associated Press reported in July that Justice Sonia Sotomayor, aided by her staff, has advanced sales of her books through college visits over the past decade. 

One trip Thomas reported was to Crow’s lodge in the Adironack Mountains in upstate New York, where the investigative news site ProPublica has reported that Thomas visits every year. 

The other two trips were to Dallas, where he spoke at conferences sponsored by the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank.

Thomas noted that court officials recommended that he avoid commercial travel for one of the trips, in mid-May, because of concerns about the justices’ security following the leak of the court’s draft abortion opinion that overturned Roe v. Wade. 

The justice also belatedly acknowledged that Crow had purchased the home in Savannah, Georgia, where Thomas’ mother still lives. Thomas and other family members owned the house, along with two neighboring properties. The sale was completed in 2014, but Thomas said he erroneously thought he didn’t have to report it because “this sale resulted in a capital loss.”

He is considering whether to amend prior reports to include more private plane travel, he noted.

The annual financial reports for Thomas and Justice Samuel Alito were released Thursday, nearly three months after those of the other seven justices. Thomas and Alito were granted 90-day extensions. 
…

When U.S. President Joe Biden visits Vietnam in early September, experts say Washington and Hanoi are likely to upgrade ties to a strategic partnership, an important step for bilateral relations. Experts add, however, that this should not be misinterpreted as Vietnam aligning with the United States.

In Hanoi’s diplomatic hierarchy, a strategic partnership is the second tier, only surpassed by the highest-level designation – a comprehensive strategic partnership.

The White House said August 8 that U.S. President Joe Biden would be coming to Hanoi September 10, to meet with Communist Party General Secretary Nguyen Phu Trong, who holds the country’s top position, and other leaders on ways to further deepen bilateral cooperation.

While experts said upgraded ties are close to a sure thing if Biden’s visit goes as planned, they said that Vietnamese leaders are upgrading their partnerships more broadly as a defense to China’s growing aggression in the region.

“This is not Vietnam moving into a U.S. orbit. This is Vietnam maintaining its own independent orbit – maintaining its own space from China,” said Gregory Poling, director of the Asia Maritime Transparency Initiative at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.

“That leaves a lot of room for pragmatic cooperation and shared interest but Vietnam is not coming to our side of the playground,” he said.

‘Web of partnerships’

Vietnam has been busy on the diplomatic front over the past year, seeking to upgrade ties with many in the region.

In December, Vietnam upgraded ties with South Korea to a comprehensive strategic partnership, the highest level in Vietnam’s diplomatic hierarchy, also held with China, Russia, and India.

Vietnam is also expected to sign a comprehensive strategic partnership with Australia this year, which was announced after Foreign Affairs Minister Bui Thanh Son and his counterpart, Penny Wong, met in Hanoi on August 22.

Singaporean Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong also visited Hanoi August 27. There, he met with Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh and the two discussed embarking on a comprehensive strategic partnership.

These enhanced ties are a concerted effort by Hanoi to create a bulwark against Beijing, said Alexander Vuving, a professor at the Asia Pacific Center for Security Studies in Honolulu.

Vietnam “has to upgrade their relationship with all these countries that can help them in case of crisis or even help them to boost their resilience against Chinese encroachment,”  Vuving said. “If you look at that kind of web of partnerships with all the significant powers in the region, you can be a little more secure. That’s the overall strategy for Vietnam. Reaching out – geopolitical promiscuity.”

Threats to Vietnam’s territorial sovereignty often play out in the South China Sea, known in Vietnam as the East Sea. Vietnam’s exclusive economic zone extends 200 nautical miles off the coastline. China claims nearly all of the resource-rich waters with its nine-dash line – a disputed map demarcation encompassing most of the South China Sea.

China “has coast guard ships and militia ships harassing and disrupting Vietnam’s exploration for oil every day,” Vuving said. “They are pushing the Vietnamese fishermen out of their own EEZ.”

This ceaseless badgering of Vietnamese operations at sea is a top rationale for upgraded ties with the United States and other partners, said Ray Powell, who leads Stanford University’s Project Myoushu on the South China Sea.

“The constant pressure that China puts on [Vietnam] from all kinds of angles factors into their desire to keep raising the levels of those partnerships,” Powell said. “In a lot of ways it is more about balancing against China than it is about aligning with the United States.”

Balancing act

This year marks 10 years since Washington and Hanoi launched a comprehensive partnership. Although experts say the Biden administration is keen to jump two levels to a comprehensive strategic partnership, Vietnamese leaders must be cautious about not angering Beijing even while trying to counter its growing power.

Hanoi and Washington normalized bilateral relations in 1995, and elevated to a comprehensive partnership in 2013. The partnership is a formal designation in Vietnamese foreign policy which puts the U.S. currently in the third tier among Vietnam’s diplomatic partners.

Nguyen Khac Giang, visiting fellow at the ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute, said moving one step up to a strategic partnership is the likely outcome of Biden’s visit as Hanoi treads carefully in order to keep peace with Beijing. “Vietnam is quite careful at balancing that relationship with the two great powers,” he said.

Still, the strategic partnership would be an important step for Vietnam to “toughen up” its maritime capabilities, enable potential arms procurement, and send a message to Beijing, he said.

“Very strongly, it would respond to China’s pressure that if you push me too far I will have the U.S. [partnership] at least to help protect my own national interest,” Giang said.
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The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has delivered a recommendation to the Drug Enforcement Administration on marijuana policy, and Senate leaders hailed it Wednesday as a first step toward easing federal restrictions on the drug.

HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra said Wednesday on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, that the agency has responded to President Joe Biden’s request “to provide a scheduling recommendation for marijuana to the DEA.”

“We’ve worked to ensure that a scientific evaluation be completed and shared expeditiously,” he added.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said in a statement that HHS had recommended that marijuana be moved from a Schedule I to a Schedule III controlled substance.

“HHS has done the right thing,” Schumer, D-N.Y., said. “DEA should now follow through on this important step to greatly reduce the harm caused by draconian marijuana laws.”

Rescheduling the drug would reduce or potentially eliminate criminal penalties for possession. Marijuana is currently classified as a Schedule I drug, alongside heroin and LSD.

According to the DEA, Schedule I drugs “have no currently accepted medical use in the United States, a lack of accepted safety for use under medical supervision, and a high potential for abuse.”

Schedule III drugs “have a potential for abuse less than substances in Schedules I or II and abuse may lead to moderate or low physical dependence or high psychological dependence.” They currently include ketamine and some anabolic steroids.

Biden requested the review in October 2022 as he pardoned thousands of Americans convicted of “simple possession” of marijuana under federal law.

Senate Finance Committee Chairman Ron Wyden, D-Ore., issued a statement calling for marijuana to be completely descheduled.

“However, the recommendation of HHS to reschedule cannabis as a Schedule III drug is not inconsequential,” he added. “If HHS’s recommendation is ultimately implemented, it will be a historic step for a nation whose cannabis policies have been out of touch with reality.”

Bloomberg News first reported on the HHS recommendation.

In reaction to the Bloomberg report, the nonprofit U.S. Cannabis Council said: “We enthusiastically welcome today’s news. … Rescheduling will have a broad range of benefits, including signaling to the criminal justice system that cannabis is a lower priority and providing a crucial economic lifeline to the cannabis industry.”
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The Biden administration recently announced an extension and redesignation of the program that gives temporary protection from deportation for nationals of Sudan and Ukraine. Nationals of El Salvador, Honduras, Nepal and Nicaragua will also have their protection extended in September.

The Temporary Protected Status (TPS) program allows migrants whose home countries are considered unsafe to live and work in the United States for a period of time if they meet certain requirements established by the U.S. government.

In a call Wednesday with reporters, immigration advocates urged the Biden administration to designate new countries to receive TPS status and redesignate current ones to allow more people to qualify for the program and work legally in the U.S.

Daniel Costa, director of immigration law and policy research at the Economic Policy Institute, said current TPS holders have high labor force participation rates and contribute billions to the U.S. economy every year.

“TPS raises wages through the provision of work authorization for people who don’t have it. … Higher wages also mean more spending back in the economy, which creates more jobs,” he said.

The original TPS designations for Honduras, Nicaragua and El Salvador were made more than 20 years ago. When the Biden administration extended TPS for those countries in June, it was for current TPS holders.

If the Biden administration were to redesignate TPS, it would change the cut-off date of when people had to have entered the U.S. in order to qualify for the program, and those who entered within the last 20 years would be eligible.

According to a report by the Niskanen Center, a Washington-based policy research institute, the “vast majority” of TPS holders are employed.

“More than 94% of TPS holders were in the labor force as of 2017, working in sectors ranging from retail to health care. According to some estimates, ending TPS for just El Salvador, Honduras, and Haiti would lead to a loss of over $160 billion to U.S. GDP over a decade,” the report shows.

New countries

Advocates also called for new TPS designations. Immigrants rights groups have ongoing campaigns for Mauritania and Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).

Nils Kinuani, the immigration coordinator for the Congolese Community of Washington Metropolitan, told VOA the group had conversations with DHS officials in April, and they are still hopeful.

“Last winter, we were joined by over 110 organizations, national and state, to request a TPS designation for DRC. We launched the campaign in February 2023. We have been also working with congressional leaders to push for this designation,” Kinuani said.

According to the State Department, the DRC is suffering a humanitarian crisis marked by civil conflicts that have spanned more than two decades.

Black Mauritanian leaders and others have also urged the administration to designate Mauritania under TPS status.

“This is the longest TPS campaign many of our organizations have worked on; a stark difference from the TPS designation for countries like Ukraine, which received TPS within a week of the conflict starting. The United States had a long-standing policy of not deporting Mauritanians because of the country’s well documented record of human rights abuses, which include the practice of enslaving Black people and maintaining an apartheid regime,” Haddy Gassama, policy and advocacy director of the UndocuBlack Network, wrote in a statement.

A bipartisan letter from Democratic Senator Sherrod Brown and Republican Representative Mike Carey was sent to President Joe Biden and Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas urging officials to consider the circumstances in Mauritania and requesting immediate TPS designation for Mauritanians living in the United States.

DHS officials did not disclose why these countries have yet to receive a TPS designation, but they said DHS is “monitoring” the situation.

Who has TPS designations?

Congress established TPS in 1990. Currently, 16 countries are designated for the program.

A U.S. Department of Homeland Security spokesperson wrote in an email to VOA on background — often used by U.S. officials to share information with reporters without being identified — that TPS is not to be equated with other recently expanded pathways to legal residence in the United States.

These include “a dramatic expansion of refugee resettlement processing from the Western Hemisphere; parole processes for Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans, and Venezuelans; expanded Family Reunification Programs; expanded labor visas; and direct access to appointments at Ports of Entry via the CBP One app,” the official wrote.

Current TPS holders who want to extend their status must register again during the 60-day registration period for their country’s designation.

What is the process for a country to receive TPS designation?

Congress authorized the DHS secretary to decide when a country should be placed under TPS designation.

Before making a decision to designate a country, the secretary is required to consult with various government agencies. While the specific agencies are not outlined in the law, these consultations typically involve the Department of State, the National Security Council, and sometimes the Department of Justice.

“The Department regularly monitors country conditions and consults other appropriate government agencies to determine whether a TPS designation is warranted. The department does not have anything specific to share regarding the status of these considerations for any particular country,” a DHS official wrote in an email.

These designations are set for six, 12, or 18 months. About two months before a country’s TPS expiration, the secretary has to decide once again if the U.S. will terminate or extend the TPS benefit.

Whatever the decision, it needs to be published in the Federal Register — the nation’s daily publication system for a variety of public documents.

The TPS program, however, does not lead to permanent U.S. residency. As of March, about 610,000 foreign nationals currently hold TPS status.

TPS holders who leave the U.S. without first obtaining a travel authorization may lose their TPS status and won’t be able to reenter the country.
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New Mexico Attorney General Raul Torrez and 13 other top prosecutors from around the U.S. are throwing their support behind efforts to compensate people sickened by exposure to radiation during nuclear weapons testing.

The Democratic officials sent a letter Wednesday to congressional leaders, saying “it’s time for the federal government to give back to those who sacrificed so much.”

The letter refers to the estimated half a million people who lived within a 240-kilometer radius of the Trinity test site in southern New Mexico, where the world’s first atomic bomb was detonated in 1945. It also pointed to thousands of people in Idaho, Colorado, Nevada, Utah, Arizona, Montana and Guam who currently are not eligible under the existing compensation program.

The U.S. Senate voted recently to expand the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act as part of a massive military spending bill. Supporters are hopeful the U.S. House will include the provisions in its version of the bill, and President Joe Biden has indicated his support.

“We finally have an opportunity to right this historic wrong,” Torrez said in a statement.

The hit summer film “Oppenheimer” about the top-secret Manhattan Project and the dawn of the nuclear age during World War II brought new attention to a decadeslong efforts to extend compensation for families who were exposed to fallout and still grapple with related illness.

It hits close to home for Torrez, who spent summers visiting his grandmother in southern New Mexico, who lived about 110 kilometers from where the Trinity test was conducted. She used rainwater from her cistern for cooking and cleaning, unaware that it was likely contaminated as a result of the detonation.

The attorneys general who signed onto Torrez’s letter are from Arizona, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Maryland, Minnesota, Nevada, New York, Pennsylvania, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont and the District of Columbia.

The attorneys mentioned the work of a team of researchers who mapped radioactive fallout from nuclear weapons tests in the U.S., starting with the Trinity test in 1945. The model shows the explosions carried out in New Mexico and Nevada between 1945 and 1962 led to widespread radioactive contamination, with Trinity making a significant contribution to exposure in New Mexico. Fallout reached 46 states as well as parts of Canada and Mexico.

“Without any warning or notification, this one test rained radioactive material across the homes, water and food of thousands of New Mexicans,” the letter states. “Those communities experienced the same symptoms of heart disease, leukemia and other cancers as the downwinders in Nevada.”

The letter also refers to an assessment by the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which acknowledged that exposure rates in public areas from the Trinity explosion were measured at levels 10,000 times higher than currently allowed.

U.S. Senator Ben Ray Lujan, the New Mexico Democrat who has been leading the effort to expand the compensation program to include New Mexico’s downwinders and others in the West, held a listening session in Albuquerque last Thursday. Those exposed to radiation while working in uranium mines and mills spoke at the gathering about their experiences.

Lujan in an interview called it a tough issue, citing the concerns about cost that some lawmakers have and the tears that are often shared by families who have had to grapple with cancer and other health problems as a result of exposure.

“It’s important for everyone to learn these stories and embrace what happened,” he said, “so that we can all make things better.”
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President Joe Biden warned Wednesday that Hurricane Idalia was “still very dangerous” even though the storm had weakened after it came ashore in Florida and said he had not forgotten about the wildfire victims in Hawaii.

Challenged by back-to-back extreme weather episodes — wildfires that burned a historic town on the island of Maui to the ground and a hurricane that forecasters said could bring catastrophic flooding — the Democratic president running for a second term said he had spoken to the governors of Florida, Georgia, South Carolina and North Carolina, all states affected by Idalia.

Biden received his second briefing in as many days from Deanne Criswell, head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), and directed her to spend Thursday with Republican Governor Ron DeSantis to start assessing the hurricane damage and the needs there.

DeSantis, who is a candidate for the Republican presidential nomination, and Biden have clashed in recent months over the socially conservative governor’s policies. But Biden said there was no trace of politics in his storm-related conversations with the governor.

“I know that sounds strange,” Biden said, noting how partisan politics have become.

“I think he trusts my judgment and my desire to help, and I trust him to be able to suggest that this is not about politics,” the president said. “This is about taking care of the people of the state.”

Idalia made landfall near Keaton Beach at 7:45 a.m. local time as a high-end Category 3 hurricane with maximum sustained winds near 205 kph (125 mph). It had weakened to a tropical storm with winds of 113 kph (70 mph) by Wednesday afternoon.

$95 billion for Maui

Biden also announced that $95 billion in infrastructure funds would go to Maui to help harden the electrical grid and pay for things such as erecting stronger poles to hold up power lines or bury them underground where possible, and to deploy technology that can send alerts about power disruptions.

Some people on the island whose homes were burned have complained that authorities have refused to let them return to their properties. Biden appealed for patience, explaining that the hazardous material must be removed before anyone can return.

“We’re doing everything we can to move heaven and earth to help you recover, rebuild and return to your lives,” he said, adding that the situation will be as “frustrating as the devil for people.”

“I want to be clear with the people of Maui about what to expect. The work we’re doing is going to take time, in some cases a long time,” he added.

The federal government is paying to remove the debris, including hazardous material.

Republicans threaten probe

Some Republicans in Congress have threatened to investigate the federal response in Hawaii after some Maui residents complained that the government wasn’t sending enough early help.

Biden met with his Cabinet on Wednesday to discuss the response in Maui and heard from Bob Fenton, the FEMA official he put in charge of overseeing the island’s long-term recovery.

“We are going to make sure you are healed and you’re in better shape than before,” Biden said, recalling his visit to Maui on August 21. “I said when I was on the island last week we’re not leaving until the job’s done, and we’ll be there as long as it takes.”
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Christian Glass was a geology geek, a painter and a young man beset by a mental health crisis when he called 911 for help getting his car unstuck in a Colorado mountain town last year.

When sheriff’s deputies arrived, he refused to get out of the car after saying that supernatural beings were after him, body camera video shows. The officers shouted, threatened and coaxed. Glass made heart shapes with his hands and prayed: “Dear Lord, please, don’t let them break the window.”

They did, and the 22-year-old grabbed a small knife. Then he was hit with bean bag rounds, stun gun charges and, ultimately, bullets that killed him and led to a murder charge against one deputy and a criminally negligent homicide charge against another.

As part of a $19 million settlement this spring with Glass’ parents, Colorado’s Clear Creek County this month joined a growing roster of U.S. communities that respond to nonviolent mental health crises with clinicians and EMTs or paramedics, instead of police.

The initiatives have spread rapidly in recent years, particularly among the nation’s biggest cities.

Data gathered by The Associated Press show at least 14 of the 20 most populous U.S. cities are hosting or starting such programs, sometimes called civilian, alternative or non-police response teams. They span from New York and Los Angeles to Columbus, Ohio, and Houston, and boast annual budgets that together topped $123 million as of June, AP found. Funding sources vary.

“If someone is experiencing a mental health crisis, law enforcement is not what they need,” said Tamara Lynn of the National De-Escalation Training Center, a private group that trains police to handle such situations.

There’s no aggregate, comprehensive data yet on the programs’ effects. Their scope varies considerably. So does their public reception.

In Denver, just an hour’s drive from where Glass was killed, a program called STAR answered 5,700 calls last year and is often cited as a national model. Its funding has totaled $7 million since 2021.

In New York, a more than $40 million-a-year program dubbed B-HEARD answered about 3,500 calls last year, and mental health advocates criticize it as anemic.

Representatives from some other cities were frank about challenges — staffing shortages, acclimating 911 dispatchers to sending out unarmed civilians, and more — at a conference in Washington, D.C., this spring.

Still, officials in places including New York see no-police teams as an important shift in how they address people in crisis.

“We really think that every single B-HEARD response is just a better way that we, the city, are providing care to people,” said Laquisha Grant of the New York Mayor’s Office of Community Mental Health.

Federal data is incomplete, but various studies and statistics show that mentally ill people make up a substantial proportion of those killed by police. Often, the dead are people of color, though Glass was not.

Calls for change

The alternative approach dates back decades but gained new impetus from calls for wide-ranging police reform after the 2020 killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis. There also were specific pleas for better responses to psychiatric crisis after such tragedies as the death of Daniel Prude that year in Rochester, New York. Prude was just out of a psychiatric hospital and running naked through snowy streets when he was suffocated by police who had been called to help him. He was Black, as was Floyd.

Reports of mental distress made up about 1% of police calls in a 2022 study involving nine police agencies; there’s no nationwide statistic. A long-established civilian response program in Eugene, Oregon, says it diverts 3% to 8% of calls from police. The Vera Institute of Justice, a police reform advocacy group, suggests alternative teams could handle 19% if homelessness, intoxication and some other troubles were included.

In Denver, STAR teams arrive in vans stuffed with everything from medical gear to blankets to Cheez-Its. In one recent instance, they spent three hours — more time than police could likely have spent — with a Denver newcomer who was living on the streets. The team helped him get a Colorado ID voucher, groceries, and medications and took him to a shelter.

“It’s really about meeting the needs of the community and making sure we are sending the right experts, so we can actually solve the problem,” says Carleigh Sailon, a former STAR manager who now works elsewhere.

STAR responded to 44% of calls deemed eligible last year, said Evan Thompkins, a STAR program specialist.

A Stanford University study found that petty crime reports fell by a third and violent crime stayed steady in areas that STAR served in its earliest phase. Throughout the program’s three years, police have never been called for backup due to safety concerns but have helped direct traffic, Thompkins said.

Identifying callers’ needs

Some observers wonder if safety worries will grow as non-police programs do. While there’s an appeal to the idea of pulling cops out of psychiatric crisis calls, “the challenge is identifying those calls,” said Stephen Eide, a senior fellow specializing in mental health issues at the conservative Manhattan Institute think tank.

In New York, dispatchers must gauge the potentially life-or-death risk of “imminent harm” while deciphering sometimes frantic 911 calls that often come from bystanders or relatives, not the person in crisis.

Officials say B-HEARD answered 53% of eligible calls in the last six months of 2022, the most recent data available. But that was 16% of all mental health crisis calls within the program’s limited territory.

Combined, staffers citywide answered about 2% of the 171,000 such calls throughout last year.

“Very unimpressive,” says Ruth Lowenkron, an attorney involved in a federal lawsuit that seeks changes in B-HEARD.

Grant says the city is exploring whether more calls could qualify. Meanwhile, officials note that B-HEARD’s social workers and EMTs resolve about half of calls by talking to people or taking them to social service or community health centers, rather than the hospitals where armed officers have traditionally brought people in crisis. Plans call for extending B-HEARD citywide.

Grant credits the program with “providing people with more options and letting people know that they can stay safely in their homes, in their communities, with the connection to the right resources.” 
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Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell appeared to briefly freeze and be unable to answer a reporter’s question during an event in Kentucky on Wednesday, weeks after he had a similar episode in Washington. 

According to video from a local news station, the 81-year-old was asked whether he would run for reelection in 2026. The senator asked the reporter to repeat the question before trailing off and staring straight ahead for about 10 seconds. 

A woman standing at the front of the room with McConnell asked him whether he heard the question, and she repeated it. When McConnell did not answer, she announced to the room that “we’re going to need a minute.” McConnell eventually answered two additional questions — though not the one about a 2026 campaign — and was halting and appeared to have some difficulty speaking. The woman then ended the news conference and McConnell left the room, walking slowly. 

McConnell’s reaction was similar to an earlier incident when he froze for about 20 seconds at a news conference in the Capitol in late July. He went back to his office with aides and then returned to answer more questions. 

The latest incident in Covington, Kentucky, on Wednesday adds to the questions in recent months about McConnell’s health and whether the Kentucky Republican, who was first elected to the Senate in 1984 and has served as Republican leader since 2007, will remain in his leadership post. 

His office said afterward that McConnell was feeling “momentarily lightheaded” and would see a physician before his next event. Similarly, after the July episode, aides said McConnell was lightheaded. McConnell told reporters several hours later that he was “fine.” Neither McConnell nor his aides have given any further details about what happened. 

In March, McConnell suffered a concussion and a broken rib after falling and hitting his head after a dinner event at a hotel. He did not return to the Senate for almost six weeks. He has been using a wheelchair in the airport while commuting back and forth to Kentucky. Since then, he has appeared to walk more slowly and his speech has sounded more halting. 

McConnell had polio in his early childhood, and he has long acknowledged some difficulty as an adult in climbing stairs. In addition to his fall in March, he also tripped and fell four years ago at his home in Kentucky, causing a shoulder fracture that required surgery. 
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A federal judge on Wednesday held Rudy Giuliani liable in a defamation lawsuit brought by two Georgia election workers who say they were falsely accused of fraud, entering a default judgment against the former New York City mayor and ordering him to pay tens of thousands of dollars in lawyers’ fees.

U.S. District Judge Beryl Howell said the punishment was necessary because Giuliani had ignored his duty as a defendant to turn over information requested by election workers Ruby Freeman and her daughter, Wandrea’ ArShaye Moss, as part of their lawsuit.

Their complaint from December 2021 accused Giuliani, one of Donald Trump’s lawyers and a confidant of the former Republican president, of defaming them by falsely stating that they had engaged in fraud while counting ballots at State Farm Arena in Atlanta.

The ruling enables the case to move forward to a trial in federal court in Washington to determine any damages that Giuliani must pay. He will have a “final opportunity” to produce the requested information, known under the law as discovery, or face additional sanctions if he fails to do so.

In the meantime, Howell said, Giuliani and his business entities must pay more than $130,000 in attorneys’ fees and other costs.

“Donning a cloak of victimization may play well on a public stage to certain audiences, but in a court of law this performance has served only to subvert the normal process of discovery in a straight-forward defamation case, with the concomitant necessity of repeated court intervention,” Howell wrote.

Ted Goodman, a political adviser to Giuliani, said in a statement that the judge’s ruling “is a prime example of the weaponization of our justice system, where the process is the punishment. This decision should be reversed, as Mayor Giuliani is wrongly accused of not preserving electronic evidence that was seized and held by the FBI.”

Last month, Giuliani conceded that he made public comments falsely claiming the election workers committed ballot fraud during the 2020 election, but he contended that the statements were protected by the First Amendment.
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Former Proud Boys national leader Enrique Tarrio’s sentencing for orchestrating the far-right extremist group’s attack on the U.S. Capitol was delayed until September 5 because the trial judge was sick on Wednesday. 

The government is seeking a 33-year sentence for Tarrio in one of the most significant prosecutions in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol. That is nearly twice the length of the longest prison term so far among the hundreds of riot prosecutions. 

U.S. District Judge Timothy Kelly, who is not bound by prosecutors’ recommendation, was sick and unable to preside at the hearing Wednesday, the U.S. Marshals Service said shortly before the proceeding was to begin. 

Tarrio had already been arrested and ordered to leave Washington by the time Proud Boys members joined thousands of supporters of then-President Donald Trump in storming the Capitol as lawmakers met to certify Democrat Joe Biden’s 2020 electoral victory. But prosecutors say Tarrio organized and led the group’s assault from afar, inspiring followers with his charisma and penchant for propaganda. 

Tarrio was a top target in one of the most important Capitol riot cases prosecuted by the Justice Department. He and three lieutenants were convicted in May of charges including seditious conspiracy — a rarely brought Civil War-era offense that the Justice Department levied against members of far-right groups who played a key role in the January 6 attack. 

“Using his powerful platform, Tarrio has repeatedly and publicly indicated that he has no regrets about what he helped make happen on January 6,” prosecutors wrote in a court filing. 

The Justice Department has also recently charged Trump with conspiring to subvert American democracy, accusing the Republican of plotting in the days before the attack to overturn the results of the election that he lost. 

The Tarrio case — and hundreds of others like it — function as a vivid reminder of the extent to which Trump’s false claims helped inspire right-wing extremists who ultimately stormed the Capitol to thwart the peaceful transfer of presidential power. 

Trump, who is the early front-runner for the 2024 GOP presidential nomination, insists he did nothing wrong. His trial is set for March 4. 

Prison sentences

The sentence that prosecutors have recommended for Tarrio, 39, of Miami, is nearly twice as long as the harshest punishment that has been handed down so far among January 6 prosecutions. The longest prison sentence so far went to Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes, who got 18 years for seditious conspiracy and his conviction on other charges. 

Kelly also was to sentence former Proud Boys chapter leader Ethan Nordean on Wednesday. Later this week, Kelly had been scheduled to sentence three other Proud Boys members who were convicted by a jury in May after a trial alongside Tarrio and Nordean. 

Tarrio, Nordean, Joseph Biggs and Zachary Rehl were convicted of seditious conspiracy. A fifth Proud Boys member, Dominic Pezzola, was acquitted of seditious conspiracy but convicted of other serious charges. 

Prosecutors also recommended prison sentences of 33 years for Biggs, 30 years for Rehl, 27 years for Nordean and 20 years for Pezzola. Nordean, of Auburn, Washington, and Rehl, of Philadelphia, led local Proud Boys chapters. Biggs, of Ormond Beach, Florida, was a self-described Proud Boys organizer. Pezzola was a group member from Rochester, New York. 

Tarrio’s lawyers denied the Proud Boys had any plan to attack the Capitol. They argued that prosecutors used Tarrio as a scapegoat for Trump, who spoke at the “Stop the Steal” rally near the White House on January 6 and urged his supporters to “fight like hell.” 

In urging the judge for a lenient sentence, Tarrio’s lawyers noted in court papers that he has a history of cooperating with law enforcement. Court records uncovered in 2021 showed that Tarrio previously worked undercover and cooperated with investigators after he was accused of fraud in 2012. 

Tarrio’s lawyers urged the judge “to see another side of him — one that is benevolent, cooperative with law enforcement, useful in the community, hardworking and with a tight-knit family unit and community support.” 

Role of Tarrio

Police arrested Tarrio in Washington two days before the riot on charges that he defaced a Black Lives Matter banner during an earlier rally in the nation’s capital, but law enforcement officials later said he was arrested in part over concerns about the potential for unrest during the certification. He complied with a judge’s order to leave the city after his arrest. 

On January 6, dozens of Proud Boys leaders, members and associates were among the first rioters to breach the Capitol. The mob’s assault overwhelmed police, forced lawmakers to flee the House and Senate floors, and disrupted the joint session of Congress for certifying Biden’s victory. 

Tarrio picked Nordean and Biggs to be his top lieutenants on January 6 and created an encrypted Telegram group chat for group leaders to communicate, according to prosecutors. The backbone of the case against Tarrio and other Proud Boys leaders was messages that they privately exchanged before, during and after the January 6 attack. 

“Make no mistake … we did this,” Tarrio wrote to other group leaders. 

Tarrio also posted encouraging messages on social media during the riot, expressing pride for what he saw unfold at the Capitol and urging his followers to stay there. He also posted a picture of rioters in the Senate chamber with the caption “1776.” 

Several days before the riot, a girlfriend sent Tarrio a document entitled “1776 Returns.” It called for storming and occupying government buildings in Washington “for the purpose of getting the government to overturn the election results,” according to prosecutors. 

More than 1,100 people have been charged with federal crimes related to the Capitol attack. More than 600 of them have been sentenced, with over half receiving terms of imprisonment. 
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The recent killing of three Black people in Jacksonville, Florida, has drawn attention to a grim reality that researchers have long documented: Black Americans are the most frequent victims of racially motivated hate crimes in the United States.

A new report released Tuesday confirms the trend, showing that Black people were the targets of more than one-fifth of all hate crimes reported in major U.S. cities last year, the highest share of any group.

The report, based on police data analyzed by the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism at California State University San Bernardino, found that hate crimes targeting Black people fell by an average of 6% last year, after surging in the previous two years.

But the trend was not uniform across the country, and many cities and states reported their worst numbers ever.

Out of 42 cities surveyed by the center, more than half showed an increase in anti-Black hate crimes, with some reaching historic highs. New York City, Los Angeles, Austin, Texas, and Sacramento, California, all set modern records.

Five states — Colorado, New Jersey, Ohio, Texas and Utah — also broke their records for anti-Black hate crimes, while incidents in California and New York state — both with large Black populations — surged by more than 20%, according to the report.

Historically, African Americans have been the most frequent victims of hate crimes in the U.S., and that did not change last year.

The report found they were the targets of 22% of all hate crimes in 2022, the highest share of any group. In 2021, the share was as high as 31%.

Jews came in second last year, with 16% of all hate incidents, followed by gay men, with 12%, and white people, with 8.5%, according to the report.

Overall, hate crimes reported to police in the 42 U.S. cities rose 10% in 2022. That’s on top of a nationwide increase of nearly 31%  seen in 2021.

Frequent targets of hate crime

The report comes just days after a white gunman killed two Black men and a Black woman at a Florida variety store in a hate-fueled rampage.

The 21-year-old shooter, who took his own life after the killings, left behind a racist screed in which he expressed hatred for Black people. One firearm he used in the attack had swastikas drawn on it.

“Blacks remain the most frequent target not only for these extremist killers but have been the most frequent target for overall hate crime for every year since data has been collected, right up through our partial 2023 totals,” said Brian Levin, director of the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism and the lead author of the report.

The FBI, which has been collecting hate crime data since 1991, said it was investigating the Jacksonville shooting as an anti-Black hate crime.

“From everything we know now, this was a targeted attack — a hate crime that was racially motivated,” FBI Director Christopher Wray said Monday during a call with civil rights leaders and law enforcement officials.

The shooting was not the first of its kind in Jacksonville this year.

In May, three white men were charged in connection with the shooting death of a 39-year-old Black man in downtown Jacksonville.

‘Replacement’ theory

Legin said the vast majority of racially motivated homicides over the past five years have been carried out by white supremacists and right-wing ideologues.

The cycle is being repeated this year, he said.

“We expect this killing cycle to continue, especially as we enter a volatile election season,” Levin said. “These atrocities are often carried out by angry young adult males who make recent weapon acquisitions, act within their home state, and who reference the ‘replacement’ doctrine statements of previous killers.”

The replacement theory, which asserts that non-white immigrants are being brought into the U.S. to “replace” white people, inspired a white gunman to shoot and kill 10 Black people in May 2022 at a supermarket in Buffalo, New York.

While the total number of extremist-motivated homicides fell last year, the figures “ignore the numerous plots and thwarted attacks which unfortunately could have driven the death count substantially higher,” Levin said.

He attributed the surge in hate crimes to several factors, including the proliferation of online and political rhetoric that promotes bigotry, stereotypes and conspiracy theories.

“The ubiquity and seepage of hateful rhetoric of various depths now in the mainstream of sociopolitical discourse demonizes whole groups of people and creates a deep well,” Levin said.
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As John Eastman prepared to surrender to Georgia authorities last week in an indictment related to efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election, he issued a statement denouncing the criminal case as targeting attorneys “for their zealous advocacy on behalf of their clients.”

Another defendant, Rudy Giuliani, struck a similar note, saying he was being indicted for his work as Donald Trump’s attorney. “I never thought I’d get indicted for being a lawyer,” he said.

The 18 defendants charged alongside Trump in this month’s racketeering indictment in Fulton County include more than a half-dozen lawyers, and the statements from Eastman and Giuliani provide early foreshadowing of at least one of the defenses they seem poised to raise: that they were merely doing their jobs as attorneys when they maneuvered on Trump’s behalf to undo the results of that election.

The argument suggests a desire to turn at least part of the sprawling prosecution into a referendum on the boundaries of ethical lawyering.

But while attorneys do have wide berth to advance untested or unconventional positions, experts say a “lawyers being lawyers” defense will be challenging to pull off to the extent prosecutors can directly link the indicted lawyers to criminal schemes alleged in the indictment. That includes efforts to line up fake electors in Georgia and other states who would falsely assert that Trump, not Democrat Joe Biden, had won their respective contests.

“The law books are replete with examples of lawyers who were disciplined for claiming they were representing their clients,” said Barry Richard, who represented George W. Bush’s winning presidential campaign in 2000 in a dispute ultimately decided by the Supreme Court. “Lawyers are required to follow very stringent rules of propriety. And there are certain things you can’t do for your clients. You cannot tell the court facts you have reason to know are not true.”

A more complicated question, though, is how far lawyers can go in advancing legal theories — even poorly supported ones — to achieve a desired outcome for a client, said Stephen Saltzburg, a George Washington University law professor and former Justice Department official.

“Bad lawyering” in and of itself is not a crime, nor is “testing the waters” of legal arguments, he said.

“The real question is, at what point does a lawyer who knows that the legal theory that that lawyer is espousing has never been accepted anywhere — when does the lawyer cross the line if the lawyer suggests sort of that it is OK, that it’s clearly OK?” Saltzburg said. “And that’s a fuzzy line.”

Of course, attorneys are expected, as Eastman noted in his statement, to zealously represent clients — though he did privately acknowledge that he anticipated the Supreme Court might unanimously dismiss a legal theory he advanced that then-Vice President Mike Pence was entitled to reject the counting of electoral votes.

There’s also a long history of election-related lawsuits, none more famous than the 2000 Florida fight between Democrat Al Gore and the Bush campaign. Justice Department counsel Jack Smith acknowledged as much in his own federal indictment against Trump, saying he was entitled like any candidate to file lawsuits challenging ballots and procedures and contest the results through other legal means.

But the Georgia indictment lists numerous acts in which prosecutors allege that lawyers went beyond conventional legal advocacy and engaged themselves in criminal activities.

It alleges, for instance, that former Justice Department official Jeffrey Clark — who has denied any wrongdoing — drafted a memo he wanted to send to Georgia officials falsely claiming that fraud had been identified that could have affected the election outcome in that state. It also accuses another lawyer, Sidney Powell, of plotting to illegally access voting equipment in a rural county in Georgia in an attempt to prove voting fraud claims.

And the indictment says multiple other lawyers — including Kenneth Chesebro, Giuliani and Eastman — were involved in discussions about enlisting fake electors in battleground states won by Biden in place of the legitimate ones. A lawyer for Chesebro has said that each allegation against him related to his work as an attorney; lawyers for Powell declined to comment Tuesday.

“The difference here is between recommending to the client that it may be possible to appoint electors other than those identified by the secretary of state, and then the client does it or doesn’t do it,” said Stephen Gillers, a legal expert at New York University. “It’s different when the lawyer himself or herself proceeds to follow that advice.”

He added: “The lawyer as actor, as opposed to the lawyer as advocate, gets less freedom to trespass on legal principles.”

Richard, who represented the Bush campaign in 2000, said there was no fair comparison to those legitimate court challenges of that era and the alleged misconduct 20 years later. The fighting then was done in court, and once the Supreme Court ruled, the matter was considered resolved.

When it came to that decision, Richard said, “I remember people said to me, ‘How is anybody going to govern after this?’ I said, ‘The Monday after this is over, everybody will go back to work, and everybody will acknowledge that we have a president’ — and that’s exactly what happened.”
…

The southeastern U.S. state of Florida braced Wednesday for the landfall of Hurricane Idalia with forecasters expecting coastal areas to experience “catastrophic storm surge inundation.”

Idalia dumped heavy rain on Florida as the center of the storm approached the state’s Gulf coast with maximum sustained winds of 175 kilometers per hour.

The National Hurricane Center said it expected Idalia to further strengthen to a Category 4 hurricane—the second strongest level—before making its landfall in the Big Bend region.

Areas most directly impacted by the storm surge could see inundation three to five meters above ground level.

Authorities ordered mandatory evacuations in eight counties in the storm’s path, with people in 14 other countries encouraged to leave.

In preparation for rescue and repair efforts, about 5,500 National Guard troops have been activated and more than 30,000 utility workers are standing by ahead of the storm’s arrival.

Forecasters also said destructive winds would affect areas in Florida and up into neighboring Georgia Wednesday, with flooding rains also impacting those states along with North Carolina and South Carolina through Thursday.

Some information for this report came from The Associated Press
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