The law, signed by Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) in May, makes it a third-degree felony for people to use a false identification to get hired for work. Any business that is found to knowingly employ those unauthorized workers could have its license revoked and face daily fines. Additionally, hospitals that accept Medicaid are now required to question a patient’s immigration status, driver’s licenses given to undocumented immigrants in other states are invalid, and it’s a third-degree felony to knowingly transport undocumented immigrants into the state.
An estimated 772,00 undocumented immigrants lived in Florida in 2019, with many working on construction sites, farms and packaging facilities. Migrant workers began leaving the state once DeSantis signed the new law in May, The Wall Street Journal reported, including those who are authorized to work but are married to someone who isn’t. A spokesperson for DeSantis defended the law, saying that businesses that hire undocumented immigrants “instead of Floridians will be held accountable.”
At multiple construction sites in Miami, workers shared with the Journal that they have lost about half of their crews; one man said he knows people who went to Indiana, where they could make $38 an hour instead of $25 and not have to worry about running afoul of the immigration law. Tom C. Murphy, co-president of Coastal Construction, told the Journal there was already a labor shortage before the law went into effect, and while “we fully support documentation of the immigrant workforce, the new law is aggravating an already trying situation.”
Immigration is usually a federal area of law, immigration lawyer Daniela Barshel told the Journal, and it will be difficult to give guidance to clients when there are differing state and federal rules. “It’s kind of extreme that Florida passed a law like this,” she said. Companies cannot be advised to stop hiring noncitizens, since that could be discrimination on the basis of race or national origin, leaving businesses with no easy path forward. “You don’t want to be fined by the government, and you also don’t want to be sued by someone because they were authorized to work and you didn’t hire them,” Barshel said.
Standing between them and the capital, however, was the ruins of the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant and its surrounding exclusion zone, a heavily restricted 1,000 square-mile area poisoned by radiation. Undeterred, the Russian forces moved in and captured the decommissioned plant on the very first day of the invasion. Five weeks later, even as the horrors of the war raged throughout Ukraine, Russian forces quit the plant.
Ever since the plant’s No. 4 reactor exploded in April 1986—to this day, the worst nuclear power accident the world has ever seen—the site has been meticulously managed by generations of workers to mitigate the ongoing threat the area poses to the public. Their critical work could not stop when the Russian tanks and troops arrived on Feb. 24, 2022.
A new film featuring the worker’s testimonies tells how, under incredible strain, they used their expertise and manipulation against Russian occupiers until the soldiers were finally forced to leave.
“Never before in history has a nuclear power plant been taken over by a hostile army. This is something that’s unprecedented,” Oleksiy Radynski, a Kyiv-based documentarian, told The Daily Beast. “And also, no one was prepared for this because people assumed that everyone is a little bit civilized and you don’t do this. You don’t do something that can really lead to a global disaster of like unspoken proportions. But the Russians did it.”
A still from the documentary “Chernobyl 22” about the Russian Army’s invasion of Chernobyl.Oleksiy Radynski
Radynski is part of The Reckoning Project, a team of journalists and researchers documenting Russian war crimes in Ukraine to build a body of evidence for eventual prosecutions. One such war crime was the occupation of Chernobyl, which Radynski explored through testimony of those who were forced to work and live alongside Russian forces as they moved in and shocked the world by turning the site into a military base. He also made a documentary film, Chernobyl 22, using footage from interviews conducted after the occupation of the plant ended on March 31, 2022.
Radynski’s connection to the area is personal, having been one of tens of thousands of children evacuated from Kyiv following the disaster at the plant 37 years ago when he was just two years old. The meltdown, created by human error, and its aftermath are among Radynski’s earliest childhood memories. It was unthinkable, he says, that the security of Chernobyl would be risked by a military operation of any kind, right up until the moment it happened.
“They had security protocols for literally any kind of disaster, like a natural disaster or a terrorist attack for example, but not for an invading army coming in with tanks and heavy artillery and so on,” Radynski said of the plant workers. “So they had to improvise. I think they did something really, really amazing. The resolve of these people is also just unimaginable.”
The plant’s capture immediately sparked international condemnation and concern. Those fears were exacerbated when monitoring stations at the plant recorded a huge spike in radiation levels on the day Russian forces arrived as military vehicles disturbed contaminated soil as they plowed across the exclusion zone. The risks were real. But the Ukrainian workers realized they could use the fear of those risks to their advantage, Radynski says, by exacerbating the fear of radiation among Russian commanders.
“What the Ukrainian personnel at the plant—I mean the senior personnel—did, was they said: ‘If you want to survive, this place is very dangerous,’” Radynski says. “‘If you think you have taken over the nuclear power plant you are wrong. This is not really a nuclear power plant, this is a decommissioned and post-disaster nuclear plant. It’s something completely different and if you want to survive here you have to follow Ukrainian laws on radiation safety.’”
“This was of course true, but this was also a bit of manipulation, because along with these basic radiation safety rules they also started to impose on the Russians,” Radynski says. In one incident, on March 9, the plant suffered a blackout due to power lines being damaged in fighting elsewhere. The workers at the plant convinced the Russians to give them fuel for diesel generators, arguing that a complete loss of power could lead to catastrophic consequences. The plant’s Supervising Electrician, Oleksiy Shelestiy, says in Radynski’s film that staff joked among themselves that, in their own way, they were helping Ukraine’s armed forces by diverting tons of fuel to Chernobyl and away from Russian tanks.
A still from the documentary “Chernobyl 22” about the Russian Army’s invasion of Chernobyl.Oleksiy Radynski
The daily reality for those who did have to remain working in the decommissioned plant throughout the occupation was nevertheless perilous and draining. “They didn’t have proper sleep,” Radynski says. “They didn’t have proper rest. They were completely exhausted—they could make a mistake of any kind at any moment. They could do something wrong at the plant. So this was also extremely dangerous. Some of them spent even more than 25 days of nonstop working there.”
When they could sleep, many had to do so in the same areas as the Russians. Of course, the danger of the situation in Chernobyl affected the invading troops too.
One particularly bizarre example of the recklessness shown by Russia throughout the occupation is where they chose to dig their fortifications. One of the sites was in the Red Forest—the wooded area near the plant named for the rubescent shade its pine trees turned after being exposed to large amounts of radiation during the 1986 disaster. As part of the clean-up operation, authorities decided to bulldoze the forest and bury its contaminated trees in trenches.
The roadblock and trenches made by Russian soldiers near the Red Forest within the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant’s Exclusion Zone on May 29, 2022, during the Russian invasion of Ukraine.DIMITAR DILKOFF/AFP via Getty Images
“They dug fortifications in this area, which is actually not a forest, but the forest is below ground,” Radynski says. “The most contaminated materials are below ground. So you shouldn’t really walk there, but one thing you definitely should not do is dig there.”
In the course of his interviews, Radynski says he learned this extremely hazardous decision may not have simply been down to Russian commanders’ negligence of their own soldiers’ wellbeing. “The Russian generals who were taking over the plant, they were kind of boasting to the staff that they know their plant really well because in Russia they have an identical plant,” Radynski says.
That twin plant, Radynski says, is the Kursk Nuclear Power Plant in western Russia—a Soviet plant built in the 1970s which is so structurally similar to Chernobyl that it’s been used as a stand-in for its Ukrainian double as a filming location.
“They were saying that they were planning and rehearsing this takeover in that nuclear power plant in Kursk,” Radynski said of the Russian commanders. “But of course there is one thing that they didn’t take into account probably—is that the power plant in Kursk is really identical in every way with one exception: it’s not contaminated.”
The extent of the damage to Russian soldiers exposed to potentially dangerous doses of radiation remains unclear. Reports claimed some required treatment for radiation sickness in Belarus, while one witness in the documentary claims workers saw Russian men “evacuated on buses full of people vomiting.” Another said Chernobyl’s cooks had to warn Russians who had shot and skinned a moose that eating the animal—where wild fauna graze on the contaminated fauna—might be a bad idea.
A still from the documentary “Chernobyl 22” about the Russian Army’s invasion of Chernobyl.Oleksiy Radynski
When the Russians withdrew, Ukraine’s Defense Ministry cited losses incurred at the hands of its armed forces and “radiation exposure” as key reasons for the departure, taking the opportunity to mock Russian “mutants” on their way out.
The occupation nevertheless had serious consequences for the ongoing safety of Chernobyl. As the Russians left, large amounts of property was either destroyed or stolen—one estimate suggested around $1 million of property was looted—including everything from technical equipment to teapots. “It’s just lucky that a lot of really vital equipment is just too large to be squeezed into a tank or a military bus,” Radynski says. The area has also been heavily mined, a small part of a national scourge which has reportedly seen an area the size of Florida in Ukraine infested with explosives.
Arguably the most troubling of all the consequences for the workers, Radynski says, is the now ever-present sense of insecurity that comes with the fear that the Russians could return. Once unimaginable, the cavalier attitude toward nuclear safety in Ukraine has remained constant since Chernobyl’s occupation. On Thursday, Ukrainian emergency workers even took part in drills to prepare for a possible radiation leak at the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant—Europe’s largest—amid alarming reports that Moscow is preparing such a plot at the site. Like Chernobyl, the southwestern Zaporizhzhia plant was captured by Russian forces early in the war—but the occupiers are still in control there to this day.
For Radynski, the fact that the Chernobyl plant is back under Ukrainian control is in itself a remarkable testament to the fortitude of those workers who stoically carried out their duties in the face of unparalleled danger. “There has been many stories of Russian military defeats during this war—I hope there will be more,” he says. “But most of the stories of Russian defeats that we know of, they come from the Ukrainian Army.”
In this case, however, it was Ukrainian workers who won out. The Russians in Chernobyl “were defeated by the power of Ukrainian kafkaesque bureaucracy,” Radynski says, as the staff found a way to “swallow them into this kind of swamp of radiation protocols.” Protocols, he notes, which they didn’t follow anyway.
In the documentary, a physical protection engineer at Chernobyl describes an exchange with a Russian energy official who kept tabs on the plant’s staff fearing they might intentionally trigger some kind of nuclear disaster. “‘I don’t care about your armed thugs,’” Vitaliy Popov says he told the official. “‘Our guys will take care of them. As for me, I actually came here to stop 1986 from happening again.’ I told him: ‘I will accomplish my task.’”
A shadowy club in California recently associated with Clarence Thomas is being sued for multiple labor violations. Here’s what the secret retreat is known for.
Hannah Getahun – July 2, 2023
In this July 29, 1971 file photo is the roadway into the exclusive Bohemian Grove, a quiet encampment 80 miles north of San Francisco in Monte Rio, Calif.Sal Veder/AP Photo
Former workers, known as valets, are suing an elite men’s club for alleged labor violations.
The lawsuit claims they were forced to work over 15 hours daily without breaks.
The Bohemian Club has been associated with right-wing political figures, including Clarence Thomas.
The Bohemian Club, an all-men’s private society in California that counts former presidents among its members, faces a class action lawsuit from servers for alleged labor violations.
The exclusive club occasionally pops up in the news, primarily for its association with elite and wealthy men. Most recently, a ProPublica report detailing Justice Clarence Thomas’ relationship with Harlan Crow mentioned the club.
Former valets who used to work at Monastery Camp in Monte Rio, California, which they described as one of the “most prestigious and well-known camps at Bohemian Grove,” filed the complaint on June 5.
The valets, who attended to wealthy guests during summer camp, claim in the complaint that workers were required to work over 15 hours a day with no breaks or meal periods while only receiving pay for 8 hours a day. The suit alleges that club management “continually worked together to come up with methods to avoid paying payroll taxes and overtime.”
The suit names Bohemian Club treasurer William Dawson as someone who directly asked employees to “falsify payroll records.” It also claims that valets were asked to hide when the owner of the payroll company Pomella LLC, also named as a defendant in the suit, came to inspect the Grove. The suit alleges that the payroll company was also aware of the falsified timesheets.
The lawsuit also alleges that valets working at around 100 other camps plaintiffs say are associated with the club are run by captains that have engaged in similar labor violations. The lawsuit says that Bohemian Club may seek to distance itself from these camps during litigation, but asserts that these affiliate camps are a joint venture of the main club and that members pay the club to access these sites.
In a statement to the Press Democrat, Sam Singer, a communications representative for the club, said that the club “has always valued and respected its employees, and that includes our commitment to full compliance with all applicable wage and hour laws and regulations.”
“We believe these three individuals know full well they did not work for the Club and that this lawsuit is a transparent attempt to drag the Club into their individual circumstances,” Singer told the Press Democrat. “The Club will vigorously defend itself in this action, as it would in any other meritless lawsuit.”
The Bohemian Club, which has thousands of members and has been associated with Republican presidents like Ronald Reagan, Richard Nixon, and George HW Bush, has been hosting the summer camp for over 150 years and describes itself as a club of “gentlemen who are connected professionally with Literature, Art, Music, or the Drama.”
The club, full of elite men often tight-lipped about its members and events, has garnered the interest of conspiracy theorists, left-leaning protestors, and interested onlookers. Although there is still much to learn about the club, one ritual was uncovered by InfoWars host Alex Jones, who snuck into the Bohemian Grove summer camp to film a strange ritual that consisted of robed members burning a coffin effigy — named “Care” — in front of a 40-foot owl statue.
According to previous investigative reports, the Grove also hosts various social activities, like plays and comedy shows featuring men portraying female characters. The club is also known for hosting “Lakeside Talks,” where members, often those of the political elite, speak about policy ideas.
The Bohemian Club and a lawyer for the plaintiffs did not immediately respond to Insider’s request for comment.
Why is America not the lawless, gun-free, socialist wasteland Republicans warned us about?
Rex Huppke, USA TODAY – July 2, 2023
Last I checked, there are approximately 3,756 Republicans running for the GOP presidential nomination, and the vast majority of them – particularly the Donalds Trump and the Rons DeSantis of the world – want voters to know they should be terrified.
Terrified of what, you ask? Oh, I dunno. Socialism. Marxism. “Radical” teachers. Mickey Mouse. Drag queens. “Others.” Pretty much everything, it seems. All the fears. (I’d add spiders to that list, but that’s just me, a liberal scaredy cat.)
Fearmongering is a tried-and-true Republican Party tradition and with the 2024 election cycle about to kick into full gear, it’s mongering season.
Republican fearmongering, and some questions about why fears are never realized
So I have a suggestion for GOP voters, from the MAGA loyalists to the (three remaining) moderates to everyone in between. The first GOP presidential debate will be Aug. 23 in Milwaukee. At that event, you should demand answers to the following fear-related questions:
Why is “her” – the Hillary Clinton character in the “Lock her up!” chant – not locked up? Former President Donald Trump was supposed to do that, yet “her” walks free.
President Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton during a debate in 2016.
Why haven’t we been literally invaded by umpteen South American migrant caravans?
Where is the country-destroying migrant surge that was supposed to come after Title 42 ended?
Why aren’t there violent MS-13 gang members on every street corner?
Why haven’t drag shows turned all Americans into drag queens?
Years of fear, with so few results – it’s almost as if they’re manipulating voters
Why are America’s big cities not actually dystopian hellscapes?
Why is the murder rate declining when we’ve been told repeatedly that crime is spiraling out of control?
How come our children are able to watch Disney movies without turning gay?
Why are Americans still allowed to speak English?
Why are we still able to hold dear all the things we hold dear?
I was specifically promised widespread socialism. What the heck?
Why has nobody come to confiscate our guns? We have actual buckets filled with guns in the basement and bullets everywhere and not a single damn Democrat has come to rip them from our hands, cold and dead or otherwise.
Why has virtually everything a Republican candidate or Fox News talking head ever said to instill fear in our hearts wound up being either total nonsense or, at best, an almost bizarre overexaggeration of a relatively minor issue?
Why has America not been transformed into a socialist wasteland?
Why, for the last time, do we still have all of our guns?
You deserve answers to these questions, my Republican friends. Because often, in this big and confusing world of ours, there are inescapable signs that suggest you’re being lied to.
Learning to spot them is an important life skill. Off you go.
Idaho Republican Party’s rule changes have a precedent: The Soviet Politburo | Opinion
The Editorial Board – June 30, 2023
Ryan Suppe
Imagine Rep. Jane Smith voted against a bill to censor public libraries.
Returning home to her rural Idaho district, she is ordered to appear before the Central Committee, where Party officials pepper her with questions. Her answers are unimportant.
The Central Committee announces the decision it made weeks ago: Smith will be cast out, the fact that she won the support of 70% of voters in the last election notwithstanding.
Because the requirement for wielding power is not loyalty to the people who elected you, but loyalty to the party bosses.
This isn’t a scene from the Soviet bloc. It’s the Idaho Republican Party’s immediate plan for running politics in the Gem State under the guidance of Premier Dorothy Moon, a plan it moved at its summer meeting in Challis to begin implementing with a series of rules.
As Melissa Davlin of Idaho Public Television reported, the party passed resolutions that include allowing central committees to summon, censure and even revoke the right of lawmakers to run as Republicans; revoking the voting privileges of the Young Republicans, College Republicans and Republican Women; supporting a constitutional amendment to allow the party to control the primary; and issuing a vote of no confidence in Gov. Brad Little and a number of Republican House members for failing to support library censorship.
The organizing logic is simple: Whatever power there is, it ought to belong to the Party.
Whatever power these ideologically extreme and power-hungry Party bosses successfully take, it will come at the expense of Idaho voters.
Because policy positions favored by huge numbers of Republican voters in Idaho are formally verboten under the Idaho GOP’s official platform.
If a Republican lawmaker doesn’t sign on to a proposal to revoke your right to cast a ballot in U.S. Senate elections, they’ve violated the GOP platform, which requires support for revoking the 17th Amendment.
If they support the continued existence of some number of grizzly bears or wolves in Idaho, they’ve arguably violated it as well.
Or if they don’t support a return to the gold standard.
Or if they don’t support the repeal of Medicaid expansion.
Or if they don’t support nullifying the U.S. Supreme Court decision recognizing marriage equality.
Or if they support the right of a child who was raped by a family member to have an abortion, or if they think that such an abortion should be handled in some way other than with a murder charge.
For these and countless other examples of crimethink, the people’s elected officials could be hauled in and stripped of their right to call themselves Republicans by a bunch of people that most Idaho Republican voters have never heard of, much less voted for.
With Idaho’s most powerful party fully hijacked, the open primary initiative seems to be the best bet for keeping the political process under popular control, precisely because it would diminish the political relevance of parties. It would allow everyone to weigh in on which candidates will face off in the general election, regardless of party, and it would allow voters to rank general election candidates in order of preference, so they wouldn’t have to worry they’re throwing their votes away if a third-party candidate is their first choice.
None of this would help people the extremist Party has termed RINOs or secret liberals or any of that nonsense. Conservatives would do well with an open primary and ranked-choice voting system because Idaho is full of conservative voters.
Those elected under such a system would know that it was the people, not the Party bosses, who put them in office. They would know it is the people, not the Party bosses, to whom they answer for their record.
Statesman editorials are the unsigned opinion of the Idaho Statesman’s editorial board. Board members are opinion editor Scott McIntosh, opinion writer Bryan Clark, editor Chadd Cripe, newsroom editors Dana Oland and Jim Keyser, and community member Mary Rohlfing.
Liz Cheney on what’s wrong with politics: ‘We’re electing idiots’
John Wagner – June 27, 2023
Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) arrives in Jackson Hole, Wyo., to speak after losing her Republican primary election on Aug. 16. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)
Ex-congresswoman Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) offered a blunt assessment of her former profession Monday night: “What we’ve done in our politics is create a situation where we’re electing idiots.”
Cheney, who lost her Republican primary last year to a candidate backed by former president Donald Trump, shared her view at an event that was billed as a conversation on the future of the two-party political system in the United States.
Cheney, who co-chaired the House select committee that investigated the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol, has emerged as a leading critic of Trump, repeatedly calling him “unfit for office.” In the conversation Monday at the 92nd Street Y in New York, guided by moderator David Rubenstein, Cheney said ensuring Trump doesn’t return to the White House is her top priority.
That prompted Rubenstein to ask whether Cheney would run for president as an independent next year if presented with polling data showing such a bid would damage Trump.
“Look, I think that the country right now faces hugely challenging and fundamentally important issues,” Cheney responded. “And what we’ve done in our politics is create a situation where we’re electing idiots.”
After laughter from the audience subsided, she continued: “And so, I don’t look at it through the lens of, is this what I should do or what I shouldn’t do. I look at it through the lens of, how do we elect serious people? And I think electing serious people can’t be partisan.”
“You know, because of the situation that we’re in,” Cheney continued, “where we have a major-party candidate who’s trying to unravel our democracy — and I don’t say that lightly — we have to think about, all right, what kinds of alliances are necessary to defeat him, and those are the alliances we’ve got to build across party lines.”
The conversation moved on without Cheney directly answering whether she might move forward with a presidential bid if it could damage Trump.
Earlier, she suggested she wouldn’t run for president if she thought doing so could help Trump, who has continued to lead in Republican primary polling despite state and federal indictments.
“I am not going to do anything that would help Donald Trump,” Cheney said.
North Carolina GOP bars promotion of certain beliefs in state government, 1 of 6 veto overrides
Gary D. Robertson – June 27, 2023
FILE – Democratic North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper speaks to The Associated Press in a year-end interview at the Executive Mansion in Raleigh, N.C., Dec. 14, 2022. On Friday, June 16, 2023, Cooper vetoed GOP legislation that would ban the promotion of certain beliefs that some lawmakers have likened to critical race theory in state government workplaces. (AP Photo/Hannah Schoenbaum, File) (ASSOCIATED PRESS)
RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) — North Carolina’s GOP-dominated legislature swept six bills into law Tuesday with veto overrides, including one barring promotion of certain beliefs in state government workplaces that some lawmakers liken to critical race theory and another placing new limits on wetlands protection rules.
The measures, which also address green investing in state government, consumer loans and local government finances, became law after a succession of votes with margins large enough to overcome Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper’s formal vetoed objections earlier this month.
Five of the veto overrides were completed Tuesday with House votes, which followed several similar Senate votes over the past week. A sixth veto override effort cleared both the House and Senate on Tuesday.
The state constitution deems an override successful if at least three-fifths of the members in each chamber present and voting agree to enact the bill anyway despite the governor’s objections.
The overrides exemplify the expanded political muscle of Republicans after electoral seat gains last fall and a House Democrat’s party switch in April gave them exact veto-proof majorities in each chamber for the first time since late 2018. Cooper had been able to block several dozen GOP measures over the previous four years with vetoes because there were enough Democrats supporting his efforts.
Several of Tuesday’s override votes in the House included support from a few Democrats. Still, Republicans needed to ensure that enough of their party colleagues were in attendance to complete overrides.
Among the bills enacted Tuesday is the legislature’s annual farm bill, which contains more than 30 provisions such as penalties for cutting down timber, waiting periods for regulators to inspect veterinarians’ offices and the establishment of an official “Farmers Appreciation Day” in November.
Cooper’s farm bill veto came Friday. He said the measure would weaken the regulation of wetlands that help control flooding and pollution. His administration and environmental groups have said the bill’s language, when combined with a recent U.S. Supreme Court decision, would leave about half of the state’s wetlands unprotected.
Republicans and their allies blunted the impact of the bill’s language on wetlands, saying it would affect largely affect isolated terrain that rarely floods and align standards with federal law.
Another now-enacted law that takes effect in December bans trainers of state employees from advancing concepts to workers such as that “one race or sex is inherently superior to another race or sex,” or to believe they should feel guilty for past actions committed by people of the same race or sex. It also would prohibit hiring managers for state agencies, community colleges and the University of North Carolina system from compelling applicants for policy-making jobs to reveal their personal or political beliefs as a condition of employment.
In his veto message, Cooper said the bill attempts to suppress workplace discussions related to diversity, equity and inclusion that can reveal “unconscious bias we all bring to our work and our communities.” But supporters of the bill said it actually encourages a diverse set of beliefs within public agencies.
Both the House and Senate voted Tuesday to override the veto of a measure that now ban state agencies from using “environmental, social and governance” standards to screen potential investments, award contracts or hire and fire employees.
On state investments like those in pension funds, the bill says the state treasurer could solely consider factors expected to have a material effect on the financial risk or financial return of an investment.
At least two other states have already enacted laws banning such criteria. Republicans nationwide has raised questions about big business focusing upon environmental sustainability and workplace diversity so much that it harms shareholders and pensioners.
Cooper said in his veto message late week that the measure would needlessly limit the treasurer’s ability to make investment decisions that are in the best interests of the state retirement fund.
Other bills enacted over Cooper’s vetoes in part would raise interest rates and late fees on certain amounts of personal consumer finance loans as well as on consumer credit sales, such as when someone buys a car and pays for it in installments or with a finance charge. Cooper said the higher costs, which would take effect in October on new, renewed or modified loans, would harm residents who already are faced with rising costs of living.
Another bill with a veto now overridden would permit the state’s Local Government Commission to order withheld a portion of sales tax revenues the state collects for cities and counties that fail to complete annual audits of their accounts. Bill supporters said the measure will promote government accountability. Cooper said it was well-intentioned but would likely hurt the state’s smallest communities.
The proposal was unveiled June 14 by U.S. House conservatives, Bloomberg reported. One of its main features is to raise the full retirement age (FRA) at which seniors are entitled to the full benefits they are due.
The 176-member House Republican Study Committee (RSC) approved a fiscal blueprint that would gradually increase the FRA to 69 years old for seniors who turn 62 in 2033. The current full retirement age is 66 or 67, depending on your birth year. For all Americans born in 1960 or later, the FRA is 67.
As Bloomberg noted, workers expecting an earlier retirement benefit will see lifetime payouts reduced if the full retirement age is raised. Those payouts could be drastically reduced for seniors who claim benefits at age 62, when you are first eligible.
Lawmakers on both sides of the political aisle have been working to come up with a fix for Social Security before the program’s Old Age and Survivors Insurance (OASI) Trust Fund runs out of money. That could happen within the next decade or so. When it does, Social Security will be solely reliant on payroll taxes for funding — and those taxes only cover about 77% of current benefits.
While most Democrats want to boost Social Security through higher payroll taxes or reductions to benefits for wealthy Americans, the GOP has largely focused on paring down or privatizing the program.
As previously reported by GOBankingRates, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) recently told Fox News that this month’s debt limit bill was only “the first step” in a broader Republican agenda that includes further cuts.
“This isn’t the end,” McCarthy said. “This doesn’t solve all the problems. We only got to look at 11% of the budget to find these cuts. We have to look at the entire budget. … The majority driver of the budget is mandatory spending. It’s Medicare, Social Security, interest on the debt.”
As Bloomberg noted, Republicans argue that failing to change Social Security could lead to a 23% benefit cut once the trust fund is depleted. Raising the retirement age is a way to soften the immediate impact. The RSC said its proposal would balance the federal budget in seven years by cutting some $16 trillion in spending and $5 trillion in taxes.
“The RSC budget would implement common-sense policies to prevent the impending debt disaster, tame inflation, grow the economy, protect our national security, and defund [President Joe] Biden’s woke priorities,” U.S. Rep. Ben Cline (R-Va.), chairman of the group’s Budget and Spending Task Force, told Roll Call.
Democrats were quick to push back against the proposal.
“Budget Committee Democrats will make sure every American family knows that House Republicans want to force Americans to work longer for less, raise families’ costs, weaken our nation, and shrink our economy — all while wasting billions of dollars on more favors to special interests and handouts to the ultra-wealthy,” U.S. Rep. Brendan Boyle, (D-Pa.), the Budget Committee’s top Democrat, said in a statement.
Meanwhile, White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre issued a statement saying the RSC budget “amounts to a devastating attack on Medicare, Social Security, and Americans’ access to health coverage and prescription drugs.”
Although the proposal might make it through the GOP-led House, it’s unlikely to become law – at least while Biden is still president. Even if a bill somehow got approved by the Democrat-controlled Senate, Biden would almost certainly veto it.
Trump Melts Down as DOJ Turns Over Evidence It Plans to Use Against Him
Ryan Bort – June 22, 2023
Donald Trump fired off a series of desperate pleas on Truth Social, including multiple appeals to Congress to bail him out, hours after news broke that the Justice Department had turned over the first batch of evidence it plans to use against him. The former president was indicted earlier this month on charges related to his handling of classified material after leaving the White House.
“CONGRESS, PLEASE INVESTIGATE THE POLITICAL WITCH HUNTS AGAINST ME CURRENTLY BEING BROUGHT BY THE CORRUPT DOJ AND FBI, WHO ARE TOTALLY OUT OF CONTROL,” Trump wrote Thursday morning.
The former president also dusted off the idea that the DOJ framed him by planting the classified material at Mar-a-Lago — despite the fact that he’s claimed repeatedly that he somehow declassified the material before bringing it to Florida himself. “Congress will hopefully now look at the ever continuing Witch Hunts and ELECTION INTERFERENCE against me on perfectly legal Boxes, where I have no doubt that information is being secretly ‘planted’ by the scoundrels in charge,” he wrote in another post before griping about his other legal woes.
Trump’s indictment is damning, with the DOJ alleging that the former president knowingly took classified documents to Mar-a-Lago, stored them in unsecure locations, and then conspired to lie to authorities about what he was hoarding while suggesting the material should be destroyed. The indictment also outlines a recording it obtained featuring Trump bragging about having a “secret” plan against Iran.
The evidence the DOJ turned over on Wednesday includes more recordings of the former president, described as “interviews” recorded with his consent. It’s unclear what is on the additional tapes. The evidence also includes grand-jury witness testimony — which means Trump now knows who testified against him and what they said — as well as material obtained through subpoenas.
Trump, understandably, seems pretty nervous. “THIS CONTINUING SAGA IS RETRIBUTION AGAINST ME FOR WINNING AND, EVEN MORE IMPORTANTLY TO THEM, ELECTION INTERFERENCE REGARDING THE 2024 PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION,” he added on Thursday morning. “IT WILL BE THERE UPDATED FORM OF RIGGING OUR MOST IMPORTANT ELECTION. LOOK AT THE POLLS – THEY CAN’T BEAT ME (MAGA!) AT THE BALLOT BOX, THE ONLY WAY THEY CAN WIN IS TO CHEAT. STOP THEM NOW!”
Trump pleaded not guilty to all of the charges against him. The DOJ has asked for a speedy trial, and Judge Aileen Cannon earlier this week told both sides to file all pretrial motions by July 24 while slating the trial to begin on Aug. 14. Trump’s team will almost certainly move to delay the start date as long as possible — maybe even until he can retake the White House and appoint an attorney general who will drop the case.
Ronen Bergman, Adam Goldman and Julian E. Barnes – June 19, 2023
Photographs of Sergei Skripal, a former colonel in Russia’s military intelligence service who was convicted in 2006 for selling secrets to British intelligence, in Moscow, Aug. 28, 2018. (Sergey Ponomarev/The New York Times)
As President Vladimir Putin of Russia has pursued enemies abroad, his intelligence operatives now appear prepared to cross a line that they previously avoided: trying to kill a valuable informant for the U.S. government on American soil.
The clandestine operation, seeking to eliminate a CIA informant in Miami who had been a high-ranking Russian intelligence official more than a decade earlier, represented a brazen expansion of Putin’s campaign of targeted assassinations. It also signaled a dangerous low point even between intelligence services that have long had a strained history.
“The red lines are long gone for Putin,” said Marc Polymeropoulos, a former CIA officer who oversaw operations in Europe and Russia. “He wants all these guys dead.”
The assassination failed, but the aftermath in part spiraled into tit-for-tat retaliation by the United States and Russia, according to three former senior U.S. officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss aspects of a plot meant to be secret and its consequences. Sanctions and expulsions, including of top intelligence officials in Moscow and Washington, followed.
The target was Aleksandr Poteyev, a former Russian intelligence officer who disclosed information that led to a yearslong FBI investigation that in 2010 ensnared 11 spies living under deep cover in suburbs and cities along the East Coast. They had assumed false names and worked ordinary jobs as part of an ambitious attempt by the SVR, Russia’s foreign intelligence agency, to gather information and recruit more agents.
In keeping with an Obama administration effort to reset relations, a deal was reached that sought to ease tensions: Ten of the 11 spies were arrested and expelled to Russia. In exchange, Moscow released four Russian prisoners, including Sergei Skripal, a former colonel in the military intelligence service who was convicted in 2006 for selling secrets to Britain.
The bid to assassinate Poteyev is revealed in the British edition of the book “Spies: The Epic Intelligence War Between East and West,” to be published by an imprint of Little, Brown on June 29. The book is by Calder Walton, a scholar of national security and intelligence at Harvard. The New York Times independently confirmed his work and is reporting for the first time on the bitter fallout from the operation, including the retaliatory measures that ensued once it came to light.
According to Walton’s book, a Kremlin official asserted that a hit man, or a Mercader, would almost certainly hunt down Poteyev. Ramón Mercader, an agent of Josef Stalin’s, slipped into Leon Trotsky’s study in Mexico City in 1940 and sank an ice ax into his head. Based on interviews with two U.S. intelligence officials, Walton concluded the operation was the beginning of “a modern-day Mercader” sent to assassinate Poteyev.
The Russians have long used assassins to silence perceived enemies. One of the most celebrated at SVR headquarters in Moscow is Col. Grigory Mairanovsky, a biochemist who experimented with lethal poisons, according to a former intelligence official.
Putin, a former KGB officer, has made no secret of his deep disdain for defectors among the intelligence ranks, particularly those who aid the West. The poisoning of Skripal at the hands of Russian operatives in Salisbury, Britain, in 2018 signaled an escalation in Moscow’s tactics and intensified fears that it would not hesitate to do the same on American shores.
The attack, which used a nerve agent to sicken Skripal and his daughter, prompted a wave of diplomatic expulsions across the world as Britain marshaled the support of its allies in a bid to issue a robust response.
The incident set off alarm bells inside the CIA, where officials worried that former spies who had relocated to the United States, like Poteyev, would soon be targets.
Putin had long vowed to punish Poteyev. But before he could be arrested, Poteyev fled to the United States, where the CIA resettled him under a highly secretive program meant to protect former spies. In 2011, a Moscow court sentenced him in absentia to decades in prison.
Poteyev had seemed to vanish, but at one point, Russian intelligence sent operatives to the United States to find him, though its intentions remained unclear. In 2016, the Russian news media reported that he was dead, which some intelligence experts believed might be a ploy to flush him out. Indeed, Poteyev was very much alive, living in the Miami area.
That year, he obtained a fishing license and registered as a Republican so he could vote, all under his real name, according to state records. In 2018, a news outlet reported Poteyev’s whereabouts.
The CIA’s concerns were not unwarranted. In 2019, the Russians undertook an elaborate operation to find Poteyev, forcing a scientist from Oaxaca, Mexico, to help.
The scientist, Hector Alejandro Cabrera Fuentes, was an unlikely spy. He studied microbiology in Kazan, Russia, and later earned a doctorate in the subject from the University of Giessen in Germany. He was a source of pride for his family, with a history of charitable work and no criminal past.
But the Russians used Fuentes’ partner as leverage. He had two wives: a Russian living in Germany and another in Mexico. In 2019, the Russian wife and her two daughters were not allowed to leave Russia as they tried to return to Germany, court documents say.
That May, when Fuentes traveled to visit them, a Russian official contacted him and asked to see him in Moscow. At one meeting, the official reminded Fuentes that his family was stuck in Russia and that maybe, according to court documents, “we can help each other.”
A few months later, the Russian official asked Fuentes to secure a condo just north of Miami Beach, where Poteyev lived. Instructed not to rent the apartment in his name, Fuentes gave an associate $20,000 to do so.
In February 2020, Fuentes traveled to Moscow, where he again met with the Russian official, who provided a description of Poteyev’s vehicle. Fuentes, the Russian said, should find the car, obtain its license plate number and take note of its physical location. He advised Fuentes to refrain from taking pictures, presumably to eliminate any incriminating evidence.
But Fuentes botched the operation. Driving into the complex, he tried to bypass its entry gate by tailgating another vehicle, attracting the attention of security. When he was questioned, his wife walked away to photograph Poteyev’s license plate.
Fuentes and his wife were told to leave, but security cameras captured the incident. Two days later, he tried to fly to Mexico, but U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers stopped him and searched his phone, discovering the picture of Poteyev’s vehicle.
After he was arrested, Fuentes provided details of the plan to American investigators. He believed the Russian official he had been meeting worked for the FSB, Russia’s internal security service. But covert operations overseas are usually run by the SVR, which succeeded the KGB, or the GRU, Russia’s military intelligence agency.
One of the former officials said Fuentes, unaware of the target’s significance, was merely gathering information for the Russians to use later.
Fuentes’ lawyer, Ronald Gainor, declined to comment.
The plot, along with other Russian activities, elicited a harsh response from the U.S. government. In April 2021, the United States imposed sanctions and expelled 10 Russian diplomats, including the chief of station for the SVR, who was based in Washington and had two years left on his tour, two former U.S. officials said. Throwing out the chief of station can be incredibly disruptive to intelligence operations, and agency officials suspected that Russia was likely to seek reprisal on its American counterpart in Moscow, who had only weeks left in that role, the officials said.
“We cannot allow a foreign power to interfere in our democratic process with impunity,” President Joe Biden said at the White House in announcing the penalties. He made no mention of the plot involving Fuentes.
Sure enough, Russia banished 10 American diplomats, including the CIA’s chief of station in Moscow.
