Supreme Court on ethics issues: Not broken, no fix needed
Jessica Greskow – April 26, 2023
Chief Justice of the United States John Roberts arrives before President Joe Biden delivers the State of the Union address to a joint session of Congress at the Capitol, Feb. 7, 2023, in Washington. Roberts has declined a request from the Senate Judiciary Committee to testify at a hearing on ethical standards at the court, instead providing the panel with a statement of ethics reaffirmed by the court’s justices. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin, Pool)The Supreme Court is seen on Friday, April 21, 2023, in Washington. While the court’s six conservatives and three liberals have been deeply divided on some of the most contentious issues of the day including abortion, gun rights and the place of religion in public life, they seem united on this particular principle: on ethics they will set their own rules and police themselves. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon, File)Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., speaks with reporters about reproductive rights for U.S. veterans, on Capitol Hill, Wednesday, April 19, 2023, in Washington. Durbin, the Democratic chairman of the Senate Judiciary, has invited Supreme Court Justice John Roberts to testify next month at a hearing on ethics standards. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon, File)
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court is speaking with one voice in response to recent criticism of the justices’ ethical practices: No need to fix what isn’t broken.
The justices’ response on Tuesday struck some critics and ethics experts as tone deaf at a time of heightened attention on the justices’ travel and private business transactions. That comes against the backdrop of a historic dip in public approval as measured by opinion polls.
Deeply divided on some of the most contentious issues of the day — including abortion, gun rights and the place of religion in public life — the court’s six conservatives and three liberals seem united on this particular principle: on ethics they will set their own rules and police themselves.
Charles Geyh, an Indiana University law professor and legal ethics expert, said everything the justices detailed Tuesday evening about ethics was essentially outlined in Chief Justice John Roberts’ annual year-end report from 2011, more than a decade ago.
“They’re basically saying … What we’ve been doing is just fine. Let’s just re-say it for those of you at the back…That just strikes me as, you know, pretty empty,” Geyh said.
The most recent stories about the questionable ethics practices of justices began earlier this month. First came a ProPublica investigation that revealed that Thomas has for more than two decades accepted luxury trips nearly every year from Republican megadonor Harlan Crow without reporting them on financial disclosure forms. Thomas responded by issuing a statement saying that he was not required to disclose the trips.
A week later, ProPublica revealed in a new story that Crow had purchased three properties belonging to Thomas and his family, a transaction worth more than $100,000 that Thomas never disclosed. Politico reported more recently that when Justice Neil Gorsuch sold property he co-owned shortly after becoming a justice, he disclosed the sale but omitted that the property was purchased by a person whose firm frequently has cases before the high court.
And earlier this year, there were stories about the legal recruiting career of Chief Justice John Roberts’ wife and whether it raised ethical concerns that she was paid large sums for placing lawyers at firms that appear before the court.
The series of revelations has provoked outcry and calls for reform particularly from Democrats. On Wednesday, Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Sen. Angus King, the independent from Maine, announced legislation that would require the Supreme Court to create a code of conduct and appoint an official to oversee potential conflicts and public complaints. Next week, the Senate Judiciary Committee will hold a hearing on Supreme Court ethics reform.
“The time has come for a new public conversation on ways to restore confidence in the Court’s ethical standards. I invite you to join it,” wrote Sen. Richard Durbin, D-Ill., in a letter.
Roberts declined in his own letter made public Tuesday evening. He wrote that testimony by previous holders of his office before Congress is “exceedingly rare, as one might expect in light or separation of powers concerns and the importance of preserving judicial independence.”
To his letter, however, Roberts attached a “Statement on Ethics Principles and Practices” signed by all nine justices describing the ethical rules they follow about travel, gifts and outside income. “This statement aims to provide new clarity to the bar and to the public on how the Justices address certain recurring issues, and also seeks to dispel some common misconceptions,” the statement read.
But ethics experts and other court observers said the statement that followed and ran just over two pages was nothing new, just “the rehashing of things we already knew and found insufficient,” said Gabe Roth of the watchdog group Fix the Court in a statement.
The statement signed by the justices essentially said that they consult a wide variety of sources to address ethical issues, decide for themselves when a conflict requires that they step away from a case and file the same annual financial disclosure reports as other judges.
The justices have previously resisted calls to write a formal code of conduct.
Kathleen Clark, a legal ethics professor at Washington University in St. Louis, said in her view the problem is that the justices “have not been subjected to basic accountability that just about everybody else in the federal government has to comply with.”
What was striking to her about the statement, she said, was “a failure to grapple with the fundamental problem of lack of accountability.” The justices “seem to be utterly clueless about the problem they have … They’re in a bubble apparently. They don’t see what a big problem they have with the lack of accountability,” she said.
Trump allies who stole from border wall donors sentenced to prison
Lauren Sforza – April 26, 2023
Two founders of an online fundraising scheme to help former President Trump build a border wall were sentenced to prison Wednesday for participating in a fraud scheme that stole hundreds of thousands of dollars from donors.
Brain Kolfage and Andrew Badolato were sentenced for their alleged involvement in the scheme, which siphoned the money from hundreds of thousands of people that donated to their “We Build the Wall” campaign. The campaign promised the donors that their funds would go toward the construction of a wall at the border with Mexico, which is part of Trump’s core platform.
The fundraising campaign raised more than $25,000,000 from thousands of donors, with Kolfage promising that “100% of the funds raised … will be used in the execution of our mission and purpose,” according to court documents. The court documents said this was false, alleging that Kolfage alone took more than $350,000 for personal funds.
Kolfage was sentenced to 51 months in prison, and Badolato was sentenced to 36 months in prison, according to a press release from the Southern District of New York U.S. attorney’s office. Kolfage and Badolato both pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud, with Kolfage also pleading guilty to tax and wire fraud charges.
“Brian Kolfage and Andrew Badolato abused the trust of donors to We Build the Wall and stole hundreds of thousands of dollars in donations to line their own pockets,” U.S. Attorney Damian Williams said in a statement. “The defendants have now been held accountable for their criminal conduct.”
District Judge Analisa Torres also said at the sentencing that “the fraud perpetrated by Mr. Kolfage and Mr. Badolato went well beyond defrauding individual donors. They hurt us all,” the release stated.
Kolfage was ordered to three years of supervised release and to forfeit $17,872,106, as well as to pay restitution of $2,877,414, in addition to the prison sentence. Badolato was ordered to three years of supervised release and to forfeit $1,414,368 and pay restitution in the same amount.
Trump’s former top political adviser Steve Bannon was also allegedly involved in the scheme, but the case was halted after the former president pardoned him. He will likely stand trial for his alleged involvement in the scheme in November 2023.
The third co-founder, Timothy Shea, will have his sentencing on June 13 after being convicted of conspiracy to commit wire fraud, conspiracy to commit money laundering and obstruction of justice.
The drama unfolded in the Senate as Sen. Elizabeth Warren, a Massachusetts Democrat, moved a request to allow the promotions and Tuberville blocked the action.
“I warned Secretary Austin that if he did this and changed this, I would put a hold on his highest-level nominees. Secretary Austin went through with the policy anyway in February of this year, so I am keeping my word,” Tuberville said on the Senate floor.
He has been blocking military promotions in objection to the Department of Defense providing leave and covering expenses for service members who travel to have abortions. Tuberville claims the policy is a violation of federal law.
Tuberville was head coach at the University of Cincinnati for four seasons before he resigned in December 2016, a short time after telling a heckling fan to “go to hell” and “get a job.”
Tommy Tuberville is in his second year as a U.S. senator from Alabama.
Warren and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin say the promotions are critical to military readiness, and Tuberville is blocking pay raises and preventing key leaders from taking their posts.
“One senator is jeopardizing America’s national security,” Warren said on the Senate floor.
The promotion of Shoshana Chatfield to vice admiral and as the U.S. representative to the NATO military committee is especially urgent, Warren said.
“At this critical juncture of Russia’s illegal invasion of Ukraine, we need her leadership in NATO now more than ever,” she said.
Blocking military promotions leaves America more vulnerable, Austin said last month during a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing.
“There are a number of things happening globally that indicate that we could be in a contest on any one given day,” he said. “Not approving the recommendations for promotions actually creates a ripple effect through the force that makes us far less ready than we need to be.”
First Republic handed out billions in ultra-low-rate mortgages to the wealthy. It backfired horribly.
Matt Turner – April 25, 2023
Lucas Jackson/Reuters
First Republic is teetering, with the stock down 93% in 2023 and the bank exploring strategic options.
The bank won wealthy clients with the offer of jumbo mortgage loans that required no principal payments for a decade.
The bank is now reversing course as it fights for survival.
First Republic is racing to strengthen itself.
The bank said Monday that it will cut as much as 25% of staff, and is pursuing strategic options after revealing that deposits plunged by more than $100 billion in the first three months of the year.
That sent the stock as much as 48% lower on the day, with First Republic now down 93% for the year to date. Gillian Tan and Matthew Monks at Bloomberg subsequently reported that the bank is exploring an asset sale in the range of $50 billion to $100 billion.
First Republic first moved into focus back in the March banking crisis that claimed Silicon Valley Bank, Signature Bank, and Silvergate.
Like SVB and Signature, a large percentage of First Republic deposits were not insured by the FDIC, making it especially susceptible to deposit flight. Like SVB, First Republic had seen deposits boom in the low-rate pandemic era. And like SVB, First Republic has been sitting on large unrealized losses, as the value of the bonds it’s marked as being held-to-maturity has dropped as rates have gone up.
One of the causes of First Republic’s troubles is a strategy to woo rich clients with huge mortgages that offer sweet terms, as detailed in this story from Noah Buhayar, Jennifer Surane, Max Reyes, and Ann Choi at Bloomberg.
In particular, First Republic would offer interest-only mortgages, where the borrower didn’t have to pay back any principal for the first decade of the loan. In 2020 and 2021, it extended close to $20 billion of these loans in San Francisco, Los Angeles, and New York alone, per Bloomberg’s analysis.
Many of these loans went to ultra wealthy types in finance, tech, and media. For example, one of the most senior executives at Goldman Sachs took out an $11.2 million mortgage with First Republic with no principal payments in the first 10 years and an interest rate below 3%, per Bloomberg.
The quality of these loans isn’t in question, as the borrowers are extremely safe bets.
But the loans are worth a lot less now than when First Republic wrote these deals, with the average mortgage rate on a thirty-year fixed rate loan now at around 6.3%. (Bond prices go down as interest rates go up, and vice versa.)
Wealthy clients can easily move their deposits away from First Republic while keeping their mortgage with the firm, which creates a liquidity challenge.
And these loans are hard to sell to other lenders, given Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are limited to only purchasing mortgages up to just over $1 million. Should they successfully sell, it would also create a hole in First Republic’s balance sheet. The bank would be forced to recognize the current value of these loans, and what are currently unrealized losses could suddenly wipe out the bank’s capital.
First Republic is now backtracking from this strategy, saying it will focus on writing loans that are guaranteed by Fannie and Freddie.
More immediately, the bank is trying to find a way to convince buyers to take on some of its assets, including finding ways to sweeten the deal with equity-like instruments so buyers pay a higher price for the loans, according to Tan and Monks at Bloomberg.
The coming days will show whether First Republic was successful.
Top Kremlin propagandist tells Tucker Carlson he should run for president and ‘You are always welcome in Russia and Moscow’
Nicholas Carlson – April 24, 2023
Former Fox News host Tucker Carlson.Janos Kummer/Getty Images
Vladimir Solovyov is a notorious Russian propagandist.
He says Tucker Carlson should run for President of the United States.
Back when Carlson had a Fox News show he would often parrot Kremlin talking points.
The US Department of State describes Vladimir Solovyov as perhaps “the most energetic Kremlin propagandist around today.”
Solovyov is also, apparently, a Tucker Carlson fan.
On Telegram, Solovyov says that after he learned that Carlson and his long time cable network, Fox News, were parting ways, he sent him an email.
“You have our admiration and support in any endeavor you choose for yourself next, be it running for president of the United States (which you should totally do, by the way) or making an independent media project. We’ll happily offer you a job if you wish to carry on as a presenter and host!”
Soloyvov also welcomed Carlson to visit Russia.
You can read it here:
RT, the Russian state television network focused on a US audience, also appeared to offer Carlson a job today.
Carlson is popular with Russian propagandists because, back when he had a show on Fox News, he would regularly use his air time to share points of view on the war in Ukraine that were eerily similar to Russian talking points.
Last year, he said the war, which was started by Russia when it invaded a neighboring independent country, was “designed to cause regime change in Moscow” and was also “payback for the 2016 election.”
In March 2022, Mother Jones obtained a directive the Kremlin gave to state-friendly media outlets in Russia: “It is essential to use as much as possible fragments of broadcasts of the popular Fox News host Tucker Carlson.”
Now that Carlson doesn’t have a show, that directive will be more difficult for the next little while.
Harry Belafonte, Calypso King Who Worked for African American Rights, Dies at 96
Chris Morris – April 25, 2023
Singer, actor, producer and activist Harry Belafonte, who spawned a calypso craze in the U.S. with his music and blazed new trails for African American performers, died Tuesday of congestive heart failure at his Manhattan home. He was 96.
An award-winning Broadway performer and a versatile recording and concert star of the ’50s, the lithe, handsome Belafonte became one of the first Black leading men in Hollywood. He later branched into production work on theatrical films and telepics.
As his career stretched into the new millennium, his commitment to social causes never took a back seat to his professional work.
An intimate of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Belafonte was an important voice in the ’60s civil rights movement, and he later embarked on charitable activities on behalf of underdeveloped African nations. He was an outspoken opponent of South Africa’s apartheid policies.
Among the most honored performers of his era, Belafonte won two Grammy Awards (and the Recording Academy’s Lifetime Achievement Award in 2000), a Tony and an Emmy. He also received the Motion Picture Academy’s Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award at the Governors Awards ceremony in 2014.
Harold George Belafonte Jr. was born in New York but was sent to live with his grandmother in Jamaica at age 5, returning to attend high school in New York. But Jamaica’s indigenous calypso and mento would supply crucial material for his early musical repertoire.
After serving in the war, Belafonte gravitated to the New York theatrical scene. An early mentor was the famed Black actor, singer and activist Paul Robeson. He studied acting with Erwin Piscator and attended Broadway shows — on a single ticket he would hand off at intermission — with another struggling young actor, Sidney Poitier. Like Poitier, he performed at Harlem’s American Negro Theater.
Belafonte first made his mark, however, as a nightclub singer. Initially working in a pop and jazz vein, Belafonte began his singing career at New York’s Royal Roost and made his recording debut in 1949 on Roost Records. He soon developed a growing interest in American folk music.
A national tour and dates at New York’s Village Vanguard and Blue Angel followed. A scout for MGM spotted him at the latter venue and, following a screen test, Belafonte secured a role opposite Dorothy Dandridge in “Bright Road” (1953).
The same year, Belafonte made his Rialto debut in the revue “John Murray Anderson’s Almanac,” for which he received the Tony for best performance by a featured actor in a musical.
Ironically, while Belafonte was cast as a lead in Otto Preminger’s 1954 musical “Carmen Jones” — based on Oscar Hammerstein II’s Broadway adaptation of Bizet’s opera “Carmen” — his singing voice was dubbed by opera singer LeVern Hutcherson. Belafonte would soon explode in his own right as a pop singer.
He made his RCA Records debut in 1954 with “Mark Twain and Other Folk Favorites”; he had performed the titular folk song with his guitarist Millard Thomas in his Tony-winning Broadway turn. The 1956 LP “Belafonte,” featuring a similar folk repertoire, spent six weeks at No. 1.
Those collections were a mere warm-up to “Calypso.” The 1956 album sparked a nationwide calypso craze, spent a staggering 31 weeks at No. 1 and remains one of the four longest-running chart-toppers in history. It spawned Belafonte’s signature hit, “Banana Boat Song (Day-O),” which topped the singles chart for five weeks. A parody of that ubiquitous number by Stan Freberg reached No. 25 in 1957. Director Tim Burton employed the tune to bright effect in his 1988 comedy “Beetlejuice.”
Belafonte would cut five more top-five albums — including two live sets recorded at Carnegie Hall — through 1961. His 1960 collection “Swing Dat Hammer” received a Grammy as best ethnic or traditional folk album; he scored the same award for 1965’s “An Evening With Belafonte/Makeba,” a collaboration with South African folk artist Miriam Makeba.
He also supplied early employment for a future folk icon: His 1962 album “Midnight Special” featured harmonica work by Bob Dylan.
A frequent guest on TV variety shows, Belafonte became the first Black performer to garner an Emmy with his 1959 special “Tonight With Belafonte.”
Belafonte made his first steps into film production with two features he toplined: end-of-the-world drama “The World, the Flesh, and the Devil” (1959) and the heist picture “Odds Against Tomorrow” (1960). However, discontent with the roles he was being offered, he would remain absent from the big screen for the remainder of the ’60s and busied himself with recording and international touring as his involvement in the civil rights movement deepened.
Closely associated with clergyman-activist King, Belafonte provided financial support to the civil rights leader and his family. He also funded the Freedom Riders and the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee and was a key figure in the organization of the historic March on Washington of August 1963.
The racial tumult of the ’60s hit close to home: In 1968 he became the center of a furor when he appeared as a guest star on an NBC special hosted by British pop singer Petula Clark. During a performance of an anti-war ballad, Clark clutched Belafonte’s arm. Doyle Lott, VP for sponsor Chrysler-Plymouth, was present at the taping and demanded the number be excised, saying the “interracial touching” might offend Southern viewers. But Clark, who owned the show, put her foot down and the show aired as recorded, while exec Lott was fired by the automaker.
Belafonte returned to feature films in 1970 in the whimsical “The Angel Levine” alongside Zero Mostel. He co-starred with old friend Poitier in the comedies “Buck and the Preacher” (1972) and “Uptown Saturday Night” (1974), both directed by Poitier.
His acting appearances would be sporadic for the remainder of his career. Notably, he appeared opposite John Travolta in “White Man’s Burden” (1995), an alternate-universe fantasy-drama about racism; Robert Altman’s ensemble period drama “Kansas City” (1996); and “Bobby” (2006), Emilio Estevez’s account of Sen. Robert Kennedy’s 1968 assassination.
In 1985, Belafonte’s activism and musicianship intertwined when he helped organize the recording session for “We Are the World,” the all-star benefit single devoted to alleviating African famine. His appearance on that huge hit led to “Paradise in Gazankulu” (1988), his first studio recording in more than 10 years.
His latter-day production work included the 1984 hip-hop drama “Beat Street” and the 2000 miniseries “Parting the Waters,” based on historian Taylor Branch’s biography of Martin Luther King Jr.
In 2002, “The Long Road to Freedom: An Anthology of Black Music,” an immense collection of African and African-American music recorded and compiled by Belafonte over the course of a decade and originally set for release by RCA in the ’70s, was finally released as a five-CD set on Universal’s Buddha imprint. It garnered three Grammy nominations.
In later years, Belafonte remained as outspoken as ever, and his views sometimes courted controversy. He was a foe of South African apartheid, opposed the U.S.’s Cuban embargo and denounced George W. Bush’s military incursion into Iraq.
Belafonte was the son of a Jamaican housekeeper and a Martiniquan chef, spending the early and late parts of his childhood in Harlem but the crucial middle period in Jamaica. He enlisted in the Navy in 1944; during his service, he encountered the writing of W.E.B. DuBois, co-founder of the NAACP and a key influence.
He was accorded the Kennedy Center Honor in 1989 and the National Medal of the Arts in 1994.
Belafonte published his memoir “My Song,” written with Michael Shnayerson, in 2011. Susanne Rostock’s biographical documentary “Sing Your Song” was released in early 2012.
He is survived by his third wife Pamela; daughters Shari, Adrienne and Gina; son David; stepchildren Sarah and Lindsey; and eight grandchildren.
A California journalist documents the far-right takeover of her town: ‘We’re a test case’
Dani Anguiano in Redding with photographs by Marlena Sloss
April 22, 2023
In a seemingly long gone era – before the Trump presidency, and Covid, and the 2020 election – Doni Chamberlain would get the occasional call from a displeased reader who had taken issue with one of her columns. They would sometimes call her stupid and use profanities.
Today, when people don’t like her pieces, Chamberlain said, they tell her she’s a communist who doesn’t deserve to live. One local conservative radio host said she should be hanged.
Chamberlain, 66, has worked as a journalist in Shasta county, California, for nearly 30 years.
Never before in this far northern California outpost has she witnessed such open hostility towards the press.
She has learned to take precautions. No meeting sources in public. She livestreams rowdy events where the crowd is less than friendly and doesn’t walk to her car without scanning the street. Sometimes, restraining orders can be necessary tools.
These practices have become crucial in the last three years, she said, as she’s documented the county’s shift to the far right and the rise of an ultraconservative coalition into the area’s highest office. Shasta, Chamberlain said, is in the midst of a “perfect storm” as different hard-right factions have joined together to form a powerful political force with outside funding and publicity from fringe figures.
The new majority, backed by militia members, anti-vaxxers, election deniers and residents who have long felt forgotten by governments in Sacramento and Washington, has fired the county health officer and done away with the region’s voting system. Politically moderate public officials have faced bullying, intimidation and threats of violence. County meetings have turned into hours-long shouting matches.
Chamberlain and her team at A News Cafe, the news site she runs, have covered it all. Her writing has made her a public enemy of the conservative crowd intent on remaking the county. Far-right leaders have confronted her at rallies and public meetings, mocking and berating her. At a militia-organized protest in 2021, the crowd screamed insults.
The response of parts of her community has left her shocked: “This isn’t how it’s supposed to be to be a journalist. I shouldn’t go to my car afraid one of these guys is gonna bash me in the head with a baseball bat,” she said on a beautiful spring day in Redding late last month.
But it has left her with a sense of urgency, a determination to warn readers about a movement that shows no signs of slowing down and could have national repercussions as extremists try to create a framework that could be replicated elsewhere. “I can’t imagine how bad things can get here,” she said.
A community swinging to the extreme right
A lifelong Shasta county resident, Chamberlain became a cub reporter in her late thirties. She went to college later in life after marrying her high school sweetheart and having children. She initially wanted to be a social worker but has always been drawn to scratching under the surface of things, she said, a tendency she attributed to her childhood: after the death of her mother, she and her sisters were raised by a family that was far less kind than they appeared to be from the outside.
For 10 years, she wrote a beloved column at the local newspaper, telling the stories of community characters and sharing her personal experiences, like her son’s deployment to Iraq. When she was laid off, a hundred people picketed outside the newspaper’s office.
With help from her son, she started A News Cafe, an online magazine that documents local affairs, and readers came with her. Just before Covid hit, she had considered selling the website, and then decided to scale back operations and change its focus to town happenings and recipes, a favorite topic of the hobby baker.
But then Covid shut down the state, and laid bare the bitter fault lines that divided this community.
Residents angry over pandemic closures began filling county meetings, sometimes forcing their way inside, and directed their ire at elected officials who enforced only the minimum restrictions required by the state. One local resident, Carlos Zapata, warned the board of supervisors at a meeting in August 2020 to reopen the county or things wouldn’t be “peaceful much longer”.
“When the ballot box is gone, there is only the cartridge box. You have made bullets expensive, but luckily for you, ropes are reusable,” another resident said at a board of supervisors meeting in January 2021.
Religious leaders defied state orders and continued holding events. Bethel church, a Redding megachurch with more than 11,000 members and a major footprint in this city of 92,000, reported hundreds of cases at its school of “supernatural ministry”.
But there was more than just a backlash under way. The anger coalesced into an anti-establishment movement backed financially by the Connecticut millionaire Reverge Anselmo, who has a longstanding grudge against the county over a failed effort to start a winery.
Leaders of the movement sought to recall county supervisors, and produced a glossy documentary series about their efforts to “take back” their county. In February 2022, voters ousted a longtime supervisor, a former police chief and self-described Reagan Republican, and gained control of the board of supervisors.
The climate in the area had shifted, residents said, and those who had expressed support for officials and Covid rules encountered hostility. One man had his tires slashed, Chamberlain said. Others reported being mocked and bullied in public for wearing masks.
Still, the recall election saw low turnout with just 41% of eligible voters casting a ballot. Though many residents opposed the rightwing agenda, they didn’t take the threat seriously, Chamberlain said.
Chamberlain followed the upheaval closely, and the far-right figures driving it, while still writing stories about the joys of loungewear and how to sell old belongings.
She began documenting the political developments through chatty and irreverent opinion columns, with analysis of what’s happening and who’s behind it, and warnings of the danger it poses to the community.
“As the shit storm of civil unrest piles up, the North State has become a tinderbox at the ready, on the verge of ignition. Slogans and memes are the kindling. Calls to action, aggression and civil war are often found on the same Facebook pages as family photos, holiday greetings and birthday wishes,” she wrote in August 2020.
Chamberlain and A News Cafe reporters were also often breaking news: a Bethel church leader officiating his son’s wedding, a large gathering held in defiance of Covid restrictions; a pandemic shortage of nurses temporarily closing a local neonatal intensive care unit; and a sheriff’s deputy promoting far-right extremist content on social media.
Chamberlain described Zapata, the resident who had threatened violence and had become the public face of Shasta county’s anti-establishment movement, as an “alt-right recall kingpin/militia member/bull-semen purveyor/restaurant owner/former Florida strip-club owner”. He lashed out in comments before the board of supervisor that Chamberlain was “coward” who wants to “poison children”.
Zapata told the Guardian he was frustrated with Chamberlain’s “incessant writing” about him and what he described as attacks on his reputation and his family. He argued he was cordial and willing to sit down for an interview, but feels Chamberlain has created a caricature of him by taking things out of context.
“I stand for the majority of residents in Shasta county who want to ensure Shasta county remains a safe and healthy place for our children to grow and prosper,” he said in a statement. “Doni doesn’t like that. That is why she has made it her priority to attack me in the name of journalism for several years.”
Zapata is the only person in Chamberlain’s three decade career whom she has refused to interview, the journalist said. Instead, she has quoted his statements and social media posts rather than speak with him directly. “He has used very abusive language. He has made threats against people. He doesn’t tell the truth often. I refuse to write things that I know are not going to be true.”
Chamberlain has made a point of not interacting with those who attack her directly, and continuing her reporting. But the exchanges, along with the menacing, graphic threats to her and her staff and others in the community, and the lack of action from law enforcement have fundamentally changed how she approaches her job.
Last year, for example, A News Cafe reported that Zapata had threatened a local man in a voicemail, telling him he was a “dead motherfucker” for talking about Zapata’s wife. Zapata apologized and law enforcement forwarded the case to the district attorney, requesting a charge of terrorist threats, Chamberlain said, but nothing has come of it. “Every time one of those guys gets away with saying something like that, with zero consequences, it moves the line a little further.”
Zapata described the incident to the Guardian as a “situation between two grown men”. “It was handled and there hasn’t been any further issue,” he said.
But the threats make doing journalism in Shasta county particularly challenging, she added. Finding sources is difficult. Many people are afraid of speaking out, even anonymously.
And her family worries for her. Her son has put cameras all around the house. For Mother’s Day, he gifted her gel pepper spray. She keeps an air horn next to her bed.
Chamberlain’s twin sister has warned her not to poke the bear.
“I say, ‘I’m not poking a bear, I’m just holding a flashlight, I’m reporting things other people can’t go report,’” she said. “I feel a moral responsibility to let people know what’s happening.”
Amid the rage, a loyal following
Chamberlain has vocal opponents, but she also has devoted followers.
As local journalism across the US disappears, Chamberlain has found a winning formula. Her site attracts more than 100,000 unique visitors a month, according to Chamberlain, and hundreds donate, locally and from across the US. She has several paid editorial staff members, even more than the local newspaper, she says. She’s looking to hire more.
At a board of supervisors meeting in March on the hiring of a new county CEO and the voting system, audience members could be seen browsing her site. (It had just published two bombshell stories: one revealing that police were investigating the county’s top candidate for said CEO job, a leader of a California secessionist group, for an incident with a teenage girl at a local business; the other an analysis from the county clerk about the risks of introducing an untested manual tally voting system in response to disproven theories about Dominion voting machines.) Chamberlain was sitting in the front of the room, her notebook and pen in hand.
In the back of the chambers, Jeff Gorder, the retired Shasta county public defender who came to urge supervisors to keep its voting system intact, said he was a longtime reader of the site. “What would we do without journalists like that to follow up on all of these issues? We’d really been in a world of hurt. Journalism is going away at the local level, so I’m really glad that we have them,” he said. “She’s just very thorough.”
Chamberlain has no plans to slow down and said she pulls all-nighters at least four times a month.
“As a journalist, you couldn’t ask for a place to have a more exciting job because so much is happening here,” she said.
She balances her work with the things that bring her joy: baking, spending time with friends and working on her home.
“There’s so many things that are out of my control. And what’s happening in Shasta county, all that kind of stuff is out of my control. So what I do have control of is planting, I planted hundreds of bulbs,” Chamberlain said. “That’s an optimistic thing to do. And when I was planting them, I was thinking, ‘I wonder what things will be like here when those tulips bloom.’”
Still, she fears for the future of Shasta county and the repercussions it could have. “I think we’re a test case for rightwing folks like [Mike] Lindell,” she said. “These big heavy-hitting wealthy people are using Shasta county, I believe, as this little petri dish … And so far, it’s working. I’m watching it unveil before my very eyes. And it’s terrifying.”
If GOP doesn’t listen to Nancy Mace on abortion, the party can count on losing big in 2024
Ingrid Jacques, USA TODAY – April 22, 2023
South Carolina U.S. Rep. Nancy Mace seems to understand some things that many others in her Republican Party are missing.
On issues such as abortion and guns, compromise is going to be necessary – or the GOP will lose the support of all but its most devout proponents. And that is not a recipe for winning elections.
Since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade last year, Mace has advocated a “middle ground” approach to abortion rights, warning that extreme anti-abortion views allowing for few if any exceptions aren’t compassionate toward women and will alienate moderate conservatives and independent voters. The majority of Americans now support legal abortion in most cases, according to polls.
“The middle, the independent voters, right of center, left of center, they cannot support us,” Mace said on a Sunday TV show.
Court battle renews focus on abortion
The midterm elections made it clear that voters were motivated on the issue of abortion, and many Republicans weren’t ready with a message that resonated – if they had one at all.
And now the legal battle over access to frequently used abortion pill mifepristone has brought fresh attention to the matter. After a federal judge in Texas halted Food and Drug Administration approval of the drug this month, the case has moved quickly through the courts.
The debate over this pill is a big deal, because more than half of abortions in the United States are medication abortions. Mifepristone is used in conjunction with misoprostol, which can also be used on its own. The two drugs are also used to treat miscarriages.
The judge’s decision sparked outrage from Democrats, including New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who said the Biden administration should simply ignore the ruling. Sen. Ron Wyden of Oregon echoed the sentiment.
As I wrote previously about Ocasio-Cortez and Wyden, Mace took things too far by making the argument that the executive branch can simply ignore the judicial branch when it doesn’t like a court decision. The ruling needs to play out in the courts, and it is.
Her broader point is worthy of consideration, however.
“This is an issue that Republicans have been largely on the wrong side of,” Mace told CNN after the Texas judge’s decision. “We have, over the last nine months, not shown compassion toward women, and this is one of those issues that I’ve tried to lead on as someone who’s pro-life and just have some common sense.”
Political decisions on issues as impactful as abortion shouldn’t be based solely on polls. Yet conservatives have to realize that imposing too much change at once on citizens will backfire on them.
USA TODAY columnist Ingrid Jacques
Politicians and groups opposed to abortion should listen to voices like Mace and fine-tune a strategy going into 2024 that is reasonable and won’t create a backlash that could hurt the GOP for years to come.
Japan has almost completely eliminated gun deaths — here’s how
Chris Weller, Erin Snodgrass, Katie Anthony, Azmi Haroun, Lloyd Lee – April 20, 2023
japan gun shotgun
AP
Japan is a country of more than 127 million people, but it rarely sees more than 10 gun deaths a year.
Culture is one reason for the low rate, but gun control is a major one, too.
Japan has a long list of tests that applicants must pass before gaining access to a small pool of guns.
A recent spate of mass shootings has prompted intensified discussions around gun control in the US.
On Saturday, four people were killed and 32 were injured in a shooting in Dadeville, Alabama, during a 16th birthday party. Last month, a 28-year-old woman opened fire at The Covenant School in Nashville, Tennessee, killing three elementary school students and three adult staff members, according to police.
One of the biggest questions being asked: How does the US prevent this from happening over and over again?
Although the US has no exact counterpart elsewhere in the world, some countries have taken steps that can provide a window into what successful gun control looks like. Japan, a country of 127 million people and yearly gun deaths rarely totaling more than 10, is one such country.
“Ever since guns entered the country, Japan has always had strict gun laws,” Iain Overton, executive director of Action on Armed Violence, a British advocacy group, told the BBC. “They are the first nation to impose gun laws in the whole world, and I think it laid down a bedrock saying that guns really don’t play a part in civilian society.”
Japan is a country with regulations upon regulations
Japan’s success in curbing gun deaths is intimately linked with its history. Following World War II, pacifism emerged as one of the dominant philosophies in the country. Police only started carrying firearms after American troops made them, in 1946, for the sake of security. It’s also written into Japanese law, as of 1958, that “no person shall possess a firearm or firearms or a sword or swords.”
The government has since loosened the law, but the fact Japan enacted gun control from the stance of prohibition is important. (It’s also one of the main factors separating Japan from the US, where the Second Amendment broadly permits people to own guns.)
If Japanese people want to own a gun, they must attend an all-day class, pass a written test, and achieve at least 95% accuracy during a shooting-range test. Then they have to pass a mental-health evaluation, which takes place at a hospital, and pass a background check, in which the government digs into their criminal record and interviews friends and family. They can only buy shotguns and air rifles — no handguns — and every three years they must retake the class and initial exam.
Even Japanese riot police infrequently turn to guns, instead preferring long batons.Toru Hanai/Reuters
Japan has also embraced the idea that fewer guns in circulation will result in fewer deaths. Each prefecture — which ranges in size from half a million people to 12 million, in Tokyo — can operate a maximum of three gun shops; new magazines can only be purchased by trading in empty ones; and when gun owners die, their relatives must surrender the deceased member’s firearms.
The role of trust can’t be overstated
The result is a situation where citizens and police seldom wield or use guns.
Off-duty police aren’t allowed to carry firearms, and most encounters with suspects involve some combination of martial arts or striking weapons. When Japanese attacks do turn deadly, they generally involve fatal stabbings. In July of 2016, an assailant killed 19 people in an assisted living facility. Japan rarely sees so many fatalities from guns in an entire year.
Yet even Japan is not immune to gun violence. The assassination of former the county’s former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe on July 8, 2022, shocked the nation. Abe was shot and killed by a shooting suspect wielding what appeared to be a homemade firearm constructed of metal barrels attached to wood with black tape.
Nancy Snow, Japan director of the International Security Industrial Council, told Insider that Japan will be “forever changed” by Abe’s death.
“When I talk about Japan changing forever — the Japanese people, it’s hard to even have a conversation with them about the gun culture in the United States, without people getting viscerally upset thinking about it because they say, we’re not that country,” Snow said.
Gun control in Japan, combined with the prevailing respect for authority, has led to a more harmonious relationship between civilians and the police than in the US. It’s something of a chicken-egg problem: The police, in choosing to use sub-lethal force on people, generate less widespread fear among the public that they’ll be shot. In turn, people feel less of a need to arm themselves.
The US, meanwhile, has a more militarized police force that uses automatic weapons and armored cars. There is also less widespread trust between people (and between people and institutions). The factors combine to produce a much fearful culture that can seem to be always on-edge.
Japan’s approach would be a tough sell in the face of American gun culture, but it can provide a starting point for reining in the senseless violence that has become a hallmark of life in the US.
As Fears of Banking Crisis Surged, Members of Congress Sold Bank Shares
Kate Kelly – April 20, 2023
An account belonging to Representative Jared Moskowitz’s children sold shares of Seacoast Banking Corporation as fears of a banking crisis rattled investors. (AP)
WASHINGTON — On March 10, as fears were swirling over the health of the nation’s banks, an investment account belonging to the children of Rep. Jared Moskowitz, D-Fla., sold shares of Seacoast Banking Corp. worth $65,000 to $150,000.
Two days later, with the government working to control the crisis, Moskowitz said in a television interview that he had attended a bipartisan congressional briefing on the tumult. And on March 13, as investors fretted over the failure of Silicon Valley Bank and two other, smaller banks, Seacoast Banking shares fell nearly 20%.
A spokesperson for Moskowitz said in an email that the Seacoast share sales had been suggested by the congressman’s financial adviser as a means to diversify his young children’s holdings. Moskowitz said the congressional briefing on the bank crisis had taken place just before the television interview and after the shares were sold.
But the transaction was just one example of how members of Congress continue to buy and sell stocks and other financial assets in industries that intersect with their official duties.
At least eight members of Congress or their close relatives sold shares of bank stocks in March, according to an analysis by Capitol Trades, a project of the data firm 2iQ — a number that could rise in the coming days, as lawmakers make additional disclosures of trades made last month.
Although broadly legal, stock trading by members of Congress has become a flashpoint because lawmakers are sometimes privy to closely held information about the companies and industries they oversee.
A New York Times investigation last year showed that during a three-year period, nearly one-fifth of federal lawmakers or their immediate family members had bought or sold stocks or other securities that could have been affected by their legislative work.
Efforts to pass legislation to place limits on trading by members of Congress or to ban it have stalled in recent years. On Capitol Hill on Tuesday, Sen. Jeff Merkley, D-Ore., and Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, announced a new bill intended to eliminate the practice that has 19 co-sponsors in the Senate.
A House version of the bill is co-sponsored by Rep. Michael Cloud, R-Texas, and Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi, D-Ill.
“As the Silicon Valley Bank was closed, even during that period, there were reports that members of Congress were trading bank stocks,” Brown said. “I mean, imagine that — that members of Congress, we have more inside information,” he said, adding, “members of Congress are able, because of our jobs, to know more about the economy.”
Rep. Dan Goldman, D-N.Y., sold shares of First Republic Bank, the large depositor that was rapidly losing both cash and clients, on March 15, the day before it received an industry bailout of $30 million.
The wife and children of Rep. Ro Khanna, D-Calif., sold First Republic shares that same day. Rep. John Curtis, R-Utah, sold shares in First Republic from a joint account with his spouse on March 16, the day the industry bailout occurred.
By that time, First Republic shares had already fallen nearly 80% from a February peak. The timing of the sales by those three lawmakers or their relatives meant that the sellers averted an additional price swoon that was still to come. First Republic stock is down nearly 90% since the beginning of this year.
A spokesperson for Goldman has said that his portfolio is managed by a third party without his knowledge and that he is setting up a blind trust to avoid any appearance of a conflict of interest. Khanna has said that his filings relate to trades made by a diversified trust belonging to his wife and young children and that he has no involvement in it. Spokespersons for Curtis did not respond to requests for comment.
Some members were also buying bank shares during the volatility. On March 17, Rep. Nicole Malliotakis, R-N.Y., bought shares of New York Community Bancorp after private discussions with New York state bank regulators. Her transaction was first reported by The Wall Street Journal.
Two days later, New York Community Bancorp bought assets belonging to the failed Signature Bank — a deal that prompted its biggest share rally ever. Around that same time, other lawmakers, including Sen. Gary Peters, D-Mich., and family members of Khanna, bought shares in larger U.S. banks, like Truist Financial. Goldman, among other transactions, made a series of purchases of shares in foreign banks, like Lloyds Banking Group and Mizuho Financial Group.
A spokesperson for Malliotakis said that her financial adviser had recommended the purchase and that it amounted to less than $5,000 in value. A spokesperson for Peters did not respond to questions about the transaction.
