Uvalde newspaper publishes powerful front page 2 days after school massacre
Dylan Stableford, Senior Writer – May 26, 2022
The Uvalde Leader-News, a locally owned newspaper in Uvalde, Texas, published a powerful front page on Thursday, two days after 19 children and two teachers were killed in the mass shooting at Robb Elementary School.
The cover of the twice-weekly paper was completely black, except for the date of the massacre — May 24, 2022 — a stark reminder of the darkness that has enveloped the community of about 16,000 people in southwest Texas.
The front page of Thursday’s Uvalde Leader-News. (Uvalde Leader-News)
Inside, the first 10 pages of the 12-page paper contain news from what would have been an ordinary week in a small town: graduations, taxes, local elections, weather, sports. Three collegiate rodeo athletes have qualified for the National Rodeo Finals, the paper reported.
There is almost no indication of the carnage that unfolded on Tuesday, except for the announcement of a blood drive at the civic center on Saturday (there is an urgent need for donors, particularly those with type O blood, the paper said) and an advertisement for the Robb School Memorial Fund established by the First State Bank of Uvalde. An ad for the Uvalde Honey Festival, which had been scheduled for June 10 and 11, shows that it has been canceled without explanation.
The final two pages, however, are dedicated to the tragedy.
Crosses with the names of victims of the mass shooting at a memorial outside Robb Elementary School in Uvalde on Thursday. (Marco Bello/Reuters)
Under the headline “City’s Soul Crushed,” the back page of the paper includes photos of children being taken out of the school through windows, and a teacher running to safety after the last of her students were evacuated.
Another shows the suspect’s abandoned pickup truck crashed in a ditch, and a rifle, believed to be the shooter’s, sitting atop a duffel bag on the ground next to the passenger door.
There is also a story about the school district’s graduation ceremonies, which had been scheduled for Friday, being postponed.
“My heart is broken,” Hal Harrell, the district’s superintendent, is quoted as saying. “We are a small community and we are going to need your prayers to get through this.”
Switzerland hasn’t had a mass shooting since 2001, when a man stormed the local parliament in Zug, killing 14 people and then himself.
The country has about 2 million privately owned guns in a nation of 8.3 million people. In 2016, the country had 47 attempted homicides with firearms. The country’s overall murder rate is near zero.
The National Rifle Association often points to Switzerland to argue that more rules on gun ownership aren’t necessary. In 2016, the NRA said on its blog that the European country had one of the lowest murder rates in the world while still having millions of privately owned guns and a few hunting weapons that don’t even require a permit.
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“Ghost guns” don’t require background checks or serial numbers, meaning they can’t be traced. Some companies are taking advantage of the legal loophole that has allowed this industry to go unregulated.
But the Swiss have some specific rules and regulations for gun use.
Switzerland hasn’t taken part in any international armed conflict since 1815, but some Swiss soldiers help with peacekeeping missions around the world.
Many Swiss see gun ownership as part of a patriotic duty to protect their homeland.
Most Swiss men are required to learn how to use a gun.
Swiss President Ueli Maurer pauses during a shooting-skills exercise — a several-hundred-year-old tradition — with the Foreign Diplomatic Corps in Switzerland on May 31, 2013.REUTERS/Denis Balibouse
In recent years, the Swiss government has voted to reduce the size of the country’s armed forces.
Switzerland is a bit like a well-designed fort.
Arnd Wiegmann/Reuters
Switzerland’s borders are basically designed to blow up on command, with at least 3,000 demolition points on bridges, roads, rails, and tunnels around the landlocked European country.
John McPhee put it this way in his book “La Place de la Concorde Suisse”:
“Near the German border of Switzerland, every railroad and highway tunnel has been prepared to pinch shut explosively. Nearby mountains have been made so porous that whole divisions can fit inside them.”
Roughly a quarter of the gun-toting Swiss use their weapons for military or police duty.
AP/Keyston, Lukas Lehmann
In 2000, more than 25% of Swiss gun owners said they kept their weapon for military or police duty, while less than 5% of Americans said the same.
In addition to the militia’s arms, the country has about 2 million privately owned guns — a figure that has been plummeting over the past decade.
Members of an honor guard of the Swiss army.REUTERS/Arnd Wiegmann
The Swiss government has estimated that about half of the privately owned guns in the country are former service rifles. But there are signs the Swiss gun-to-human ratio is dwindling.
In 2007, the Small Arms Survey found that Switzerland had the third-highest ratio of civilian firearms per 100 residents (46), outdone by only the US (89) and Yemen (55).
But it seems that figure has dropped over the past decade. It’s now estimated that there’s about one civilian gun for every three Swiss people.
Gun sellers follow strict licensing procedures.
Daniel Wyss, the president of the Swiss weapons-dealers association, in a gun shop.REUTERS/Arnd Wiegmann
Swiss authorities decide on a local level whether to give people gun permits. They also keep a log of everyone who owns a gun in their region, known as a canton, though hunting rifles and some semiautomatic long arms are exempt from the permit requirement.
But cantonal police don’t take their duty dolling out gun licenses lightly. They might consult a psychiatrist or talk with authorities in other cantons where a prospective gun buyer has lived before to vet the person.
Swiss laws are designed to prevent anyone who’s violent or incompetent from owning a gun.
Nina Christen of Switzerland at the Olympic Games in Rio in August 2016.Sam Greenwood/Getty Images
People who’ve been convicted of a crime or have an alcohol or drug addiction aren’t allowed to buy guns in Switzerland.
The law also states that anyone who “expresses a violent or dangerous attitude” won’t be permitted to own a gun.
Gun owners who want to carry their weapon for “defensive purposes” also have to prove they can properly load, unload, and shoot their weapon and must pass a test to get a license.
Switzerland is also one of the richest, healthiest, and, by some measures, happiest countries in the world.
The Swiss have been consistently near the top of this list. In 2017, when Switzerland was ranked fourth overall among nations, the report authors noted that the country tends to do well on “all the main factors found to support happiness: caring, freedom, generosity, honesty, health, income and good governance.”
Meanwhile, according to the report, happiness has taken a dive over the past decade in the US.
The report authors cite “declining social support and increased corruption,” as well as addiction and depression for the fall.
But the Swiss aren’t perfect when it comes to guns.
Around the world, stronger gun laws have been linked to fewer gun deaths. That has been the case in Switzerland too.
A police officer at Geneva’s airport.REUTERS/Denis Balibouse
After hundreds of years of letting local cantons determine gun rules, Switzerland passed its first federal regulations on guns in 1999, after the country’s crime rate increased during the 1990s.
As of 2015, the Swiss estimated that only about 11% of citizens kept their military-issued gun at home.
Most people aren’t allowed to carry their guns around in Switzerland.
Hunters at a market in central Switzerland offer their fox furs.REUTERS
Concealed-carry permits are tough to get in Switzerland, and most people who aren’t security workers or police officers don’t have one.
“We have guns at home, but they are kept for peaceful purposes,” Martin Killias, a professor of criminology at Zurich University, told the BBC in 2013. “There is no point taking the gun out of your home in Switzerland because it is illegal to carry a gun in the street.”
That’s mostly true. Hunters and sports shooters are allowed to transport their guns only from their home to the firing range — they can’t just stop off for coffee with their rifle.
And guns cannot be loaded during transport to prevent them from accidentally firing in a place like Starbucks — something that has happened in the US at least twice.
“I would like to express my condolences to all of the relatives and family members of the children who were killed in an awful shooting in Texas in a school,” Zelenskyy said. “The people of Ukraine share the pain of the relatives and friends of the victims and all Americans.”
Authorities said a gunman killed 19 children and two teachers at Robb Elementary School on Tuesday in Uvalde, a small community about an hour from the Mexican border.
An 18-year-old male, armed with a rifle, shot his grandmother before going to the school and opening fire in the state’s deadliest shooting in modern history. It was the country’s third mass shooting within weeks, according to Texas Department of Public Safety Sgt. Erick Estrada.
In Ukraine, almost 250 children have been killed since the Russian invasion began in February, according to U.N. humanitarian agency figures shown earlier this month.
“I feel it is my personal tragedy when children are killed in Texas, and now in my country Russian military is killing our children,” Zelenskyy said.
Ukrainian ambassador on Texas school shooting: ‘Should not happen in US’
Laura Kelly – May 25, 2022
Ukraine’s Ambassador to the U.S. Oksana Markarova on Tuesday expressed solidarity with Americans following the elementary school shooting in Uvalde, Texas, saying that such violence “should not happen in the U.S.”
“For us, the pain of losing children, especially of that age, is something we live for the past 90 days nonstop, and our condolences go to the American people,” she said.
“This should not happen anywhere. It should not happen in the U.S. and it should not happen in Ukraine.”
Markarova said that Ukraine’s condolences are with the American people, describing the “horrible tragedy” in Texas, where at least 19 children and two adults were killed in a shooting rampage by an 18-year-old on Tuesday. The age of the victims is not yet released but the elementary school included second, third and fourth grades.
“This cycle of hate and brutal shooting and shooting children and civilians in general, should be stopped.”
Markarova spoke with reporters briefly before addressing the American Jewish Committee’s Diplomatic Seder, where she thanked Washington diplomats, representing dozens of countries, and the American Jewish community for supporting Ukraine in its more than three-month, defensive war against Russia.
Hundreds of Ukrainian children are believed to have been killed amid indiscriminate and alleged targeting of civilian areas by Russian forces during the unprovoked invasion of the nation.
Markarova later tweeted that losing children to gun violence “in a peaceful time is a tragedy beyond understanding. Ukraine knows too well the horror of growing number of lost children.”
CBS News poll: More Americans label GOP extreme, but Democratic Party as weak
Jennifer De Pinto, Fred Backus, and Kabir Khanna – May 22, 2022
With midterm primaries helping set the direction for the Democratic and Republican parties, most Americans, including many of the parties’ own voters, aren’t terribly happy with the parties or what they’re talking about. Given that Sunday’s CBS News poll finds most aren’t happy with the direction of the country either, the major political parties aren’t providing much solace.
For starters, the Democratic Party — which controls Congress and the presidency — is not seen by a majority as either “effective” or “in touch,” which are, no doubt, important measures for a party in power. The Democratic Party is more apt to be described as “weak,” a label applied by a slight majority of Americans, than it is “strong.”
The Republican Party, for its part, is described by a slight majority as “extreme,” a term Americans apply to the GOP more so than to Democrats, though neither really escapes the label. Independents are more likely to call the GOP extreme. The GOP is described as “strong” more often than as “weak,” but it is also described by Americans more often as “hateful” than as “caring” — by double digits.
Primaries tend to find candidates arguing over matters that appeal to their bases, but as different as each side’s campaigns are, there is something voters of each side share: a desire for candidates to focus on inflation. Perhaps that’s no surprise, given how large it looms for most Americans.
Among Democrats, who also want a focus on taxing the wealthy and racial justice, many also want their candidates to focus on protecting abortion rights. In fact, especially among those who care a lot about the potential overturning of Roe v. Wade — almost all say they want the party’s nominees to focus on abortion rights.
Republicans want their nominees to focus on stopping illegal immigration and talk about traditional values. Illegal immigration is especially a priority among self-described conservative Republicans.
A majority of independents also want the Democrats to focus on abortion rights.
And there’s an asymmetry on abortion focus between the parties: even more Democrats want their candidates to focus on supporting abortion rights than Republicans want their candidates to talk about opposing it.
But despite being in power during a time of inflation, Democrats don’t cede that much ground to Republicans on who’s trusted to deal with it. It’s 51% of Americans who trust the GOP, not much more than the 49% who trust the Democrats on inflation. It’s the same nearly even gap on the economy. And that may be because the parties’ candidates aren’t talking about it enough.
Democrats have an advantage being trusted on abortion and coronavirus.
The Trump factor
Within the Republican rank-and-file, there’s a divide over how much they want to hear about loyalty to former President Donald Trump, some of which we’re seeing play out in the primaries right now. A slight majority of Republicans do want their candidates to focus on showing loyalty to Trump, but nearly half don’t. Related to this, four in 10 Republicans want the nominees focused on the 2020 election, but most don’t.
Who is fighting for whom?
We also see such dramatic differences in which people Americans think the parties support — or don’t. The overall picture reminds us of how much Americans see the parties dividing them, not only on policy, but by demographic groups.
Americans overall are more likely to see the Republican Party as fighting for White people than for Black people — by more than two to one. In fact, more say the Republican Party fights against the interests of Black Americans than is neutral toward them. It’s similarly true for views of the Republican Party’s approach to Hispanic people, with more feeling it works against them, rather than for them, and by more than two to one, against LGBTQ people than for them. Americans do think the GOP fights more for people of faith than do Democrats.
Conversely, they see the Democratic Party as fighting for Black and Hispanic Americans more so than for White Americans.
Americans are more likely to believe the GOP fights more against the interests of women than for women, and women overall describe things this way.
Men, meanwhile, are much more likely to think the Democrats fight more for women than for men, but a majority of men think the Republican Party fights for them (and more so than for women).
Echoing some of these perceptions are big differences in how partisans within the parties approach the country’s racial diversity — and each group’s partisans tend to think they’re not being treated fairly.
Big majorities of Democrats think immigrants make America better in the long run; a majority of Republicans say they make America worse.
Republicans are more likely to say White Americans suffer “a lot” of discrimination than they are to say Black Americans do.
Democrats see quite the opposite. And Democrats are more likely to say it’s very important for political leaders to condemn White nationalism.
Republicans tend to see America’s changing diversity as neither good nor bad, but those who take a position tend to say bad. Democrats (whose ranks are made up of more people of color) say it’s a good thing.
This CBS News/YouGov survey was conducted with a nationally representative sample of 2,041 U.S. adult residents interviewed between May 18-20, 2022. The sample was weighted according to gender, age, race, and education based on the U.S. Census American Community Survey and Current Population Survey, as well as to 2020 presidential vote. The margin of error is ±2.5 points.
Should you allow cookies? Cybersecurity experts weigh in
Korin Miller – May 15, 2022
There’s a quick and easy way to delete cookies that track you online. (Photo: Getty)
Over the past few years and particularly recently, you might have noticed a change when you browse the internet: Practically every website will ask you if you’ll accept cookies.
It’s due to a European data protection and privacy law called the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). Your so-called “cookie persona” (i.e. the online collection of your cookies) can be shared or sold to companies, and the law has recognized that this could compromise your privacy, Chuck Brooks, tech and cybersecurity expert and president of Brooks Consulting International, tells Yahoo Life. The result? You get asked everywhere if you’re OK with allowing cookies.
There is a quick and easy way to delete cookies that track you online: You can download software like McAfee Multi Access, which removes cookies and temporary files from your computer for you. An added bonus: It also blocks viruses, malware, spyware and ransomware attacks.
But it’s only natural to have questions about whether you should even allow cookies in the first place. Here’s what you need to know.
Experts say it’s OK to allow cookies from senders and websites you know and trust. (Photo: Getty)
First, a recap on what cookies are.
Cookies are one or more small pieces of data that identify your computer to a website with a unique code, Joseph Steinberg, cybersecurity expert and emerging technologies advisor, tells Yahoo Life. The cookies are sent by a web server to your laptop, phone or tablet while you’re on that server’s website. (Once you give the OK, of course.)
Your device stores the cookies and when you visit the website again, the server recognizes you, Steinberg explains. In addition to using cookies to know who you are, cookies are often used by marketing companies to target ads towards you, which explains why you might consider buying a pair of jeans on a website, only to see ads for those jeans when you go on other sites.
So, should you allow cookies?
Some websites won’t let you fully explore them without allowing cookies, making this a tricky issue.
Under GDPR, most people get daily requests from websites to allow permission to use tracking cookies, Brooks points out. “Users should always ask themselves, ‘Do I want to have the site accessible to my personal data?'” he says.
But, “generally speaking, cookies are fine and you can allow them,” Steinberg says. “In fact,” he adds, “cookies can be extremely useful — and many common activities would be difficult, if not practically impossible to achieve, without them.”
Authentication cookies, for example, allow a user who logs onto a website to click and view multiple pages on the site without having to re-authenticate each time they try to view another page, Steinberg explains. (Think: being able to cruise around your online bank information without having to log in to see every page.) “In many such cases, cookies are valid for only one ‘session,'” says Steinberg, and expire immediately after a web session ends. “But, in some cases, servers are programmed to create and accept such cookies to allow users access for many different sessions using ‘persistent cookies.'”
You can download software that removes cookies and temporary files from your computer for you. (Photo: Getty)
Cookies also allow a site to remember your personalization preferences, Steinberg notes, and refusing to accept cookies can make your user experience less optimal.
“Cookies have a bad reputation because they facilitate tracking, including across websites,” Steinberg says. That can allow a provider to track your activity wherever you go online, he points out.
“In general, users should only allow cookies from senders and websites that they really desire and keep it limited,” Brooks says.
Don’t have the time to be that selective? Software like McAfee Multi Access can take care of it for you, weeding out the cookies you don’t want while keeping the ones you do.
Overall, experts stress that all cookies aren’t bad — and some can even be helpful. Just be smart about the ones you accept in the future.
White House says 20 internet companies will provide effectively free internet to millions of Americans
Ben Werschkul, Senior Producer and Writer – May 9, 2022
The Biden administration announced Monday that 20 leading internet service providers have agreed to offer basic low cost plans that will be free for millions of Americans after a refund.
The 20 companies, including AT&T (T), Comcast (CMCSA), and Verizon (VZ), cover more than 80% of the U.S. population. They will immediately provide at least one plan that costs no more than $30 a month and provides download speeds of at least 100 mbps.
The White House says that 40% of the U.S. population, about 48 million households, will be eligible to sign up through an existing program called the Affordable Connectivity Program (ACP). The program is aimed at lower income Americans and offers participants a discount of up to $30/month on their internet bill, meaning they’ll effectively get free service if they can get online with one of these participating companies.
AT&T CEO John Stankey said his company’s new plan “when combined with federal ACP benefits, provides up to 100 Mbps of free internet service.”
“Internet for all requires the partnership of business and government, and we are pleased to be working with the Administration, Congress and FCC to ensure everyone has accessible, affordable and sustainable broadband service,” he said.
‘High speed internet at home is no longer a luxury’
Monday’s news come largely thanks to $65 billion set aside for high speed internet in the Bipartisan Infrastructure law. That money has helped fund the ACP and is also being directed towards parallel efforts to increase coverage areas and speeds.
“High speed internet at home is no longer a luxury: it’s a necessity for children to learn, workers to do their job, seniors and others to access health care through telemedicine, and for all of us to stay connected in this digital world,” a senior administration official told reporters in previewing the announcement.
‘A historic opportunity’
Families are eligible for the ACP mostly based on income level. Any household making less than 200% of the Federal Poverty Level — $55,500 for a family of four in the continental U.S. — is eligible. Households can also qualify if they participate in certain government programs like Medicaid or Supplemental Security Income.
“The Affordable Connectivity Program is a historic opportunity to close the digital divide by empowering more Americans to get online and connect to our increasingly digital world, “ said David N. Watson, the CEO and president of Comcast.
The full list of participating companies includes Allo Communications, AltaFiber, Altice USA, Astound, AT&T, Breezeline, Comcast, Comporium, Frontier, IdeaTek, Cox Communications, Jackson Energy Authority, MediaCom, MLGC, Spectrum, Verizon, Vermont Telephone Company, Vexus Fiber, and Wow! Internet, Cable, and TV.
Verizon, as an example, will now offer its existing Fios service for $30/month to program participants. Other companies, like Spectrum, say they will increase the speeds of an existing $30/month plan to reach the 100 mbps standard set by the White House, where their infrastructure allows it.
Pushing more companies to ‘make the same commitments’
Notably missing from Monday’s announcement are many smaller and rural internet service providers that would have a challenge meeting the White House’s pricing or speed requirements.
“I think that there are roughly 1,300 participating internet providers in the ACP right now and we would obviously love for each and every one of them to make the same commitments that these 20 companies are doing,” said a senior administration official.
Vice President Kamala Harris discusses the Affordable Connectivity Program in February. (Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)
These companies cover 50% of the rural population. Those Americans are still eligible to sign up for the ACP, but they may continue to face slower speed or plans that aren’t fully covered by the $30 refund.
So far, 11.5 million households have signed up to receive ACP benefits. The program was first created as a relief measure in the early days of the coronavirus pandemic, and Biden officials have moved to make it a permanent as a way to lessen the digital divide.
President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris will speak at the White House Monday alongside internet company CEOs as the first part of a multi-pronged effort to drive signups. That effort includes a new website, GetInternet.gov, and direct outreach from federal agencies like the Social Security Administration as well as states.
Ben Werschkul is a writer and producer for Yahoo Finance in Washington, DC.
Flurry of New Laws Move Blue and Red States Further Apart
Shawn Hubler and JillCowan – April 4, 2022
SACRAMENTO, Calif. — After the governor of Texas ordered state agencies to investigate parents for child abuse if they provide certain medical treatments to their transgender children, California lawmakers proposed a law making the state a refuge for transgender youths and their families.
When Idaho proposed a ban on abortions that empowers relatives to sue anyone who helps terminate a pregnancy after six weeks, nearby Oregon approved $15 million to help cover the abortion expenses of patients from out of state.
As Republican activists aggressively pursue conservative social policies in state legislatures across the country, liberal states are taking defensive actions. Spurred by a U.S. Supreme Court that is expected to soon upend an array of long-standing rights, including the constitutional right to abortion, left-leaning lawmakers from Washington to Vermont have begun to expand access to abortion, bolster voting rights and denounce laws in conservative states targeting LGBTQ minors.
The flurry of action, particularly in the West, is intensifying already marked differences between life in liberal- and conservative-led parts of the country. And it’s a sign of the consequences when state governments are controlled increasingly by single parties. Control of legislative chambers is split between parties now in only two states — Minnesota and Virginia — compared with 15 states 30 years ago.
“We’re further and further polarizing and fragmenting, so that blue states and red states are becoming not only a little different but radically different,” said Jon Michaels, a law professor who studies government at UCLA.
Americans have been sorting into opposing partisan camps for at least a generation, choosing more and more to live among like-minded neighbors, while legislatures, through gerrymandering, are reinforcing their states’ political identities by solidifying one-party rule.
“As states become more red or blue, it’s politically easier for them to pass legislation,” said Ryan D. Enos, a Harvard political scientist who studies partisan segregation. “Does that create a feedback loop where more sorting happens? That’s the part we don’t know yet.”
With some 30 legislatures in Republican hands, conservative lawmakers, working in many cases with shared legislative language, have begun to enact a tsunami of restrictions that for years were blocked by Democrats and moderate Republicans at the federal level. A recent wave of anti-abortion bills, for instance, has been the largest since the landmark 1973 decision in Roe v. Wade.
Similar moves have recently been aimed at LGBTQ protections and voting rights. In Florida and Texas, teams of “election police” have been created to crack down on the rare crime of voter fraud, fallout from former President Donald Trump’s specious claims after he lost the 2020 presidential election.
Carrying concealed guns without a permit is now legal in nearly half of the country. “Bounty” laws — enforced not by governments, which can be sued in federal court, but by rewards to private citizens for filing lawsuits — have proliferated on issues from classroom speech to vaccination since the U.S. Supreme Court declined to strike down the legal tactic in Texas.
The moves, in an election year, have raised questions about the extent to which they are performative, as opposed to substantial. Some Republican bills are bold at first glance but vaguely worded. Some appear designed largely to energize base voters.
Many, however, send a strong cultural message. And divisions will widen further, said Peverill Squire, an expert on state legislatures at the University of Missouri, if the Supreme Court hands more power over to the states on issues like abortion and voting, as it did when it said in 2019 that partisan gerrymandering was beyond federal jurisdiction.
Some legal analysts also say the anticipated rollback of abortion rights could throw a host of other privacy rights into state-level turmoil, from contraception to health care. Meanwhile, entrenched partisanship, which has already hobbled federal decision-making, could block attempts to impose strong national standards in Congress.
“We’re potentially entering a new era of state-centered policymaking,” said Karthick Ramakrishnan, a professor of public policy and political science at the University of California, Riverside. “We may be heading into a future where you could have conservative states and progressive states deciding they are better off pushing their own visions of what government should be.”
In recent weeks, several states including Colorado and Vermont have moved to codify a right to abortion. More — Maryland and Washington, for example — have expanded access or legal protection in anticipation of out-of-state patients.
But no state has been as aggressive as California in shoring up alternatives to the Republican legislation.
One package of pending California bills would expand access to California abortions and protect abortion providers from out-of-state legal action. Another proposal would thwart enforcement of out-of-state court judgments removing children from the custody of parents who get them gender-affirming health services.
Yet another would enforce a ban on ghost guns and assault weapons with a California version of Texas’ recent six-week ban on abortion, featuring $10,000 bounties to encourage lawsuits from private citizens against anyone who sells, distributes or manufactures those types of firearms.
In a “State of the State” address last month, Gov. Gavin Newsom took more than a half-dozen swipes at Florida and Texas, comparing California’s expanded sick leave, family leave and Medicaid coverage during the pandemic with the higher COVID-19 death rates in the two Republican-led states, and alluding to states “where they’re banning books” and “where you can sue your history teacher for teaching history.”
After Disney World employees protested the corporation’s initial reluctance to condemn the Florida bill that opponents call “Don’t Say Gay,” Newsom suggested Disney cancel the relocation of some 2,000 West Coast positions to a new Florida campus, saying on Twitter that “the door is open to bring those jobs back to California — the state that actually represents the values of your workers.”
Dan Schnur, a former Republican strategist who teaches political science now at the University of Southern California and the University of California, Berkeley, said that without strong Republican opposition, Newsom has been using the governors of Texas and Florida as straw men.
“It’s an effective way of strengthening himself at home and elevating his name in Democratic presidential conversations,” Schnur said.
Conservatives in and outside California have criticized the governor for stoking division.
A spokesperson for Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, who is a Republican presidential contender, noted in an email that Disneyland was closed three times longer than Disney World during the pandemic, and that hundreds of thousands of Americans moved to Florida between April 2020 and July 2021 while hundreds of thousands left California. Newsom, she wrote, “is doing a better job as a U-Haul salesman.”
“Politicians in California do not have veto power over legislation passed in Florida,” the spokesperson, Christina Pushaw, added. “Gov. Newsom should focus on solving the problems in his own state.”
The office of Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas — who, in 2018, ran on the slogan “Don’t California My Texas” — did not respond to emails and calls requesting comment.
Newsom noted that California has been grappling for decades with the cultural and demographic changes that are only now hitting other parts of the country, including early battles over such issues as gay rights and immigration. “I’m very concerned broadly about what’s happening and whether or not it’s fully understood by the majority, not just of the American people but people within my own party,” he said.
“We are not going to sit back and neutrally watch the progress of the 20th century get erased,” he added, decrying the “zest for demonization” and an “anti-democratic” tilt in recent policies to restrict voting and LGBTQ protections.
“If you say nothing, you’re complicit,” Newsom said. “You have to take these guys on and push back.”
California’s stance has broad implications. Although U.S. census figures showed stalled growth in the state in 2020, its population of nearly 40 million is the nation’s largest, encompassing 1 in 9 U.S. residents.
“In a world in which the federal government has abdicated some of its core responsibility, states like California have to figure out what their responsibilities are,” said Michaels, the UCLA professor. “The hard question is: Where does it end?”
For example, he noted, the fallout could mean that federal rights that generations have taken for granted could become available only to those who can afford to uproot their lives and move to the states that guarantee them.
“It’s easy for Gov. Newsom to tell struggling Alabamians, ‘I feel your pain,’ but then what? ‘Come rent a studio apartment in San Francisco for $4,000 a month?’ ”
Violet Augustine, 37, an artist, art teacher and single parent in Dallas, worries about the limits of interstate refuge. For months, she said, she considered moving away from Texas with her transgender daughter, a kindergartner, to a state where she doesn’t constantly fear for their safety. When Abbott and Texas’ attorney general directed the state to investigate parents with transgender children for possible child abuse, her plan solidified.
An appeal on GoFundMe has raised some $23,000, and she recently made a visit to Los Angeles, staying at a hotel in the heart of the city’s Koreatown and meeting with leaders of a community group that describes itself as “radically inclusive” of LGBTQ families.
“The city itself just felt like a safe haven,” Augustine said. But, she added, her $60,000 salary, which allows her to rent a house in Texas, would scarcely cover a California apartment: “We’re going to have to downsize.”
Call Logs Underscore Trump’s Efforts to Sway Lawmakers on Jan. 6
Luke Broadwater and Maggie Haberman – March 30, 2022
Peter Navarro, former trade advisor to the White House, speaks to reporters on Capitol Hill in Washington, on Oct. 30, 2020. (Anna Moneymaker/The New York Times).
WASHINGTON — As part of his frenzied attempt to cling to power, President Donald Trump reached out repeatedly to members of Congress on Jan. 6, 2021, both before and during the siege of the Capitol, according to White House call logs and evidence gathered by the House committee investigating the attack.
The logs, reported earlier by The Washington Post and CBS and authenticated by The New York Times, indicated that Trump had called Republican members of Congress, including Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri and Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio, as he sought to pressure Vice President Mike Pence to reject electoral votes from several states.
But the logs also have a large gap with no record of calls by Trump from critical hours when investigators know that he was making them. The call logs were among documents turned over by the National Archives to the House committee examining the attack last year on the Capitol.
The New York Times reported last month that the committee had discovered gaps in official White House telephone logs from the day of the riot. The Washington Post and CBS reported Tuesday that a gap in the phone logs amounted to 7 hours and 37 minutes, including the period when the building was being assaulted.
Investigators have not uncovered evidence that any of the call logs were tampered with or deleted. It is well known that Trump routinely used his personal cellphone, and those of his aides, to talk with other aides, congressional allies and outside confidants, bypassing the normal channels of presidential communication and possibly explaining why the calls were not logged.
The logs appear to have captured calls that were routed through the White House switchboard. Three former officials who worked under Trump said that he mostly used the switchboard operator for outgoing calls when he was in the residence. He would occasionally use it from the Oval Office, the former officials said, but more often he would make calls through the assistants sitting outside the office, as well as from his cellphone or an aide’s cellphone. The assistants were supposed to keep records of the calls, but officials said the record keeping was not thorough.
People trying to reach Trump sometimes called the cellphone of Dan Scavino, former deputy chief of staff and omnipresent aide, one of the former officials said. (The House committee investigating the attack recommended Monday evening that Scavino be charged with criminal contempt of Congress for refusing to cooperate with a subpoena from the panel.)
But the call logs nevertheless show how personally involved Trump was in his last-ditch attempt to stay in office.
One of the calls made by Trump on Jan. 6, 2021 — at 9:16 a.m. — was to McConnell, the Senate’s top Republican, who refused to go along with Trump’s pressure campaign. Trump checked with the White House switchboard operator at 10:40 a.m. to make sure a message had been left for McConnell.
McConnell declined to return the president’s calls, he told reporters Tuesday.
“The last time I spoke to the president was the day after the Electoral College declared President Biden the winner,” McConnell said. “I publicly congratulated President Biden on his victory and received a phone call after that from President Trump and that’s the last time we’ve spoke.”
The logs also show Trump reached out on the morning of Jan. 6 to Jordan, who had been among members of Congress organizing objections to Joe Biden’s election on the House floor.
The logs show Trump and Jordan spoke from 9:24 a.m. to 9:34 a.m. Jordan has acknowledged speaking with Trump on Jan. 6, although he has said he cannot remember how many times they spoke that day or when the calls occurred.
Trump called Hawley at 9:39 a.m., and Hawley returned his phone call. A spokesperson for Hawley said Tuesday that the two men did not connect and did not speak until March. Hawley had been the first senator to announce he would object to Biden’s victory, and continued his objections even after rioters stormed the building and other senators backed off the plan.
The logs also show that Trump spoke from 11:04 a.m. to 11:06 a.m. with former Sen. David Perdue, R-Ga., who had recently lost his reelection campaign to Sen. Jon Ossoff.
A spokesperson for Sen. Bill Hagerty, R- Tenn., confirmed he had called Trump on Jan. 6 but said they did not connect. Hagerty declined to comment.
Despite the lack of call records from the White House, the committee has learned that Trump spoke on the phone with other Republican lawmakers on the morning of Jan. 6.
For instance, Trump mistakenly called the phone of Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, thinking it was the number of Sen. Tommy Tuberville, R-Ala. Lee then passed the phone to Tuberville, who said he had spoken to Trump for less than 10 minutes as rioters were breaking into the building.
The president also fielded a call from Rep. Kevin McCarthy of California, the top House Republican, who told Trump that people were breaking into his office on Capitol Hill.
During that call, Trump was said to have sided with the rioters, telling the top House Republicans that members of the mob who had stormed the Capitol were “more upset about the election than you are.”
Rudy Giuliani, Trump’s personal lawyer, was also calling lawmakers that day and continued to do so even after rioters laid siege to the building. In an evening phone call, he made clear that the effort to fight the result of the election was still alive even after the riot.
“Sen. Tuberville, or I should say Coach Tuberville, this is Rudy Giuliani, the president’s lawyer,” Giuliani said in a voicemail message intended for Tuberville, but mistakenly left on Lee’s phone. “I’m calling you because I want to discuss with you how they’re trying to rush this hearing and how we need you, our Republican friends, to try to just slow it down.”
The news of the call logs came the same day that the White House said Biden would not extend executive privilege to cover any testimony to the committee by Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner, Trump’s daughter and son-in-law, who worked as his advisers.
“The president has spoken to the fact that Jan. 6 was one of the darkest days in our country’s history, and that we must have a full accounting of what happened to ensure that it never occurs again,” said White House spokesperson Kate Bedingfield. “And he’s been quite clear that they posed a unique threat to our democracy and that the constitutional protections of executive privilege should not be used to shield, from Congress or the public, information about an attack on the Constitution itself.”
Kushner is scheduled to testify before the committee this week, while Ivanka Trump has been negotiating the terms of her potential cooperation.
Trump likely committed felony with plan to obstruct Congress, U.S. judge rules
Jan Wolfe – March 28, 2022
FILE PHOTO: U.S. President Donald Trump holds a rally to contest the certification of the 2020 U.S. presidential election results by the U.S. Congress in Washington
WASHINGTON (Reuters) -A U.S. judge ruled on Monday that former President Donald Trump “more likely than not” committed a felony by trying to pressure his vice president to obstruct Congress and overturn his election defeat on Jan. 6, 2021.
The assertion was in a ruling that found the House of Representatives committee probing the deadly attack on the U.S. Capitol has a right to see emails written to Trump by one of his then-lawyers, John Eastman. The judge said that Trump’s plan to overturn his defeat amounted to a “coup.”
“The Court finds it more likely than not that President Trump corruptly attempted to obstruct the Joint Session of Congress on January 6, 2021,” U.S. District Judge David Carter in Los Angeles said in a written decision.
Representatives of Trump and Los Angeles-based Eastman did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Carter has no power to bring criminal charges against Trump. That decision would need to be made by U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland, for violations of federal law.
The Capitol riot occurred as then-Vice President Mike Pence and members of both chambers of Congress were meeting to certify Democrat Joe Biden’s November 2020 election win.
“Dr. Eastman and President Trump launched a campaign to overturn a democratic election, an action unprecedented in American history,” Carter wrote. “Their campaign was not confined to the ivory tower – it was a coup in search of a legal theory.”
The Democratic-led committee was formed to investigate last year’s Capitol attack by thousands of Trump supporters, more than 750 of whom have been charged criminally.
The committee said earlier this month it believed Trump may have committed multiple felonies.
Before the mob stormed the Capitol, Trump gave a fiery speech in which he falsely claimed his election defeat was the result of widespread fraud, an assertion rejected by multiple courts, state election officials and members of his own administration.
(Reporting by Jan Wolfe; Editing by Scott Malone and Grant McCool)
