Will DeSantis run for president? The candidate I saw during the Florida debate is worrisome.
Carli Pierson, USA TODAY – October 30, 2022
If there were a recipe to make another Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis it might go something like this: Grab some playground bully off the shelf with a heaping teaspoon of science denial, a swig of race-baiting and a lump of LGBTQ bigotry for good measure.
If it sounds nasty, that’s because it is (recipe and politics).
As a former Floridian who visits as often as possible, and because I have close family that still lives there, I care deeply about what goes on in the Sunshine State and worry about where DeSantis is heading politically.
Not everyone agrees with me. During the first and only gubernatorial debate with former Republican Gov. and now Democratic Congressman Charlie Crist on Monday night in Fort Pierce, DeSantis got a concerning amount of applause for his hateful, misleading and divisive comments. Before the debate, DeSantis was also leading in the polls and has proved to be popular in Florida.
After the debate, he went back to being favored to be a GOP candidate running against former President Donald Trump (should he run) in the 2024 presidential election. It’s with that in mind that I’m writing about the debate. What kind of candidate would DeSantis be for the 2024 campaign? And, God forbid, what kind of president?
The debate was a good window into that.
Crist and DeSantis at gubernatorial debate
What DeSantis said during the debate
I didn’t ever imagine myself saying this because I am an atheist, but as I watched Monday night’s debate, I found myself praying Crist becomes governor again. No matter how much I dislike millionaires getting into politics, DeSantis’ far right ideology makes me nervous. But how will more centric and independent voters feel about his rhetoric?
DeSantis made some really troubling comments during the debate. He also has a record of troubling, bigoted leadership that has no place in 2022 America, or 2024:
►When asked by local news anchor Liz Quirantes about his “Stop WOKE” Act and his Florida Parental Rights in Education Act – which critics have called the “Don’t Say Gay” law because it bans classroom instruction on sexual orientation and gender identity for students in kindergarten through third grade – DeSantis went on a tangent dog-whistling about keeping Florida free. He also stooped to his habitual race baiting saying, “I don’t want to teach kids to hate our country,” and claimed that it was false that the United States was built on “stolen lands.”
DeSantis isn’t mature enough to be governor or president
DeSantis, like others in his party, seems to be unable to realize that he is (and would be if elected) the governor of all Floridians, not just the ones who agree with him. But his radical positions send progressives, moderate Democrats and even independents running in the opposite direction.
That won’t stop if he decides to run for president.
DeSantis’ inability to answer Crist’s question about whether he would serve the full term, if elected, made it painfully clear that he doesn’t care about being governor – he wants to be president. Rather than answering the question honestly, he mumbled something and then reverted to his inner playground bully by calling Crist a “worn-out old donkey.” A “yo mamma” joke would probably have had the same effect: Rally the base; make everyone else cringe.
DeSantis doesn’t really want to be governor for much longer and he doesn’t want to listen to American voters – he wants to be president so he can push his radical agenda from the White House.
Carli Pierson, a New York licensed attorney, is an opinion writer and a member of the USA TODAY Editorial Board.
Blood pressure medicine recall: Some pills pose potential cancer risk, FDA announces
Natalie Neysa Alund – October 27, 2022
A pharmaceutical company is recalling a blood pressure medication due to a potential cancer risk, the FDA announced this week.
Aurobindo Pharma USA is recalling two lots of quinapril and hydrochlorothiazide tablets due to levels of nitrosamine. The tablets are commonly prescribed for the treatment of hypertension to lower blood pressure.
Low levels of nitrosamine, or N-nitroso-quinapril, is regularly found in water and food including cured and grilled meats, dairy products and vegetables. Exposure to high levels, the FDA reports, has been linked with an elevated risk of cancer.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Food Safety and Inspection Service announced the company’s voluntary recall Wednesday.
According to the FDA advisory, the medication are “pink colored, scored, round shaped, biconvex, film-coated tablets, debossed with ‘D’ on the scored side and ‘19’ on the other side.”
So far, the FDA reported no adverse events have been linked to this issue.
“Patients should contact their doctor or health care provider about whether to continue taking their medication, or whether to consider an alternative treatment prior to returning their medication,” according to an advisory on the FDA’s website.
Related video: How to stay on top of food recalls and prevent foodborne illnesses
How to stay on top of food recalls and prevent foodborne illnesses
About 128,000 are hospitalized and 3,000 people die each year from preventable foodborne illnesses.
Consumers with questions about the recall can call 1-866-850-2876 or email pvg@aurobindousa.com.
Natalie Neysa Alund covers trending news for USA TODAY.
And possibly Kamala Harris, and Merrick Garland, and Alejandro Mayorkas, and Antony Blinken
By Barton Gellman – October 26, 2022
Photo-collage images: Graeme Jennings / Getty; Dustin Franz / Bloomberg / Getty; Brendan Smialowski / AFP / Getty; Anna Moneymaker / Getty; Nicholas Kamm / AFP / Getty
Sometime next year, after an interval of performative investigations, Republicans in the House are going to impeach Joe Biden. This may not be their present plan, but they will work themselves up to it by degrees. The pressure from the MAGA base will build. A triggering event will burst all restraints. Eventually, Republicans will leave themselves little choice.
This prediction rests, of course, on the assumption that Republicans will win control of the House next month, which appears likely: Democrats would need to win an improbable number of toss-up races to keep their majority. And an impeachment resolution requires just a simple majority to pass the House.
Nothing in the public record offers the slightest reason to believe that the Senate, even if it is under Republican control, would convict and remove Biden from office. Still, House Republicans will come to see plenty of advantages in impeaching Biden—and, possibly, several other top administration officials.
Already, there is enormous demand for impeachment. A University of Massachusetts Amherst poll in May found that 68 percent of Republican voters think the House should impeach Biden. A majority expect that it will impeach him. Thwarting those expectations would be dangerous for any House Republican.
The poll numbers for impeachment correspond closely to the belief among Republicans that Biden is an illegitimate president. This is no coincidence: Impeachment is the corollary of election denial—the invincible certainty that Biden cheated in 2020 and Donald Trump won. If you truly believe that and haven’t joined a militia, impeachment is the least of the remedies you will accept.
Election denial is the core position of the GOP today. Two-thirds of the Republican caucus in the House voted to overturn the presidential election in 2020—including Kevin McCarthy, who is likely to become the next speaker. A new cohort of incoming members, Republican nominees in safe red districts, has campaigned as election deniers. After a number of forced retirements and establishment defeats in primaries this year, very few party members will publicly concede that Biden won a free and fair election.
“The impeachment buzz will be at the backdrop of every conversation about a Republican agenda,” Kevin Madden, a former top GOP spokesperson and strategist, told me. MAGA true believers think establishment Republicans “for too long allowed Democrats to play hardball, and now’s the time to really sort of fight fire with fire.” Trump’s supporters, he said, want “retribution.”
McCarthy has so far equivocated on the question of impeachment. His allies tell me he will instead try to channel this energy into congressional investigations of the president, his family, and his administration. The prospective chairs of the relevant committees, Oversight and Judiciary, have already laid the groundwork for these probes in planning meetings and public pronouncements. But taking the next step toward impeachment is risky, and could backfire with voters. McCarthy wants to oversee subpoenas and Benghazi-style hearings to weaken the president ahead of the 2024 election, not issue a call for Biden’s removal. (McCarthy and his staff did not respond to a request for comment.)
But there is little reason to think that McCarthy can resist the GOP’s impulse to impeach once it gathers strength. He is a notably weak leader of a conference that proved unmanageable for his predecessors Paul Ryan and John Boehner. If he does in fact reach the speakership, his elevation will be a testament to his strategy of avoiding conflict with those forces.
Donald Trump remains the strongest influence on McCarthy’s caucus. Anytime he cares to intervene, he will be the dominant figure in setting Republican priorities in the House. “Trump has the ability to get a message out, to motivate the grassroots base of the Republican Party,” a close McCarthy ally told me. “And then that then turns around and motivates all these members.”
And what will Trump want? Doug Heye, another McCarthy ally and former member of the House leadership staff, says the answer is obvious.
“Donald Trump’s going to want to impeach everybody,” he said.
We tend to think of presidential impeachment proceedings as rare. The Constitution defined the power to impeach in 1787. Nearly a century passed before Congress picked up that weapon, impeaching and (barely) acquitting Andrew Johnson in 1868. Another hundred years passed before Richard Nixon resigned ahead of certain impeachment in 1974. Then came Bill Clinton, impeached in 1998 and acquitted the following year, and Donald Trump, impeached twice—in 2019 and 2021—and acquitted twice.
Five times, then, even if you count Nixon, in 235 years. But there is a lesser known and more extensive history. Twelve presidents—including all but one since Jimmy Carter—have been subject to impeachment resolutions. Amazingly, given the animus he attracted, the exception was Barack Obama.
“In the 21st century,” the presidential historian Barbara A. Perry told me, impeachment “is now routine.”
But while most attempts at impeachment have been symbolic gestures that had no chance to win a majority in the House, the coming Biden impeachment will not be that kind. Its prospects of passing and going to the Senate for trial will be substantial.
On January 21, 2021, Joe Biden’s first full day in office, Marjorie Taylor Greene filed the first article of impeachment against him. At the time, House Resolution 57 was no more than a sneer at a president whom Greene called illegitimate. With the House under Democratic control, Greene had to know she would get no floor vote or committee referral. The House leadership did not even acknowledge the submission.
But the threat that Greene posed to Biden was not empty. In the long term, it will prove to be very real.
Greene—for all her history of anti-Semitic, racist, and ludicrously conspiratorial remarks—holds a position of growing influence in her party. Unlike Nancy Pelosi, the current speaker, McCarthy cannot ignore Greene’s next impeachment resolutions, which she has promised in the new year.
“Marjorie Taylor Greene is going to have, if not more of, as much a say in the message and political focus of a Republican House conference than Kevin McCarthy will,” Madden said. “That’s just a very real pressure Kevin McCarthy is going to face.”
Greene’s day-one impeachment maneuver set the tone for the Republican conference. In August of 2021 she offered three more resolutions, gathering eight co-sponsors, including fellow bomb-throwers and election deniers Matt Gaetz and Paul Gosar. Soon other members of the Freedom Caucus caught on.
Another resolution was introduced the following month. Yet another less than two weeks after that. Three days later, Lauren Boebert introduced a pair of resolutions against Biden and Kamala Harris. (In a nice piece of recursive logic, one of the charges against Harris was failing to invoke the Twenty-Fifth Amendment to remove Biden.) The barrage continued with another impeachment resolution in April, and still another—from Greene again—last month.
None of these resolutions will be the one that gets Biden impeached. They all expire shortly after the new year, when the 117th Congress draws to a close. When the next Congress gavels in, Republicans will likely control the committees, the floor, and the rules. At some point in 2023, momentum for impeachment will build.
What charge could republicans use on Biden?
Advocates will have to come up with something that a majority of the House will endorse, and that will take time.
I talked with a lot of Republicans for this story, and the subject they mentioned most often was the president’s son Hunter Biden. “Hunter” is an all-purpose emblem of scandal in the GOP, and to some extent that is justified. He has admitted to abusing drugs; he was thinly qualified for his position on the board of Burisma, a Ukrainian natural-gas company, which he held while his father was vice president; and he is reportedly under federal investigation for alleged tax crimes and for lying about his drug use on an application to buy a gun. (He has said that professional advisers helped him with his tax affairs and is confident they were handled legally.)
The problem for those who want to impeach is how to connect the president to his son’s alleged misadventures. Republicans who mentioned “the Hunter issue”—even those who predicted that it would be the central predicate for impeachment—grew vague when I asked them how it demonstrated wrongdoing by the president. One said it showed “a pay-to-play scheme,” but did not specify who paid whom for what corrupt purpose.
The only formal accusation against Biden in connection with his son came in Greene’s first impeachment resolution. The evidence she cited was scant. The best Greene had was a 2011 email in which a business associate told Hunter Biden: “We need to get these guys to an event or something where they get to just formally meet your Dad.” Greene concludes from this that Biden “allowed his son to trade appointments with his father … in exchange for financial compensation,” but no evidence suggests that Hunter agreed to arrange such a meeting, much less that it happened.
A former House leadership aide close to McCarthy said an impeachment charge against the president based on his son’s conduct would be politically effective only “if it was discovered that Joe Biden had been very significantly involved in making money for Hunter … and he had done something clearly illegal.”
Another oft-mentioned reason for impeachment is Biden’s immigration policies and border enforcement. One impeachment resolution offered last year alleged that Biden “has allowed illegal aliens to enter the United States in violation of immigration law, admitted aliens who have tested positive for COVID-19 into the United States, countered the will of Congress by not completing the southern border wall, [and] deprived border agents of the sufficient manpower and resources needed to secure the border.” This is a policy dispute, but Congress gets to define high crimes and misdemeanors any way it likes.
The botched U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan last year offers another potential basis for impeachment. A resolution backed by eight Republicans said Biden “failed to secure the extraction of thousands of American civilians and Afghan allies before and during the withdrawal.” The resolution also said, accurately, that Biden “armed our enemies by leaving numerous weapons, ammunition, and other military equipment which could be used against American citizens, allies, and other civilians in Afghanistan.”
Republicans have also offered the federal government’s temporary ban on evictions as grounds for impeachment. According to three members of the Freedom Caucus, Biden showed “disrespect for Congress” and disregard for a (nonbinding) concurring Supreme Court opinion that cast doubt on the CDC’s authority to halt evictions.
Last month, in her latest impeachment charge, Greene accused Biden of “endangering, compromising, and undermining the energy security of the United States by selling oil from the United States’ Strategic Petroleum Reserve to foreign nations.”
None of these rises to impeachable conduct by historical standards. But the GOP will find some new cause for outrage. Some leading Republicans say the details won’t even matter.
Senator Ted Cruz, speaking on his podcast in December, opined that Biden’s impeachment, “whether it’s justified or not,” will come in revenge for Trump’s. “The Democrats weaponized impeachment. They used it for partisan purposes to go after Trump because they disagreed with him. And one of the real disadvantages of doing that … is the more you weaponize it and turn it into a partisan cudgel, you know, what’s good for the goose is good for the gander.”
As George Conway, an establishment Republican turned Trump critic, put it, “This is a party that basically lives off of false equivalences now.”
For months, house republicans and conservative think tanks have been meeting to game out an aggressive agenda of hearings and investigations for the coming term. Much of the action will center on the Oversight and Judiciary Committees, expected to be chaired by James Comer and Jim Jordan, respectively. The overarching purpose will be to inflict political damage on the president in the run-up to the 2024 election. But Biden will not be the only target of these investigations.
Mike Howell, who leads the Heritage Foundation’s Oversight Project and took part in a May planning retreat with senior congressional staffers, told me that oversight will quickly lead to impeachment debates—beginning with the Homeland Security secretary, Alejandro Mayorkas. “Impeachment comes up in virtually every conversation you have about what to do when the next conference gavels in,” he said. “And I’m talking about the impeachment of Mayorkas.”
Last year, an impeachment resolution against Mayorkas won 31 co-sponsors, including Scott Perry, the chair of the Freedom Caucus. This year, Heritage published what amounts to a draft impeachment resolution against him. And Republicans have already introduced articles of impeachment against Kamala Harris, Attorney General Merrick Garland, and Secretary of State Antony Blinken.
All of this momentum, Howell said, could naturally lead to the president. “I think the arguments are there” to impeach Biden, he told me. “You have your pick of multiple different types of impeachable conduct across the board.”
For die-hard Trump allies, impeaching Biden is good politics no matter what. But for McCarthy and the rest of the prospective House leadership, there are pitfalls. “There are lots of reasons not to go on an impeachment bonanza,” says Brendan Buck, who was a top aide to both Boehner and Ryan, “not the least of which is that it could politically be viewed as overreach and make House Republicans look crazy and make Joe Biden, by contrast, look better.”
But McCarthy’s equivocation on impeachment carries the seeds of its own collapse. He wants to mollify angry voters and zealous members of his conference by orchestrating aggressive investigations of Biden, but hopes to stop short of calling for the president’s removal. That strategy has two likely outcomes, either of which spells trouble for McCarthy. If the investigations don’t damage Biden, the party’s base will insist on stronger medicine. If they do, the base will demand that McCarthy finish the job.
The tipping point may be Jim Jordan. He is a co-founder and leading member of the Freedom Caucus, and no stranger to extreme rhetoric about Biden. But his looming chairmanship of the Judiciary Committee will nudge him toward institutional prerogatives and the orderly execution of McCarthy’s plans. So far he has been carefully ambiguous about impeachment, saying, “That’s definitely a discussion we have to have,” but raising the bar for proceeding: “The conference has to decide. You have to have complete buy-in from the entire conference and the leadership of our conference.”
So Jordan is with McCarthy’s program for now, but he has long made sure to position himself on the front lines against Democrats. He will not allow himself to be outdone by zealots like Greene and Gaetz once momentum for impeachment builds. He will want to be sure that his committee is the primary venue for confronting Biden. When he embraces impeachment, the die will be cast.
More than anything, my confidence that impeachment is coming relies in the end on a firm belief that Trump will demand it. His own impeachments humiliated him, and losing to Biden was an injury from which his ego has yet to recover. He is obsessed with revenge. His lifelong survival technique is to turn every accusation back on his opponents. And when he is on the defensive, as he is now on multiple legal fronts, he is especially prone to deflect attacks elsewhere.
In the new year, there will come an event that triggers all those instincts. Given his reaction to the Mar-a-Lago search warrant, and his barely veiled warnings about violence if he is indicted, that event might well be the revelation of criminal charges against him. Trump’s explosive reaction, amplified by his followers and enablers, will change every Republican’s calculus on impeachment.
Gradually, and then suddenly, impeachment will become as much a litmus test for Republican House members as the Big Lie. McCarthy—“my Kevin,” as Trump styles him—will not hold back that tide. In the end, he will not even try.
Republicans Claim They Can Tame Inflation, but Economists Have Their Doubts
Jim Tankersley and Emily Cochrane – October 26, 2022
The U.S. Capitol Building in Washington on Sept. 27, 2022. (Haiyun Jiang/The New York Times)
WASHINGTON — Republicans are riding a wave of anger over inflation as they seek to recapture the House and the Senate this fall, hammering Democrats on President Joe Biden’s economic policies, which they say have fueled the fastest price gains in 40 years.
Republican candidates have centered their economic agenda on promises to help Americans cope with everyday price increases and to increase growth. They have pledged to reduce government spending and to make permanent parts of the 2017 Republican tax cuts that are set to expire over the next three years — including incentives for corporate investment and tax reductions for individuals.
They have vowed to repeal the corporate tax increases that Biden signed into law in August while gutting funding for the IRS, which was given more money to help the United States go after high-earning and corporate tax cheats.
“The very fact that Republicans are poised to take back majorities in both chambers is an indictment of the policies of this administration,” said Sen. Bill Cassidy, R-La., noting that “if you look at the spending that they did on a partisan basis, we certainly would be able to stop that.”
But while Republicans insist they will be better stewards of the economy, few economists on either end of the ideological spectrum expect the party’s proposals to meaningfully reduce inflation in the short term. Instead, many say some of what Republicans are proposing — including tax cuts for high earners and businesses — could actually make price pressures worse by pumping more money into the economy.
“It is unlikely that any of the policies proposed by Republicans would meaningfully reduce inflation in 2023, when rapidly rising prices will still be a major problem for the economy and for consumers,” said Michael R. Strain, an economist at the conservative American Enterprise Institute.
On Wednesday, Republicans on the House Ways and Means Committee held a virtual meeting where they detailed plans to make the 2017 tax law provisions permanent, billing the move as a crucial step toward improving the nation’s economy.
“As we look forward to the strong probability of an upcoming recession, there is new urgency to preserve these pro-growth policies,” said Rep. Vern Buchanan, R-Fla.
As they position themselves for the midterm elections, Republicans have also indicated that they might try to hold the nation’s borrowing limit hostage to achieve spending cuts. The debt ceiling, which caps how much the federal government can borrow, has increasingly become a fraught arena for political brinkmanship.
Multiple top Republicans have signaled that unless Biden agrees to reduce future government spending, they will refuse to lift the borrowing cap. That would effectively bar the federal government from issuing new bonds to finance its deficit spending, potentially jeopardizing on-time payments for military salaries and safety-net benefits, and roiling bond markets.
Biden has tried to push back against the Republicans and cast the election not as a referendum on his economic policies, but as a choice between Democratic policies to reduce costs on health care and electricity and Republican efforts to repeal those policies. He has accused Republicans of stoking further price increases with tax cuts that could add to the federal budget deficit, and of risking financial calamity by refusing to raise the debt limit.
“We, the Democrats, are the ones that are fiscally responsible. Let’s get that straight now, OK?” Biden said during remarks Monday to workers at the Democratic National Committee. “We’re investing in all of America, reducing everyday costs while also lowering the deficit at the same time. Republicans are fiscally reckless, pushing tax cuts for the very wealthy that aren’t paid for, and exploiting the deficit that is making inflation worse.”
The challenge for Biden is that voters do not seem to be demanding details from Republicans and are instead putting their trust in them to turn around an economy that voters believe is headed in the wrong direction. Polls suggest Americans trust Republicans by a wide margin to handle inflation and other economic issues.
In a nationwide deluge of campaign ads and in public remarks, Republicans have pinned much of their inflation-fighting agenda on halting a stimulus spending spree that began under President Donald Trump and continued under Biden, in an effort to help people and businesses survive the pandemic recession. Those efforts have largely ended, and Biden has shown no desire to pass further stimulus legislation at a time of rapid price growth.
Rep. Jason Smith of Missouri, the top Republican on the House Budget Committee, said in a statement that “the first step in combating inflation is to stop the historically reckless spending spree occurring under one-party Democrat rule in Washington, and that will only happen with a Republican majority in Congress.”
Economists largely agree that the Federal Reserve is most responsible for fighting inflation, which policymakers are trying to do with rapid interest rates increases. But they say Congress could plausibly help the Fed by reducing budget deficits, in order to slow the amount of consumer spending power in the economy.
One way to do that would be to significantly and quickly reduce federal spending. Such a move could result in widespread government layoffs and reduced support for low-income individuals — who would be less able to afford increasingly expensive food and other staples — and could prompt a recession.
“The amount of cuts you’d have to do to move the needle on inflation are completely off the table,” said Jon Lieber, a former aide to Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky who is now the Eurasia Group’s managing director for the United States.
Still, Lieber said that likelihood would not sully the Republican pitch to voters this fall. “Midterm votes are a referendum on the party in power,” he said, “and the party in power has responsibility for inflation.”
Biden administration officials contend that the Republican plans, rather than curbing inflation, could worsen America’s fiscal situation.
Administration economists estimate that two policies favored by Republicans — repealing a new minimum tax on large corporations included in the Inflation Reduction Act and extending some business tax cuts from Trump’s 2017 legislation — could collectively increase the federal budget deficit by about $90 billion next year.
Such an increase could cause the Federal Reserve to raise rates even faster than it already is, further choking economic growth. Or, alternatively, it could add a small amount to the annual inflation rate — perhaps as much as 0.2 percentage points. Fully repealing the Inflation Reduction Act would also mean raising future costs for prescription drugs for seniors on Medicare, including for insulin, and potentially raising future electricity costs.
“Their plan to repeal the IRA and double down on the Trump tax cuts for the wealthy will worsen inflation,” said Jared Bernstein, a member of Biden’s Council of Economic Advisers. “On top of that, they’re also explicit that they’re coming for Social Security and Medicare, making this a terribly destructive agenda that starts by fighting the Fed and moves on to devastating vulnerable seniors.”
Conservative economists say the inflation impact of extending Trump’s tax cuts could be much smaller, because those extensions could lead businesses to invest more, people to work more and growth to increase across the economy. They also say Republicans could help relieve price pressures, by following through on their proposals to reduce federal regulations governing new energy development.
“Those things are going to be positive for investment, job creation and capacity” in the economy, said Donald Schneider, a former chief economist for Republicans on the House Ways and Means Committee and the deputy head of U.S. policy at Piper Sandler.
A budget proposal unveiled this year by the Republican Study Committee, a conservative policy group within the House Republican conference, included plans to permanently extend the Trump tax cuts and to impose work requirements on federal benefits programs, in hopes of reducing federal spending on the programs and increasing the number of workers in the economy.
“We know for a fact that federal spending continues to keep inflation high, which is why a top priority in next year’s Republican majority will be to root out waste, fraud and abuse of taxpayer money,” Rep. Kevin Hern, R-Okla., said in a statement. Hern, who helped devise the budget, called it “one of many proposals to address the dire situation we’re in.”
As they eye the majority, top Republicans have suggested that they will consider an economically risky strategy to potentially force Biden to agree to spending cuts, including for safety-net programs. Rep. Kevin McCarthy of California, who is the minority leader and is seen as the clear pick to be speaker should Republicans win control of the House, suggested to Punchbowl News this month that he would be open to withholding Republican votes to raise the federal borrowing limit unless Biden and Democrats agreed to policy changes that curb spending.
How to use that leverage has divided Republicans. Some, like Rep. Nancy Mace of South Carolina, who fended off a Trump-backed primary challenger, are supportive of that option.
But other Republicans — particularly candidates laboring to present a more centrist platform in swing districts held by Democrats — have shied away from openly supporting cuts to safety-net programs.
“Absolutely not,” Lori Chavez-DeRemer, a Republican and former mayor running in Oregon’s 5th Congressional District, said when asked if she would support cuts to Medicare and Social Security as a way to rein in federal spending. “Cutting those programs is not where I, as a Republican, see myself. I want to make sure that we can fill those coffers.”
‘Wonderful’ news: Fort Myers Beach rapidly restoring water service, whatever it takes
Phil Fernandez, Fort Myers News-Press – October 26, 2022
Fort Myers Beach Utilities Director Utilities Director Christy Cory and fellow departments heads, workers and leaders bore the brunt of frustration and anger last week from many of the nearly 200 at the Town Council’s first gathering since Hurricane Ian’s battering.
On Tuesday night, many of those same residents cheered Cory as she brought a surprising update to the council meeting on the rapid return of water service to Estero Island.
“As of today at close of business — and my guys are actually still out there — we had 62 side streets on. We had 51.2% of the island turned on,” Cory said.
“Say that again?” a voice blurted out.
“Your numbers are outstanding,” council member Jim Atterholt said, after the applause and whistling had subsided, and then occurred a half-dozen more times sprinkled with prolonged clapping, hurrahs and amens during a six-minute spurt as Cory spoke. “Your news is wonderful.”
That’s a dramatic surge from zero Friday morning on side streets.
“There’s two to three valves per side street. The debris is causing a little bit of a problem for us. I try to get the machines down there (to) get it out of the way so we can turn on a valve to a side street. Once we do that, then we immediately break up (to) individual” houses, Cory said. “I’m out there, my office staff is out there. We’re hitting each house individually because we’re watching (for) water coming out of the houses.”
“A case in point. We went to Bay Beach Lane today to get Bay Beach Lane turned on. It was a hot mess, for a lack of a better term. There was debris everywhere,” Cory said. “We are also repairing on the residents’ side just to try to get people’s water back to them. We’re just not repairing our side. We’re actually going onto property and helping people.”
That led to yet another eruption of cheers among the 150 or so at the makeshift setup inside the former SkipOne Seafood restaurant, 17650 San Carlos Blvd.
“We’re doing absolutely the best we can to get everyone water,” Cory said. “We’re out there at 5:45 (a.m.) with every one of my crew members. We start at daylight and we work until the sun goes down every single day. And we’ll continue to do that until every single resident on this island has water.”
With the previous complaints about the lack of service and too much caution and inspection as repairs continued, Mayor Ray Murphy and town council members had implored more creativity from Town Manager Roger T. Hernstadt and his team.
“If we feel that it’s safe, and we’re out there, and someone is home and we feel that it’s safe to turn on their water, we are doing so. Let me say that Roger has given me permission to do that,” Cory said. “If there’s a policy in place, I want to make it clear I didn’t go against that policy. Roger authorized me if I feel it’s safe as the director to turn on their water, I can do that.”
Times Square on Fort Myers Beach was destroyed in Hurricane Ian.
‘Literally, the street rose up’
But there are hazards.
“We went to Primo (Drive) to turn on that water, and the whole street, I mean, literally the street rose up, and we immediately shut it down,” Cory said. “I don’t want to devastate an area that’s devastated already. When it comes to a street like that, I want to keep moving but bring back my contractors to repair that, which they did today and that water’s turned on.
“So it’s just a matter of when we get to a street, then we have something like a main break. We had a valve blow up once the other day that basically comes out of the street.”
And then there’s the riskiness of residents turning on their own meters, Hernstadt said.
“We’ve had cases where people’s properties got flooded, and they’ll call us up, ‘My house is flooded.’ We don’t recommend you do that,” he said. “It’s wiser to turn on the meter when we’re there.”
Fort Myers Beach was destroyed by Hurricane Ian on Sept. 28, 2022. This is the Times Square area on October 14, 2022.
Cory said she understands inhabitants trying to get their lives closer to normal in any way they can.
“Previously, I would have told you not to touch that meter. Now, I’m just going to say, ‘If you want to turn on your water, you can go right ahead,'” Cory said. “If you could do that between sunrise and sunset, that would be amazing because the 1 a.m. (calls), phew.”
But while there’s some victory with water, it’s not like most residents who still have a standing structure could go home Tuesday night and repeatedly turn their lights on and off in celebration. A total of 177 buildings have been energized, according to FPL. The company continues to work with town officials on the more challenging mission of extending power, among the concerns raised Tuesday night by about a dozen speakers.
“There’s a big difference between electricity and water,” Cory said.
But Hernstadt said he’s working with staff to find ways to shorten the restoration process. It’s just a matter again of being careful on an island landscape covered in potential dangers after a storm that officially killed 118 Floridians, based on new state data Tuesday night. Lee County’s 57 leads, and Collier, Charlotte and Sarasota counties all lost eight lives each, second most.
The Cottage Bar at Shuckers on Fort Myers Beach was destroyed in Hurricane Ian. An American flag was placed on one of the pilings that remains.
Threats remain: Leaking propane tanks
Threats to life continue a month after Ian’s Sept. 28 savagery of 15-foot storm surges and 155 mph winds that obliterated a majority of beachside dwellings and businesses.
“We are getting calls about underground propane tanks that are leaking, as people are cleaning up debris,” said Scott Wirth, Fort Myers Beach district chief of operations. “We have a hazmat team on the island that’s working with us in response so they’re there to help secure propane tanks that are leaking.”
Sinkholes and other obstacles also are in play.
“As you’re driving down the roads, you’ll see any kind of wash out,” Wirth said. “In some places that you see some of the road washed out, anticipate that there’s pockets of void spaces underneath the road. So if you see a washed out area, try to avoid it and go as far around it as you can, to avoid collapsing the road any further.”
The pier on Fort Myers Beach was destroyed in Hurricane Ian.
And residents are taking chances from a “life safety perspective” in some of their rebuild efforts.
“Unstable buildings — the work is continuing in these,” Wirth said, noting red or yellow placards. “These placards were put up by fire inspectors from around the state who came in and helped us inspect. (A) red placard means that there was something about your building that made it hazardous to be in, to the point where a certificate of occupancy provided for a commercial building has been revoked.”
Yellow’s a tad better.
“The yellow placard means your certificate of occupancy has been downgraded to a temporary certificate of occupancy. This building is safer to be in than one that is placarded in red,” Wirth said. “You’re working in that structure at your own risk. Those activities should be the types of things that would have to happen to get the building fixed until it can reach normal certificate of occupancy.
Crews using a crane removed the Sea Trek from the mangroves along San Carlos Boulevard on Tuesday, Oct. 18, 2022. A captain and a member of the crew were trying to save the boat during Hurricane Ian. As the storm surge from the storm rushed in, they ended up floating over the roadway and deposited in the mangroves. The hope is to repair the boat and return it to the water for working trips.
Other Beach updates from the town
• Inspections: Once electricity is restored in residential areas, residents need to get an inspection from a Florida licensed structural engineer and an electrician to get power. Both inspection reports need to be sent to buildingpermits@fmbgov.com, noting the address and the contractors’ Florida license number. In October, the town had processed 598 permits as of Tuesday. FPL is replacing meters on homes.
• Water service: Homes with potable water are under a mandatory boil notice, which will continue until samples show a return to safe drinking levels. All water used for consumption, cooking, making ice, washing dishes or brushing teeth must be brought to a rolling boil for at least one minute.
• Community Resource Centers: After being relocated from temporary town hall, there are two sites with hot meals from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. daily and most other services 24 hours a day. Santini Marina Plaza, 7205 Estero Blvd., also features water, showers, laundry and restrooms. Diesel and regular unleaded fuel are available from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. daily through Saturday. Fuel limits are 10 gallons per car and 15 per truck or SUV.
Beach Baptist Church, 130 Connecticut St., also provides access to ice, water, showers, laundry and restrooms as well as federal, state, local and non-profit partners, who are there from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. daily. This includes FEMA Disaster Recovery Assistance Teams, Florida Department of Children and Families, and local and national non-profits.
• Mail pickup: Residents can pick up correspondence at the Fort Myers Processing & Distribution Center, 14080 Jetport Loop. For customers arriving by car, there is signage directing to a parking lot, where a mobile retail unit has been set up to assist in mailing and shipping needs, stamp and money order purchases and change of address requests. Hours: Monday through Saturday from 9 a.m. to 4:30 p.m.
• Early voting: Residents can vote at any of 12 sites in Lee County through Nov. 8 Election Day. Nearest to the beach include Wa-Ke Hatchee Park Recreation Center, 16760 Bass Road, Fort Myers; and Bonita Springs office for Lee County Elections office, 25987 S. Tamiami Trail, No. 105.
This parking lot near Naples Park flooded late Wednesday but by Thursday morning, the water had drained, leaving behind mud and debris.
• Damage assessments: In conjunction with the Army Corps of Engineers infrastructure assessment team and experts on design and construction, town building are conducting building assessments. The intent is to assess the habitability of a structure and recommend a rating of safe to enter, restricted use, or not safe to enter.
• Debris: Coordinating with Lee County, 168,397 cubic yards of debris had been collected as of Tuesday, or equal to more than 50 Olympic-sized swimming pools. It’s being deposited on the Bay Oaks recreational campus and Lovers Key. Some streets or homes may have been skipped due to obstruction from debris or parked vehicles in the right of way. As much as possible, debris should be pushed curbside.
• Fire inspection and permit fees suspended: The Board of Fire Commissioners and Fire Chief Ronald L. Martin have suspended fees into January.
• Roof permits: Access, complete and submit roof permits on the town’s website at www.fmbgov.com. Send questions to buildingpermits@fmbgov.com.
• Contractors: Use only licensed and registered contractors. A list of registered contractors of all types, including electrical, is on the Building Services page of the town’s website at www.fmbgov.com/building. Also available: the state’s database of licensed contractors at https://dcnonline.org/
Road leading to Vanderbilt Beach, Delnor Wiggins State Park and other Collier County venues remained closed Friday afternoon Oct. 14, 2022 in Hurricane Ian’s aftermath. Donations are being accepted at delnorwiggins.org to help pay for the wrecked Wiggins’ restoration, which officials say will take one to two years.
Where to find more help
At least three SBA Recovery Centers have been opened in Southwest Florida:
► The Naples Players, 701 Fifth Ave. S., Naples. Opens at 9 a.m. every day and closes at 4:30 p.m. Mondays and 5 p.m. Tuesday through Sunday.
► The Hub at SWFL Inc., 25071 Chamber of Commerce Drive, Bonita Springs. Hours are 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Sunday.
► Kiwanis Club of Cape Coral, 360 Santa Barbara Blvd. S., Cape Coral. Times are 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. Monday through Thursday and closed on other days.
♦ President Biden has authorized Southwest Florida enterprises and private nonprofit organizations of any size to borrow up to $2 million to repair or replace damaged or destroyed real estate, machinery and equipment, inventory and other assets. Go to https://disasterloanassistance.sba.gov/
♦ Disaster loans up to $200,000 are available to homeowners to repair or replace damaged or destroyed real estate through FEMA or other agencies. Homeowners and renters are eligible for up to $40,000 to repair or replace damaged or destroyed personal property.
♦ The Florida Small Business Emergency Bridge Loan program provides short-term, zero-interest working capital loans to “bridge the gap” between the time a disaster impacts a business and when it can secure longer-term recovery funding, such as federally or commercially available loans. On Google, search “rebuild Florida business loan fund.”
♦ Disaster unemployment assistance is available to Florida businesses and residents. It’s for weeks of unemployment from Sept. 25 to April 1. For assistance call 1-800-385-3920, go to a local CareerSource Career Center or online to floridajobs.org.
Based at the Naples Daily News, Columnist Phil Fernandez (pfernandez@gannett.com) writes In the Know as part of the USA TODAY NETWORK. Support Democracy and subscribe to the paper.
Texas Goes Permit-less on Guns, and Police Face an Armed Public
J. David Goodman – October 26, 2022
Inside a gun store in Austin, Texas, May 27, 2021. (Matthew Busch/The New York Times)
HOUSTON — Tony Earls hung his head before a row of television cameras, staring down, his life upended. Days before, Earls had pulled out his handgun and opened fire, hoping to strike a man who had just robbed him and his wife at an ATM in Houston.
Instead, he struck Arlene Alvarez, a 9-year-old girl seated in a passing pickup, killing her.
“Is Mr. Earls licensed to carry?” a reporter asked during the February news conference, in which his lawyer spoke for him.
He didn’t need one, the lawyer replied. “Everything about that situation, we believe and contend, was justified under Texas law.” A grand jury later agreed, declining to indict Earls for any crime.
The shooting was part of what many sheriffs, police leaders and district attorneys in urban areas of Texas say has been an increase in people carrying weapons and in spur-of-the-moment gunfire in the year since the state began allowing most adults 21 or over to carry a handgun without a license.
At the same time, mainly in rural counties, other sheriffs said they had seen little change, and proponents of gun rights said more people lawfully carrying guns could be part of why shootings have declined in some parts of the state.
Far from an outlier, Texas, with its new law, joined what has been an expanding effort to remove nearly all restrictions on carrying handguns. When Alabama’s “permitless carry” law goes into effect in January, half of the states in the nation, from Maine to Arizona, will not require a license to carry a handgun.
The state-by-state legislative push has coincided with a federal judiciary that has increasingly ruled in favor of carrying guns and against state efforts to regulate them.
But Texas is the most populous state to do away with handgun permit requirements. Five of the nation’s 15 biggest cities are in Texas, making the permitless approach to handguns a new fact of life in urban areas to an extent not seen in other states.
In the border town of Eagle Pass, drunken arguments have flared into shootings. In El Paso, revelers who legally bring their guns to parties have opened fire to stop fights. In and around Houston, prosecutors have received a growing stream of cases involving guns brandished or fired over parking spots, bad driving, loud music and love triangles.
“It seems like now there’s been a tipping point where just everybody is armed,” said Sheriff Ed Gonzalez of Harris County, which includes Houston.
No statewide shooting statistics have been released since the law went into effect last September. After a particularly violent 2021 in many parts of the state, the picture of crime in Texas has been mixed this year, with homicides and assaults up in some places and down in others.
But what has been clear is that far fewer people are getting new licenses for handguns even as many in law enforcement say the number of guns they encounter on the street has been increasing.
Big city police departments and major law enforcement groups opposed the new handgun law when it came before the state Legislature last spring, worried in part about the loss of training requirements necessary for a permit and more dangers for officers.
But gun rights proponents prevailed in the Republican-dominated Capitol, arguing that Texans should not need the state’s permission to exercise their Second Amendment rights.
Recent debates over gun laws in Texas have not been limited to handgun licensing. After the elementary school shooting in Uvalde, gun control advocates have pushed to raise the age to purchase an AR-15-style rifle. And after the Supreme Court struck down New York’s restrictive licensing program, a federal court in Texas found that a state law barring adults under 21 from carrying a handgun was unconstitutional. Gov. Greg Abbott has suggested he agreed, even as the Texas Department of Public Safety, which oversees the state police, is appealing.
“What I believe in is that the Second Amendment provides certain rights, and it provides those rights to adults,” Abbott said in a recent news conference. “I think that the court ruling is going to be upheld.”
The loosening of regulations also landed in the middle of a national debate over crime. Researchers have long argued over the effect of allowing more people to legally own and carry guns. But a series of recent studies has found a link between laws that make it easier to carry a handgun and increases in crime, and some have raised the possibility that more guns in circulation lead to more thefts of weapons and to more shootings by the police.
“The weight of the evidence has shifted in the direction that more guns equals more crime,” said John J. Donohue III, a Stanford Law School professor and author of several recent studies looking at gun regulations and crime.
Much of the research has been around the effects of making handgun licenses easier to obtain, part of what are known as right-to-carry laws, and Donohue cautioned that only limited data is available on laws that in most cases require no licenses at all.
“I think most people are reasoning by analogy: If you thought that right-to-carry was harmful, this will be worse,” he said.
But John R. Lott Jr., a longtime researcher whose 1998 book, “More Guns, Less Crime,” has been influential among proponents of gun rights, said the newer studies did not take into account differences between state handgun regulations that might account for increases in crime. He also pointed to some recent crime declines in Texas cities after the permitless carry law went into effect, and to what he saw as the importance of increasing lawful gun ownership in high-crime areas.
“If my research convinces me of anything,” Lott said, “it’s that you’re going to get the biggest reduction in crime if the people who are most likely victims of violent crime, predominantly poor Blacks, are the ones who are getting the permits.”
In Dallas, there has been a rise in the number of homicides deemed to be justifiable, such as those conducted in self-defense, even as overall shootings have declined from last year’s high levels.
“We’ve had justifiable shootings where potential victims have defended themselves,” said the Dallas police chief, Eddie Garcia. “It cuts both ways.”
Last October in Port Arthur, Texas, a man with a handgun, who had a license, saw two armed robbers at a Church’s Chicken and fired through the drive-thru window, fatally striking one of the men and wounding the other. His actions were praised by the local district attorney.
Michael Mata, president of the local police union in Dallas, said that he and his fellow officers had seen no increase in violent crime tied to the new permitless carry law, though there were “absolutely” more guns on the street.
Sheriff David Soward of Atascosa County, a rural area south of San Antonio, said he had also seen no apparent increase in shootings. “Only a small percentage of people actually take advantage of the law,” he said.
But for many law enforcement officers, the connection between the new law and spontaneous shootings has been readily apparent.
“Now that everybody can carry a weapon, we have people who drink and start shooting each other,” said Sheriff Tom Schmerber of Maverick County, which includes Eagle Pass. “People get emotional,” he said, “and instead of reaching for a fist, they reach for a weapon. We’ve had several shootings like that.”
Handgun licenses are still available. The process involves a background check and a roughly five-hour training course, including on a shooting range, that covers the legal troubles that can arise when opening fire.
The number of new permits sought by Texans surged with the pandemic, but then sharply declined through 2021, as the permitless carry bill moved through the Legislature. An average of fewer than 5,000 a month were issued in 2022, lower than at any point going back to 2017.
Many Texans still seek the license because of the benefits it affords, including the ability to carry a concealed handgun into a government meeting. But it is no longer necessary.
“Somebody could go into Academy Sporting Goods here in El Paso and purchase a handgun and walk out with it after their background check,” said Ryan Urrutia, a commander at the El Paso Sheriff’s office. “It really puts law enforcement at a disadvantage because it puts more guns on the street that can be used against us.”
The law still bars carrying a handgun for those convicted of a felony, who are intoxicated or committing another crime. In Harris County, criminal cases involving illegal weapons possession have sharply increased since the new law went into effect: 3,500 so far this year, as of the middle of October, versus 2,300 in all of 2021 and an average of about 1,000 cases in prior years going back to 2012.
“It’s shocking,” said Kim Ogg, the Harris County district attorney. “We’ve seen more carrying weapons, which by itself would be legal. But people are carrying the weapons while committing other crimes, and I’m not talking just about violent crimes. I’m talking about intoxication crimes or driving crimes or property crimes, carrying weapons on school property or in another prohibited place,” including bars and school grounds.
Her office provided a sampling of arrests in the last few weeks: a 21-year-old man carrying a pistol and a second magazine while walking through the grounds of an elementary school during school hours; a man jumping from his car and opening fire at the driver of Tesla in a fit of road rage; a woman, while helping her little brother into a car, turning to shoot at another woman after an argument over a social media video.
In the case of Earls, the man accused of fatally shooting 9-year-old Arlene Alvarez while shooting at a fleeing robber, Ogg’s office presented evidence to a grand jury of charges ranging from negligent homicide to murder. The grand jury rejected those charges.
A lawyer for Earls declined to make him available to comment. The man who robbed Earls and his wife remains unidentified, Ogg said.
In May, a committee of the Texas House heard testimony from gun rights advocates who praised the passage of permitless carry and argued that it may be time to go further.
Rachel Malone, of Gun Owners of America, outlined some of her group’s priorities for the next legislative session.
“I think it would be appropriate to move the age for permit-less carry to 18,” she told the committee. “There’s really no reason why a legal adult should not be able to defend themselves.”
Takeaways from investigation of Russian general in Ukraine
Erika Kinetz – October 26, 2022
In this image from video released by the Russian Defense Ministry Press Service on Thursday, March 24, 2022, commander of the troops of the Russian Eastern Military District Alexander Chaiko speaks to Russian servicemen during a special military operation at an undisclosed location in Ukraine. (Russian Defense Ministry Press Service via AP)In this image from surveillance video, Russian troops take over Yablunska Street in Bucha, Ukraine on March 3, 2022, where they set up a headquarters during their month-long occupation. When Russian troops crossed from Belarus into Ukraine in late February, pressing toward Kyiv, they were ordered to block and destroy “nationalist resistance,” according to the Royal United Services Institute, a London think tank that has reviewed copies of Russia’s battle plans. (AP Photo)From right, President Vladimir Putin, Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu and Lt. Gen. Alexander Chaiko listen to Syrian President Bashar Assad during a meeting in Damascus, Syria, Tuesday, Jan. 7, 2020. (Alexei Druzhinin/Sputnik, Kremlin via AP, Pool, File) Police investigate the killing of civilians in Bucha, Ukraine on the outskirts of Kyiv, before bringing the corpses to a morgue, Wednesday, April 6, 2022. (AP Photo/Rodrigo Abd, File)Tanks participate in the Union Courage-2022 Russia-Belarus military drills at the Obuz-Lesnovsky training ground in Belarus, Saturday, Feb. 19, 2022. (AP Photo/Alexander Zemlianichenko Jr., File)In this image from surveillance video, Russian troops take over Yablunska Street in Bucha, Ukraine on March 3, 2022, where they set up a headquarters during their month-long occupation. Police recovered nearly 40 bodies along Yablunksa after Russian forces withdrew at the end of March. (AP Photo)Journalists examine the site of a mass grave in Bucha, Ukraine, on the outskirts of Kyiv, Tuesday, April 5, 2022, after Russian forces left. (AP Photo/Rodrigo Abd, File)
ZDVYZHIVKA, Ukraine (AP) — The carnage left by Russian soldiers on the road to Kyiv wasn’t random. It was strategic brutality, perpetrated in areas that were under tight Russian control where military officers — including one of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s top generals accused of war crimes in Syria — were present, an investigation by The Associated Press and the PBS series “Frontline” found.
Troops moving down from Belarus toward Kyiv had been ordered to block and destroy “nationalist resistance,” according to the Royal United Services Institute, a London think tank that has reviewed copies of Russia’s battle plans. Soldiers used lists compiled by Russian intelligence and conducted “zachistki” — cleansing operations — sweeping neighborhoods to identify and neutralize anyone who might pose a threat.
The man in charge of this front of the war was Col. Gen. Alexander Chaiko, who earned a global reputation for brutality as leader of Russia’s forces in Syria.
“Those orders were written at Chaiko’s level. So he would have seen them and signed up for them,” said Jack Watling, a senior research fellow at RUSI who shared the battle plans with the AP.
While there is nothing necessarily illegal about that order, it was often implemented with flagrant disregard for the laws of war as Russian troops seized territories across Ukraine.
Witnesses and survivors in Bucha, as well as Ozera, Babyntsi and Zdvyzhivka — all places under Chaiko’s command — told the AP and “Frontline” that Russian soldiers tortured and killed people on the slightest suspicion they might be helping the Ukrainian military. Sweeps intensified after Russian positions were hit with precision, interviews and video show, and soldiers, in intercepted phone calls obtained by the AP, told their loved ones that they’d been ordered to take a no-mercy approach to suspected informants.
Ukraine has indicted Chaiko for the broad crime of aggression — that is waging an illegal war on their territory. But it will take more specific evidence to land him in international court. Prosecutors would have to show that he played a key role in implementing illegal policies of the Russian Federation or should have known what his troops were doing and was in a position to stop, or punish, their behavior.
For now, Chaiko — a man implicated in some of the worst atrocities in both Syria and Ukraine — is still leading troops, once again as commander of Russia’s forces in Syria.
Here are four takeaways from the investigation:
MOM, I AM KILLING CIVILIANS
Russian soldiers openly discussed atrocities against civilians during phone calls with their mothers, wives and friends that the Ukrainian government intercepted near Kyiv.
On March 21, a soldier named Vadim told his mother: “We have the order to take phones from everyone and those who resist — in short — to hell with the f——.”
“We have the order: It does not matter whether they’re civilians or not. Kill everyone.”
The slightest movement of a curtain in a window — a possible sign of a spotter or a gunman — justified slamming an apartment block with lethal artillery. Ukrainians who confessed to passing along Russian troop coordinates were summarily executed, including teenagers, soldiers said.
“We have the order not to take prisoners of war but to shoot them all dead directly,” a soldier nicknamed Lyonya said in a March 14 phone call.
“There was a boy, 18 years old, taken prisoner. First, they shot through his leg with a machine gun, then he got his ears cut off. He admitted to everything and was shot dead,” Lyonya told his mom. “We do not take prisoners. Meaning, we don’t leave anyone alive.”
The Dossier Center, a London-based investigative group funded by Russian opposition figure Mikhail Khodorkovsky, verified the identity of the soldiers who made those calls.
IN CHARGE OF THE CARNAGE IN BUCHA
Ukrainian prosecutors say that a unit under Chaiko’s command — the 76th Guards Airborne Assault Division — participated in a lethal cleansing operation on March 4 along Yablunska street, the deadliest road in occupied Bucha and the site of an important Russian command center.
In June, the U.S. State Department sanctioned the division and its 234th Guards Airborne Assault Regiment, as well as the 64th Separate Motorized Rifle Brigade, for atrocities in Bucha.
Those units were all under the ultimate command of Chaiko during the early weeks of the invasion, Ukrainian authorities told AP.
NOT THE WORK OF ROGUE SOLDIERS
Russians transformed the village of Zdvyzhivka, an hour north of Kyiv, into a major forward operating base for their assault on the capital. From March 20 to March 31, Chaiko commanded the assault on Kyiv from this village. He was spotted about a kilometer (less than a mile) down a tightly controlled road around the same time as five men were tortured and killed in the garden of a house frequented by Russian officers. The transport of tied-up civilians to that house happened more than once, in broad daylight, within the security structures set up by the occupying forces, eyewitnesses said.
KEEPING THE BOSS HAPPY
There’s no sign Chaiko disapproved of what his troops were doing. Russia’s Ministry of Defense released a video of the general pinning medals on soldiers in Ukraine. “All units, all divisions are acting the way they were taught,” he said in the March 24 video. “They are doing everything right. I am proud of them.”
There is also no sign Moscow has sanctioned Chaiko for the very public atrocities committed on his watch. Instead, Putin praised Chaiko for his actions in Syria, awarding him the title “Hero of Russia” in 2020 and promoting him to colonel general in June 2021.
“Frontline” producers Tom Jennings and Annie Wong, co-producer Taras Lazer and AP reporters James LaPorta, Oleksandr Stashevskyi, Richard Lardner, Janine Graham and Solomiia Hera contributed to this report.
To contact AP’s investigations team, email investigative@ap.org
Is Arizona’s Kari Lake the most ‘dangerous’ politician in America?
Andrew Romano, West Coast Correspondent – October 25, 2022
Kari Lake, the Arizona Republican candidate for governor and former Fox 10 Phoenix news anchor, seems to be everywhere lately.
Earlier this month, the Atlantic declared her “Trumpism’s leading lady,” then spent more than 3,500 words explaining why. The Washington Post elaborated a few days later. “[Lake] has emerged as a Republican phenom by amplifying Donald Trump’s lie that the 2020 election was stolen,” read the subhead of its even longer profile. Last week, Axios went several steps further and reported that top Democratic strategists now believe Lake has the “potential to soar to a vice presidential spot or a post-Trump presidential candidacy.”
Kari Lake, Republican candidate for Arizona governor, at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Dallas in August. (Brian Snyder/Reuters)
“If you get a candidate who has the performance skills of a major-market local TV anchor and the philosophy and thinking of Steve Bannon, that’s a potent and dangerous combination,” Barack Obama guru David Axelrod told the site. “Look at Italy.”
“I’m going to win the election and I will accept that result,” Lake said (twice).
It remains to be seen, of course, whether she can actually defeat her opponent, Democrat Katie Hobbs. Long considered the frontrunner, Hobbs, the Arizona secretary of state, made her own national headlines for holding the line against relentless right-wing efforts to overturn Trump’s 2020 loss there.
Part of the problem, local observers say, is that the subdued, soft-spoken Hobbs has proved to be a limp campaigner whose unwillingness to debate Lake has become almost as much of an issue as the issues themselves.
Arizona gubernatorial candidate Katie Hobbs, once the frontrunner, is currently trailing Lake. (Mario Tama/Getty Images)
“Hobbs is a mediocre Democratic politician, and she’s running a mediocre race,” Robert Robb, a longtime columnist for the Arizona Republic and a former GOP political consultant, told Yahoo News. “So it’s no surprise that Lake’s competitive. It’s still a Republican-leaning state in a Republican-leaning year.”
But others see Lake’s own telegenic talent as the bigger factor. The national media has made much of what one might call her style: the “familiar pixie cut”; the large silver cross she took to wearing “for protection” shortly before she announced her campaign; the “impossibly smooth” skin showcased in “ethereal” campaign videos. And then there’s the power of her voice — “deep but still feminine; firm, even severe, but smooth,” as the Atlantic put it. “Like black tea with a little honey.”
“She’s a local celebrity,” Arizona pollster and political consultant Paul Bentz told Yahoo News. “She’s great with an audience. She’s great on camera. She’s a more polished version of Trump. And because of all that, she’s put herself in a position where she’s tied this thing up.”
For all their primary-season success, MAGA candidates haven’t exactly been taking purple states like Arizona by storm. In Pennsylvania, for example, hard-right state Sen. Doug Mastriano is lagging well behind his Democratic opponent for governor. And although he’s risen some in recent surveys, the GOP’s 36-year-old nominee for U.S. Senate in Arizona, Blake Masters, is still polling behind Lake.
So what makes Lake different? At first, Arizona Democrats were publicly rooting for her to beat establishment rival Karrin Taylor Robson in the GOP primary; no less of an authority than former Gov. Janet Napolitano told the New York Times in August that Lake was a “one-trick pony” who would be easier to defeat in November.
“If this is an election about Trump and 2020 in Arizona, then Democrats will win,” Napolitano said. Leading Arizona Democrats even tried to tip the scales for Lake by touting Robson’s past donations to Democratic candidates.
Donald Trump with Lake at a rally in Mesa, Ariz., Oct. 9. (Brian Snyder/Reuters)
Now they may come to regret that decision. “We wanted these extreme candidates on the Republican side,” Roy Herrera, the Arizona state counsel for Joe Biden’s 2020 campaign, told the Times. “Now we got them and, you know, are we sure we wanted that?”
By any normal standard, Lake remains one of 2022’s most out-there figures. In the wake of the 2020 election, Arizona’s far-right Republican activists and legislators pushed hard to reverse Trump’s 10,457-vote loss — the narrowest margin of any state in the country. But not a single one of the 24 challenges filed in Maricopa, the state’s largest county, since Nov. 3, 2020, was upheld in court. Multiple audits (including a private count funded by Trump supporters) found zero evidence of fraud; in fact, the partisan GOP audit actually widened Biden’s margin of victory by 360 votes.
Lake at a campaign stop in Scottsdale, Ariz., on Oct. 7. (Mario Tama/Getty Images)
None of these positions is mainstream. Yet Lake may soon show that with the right combination of poise, polish and bravado, none of them has to be disqualifying either — not even in a swing state like Arizona.
“It’s all based on personality,” Bentz told Yahoo News. “I mean, she’s an incredible actress. It’s not clear how much of this stuff she believes. Maybe it’s all of it. But she is absolutely the party’s next ‘great communicator.’”
And that’s why Democrats like Axelrod are starting to think that Lake might be one of the most “dangerous” politicians in America.
The danger, according to democracy advocates, isn’t so much that Lake might beat Hobbs and implement the policies we expect from Republican governors. Rather, they worry that, given the chance, she will try to steal the 2024 presidential election for the GOP nominee.
If Lake and her Republican ticketmates and fellow 2020 election deniers Mark Finchem (secretary of state) and Abraham Hamadeh (attorney general) win as well, they and Arizona’s almost-certain-to-be-Republican-led Legislature could make all kinds of changes to help Trump win the state two years from now, regardless of the actual results.
For his part, Finchem — who argues that Marxists conspired to manipulate the 2020 election, that people cast ballots with “software that flips votes” and that Biden is “a fraudulent president” — has already said he would ban early voting and sharply restrict mail-in ballots. More worryingly, he’s thrown his weight behind efforts to empower the state Legislature to overturn election results.
In May, Finchem assured his supporters that if he had been secretary of state last time around, “we would have won. Plain and simple.” Last month, he implied to Time magazine that he would not certify the state’s electoral votes for Biden in 2024.
Mark Finchem, GOP candidate for Arizona secretary of state. (Matt York/AP)
“I’m extremely concerned about candidates who make false claims about the 2020 election — and who applaud the things that were done to not only discredit the results, but to undermine the results and change the outcome,” Robb, the former GOP strategist, said.
“[Lake and Finchem] are not forswearing doing that again in the future. That’s deeply worrying.”
But the stakes go beyond 2024. The hope among Democrats — not to mention many Trump-wary Republicans — was that only Trump, with his all-consuming celebrity and shameless showmanship, could really sell pure, uncut Trumpism to the masses, and that without him MAGA would wither.
Lake’s emergence, however, suggests a new way forward for Trumpism after Trump.
The youngest of nine — eight girls and one boy — Lake grew up “off a gravel road” in rural eastern Iowa. Her father was a public high school teacher; her mother was a nurse. “My family was very poor,” she has said. “You had to work if you wanted shampoo.”
Describing Lake as someone who “sought attention in the newsroom,” a former Fox colleague recently told the Washington Post that “everything starts with her being the ninth of nine kids.” But when a reporter from Phoenix magazine asked Lake how her childhood shaped her, she batted the question away.
“I’ve read that young kids in big families sometimes have to fight for recognition and attention,” the reporter asked.
“We had to fight for food, not recognition,” Lake shot back.
A sign depicting Lake as Rosie the Riveter, seen at a Tucson, Ariz., rally in October. (Rebecca Noble/Reuters)
Either way, the spotlight found her soon enough. A few months after graduating from the University of Iowa, she was on the air as a weekend weather anchor in her native state; by the time she was 25, she was doing the same job in Phoenix. Lake went on to spend 22 years as a Fox 10 anchor, mostly covering the evening news — and becoming a household name in the process.
“I am beloved by people, and I’m not saying that to be boastful,” she told the New York Times in August. “I was in their homes for the good times and the bad times.”
It was a successful career — she was one of the few local news anchors to land interviews with both Obama and Trump — but it ended last year in controversy.
Although Lake was reportedly a Republican before she donated to John Kerry in 2004 — then registered as an independent in 2006, a Democrat in 2008 and a Republican again in 2012 — she didn’t come off as conservative. In fact, Fox colleagues have described her as a head-over-heels Obama fan who dabbled in Buddhism, wore a red Kabbalah string around her wrist and befriended John McCain’s son Jimmy as well as popular Phoenix drag queen Barbra Seville. (Lake “was the queen of the gays!” a former co-worker told the Atlantic.)
A primary attack ad in July from the campaign of Arizona Republican gubernatorial candidate Karrin Taylor Robson attempts to portray Lake as a supporter of former President Barack Obama. (Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)
In 2016, Lake pitched mass amnesty as a “humane and fair” solution for the roughly 11 million immigrants living in America illegally. In 2017, she shared a meme on Facebook declaring Trump’s inauguration a “national day of mourning and protest.”
But something flipped after Trump took office. In 2018, Fox 10 hung a widescreen monitor in the newsroom to rank on-air talent by social media likes, retweets and replies; that same year, Lake took to her official Fox 10 Twitter account to dismiss a movement for teacher pay raises as “nothing more than a push to legalize pot.”
Although she later apologized, colleagues noticed a shift. “When she found something that garnered attention,” one told Phoenix magazine, “she gravitated toward that.”
In 2019, Lake joined the right-wing social media platform Parler. Viewers complained; lawyers got involved. “F*** them,” Lake said, on a hot mic, when her co-anchor warned that the station could get blowback from outlets like the local alt-weekly. She later described the next year or so — when she started retweeting debunked COVID-19 misinformation and clashing with producers over calling Biden the “president-elect” — as the period in which “I got canceled.”
“That’s when all of this started going downhill,” Fox 10’s former human resources director told the Washington Post. “Her thing became, ‘It’s freedom of speech, I have the right to say what I want to say.’”
In March 2021, Lake resigned. “Journalism has changed a lot since I first stepped into a newsroom, and I’ll be honest, I don’t like the direction it’s going,” she said in a video posted to Rumble. “I found myself reading news copy that I didn’t believe was fully truthful, or only told part of the story. … I’ve decided the time is right to do something else.”
She launched her campaign for governor three months later.
Lake has explained her transformation as typical: a lifelong Republican becoming disenchanted with the overseas adventurism of the George W. Bush era, then reverting back to her roots. She claims to be in good company, citing other famous party switchers such as Ronald Reagan, Donald Trump and Arizona GOP Chair Kelli Ward.
Lake at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Dallas, Aug. 5. (LM Otero/AP)
None of which, of course, has stopped rivals from questioning her sincerity. “I believe she’s an opportunist,” Robson, her primary opponent, told Fox News shortly before the August election. “She’s actually a fraud, a fake. She’s not who she says she is. She’s a fabulous actress.”
Old colleagues have advanced more nuanced theories. “The only thing I can come up with in watching this is that her conservative views, little by little, brought her power and recognition that she had never felt before,” Marlene Galán-Woods, another former Channel 10 anchor, told the Post. “It’s intoxicating. The Kool-Aid is the power and all these people fawning over you — you forget what the truth is anymore.”
Whatever Lake really believes, however, most observers seem to agree on one thing: She knows how to perform. The power of her MAGA magnetism — and the unusual skill set she brings to the table — have been on full display in the closing days of the campaign.
Two moments in particular stand out.
The first came Sunday, Oct. 9, at a Trump rally in Mesa, just east of Phoenix. Lake spoke in complete, composed sentences — without notes, or a teleprompter, or a single crutch phrase like “um.” But more important than how the former newscaster spoke is what she spoke about. Or rather, what she didn’t.
Lake at a rally in Mesa, Ariz., on Oct. 9. (Matt York/AP)
Instead of fanciful election denialism, she focused on mainstream, meat-and-potatoes fare: Her plan for more career and technical education opportunities; her plan to counter what she calls “Bidenflation” by barring local government from taxing groceries or rent payments; her push to secure the border so that fentanyl stops “kill[ing] our babies”; her desire to “replace the woke garbage with common sense” in public school education; her call for “tough love to get [unhoused] people into treatment.”
In her framing, “the new Republican Party” — the party, presumably, of Trump and Lake — isn’t the party of “very fine people on both sides” and Jan. 6. Rather, it’s “the most inclusive party in the history of politics.”
“I don’t care if you think you’re a Democrat. If you don’t like the way the Democrat Party is going, chances are you’re a Republican,” Lake said, throwing open her arms. “We don’t care what color your skin is. We don’t care what zip code you come from. We love all of you. And if you like common-sense solutions, then welcome.”
In July, the last time Trump stumped for her in Arizona, Lake had “railed about a stolen election five times during [her] 20-minute speech,” according to the Arizona Republic. Now her message was tailored for the broader electorate. One-third of Arizona voters are Latino; one-third are independents. To win in November, a Republican like Lake can’t afford to just rile up the base.
Lake supporters cheer their candidate in Mesa, Ariz. (Brian Snyder/Reuters)
“If the focus is on who’s a potential rising star within the MAGA universe, Lake is a contender,” said Robb. “She does unquestionably well with Trump crowds and with Trump. But she’s got a way to go in the next few weeks just to squeak out a victory that ought to be a walk in the park for a Republican candidate for governor.”
The second moment came exactly one week later, after a “Black Voices for Kari” event at Phoenix’s Bobby-Q barbecue restaurant. Lake might not have mentioned 2020, but the press did. “Over the weekend your name was trending everywhere,” a reporter said right out of the gate. “And most of [those mentions] were asking, ‘Is she an election denier?’”
Lake didn’t hesitate. “Let’s talk about election deniers,” she said as an aide handed her what was presumably a GOP research document. “Here’s 150 examples of Democrats denying election results.”
She mentioned Hillary Clinton saying that “Trump is an illegitimate president.” She mentioned 2018 Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams — who is running again in 2022 — “claiming she never lost.” She even invoked Al Gore, who won the popular vote in 2000 but lost the election to George W. Bush after conservative Supreme Court justices stopped the recount in Florida.
“Since 2000, people have questioned the legitimacy of our elections,” Lake said. “And all we are asking is, in the future, we don’t have to have that happen anymore.”
Trump has been a big booster of Lake’s candidacy. Here they are at a “Save America” rally in July. (Mario Tama/Getty Images)
Never mind that Lake’s argument here — that her denialism, and by extension Trump’s, is just politics as usual, and nothing to worry about — bears little resemblance to reality. Trump’s refusal to accept the results of the 2020 election, and the embrace of his conspiracy theories by Republicans nationwide, is without parallel in American history.
Regardless, Lake sounded like she believed every word of what she was saying. The next morning, she posted a video of the exchange on Twitter. It now has more than 2.1 million views.
Supreme Court’s Alito says abortion draft leak made justices ‘targets’
Andrew Chung – October 25, 2022
(Reuters) – U.S. Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito on Tuesday denounced the ongoing debate over the institution’s legitimacy amid a backlash over its decision on abortion last June, saying such criticism focuses on “character” rather than the court’s rulings.
Alito, speaking at an event organized by the conservative Heritage Foundation think tank in Washington, also condemned the leak last May of his draft opinion overturning the landmark Roe v. Wade decision that legalized abortion nationwide, saying it made the justices “targets.”
The justice, who authored the ruling formally overturning Roe in June, made the comments amid heavy scrutiny of the court since the abortion decision, as well as others powered by the court’s conservative majority widening gun rights and curbing the government’s power to tackle climate change.
The legitimacy of the court, which has a 6-3 conservative majority, largely depends on its acceptance by the public as an institution whose actions are based on the law, not the justices’ political preferences. Polls show that the court’s public approval has reached record lows.
Alito did not name liberal Justice Elena Kagan, but she has repeatedly expressed concerns in recent weeks, including in September at an event in Chicago when she said the court’s legitimacy could be imperiled if Americans come to view its members as trying to impose personal preferences on society. She echoed those comments in a discussion at the University of Pennsylvania last week.
Everyone is free to strongly criticize the court’s decisions or the reasoning behind them, Alito said. “But to say that the court is exhibiting a lack of integrity is something quite different. That goes to character, not to a disagreement with the result or the reasoning.”
Alito added: “Someone also crosses an important line when they say that the court is acting in a way that is illegitimate. I don’t think anybody in a position of authority should make that claim lightly.”
In blunt terms, Alito also commented on the man who was charged with attempted murder after being arrested near the Maryland home of conservative Justice Brett Kavanaugh in June.
Alito said the leak of his draft opinion made the conservative justices who at the time were thought to back overturning Roe v. Wade “targets for assassination because it gave people a rational reason to think they could prevent that from happening by killing one of us.”
The conservative majority has shown an increasing willingness to take on divisive issues as it steers the court on a rightward path.
The court’s new term, which began on Oct. 3, promises to be just as consequential. Potential rulings in major cases could end affirmative action policies used by colleges and universities to increase campus racial diversity, hobble a federal law called the Voting Rights Act, and make it easier for businesses to refuse service to LGBT people based on free-speech rights.
President Joe Biden’s recent appointee Ketanji Brown Jackson has joined Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor in the court’s liberal bloc.
(Reporting by Andrew Chung; editing by Richard Pullin)
Ted Cruz says he and several GOP colleagues hid out in a supply closet during the Capitol riot
Cheryl Teh – October 25, 2022
Ted Cruz says he and several GOP colleagues hid out in a supply closet during the Capitol riot Sen. Ted Cruz.Drew Angerer/Getty Images
In his new book, Ted Cruz says he hid out in a supply closet during the Capitol riot.
He says he “assembled” a coalition of Republicans in a “back room” to discuss what to do.
Cruz has on different occasions characterized the riot as a peaceful protest and a “terrorist attack.”
Sen. Ted Cruz wrote in his new book that he hid out in a supply closet with several Republican colleagues while rioters poured into the Capitol on January 6, 2021.
In “Justice Corrupted,” Cruz wrote that he and several Republicans, who he did not name, gathered to plan their next steps amid the chaos.
“While we waited for the Capitol to be secured, I assembled our coalition in a back room (really, a supply closet with stacked chairs) to discuss what we should do next,” Cruz wrote.
He added that he thought to himself that he would be “damned” if he allowed a “handful of violent rioters” to prevent him from fulfilling his constitutional responsibility.
“As we evacuated the floor, Mitt Romney turned to me and the other objectors and said with a snarl, ‘This is what you’ve gotten us!’ And the Democrats were even angrier,” Cruz wrote.
Cruz has flip-flopped on how he’s described the January 6 riot. During an appearance on Fox News in May, he called the rioters “peaceful protesters.” And in February, Cruz broke with Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, calling it a “mistake” for Republicans like McConnell to describe the Capitol attack as a violent insurrection.
The Texas senator received sharp rebukes from the right after his January 2022 statement. Fox News host Tucker Carlson was one of the first to lash out at Cruz. Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz followed, taunting the Texas lawmaker during a press conference that week, saying that Cruz may “bend over” for the GOP establishment but “they’ll never love” him.
Cruz went on Carlson’s show the same week and walked back his description of the Capitol riot. Speaking with Carlson, Cruz repeatedly said he made a mistake because of “sloppy” and “frankly, dumb” phrasing.
Representatives for Cruz did not immediately respond to Insider’s request for comment. “Justice Corrupted” was released on October 25.
