How Far Should You Walk to Improve Your Health? You Won’t Like the Answer.
Neal Templin – Dec. 3, 2022
Yes, it really takes that many steps to stay in shape.Dreamstime.com
Walking 10,000 steps a day is one of those mysteriously decided good things we should all do, much like drinking eight glasses of water a day. I read it comes from a Japanese marketing campaign in the 1960s.
I’d like to report the number of steps needed for full benefit was fewer, but a fair amount of research has since been done on the subject, and it found that walking 10,000 steps a day is great for your health.
Evan Brittain, a cardiologist and associate professor at Vanderbilt University School of Medicine in Tennessee, co-wrote an October 2022 study published in Nature Medicine journal that measured how much exercise people actually got using Fitbit fitness trackers during a median of four years.
The study looked for associations between step count and disease. “We looked across every human disease that showed up in unbiased analysis,” Brittain says. “We homed in on six strongly: obesity, hypertension, diabetes, esophageal reflux, sleep apnea and depression.”
The study found the biggest protections against most diseases among those who walked close to 10,000 steps a day. For example, the research found that increasing your step count to 10,000 from 6,000 reduces the incidence of diabetes by 56%.
Why is walking—or any form of exercise, really—so good for us?A few reasons, says cardiologist Chad Raymond, director of cardiac rehabilitation at University Hospitals Harrington Heart and Vascular Institute in Ohio. For starters, those same endorphins that make you feel great after exercising also open up your blood vessels and help create new blood vessels.
“Regular exercise reduces blood pressure five to eight points, often what most blood pressure medicines do,” he says.
Exercise also improves the ability of skeletal muscles ability to extract oxygen from the blood, Raymond adds. And it helps improve lung function, which in turn helps the heart.
Stop the presses: Being a couch potato isn’t good for you. So put on those comfortable shoes and go for a walk.
Finnish leader says the brutal truth is Ukraine shows Europe isn’t ‘strong enough’ without the US
John Haltiwanger – December 2, 2022
Finnish Prime Minister Sanna Marin with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in Kyiv, Ukraine.Ukrainian Presidential Press Office via AP
Finland’s prime minister said Ukraine showed Europe was too reliant on the US for security.
“I must be brutally honest with you, Europe isn’t strong enough right now,” Sanna Marin said.
“We would be in trouble without the United States,” she added.
Finnish Prime Minister Sanna Marin said Friday the Ukraine war showed Europe was too reliant on the US for its security.
“I must be brutally honest with you, Europe isn’t strong enough right now,” Marin said in remarks at a think tank in Sydney, according to Reuters. “We would be in trouble without the United States.”
She added: “The United States has given a lot of weapons, a lot of financial aid, a lot of humanitarian aid to Ukraine, and Europe isn’t strong enough yet.
“We have to make sure that we are building those capabilities when it comes to European defense.”
The US has provided Ukraine with far more security assistance than any other country — roughly $19.1 billion since Russia launched its invasion in late February.
Russia’s unprovoked war in Ukraine marks the first major conflict in Europe since World War II, and it has prompted more urgent discussions on European security and the continent’s reliance on the US. It also pushed Finland and Sweden — two countries that have historically been neutral or militarily nonaligned — to join NATO (the process for their accession is ongoing).
In a speech last month to European diplomats, the European Union’s foreign-policy chief, Josep Borrell, questioned how the US would’ve handled the Ukraine war if former President Donald Trump were in office instead of President Joe Biden.
Trump was often critical of US security commitments in Europe and frequently chastised NATO allies over their lower levels of defense spending compared with the US. His first impeachment was also related to his dealings with Ukraine, including freezing aid to Kyiv, its capital, as he pressured Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to launch an investigation into Hunter Biden, the president’s son, over allegations of corruption.
Along these lines, Borrell said Europe needed to take more steps to ensure it’s not so reliant on Washington.
“What would have happened if, instead of Biden, it would have been Trump or someone like him in the White House? What would have been the answer of the United States to the war in Ukraine? What would have been our answer in a different situation?” Borrell said, adding: “These are some questions that we have to ask ourselves. And the answer for me is clear:
“We need to shoulder more responsibilities ourselves. We have to take a bigger part of our responsibility in securing security.”
Tiny Blood Clots May Be to Blame for Long COVID Symptoms, Some Researchers Say
Jamie Ducharme – December 2, 2022
Blood samples in a laboratory
Credit – Getty Images
Blood clotting is a normal, healthy process. It’s what stops the bleeding when you slice your finger in the kitchen, for example. But sometimes, clotting goes awry. Clots that block major blood vessels can lead to potentially fatal issues like strokes or heart attacks. Tiny clots in the body’s small blood vessels can also be dangerous.
People with Long COVID can experience a range of health issues—everything from neurological issues to intense fatigue and gastrointestinal distress—for months, or even years, after catching COVID-19. Researchers aren’t entirely sure why this happens. Some argue it’s because remnants of the virus linger in the body, while others think the virus triggers an abnormal immune response that essentially causes the body to attack itself.
Yet another camp of researchers believes that microclots cause Long COVID symptoms by impeding blood and oxygen flow to the body’s organs and tissues. That hypothesis is alluring because it suggests an intuitive treatment approach: if you can flush clots from the blood, you should be able to get rid of symptoms.
Resia Pretorius, head of the physiological sciences department at South Africa’s Stellenbosch University, is one of the leaders of that camp. In August 2021, she co-authored the first paper to raise the microclot theory. Still, Pretorius isn’t ruling out other explanations—or a combination of them. In fact, she believes the leading hypotheses about Long COVID’s causes are interconnected. She posits that lingering viral remnants may damage the cells that line the blood vessels, prompting the formation of inflammation and microclots, which could in turn make the immune system attack itself. “It’s connected,” she says. “It can be seen as interacting with each other, not one [theory] above the other.”
David Putrino, a Long COVID researcher at New York’s Mount Sinai health system who has collaborated with Pretorius, agrees that microclots are likely a piece of the larger Long COVID puzzle. “Microclots are kind of like exhaust fumes,” he says. “They’re showing up because something systemically is going wrong.” Putrino’s research with Yale University’s Akiko Iwasaki (who has also collaborated with Pretorius) suggests Long COVID patients have high levels of systemic inflammation, which he says could lead to the formation of microclots.
“If we can modulate any part of that cascade with therapeutics,” Putrino says, “people are [hopefully] going to start to feel better.”
There is no proven cure for Long COVID. But in December 2021, Pretorius’ research group posted online a study (which has not yet been peer reviewed) showing that 24 Long COVID patients experienced improvements in symptoms, including fatigue, after being treated with blood-thinning drugs.
But some experts have doubts about that approach. Dr. Adam Cuker, clinical director of Penn Medicine’s Blood Disorders Center and a member of the American Society of Hematology, says so much remains unknown about microclots that it feels premature to begin treating people with drugs that come with significant risks, such as excessive bleeding.
“The scientific part of me would say, ‘It would be better if we had more evidence from basic science labs before we turn this into a clinical trial,’” Cuker says. “The tension is that I recognize that there are patients suffering out there and desperate for answers.”
At the moment, Cuker says some of the studies on microclots are “hypothesis-generating,” but he has doubts about some of the ways that researchers are looking for microclots in the blood. For example, the protocol developed by Pretorius’ team involves drawing blood and adding a fluorescent agent. Researchers then compare the sample’s appearance under a microscope with fluorescent-treated samples from healthy control patients. “That’s a very artificial system,” Cuker says. “It’s very different from an autopsy, where you can see with your own eyes that there were clots in the body.”
To help standardize the research process, Putrino’s team is developing an objective way to detect the presence of microclots using a computer vision algorithm. From there, he says, the next step is to determine whether the amount of microclots in a person’s body correlates with their symptom severity. His lab has already gathered some unpublished data that suggest extensive clotting is linked to increased cognitive impairment—another finding, albeit a premature one, that suggests microclots are at least partially responsible for Long COVID symptoms.
Putrino acknowledges that there’s a long way to go when it comes to microclot research, and research on Long COVID in general. But he says it’s necessary to think outside the box, “especially when people’s lives are at stake.”
Neurologists say accelerated brain aging in Black people can be countered by lifestyle changes
Curtis Bunn – December 2, 2022
Black physicians are fascinated but not surprised by recent data that suggests Black people’s brains are likely to age faster than those of other races due to stressors such as racism. However, doctors said lifestyle changes and preventative care could help slow some of the decline.
In a study published last month in the journal JAMA Neurology, researchers from Columbia University found racial and ethnic disparities in brain markers of Alzheimer’s disease and related cases of dementia. The scientists analyzed MRI scans of nearly 1,500 participants, and found that Black adults in their mid-50s were more likely than white or Hispanic adults of the same age group to show white-matter lesions in their brains, which are indicators of cerebrovascular disease or cognitive decline.
The authors noted that “social forces” may have played a part in the accelerated brain aging seen among their Black subjects. In particular, the study says the weathering hypothesis — which states that “chronic exposure to social and economic disadvantage leads to accelerated decline in physical health outcomes”— could cause Black middle-aged adults on average to have cerebrovascular disease earlier in life.
JAMA Neurology did not immediately respond to request for interview.
Dr. Philippe Douyon. (Courtesy of Dr. Bouyon)
Dr. Philippe Douyon, a neurologist in New Jersey at the Inle Brain Fit Institute who hosts The Brain Prophets Podcast, said he’s concerned that some may interpret the study to mean that Black people are naturally predisposed to Alzheimer’s. “That’s not the case at all. A lot of things contribute to dementia and Alzheimer’s, like high blood pressure and diabetes. Also, chronic stress kills neurons or brain cells in the part of the brain responsible for making new memories,” Douyon said.
He also noted that chronic stress as a result “of racism or health inequalities due to racism” can raise someone’s risk of developing cognitive disease. “But I would not want people to think that it has anything to do with the fact that the color of their skin is black,” he said.
Dr. Richard D. King, a neurologist and associate professor at the University of Kentucky College of Medicine, said many people who experience a deterioration in brain function do not realize there’s a problem until there’s been “quite a bit of decline.”
He added that stress can exacerbate hypertension, which can make a person more prone to cognitive decline.
Dr. Richard D. King. (Pete Comparoni)
“Elevated blood pressure is a very strong risk factor for worsening cerebrovascular disease,” King said. “But two people might respond to the exact same stress in very different ways. It’s a difficult thing to measure on an individual basis.”
Donald Grant, a psychologist and the executive director of Mindful Training Solutions, a firm that designs diversity, equity and inclusion programs for businesses, said the stress of being Black in America can wear on the brain.
“We’re talking about Black folks experiencing these higher degrees of racialized stress, meaning we’re watching ourselves being murdered through racism, we’re watching ourselves not get jobs because of racism,” Grant said. “We’re watching ourselves not get housing and equal opportunities through racism. That creates a unique stress that nobody else experiences and our brains are being impacted by it.”
Minimizing the risk
Douyon said there are many ways to slow brain aging, including maintaining a healthy diet and getting proper rest.
“You can minimize your risk of dementia by eating healthy — more fruits and grains and vegetables and less animal fats and sweets in moderation,” he said. “You need to make sure you’re getting six to eight hours of sleep every night.”
Douyon said sleep deprivation in someone’s mid-life years — 20s through 50s — can raise the risk of dementia in their 60s, 70s or 80s. He said it’s important to not only get sleep, but deep sleep, known as non-rapid eye movement (NREM) sleep.
“That’s when the brain essentially clears out the toxins that are developing throughout the day. And when these toxins build up, they develop into plaques and those are the kind of plaques that we see in people with Alzheimer’s,” he said.
King added that it’s also important to keep the mind and body active.
“Exercise is a big one,” he said, “and that’s something that we’re actually pretty good at least until we get older, when we get kind of lazy. But physical activity is my best anti-aging formula.” He recommends spending 30 minutes per day doing “something that’s kind of vigorous and gets your heart rate up — gets you a little sweaty.”
King and Douyon also suggested playing board games, solving puzzles and reading as ways to exercise the brain.
“Learning a new hobby makes a big difference,” King said. “And then staying socially active. Keeping those connections with family with friends, with church and social organizations provide meaningful interaction. If you get isolated, you just don’t do as well as those that maintain those connections.”
In addition, Grant thinks it’s equally important to find ways to manage stress.
One option is through activities like restorative yoga, which Grant said can help address stress and regulate blood pressure and brain function.
Dr. Donald Grant. (Courtesy of Dr. Grant.)
“Racism creates a unique stress that nobody else experiences,” he said. “We have to begin building stress relief techniques in school that specifically speak to race-based stress and trauma. This type of yoga is one of them.”
King noted that “the study certainly suggests that if we were able to do things like close the socioeconomic gaps and provide more opportunities and reduce the number of microaggressions Black people face, you might see some change in that.”
He added that high blood pressure and diabetes, which are prevalent in Black communities, can be managed with proper health care and while both are very common, they are “very treatable.”
“What gets measured, gets managed,” King said. “And so you have to measure it. You have to go to your primary care doctor and check your blood pressure and blood sugar level. And you have to take your medications on a regular basis.”
Douyon said a holistic approach is likely the best way to slow down brain aging.
“You want to constantly be learning, constantly evolving, learning new skills, interacting with different people, learning new languages, traveling the world, having new experiences,” he said. “Being creatures of habit is killing our neurological potential. So, you don’t want to be sedentary — that causes the brain to atrophy and to shrink. These are things that we can do every day to minimize the risk of us developing something like Alzheimer’s.”
One Type of Exercise May Reduce Risk of Metastatic Cancer by 72%, Research Finds
Madeleine Haase – December 2, 2022
Exercise May Reduce the Risk of Metastatic CancerJustin Paget – Getty Images
We all know that exercise is good for you, but new research shows just how beneficial regular exercise can be for our health.
A study from Tel Aviv University, published in Cancer Research, is the first to investigate the impact of exercise on the internal organs in which metastases (secondary cancerous growths) usually develop, like the lungs, liver, and lymph nodes. And what the researchers found was truly remarkable: aerobic exercise may reduce the risk of metastatic cancer by 72%.
In a press release, lead researchers Carmit Levy, Ph.D., and Ytach Gepner, Ph.D., said that these findings added new insight, showing that high-intensity aerobic exercise, which derives its energy from sugar, can reduce the risk of metastatic cancer by as much as 72%. “If the general message to the public so far has been ‘be active, be healthy,’” they say, “now we can explain how aerobic activity can maximize the prevention of the most aggressive and metastatic types of cancer.”
The study included both mice and humans—mice trained under a strict exercise regimen, and healthy human volunteers were examined before and after running.
Human data was also obtained from an epidemiological study that monitored 3,000 individuals for about 20 years—during that time, 243 new cancer cases were recorded. Researchers found that there was 72% less metastatic cancer in participants who reported regularly exercising at a high intensity, compared to those who did not engage in physical exercise.
The mice exhibited a similar outcome, which enabled the researchers to use the animal model to better understand what might be leading to the reduction in cancer. They found that aerobic activity significantly reduced the development of metastatic tumors in the lymph nodes, lungs, and liver of the mice. The researchers hypothesized that in both humans and model animals, this outcome is related to the body’s ramped-up use of glucose for fuel induced by exercise.
“Examining the cells of these organs, we found a rise in the number of glucose receptors during high-intensity aerobic activity—increasing glucose intake and turning the organs into effective energy-consumption machines, very much like the muscles,” Levy says in the press release.
According to the researchers, this happens because the organs must compete for sugar resources with the muscles, which are known to burn large quantities of glucose during physical exercise. As a result, there is less glucose—therefore energy—available for the cancer to metastasize, or grow and spread.
On top of these encouraging findings, Levy explains that “when a person exercises regularly, this condition becomes permanent: the tissues of internal organs change and become similar to muscle tissue.” We all know that sports and physical exercise are good for our health. However, this study in particular examines the internal organs, and discovered that exercise changes the whole body, so that the cancer cannot spread, and the primary tumor also shrinks in size, says Levy.
What is metastatic cancer?
Metastatic cancer is a cancer that spreads to another place which is not the primary location of the cancer, says Carolina Gutierrez, M.D., cancer rehabilitation specialist with McGovern Medical School at UTHealth Houston and an attending physician at TIRR Memorial Hermann.
How does exercise affect your internal organs where metastases typically develop?
We knew from previous observational studies that exercise has a very important positive impact that can range from decreased risk of recurrence to decreased risk of getting certain cancers, but we didn’t really understand how that works, says Marlene Meyers, M.D., medical oncologist at NYU Langone Perlmutter Cancer Center.
Meyers explains that this study actually sought to look at what happens in mice. “Essentially, what it showed was that mice who exercised at high intensity had an increase in glucose receptors or sugar receptors in these organs.” She notes that the feeling from the researchers is that this increase in receptors competes with the glucose (sugar) that might go to cancer cells, which gives them the energy to spread.
How does exercise reduce your risk for cancer?
There are many reasons why exercise can reduce your risk for cancer, says Gutierrez. “Exercise helps maintain a healthy weight and body composition, reduces fat, helps with glucose levels, and helps control high blood pressure. It also helps reduce the risk of diabetes, insulin resistance and in turn reduces a person’s overall cancer risk.”
However, when it comes to how high-intensity exercise, in particular, affects your cancer risk, the science is less clear. “We do know that any exercise can decrease the risk of recurrence in some cancers, so it’s not clear specifically whether high intensity makes as big a difference versus regular exercise, or how long you have to sustain high-intensity exercise or how often,” says Meyers.
In this study, the researchers defined high-intensity exercise as exercise where your heart rate is 80% to 85% of maximum pulse rate, says Meyers. Due to these findings, she says that “high-intensity exercise may be the type of exercise that actually can increase glucose receptors.” In the end, Meyers says that these findings do support what we know about exercise, “but doesn’t clearly say what we should be recommending for humans.”
The bottom line on exercise and cancer
Exercise is good for you, says Gutierrez. “It will help you with your overall health and reduce the risk not only of cancer but of metastases.”
However, Meyers warns that we need to take these promising findings with a grain of salt. “When we see these retrospective studies, we’re relying on what people report…There are many other factors that go into reduced risk, whether it’s exercise alone, exercise and nutrition, where you live, your family history,” she explains.
Future studies need to be more randomized, especially in our survivor populations, says Meyers.
Also, a reminder that exercise is not a substitute for medical care or cancer screenings, and it’s not an end all be all, says Meyers. “Even professional athletes get cancer,” so although exercise can do a whole lot of good for you, there’s no cure for cancer yet.
Suffering from flu, RSV or COVID-19? How you can tell the difference
Mary Kekatos – December 2, 2022
Suffering from flu, RSV or COVID-19? How you can tell the difference
The U.S. is facing a surge of respiratory viruses, mainly driven by COVID-19, influenza and respiratory syncytial virus, or RSV.
Flu and RSV have appeared earlier than usual and have particularly affected children, leading to 78% of pediatric hospital beds being full, according to the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services.
All three viruses have symptoms that are similar, which can make them difficult to tell apart. But knowing which virus a person has can help them receive proper treatment or, if need be, let them know if they need to isolate.
Here are some questions to consider when trying to determine if you have COVID-19, flu or RSV.
What are the symptoms?
COVID-19, flu and RSV are more similar to each other than they are different in terms of symptoms.
One of the only symptoms exclusive to one virus and not the others is loss of taste and smell, which has been a hallmark symptom of COVID-19.
PHOTO: Symptoms of COVID-19, RSV, and Flu (ABC News Photo Illustration, CDC, Mayo Clinic)
However, public health experts told ABC News the absence of one of the symptoms does not mean a patient doesn’t have a particular virus and that the only way to be sure is to get tested.
“In most cases, if anybody has generic symptoms, such as fever, cough, runny nose, there’s going to be no real way to distinguish which one is which without a test,” Dr. Scott Roberts, an assistant professor and the associate medical director of infection prevention at Yale School of Medicine, told ABC News.
How quickly did symptoms come about?
Flu symptoms typically appear rather quickly while symptoms of RSV and COVID-19 appear more gradually, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
COVID-19 has an incubation period of two to 14 days while RSV has an average incubation of about five days but can be anywhere from two to eight days.
By comparison, flu has an incubation period of one to four days.
“So, if somebody says, ‘I went to Thanksgiving party yesterday where someone had flu and the next day I had a fever,’ I can already tell you that’s flu,” Roberts said. “I know it’s much too fast for it to be COVID.”
How old is the patient?
Public health experts told ABC News that depending on how old a patient is can affect the severity of the disease.
PHOTO: FILE PHOTO: People enter a pharmacy next to a sign promoting flu shots in New York Jan. 10, 2013. (Andrew Kelly/Reuters, FILE)
“Children under six months of age and children maybe a little bit older who have underlying medical conditions or who were premature, end up with the shortness of breath and the difficulty breathing because their airways are just so small, and they don’t have a lot of reserve there to move air through the small air passages when they’re inflamed,” Dr. Shira Doron, an infectious disease physician and hospital epidemiologist at Tufts Medical Center in Boston, told ABC News.
However, relatively young and healthy adults are not likely to have a severe case of RSV if they get infected.
“In children, we tend to see a lot more of the sort of bronchiolitis respiratory issues with RSV,” Dr. Allison Bartlett, an associate professor of pediatrics at the University of Chicago Medical Center, told ABC News. “Adults, when they get RSV, it tends to be a like a cold. It’s just like one of the colds that you would get every year.”
With COVID-19, age is the number one risk factor when it comes to severe disease and death.
As of the week ending Nov. 19, Americans aged 65 and older make up 92% of all deaths from the virus, according to an ABC News analysis of data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
What treatments or precautions do I need to follow?
“Not everyone needs to be tested; our pediatricians’ offices and hospitals are overloaded,” Bartlett said. However, figuring what the illness is can help treat the patient and potentially family members or close contacts, she said.
For example, with COVID-19, it’s important to follow CDC guidelines, which include isolating for at least five days — or longer if symptoms don’t improve — and wearing a mask around others.
Additionally, they can be prescribed Paxlovid if they are at risk of severe illness.
With flu, patients can receive Tamiflu to shorten the course of their illness as long as it is given early on and people who are exposed to flu can receive the treatment to prevent them from getting sick.
However, the most important thing a person can do if they are infected — when possible — is to stay home.
“If you’re really, really sick, go the hospital. If you’re not that sick, and it looks like a common cold, then you stay home and don’t infect people,” Doron said.
Appeals court orders end to special master review process in Trump documents case
Robert Legare – December 1, 2022
Washington – A three-judge federal appeals court panel in Atlanta ruled that the special master review process that oversaw the Justice Department’s use of non-classified evidence collected earlier this year at former President Donald Trump’s Florida residence must end.
The unanimous decision from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit reversed the decision of Judge Aileen Cannon, a federal judge from Florida who granted Trump’s request for the review and appointed semi-retired federal Judge Raymond Dearie of New York as an independent arbiter, or special master, to sift through the documents for any that may be subject to claims of privilege by the former president.
That decision also barred investigators from using the roughly 13,000 documents taken from Mar-a-Lago, Trump’s resort, during the execution of a search warrant on Aug. 8 for investigative purposes. A separate appeals court decision from September permitted the Justice Department to use more than 100 documents with classified markings it seized for its investigation into Trump’s alleged mishandling of sensitive documents, and Thursday’s subsequent decision grants the government full access to the evidentiary record.
Trump can now ask the full 11th Circuit to rehear the case or appeal the decision to the Supreme Court.
In a statement, Trump spokesperson Steven Cheung said the former president called the panel’s decision “procedural and based only on jurisdiction.”
“The decision does not address the merits that clearly demonstrate the impropriety of the unprecedented, illegal, and unwarranted raid on Mar-a-Lago,” Cheung’s statement said.
But in fact, the 11th Circuit’s opinion made clear that the execution of the search warrant — the “raid” — was legal.
The Justice Department “presented an FBI agent’s sworn affidavit to a Florida magistrate judge, who agreed that probable cause existed to believe that evidence of criminal violations would likely be found at Mar-a-Lago,” the opinion stated.
“President Donald J. Trump will continue to fight against the weaponized Department of ‘Justice,’ while standing for America and Americans,” Cheung added.
Trump and his allies have frequently accused Attorney General Merrick Garland of weaponizing the Justice Department against Republicans, although no court has found any evidence of that.
Former President Donald Trump applauds while speaking at the Mar-a-Lago Club in Palm Beach, Florida, on Nov. 15, 2022. / Credit: ALON SKUY/AFP via Getty Images
“The law is clear. We cannot write a rule that allows any subject of a search warrant to block government investigations after the execution of the warrant. Nor can we write a rule that allows only former presidents to do so,” Chief Judge William Pryor and Judges Britt Grant and Andrew Brasher said in their 23-page opinion. “Either approach would be a radical reordering of our caselaw limiting the federal courts’ involvement in criminal investigations. And both would violate bedrock separation-of-powers limitations.”
Pryor was appointed to the 11th Circuit by former President George W. Bush, while Grant and Brasher were named by Trump.
The opinion from the 11th Circuit wipes away Cannon’s order appointing the special master and sends the case back to the lower court with instructions for it to be dismissed.
“This appeal requires us to consider whether the district court had jurisdiction to block the United States from using lawfully seized records in a criminal investigation,” the judges wrote. “The answer is no.”
Trump first asked Cannon to appoint a special master to review the seized documents in late August, two weeks after the FBI conducted the search of his office and storage room at Mar-a-Lago. Prosecutors say they are conducting a national security investigation into those and other sensitive documents retrieved from the Florida resort after Trump left office, and possible obstruction of that probe.
When issuing her original order appointing the special master, Cannon wrote that Trump faced an “unequitable potential harm by way of improper disclosure of sensitive information to the public,” but criminal investigators rarely — if ever — release seized evidence to the public unless criminal charges are filed. The Justice Department has repeatedly argued the entire process was premature and unnecessary.
The former president’s legal team has said Cannon’s order appointing a special master was not appealable and claimed that Trump deemed the records he brought to Mar-a-Lago as “personal” while he was still in office, a designation allowed under the Presidential Records Act (PRA).
“It is simply untenable to conclude any president may be subject to a criminal charge for exercising the unfettered rights set forth in the PRA to categorize certain documents as ‘personal’ during that president’s term of office,” they told the 11th Circuit in filings.
But the 11th Circuit noted that even if Trump did designate the document as “personal,” search warrants authorize the seizure of such records.
“As we have said, the status of a document as personal or presidential does not alter the authority of the government to seize it under a warrant supported by probable cause,” the judges wrote.
Claims of attorney-client privilege have mostly been resolved by the two parties, but Trump argued some of the seized records belong to him in a personal capacity as the former president. His legal team has said the documents he brought to Mar-a-Lago must be considered “presumptively privileged” by the courts and shielded from the criminal investigation until the independent review concludes.
Throughout the appeal, prosecutors remained opposed to Trump’s reading of the law, writing in part that he cannot assert executive privilege to preclude review of executive branch documents by the executive branch itself. The Justice Department also argued that Cannon overstepped when she issued her September injunction barring the FBI from using the seized material for investigative purposes.
A three-judge panel heard oral arguments in the dispute last week, during which they appeared open to the Justice Department’s position that Cannon wrongly appointed the special master to review the seized documents and erred when she issued her injunction.
Thursday’s ruling comes after Attorney General Merrick Garland last month appointed a special counsel to oversee the Justice Department’s investigation into Trump’s handling of government records, as well as the department’s probe into his efforts to subvert the results of the 2020 presidential election.
Florida federal Judge Aileen Cannon ‘slammed’ by appeals court in Trump case
Jay Weaver – December 2, 2022
Three months ago, U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon made the controversial call to appoint an independent expert to examine documents — including classified government materials — seized by FBI agents from former President Donald Trump’s Palm Beach residence.
She did so despite expressing initial doubts in her own ruling about intervening in the politically charged case.
In a scathing ruling issued Thursday night, a federal appellate court in Atlanta found she should have heeded her first legal concerns. A three-judge panel, all Republican-appointees like Cannon, reversed her decision to name a “special master” because she had no authority to do so and effectively killed the case as legal experts consider a potential appeal unlikely to succeed.
The ruling from the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, several South Florida and other legal experts said, left little room for argument.
“The key point is that Judge Cannon had no jurisdiction to do anything here,” said Mark Schnapp, a former federal prosecutor and longtime Miami criminal defense attorney. “She tried to assert equitable jurisdiction [to appoint the special master], but her own opinion showed why her analysis was defective.
“Her opinion got ripped to shreds by the Eleventh Circuit Court,” he said.
In her Sept. 5 order, Cannon noted that she agreed with Justice Department lawyers that FBI agents carrying a search warrant for Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate had not shown a “callous disregard for [his] constitutional rights,” concluding that “this factor cuts against the exercise of equitable jurisdiction.”
But rather than follow her own analysis, Cannon extended Trump protections not provided to ordinary citizens by appointing a special master to review the FBI’s evidence, citing the “unprecedented circumstances” of the U.S. government raiding a former president’s home.
Her decision, in response to a civil lawsuit seeking to have certain privileged documents returned to Trump, slowed down the FBI’s criminal probe of the former president. The Justice Department appealed her ruling and has now scored a major legal victory, allowing its investigation of the classified documents case to move forward at full throttle.
Former President Donald Trump speaks at Mar-a-Lago Friday, Nov. 18, 2022, in Palm Beach, Fla. Earlier in the day Attorney General Merrick Garland named a special counsel to oversee the Justice Department’s investigation into the presence of classified documents at Trump’s Florida estate and aspects of a separate probe involving the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection and efforts to undo the 2020 election.
The impact is immediate: Cannon’s decision will not only be thrown out based on her lack of jurisdiction but the special master’s still-unfinished review will be shut down, bringing Trump’s lawsuit to dead end.
While the former president’s lawyers are expected to pursue a counter appeal experts say it will likely fall on deaf ears given the blunt appellate decision: “This appeal requires us to consider whether the district court had jurisdiction to block the United States from using lawfully seized records in a criminal investigation. The answer is no.”
Legal experts in South Florida agreed, saying Cannon should have rejected Trump’s lawsuit seeking to thwart the Justice Department’s investigation after the FBI obtained a search warrant from a magistrate judge who found probable cause of a crime over his storing of classified and other presidential documents at the Mar-a-Lago club and residence after he left the White House in January 2021.
“The bottom line is, he didn’t have presidential privilege anymore because he was no longer president,” said retired career federal prosecutor Dick Gregorie. “She had no business sticking her nose in it, and they slammed her for it.”
Carl Tobias, a University of Richmond law professor, echoed that view, saying the Atlanta appellate judges “ripped her [decision] apart” during oral arguments and so the outcome “was not surprising.”
Tobias said that Cannon never “justified” her decision to invoke jurisdiction in Trump’s case, saying her conclusion to appoint a special master was “wrong.” But he added: “I don’t think she’s acting in bad faith. She’s a junior judge acting in isolation” in Fort Pierce.” That’s where Cannon was assigned when she joined the federal bench in the Southern District of Florida.
The appellate panel’s ruling came from three Republican-appointed judges, including two by Trump. It also marks the second time that the Atlanta court has dealt a major blow to Cannon in her handling of the high-profile case. After her initial decision to appoint the special master, the appellate court ruled that the outside expert, New York U.S. District Judge Raymond Dearie, could not review the classified documents taken from Mar-a-Lago, and that they should be returned immediately to U.S. investigators.
In a 21-page ruling issued late Thursday, the judges — Chief Judge William H. Pryor, Britt Grant and Andrew L. Brasher — described the Trump legal team’s arguments as a “sideshow,” highlighting that his lawyers never made the fundamental point that FBI agents showed a “callous disregard” for the former president’s constitutional rights. The appellate panel found that the “callous disregard standard has not been met here, and no one argues otherwise” — including the presiding judge, Cannon.
“There is no record evidence that the government exceeded the scope of the warrant — which, it bears repeating, was authorized by a [West Palm Beach] magistrate judge’s finding of probable cause [of a crime],” the panel wrote. “And yet again, [Trump’s] argument would apply universally; presumably any subject of a search warrant would like all of his property back before the government has a chance to use it.”
The panel said that the proper time for Trump or any other suspect in a criminal investigation to challenge the government’s seizure of property would be after an indictment has been returned by a grand jury. The grand jury in Washington, D.C., is currently reviewing evidence and hearing witness testimony in the Mar-a-Lago documents probe, according to published reports. U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland recently appointed a special prosecutor, Jack Smith, to oversee the investigation., which followed Trump’s announcement that he is running for president in 2024.
The Atlanta appellate judges noted that it is “indeed extraordinary for a warrant to be executed at the home of a former president — but not in a way that affects our legal analysis or otherwise gives the judiciary license to interfere in an ongoing investigation.”
Citing a legal test on jurisdiction that has been in place for nearly 50 years, the three-judge panel wrote that “its limits apply no matter who the government is investigating.”
“The law is clear,” the panel concluded. “We cannot write a rule that allows any subject of a search warrant to block government investigations after the execution of a warrant. Nor can we write a rule that allows only former presidents to do so.“
Winter comes to Ukraine: Civilians forced to face ‘extremely difficult few months ahead’ as Russian invasion grinds on
Niamh Cavanagh, Reporter – December 1, 2022
TBILISI, Georgia — It’s been nine months since Russia launched its “special operation” in Ukraine in what President Vladimir Putin claimed was done to “de-Nazify” the region. Since February, millions of Ukrainians have fled to neighboring countries, while others, unable to leave, have taken shelter in train stations and in the basements of buildings from heavy shelling and invading forces.
As the weather in Ukraine drops below freezing, with average temperatures this time of year around 20°F, civilians will be forced to defend themselves against another threat: the oncoming winter. In recent weeks, Russia’s military has ramped up attacks on critical infrastructures in cities such as Kyiv and Lviv. In just one day last month, Russia’s military launched between 60 and 100 missiles at several major cities.
Among the targets was the national power grid, its operator said. Volodymyr Kudrytskyi, CEO of Ukrenergo, said the attacks on the grid had been “colossal.” In a briefing to reporters, he stated that Ukrainians could face power outages as the grid could not “generate as much energy as consumers can use.”
A view of damaged electrical wires after the Ukrainian army retook control from Russian forces in Lyman, Ukraine, on Nov. 27. (Metin Aktas/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images)
As a result of the colder weather and lack of basic necessities in Ukraine, a World Health Organization regional director said that at least 3 million people would be displaced in the coming months. “This winter will be life-threatening for millions of people in Ukraine,” Hans Henri P. Kluge said in a statement. “We expect 2–3 million more people to leave their homes in search of warmth and safety.”
Similarly, the top U.S. general and chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Mark Milley, said there would be “incalculable human suffering” as families are left without electricity and heat. “Basic human survival and subsistence is going to be severely impacted, and human suffering for the Ukrainian population is going to increase,” Milley said. He went on to say that the Russian strikes on energy infrastructure would “undoubtedly hinder Ukraine’s ability to care for the sick and the elderly. … The elderly are going to be exposed to the elements.”
Elderly residents are evacuated from the southern city of Kherson, Ukraine, on Nov. 27. (Bernat Armangue/AP)
On Tuesday, during a NATO two-day conference held in Romania, Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg accused Putin of trying to “weaponize winter.” “Russia is using brutal missile and drone attacks to leave Ukraine cold and dark this winter,” Stoltenberg said. Now Ukrainians are either forced to “freeze or flee.”
And there are some who are deciding to stay. Yahoo News spoke to a mother of two based in Lviv, where she runs a bakery with her husband. Asked why she wanted to stay despite the bombings and the looming bitter winter, Kateryna Humenyuk said: “Of course, we are worried. But as long as it is possible to live here, we will raise the economy of our country and look for all possible options for the safety of our children.”
In the residential area where she lives, Humenyuk said that the infrastructure had been “badly damaged” from a previous bombing. “There was no light and therefore no heat.” She added: “But fortunately, our energy workers have restored everything and there is still light, although there are still intermittent blackouts.” For those, Humenyuk explained how her husband connected an ordinary lightbulb to a car battery. ”It’s a pity it does not give warmth,” she said.
Kateryna Humenyuk with her husband and children. (Courtesy of Kateryna Humenyuk)
Across Ukraine, there are organizations, both local and international, that are helping those who will stay during the long winter. One organization on the ground in Ukraine is Plan International, which, among other services, provides Ukrainians with thermal blankets, winter clothing, heat appliances and fuel ahead of the winter months.
Speaking to Yahoo News, Mia Haglund Heelas, Plan International’s head of Mission Ukraine Crisis Response, said that the freezing temperatures will have a “brutal impact” on the lives of millions of Ukrainian children and their families. “Many are living in homes that are damaged and are not able to provide the protection that you need when you meet very harsh winter conditions,” she said. “Now, with the beginning of winter, and the below-zero temperatures, this is the start of an extremely difficult few months ahead.”
With the charity being a children’s rights organization, Heelas said it also provides protective gear for children making their way to school during the harsh winter conditions. So far the organization has supported around 14,000 individuals, particularly those living in isolated areas.
A woman is seen making her way through the snow on Nov. 27 in Kyiv. (Jeff J. Mitchell/Getty Images)
She won 51%-45% over her Democratic challenger and lost her home county by nearly 1,800 votes. It gaveFrisch an idea:If a moderate Democrat like him could get through a primary, they might be able to beat Boebert in the general election.
He was almost right.
Frisch lost to Boebert by about 500 votes in a down-to-the-wire race last month in the midterm election. But he did so as a largely self-funded candidate, who ran a campaign without any financial help from national Democrats and struggled to get national pollsters and pundits to take him seriously during the bulk of the campaign.
In an election where far-right candidates faltered and Democrats fared far better than expectations, did Democrats miss an opportunity to unseat one of their most outspoken critics?
“I said, ‘Listen, this could be the emotional win for the country and the party if you actually put some investment in here,’” said Frisch recalling his pitch to national Democratic campaign leaders for money after winning the June primary.
Democrat Adam Frisch, a candidate for Colorado’s 3rd Congressional District, makes an appearance on the campus of the University of Colorado-Pueblo, Sept. 28, 2022, in Pueblo, Colo.
There’s no expert consensus over whether money from national Democrats would have helped Frisch get over the finish line, or whether national support would have created more ammo for the Boebert campaign to tie the moderate Democrat to figures like President Joe Biden and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.
Even Frisch is cautious to say whether more money would have helped his campaign or made him look too much like a national Democrat, or created a kind of arms race between the two parties.
What is known is Boebert, known for her disparaging comments against Muslim colleagues and opposition to LGBT rights, heads into a second two-year term in the House with a Republican majority. The chamber’s possible next speaker, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., pledged to give far-right members committee seats, offering the likes of Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., a louder microphone.
Frisch said he kept reaching out to national Democrats as the race got closer, and didn’t get a substantive response. Chris Taylor, spokesperson for the Democratic party’s congressional campaign arm, said his group “engaged with Team Frisch multiple occasions throughout this election cycle” but did not address any of Frisch’s detailed accounts of his outreach.
Frisch nets a primary win, then seeks support from Democrats
Adam Frisch, a Democratic candidate in Colorado’s 3rd Congressional district, arrives at the Hyatt Regency, in Washington, Sunday, Nov. 13, 2022.
Frisch is a moderate Democrat who campaigned on issues like fighting inflation and maintaining energy production in his home state. He said it was hard to win the Democratic primary as a moderate, but after he won in June, he began pitching to national Democrats.
Frisch said he was in Washington, D.C. in July when he first made an appeal to the House Democrats’ campaign arm, also known as the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, or DCCC. He said his campaign’s polling showed him down by 7 percentage points to Boebert, but campaign staff thought Frisch should have been down by 12 percentage points because of the makeup of the largely rural district and Boebert’s incumbency.
Despite some encouraging words, the DCCC did not agree to provide financial help, and Frisch was outgunned. Boebert raised $6.7 million to Frisch’s $5.2 million, and $2.2 million of Frisch’s money came from his own pocket. Boebert also got a $413,000 ad boost from the campaign arm of the House Freedom Caucus, but no similar PACs bought their own ads for Frisch.
Around the time of the DCCC conversation, pundits and pollsters projected Democrats would lose the House by a wide margin. Frisch said he understood party leaders might prefer to put money into closer districts, as opposed to his district, which the Cook Political Report says the average national Republican could win by about seven percentage points.
“The mindset was, ‘We have other easier races that we can focus on by a longshot,’” Frisch said. “I appreciate numbers are important, but what about the emotional win?”
As internal polling showed him getting closer to Boebert, Frisch said he kept reaching out but “never received a response of substance” in the lead-up to Election Day. His campaign did receive legal help from the DCCC after polls closed and it became more likely there would be a recount of the close race.
Frisch said he would have spent any additional money on media buys in the vast western Colorado district that encompasses about half the state.
‘Hard to say’ if more money to Frisch could have flipped district
Adam Frisch of Aspen, Colo., center, the Democrat who opposed Rep. Lauren Boebert, R-Colo., in Colorado’s 3rd Congressional District, walks with his son Felix Frisch, left, and wife Katy Frisch, right, at the Capitol in Washington, Friday, Nov. 18.
Experts told USA TODAY more support for Frisch wouldn’t necessarily equate to a win for the Democrat over Boebert in the Republican-leaning district.
“It’s hard to say that one strategic decision would have made a difference in that complex environment, but it could have,” said Kyle Saunders, political science professor at Colorado State University.
Saunders said the DCCC and other organizations that contribute to campaigns have limited resources and must “behave strategically” when deciding which candidates to support during an election season.
Almost half of the voters in the district, or 45%, are registered as unaffiliated voters. Another 31% are registered Republicans and 24% are registered Democrats. Saunders said most of these unaffiliated voters are not independents and estimates 70% are likely to lean toward one party or another.
“They’re just as partisan as the people who say they are a Republican or Democrat,” he said.
David Wasserman, House editor for Cook Political Report, a nonpartisan election analysis newsletter, rated the race as solid Republican but said pundits like him and Democrats clearly underestimated Boebert’s vulnerability. Still, he cautioned against assuming help from national Democrats would have put Frisch over the finish line.
“Had national Democrats invested more in this race, it might not have helped Frisch because, No. 1, Frisch was well funded on his own, and No. 2, attempting to nationalize this race might’ve played into Boebert’s argument that D.C. liberals and Nancy Pelosi are out to get her,” Wasserman said.
He pointed to how Democrat Marie Perez beat Republican Trump acolyte Joe Kent for a seat in Washington without any help from national Democrats.
“It may have been beneficial to Frisch to come across as a homegrown campaign,” Wasserman said.
What does this mean for 2024?
Rep. Lauren Boebert, R-Colo., who was in an unexpected tight race with Democratic challenger Adam Frisch, arrives to meet with fellow Republicans behind closed doors as Republicans hold its leadership candidate forum at the Capitol in Washington, Monday, Nov. 14, 2022.
Headed into 2024, Boebert will be a twice-elected incumbent serving in a House led by Republicans, and Frisch will be better known in Democratic circles for having almost unseated her.
Incumbents have high name recognition in their districts and need to spend less to get their message out. Incumbents running for Congress raised more than twice as much as their challengers, according to an analysis by OpenSecrets, an organization that tracks money in politics.
Wasserman said Frisch could double how much he raises if he runs in 2024 because of his increased name recognition. However, he cautioned that won’t necessarily propel him to victory.
“The problem, if Trump is back on the ballot, the district’s electorate is likely to become more favorable to Republicans, judging by the low turnout on the Republican side this time,” said Wasserman, referring to former President Donald Trump.
Taylor, from the DCCC, said Colorado voters this year stood up to “extremism, hate and division” and showed that they were not welcome in their state.
“While we narrowly came up short this time, voters will have their say again in two years,” he said.
Frisch did not address whether he would run in 2024, but said he is working to understand what went wrong in his 2022 campaign.
“When losers lose, they blame other people,” Frisch said. “When winners lose, they try to figure out where they could’ve done better, and that’s what I’m trying to figure out.”
