Category: International

American Democracy in peril: Trump and Allies Forge Plans to Increase Presidential Power in 2025

The New York Times

Trump and Allies Forge Plans to Increase Presidential Power in 2025

The former president and his backers aim to strengthen the power of the White House and limit the independence of federal agencies.

Jonathan Swan, Charlie Savage and Maggie Haberman – July 17, 2023

Donald J. Trump, wearing a blue suit and a red tie, walks down from an airplane with a large American flag painted onto its tail.
Donald J. Trump intends to bring independent regulatory agencies under direct presidential control. Credit…Doug Mills/The New York Times

Donald J. Trump and his allies are planning a sweeping expansion of presidential power over the machinery of government if voters return him to the White House in 2025, reshaping the structure of the executive branch to concentrate far greater authority directly in his hands.

Their plans to centralize more power in the Oval Office stretch far beyond the former president’s recent remarks that he would order a criminal investigation into his political rival, President Biden, signaling his intent to end the post-Watergate norm of Justice Department independence from White House political control.

Mr. Trump and his associates have a broader goal: to alter the balance of power by increasing the president’s authority over every part of the federal government that now operates, by either law or tradition, with any measure of independence from political interference by the White House, according to a review of his campaign policy proposals and interviews with people close to him.

Mr. Trump intends to bring independent agencies — like the Federal Communications Commission, which makes and enforces rules for television and internet companies, and the Federal Trade Commission, which enforces various antitrust and other consumer protection rules against businesses — under direct presidential control.

He wants to revive the practice of “impounding” funds, refusing to spend money Congress has appropriated for programs a president doesn’t like — a tactic that lawmakers banned under President Richard Nixon.

He intends to strip employment protections from tens of thousands of career civil servants, making it easier to replace them if they are deemed obstacles to his agenda. And he plans to scour the intelligence agencies, the State Department and the defense bureaucracies to remove officials he has vilified as “the sick political class that hates our country.”

Mr. Trump standing on a balcony at the White House, with two American flags on either side of him.
Mr. Trump and his advisers are openly discussing their plans to reshape the federal government if he wins the election in 2024.Credit…Anna Moneymaker for The New York Times

“The president’s plan should be to fundamentally reorient the federal government in a way that hasn’t been done since F.D.R.’s New Deal,” said John McEntee, a former White House personnel chief who began Mr. Trump’s systematic attempt to sweep out officials deemed to be disloyal in 2020 and who is now involved in mapping out the new approach.

“Our current executive branch,” Mr. McEntee added, “was conceived of by liberals for the purpose of promulgating liberal policies. There is no way to make the existing structure function in a conservative manner. It’s not enough to get the personnel right. What’s necessary is a complete system overhaul.”

Mr. Trump and his advisers are making no secret of their intentions — proclaiming them in rallies and on his campaign website, describing them in white papers and openly discussing them.

“What we’re trying to do is identify the pockets of independence and seize them,” said Russell T. Vought, who ran the Office of Management and Budget in the Trump White House and now runs a policy organization, the Center for Renewing America.

The strategy in talking openly about such “paradigm-shifting ideas” before the election, Mr. Vought said, is to “plant a flag” — both to shift the debate and to later be able to claim a mandate. He said he was delighted to see few of Mr. Trump’s Republican primary rivals defend the norm of Justice Department independence after the former president openly attacked it.

Steven Cheung, a spokesman for Mr. Trump’s campaign, said in a statement that the former president has “laid out a bold and transparent agenda for his second term, something no other candidate has done.” He added, “Voters will know exactly how President Trump will supercharge the economy, bring down inflation, secure the border, protect communities and eradicate the deep state that works against Americans once and for all.”

Mr. Trump sitting inside his plane at a table strewn with papers, speaking and gesturing to someone out of frame.
The agenda being pursued by Mr. Trump and his associates has deep roots in a longstanding effort by conservative legal thinkers to undercut the so-called administrative state.Credit…Doug Mills/The New York Times

The two driving forces of this effort to reshape the executive branch are Mr. Trump’s own campaign policy shop and a well-funded network of conservative groups, many of which are populated by former senior Trump administration officials who would most likely play key roles in any second term.

Mr. Vought and Mr. McEntee are involved in Project 2025, a $22 million presidential transition operation that is preparing policies, personnel lists and transition plans to recommend to any Republican who may win the 2024 election. The transition project, the scale of which is unprecedented in conservative politics, is led by the Heritage Foundation, a think tank that has shaped the personnel and policies of Republican administrations since the Reagan presidency.

That work at Heritage dovetails with plans on the Trump campaign website to expand presidential power that were drafted primarily by two of Mr. Trump’s advisers, Vincent Haley and Ross Worthington, with input from other advisers, including Stephen Miller, the architect of the former president’s hard-line immigration agenda.

Some elements of the plans had been floated when Mr. Trump was in office but were impeded by internal concerns that they would be unworkable and could lead to setbacks. And for some veterans of Mr. Trump’s turbulent White House who came to question his fitness for leadership, the prospect of removing guardrails and centralizing even greater power over government directly in his hands sounded like a recipe for mayhem.

“It would be chaotic,” said John F. Kelly, Mr. Trump’s second White House chief of staff. “It just simply would be chaotic, because he’d continually be trying to exceed his authority but the sycophants would go along with it. It would be a nonstop gunfight with the Congress and the courts.”

The agenda being pursued has deep roots in the decades-long effort by conservative legal thinkers to undercut what has become known as the administrative state — agencies that enact regulations aimed at keeping the air and water clean and food, drugs and consumer products safe, but that cut into business profits.

Its legal underpinning is a maximalist version of the so-called unitary executive theory.

The legal theory rejects the idea that the government is composed of three separate branches with overlapping powers to check and balance each other. Instead, the theory’s adherents argue that Article 2 of the Constitution gives the president complete control of the executive branch, so Congress cannot empower agency heads to make decisions or restrict the president’s ability to fire them. Reagan administration lawyers developed the theory as they sought to advance a deregulatory agenda.

Mr. Trump walks between rows of American flags on a red-carpet-style walkway leading from his plane.
Mr. Trump and his allies have been laying out an expansive vision of power for a potential second term.Credit…Christopher Lee for The New York Times

“The notion of independent federal agencies or federal employees who don’t answer to the president violates the very foundation of our democratic republic,” said Kevin D. Roberts, the president of the Heritage Foundation, adding that the contributors to Project 2025 are committed to “dismantling this rogue administrative state.”

Personal power has always been a driving force for Mr. Trump. He often gestures toward it in a more simplistic manner, such as in 2019, when he declared to a cheering crowd, “I have an Article 2, where I have the right to do whatever I want as president.”

Mr. Trump made the remark in reference to his claimed ability to directly fire Robert S. Mueller III, the special counsel in the Russia inquiry, which primed his hostility toward law enforcement and intelligence agencies. He also tried to get a subordinate to have Mr. Mueller ousted, but was defied.

Early in Mr. Trump’s presidency, his chief strategist, Stephen K. Bannon, promised a “deconstruction of the administrative state.” But Mr. Trump installed people in other key roles who ended up telling him that more radical ideas were unworkable or illegal. In the final year of his presidency, he told aides he was fed up with being constrained by subordinates.

Now, Mr. Trump is laying out a far more expansive vision of power in any second term. And, in contrast with his disorganized transition after his surprise 2016 victory, he now benefits from a well-funded policymaking infrastructure, led by former officials who did not break with him after his attempts to overturn the 2020 election and the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol.

One idea the people around Mr. Trump have developed centers on bringing independent agencies under his thumb.

Congress created these specialized technocratic agencies inside the executive branch and delegated to them some of its power to make rules for society. But it did so on the condition that it was not simply handing off that power to presidents to wield like kings — putting commissioners atop them whom presidents appoint but generally cannot fire before their terms end, while using its control of their budgets to keep them partly accountable to lawmakers as well. (Agency actions are also subject to court review.)

Presidents of both parties have chafed at the agencies’ independence. President Franklin D. Roosevelt, whose New Deal created many of them, endorsed a proposal in 1937 to fold them all into cabinet departments under his control, but Congress did not enact it.

Later presidents sought to impose greater control over nonindependent agencies Congress created, like the Environmental Protection Agency, which is run by an administrator whom a president can remove at will. For example, President Ronald Reagan issued executive orders requiring nonindependent agencies to submit proposed regulations to the White House for review. But overall, presidents have largely left the independent agencies alone.

Mr. Trump’s allies are preparing to change that, drafting an executive order requiring independent agencies to submit actions to the White House for review. Mr. Trump endorsed the idea on his campaign website, vowing to bring them “under presidential authority.”

Such an order was drafted in Mr. Trump’s first term — and blessed by the Justice Department — but never issued amid internal concerns. Some of the concerns were over how to carry out reviews for agencies that are headed by multiple commissioners and subject to administrative procedures and open-meetings laws, as well as over how the market would react if the order chipped away at the Federal Reserve’s independence, people familiar with the matter said.

Mr. Trump, largely in shadow, giving a thumbs-up.
The former president views the civil service as a den of “deep staters” who were trying to thwart him at every turn in the White House.Credit…John Tully for The New York Times

The Federal Reserve was ultimately exempted in the draft executive order, but Mr. Trump did not sign it before his presidency ended. If Mr. Trump and his allies get another shot at power, the independence of the Federal Reserve — an institution Mr. Trump publicly railed at as president — could be up for debate. Notably, the Trump campaign website’s discussion of bringing independent agencies under presidential control is silent on whether that includes the Fed.

Asked whether presidents should be able to order interest rates lowered before elections, even if experts think that would hurt the long-term health of the economy, Mr. Vought said that would have to be worked out with Congress. But “at the bare minimum,” he said, the Federal Reserve’s regulatory functions should be subject to White House review.

“It’s very hard to square the Fed’s independence with the Constitution,” Mr. Vought said.

Other former Trump administration officials involved in the planning said there would also probably be a legal challenge to the limits on a president’s power to fire heads of independent agencies. Mr. Trump could remove an agency head, teeing up the question for the Supreme Court.

The Supreme Court in 1935 and 1988 upheld the power of Congress to shield some executive branch officials from being fired without cause. But after justices appointed by Republicans since Reagan took control, it has started to erode those precedents.

Peter L. Strauss, professor emeritus of law at Columbia University and a critic of the strong version of the unitary executive theory, argued that it is constitutional and desirable for Congress, in creating and empowering an agency to perform some task, to also include some checks on the president’s control over officials “because we don’t want autocracy” and to prevent abuses.

“The regrettable fact is that the judiciary at the moment seems inclined to recognize that the president does have this kind of authority,” he said. “They are clawing away agency independence in ways that I find quite unfortunate and disrespectful of congressional choice.”

Mr. Trump has also vowed to impound funds, or refuse to spend money appropriated by Congress. After Nixon used the practice to aggressively block agency spending he was opposed to, on water pollution control, housing construction and other issues, Congress banned the tactic.

On his campaign website, Mr. Trump declared that presidents have a constitutional right to impound funds and said he would restore the practice — though he acknowledged it could result in a legal battle.

Mr. Trump and his allies also want to transform the civil service — government employees who are supposed to be nonpartisan professionals and experts with protections against being fired for political reasons.

The former president views the civil service as a den of “deep staters” who were trying to thwart him at every turn, including by raising legal or pragmatic objections to his immigration policies, among many other examples. Toward the end of his term, his aides drafted an executive order, “Creating Schedule F in the Excepted Service,” that removed employment protections from career officials whose jobs were deemed linked to policymaking.

Mr. Trump signed the order, which became known as Schedule F, near the end of his presidency, but President Biden rescinded it. Mr. Trump has vowed to immediately reinstitute it in a second term.

Critics say he could use it for a partisan purge. But James Sherk, a former Trump administration official who came up with the idea and now works at the America First Policy Institute — a think tank stocked heavily with former Trump officials — argued it would only be used against poor performers and people who actively impeded the elected president’s agenda.

“Schedule F expressly forbids hiring or firing based on political loyalty,” Mr. Sherk said. “Schedule F employees would keep their jobs if they served effectively and impartially.”

Mr. Trump himself has characterized his intentions rather differently — promising on his campaign website to “find and remove the radicals who have infiltrated the federal Department of Education” and listing a litany of targets at a rally last month.

“We will demolish the deep state,” Mr. Trump said at the rally in Michigan. “We will expel the warmongers from our government. We will drive out the globalists. We will cast out the communists, Marxists and fascists. And we will throw off the sick political class that hates our country.”

Jonathan Swan is a political reporter who focuses on campaigns and Congress. As a reporter for Axios, he won an Emmy Award for his 2020 interview of then-President Donald J. Trump, and the White House Correspondents’ Association’s Aldo Beckman Award for “overall excellence in White House coverage” in 2022. More about Jonathan Swan

Charlie Savage is a Washington-based national security and legal policy correspondent. A recipient of the Pulitzer Prize, he previously worked at The Boston Globe and The Miami Herald. His most recent book is “Power Wars: The Relentless Rise of Presidential Authority and Secrecy.” More about Charlie Savage

Maggie Haberman is a senior political correspondent and the author of “Confidence Man: The Making of Donald Trump and the Breaking of America.” She was part of a team that won a Pulitzer Prize in 2018 for reporting on President Trump’s advisers and their connections to Russia. More about Maggie Haberman

A version of this article appears in print on July 17, 2023, Section A, Page 1 of the New York edition with the headline: Trump and Allies Seeking Vast Increase of His Power.

5 stats show how Russia’s economy is withering

Business Insider

5 stats show how Russia’s economy is withering

Phil Rosen – July 16, 2023

Vladimir Putin
Russian President Vladimir Putin gives a speech during the Victory Day military parade at Red Square in central Moscow on May 9, 2023.GAVRIIL GRIGOROV/SPUTNIK/AFP via Getty Images
  • Russia’s economy has deteriorated since Vladimir Putin ordered the invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
  • Its current-account balance has crashed, the ruble is weakening, and it’s status as an energy superpower has crumbled.
  • At the same time, Russia’s domestic consumption and production are low.

Russia’s economy is a shadow of what it was 16 months ago.

Before Vladimir Putin ordered the invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 and prior to the onset of historic sanctions, Moscow commanded the world’s 11th largest economy and played a key role as a reliable, wide-reaching energy exporter.

Now however, from a weakening currency to tepid trade, all signs point to a sharp deterioration with no end in sight.

“Russia might collapse into multiple pieces, like the Soviet Union, and that might not be a bad thing for the world,” Volodymyr Lugovskyy, an economics professor at Indiana University, told Insider this week. “It’s resembling an empire right now, with a central power. Extreme events are highly possible.”

These five statistics illustrate how war has reshaped the Russian economy for the worse.

A weakening ruble

The ruble has been one of the worst-performing currencies this year, and geopolitical uncertainty in Russia has made it volatile.

During the failed mutiny in June by the Wagner Group, the currency tumbled to a 15-month low against the dollar as panicked citizens swapped for alternative currencies.

Over the last month, the ruble has weakened more than 6.8%, and it’s down more than 35% in the last year.

Current-account balance drops 93%

For the April to June quarter, the country posted a current-account surplus of $5.4 billion, marking a 93% plunge from a record $76.7 billion during the same stretch last year, according to the Russian central bank.

The fading current account surplus shows that Moscow has been unable to secure imports, and that its profits from energy exports are failing to prop up the economy like they did before.

Yale russia economy
Weakening Russian trade surplus illustrates inability to secure imports, and diminishing profits from windfall energy exports.Yale Chief Executive Leadership Institute

“The decline in the surplus of the balance of the external trade in goods in January – June 2023 compared to the comparable period of 2022 was caused by a decrease in both the physical volumes of export deliveries and the deterioration in the price situation for the basic Russian export commodities, energy commodities made the most significant contribution to the decline in the value of exports,” the Bank of Russia said in a statement.

Energy revenue crash

Russia’s Finance Ministry said in June that revenue from oil and gas taxes dropped 36% compared to a year ago, while profits from crude and petroleum products fell 31%.

Before the war, Russia was responsible for almost 40% of the European Union’s natural gas imports, and a quarter of the bloc’s crude oil.

Those numbers have gone to almost zero since then, and even though Putin has turned to China and India as alternative buyers, Moscow has had to sell energy at steep discounts.

Yale Russia economy energy
Russia’s energy exports now go mostly to China and India.Yale Chief Executive Leadership Institute
Russian car sales have tumbled

Before the invasion of Ukraine, roughly 100,000 vehicles were sold every single month across Russia, according to Yale research data shared with Insider.

Those sales have collapsed to about a quarter of that level, driven not only by soaring prices and sinking consumer sentiment, but also due to a lack of supply.

Yale collapse in russian economy car sales
Russia has seen a total collapse in car sales over the last year and a half.Yale Chief Executive Leadership Institute
Brain drain and emigration

Millions of Russians have emigrated since the start of the war in Ukraine, according to Yale data, with Uzbekistan alone taking in more than 400,000 fleeing citizens.

The flight of capital and talent out of Russia is illustrated in the surge of money transfers to neighboring countries that aren’t normally seen as financial hubs, according to Yale, such as Armenia, Georgia, and Kyrgyzstan.

“While there is no concrete measure of how much capital flight has taken place, proxy measures, such as the explosion of non-resident deposits in UAE bank accounts, suggests that Russians of means are taking their productive capital out of Russia at a dramatic clip,” Yale researcher Jeffrey Sonnenfeld said.

Jack the Ripper’s identity ‘revealed’ by newly discovered medical records

The Telegraph

Jack the Ripper’s identity ‘revealed’ by newly discovered medical records

Dalya Alberge – July 15, 2023

Hyam Hyams
Hyam Hyams, photographed at Colney Hatch Lunatic Asylum in 1899, has been named as a key suspect in the Jack the Ripper murders – London Metropolitan Archives

A former police volunteer claims to have discovered the identity of the figure behind some of the most shocking crimes in British history, unmasking the 19th-century murderer who terrorised the nation as Jack the Ripper.

Sarah Bax Horton – whose great-great-grandfather was a policeman at the heart of the Ripper investigation – has unearthed compelling evidence that matches witness descriptions of the man seen with female victims shortly before they were stabbed to death in 1888 in the East End of London.

Her detective work has led her to Hyam Hyams, who lived in an area at the centre of the murders and who, as a cigar-maker, knew how to use a knife. He was an epileptic and an alcoholic who was in and out of mental asylums, his condition worsening after he was injured in an accident and unable to work. He repeatedly assaulted his wife, paranoid that she was cheating on him, and was eventually arrested after he attacked her and his mother with “a chopper”.

Significantly, Ms Bax Horton gained access to his medical records and discovered dramatic details. She told The Telegraph: “For the first time in history, Jack the Ripper can be identified as Hyam Hyams using distinctive physical characteristics.”

Sarah Bax Horton
Sarah Bax Horton has researched medical records in her quest to find Jack the Ripper – HENRY HARRISON

Witnesses described a man in his mid-thirties with a stiff arm and an irregular gait with bent knees, and Ms Bax Horton discovered that the medical notes of Hyams – who was 35 in 1888 – recorded an injury that left him unable to “bend or extend” his left arm as well as an irregular gait and an inability to straighten his knees, with asymmetric foot dragging. He also had the most severe form of epilepsy, with regular seizures.

The victims were prostitutes or destitute. Their throats were cut and their bodies butchered in frenzied attacks with the authorities received taunting anonymous notes from someone calling himself Jack the Ripper. They are some of the most infamous unsolved crimes.

At least six women Martha Tabram, Polly Nichols, Annie Chapman, Elisabeth Stride, Kate Eddowes and Mary Jane Kelly – were killed in or near Whitechapel between August and November 1888.

Hyams’ medical notes, taken from various infirmaries and asylums, reveal that his mental and physical decline coincided with the Ripper’s killing period, escalating between his breaking his left arm in February 1888 and his permanent committal in September 1889.

“That escalation path matched the increasing violence of the murders,” said Ms Bax Horton. “He was particularly violent after his severe epileptic fits, which explains the periodicity of the murders.”

She added: “In the files, it said what the eyewitnesses said – that he had a peculiar gait. He was weak at the knees and wasn’t fully extending his legs. When he walked, he had a kind of shuffling gait, which was probably a side-effect of some brain damage as a result of his epilepsy.”

An 1888 Illustrated Police News front page reports on the murders
An 1888 Illustrated Police News front page reports on the murders – alamy

Witness accounts of the man’s height and weight were similar to the details in Hyams’ medical files, Ms Bax Horton discovered.

“They saw a man of medium height and build, between 5ft 5in. and 5ft 8in. Tall, stout and broad-shouldered. Hyams was 5 foot 7 and a half inches, and weighed 10 stone 7 lbs… His photograph demonstrates that he was noticeably broad-shouldered,” she said.

She has concluded that Hyams’ physical and mental decline – exacerbated by his alcoholism – triggered him to kill. The murders stopped at the end of 1888, around the time Hyams was picked up by the police as “a wandering lunatic”. In 1889, he was incarcerated in the Colney Hatch Lunatic Asylum, north London, until his death in 1913. Jack the Ripper never struck again.

Various suspects have previously been suggested as the man behind the killings, including the artist Walter Sickert, who painted gruesome pictures of a murdered prostitute.

Hyams had been on a “long list” of around 100 culprits, but Ms Bax Horton said he had been discounted because he had been misidentified. “When I was trying to identify the correct Hyam Hyams, I found about five. It took quite a lot of work to identify his correct biographical data. Hyam Hyams has never before been fully explored as a Ripper suspect. To protect the confidentiality of living individuals, two of the Colney Hatch Asylum files on patients, including Hyams, were closed to public view until 2013 and 2015.”

What makes her research particularly extraordinary is that it was prompted by her chance discovery in 2017 that her own great-great-grandfather, Harry Garrett, had been a Metropolitan Police sergeant at Leman Street Police Station, headquarters of the Ripper investigation. He was posted there from January 1888 – the murders’ fateful year – until 1896.

Sergeant Harry Garrett, who worked on theJack the Ripper case
Sergeant Harry Garrett, who worked on theJack the Ripper case

Ms Bax Horton, who read English and modern languages at Oxford University, is a retired civil servant who volunteered with the City of London Police for almost two decades until 2020. She had no idea of her ancestor’s history until she began researching her family and found herself studying the Ripper case.

She will now present her extensive evidence in a forthcoming book, titled One-Armed Jack: Uncovering the Real Jack the Ripper, to be published by Michael O’Mara Books next month.

It is written in tribute to her ancestor and his police colleagues.

Paul Begg, a leading Ripper authority, has endorsed it. “This is a well-researched, well-written, and long-needed book-length examination of a likely suspect. If you have an idea of the sort of man Jack the Ripper might have been, Hyam Hyams could be it,” he said.

More Clarence Thomas allegations stain the court: Lawyers with supreme court business paid Clarence Thomas aide via Venmo

The Guardian

Lawyers with supreme court business paid Clarence Thomas aide via Venmo

Stephanie Kirchgaessner in Washington – July 12, 2023

<span>Photograph: Joshua Roberts/Reuters</span>
Photograph: Joshua Roberts/Reuters

Several lawyers who have had business before the supreme court, including one who successfully argued to end race-conscious admissions at universities, paid money to a top aide to Justice Clarence Thomas, according to the aide’s Venmo transactions. The payments appear to have been made in connection to Thomas’s 2019 Christmas party.

The payments to Rajan Vasisht, who served as Thomas’s aide from July 2019 to July 2021, seem to underscore the close ties between Thomas, who is embroiled in ethics scandals following a series of revelations about his relationship with a wealthy billionaire donor, and certain senior Washington lawyers who argue cases and have other business in front of the justice.

Vasisht’s Venmo account – which was public prior to requesting comment for this article and is no longer – show that he received seven payments in November and December 2019 from lawyers who previously served as Thomas legal clerks. The amount of the payments is not disclosed, but the purpose of each payment is listed as either “Christmas party”, “Thomas Christmas Party”, “CT Christmas Party” or “CT Xmas party”, in an apparent reference to the justice’s initials.

However, it remains unclear what the funds were for.

The lawyers who made the Venmo transactions were: Patrick Strawbridge, a partner at Consovoy McCarthy who recently successfully argued that affirmative action violated the US constitution; Kate Todd, who served as White House deputy counsel under Donald Trump at the time of the payment and is now a managing party of Ellis George Cipollone’s law office; Elbert Lin, the former solicitor general of West Virginia who played a key role in a supreme court case that limited the Environmental Protection Agency’s ability to regulate greenhouse gas emissions; and Brian Schmalzbach, a partner at McGuire Woods who has argued multiple cases before the supreme court.

Other lawyers who made payments include Manuel Valle, a graduate of Hillsdale College and the University of Chicago Law School who clerked for Thomas last year and is currently working as a managing associate at Sidley, and Liam Hardy, who was working at the Department of Justice’s office of legal counsel at the time the payment was made and now serves as an appeals court judge for the armed forces.

Will Consovoy, who died earlier this year, also made a payment. Consovoy clerked for Thomas during the 2008-09 term and was considered a rising star in conservative legal circles. After his death, the New York Times reported that Consovoy had come away from his time working for Thomas “with the conviction that the court was poised to tilt further to the right – and that constitutional rulings that had once been considered out of reach by conservatives, on issues like voting rights, abortion and affirmative action, would suddenly be within grasp”.

None of the lawyers who made payments responded to emailed questions from the Guardian.

According to his résumé, Vasisht’s duties included assisting the justice with the administrative functioning of his chambers, including personal correspondence and his personal and office schedule.

Vasisht did not respond to an emailed list of questions from the Guardian, including questions about who solicited the payments, how much individuals paid, and what the purpose of the payments was. The Guardian also asked questions about the nature of Thomas’s Christmas party, how many guests were invited and where the event took place.

Reached via WhatsApp and asked if he would make a statement, Vasisht replied: “No thank you, I do not want to be contacted.”

Legal experts said the payments to Vasisht raised red flags.

Richard Painter, who served as the chief White House ethics lawyer in the George W Bush administration and has been a vocal critic of the role of dark money in politics, said it was “not appropriate” for former Thomas law clerks who were established in private practice to – in effect – send money to the supreme court via Venmo.

“There is no excuse for it. Thomas could invite them to his Christmas party and he could attend Christmas parties, as long as they are not discussing any cases. His Christmas party should not be paid for by lawyers,” Painter said. “A federal government employee collecting money from lawyers for any reason … I don’t see how that works.”

Painter said he would possibly make an exception if recent law clerks were paying their own way for a party. But almost all of the lawyers who made the payments are senior litigators at big law firms.

Kedric Payne, the general counsel and senior director of ethics at the Campaign Legal Center, said that – based on available information – it was possible that the former clerks were paying their own party expenses, and not expenses for Thomas, which he believed was different than random lawyers in effect paying admission to an exclusive event to influence the judge.

He added: “But the point remains that the public is owed an explanation so they don’t have to speculate.”

Thomas has been embroiled in ethics scandals for weeks following bombshell revelations by ProPublica, the investigative outlet which published new revelations about how the billionaire conservative donor Harlan Crow has paid for lavish holidays for the justice, bought Thomas’s mother’s home, and paid for the judge’s great-nephew’s private school education. The stories have prompted an outcry on Capitol Hill, where Democrats have called for the passage of new ethics rules.

Thomas is known for having close relationships with his former clerks. A 2019 article in the Atlantic noted that the rightwing justice has a “vast network” of former clerks and mentees who are now serving as federal judges and served in senior positions throughout the Trump administration. The large presence of former Thomas clerks, the Atlantic noted, meant that the “notoriously silent justice may end up with an outsize voice in the legal system for years to come”.

Thomas’s chamber did not respond to a request for comment.

Got a tip on this story? Please contact Stephanie.Kirchgaessner@theguardian.com

Russian Military Hit by Uncertainty as One General Is Killed and Another Remains Absent

The New York Times

Russian Military Hit by Uncertainty as One General Is Killed and Another Remains Absent

Paul Sonne – July 12, 2023

Russian President Vladimir Putin and Gen. Sergei Surovikin. (Reuters)

One top commander has disappeared since a mutiny. Another was killed in an airstrike in Ukraine. Another accused his leadership of treachery after being fired. And a fourth former commander was gunned down while out on a jog in what may have been an organized hit.

The ranks of the Russian military have continued to be roiled by instability in the days since a short-lived insurrection by Wagner mercenaries three weeks ago, as pressures from Moscow’s nearly 17-month war reverberate across the armed forces.

On Wednesday, mystery deepened over the fate of Gen. Sergei Surovikin, the country’s former top commander in Ukraine, who has been dubbed “General Armageddon” for his ruthless tactics, and who has not been seen since the Wagner rebellion.

One of the country’s top lawmakers said, when pressed by a reporter, that the general was “taking a rest.”

“He is unavailable right now,” the lawmaker, Andrei Kartapolov, the head of the Russian Duma’s defense committee, added in a video posted on the Telegram messaging app before hurrying away from the reporter.

Surovikin was considered to be an ally of Yevgeny Prigozhin, the leader of the Wagner mercenary company, whose forces mounted the brief insurrection in late June aimed at toppling Russia’s military leadership before standing down in a deal with the Kremlin.

The New York Times reported that U.S. officials believe Surovikin had advance knowledge of the mutiny but do not know whether he participated. In the hours after the rebellion began, Russian authorities quickly released a video of the general calling on the Wagner fighters to stand down.

The lawmaker’s enigmatic comment about Surovikin came two days after Russian authorities released the first footage of the country’s top military officer, Gen. Valery Gerasimov, since the insurrection.

In the video, Gerasimov was receiving a report from the Russian Aerospace Forces, which are run by Surovikin. But the person giving the update in the footage was Surovikin’s deputy, Col. Gen. Viktor Afzalov.

Surovikin’s location is just one of the many mysteries that have arisen since the mutiny. Despite a deal announced by the Kremlin, under which Prigozhin would depart Russia for Belarus and avoid prosecution, the mercenary tycoon appears to have remained in Russia.

The Kremlin disclosed this week that Prigozhin and his top commanders met with President Vladimir Putin five days after the mutiny, raising many questions about what sort of deal had been struck with the former insurrectionists. On Wednesday, the Ministry of Defense said that Russian armed forces had been collecting Wagner’s weapons, ammunition, and military equipment.

The matériel is expected to be restored for further use. So far, the mercenary group has handed over thousands of small arms and heavy weapons, the ministry said, including rocket launch and mortar systems, anti-tank guns and multipurpose armored tractors.

Russia, meanwhile, received another blow to its top military ranks. Lt. Gen. Oleg Tsokov, the deputy commander of Russia’s Southern Military District, was killed in Ukraine during a Monday night missile strike on the occupied city of Berdiansk, one of the highest-level losses for Russia during the course of the war, Ukrainian authorities announced.

A Russian lawmaker and retired general, Andrei Gurulyov, confirmed Tsokov’s death in an appearance on state television Wednesday, saying he “died heroically.” The death recalled the early days of the war, when Ukrainian officials said they had killed about 12 generals on the front lines.

Gurulyov also released a recording late Wednesday of the commander of Russia’s 58th Combined Arms Army, Maj. Gen. Ivan Popov, explaining to his troops why he was relieved from commanding the unit, which is fighting on the front in Ukraine near Zaporizhzhia.

Popov described a “difficult situation with the senior leadership,” which led to him being relieved after he brought up problems on the battlefield, including the lack of counter battery fire and artillery reconnaissance stations, as well as deaths and injuries the force is suffering from enemy artillery fire.

Popov appeared to take aim at Gerasimov without naming him, saying that while Ukrainian forces couldn’t break through his army unit from the front, “our senior commander hit us from the rear, treacherously and vilely decapitating” the army unit “at the most difficult and tense moment.”

Russian authorities also arrested a Ukrainian man Wednesday on suspicion of gunning down a former Russian submarine commander, Capt. 2nd Rank Stanislav Rzhitsky, this week in the southern city of Krasnodar, where he had been serving as the deputy director of the city’s mobilization office.

Russian news outlets reported that Rzhitsky, who posted his running routes publicly on the exercise service Strava, was shot to death while jogging in a Krasnodar park.

On Tuesday, the day after the body was found, Ukrainian military intelligence said on its official Telegram account that Rzhitsky had commanded a submarine that was involved in missile attacks on Ukraine. Friends and relatives, however, told Russian news outlets that he had left active-duty military service before the February 2022 invasion.

The state news agency RIA Novosti, citing an anonymous source in Russian law enforcement, reported that the man arrested Wednesday had admitted under questioning to being recruited by Ukrainian intelligence to carry out the killing.

Rzhitsky’s name had been entered in the online database Myrotvorets, which posts photographs, social media accounts and telephone numbers of people considered to have committed crimes against Ukraine.

A red stamp was added over his photograph on the database reading, “Liquidated.”

Sad Day for Golf and for Sports Integrity: Golf in shock at Saudi plan to hand Tiger Woods and Rory McIlroy LIV teams

The Telegraph

Golf in shock at Saudi plan to hand Tiger Woods and Rory McIlroy LIV teams

James Corrigan – July 11, 2023

Tiger Woods and Rory McIlroy at the 2023 Masters
During one phase of the peace proposals Tiger Woods and Rory McIlroy were to be offered ownership of LIV teams – Christian Petersen/Getty Images

Plans to hand Rory McIlroy and Tiger Woods their own LIV Golf franchises have been revealed as part of the initial discussions in the merger between the PGA and DP World Tours and the Saudi sovereign wealth fund.

In surreal scenes on Capitol Hill on Tuesday – that featured representatives of 9/11 victim groups sat behind PGA Tour executives as they were grilled in a Senate hearing – it also emerged that the Tour asked for Greg Norman to be sacked as LIV Golf chief executive after the framework agreement was completed.

As well as this ouster, there were bizarre proposals from the Public Investment Fund for Yasir Al-Rumayyan – the PIF governor who is chairman of Newcastle United as well as LIV – to be granted membership of Augusta National and the R&A.

It must be stressed that these were all merely suggestions proffered in the build-up to last month’s hastily-announced alliance that shook the sport to its core following two years of bitter infighting between the revel circuit and the traditional powers.

PGA Tour chief operating officer Ron Price, left, and PGA Tour board member Jimmy Dunne are sworn in
The PGA Tour’s Ron Price and Jimmy Dunne were sworn in before the Senate committee – AP Photo/Patrick Semansky

The PGA Tour told Telegraph Sport that it summarily rejected the McIlroy-Woods idea and refused to assist in Al-Rumayyan joining perhaps the two most august clubs in the game.

Yet at the very least the 276-page trove of documents released by the Senate sub-committee on Tuesday, highlight the extraordinary levels of horse-trading that could take place as the parties attempt to reach a solution that unifies the game and, just as pertinently, satisfies each of the two sides in terms of finance and power.

The proposals from Amanda Staveley – the English financier who oversaw PIF’s purchase of Newcastle – inevitably command the headlines, despite PGA Tour executive Jimmy Dunne’s admission to the politicians that “if LIV takes five players a year for five years, they can gut us”. Goodness knows what McIlroy and Woods will make of Staveley’s “Best of both worlds” presentation which was made in the first phase of the peace talks in late April.

It featured several bullet points, the first of which stated that Woods and McIlroy should have their own LIV teams and play “in at least 10 LIV events’’. Even if he agreed, the chances of Woods playing in that many LIV tournaments after a car crash two years ago that almost saw him lose his right leg are negligible to the point of being impossible.

It will be interesting to see if Woods was told anything about being named in the early negotiations, because a few weeks ago, he claims to have been completely in the dark about intentions that came to light of the Tour having him railing against LIV to his fellow pros in the midst of the civil war.

The same applies to McIlroy. The Northern Irishman was the most vocal opponent of LIV and expressed his anger at being used as “a sacrificial lamb” by the Tour after Sawgrass HQ’s remarkable about-turn. He was in a dark mood after discovering – at the same time as everyone else – about the amalgamation and reiterated that he still detested the breakaway league.

“I still hate LIV – hate it,” he said.  “I hope it goes away”. McIlroy refused to play in Saudi Arabia when it became a venue on the DP World Tour, citing concerns about “the source” and although his attitude has since softened – “if they are going to invest money in golf it is better than it is on the PGA Tour” – it must be highly doubtful that, after he has said, that he would ever play under the LIv brand. Norman or no Norman.

The Australian’s future at the LIV helm was under speculation months before the merger was unveiled, with both McIlroy and Woods insisting that he had to leave the role before peace could break out.

It was known that Jay Monahan, the PGA Tour commissioner, wanted him out after so many criticisms and his desire is laid bare in emails between him and his negotiators. In a side letter to the agreement, the firing of Norman was billed as a necessity, although the PGA Tour revealed on Tuesday that it was never signed. Norman remains in the job. For now.

Whether he can trust his paymasters, however, is a moot point, regardless of  the chairman’s attendance at both the LIV events in the Costa del Sol and in Hertfordshire over the last two weeks. At Valderrama and the Centurion Club, Al-Rumayyan assured LIV players and staff that the league will continue, despite the fact the framework agreement states that Monahan will have the right to terminate the circuit if an agreement is finalised.

In the event of an ultimate deal, Staveley is seemingly determined to make sure that as well as being chairman of the new company, Al-Rumayyan is also installed as the president of the International Golf Federation and is welcomed as a member at Augusta and the Royal and Ancient. This proposal was also in her presentation, though she actually asked for him to be a member of the R&A, which is not a club.

An R&A insider revealed “this is the first we’ve heard of this”. On another jaw-dropping day in the LIV saga, uncertainty still reigns supreme.

Andrey Rublev: I do not deserve support of Wimbledon crowd because I am Russian

The Telegraph

Andrey Rublev: I do not deserve support of Wimbledon crowd because I am Russian

Molly McElwee – July 11, 2023

Andrey Rublev - Andrey Rublev: I do not deserve support of Wimbledon crowd because I am Russian
Andrey Rublev was cheered on by the Centre Court crowd against Novak Djokovic – Shutterstock/Tolga Akmen

Andrey Rublev admitted he felt like he “does not deserve” the support of the Wimbledon crowd, due to being Russian.

Rublev, 25, missed last year’s tournament along with his compatriots and all Belarusian players, due to Wimbledon imposing a ban in response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Upon his return this year he reached the quarter-finals, and on Tuesday had the Centre Court crowd on their feet on more than one occasion as they tried to will him on against Novak Djokovic. 

After bowing out in four sets, Rublev said he felt “grateful” that the British public had got behind him, especially considering where he is from.

”I felt really great support during all these two weeks. Today, as well. To be from the country where I am, to have this support, it’s special. I don’t know, I feel sometimes I don’t deserve it or something like that. To have it, I don’t know… I don’t know what you need to do to have this support. I’m really grateful for this.”

Ever since the war broke out, Rublev has been a leading Russian voice in opposition to the conflict. In fact, the night before the invasion began in February 2022, he made headlines around the world for writing “no war please” on a camera lens after his match in Dubai.

Asked whether he felt guilty to hail from Russia, Rublev said he did not: “No. I don’t know what to say. I made so many statements. I think my opinion is very clear, so it’s not guilty. It’s more just the situation is terrible. Of course, you don’t wish this on anyone. You want these terrible things to be able to finish as fast as possible for all the people in the world just to have a chance to have a good life.”

Andrey Rublev
Rublev played some brilliant tennis on his way to the last-eight – AFP/Daniel Leal

Rublev’s comments followed a weekend of high tensions at Wimbledon, where the war in Ukraine played a central role.

On Sunday Belarus’s Victoria Azarenka was booed off court after losing to Ukraine’s Elina Svitolina, the crowd seemingly unaware that it was Svitolina who had opted out of their handshake.

While other players from last year’s banned list have had unpleasant moments with the crowd, Rublev only had good feedback.

On the eve of Wimbledon, he told Telegraph Sport that he was glad the tournament was giving extra support to Ukrainian players competing here and also said he had received support from fans ahead of arriving at the Championships.

”Being here this year, I felt grateful,” Rublev said on Tuesday. “I’m happy that I was able to have a really, really good two weeks of my tennis. I’m happy that I was able, I think for the first time, to give my best in a quarter-final so far compared to all the other quarters that I have been in. This one I feel proud of myself for the first time.”

A dip in the ocean this summer? No thanks.

The Washington Post

A dip in the ocean this summer? No thanks.

Maura Judkis – July 11, 2023

WANTAGH, NEW YORK – JULY 07: A new shark-monitoring drone monitors the waters for sharks as people swim at Jones Beach State Park on July 07, 2023 in Wantagh, New York. Governor Kathy Hochul announced that local beach communities on Long Island and New York City will receive shark-monitoring drones as the state addresses beachgoer safety in response to shark sightings over the 4th of July holiday and reports of people being bitten by sharks at some of New York’s most popular beaches. (Photo by Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images) (Michael M. Santiago via Getty Images)More

Try not to think about the ocean. Because if you’re the type of person prone to listless anxiety, a simple question – What’s a submersible? Where do orcas live? – might take you to a deep, dark place. A place like the Hadal Zone, named for the Greek god of hell, where there is absolutely no light and the only creatures that can survive the crushing pressure are characterized by their transparent, gooey skin. Or maybe a place in the Gulf of Mexico called the “Hot Tub of Despair,” an underwater lake full of methane that kills any organism that enters it. Or perhaps a remote part of the Pacific Ocean that has earned the nickname “White Shark Cafe.”

We are having a “Jaws” Girl Summer. It’s giving Moby-Dick Energy. We’re in our Ancient Mariner Era. Is the ocean more terrifying than usual this year, or are we suddenly just more aware of how terrifying the ocean can be?

Here’s an illustrative roundup of recent horrors. Orcas have trained one another to attack boats off the coast of Spain and Portugal. Over the July Fourth holiday, four people were bitten by sharks on New York beaches, and approximately 200 people needed to be rescued from rip currents in Virginia and North Carolina. A man on a fishing trip to a Freeport, Tex., beach last month arrived to discover that tens of thousands of dead fish had washed ashore. Homes in the Outer Banks are toppling into the waves.

Don’t forget the beach where severed human feet wash ashore on a regular basis in a northwest Washington county that recently announced that it is crowdfunding an investigation to identify a recent set of remains. Or the awful video of the teen who jumped off the party boat in the Bahamas in May, only to be swallowed up by the inky black water, and never seen again. Or the fact that Japan is planning to release more than 1 million cubic meters of treated radioactive water – approximately 500 Olympic-size swimming pools, an amount that is considered “safe” – from the 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster into the Pacific this summer.

Then there was the OceanGate catastrophe, which made millions of people ponder the specifics of an excruciating death: Trapped at the bottom of the ocean in a claustrophobic metal coffin-like tube, in a dark blacker than any night, with 96 hours of oxygen left to contemplate the unlikelihood of rescue and your imminent suffocation. What actually happened was no less horrific, but somehow seemed kinder: being crushed to death in milliseconds by as much as 6,000 pounds of pressure per square inch.

In the ocean, that’s a good way to go.

That’s what Alexandria Neonakis realized during the days she spent transfixed by the submersible crisis.

“At every step, every fact that you learned about it” – The video game controllers! The strange knocking noises! The fact that it was bolted shut from the outside! – “was so much worse, and it kept getting worse,” says the 38-year-old artist. “Social media just enabled that to go even crazier, because it takes your imagination and it amplifies it, because everybody’s thinking insane things,” such as: Did one of the rich men on the submersible kill another one of the rich men to conserve oxygen?

The speculation became “a feeding frenzy,” she says. Which is yet another terrifying thing you find in the ocean.

Space is also a terrifying void, but “that’s pretty far. I don’t have to worry about that,” Neonakis says. She does not have a quarter of a million dollars to spend on space tourism, so she won’t end up on a rocket anytime soon. And, yes, that’s the same price the now-defunct OceanGate charged people for a trip down to the wreckage of the Titanic, but unlike space, you can get swept away by the ocean for free. “It’s like, right there,” Neonakis says. Near Los Angeles. Where she lives.

The term for fear of the ocean is thalassophobia. Myths about deep-sea monsters can be found in ancient cultures from all across the globe. “The lack of adoration, desire for interaction, or simply fear itself, towards the deep sea is not irrational but rather primal,” wrote a team of marine researchers in a 2021 paper examining why the public seems to not care about deep-sea exploration as much as space exploration. We associate “up” with heaven, and “down” with hell.

And the fear of the unknown, combined with the vastness of a seemingly infinite horizon and improbability of rescue, makes great horror fodder, which is why the ocean has been the setting for so many scary movies. Most are fiction, such as “The Meg” and “The Shallows,” but some, such as 2003’s “Open Water,” about a couple mistakenly left to die during a scuba expedition, are based on true stories. As “Jaws” taught us, you don’t have to be out in the deep ocean to encounter its frights: Just last week, a dorsal fin popped up at Navarre Beach near Pensacola, Fla., prompting a chaotic scramble amid screams of, “Get out of the water!” Jellyfish wrap their tentacles around an ankle. Stingrays slink around the shallows. Something you can’t see just brushed past your thigh.

Mark Fryers, a British researcher who studies media representations of marine culture, says he wouldn’t be surprised if we eventually get a movie based on the ill-fated submersible.

“The sea is something of a castigating mirror: It reflects back our bad deeds,” Fryers says. “We know we’re creating, as a species, more damage in the ocean. It comes back to haunt us. It all washes back to us. There’s a pervasive sense of death and decline and self-examination.”

The problem, too, is that we focus on the unlikely catastrophes and ignore the more commonplace ones: A coast guard that allows a boat full of migrants to capsize. An ocean that is rapidly warming. Microplastics. Instead, we think about the sharp fangs of the anglerfish, or the tentacles of a colossal squid, or the spindly six-foot-long (!) legs of the Japanese spider crab. Those glow-in-the-dark fish with a bajillion fangs. Something called a goblin shark. Even the most delicious creatures in the ocean can be kind of gross, when you think about it: As a popular meme reminds us, shrimps is bugs.

Even if those creatures don’t give you anxiety, there is one that might: the great white shark.

We may have been hearing more about sharks lately – Cape Cod has become “one of the largest white shark hotspots in the world,” according to Scientific American – but it’s been a pretty typical year so far, says Gavin Naylor, director of the Florida Program for Shark Research at the University of Florida.

“We’ve had a similar number of bites thus far this year as we did at this stage last year,” Naylor tells us via email. “Every year people seem to think ‘This year is different.’ I guess they must forget how they felt this time last year.”

It’s related to a phenomenon researchers call “sea blindness,” which sounds like something that afflicted pirates and castaways, but is actually contemporary: It refers to how oceanic issues “tend to disappear from our consciousness, our daily life,” Fryers says, until an event or flash point brings them abruptly back. Like the submersible.

“Every horrifying story about the ocean is so f—ing horrifying. It’s not like it’s a little horrifying. It’s like, ‘Wow, that’s the worst thing I’ve ever heard,'” Neonakis says. Better to just brave the myriad horrors on dry land.

Dirty Socks and Rotting Bodies: What Russians Left Behind in the Trenches

THe New York Times

Dirty Socks and Rotting Bodies: What Russians Left Behind in the Trenches

Andrew E. Kramer – July 11, 2023

Ukrainian soldiers making their way through Novodarivka, a village formerly occupied by Russian forces. (NYT)

NOVODARIVKA, Ukraine — A bottle of syrup made from Siberian berries, legions of dirty socks and a military-issued tea bag stamped with “For Victory!”

For Ukrainian soldiers, one advantage of achieving at least creeping advances in the now month-old counteroffensive in southern Ukraine is appropriating ready-made fortifications from the retreating Russians, who in months of preparations dug deep, well-protected trenches.

For the Ukrainians, eerily enough, it also means living and fighting in positions long held by the Russians — with a huge sprawl of military debris and personal items of Russian soldiers scattered about.

“It’s not very pleasant,” said Pvt. Maksim, a soldier with Ukraine’s 36th Marine Brigade, who has collected a number of curiosities, including what he thinks was a talisman: several bullets covered in sparkles and attached to a key ring.

“It’s our land but it’s not very comfortable to be here,” said the private, who like the other soldiers gave only his first name and rank for security reasons. “It doesn’t feel like home.”

In early June, Ukrainian troops, including thousands of soldiers trained and equipped by the United States and other Western allies, began a counteroffensive aimed at driving a wedge through Russian-occupied southern Ukraine. Lying in wait were thousands of Russian troops stationed in miles of trenches and other fortifications amid tank traps and thousands upon thousands of mines.

The Ukrainian forces are attacking in at least three locations on the Russian defensive front. At their farthest point of advance, they have pushed south to form a bulge about 5 miles into the defensive lines.

Ukrainian commanders want to reach the Sea of Azov, about 55 miles away across open plains that offer little cover. If they succeed, they will divide the Russian occupied south into two zones, cutting the land bridge from Russia to the occupied Crimean Peninsula and greatly compromising Russia’s ability to resupply its forces farther west.

As they have advanced, the Ukrainians have seized Russian trench lines, bunkers and firing positions in abandoned buildings, but under continual artillery bombardment they have had little time to clear the refuse and abandoned clothing, body armor, ponchos, bedding and leftover military rations of their enemy.

Take, for example, the village of Novodarivka, on the plains of the Zaporizhzhia region in southern Ukraine, south of the city of Orikhiv. A month after soldiers with Ukraine’s 110th Territorial Defense Brigade and other units reclaimed it, the village is still littered with the detritus of the occupying forces.

In the baking sun on a recent day, the village appeared deserted, with the occasional military vehicle rumbling along the single dirt road between destroyed, abandoned houses, kicking up dust.

Amid the boom of artillery shelling, Ukrainian soldiers hunkered down in the captured Russian trenches. On the village’s main road lay an incinerated Russian tank; in a field nearby, two blown-up American-provided mine-resistant vehicles called MaxxPros.

One grim task has been retrieving the remains of Ukrainian soldiers who died defending the village in the first months of the war as the Russian forces were advancing rapidly.

Seven bodies had been lying in the vicinity since April 2022, said one of the soldiers, Lt. Volodymyr.

The Ukrainians had occasionally flown drones over the village while it was occupied, to make sure the Russians had not moved the bodies. On Wednesday, they finally had the chance to retrieve them. “They were just skeletons” that would have to be identified by their DNA, Volodymyr said.

As for the Russian dead, he added, the Ukrainians retrieved those that could be removed without risk and are covering others in heaps of dirt, to try to control the foul odor. Nevertheless, an awful stench wafted about the trenches, and swarms of flies buzzed everywhere.

In an abandoned house, Russian soldiers had scraped into the plaster walls the names of their hometowns or regions: Vladikavkaz, a city in southern Russia, and Primorye, a region on the Pacific coast, near Japan.

Maksim, interviewed in the trenches, had collected a small pile of curiosities left behind, including the cowberry syrup made in Yakutia, a region in northern Siberia. Gesturing to the “For Victory!” brand of Russian tea, he said of its former Russian owner, “he didn’t have time to drink it.”

Speaking of the back-and-forth nature of the fighting, Maksim said, “We push them back, they push us back, we push them, they push us, and so on,” adding: “They had a lot of time to dig.”

Soldiers said in interviews that the slow progress was to be expected, given the minefields, trenches and open countryside.

The 110th Territorial Defense Brigade, in contrast to the newly trained and equipped units deployed specifically for the counteroffensive, has been fighting in southern Ukraine for more than a year.

One soldier with the 110th, who identified himself as Sgt. Igor, said his unit has been crawling forward to the relative safety of tree lines between fields to assault Russian trenches, moving in small bursts of a few dozen or hundred yards at a time. Such slow advances were preferable to all-out assaults, he said.

“We need to creep forward bit by bit, with infantry, and break them in this way,” Igor said. “Crawl forward, fight them, then dig in again.”

Time must pass, he said, for the advancing Ukrainian soldiers trained by Kyiv’s Western allies to become skilled at fighting in the open farmland.

Soldiers deployed in the area develop a finely tuned ear for the whistles and booms of outgoing and incoming artillery, he said, adding, “You hear it and should understand in a second whether to fall down or not.”

Soldiers must steel themselves to maneuver in the trenches and fire their guns at enemy troops approaching in an assault, even if bullets are zipping overhead, he said.

“Training abroad is not the same as real combat,” he said. “They are gaining combat experience now,” he added, and as they do, the pace of the advance could pick up. American officials have said the Ukrainian commanders are reassessing tactics after the offensive’s slow start and soldiers’ harrowing forays into minefields.

Green recruits are demoralized when fellow soldiers are wounded or killed, Igor said. “Their morale is affected quickly,” he said.

“The soldiers will learn,” he added. “It’s complicated. And yes, it’s going slowly. But importantly, it’s going.”

Republican’s hold on nominations leaves Marines without confirmed leader for 1st time in 100 years

Associated Press

Republican’s hold on nominations leaves Marines without confirmed leader for 1st time in 100 years

Lolita C. Baldor – July 10, 2023

Acting Commandant of the U.S. Marine Corps Gen. Eric Smith speaks during a relinquishment of office ceremony for U.S. Marine Corps Gen. David Berger on Monday, July 10, 2023, at the Marine Barracks in Washington. Smith has been nominated to be the next leader, but will serve in an acting capacity because he hasn't been confirmed by the Senate. Berger's term as Commandant of the U.S. Marine Corps expired Monday. (AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta)
Acting Commandant of the U.S. Marine Corps Gen. Eric Smith speaks during a relinquishment of office ceremony for U.S. Marine Corps Gen. David Berger on Monday, July 10, 2023, at the Marine Barracks in Washington. Smith has been nominated to be the next leader, but will serve in an acting capacity because he hasn’t been confirmed by the Senate. Berger’s term as Commandant of the U.S. Marine Corps expired Monday. (AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta)
ASSOCIATED PRESS
U.S. Marine Corps Gen. David Berger, left, whose term as Commandant of the U.S. Marine Corps expires Monday, holds the battle colors during a relinquishment of office ceremony, Monday, July 10, 2023, at the Marine Barracks in Washington. Assistant Commandant Gen. Eric Smith, right, has been nominated to be the next leader, but will serve in an acting capacity because he hasn't been confirmed by the Senate. (AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta)
U.S. Marine Corps Gen. David Berger, left, whose term as Commandant of the U.S. Marine Corps expires Monday, holds the battle colors during a relinquishment of office ceremony, Monday, July 10, 2023, at the Marine Barracks in Washington. Assistant Commandant Gen. Eric Smith, right, has been nominated to be the next leader, but will serve in an acting capacity because he hasn’t been confirmed by the Senate. (AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta)
ASSOCIATED PRESS

WASHINGTON (AP) — The U.S. Marine Corps is without a confirmed leader for the first time in a century as Gen. David Berger stepped down as commandant on Monday and a Republican senator is blocking approval of his successor.

Berger took over as the 38th commandant in July 2019, and is required to leave the job after four years. Gen. Eric Smith, currently the assistant commandant, has been nominated to be the next leader, but will serve in an acting capacity because he hasn’t been confirmed by the Senate.

Under the law, Smith can serve as the acting commandant, but he can do nothing that would presume confirmation. As a result, he can’t move into the main residence or the commandant’s office, or issue any new formal commandant’s planning guidance, which is traditional for a new leader. He has the authority to implement new policies such as budget, training and other personnel decisions.

Smith’s promotion delay is the first of what could be many top level military officers held up by Sen. Tommy Tuberville, R-Ala. Tuberville has stalled all nominations for senior military jobs because he disagrees with Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin’s decision to have the Defense Department pay for travel when a service member has to go out of state to get an abortion or other reproductive care. Abortion is now illegal in Alabama.

Speaking at a ceremony at the Marine Barracks Washington, just down the street from Capitol Hill, Austin and Berger called on the Senate to take action.

“We need the Senate to do their job so that we can have a sitting commandant that’s appointed and confirmed. We need that house to be occupied,” said Berger, with a nod to the commandant’s quarters at the edge of the parade field.

Austin and other Pentagon officials have pressed the Senate to move forward, saying that delays are already impacting more than 200 military officers, and many key leaders.

“You know, it’s been more than a century since the U.S. Marine Corps has operated without a Senate confirmed commandant,” Austin said during the ceremony.

Because of Berger’s requirement to step down in July, the Marine job is the first of the military chiefs to be affected by Tuberville. The Army, Navy and Air Force are all expected to face the same delay later this year, as could the nomination of the next chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

The current chairman, Army Gen. Mark Milley, leaves his job at the end of September. Gen. CQ Brown, the current chief of the Air Force, has been nominated to replace Milley, and is scheduled to go before the Senate Armed Services Committee for his hearing on Tuesday.

The hold, however, is also impacting scores of one, two and three-star officers who are assigned to new commands but can’t move on. It also affects their families, who usually relocate over the summer to their new military communities so school-age children can settle in before fall.

“Smooth and timely transitions of confirmed leadership are central to the defense of the United States and to the full strength of the most powerful fighting force in history,” said Austin. “Stable and orderly leadership transitions are also vital to maintaining our unmatched network of allies and partners. And they’re crucial for our military readiness.”

Smith hit the thorny issue head on during his remarks at the ceremony Monday — saying he wanted to get one thing out fast.

“If you’re saying, ‘what am I supposed to call you?’ ACMC. That is my title, and one that I’m proud of,” said Smith, using the shorthand for his assistant commandant role. But he quickly added, “to make sure that there is no confusion — all orders, directives and guidance, which were in effect this morning remain in effect, unless I direct otherwise. Further guidance to the force will follow.”

Sabrina Singh, a Pentagon spokeswoman, said Monday that as of last Friday, there were 265 senior officers whose promotions have been held up by Tuberville, and that number could leap to 650 by the end of the year if the issue isn’t corrected. She noted that in more than 100 cases, officers — like Smith — would be forced to do two jobs at the same time because no one can move up.

She said the Pentagon is asking officers to delay planned retirements and stay on, while in other cases officers are doing more senior ranking jobs without getting the pay for that new rank.

Later in the day, Jack Reed, D-R.I., chairman of the Senate committee, spoke on the Senate floor, asking that Smith be confirmed and criticizing Tuberville for what he called an unprecedented hold that is driving the U.S. military “to a potential breaking point.

“In General Smith we have a Purple Heart recipient — this man has literally shed his blood for his country,” said Reed, who attended the Marine ceremony. “He stands ready to continue his service to our nation and the Marines he will lead for four more years. He simply awaits our action.”

Tuberville, however, blocked a vote and in a Senate floor speech said the holds would have “minimal effect” on Smith’s ability to lead.

“There may be a delay in his planning guidance, and yet he cannot move into the commandant’s residence, but there is little doubt about General Smith’s ability to lead effectively,” said Tuberville.

The last time the Corps was led by an acting commandant was in 1910. Then-Maj. Gen. George Elliott, who was the commandant, reached the required retirement age in November 1910 and left the office. Col. William Biddle served as the acting commandant until he was promoted to major general and became commandant in February 1911.

Berger, a native of Woodbine, Maryland, graduated from Tulane University and was commissioned in 1981. He commanded at every level including tours in Iraq and Afghanistan.

During his tenure, he spearheaded a broad campaign to transform the Marine Corps to better be able to fight amphibious wars in the Pacific after years of battling terrorist groups in the Middle East. The plan was lauded by many in the Pentagon and Congress as a critical way for the Marines to prepare for a potential conflict with China.

Smith, a career infantry officer, is a highly decorated Marine who served multiple tours in Afghanistan and Iraq, including time in Fallujah and Ramadi during heavy combat in 2004 and 2005 in Operation Iraq Freedom. He later was the senior military adviser to Defense Secretary Ash Carter.

Associated Press writer Mary Clare Jalonick contributed to this report.