October 10, 2022

Afternoon Update:

Marc Caputo of NBC News: "Christina Bobb, the attorney who signed a letter certifying that all sensitive records in ... Donald Trump's possession had been returned to the government, spoke to federal investigators Friday..., according to three sources familiar with the matter. The certification statement, signed June 3 by Bobb, indicated that Trump ... no longer had possession of a host of documents with classification markings at his Mar-a-Lago club in Florida, according to the three sources.... Bobb, who was Trump's custodian of record at the time, did not draft the statement.... Instead, Trump's lead lawyer in the case at the time, Evan Corcoran, drafted it and told her to sign it, Bobb told investigators.... Bobb also spoke to investigators about Trump legal adviser Boris Epshteyn, who she said did not help draft the statement but was minimally involved in discussions about the records.... Before Bobb signed the document, she insisted [twice that] it be rewritten with a disclaimer that said she was certifying Trump had no more records 'based upon the information that has been provided to me.'..." ~~~

They should give me immediately back everything that they've taken from me, because it's mine. I';s mine.... Likewise, under the Presidential Record Act, everything should come back.... [The Archives] lose documents, they plant documents. "Let's see, is there a book on nuclear destruction or the building of a nuclear weapon cheaply? Let's put that book in with Trump." No, they plant documents. -- Donald Trump, in a speech Sunday

IOW, a confession/proof of intent. -- Marie Burns, not a lawyer ~~~

~~~ Aaron Blake of the Washington Post: "Donald Trump's latest riff on his decision to keep government documents at his residence at Mar-a-Lago is chock full of ridiculousness and false equivalency to a degree remarkable even by his standards. Appearing at a rally in Arizona on Sunday, Trump repeatedly compared his retention of presidential records to the actions of his predecessors. Except most of the examples he cited involved those presidents setting up presidential libraries. (And his other arguments were almost complete non sequiturs.) He cited Barack Obama, George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton having their presidential records moved to warehouses as their libraries were being built. But that's how the process works. And even if there were evidence that the records were handled improperly during those moves -- which there isn't -- they were in the custody of the National Archives...." Blake runs down some of Trump's assertions. MB: Hard to tell if he's crazy, lying or both. I'd guess both.

Sara Murray & Zachary Cohen of CNN: "An Atlanta-area prosecutor investigating Donald Trump and his allies' efforts to overturn the 2020 election has secured cooperation from former Trump White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson, sources familiar with the matter tell CNN.... Prosecutors have called for [Hutchinson's former boss, Chief of Staff Mark] Meadows to testify before the special grand jury, but they are still working to secure his testimony."

California. Shawn Hubler & Jill Cowan of the New York Times: "The president of the Los Angeles City Council stepped down from her powerful leadership role on Monday after a leaked audio recording revealed racist and disparaging remarks that she had made about the Black child of a white council member, and about Indigenous immigrants in the city's Koreatown neighborhood." This is an update of a story linked earlier today.

Pennsylvania. Katie Glueck of of the New York Times: "Four years after the massacre at a Pittsburgh synagogue..., Doug Mastriano, the Republican nominee for governor of Pennsylvania, has rattled a diverse swath of the state's Jewish community.... The race between Mr. Mastriano, a state senator, and his Democratic opponent, Attorney General Josh Shapiro -- a Jewish day school alum ... -- has also centered to an extraordinary degree on Mr. Shapiro's religion. Mr. Mastriano, who promotes Christian power and disdains the separation of church and state, has repeatedly lashed Mr. Shapiro for attending and sending his children to what Mr. Mastriano calls a 'privileged, exclusive, elite' school, suggesting to one audience that it evinced Mr. Shapiro's 'disdain for people like us.'... Mr. Mastriano has also spread the lie that George Soros, a Holocaust survivor and liberal billionaire often vilified on the right, was a Nazi collaborator. And Mr. Mastriano has baselessly accused Mr. Shapiro of holding a 'real grudge' against the Roman Catholic Church." ~~~

     ~~~ Marie: Of course I can't speak to Mastriano's personal opinions, but I can speak from personal experience that the type of remarks he is willing to make in public may only hint of the deep animus "people like him" holds toward Jews. I grew up in the midst of this type of prejudice, and it was widespread -- and incomprehensible to me. I imagine there are communities where this is still true.

Ukraine, et al. Emily Rauhala, et al., of the Washington Post: “The string of strikes against Ukrainian cities and key infrastructure on Monday galvanized long-standing calls from the government to its allies for more sophisticated air defense systems and longer-range weapons. The Russian attacks appeared to signal a significant escalation, raising pressure on the United States and other European countries that have been slow to provide Ukrainian forces with the most advanced weapons systems. While a chorus of U.S. and European leaders condemned the attacks and declared their continued support for Ukraine, it was not clear that they would accelerate or expand their deliveries."

~~~~~~~~~~

Donald Trump Thinks Racism Is a Joke. Jonathan Capehart of the Washington Post: "... two weeks ago at a rally in North Carolina for Rep. Ted Budd, the MAGA Republican candidate for U.S. Senate..., [Donald] Trump bellowed, 'You know Putin mentioned the n-word. Do you know what the n-word is?' Plenty of people shouted the answer they thought Trump was looking for -- because there is only one answer. Hardly surprised by the response to his purposefully provocative question, Trump jumped in and said, 'No, no, no, it's the "nuclear" word.' Doug Jones, the former Alabama senator who successfully prosecuted two of the Klansmen who bombed Birmingham's 16th Street Baptist Church in 1963, called out Trump's tip of the hood to white supremacists for what it was. 'Folks, no one uses the term "n-word" when talking about nuclear weapons. That term refers to only one thing & Trump used it for a MAGA candidate running for the Senate,' Jones tweeted. 'This is the kind of white nationalist, dog whistle rhetoric that has no place in America.'"

Jennifer Solis of the Nevada Current: "In [a] speech [in rural Nevada] riddled with inaccuracies..., [Donald] Trump said, 'You know the biggest crowd I've ever seen? January 6. And you never hear that.'" (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ~~~

     ~~~ Marie: (1) The January 6 crowd was not the biggest he'd ever seen. (2) No one in his right mind would boast about the size of a crowd of insurrectionists. ~~~

~~~ Sen./Mr. Potato Head Goes Full Racist. Sarah Swetlik of AL.com: "U.S. Sen. Tommy Tuberville on Saturday said Democrats are in favor of 'reparations' because they are 'pro-crime.' Tuberville, R-Ala., made the comments while at a rally held by ... Donald Trump in Nevada. 'They want reparations because they think the people who do the crime are owed that,' Tuberville said as the crowd cheered behind him. 'Bullshit!' he added.... Reparations typically refer to 'financial recompense for African-Americans whose ancestors were slaves and lived through the Jim Crow era,' according to the NAACP." Thanks to Akhilleus for the lead. (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ~~~

~~~ BUT what do Trump's Black friends say? Here's one now. ~~~

~~~ Hannah Getahun of Insider, republiced by Yahoo! News: "Rapper Kanye West faced more accusations of antisemitism on Saturday after posting a rant about Jewish people. In a tweet now removed by Twitter for violating its guidelines, the rapper and fashion designer said he was 'going death con 3 on JEWISH PEOPLE.' West defended himself by saying he could not be antisemitic because 'black people are actually Jew [sic].'... West returned to Twitter -- from which he had been on hiatus since Nov. 4, 2020 -- after his Instagram account was restricted amid a week of tirades on the platform. Instagram confirmed to Insider it had restricted West's account.... After photos and videos surfaced of West on Monday wearing a hoodie with the words "White Lives Matter," prominent Republicans like Candace Owens, former congressional candidate Lavern Spicer, and the GOP House Judiciary Committee came to his defense. West, a friend of ... Donald Trump, pulled the stunt as a part of his YZYSZN9 show at Paris Fashion Week. Critics pointed out that the phrase on West's hoodie is tied to white supremacist movements." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ~~~

     ~~~ Update. Stuart Thompson of the New York Times: "In a statement, a spokeswoman for Twitter said Ye's [i.e., Kanye West's] account was locked for violating Twitter's policies. A spokeswoman for Meta said it places restrictions on [Instagram] accounts that repeatedly break its rules." MB: Oh, and for those of you who just can't keep up, it's not Kanye West anymore; it's "Ye, the rapper formerly known as Kanye West." Okay then. Maybe I'll change my name to the last two letters of my first name, i.e., "Ie," pronounced "Aiyee!"

Teddy Amenabar of the Washington Post consults experts on how to debunk your friends' and families' false claims. For some reason, they seem to advise against telling Uncle Fred at Thanksgiving dinner that he's a certifiable lunatic. Yeah, but especially if you say it calmly, with your best smug, know-it-all expression, that's so satisfying.

Beyond the Beltway

California. Shawn Hubler & Jill Cowan of the New York Times: "The president of the Los Angeles City Council faced widespread calls to resign on Sunday after a leaked audio recording revealed racist and disparaging remarks about the Black child of a white council member and also about Indigenous immigrants in the city's Koreatown neighborhood. The comments, made during a meeting last year with two other council members and a labor official, exposed longstanding racial tensions in the governance of one of the nation's most multicultural cities as well as fault lines among the city's Democrats. In the profanity-laced recording, a copy of which was obtained by The New York Times and which was first reported by The Los Angeles Times, the City Council president, Nury Martinez, who is Latina, compared the Black child of a white council member to a 'changuito,' Spanish for little monkey. She also called Oaxacan immigrants living in Koreatown 'short little dark people.'... The recording ... included Gil Cedillo and Kevin de León, council members representing parts of the city's East Side, and Ron Herrera, president of the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor."

New York. Michelle Price of the AP: "New York congressman and Republican candidate for governor Lee Zeldin says his family is safe after two strangers were shot outside his Long Island home on Sunday. Zeldin said in a statement that he does not know the identities of the two people who were shot but that they were found under his porch and in the bushes in front of his home in Shirley, New York. The congressman and his wife were not at home at the time of the shooting but their teenage daughters were in the home and heard gunshots and screaming, he said in the statement released by his office.... The Suffolk County Police Department issued a brief statement saying it was investigating the shooting, which appeared to have no connection to Zeldin's family."

Way Beyond

Ukraine, et al.

The New York Times' live updates of developments Monday in Russia's war on Ukraine are here. The Guardian's live updates are here. The Guardian's summary report is here. ~~~

     ~~~ The Washington Post's live briefings for Monday are here: "Russian President Vladimir Putin boasted of a 'massive strike' across Ukraine at a meeting of his Security Council on Monday. Accusing Ukraine's special services of carrying out an attack on the Crimean Bridge, Putin warned of 'harsh' reprisal: 'Its scale will correspond to the level of threats.' The torrent of attacks -- including in the hear of Kyiv, the first major strikes there in months -- on energy facilities and civilian targets spurred Ukrainian officials to call for a 'resolute response' from allies. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky tweeted Monday that he had an urgent call with French President Emmanuel Macron to discuss 'air defense, the need for a tough European and international reaction, as well as increased pressure on the Russian Federation.' Ukraine's prime minister said 11 infrastructure facilities in eight regions and the city of Kyiv were damaged, warning of interruptions to electricity, water and communication -- in addition to attacks on a children's playground, museums and educational institutions. Attacks were reported in key areas including Kharkiv in the northeast, Lviv in the west, and Zaporizhzhia and Dnipro in the center.... Belarusian leader Alexander Lukashenko announced that he and Putin agreed to 'deploy a joint regional grouping of troops' in response to the 'aggravated situation' in Ukraine. It's not immediately clear where this grouping would be based."

North Korea. Hyung-Jin Kim of the AP: "North Korea's recent barrage of missile launches were the simulated use of its tactical battlefield nuclear weapons to 'hit and wipe out' potential South Korean and U.S. targets, state media reported Monday, as its leader Kim Jong Un signaled he would conduct more provocative tests." ~~~

News Ledes

AP: "Former U.S. Federal Reserve Chair Ben Bernanke, who put his academic expertise on the Great Depression to work reviving the American economy after the 2007-2008 financial crisis, won the Nobel Prize in economic sciences along with two other U.S.-based economists for their research into the fallout from bank failures. Bernanke was recognized Monday along with Douglas W. Diamond and Philip H. Dybvig. The Nobel panel at the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in Stockholm said the trio's research had shown 'why avoiding bank collapses is vital.'"

New York Times: "Heavy rains and landslides have left at least 22 people dead and 52 missing in a single town in north-central Venezuela, officials said Sunday. The authorities believe that an unknown number of other people in the town, Las Tejerías, remain trapped in their homes by the mud. The Venezuelan armed forces planned to deploy canines and drones to find the missing residents and to deliver food and medicine, one top military officer, Remigio Ceballos, said at the news conference in Las Tejerías, about 40 miles southwest of the capital, Caracas."

Variety: "Nikki Finke, a tenacious journalist who revolutionized entertainment reporting with what became the Hollywood trade website Deadline, died Sunday morning in Boca Raton, Fla. after a prolonged illness. She was 68." ~~~

     ~~~ Update. Finke's New York Times obituary is here.

October 9, 2022

Afternoon Update:

Jennifer Solis of the Nevada Current: "In [a] speech [in rural Nevada] riddled with inaccuracies..., [Donald] Trump said, 'You know the biggest crowd I've ever seen? January 6. And you never hear that.'" ~~~

     ~~~ Marie: (1) The January 6 crowd was not the biggest he'd ever seen. (2) No one in his right mind would boast about the size of a crowd of insurrectionists. ~~~

~~~ Sen./Mr. Potato Head Goes Full Racist. Sarah Swetlik of AL.com: "U.S. Sen. Tommy Tuberville on Saturday said Democrats are in favor of 'reparations' because they are 'pro-crime.' Tuberville, R-Ala., made the comments while at a rally held by ... Donald Trump in Nevada. 'They want reparations because they think the people who do the crime are owed that,' Tuberville said as the crowd cheered behind him. 'Bullshit!' he added.... Reparations typically refer to 'financial recompense for African-Americans whose ancestors were slaves and lived through the Jim Crow era,' according to the NAACP." Thanks to Akhilleus for the lead. ~~~

~~~ BUT what do Trump's Black friends say? Here's one now. ~~~

~~~ Hannah Getahun of Insider, republished by Yahoo! News: "Rapper Kanye West faced more accusations of antisemitism on Saturday after posting a rant about Jewish people. In a tweet now removed by Twitter for violating its guidelines, the rapper and fashion designer said he was 'going death con 3 on JEWISH PEOPLE.' West defended himself by saying he could not be antisemitic because 'black people are actually Jew [sic].'... West returned to Twitter -- from which he had been on hiatus since Nov. 4, 2020 -- after his Instagram account was restricted amid a week of tirades on the platform. Instagram confirmed to Insider it had restricted West's account.... After photos and videos surfaced of West on Monday wearing a hoodie with the words "White Lives Matter," prominent Republicans like Candace Owens, former congressional candidate Lavern Spicer, and the GOP House Judiciary Committee came to his defense. West, a friend of ... Donald Trump, pulled the stunt as a part of his YZYSZN9 show at Paris Fashion Week. Critics pointed out that the phrase on West's hoodie is tied to white supremacist movements."

~~~~~~~~~~~

Maggie Haberman & Michael Schmidt of the New York Times: Donald "Trump spent a year and a half deflecting, delaying and sometimes leading aides to dissemble when it came to demands from the National Archives and ultimately the Justice Department to return the material he had taken, interviews and documents show. That pattern was strikingly similar to how Mr. Trump confronted inquiries into his conduct while in office: entertain or promote outlandish ideas, eschew the advice of lawyers and mislead them, then push lawyers and aides to impede investigators.... In the closing weeks of his presidency, the White House counsel, Pat A. Cipollone, flagged the need for Mr. Trump to return documents that had piled up in boxes in the White House residence, according to archives officials." MB: Mostly a review of what you already know, but entertaining/maddening. (Also linked yesterday.)

Danny Hakim & Richard Fausset of the New York Times: "Witnesses called to testify in a Georgia criminal investigation into ... Donald J. Trump and his allies have not always come willingly. A number of them have fought their subpoenas in their home-state courts, only to have local judges order them to cooperate.... But the state of Texas is proving to be an outlier, creating serious headaches for Fani T. Willis, the Fulton County district attorney, who is leading the investigation into efforts by Mr. Trump and others to overturn his 2020 election loss in Georgia. Last month, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, the state's highest criminal court, thwarted Ms. Willis's effort to force Jacki L. Pick, a Republican lawyer and pundit, to testify in Atlanta, saying that her subpoena had essentially expired. But in a pair of opinions, a majority of the judges on the all-Republican court went further, indicating that they believed the Georgia special grand jury conducting the inquiry may not have the legal standing to compel testimony from Texas witnesses.... It looks to some Georgia observers like a pattern of Texas Republicans meddling with Georgia when it comes to the fate of Mr. Trump." (Also linked yesterday.)

Judge Slaps Down Durham. Charlie Savage & Adam Goldman of the New York Times: "John H. Durham, the Trump-era special counsel, set off political reverberations last year when he unveiled a lengthy indictment of an analyst he accused of lying to the F.B.I. about sources for the so-called Steele dossier, a discredited compendium of political opposition research about purported ties between Donald J. Trump and Russia. But the trial of the analyst, Igor Danchenko, which opens on Tuesday with jury selection in federal court in Alexandria, Va., now appears likely to be shorter and less politically salient than the sprawling narrative in Mr. Durham's indictment had suggested the proceeding would be. In an 18-page order last week, the judge overseeing the case, Anthony J. Trenga of the Eastern District of Virginia, excluded from the trial large amounts of information that Mr. Durham had wanted to showcase -- including material that undercuts the credibility of the dossier's notorious rumor that Russia had a blackmail tape of Mr. Trump with prostitutes.... Judge Trenga, a George W. Bush appointee, almost always sided with Mr. Danchenko's defense lawyers. Mr. Durham, they said, had tried to inject irrelevant issues into the trial in 'an unnecessary and impermissible attempt to make this case about more than it is.'"

Mark Miller of the New York Times: "Social Security will soon announce the largest inflation adjustment to benefits in four decades -- a welcome development for millions of older Americans struggling to keep up with fast-rising living costs. The cost-of-living adjustment for 2023 is likely to be around 8.7 percent, based on the latest government inflation figures. The final COLA, as the adjustment is known, will be released Thursday, when the federal government announces inflation figures for September. Medicare enrollees can anticipate some additional good news: The standard Part B premium, which is typically deducted from Social Security benefits, will decline next year.... The New York Times examined the back story of Social Security's inflation adjustment -- how it works, how it could be revised -- and how it affects pocketbooks."

Reed Abelson & Margot Sanger-Katz of the New York Times: "Medicare Advantage, a private-sector alternative to traditional Medicare, was designed by Congress two decades ago to encourage health insurers to find innovative ways to provide better care at lower cost. If trends hold, by next year, more than half of Medicare recipients will be in a private plan.... But a New York Times review of dozens of fraud lawsuits, inspector general audits and investigations by watchdogs shows how major health insurers exploited the program to inflate their profits by billions of dollars.... The insurers, among the largest and most prosperous American companies, have developed elaborate systems to make their patients appear as sick as possible, often without providing additional treatment, according to the lawsuits. As a result, a program devised to help lower health care spending has instead become substantially more costly than the traditional government program it was meant to improve. Eight of the 10 biggest Medicare Advantage insurers ... have submitted inflated bills, according to the federal audits. And four of the five largest players -- UnitedHealth, Humana, Elevance and Kaiser -- have faced federal lawsuits alleging that efforts to overdiagnose their customers crossed the line into fraud."

Today in Fake Heiress News

Emily Palmer of the New York Times: "Anna Sorokin, who bilked banks and tricked New York's elite into believing she was a German heiress named Anna Delvey, was released from an immigration detention facility in Goshen, N.Y., on Friday and sent back to Manhattan. In May 2019, Ms. Sorokin was sentenced to four to 12 years in prison for financial crimes including grand larceny and stealing a private jet. After serving nearly four years, she spent 18 months behind bars in immigration detention for overstaying her visa, after a judge determined she was unrepentant. (Ms. Sorokin, 31, who was born in what was then the Soviet Union, has German citizenship.)... While in Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention, Ms. Sorokin accrued one million Instagram followers when her exploits were dramatized this year in a series on Netflix about her time, in her mid-20s, as Anna Delvey, the heiress persona she fabricated.” (Also linked yesterday.) ~~~

~~~ Pittsburgh Post-Gazette: "A close associate of a woman who posed as a member of a famous banking family and spent days at ... Donald Trump's Mar-a-Lago home was shot Friday in a brazen attack outside a lakeside resort northwest of Montreal, the Canadian paper LaPresse reported. Quebec provincial police have launched a search for the shooter and other accomplices behind the midday attack on Valeriy Tarasenko, 44, in the upscale community of Esterel, according to LaPresse. Police said he suffered 'significant injuries' but was expected to survive. Mr. Tarasenko was a former business partner of Inna Yashchyshyn, a Russian-speaking Ukrainian immigrant who gained recent notoriety after an investigation by the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette and the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project in August revealed that she masqueraded as a member of the Rothschild family and went to Mar-a-Lago, where she made inroads in the former president's inner circle."(Also linked yesterday.)

~~~ BTW, that part about Mehmet Oz's killing hundreds of dogs & giving a speech in front of a Hitlermobile are true (except, of course, for the joke parts). And, no, that picture of DeSantolini in the cheerleader boots is not Photoshopped. ~~~

November Elections

Maureen Dowd of the New York Times: "Conservatives have sacrificed any claim to principle. In an unholy transaction, they stuck with Trump because there was a Supreme Court seat and they were willing to tolerate his moral void in order to hijack the court. They didn't care how he treated women as long as he gave them the opportunity to rip away rights from women. They wanted to impose their warped morality, a 'Handmaid's Tale' world, on the rest of us.... Now, in Georgia, conservatives are turning a blind eye to sordid stories coming out about Herschel Walker, who demonstrates no qualifications for serving in the Senate. Mitch McConnell and his fellow Republicans should be ashamed to promote this troubled person for their own benefit. Privately, some Republicans are mortified by the Walker spiral, but they're going to brazen it out for the win." (Also linked yesterday.)

The Democrats want to destroy this country, and they will destroy anyone who gets in their way. Today, it's Herschel Walker, but tomorrow it's the American people.... I'm proud to stand with Herschel Walker and make sure Georgians know that he will always fight to protect them from the forces trying to destroy Georgia values. -- Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.), statement to the Washington Post ~~~

~~~ Georgia Senate. Michael Scherer & Annie Linskey of the Washington Post: "National Republican Senatorial Committee Chairman Rick Scott (Fla.) will travel to Georgia on Tuesday to demonstrate support for Herschel Walker, days after news reports in which a former girlfriend accused the Senate candidate of paying for one abortion and urging a second. Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) is also making the trip, as the party continues to treat the Georgia contest as a marquee race that could help determine control of the Senate in 2023.... Walker -- who is running for office on a platform that opposes abortion in all cases, without exceptions for rape or incest -- has denied that he paid for an abortion or knew about it at the time." ~~~

     ~~~ Marie: Walker has supported strict anti-abortion laws with no exceptions. However, it turns out he has carved out one acceptable exception: if you're a Republican candidate for public office.

Beyond the Beltway

New York. Such a Romantic Twist on Nepotism. Susan Edelman of the New York Post: New York City "Schools Chancellor David Banks quietly promoted Mayor [Eric] Adams' girlfriend to a top job at the Department of Education, just months after Adams hired Banks' girlfriend as a deputy mayor, The Post has learned. Banks named Tracey Collins -- Adams' longtime partner and NYC's unofficial First Lady -- the DOE's 'senior advisor to the deputy chancellor of school leadership,' Desmond Blackburn. She started the new job in July, and got a giant, 23% raise to $221,597 a year, records show. Hizzoner named Banks' girlfriend, Sheena Wright, and four other women deputy mayors last Dec. 21. Deputy mayors made $251,982 in FY 21."

New York. Hurubie Meko of the New York Times: "Columbia University and its affiliated hospitals on Friday announced a $165 million settlement with 147 patients of a former gynecologist accused of sexual abuse by dozens of women. Among the people who have accused him of abuse was Evelyn Yang, the wife of the former presidential candidate Andrew Yang. Robert A. Hadden, who according to the hospitals has not worked as a doctor since 2012, pleaded guilty in 2016 to abusing 19 women, but was spared prison time. Now, Mr. Hadden is awaiting trial on federal charges of enticing and inducing women, including a minor, to travel from outside New York State to his Manhattan offices to engage in illegal sex acts." MB: It's amazing how long it takes to catch some of these creeps. Why, it almost makes you think the institutions where they work don't care. (Also linked yesterday.)

Texas. Vimal Patel of the New York Times: "A rookie San Antonio police officer was fired after he shot a teenager who was eating in a McDonald's parking lot, leaving the 17-year-old in critical condition, the authorities said. The San Antonio Police Department said that the former officer, James Brennand, was fired because of his actions during the encounter on Oct. 2. Body camera footage showed him abruptly opening the door of a car the teenager was in and opening fire moments later.... [The Bexar County D.A., Joe] Gonzales said that he had not determined yet whether to file charges against Mr. Brennand, a newly hired officer who was still in a probationary period, and was awaiting 'all the evidence.'"

Way Beyond

Ukraine, et al.

The New York Times' live updates of developments Sunday in Russia's war on Ukraine are here. The Guardian's live updates are here. The Guardian's summary report is here. ~~~

     ~~~ The Washington Post's live briefings for Sunday are here: "Overnight airstrikes on the city of Zaporizhzhia killed at least 12 people and reduced high-rise apartment buildings and homes to rubble, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said Sunday, branding the strikes' absolute evil.'... Ukraine hasn’t taken public credit for the Crimean Bridge explosion, which poses a strategic and symbolic disaster for ... Vladimir Putin, although a Ukrainian official told The Washington Post that the country's special services were behind the attack.... The Kremlin appointed Gen. Sergei Surovikin as the latest top commander in Ukraine, the Defense Ministry announced Saturday, as it grapples with strategic errors and a Ukrainian counteroffensive that has left its forces in disarray.... The International Monetary Fund has approved Ukraine's request for $1.3 billion in additional emergency funding as the war grinds into its eighth month...."

Missy Ryan, et al., of the Washington Post with more on the explosion on the Russia-Crimea bridge: "A giant explosion ripped across the Crimean Bridge, a strategic link between mainland Russia and Crimea, in what appeared to be a stunning blow early Saturday morning to a symbol of President Vladimir Putin's ambitions to control Ukraine.... The Ukrainian government provided no immediate official statement on the cause of the blast. But in a taunt, the government's official Twitter account posted: 'sick burn.' A Ukrainian government official told The Washington Post on Saturday that Ukrainian special services were behind the bridge attack." (Also linked yesterday.) ~~~

     ~~~ Putin's "Off-Ramp" ... Ends in the Waters of the Kerch Strait. Megan Specia of the New York Times: "Within hours of the explosion, several government agencies in Ukraine had posted some sort of meme or joke on social media to celebrate it, to poke fun at Mr. Putin or to hint at who might have been behind it.... Ukraine's postal service quickly came up with a mock stamp depicting the bridge in a scene from the movie 'Titanic.' One Ukrainian bank -- Monobank -- offered a new image for their virtual mobile bank cards that showed the destroyed surface of the Crimean bridge and the burning train. By midday, it had been downloaded more than 300,000 times. Oleksiy Danilov, head of the Ukrainian National Security and Defense Council, posted footage of the destruction alongside a video of Marilyn Monroe singing, 'Happy Birthday, Mr. President,' alluding to Mr. Putin's birthday a day earlier." ~~~

Secretary of the National Security and Defense Council of #Ukraine Oleksiy Danilov published a video of a burning bridge, combining them with Marilyn Monroe singing "Happy Birthday, Mr. President". pic.twitter.com/jRJIeVS5Gt

— NEXTA (@nexta_tv) October 8, 2022

Andrew Higgins of the New York Times:"With the Kremlin distracted by its flagging war more than 1,500 miles away in Ukraine, Russia's dominium over its old Soviet empire shows signs of unraveling. Moscow has lost its aura and its grip, creating a disorderly vacuum that previously obedient former Soviet satraps, as well as China, are moving to fill.... Before President Vladimir V. Putin invaded Ukraine in February, Russia played an outsize role in the affairs of Central Asia and also the volatile Caucasus region, in what had passed for a far-flung Pax Russica.... Moscow's security alliance has long been touted by Mr. Putin as Russia's answer to NATO and an anchor of its role as the dominant (and often domineering) force across vast swaths of the former Soviet Union. But now the bloc is barely functioning. Five of its six members -- Armenia, Belarus, Russia, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan -- have been involved in wars this year, while the sixth, Kazakhstan, has seen violent internal strife."

Marie: Let's say you had set a goal for yourself. You believed it was a worthy goal & achieving it would benefit you but was not essential to your existence. Months or years into working toward that goal, you had miserably failed, and -- what's worse -- your attempts had many negative effects, like say, killing a lot of innocent people. Wouldn't you quit? Well, not if you were Vladimir Putin or most American presidents since Ike. Neither a totalitarian government nor a quasi-democratic one has a structure that incentivizes its leaders to act rationally & in the broader public good.

News Lede

New York Times: "Grace Glueck, a transformative journalist who broke new ground by making the art world a distinct beat at The New York Times, and who then helped bring an important sex-discrimination lawsuit against the paper, her employer of more than 60 years, died on Saturday at her home on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. She was 96."

October 8, 2022

Late Morning Update:

Maureen Dowd of the New York Times: "Conservatives have sacrificed any claim to principle. In an unholy transaction, they stuck with Trump because there was a Supreme Court seat and they were willing to tolerate his moral void in order to hijack the court. They didn't care how he treated women as long as he gave them the opportunity to rip away rights from women. They wanted to impose their warped morality, a 'Handmaid's Tale' world, on the rest of us.... Now, in Georgia, conservatives are turning a blind eye to sordid stories coming out about Herschel Walker, who demonstrates no qualifications for serving in the Senate. Mitch McConnell and his fellow Republicans should be ashamed to promote this troubled person for their own benefit. Privately, some Republicans are mortified by the Walker spiral, but they're going to brazen it out for the win."

Maggie Haberman & Michael Schmidt of the New York Times: Donald "Trump spent a year and a half deflecting, delaying and sometimes leading aides to dissemble when it came to demands from the National Archives and ultimately the Justice Department to return the material he had taken, interviews and documents show. That pattern was strikingly similar to how Mr. Trump confronted inquiries into his conduct while in office: entertain or promote outlandish ideas, eschew the advice of lawyers and mislead them, then push lawyers and aides to impede investigators.... In the closing weeks of his presidency, the White House counsel, Pat A. Cipollone, flagged the need for Mr. Trump to return documents that had piled up in boxes in the White House residence, according to archives officials." MB: Mostly a review of what you already know, but entertaining/maddening.

Danny Hakim & Richard Fausset of the New York Times: "Witnesses called to testify in a Georgia criminal investigation into ... Donald J. Trump and his allies have not always come willingly. A number of them have fought their subpoenas in their home-state courts, only to have local judges order them to cooperate.... But the state of Texas is proving to be an outlier, creating serious headaches for Fani T. Willis, the Fulton County district attorney, who is leading the investigation into efforts by Mr. Trump and others to overturn his 2020 election loss in Georgia. Last month, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, the state's highest criminal court, thwarted Ms. Willis's effort to force Jacki L. Pick, a Republican lawyer and pundit, to testify in Atlanta, saying that her subpoena had essentially expired. But in a pair of opinions, a majority of the judges on the all-Republican court went further, indicating that they believed the Georgia special grand jury conducting the inquiry may not have the legal standing to compel testimony from Texas witnesses.... It looks to some Georgia observers like a pattern of Texas Republicans meddling with Georgia when it comes to the fate of Mr. Trump."

Today in Fake Heiress News

Emily Palmer of the New York Times: "Anna Sorokin, who bilked banks and tricked New York's elite into believing she was a German heiress named Anna Delvey, was released from an immigration detention facility in Goshen, N.Y., on Friday and sent back to Manhattan. In May 2019, Ms. Sorokin was sentenced to four to 12 years in prison for financial crimes including grand larceny and stealing a private jet. After serving nearly four years, she spent 18 months behind bars in immigration detention for overstaying her visa, after a judge determined she was unrepentant. (Ms. Sorokin, 31, who was born in what was then the Soviet Union, has German citizenship.)... While in Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention, Ms. Sorokin accrued one million Instagram followers when her exploits were dramatized this year in a series on Netflix about her time, in her mid-20s, as Anna Delvey, the heiress persona she fabricated." ~~~

~~~ Pittsburgh Post-Gazette: "A close associate of a woman who posed as a member of a famous banking family and spent days at ... Donald Trump's Mar-a-Lago home was shot Friday in a brazen attack outside a lakeside resort northwest of Montreal, the Canadian paper LaPresse reported. Quebec provincial police have launched a search for the shooter and other accomplices behind the midday attack on Valeriy Tarasenko, 44, in the upscale community of Esterel, according to LaPresse. Police said he suffered 'significant injuries' but was expected to survive. Mr. Tarasenko was a former business partner of Inna Yashchyshyn, a Russian-speaking Ukrainian immigrant who gained recent notoriety after an investigation by the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette and the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project in August revealed that she masqueraded as a member of the Rothschild family and went to Mar-a-Lago, where she made inroads in the former president's inner circle."

New York. Hurubie Meko of the New York Times: "Columbia University and its affiliated hospitals on Friday announced a $165 million settlement with 147 patients of a former gynecologist accused of sexual abuse by dozens of women. Among the people who have accused him of abuse was Evelyn Yang, the wife of the former presidential candidate Andrew Yang. Robert A. Hadden, who according to the hospitals has not worked as a doctor since 2012, pleaded guilty in 2016 to abusing 19 women, but was spared prison time. Now, Mr. Hadden is awaiting trial on federal charges of enticing and inducing women, including a minor, to travel from outside New York State to his Manhattan offices to engage in illegal sex acts." MB: It's amazing how long it takes to catch some of these creeps. Why, it almost makes you think the institutions where they work don't care.

Missy Ryan, et al., of the Washington Post with more on the explosion on the Russia-Crimea bridge: "A giant explosion ripped across the Crimean Bridge, a strategic link between mainland Russia and Crimea, in what appeared to be a stunning blow early Saturday morning to a symbol of President Vladimir Putin's ambitions to control Ukraine.... The Ukrainian government provided no immediate official statement on the cause of the blast. But in a taunt, the government's official Twitter account posted: 'sick burn.' A Ukrainian government official told The Washington Post on Saturday that Ukrainian special services were behind the bridge attack."

~~~~~~~~~~

Secrecy. Shame. Silence. Danger. Even death. That's what defined that time for so many women. -- Dr. Jill Biden, on life before Roe ~~~

~~~ Katie Rogers of the New York Times: "Jill Biden, the first lady, said on Friday that she had once helped a friend recover from an abortion before there was a constitutional right to the procedure, evoking the issue in deeply personal terms at a political fund-raiser as she warned of further restrictions from 'extremist Republicans.' Dr. Biden, who was introduced by Speaker Nancy Pelosi before speaking to a group of donors in San Francisco, said that in the late 1960s -- years before the Supreme Court-s decision in Roe v. Wade established a right to abortion -- a friend got pregnant. At that time, abortion was outlawed in Pennsylvania, where Dr. Biden grew up.... 'I went to see her in the hospital and then cried the whole drive home,' said Dr. Biden, who said she was 17 at the time. 'When she was discharged from the hospital, she couldn't go back to her house, so I gathered my courage and asked my mom, "Can she come stay with us?"' Dr. Biden, now 71, said that her mother, Bonny Jean Jacobs, allowed her friend to visit and that the two kept it a secret."

Timothy Shenk in a New York Times op-ed, based on an excerpt from a book Shenk is writing: Barack "Obama left Harvard with a blueprint for remaking American democracy. Written with Robert Fisher, a friend and former economics professor, the 250-page manuscript had the working title of 'Transformative Politics.'" Shenk outlines the Obama/Fisher thesis and how it fit into, you know, real life. Interesting. (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)

Bob Brigham of the Raw Story: "Agents for the Federal Bureau of Investigation have been questioning witnesses about whether Donald Trump may still be in possession of classified documents at Trump Tower or other properties. 'The FBI, according to these sources, had also asked in recent months whether the ex-president had a habit of transporting classified documents from his Florida estate Mar-a-Lago to the other Trump properties. The feds specifically discussed both the New York City and Bedminster locations with certain witnesses,' Asawin Suebsaeng and Adam Ransley reported for Rolling Stone magazine." ~~~

~~~ Trump Confuses "Privileged" with "Evidence." Hugo Lowell of the Guardian: "Donald Trump is seeking to withhold from the justice department two folders marked as containing correspondence with the National Archives and signing sheets that the FBI seized from his Mar-a-Lago resort, according to court filings in the special master review of the confiscated documents. The former US president s privilege assertions over the folders, which appear to have direct relevance to the criminal investigation into whether he retained national defense information and obstructed justice, are significant as they represent an effort to exclude the items from the inquiry and keep them confidential." ~~~

     ~~~ Marie: I can't quite think of any legitimate reason that correspondence between Trump & the Archives would be privileged, but I suppose it's possible that there are Trumpy handwritten notes to his lawyers on some of the letters that says something like, "Tell those NARA deep-state liberals they'll never get their hands on MY papers!!!! They belong to ME, ME. ME!!!!" ~~~

~~~ The TrumpDocs Story Gets Weirder & Weirder. Mike Levine & Katherine Faulders of ABC News: "At the end of Donald Trump's presidency, his team returned a large batch of classified FBI documents and other government records to the Justice Department in such disarray that a year later -- in a letter to lawmakers -- the department said it still couldn't tell which of the documents were the classified ones. The documents came from the FBI's controversial probe in 2016 looking at alleged links between Russia and Trump's presidential campaign. Trump tried to make the documents public the night before he left office, issuing a 'declassification' memo and secretly meeting with conservative writer John Solomon, who was allowed to review the documents, Solomon told ABC News this past week." The story goes on. And on. (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)

Alan Feuer of the New York Times: "In December 2020, hours after the Electoral College cast its votes for Joseph R. Biden Jr., Stewart Rhodes, the leader of the Oath Keepers militia, posted a letter on his website urging ... Donald J. Trump to undertake a series of unprecedented -- and possibly illegal -- moves to stay in office. Telling Mr. Trump the country was at war with 'Communist China' and a secret army of 'willing American agents,' Mr. Rhodes beseeched the president to invoke the Insurrection Act, a more than two centuries-old law that he believed would give Mr. Trump the power to call up the National Guard and militias like his own to suppress the 'coup' that was seeking to unseat him. The open letter, which was shown on Friday to the jury at the trial of Mr. Rhodes and four of his subordinates on seditious conspiracy charges, demanded that Mr. Trump take more wild steps to maintain his grip on power.... All of this was followed by a threat of violence against Mr. Biden and Kamala Harris, his vice president-elect. 'If you fail to act while you are still in office,' Mr. Rhodes told Mr. Trump, 'We the People will have to fight a bloody war against these two illegitimate Chinese puppets.'"

Martin Pengelly of the Guardian: "Republican senator and Trump ally Lindsey Graham told a police officer badly beaten during the Capitol attack that law enforcement should have shot rioting Trump supporters in the head, according to a new book. 'You guys should have shot them all in the head,' the now ex-cop, Michael Fanone, says the South Carolina Republican told him at a meeting in May 2021, four months after the deadly attack on Congress. 'We gave you guys guns, and you should have used them. I don't understand why that didn't happen.'"

Tom Hamburger of the Washington Post: "The Georgia prosecutor investigating whether Donald Trump improperly interfered in the 2020 presidential election filed court papers Friday to obtain testimony from Michael Flynn, Trump's former national security adviser, and former House speaker Newt Gingrich. Fulton County District Attorney Fani T. Willis also requested testimony from other potential witnesses including former White House lawyer Eric Herschmann. The requests to compel testimony were filed on a day that marked the beginning of a 'quiet' period for Willis's investigation in advance of the midterm elections." The AP's report is here.

Dan Diamond, et al., of the Washington Post: "Federal officials have spent the past year urging Americans to get [Covid] booster shots to bolster their protection against the coronavirus, which wanes over time. In early September, they rushed out the first new shots -- reformulated to target the still-dominant omicron variants -- to give people time to get inoculated before a likely cold weather surge, when respiratory infections increase as people head indoors, and recommended that all Americans 12 and older receive a third and fourth dose of vaccine. But the campaigns have lagged badly. Only about 105 million U.S. adults -- roughly 40 percent -- have received the third shot of vaccine initially offered a year ago, according to federal data, a far lower rate than countries like the United Kingdom, where more than 70 percent of adults have gotten a third dose." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)

Jacqueline Alemany of the Washington Post: "House Democrats are again seeking to censure Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) over "Joe Biden is Hitler" social media posts. Rep. Brad Schneider (D-Ill.) introduced a resolution on Thursday. The move comes after Greene posted on Twitter that 'Joe Biden is Hitler' and subsequently tweeted a doctored video of the president with a small mustache standing at a lectern with swastikas in the background dubbed with audio of the Nazi leader."

November Elections

Georgia Senate. Maya King, et al., of the New York Times: "A woman who has said Herschel Walker, the Republican Senate nominee in Georgia, paid for her abortion in 2009 told The New York Times that he urged her to terminate a second pregnancy two years later. They ended their relationship after she refused. In a series of interviews, the woman said Mr. Walker had barely been involved in their now 10-year-old son's life, offering little more than court-ordered child support and occasional gifts.... [Mr. Walker] called her 'some alleged woman' in a radio interview on Thursday.... Mr. Walker has repeatedly denied her account, calling it a 'flat-out' lie and the work of Democrats and the hostile news media. He has disputed that he signed [a get-well] card [the woman produced].... The interviews and documents provided to The Times together corroborate and expand upon an account about her abortion first published on Monday in The Daily Beast. The Times also independently confirmed details with custody records filed in family court in New York and interviewed a friend of the woman...." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ~~~

     ~~~ Marie's Note to Walker: Maybe the fact that you're sending child support payments to "some alleged woman" will help you recall who she is. You could consult your bank statement. ~~~

     ~~~ OR, Herschel could have just asked his wife, Julie Blanchard Walker, who apparently reached out to the woman in a Friday morning text message to address the brouhaha. ~~~

     ~~~ Update. Marc Caputo of NBC News: "Herschel Walker ... claimed he confirmed for the first time Friday the identity of the woman who has claimed he paid for her abortion 13 years ago when she leveled the allegation in a text message to his wife. In a brief interview with NBC News, Walker said this was also the first time the woman ... mentioned to him or his wife that she had had an abortion. 'Did you know Herschel paid for my abortion the first time? Or that he told me it wasn't the "right time" to have [her current child]?' the woman wrote in a 9:54 a.m. text message sent Friday to Herschel Walker's wife, Julie Walker, who initiated the conversation.... The messages [Herschel Walker's] campaign provided between the woman and Julie Walker dated back to May 2022.... According to the text messages, the woman ... expressed early support for Herschel Walker's campaign, especially in the run-up to the May 24 GOP primary, when Walker first began running as an anti-abortion conservative."

~~~ Gabby Orr & Michael Warren of CNN: "Herschel Walker's Senate campaign cut ties with its political director on Wednesday, CNN has learned, the move coming just days after The Daily Beast reported that the Georgia Republican paid for a woman's abortion more than a decade ago. The departure of Taylor Crowe, who previously held the same role on ex-GOP Sen. David Perdue's failed bid for Georgia governor this year, comes just weeks before Election Day in the crucial Senate contest against Democratic incumbent Raphael Warnock.... Two people familiar with the matter said Crowe was fired after suspected leaking to members of the media." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ~~~

~~~ Quin Hillyer of the right-wing Washington Examiner: "Here's what Walker should do: Announce that he will stay on the ballot because it is legally too late to replace him. He should say if he wins, he will indeed be sworn in, in January, to make things official. He should pledge, though, that within two days of being sworn in, he will resign -- under one huge condition. Whomever the governor is (it is likely to be Republican Brian Kemp), of either party, they must agree to appoint a person chosen by the Georgia Republican Executive Committee to replace him until a new election can be held. The committee should name its choice before the Nov. 8 election so voters will know exactly for whom Walker is essentially standing as a proxy." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)

Maryland. Karina Elwood of the Washington Post: "The Maryland Court of Appeals will allow early counting of mail-in ballots in November's general election, over objections from Republican gubernatorial candidate Dan Cox. The ruling comes after an expedited legal battle between Cox and the State Board of Elections over a petition to suspend an outdated law that prohibits election officials from canvassing mail-in ballots until two days after the election -- the only law of its kind in the country. A Montgomery County Circuit Court judge sided with the state board and suspended the law, allowing counting to begin on Oct. 1. A panel of judges on Friday upheld that decision, which Cox had appealed, arguing among other things that the state legislature and not the judiciary should control changes to election rules."

North Carolina Senate. Jazmine Ulloa of the New York Times: "For much of the 2022 campaign, the race between Cheri Beasley, a Democratic former chief justice of the State Supreme Court, and Representative Ted Budd, a three-term Republican congressman, has been a sleepy one. The two contenders are polished and low key. They don't tend to use incendiary rhetoric. But with the polls showing them in a dead heat, Mr. Budd and Ms. Beasley on Friday turned up the volume in their first (and likely only) debate: Mr. Budd tried to make the race a referendum on President Biden, while Ms. Beasley sought to cast it as chance to vote against election denialism and extremism."

Wisconsin Senate. Jonathan Weisman & Katie Glueck of the New York Times: "The first debate between Senator Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, a Republican, and his Democratic challenger, Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes, was a study in contrasts between an unapologetic, older conservative and a younger liberal who appeared unafraid of his ideological roots. Here are five takeaways."

Beyond the Beltway

Arizona & Ohio. Ava Sasani of the New York Times: "Abortion rights supporters won two temporary victories on Friday when judges in Ohio and Arizona suspended state laws banning the procedures. In Ohio, a county judge indefinitely suspended a state law prohibiting most abortions after six weeks of pregnancy. A few hours later, an appeals court in Arizona temporarily blocked its pre-statehood law banning the procedure."

New York. Emma Fitzsimmons of the New York Times: "Mayor Eric Adams declared a state of emergency for New York City on Friday as the city struggles to respond to an influx of tens of thousands of migrants from Latin America. Mr. Adams said in a speech at City Hall that the city was preparing to spend $1 billion on its response and called for federal and state funding to help pay for housing and services for the busloads of migrants who have strained the city's homeless shelter system.... Mr. Adams, a Democrat who took office in January, said the city was moving forward with plans to build a tent intake center on Randalls Island, in the East River just off Manhattan. City officials are also negotiating with cruise ship companies to house migrants on board a ship." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)

Texas. Jenny Courts, et al., of ABC News: "The Uvalde, Texas, school district -- still facing withering criticism over its police department's failings both during the May 24 elementary school massacre and since -- announced the suspension of the entire district police force on Friday. Hours later, Uvalde school district Superintendent Hal Harrell announced he would be retiring. There was no timeframe given for Harrell's retirement, but the transition will be discussed in a closed session of the school board on Monday.... The length of the school district police suspension is not clear."

Way Beyond

Ireland. Ed O'Loughlin of the New York Times: "The Irish government introduced an online service this week that for the first time promises adopted people born in Ireland, wherever they now live, the right to see any information the state holds about them -- including the names of their birth mothers. It also offers a free tracing service for anyone, including birth mothers, trying to find relatives lost to them through Ireland's adoption system.... [The service] has the potential to be a significant step in reckoning with a painful national legacy of mistreatment of unmarried mothers and their children. Over decades, ending as recently as 1998, thousands of pregnant and unmarried women and girls in Ireland were confined to church-run 'mother and baby homes,' where they were expected and often pressured to give up their babies after birth. An official inquiry published last year acknowledged poor conditions, high death rates and abuses at the institutions." (Also linked yesterday.)

Ukraine, et al.

The Washington Post's live briefings of developments Saturday in Russia's war on Ukraine are here: "Parts of a key bridge linking Russia to the annexed Crimean peninsula appeared to be on fire Saturday morning, Russian and Ukrainian media reported. The Kerch strait bridge is vital to Russia's ability to supply its invading forces in southern Ukraine, where Kyiv's troops have made recent gains. Ukraine took back nearly 300 square miles in the east this week, according to President Volodymyr Zelensky. Facing Ukrainian advances there and in the south, Russian forces are intensifying missile attacks on civilian areas in key regions across the country, including Donbas, Kharkiv and Zaporizhzhia. On Thursday alone, at least 22 civilians were killed and 32 others were wounded in the southeast.... Russian shelling forced the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant to rely again on its emergency diesel generators to sustain operations, Ukraine's state nuclear operator said early Saturday....

Captured Russian equipment now makes up a large portion of Ukraine's military hardware, according to Britain's Defense Ministry.... At least eight Russian generals have been fired, reassigned or otherwise sidelined since the invasion in Ukraine began, and western governments have said that at least 10 others were killed in battle, a remarkably high number that military analysts say is evidence of grievous strategic errors."

     ~~~ The Guardian's live updates for Saturday are here. The New York Times' live updates for Saturday are here. ~~~

     ~~~ From the NYT live updates: "An explosion tore through the sole bridge linking the Russian-occupied Crimean Peninsula to Russia, collapsing a part of the span into the sea and imperiling a primary supply route for Russian troops fighting in the south of Ukraine. The 12-mile-long Kerch Strait Bridge is a cherished political project of President Vladimir V. Putin and had become a potent symbol of the claims that Mr. Putin makes to the peninsula, which his forces illegally seized from Ukraine in 2014. Mr. Putin presided over the opening of the bridge in 2018, personally driving a truck across.... Without [the bridge], the Russian military will be severely limited in its ability to bring fuel, equipment and ammunition to its units fighting an increasingly intense battle for the control of southern Ukraine.... Russia's National Anti-Terrorism Committee said in a statement that a truck had exploded on the bridge, igniting seven fuel cisterns being pulled by train on a parallel railroad crossing headed in the direction of Crimea and causing two car spans to partially collapse. Preliminary information suggested that three people were killed, Russia's investigative committee said in a statement. While there were no immediate claims of responsibility, Russian and Ukrainian officials indicated that the fire was no accident."

Louisa Loveluck of the Washington Post: "Across at least five different provinces, Russian troops left the remnants of an archipelago of torture in their wake, often in buildings where families had lived or children had played.... Police have found torture sites across basements, living rooms and in gardens. In the Kyiv suburb of Bucha, men were abused and executed in the basement of a children's summer camp. In Izyum, the soldiers used a kindergarten and a medical clinic.... On Friday, the chief investigator of the northeastern Kharkiv province, Serhii Bolvinov, said that his forces had recovered 534 civilian bodies in the eastern province of Kharkiv, most of them from a mass grave in the town of Izyum. Many bore signs of torture. In Lyman, 100 miles to the southeast, a key transport hub for Russian forces before the Ukrainian army recaptured it last week, the local governor said another 39 'burial sites' had been uncovered."

Lara Seligman of Politico: "The Pentagon said Friday that it still has seen no indications that Vladimir Putin is planning to launch nuclear weapons after President Joe Biden warned of the risk of a nuclear 'Armageddon.' Biden's comments show how seriously the U.S. is taking Putin's threats to use nuclear weapons, Defense Department spokesperson J. Todd Breasseale said in a statement to Politico. 'However -- and to be clear: we have not seen any reason to adjust our own strategic nuclear posture nor do we have indications that Russia is preparing to imminently use nuclear weapons,' he said. U.S. officials told Politico that nothing has changed on the nuclear front in the past 24 hours. On Thursday, Pentagon press secretary Brig. Gen. Patrick Ryder told reporters that the department does not have any information that would cause it to change its nuclear posture." (Also linked yesterday.)

News Lede

New York Times: "Billy Sothern, a defense lawyer renowned for taking on some of Louisiana's toughest capital cases -- including the wrongful conviction of Albert Woodfox, who spent 42 years in solitary confinement for a crime he didn't commit — died on Sept. 30 at his home in Great Barrington, Mass., where he and his family had moved during the pandemic. He was 45. His wife, Nikki Page Sothern, said he had been fighting Covid, thyroid cancer and major depressive disorder, and that he died by suicide."