;)
June 22, 2022
Afternoon Update:
Jenny Vrentas of the New York Times: "As the N.F.L. was investigating his team for widespread workplace misconduct, the Washington Commanders owner Daniel Snyder directed a 'shadow investigation' to interfere with and undermine its findings, a Congressional committee found. At Snyder's behest, his legal team used private investigators to harass and intimidate witnesses, and created a 100-page dossier targeting victims, witnesses and journalists who had shared 'credible public accusations of harassment' against the team. The House Committee on Oversight and Reform released a 29-page memo on Wednesday that detailed the findings of its eight-month inquiry into how the Commanders and the N.F.L. handled claims of rampant sexual harassment of the team's female employees. The report came ahead of a hearing where the league's commissioner, Roger Goodell, was expected to appear and face questioning." ~~~
~~~ From a Washington Post liveblog: "Rep. Carolyn B. Maloney (D-N.Y.), the chairwoman of the House Committee on Oversight and Reform, announced during a Capitol Hill hearing Wednesday on the workplace of Washington's NFL team that the committee intends to issue a subpoena to compel the testimony of Commanders owner Daniel Snyder next week. Maloney's announcement came during a hearing in which NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell told the committee that he did not recall the league being informed in 2009 of an allegations of sexual harassment and assault made against Snyder." Goodell testified he did not have the authority to remove Snyder. Snyder was a no-show for the hearing, what with his being on his yacht in France.
Marc Caputo of NBC News: "Andrew Gillum, the once-rising Florida Democratic star who narrowly lost the 2018 governor's race to Ron DeSantis, was hit with a 21-count federal indictment Wednesday for wire fraud, related conspiracy charges and making false statements. Gillum, the former Tallahassee mayor, was charged along with his mentor, Sharon Lettman-Hicks, for fraudulently fundraising from 'various entities' between 2016 to 2019, according to a Department of Justice press release. The Justice Department said the two allegedly diverted some of the money to a company controlled by Lettman-Hicks, who fraudulently disguised the funds as payroll payments to Gillum."
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Alexander Bolton of the Hill: "The Senate voted 64 to 34 Tuesday evening to advance an 80-page gun safety bill to strengthen background check requirements for gun buyers under 21, provide funding to states to administer red flag laws and provide billions of dollars in new federal funding for mental health services. Fourteen Republicans voted to proceed to the bill, including Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), who announced his support for the legislation moments before the vote." MB: the New York Times story is here. For a related story on the Uvalde, Texas, massacre (which motivated 14 GOP senators to do something) is linked below.
** Luke Broadwater & Alan Feuer of the New York Times: "The House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack directly tied Donald J. Trump on Tuesday to a scheme to put forward fake slates of pro-Tump electors and presented fresh details on how the former president sought to bully, cajole and bluff his way into invalidating his 2020 defeat in states around the country. Using sworn in-person testimony from Republicans and videotaped depositions from other officials, the panel showed how the former president and a group of allies laid siege to state lawmakers and election officials after the balloting in a wide-ranging plot to reverse the outcome. The campaign led to harassment and threats of violence against anyone who resisted. The hearing on Tuesday amounted to the most comprehensive picture to date of a president who directed an attack on democracy itself and repeatedly reached into its essential machinery -- the administration of free and fair elections."
The Careless Cruelty of a Narcissist. Catie Edmondson of the New York Times: "Election official after election official testified to the House Jan. 6 committee on Tuesday in searing, emotional detail how Mr. Trump and his aides unleashed violent threats and vengeance on them for refusing to cave to his pressure to overturn the election in his favor. The testimony showed how Mr. Trump and his aides encouraged his followers to target election officials in key states -- even going so far as to post their personal cellphone numbers on Mr. Trump's social media channels, which the committee cited as a particularly brutal effort by the president to cling to power. 'Donald Trump did not care about the threats of violence,' said Representative Liz Cheney, Republican of Wyoming and the vice chairwoman of the committee. 'He did not condemn them. He made no effort to stop them. He went forward with his fake allegations anyway.'" The Guardian's story is here. The AP's report is here.
Michael Schmidt of the New York Times lays out four takeaways from Tuesday's hearing: "The committee showed evidence that Mr. Trump was directly involved behind the scenes in trying to put forward the alternate slates of Trump electors that he hoped could replace the electors awarded to Mr. Biden through his victories in swing states like Arizona and Georgia....
"The committee showed examples of how Mr. Trump and his allies knew that there was no evidence that the election had been stolen.... 'He [Rudy Giuliani] said, "We've got lots of theories, we just don't have the evidence,"' [Rusty Bowers (R), the speaker of the Arizona House of Representatives] recalled Mr. Giuliani telling him.... At another point, [attorney John] Eastman was pressing Mr. Bowers to embrace the plan to push a slate of Trump electors from Arizona despite the state's certification of Mr. Biden's victory there. Mr. Bowers said that he questioned how he could legally participate in the scheme and that Mr. Eastman responded by saying, 'Just do it and let the courts sort i out.'...
"The public pressure that Mr. Trump and his allies put on state election officials resulted in the officials being targeted in frightening and intimidating ways by Trump supporters....
"The committee showed that Republicans in Congress were pushing the alternate electors plan even on Jan. 6, hours before the day's violence.... According to text messages obtained by the committee, an aide to Senator Ron Johnson, Republican of Wisconsin, told an aide for Mr. Pence on Jan. 6 that Mr. Johnson wanted to give Mr. Pence a list of Trump electors from Michigan and Wisconsin, two states won by Mr. Biden. 'Johnson needs to hand something to VPOTUS please advise,' Sean Riley, an aide to Mr. Johnson, texted an aide to Mr. Pence, according to messages released by the committee. 'What is it?' Chris Hodgson, the aide to Mr. Pence, replied. 'Alternate slate of electors for MI and WI because archivist didn't receive them,' Mr. Riley said. 'Do not give that to him,' Mr. Hodgson texted back. A spokeswoman for Mr. Johnson, Alexa Henning, said on Twitter that he 'had no involvement in the creation of an alternate slate of electors and had no foreknowledge that it was going to be delivered to our office.'" ~~~
~~~ Nicholas Wu & Kyle Cheney of Politico: "A top aide to Sen. Ron Johnson attempted to arrange a handoff of false, pro-Trump electors from the senator to Mike Pence just minutes before the then-vice president began to count electoral votes on Jan. 6, 2021.... The attempted handoff shows just how much ... Donald Trump and his allies tried to lean on Pence to introduce false slates of electors that could have thrown the 2020 election from Biden to Donald Trump."
~~~ Marie: The video below is of crappy quality, but it's worth watching the first 40 seconds or so. Bear in mind that reporters are usually fairly deferential to senators on account of the senators' exalted status & all:
~~~ Marie: BTW, blaming staff for passing slates of fake electors to the Vice President, as Johnson did, is not slightly credible. ~~~
~~~ Michael Cohen & others of CNN post their takeaways from the hearing. Here's one: Arizona House Speaker Rusty "Bowers (R) said under oath Tuesday that Trump lied about him in a press release that came out shortly before the hearing started, where Trump claimed Bowers told him in November 2020 that he believed the election was rigged. In the statement, Trump attacked Bowers and described a call they had after the election, claiming, 'during the conversation, he told me that the election was rigged and that I won Arizona.' Trump added, 'Bowers should hope there's not a tape of the conversation.' Under questioning from [Adam] Schiff, Bowers confirmed that he 'did have a conversation with the president, but that certainly isn't it.... Anywhere, anyone anytime who has said that I said the election was rigged -- that would not be true.'"
WNBC New York: “Laura Cox, the former leader of Michigan's Republican Party, testified of a plot to have fake Republican electors hide in the state Capitol overnight so they could fulfill state law requiring electoral votes to be cast in the building. In video of her testimony from a deposition by Jan. 6 committee investigators earlier this year, Cox recalled a conversation with a man who told her he was working with Trump's re-election campaign. 'He told me that the Michigan Republican electors were planning to meet in the Capitol and hide overnight so that they could fulfill the role of casting their vote in the Michigan chambers,' Cox said. 'I told him in no uncertain terms that, that was insane and inappropriate,' Cox said." ~~~
~~~ Marie: It's because of stories like these -- the Stupidest Senator who still hasn't learned how to fake a phone call and Michigan party poobahs planning to spring from the bowels of the statehouse after a sleepover (not to mentioned Rudy in the Total Landscaping parking lot) -- that we tend to think of Trump's plot to overthrow the government as merely a haphazard, amateurish project that could never have succeeded. But as the committee has made clear in the course of four hearings, the plot was multifaceted, extensive, relentless and ruthless.
You can watch the hearing on this page of the committee's Website.
Philip Pump of the Washington Post: 'It was the personal stories that were the most moving part of Tuesday's hearing.... Fulton County, Ga., election worker Shaye Moss explaining how she and her mother had become afraid to use their real names or to engage with other people after being falsely accused of election fraud. Arizona House Speaker Rusty Bowers (R) describing how protests at his home had unsettled his daughter in the months before she died.... 'Pressuring public servants into betraying their oath was a fundamental part of the playbook,' [committee chairman Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.)] said at the outset of the hearing. 'And a handful of election officials in several key states stood between Donald Trump and the upending of American democracy.... When [officials] wouldn't embrace the 'big lie' and substitute the will of the voters with Donald Trump's will to remain in power,' Thompson said of those unlucky targets, 'Donald Trump worked to ensure they faced the consequences: threats to people's livelihood and lives, threats of violence that Donald Trump knew about and amplified.'"
The New York Times' live updates of developments related to Tuesday's January 6 committee hearing are here. (Also linked yesterday.)
Oh, Lordy, There Are Tapes. Eugene Daniels & Ryan Lizza of Politico: "The House select committee investigating Jan. 6 sent a subpoena last week to Alex Holder, a documentary filmmaker who was granted extensive access to ... Donald Trump and his inner circle. Holder shot interviews with the then-president both before and after Jan. 6. The existence of this footage is previously unreported. A source familiar with the project told Politico on Monday night that Holder began filming on the campaign trail in September 2020 for a project on Trump's reelection campaign. Over the course of several months, Holder had substantial access to Trump, Trump's adult children and Mike Pence, both in the White House and on the campaign trail.... Holder is expected to fully cooperate with the committee in an interview scheduled for Thursday." (Also linked yesterday.)~~~
~~~ Maggie Haberman of the New York Times: "Ivanka Trump ... told a documentary film crew in the middle of December 2020 that her father should 'continue to fight until every legal remedy is exhausted' because people were questioning 'the sanctity of our elections.' The video, which was played for The New York Times by someone with access to it, was part of a trove that the filmmaker Alex Holder turned over to the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the Capitol.... The small piece of [video] seen by The Times was striking for how it shows Ms. Trump using a different tone in describing her father's efforts to overturn the outcome than she did in the portion of her deposition to the House committee that has been made public so far. The interview for the documentary was conducted on Dec. 10, 2020, the person with access to the video said. That was nine days after a public statement by Attorney General William P. Barr, who declared at the time that there was no widespread fraud impacting the election's outcome, a rare public rebuke of [Donald] Trump's claims at the time."
Jennifer Rubin of the Washington Post: "... the evidence [the January 6 committee has] presented thus far has been far more impactful than the punditocracy predicted.... The question is no longer about Donald Trump's role in the attempted coup (there is no doubt his fingerprints are all over it); instead, the country is avidly debating whether there is sufficient evidence of Trump's corrupt intent to prosecute him for it.... A new ABC News-Ipsos poll released on Sunday found that 58 percent of Americans think Trump should be charged criminally, up about six points from a similar poll in April."
Dana Milbank of the Washington Post: "The democracy America has cultivated for 230 years is slipping away.... We didn't arrive at this precarious moment solely because of Trump. Trump couldn't have happened if Fox News and Republican elites hadn't normalized his threats to democratic traditions. Now they continue to do so with their breezy dismissal of the breathtaking revelations of the Jan. 6 hearings. The conservative elites surely know we are moving toward instability and violence. Yet rather than grapple with the threat, they excuse Trump's lawlessness once more by resorting to tribalism.... Trump is claiming the Jan. 6 probe is 'fake and phony' and the testimony from his former advisers 'doctored.' And Trump allies and supporters are helping him get away with it -- again. In doing so, they are effectively guaranteeing more violence."
Eric Cortellessa of Time: "The House committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol will have at least one more hearing than the six originally planned, and committee members are considering holding even more hearings beyond that, multiple sources familiar with the matter tell Time.... Since the first hearing on June 9, which garnered almost 20 million viewers, the committee has accrued more information relevant to its findings. 'Every day, new stuff is coming out,' Rep. Jamie Raskin, Democrat of Maryland and a member of the panel, told TIME last week after the third hearing. The new information is a major reason why the committee has begun to consider more hearings...."
Kyle Cheney of Politico: "Proud Boys leaders facing seditious conspiracy charges shouldn't face a jury until early 2023 the Justice Department contended Tuesday, warning that the ongoing work of the Jan. 6 select committee had made it difficult for both sides to prepare for trial. In a court filing Tuesday evening, Assistant U.S. Attorney Jason McCullough noted that the Proud Boys had been given a prominent role in the select committee's televised hearings, which described the group as crucial instigators of the riot that disrupted the transfer of power on Jan. 6, 2021. But the select committee has also refused, for now, to share with the DOJ the transcripts of its 1,000 witness interviews but has indicated that it may release them publicly in the next weeks or months.... It's a significant concession for DOJ, which had initially intended to try the seditious conspiracy case in early August."
The New York Times' live updates of primary election results are here: "Katie Britt, a former chief of staff to the retiring Senator Richard C. Shelby of Alabama, won the Republican nomination to replace her onetime boss on Tuesday, comfortably defeating a right-wing rival [Rep. Mo Brooks] in a race that puts the 40-year-old on track to become the youngest woman in the United States Senate.... In Georgia, where [Donald] Trump last month suffered his most serious political setbacks of 2022, the former president continued to rack up losses, as two congressional candidates he supported lost their runoffs on Tuesday.... In Texas, a fierce Democratic clash in the border region of Laredo was called on Tuesday nearly a month after the May 24 runoff, as Representative Henry Cuellar, a moderate, survived a second consecutive primary challenge from Jessica Cisneros, a lawyer who was once his intern. A recount by the Texas Democratic Party found Mr. Cuellar won by 289 votes."
Michael Brice-Saddler of the Washington Post: "Muriel E. Bowser (D), the pragmatic politician who has led the District for eight years, won the Democratic mayoral nomination Tuesday, according to projections from the Associated Press, beating out two left-leaning members of the council on her path to becoming just the second three-term mayor in D.C.'s history."
Zolan Kanno-Youngs & Lydia DePillis of the New York Times: "President Biden plans to call on Congress on Wednesday to temporarily suspend the federal gas tax, an effort to dampen the soaring fuel prices that have stoked frustration across the United States. During a speech on Wednesday afternoon, Mr. Biden will ask Congress to lift the federal taxes -- about 18 cents per gallon of gasoline and 24 cents per gallon of diesel -- through the end of September, just before the fall midterm elections, according to senior officials speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss the announcement on Tuesday night. The president will also ask states to suspend their own gas taxes, hoping to alleviate the economic pain that has contributed to the president's diminishing popularity." The AP's story is here.
Michael Crowley & John Ismay of the New York Times: "The United States on Tuesday limited its military's use of land mines worldwide, except for on the Korean Peninsula, meeting President Biden's campaign pledge to undo a Trump-era policy that he had called 'reckless.' The move effectively returns to a 2014 policy established by the Obama administration that forbade the use of antipersonnel land mines except in defense of South Korea. The Trump administration loosened those restrictions in 2020, citing a new focus on strategic competition with major powers with large armies. Human rights groups have long condemned antipersonnel land mines -- small explosive weapons that typically detonate after an unsuspecting victim steps on them -- as a leading cause of preventable civilian casualties. Land mines kill thousands of people per year, many of them children, often long after conflicts have ended...." ~~~
~~~ Marie: Trump was such a horrible president* and did so many horrible things, that I forgot he had stepped the killing of children around the world.
Christina Jewett & Andrew Jacobs of the New York Times: "The Food and Drug Administration is planning to require tobacco companies to slash the amount of nicotine in traditional cigarettes to make them less addictive and reduce the toll of smoking that claims 480,000 lives each year. The proposal, which could take years to go into effect, would put the United States at the forefront of global antismoking efforts. Only one other nation, New Zealand, has advanced such a plan. The headwinds are fierce. Tobacco companies have already indicated that any plan with significant reductions in nicotine would violate the law. And some conservative lawmakers might consider such a policy another example of government overreach, ammunition that could spill over into the midterm elections."
Deborah Solomon of the New York Times: "Millions of 2021 taxpayer returns filed with the Internal Revenue Service have yet to be completed, and the agency is facing a larger-than-normal backlog at this point in the tax season, the Treasury Department said on Tuesday. More than twice as many tax returns await processing 'compared to historical norms at this point in the calendar year,' according to a letter sent to lawmakers by top Treasury and I.R.S. officials. Most of the backlog relates to paper returns, which take longer to process than those filed electronically. The I.R.S. began this tax season with eight million unprocessed tax returns from the previous year.... Treasury and I.R.S. officials have blamed the initial backlog on severe resource challenges after Republican lawmakers gutted the agency's budget in recent years. Staffing shortages and antiquated technology have eroded many of its abilities, a situation that worsened in the wake of the pandemic, when the I.R.S. became the primary conduit for sending stimulus payments to households." ~~~
~~~ Marie: A week ago the IRS sent me a refund (and it was huge, by my standards) for ... 2019. And my accountant filed it electronically. So, yeah, the IRS is a little behind. (BTW, the feds paid me quite a bit in interest.)
Eric Schmitt of the New York Times: "The Air Force has detained a U.S. service member in connection with an attack in April at a small American military base in northeastern Syria that wounded four U.S. troops, the service said on Tuesday. An airman was taken into custody at an undisclosed location in the United States on Thursday in relation to the attack on the Green Village base in Syria, Ann Stefanek, an Air Force spokeswoman, said in a statement. The airman, having completed a tour of duty in Syria, had returned home, she said.... The Air Force did not identify the airman or provide any details about the incident, but two U.S. military officials said the airman is an explosives expert. Ms. Stefanek said that the airman had not been charged, adding that 'it is too early in the process' to do so, and that the military would release more information if charges were filed." CNN's story is here.
Adam Liptak of the New York Times: "The Supreme Court ruled on Tuesday that Maine may not exclude religious schools from a state tuition program. The decision, from a court that has grown exceptionally receptive to claims from religious people and groups in a variety of settings, was the latest in a series of rulings requiring the government to aid religious institutions on the same terms as other private organizations. The vote was 6 to 3, with the court's three liberal justices in dissent." MB: When Texas secedes, could we please donate 2/3rds of the Supreme Court to them. And you know which 2/3rds I'm talkin' about. (Also linked yesterday.) ~~~
~~~ Update: I see where contributor Jeanne, in yesterday's Comments, had the related idea of sending Trump & Greitens to rule over Texas as prez & veep. I second that. ~~~
~~~ So Long, Establishment Clause. Martin Pengelly of the Guardian: "The liberal justice Sonia Sotomayor has warned that the US supreme court is dismantling the wall between church and state, after the conservative majority ruled that the state of Maine cannot exclude religious schools from a tuition programme. In a dissent to the ruling in Carson v Makin, released on Tuesday, Sotomayor wrote: 'This court continues to dismantle the wall of separation between church and state that the framers fought to build.... In just a few years, the court has upended constitutional doctrine, shifting from a rule that permits states to decline to fund religious organisations to one that requires states in many circumstances to subsidise religious indoctrination with taxpayer dollars.'" See also Akhilleus' commentary below. He didn't have to read Sotomayor's dissent to figure out what the Supremes were up to.
Graham Bowley, et al., of the New York Times: "A jury on Tuesday found that Bill Cosby sexually assaulted Judy Huth in 1975, when as a 16-year-old girl she accepted his invitation to join him at the Playboy Mansion in Los Angeles.... As part of its decision, the jury awarded Ms. Huth $500,000 in compensatory damages, but declined to award punitive damages."
The New York Times' live updates of Covid-19 developments Tuesday are here: "President Biden on Tuesday marked what White House officials have cast as the unofficial beginning of the U.S. vaccination campaign for children younger than 5, visiting a site in Washington, D.C., to meet with families and children as some shots were administered. 'Finally, some peace of mind,' Mr. Biden said at the White House after the event in remarks celebrating the availability of shots, calling it a 'monumental step forward' in the nation's pandemic response. Federal health officials, eager to showcase the progress the United States has made in fending off deadly cases of the coronavirus, have worked for weeks to prepare parents and doctors for immunizing the youngest children, a population of around 20 million that has waited 18 months after adults first became eligible for the shots."
Beyond the Beltway
South Dakota. Stephen Groves of the AP: "The South Dakota Senate on Tuesday convicted Attorney General Jason Ravnsborg of two impeachment charges stemming from a 2020 fatal crash, removing and barring him from future office in a stinging rebuke that showed most senators didn't believe his account of the crash. Ravnsborg, a first-term Republican who only recently announced he wouldn't seek reelection, showed little emotion as senators convicted him first of committing a crime that caused someone's death. They then delivered another guilty verdict on a malfeasance charge that alleged he misled investigators and misused his office. Ravnsborg told a 911 dispatcher the night of the crash that he might have struck a deer or other large animal and has said he didn't know he struck a man -- 55-year-old Joseph Boever -- until he returned to the scene the next morning. Criminal investigators said they didn't believe some of Ravnsborg's statements, and several senators made clear they didn't either."
The officers had weapons; the children had none. The officers had body armor; the children had none. The officers had training; the subject had none. One hour, 14 minutes and 8 seconds. That's how long children waited, and the teachers waited, in Room 111 to be rescued. -- Texas Public Safety director Steven McCraw, Tuesday ~~~
Texas. David Goodman of the New York Times: "The head of the Texas State Police offered a pointed and emphatic rebuke of the police response to a shooting last month at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, calling it 'an abject failure' that ran counter to decades of training. In his comments before a special State Senate committee in Austin, Steven McCraw, the director of the Department of Public Safety, said that just minutes after a gunman began shooting children inside a pair of connected classrooms on May 24, the police at the scene had enough firepower and protective equipment to storm the classroom. But, he said, the on-scene commander 'decided to put the lives of officers ahead of the lives of children.' Mr. McCraw, speaking forcefully, said the same commander had delayed confronting the gunman because he 'waited for a key that was never needed.... 'I don't believe, based on the information that we have right now, that that door was ever secured.'..." The Texas Tribune report is here. (Also linked yesterday.) ~~~
~~~ Travis Caldwell & Amy Simonson of CNN: At a city council meeting Tuesday, Uvalde Mayor Don McLaughlin accused Steven McCraw of "lying leaking and misleading [the public] ... 'in order to distance his own troopers and Rangers from the response.'... Meanwhile, the mayor on Tuesday slammed leaks from unnamed DPS sources in the week following the shooting that were critical of local or school district law enforcement, including reports that they were not cooperating with investigators. 'Col. McCraw has an agenda, and it's not to present a full report and to give factual answers to the families of this community,' he said.... At the Uvalde meeting Tuesday night, [Uvalde school police chief Pete Arredondo, who was recently sworn in as a council member] was unanimously denied by fellow council members a leave of absence from future meetings." ~~~
~~~ Marie: Although it isn't crystal-clear from the CNN report, apparently Arredondo didn't show up for Tuesday's meeting. Arredondo missed at least one earlier meeting. When I was a borough council member a long time ago, local ordinance allowed the council to kick out a member who didn't appear at three consecutive meetings, as I recall. It sounds as if Uvalde may have a similar ordinance & they're prepared to act on it. ~~~
~~~ MEANWHILE, Amir Vera of CNN reports that at a Monday evening school board meeting, parents & residents demanded that Arredondo be fired as chief. ~~~
~~~ Marie: Way back on May 25, the day after the massacre, when very little about the shooting was publicly known, and local authorities, Gov. Abbott & Director McCraw were praising the "immediate" police response, I wrote in the Comments section, "... based on the little I know -- it seems to me that better policing might have prevented this carnage." I guess that was right.
Way Beyond
Ukraine, et al.
The New York Times' live updates of developments Tuesday in Russia's war on Ukraine are here. The Guardian's live updates Wednesday are here. ~~~
~~~ The Washington Post's live updates for Wednesday are here: "The fate of the eastern Luhansk region hangs in the balance as Russian forces intensify efforts to seize war-torn Severodonetsk and threaten its twin city of Lysychansk across the Seversky Donets river.... U.S.-based analysts say the advance is a 'clear setback' for Ukraine. Ahead of a European Commission summit this Thursday and Friday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is conducting a marathon session of calls with leaders across the continent to maximize his country's chance of being granted European Union candidate status.... Zelensky also called for tougher Western sanctions in response to Russia’s threat to retaliate against Lithuania for enforcing E.U. sanctions, as well as its control of Ukrainian grain and energy exports. So far, Russia has withstood Western pressure better than expected.... Press group Reporters without Borders says Russian forces appear to have executed a Ukrainian photojournalist and a soldier who accompanied him in a forest near Kyiv in March[.]... The White House said Moscow's suggestion that two Americans captured by Russian forces in Ukraine could face the death penalty was 'totally appalling.'" ~~~
~~~ The AP's story on Russia's executions of photojournalist Maks Levin and serviceman Oleksiy Chernyshov is here. ~~~
~~~ The Guardian's summary report of Tuesday's developments is here.
Glenn Thrush of the New York Times: "Attorney General Merrick B. Garland said during a surprise trip to Ukraine on Tuesday that a veteran prosecutor known for investigating former Nazis [-- Eli Rosenbaum --] would lead American efforts in tracking Russian war criminals. Mr. Garland's visit, part of scheduled stops in Poland and Paris this week, was intended to bolster U.S. and international support in helping Ukraine identify, apprehend and prosecute Russians involved in war crimes and other atrocities.... Mr. Garland met for an hour with Ukraine's prosecutor general, Iryna Venediktova, in the village of Krakovets, about a mile from the border with Poland, to discuss the technical, forensic and legal support that the United States could provide, department officials said." A CNN story is here. MB: Presumably Garland, a former chief judge of the D.C. Circuit Court, can multi-task. We have our own chief war criminal here at home who needs some prosecuting.
U.K. William Booth of the Washington Post: "As tens of thousands of train workers went on strike Tuesday in the biggest such action in three decades, the British commute turned into a slog for millions of people. With trains idled across England, Scotland and Wales, travelers packed the highways, sought out scarce taxis and looked for buses. A lot of Britons took to rental bicycles. With 80 percent of trains canceled and 40,000 workers out on strike, some lines were completely shut down, and usually bustling central stations were nearly empty. The London Underground -- also known as 'the Tube' -- was also mostly closed because of another strike."
News Lede
AP: &"A powerful earthquake struck a rural, mountainous region of eastern Afghanistan early Wednesday, killing 1,000 people and injuring 1,500 more, according to a state-run news agency. Officials warned that the already grim toll would likely rise. Information remained scarce on the magnitude 6.1 temblor near the Pakistani border, but quakes of that strength can cause severe damage in an area where homes and other buildings are poorly constructed and landslides are common. Experts put the depth at just 10 kilometers (6 miles) -- another factor that could increase the impact."
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