Tag: civil disobedience

With furry costumes, water jugs and tambourines, this tiny California college became a Gaza flashpoint

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ARCATA, Calif. —

Before dawn Tuesday, more than 100 law enforcement officers in riot gear marched into the quad of Cal Poly Humboldt, clutching guns and batons.

They encircled a small group of protesters — including a furry one in a lime-green costume — who knelt on the ground, holding hands and reciting native chants.

“Resistance is justified!” the crowd yelled as officers informed them they were being arrested before pulling them up, one by one, and fastening their hands with zip ties.

The scene capped an extraordinary weeklong protest at this public university that has emerged as California’s strongest epicenter of civil disobedience over Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza.

Students at the state’s major campuses, including USC and Berkeley, have made the news over the last week. But Cal Poly Humboldt, tucked at the base of a redwood forest in rural Northern California and home to 5,976 students in Arcata, has taken on an out-sized role. Students have engaged in more vigorous disruption, occupying an academic and administrative building, painting buildings with graffiti and twice forcing police to retreat.

Humboldt is one of the smallest and most isolated of the Cal State schools, a hub for students in the rural towns and former logging communities of California’s far north coast and interior.

Yet those on campus understand why it has become such flashpoint.

Faculty leaders say activism is in the college’s DNA, noting that students and professors have practiced nonviolent civil disobedience for more than half a century — from the Vietnam War in the 1960s and 1970s to the forest defense movement of the 1980s and 1990s.

“People ask, ‘Well, why do they occupy? Why don’t they do what everybody else does and sit outside in tents?’ ” said Anthony Silvaggio, the chair of the sociology department.

“It’s because we’re Humboldt,” he said, noting that as a graduate student in 1997 he was arrested during the Headwaters Campaign to save the last remaining old-growth redwood forests. “We occupy space! We have a rich history of taking over space and a long genealogy of direct-action tactics.”

After resisting multiple attempts by police in riot gear to remove them from a building, students renamed it “Intifada Hall.” They scrawled slogans such as “land back,” “destroy all colonial walls” and “pigs not allowed” up and down its corridors and wrote “BLOOD ON YOUR HANDS” across the wood-paneled walls of President Tom Jackson Jr.’s office.

They said they would not leave until the university disclosed all holdings and collaborations with Israel, cut all ties with Israeli universities, divested from companies “complicit in the occupation of Palestine” and publicly called for a cease-fire. They also called for the dropping of any legal charges against student organizers.

Jackson said Tuesday “it breaks my heart” to see arrests. “Unfortunately, serious criminal activity that crossed the line well beyond the level of a protest had put the campus at ongoing risk.”

But some faculty and students reject that narrative, accusing administrators and authorities of escalating a peaceful situation by bringing in riot police the first evening of the occupation. The closure of the entire campus, they argue, was unnecessary.

“These are the actions of conscientious individuals working to end a genocide, not the actions of criminals,” the faculty union, the university chapter of the California Faculty Assn., said in a statement

One of the activists arrested, assistant professor Rouhollah Aghasaleh, vowed to reject any bond and embark on a hunger strike until he and all his students were released.

“I refuse to accept the label of criminal for standing up for an ethical reason.” he wrote in a statement before his arrest.
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At the heart of the showdown is a dispute that stretches beyond the Middle East to the question of how central activism is to the university’s mission.

Faculty leaders blame Jackson, who became president in 2019 and has overseen the university’s transition to a polytechnic. The new designation, made in 2022, was designed to increase sagging enrollment with high-demand STEM education and research offerings.

Officials hope the changes will result in a better university. But critics accuse Jackson of being out of sync with campus culture and failing to appreciate the university’s long history of environmental and social justice activism.

According to Silvaggio, Jackson has ruffled feathers by telling faculty, “We’re not here to train activists.”

Silvaggio — who said he learned tactics of non-violent civil disobedience from his professors, who were activists on the defense of native forests — now teaches courses in community organizing and social movements.

He noted that last week was hardly the first occupation of a Humboldt campus building: In 2015, students occupied the university’s Native American Forum for a week to protest the abrupt firing of the then-chair of the Indian Natural Resource Science & Engineering Program.

At the time, the university’s president visited the sit-in to talk to students, praising their action as “a real demonstration of your commitment to student access, achievement and completion.”

“Look at our mission,” Silvaggio said, pointing to the university’s purpose and vision statement, which commits to being a “campus for those who seek above all else to improve the global human condition.” It also commits to “partnering with indigenous communities to address the legacy of colonialism.”

Still, the occupation involved far more disruption than the one in 2015. Supporters of the movement acknowledge that they have developed bolder tactics and become more willing to eschew rules and leaders in the last decade with the coalescing of movements such as Black Lives Matter and the Black Bloc.

“There is no organization or leader,” Silvaggio said. “When these rudderless movements happen, you’re gonna have property destruction, vandalism. That’s the natural course of occupations these days.”

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The occupation of Cal Poly Humboldt began April 22 when students showed up at Siemens Hall, an academic building that includes the university president’s office, with sleeping bags, board games and decks of cards. They barricaded the entrance with chairs and tables and erected a banner that said, “STOP THE GENOCIDE.”

Students planned a peaceful sit-in in the president’s office to protest Israel’s actions in Gaza, said a 23-year-old student from San Jose who asked to be known only as “Mango” because he feared retaliation. Transgender indigenous students started holding a prayer, he said, and then police showed up and started hitting.

The university gave a different account, saying students and faculty had to be evacuated as protesters disrupted classes and vandalized university property. In addition to defacing the building with graffiti, the university said, protesters blocked entrances and elevators with tents and in some locations shut doors using chains and zip ties, violating fire codes and “creating extreme safety hazards for those inside.”

Video taken from inside showed protesters blocked law enforcement from entering, a police officer beat a protester with a baton and a protester beat an officer’s helmet with an empty five-gallon water jug — a scene that swiftly turned viral, inspiring “jug of justice” memes with the catchphrase “Bonk the police.”

Three students were arrested. Citing safety concerns, officials announced a hard closure of campus, first through last Wednesday, then Sunday, and eventually for the rest of the semester.

Hundreds of students living on campus were told they could leave their dorms only if they had a valid reason and could be cited for trespassing.

Aaron Donaldson, a lecturer in the communications department and secretary of the faculty union, said students who tried to leave campus to get groceries complained of confrontations with police. He had 50 outlines to grade, but could not go get them for fear of arrest.

After another standoff Friday — police moved in that evening to enforce an order to disperse, students resisted and police ultimately withdrew — the university again condemned activists, claiming the occupation “has nothing to do with free speech or freedom of inquiry.”

But the administration said it would “continue to talk to anyone willing to have productive and respectful dialogue.”

In a gesture of good faith, the occupiers moved out of Siemens Hall on Sunday, clearing the building and moving their occupation to outdoor space.

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By Monday afternoon, the tree-lined campus with glimmering views of Humboldt Bay had the feel of a nearly deserted, surreal summer camp.

Activists in pink, brown, and white furry costumes roamed outside the main administration building and quad, which was encircled with barricades of chairs, tables, trash bins and fencing.

After a faculty led teach-in about ablism, there was a march, followed by a Passover seder. As some munched matzo, others chanted: “From the river to the sea.”

As dusk fell, some activists put on goggles and helmets, carried makeshift shields, jangled tambourines and beat drums as they prepared for another standoff with law enforcement.

Just after 9:30 p.m., a patrol car rolled through campus, broadcasting a recorded message urging demonstrators to immediately disperse. If they did not move, protesters could face rubber bullets and chemical spray.

“Cops off campus!” the crowd chanted in unison.

Many faculty, barred from campus, massed on the street outside, saying they wanted to bear witness to what was happening to their students.

Dominic Corva, a professor of sociology, said he blamed Cal Poly Humboldt’s president for creating conditions that led to the standoff.

“This [university] has a president … completely at odds with [the] culture and pedagogy of the university,” Corva said. “His actions have escalated the situation.”

Jackson could not be reached for comment Tuesday. But in a statement, he said: “Our focus for the entire time has been on doing all we could do to protect the safety of all involved, and we were very patient and very disciplined with that.”

Donaldson said the standoff between activists and administrators had reinforced some key lessons of the social advocacy class he taught this semester: Direct democracy, he said, is fundamentally about non-violence and is never convenient; the point is to interrupt and to stop and to say, “Wait, we have to talk and pay attention.”

For Rick Toledo, 32, a student organizer on campus who did not occupy the building but supported the movement, the most pressing concern Tuesday morning was raising $10,000 per person for bail.

There had been some conflicts among activists over strategy and the value of graffiti, Toledo said. But in the course of the occupation, they had tried to come to a consensus and develop some rules.

“When you have varying ideologies and no strict guidelines, clashes are bound to happen,” Toledo said.

Going forward, Toledo hoped activists could develop guidelines before they occupied again.

“The movement can’t die here,” he said. “There’s so much pain in Palestine. What the students have done is huge and we need to keep that momentum.”

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Jessica Garrison, Jenny Jarvie

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April 30, 2024
Syrian Civil War Fast Facts | CNN

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CNN
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Here’s a look at ongoing civil war in Syria.

Bashar al-Assad has ruled Syria as president since July 2000. His father, Hafez al-Assad, ruled Syria from 1970-2000.

The ongoing violence against civilians has been condemned by the Arab League, the European Union, the United States and other countries.

Roughly 5 million Syrians have fled to neighboring countries, according to the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, and more than 6.8 million people are displaced internally.

According to UNICEF’s Representative in Syria, Bo Viktor Nylund, “Since 2011, nearly 12,000 children were verified as killed or injured in Syria, that’s one child every eight hours over the past ten years.” Nylund said that the actual figures are likely much higher.

When the civil war began in 2011, there were four main factions of fighting groups throughout the country: Kurdish forces, ISIS, other opposition (such as Jaish al Fateh, an alliance between the Nusra Front and Ahrar-al-Sham) and the Assad regime.

March 2011 – Violence flares in Daraa after a group of teens and children are arrested for writing political graffiti. Dozens of people are killed when security forces crack down on demonstrations.

March 24, 2011 – In response to continuing protests, the Syrian government announces several plans to appease citizens. State employees will receive an immediate salary increase. The government also plans to study lifting Syria’s long standing emergency law and the licensing of new political parties.

March 30, 2011 – Assad addresses the nation in a 45-minute televised speech. He acknowledges that the government has not met the people’s needs, but he does not offer any concrete changes. The state of emergency remains in effect.

April 21, 2011 – Assad lifts the country’s 48-year-old state of emergency. He also abolishes the Higher State Security Court and issues a decree “regulating the right to peaceful protest, as one of the basic human rights guaranteed by the Syrian Constitution.”

May 18, 2011 – The United States imposes sanctions against Assad and six other senior Syrian officials. The Treasury Department details the sanctions by saying, “As a result of this action, any property in the United States or in the possession or control of US persons in which the individuals listed in the Annex have an interest is blocked, and US persons are generally prohibited from engaging in transactions with them.”

August 18, 2011 – The US imposes new economic sanctions on Syria, freezing Syrian government assets in the US, barring Americans from making new investments in the country and prohibiting any US transactions relating to Syrian petroleum products, among other things.

September 2, 2011 – The European Union bans the import of Syrian oil.

September 23, 2011 – The EU imposes additional sanctions against Syria, due to “the continuing brutal campaign” by the government against its own people.

October 2, 2011 – A new alignment of Syrian opposition groups establishes the Syrian National Council, a framework through which to end Assad’s government and establish a democratic system.

October 4, 2011 – Russia and China veto a UN Security Council resolution that would call for an immediate halt to the crackdown in Syria against opponents of Assad. Nine of the 15-member council countries, including the United States, voted in favor of adopting the resolution.

November 12, 2011 – The Arab League suspends Syria’s membership, effective November 16, 2011.

November 27, 2011 – Foreign ministers from 19 Arab League countries vote to impose economic sanctions against the Syrian regime for its part in a bloody crackdown on civilian demonstrators.

November 30, 2011 – Turkey announces a series of measures, including financial sanctions, against Syria.

December 19, 2011 – Syria signs an Arab League proposal aimed at ending violence between government forces and protesters.

January 28, 2012 – The Arab League suspends its mission in Syria as violence there continues.

February 2, 2012 – A UN Security Council meeting ends with no agreement on a draft resolution intended to pressure Syria to end its crackdown on anti-government demonstrators.

February 4, 2012 – A UN Security Council resolution condemning Syria is not adopted after Russia and China vote against it.

February 6, 2012 – The United States closes its embassy in Damascus and recalls its diplomats.

February 7, 2012 – The Gulf Cooperation Council announces its member states are pulling their ambassadors from Damascus and expelling the Syrian ambassadors in their countries.

February 16, 2012 – The United Nations General Assembly passes a nonbinding resolution endorsing the Arab League plan for Assad to step down. The vote was 137 in favor and 12 against, with 17 abstentions.

February 26, 2012 – Syrians vote on a constitutional referendum in polling centers across the country. Almost 90% of voters approve the changes to the constitution, which include the possibility of a multi-party system.

March 13, 2012 – Kofi Annan, the UN special envoy to Syria, meets in Turkey with government officials and Syrian opposition members. In a visit to Syria over the weekend, he calls for a ceasefire, the release of detainees and allowing unfettered access to relief agencies to deliver much-needed aid.

March 15, 2012 – The Gulf Cooperation Council announces that the six member countries will close their Syrian embassies and calls on the international community “to stop what is going on in Syria.”

March 27, 2012 – The Syrian government accepts Annan’s plan to end violence. The proposal seeks to stop the violence, give access to humanitarian agencies, release detainees and start a political dialogue to address the concerns of the Syrian people.

April 1, 2012 – At a conference in Istanbul, the international group Friends of the Syrian People formally recognizes the Syrian National Council as a legitimate representative of the Syrian people.

July 30, 2012 – The Syrian Charge d’Affaires in London, Khaled al-Ayoubi, resigns, stating he is “no longer willing to represent a regime that has committed such violent and oppressive acts against its own people.”

August 2, 2012 – UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon announces that Annan will not renew his mandate when it expires at the end of August.

August 6, 2012 – Syrian Prime Minister Riyad Hijab’s resignation from office and defection from Assad’s regime is read on Al Jazeera by his spokesman Muhammad el-Etri. Hijab and his family are said to have left Syria overnight, arriving in Jordan. Hijab is the highest-profile official to defect.

August 9, 2012 – Syrian television reports that Assad has appointed Health Minister Wael al-Halki as the new prime minister.

October 3, 2012 – Five people are killed by Syrian shelling in the Turkish border town of Akcakale. In response, Turkey fires on Syrian targets and its parliament authorizes a resolution giving the government permission to deploy its soldiers to foreign countries.

November 11, 2012 – Israel fires warning shots toward Syria after a mortar shell hits an Israeli military post. It is the first time Israel has fired on Syria across the Golan Heights since the 1973 Yom Kippur War.

November 11, 2012 – Syrian opposition factions formally agree to unite as the National Coalition for Syrian Revolutionary and Opposition Forces.

November 13, 2012 – Sheikh Ahmed Moaz al-Khatib is elected leader of the Syrian opposition collective, the National Coalition for Syrian Revolutionary and Opposition Forces.

January 6, 2013 – Assad announces he will not step down and that his vision of Syria’s future includes a new constitution and an end to support for the opposition. The opposition refuses to work with Assad’s government.

March 19, 2013 – The National Coalition for Syrian Revolutionary and Opposition Forces elects Ghassan Hitto as its prime minister. Though born in Damascus, Hitto has spent much of his life in the United States, and holds dual US and Syrian citizenship.

April 25, 2013 – US Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel announces the United States has evidence that the chemical weapon sarin has been used in Syria on a small scale.

May 27, 2013 – EU nations end the arms embargo against the Syrian rebels.

June 13, 2013 – US President Barack Obama says that Syria has crossed a “red line” with its use of chemical weapons against rebels. His administration indicates that it will be stepping up its support of the rebels, who have been calling for the US and others to provide arms needed to battle Assad’s forces.

July 6, 2013 – Ahmad Assi Jarba is elected the new leader of the Syrian National Coalition.

August 18, 2013 – A team of UN weapons inspectors arrives in Syria to begin an investigation into whether chemical weapons have been used during the civil war.

August 22, 2013 – The UN and the US call for an immediate investigation of Syrian activists’ claims that the Assad government used chemical weapons in an attack on civilians on August 21. Anti-regime activist groups in Syria say more than 1,300 people were killed in the attack outside Damascus, many of them women and children.

August 24, 2013 – Medical charity Doctors Without Borders announces that three hospitals near Damascus treated more than 3,000 patients suffering “neurotoxic symptoms” on August 21. Reportedly, 355 of the patients died.

August 26, 2013 – UN inspectors reach the site of a reported chemical attack in Moadamiyet al-Sham, near Damascus. En route to the site, the team’s convoy is hit by sniper fire. No one is injured.

August 29, 2013 – The UK’s Parliament votes against any military action in Syria.

August 30, 2013 – US Secretary of State John Kerry says that US intelligence information has found that 1,429 people were killed in last week’s chemical weapons attack in Syria, including at least 426 children.

September 9, 2013 – Syria agrees to a Russian proposal to give up control of its chemical weapons.

September 10, 2013 – In a speech, Obama says he will not “put American boots on the ground in Syria,” but does not rule out other military options.

September 14, 2013 – The United States and Russia agree to a plan to eliminate chemical weapons in Syria.

September 16, 2013 – The United Nations releases a report from chemical weapons inspectors who investigated the August 21 incident. Inspectors say there is “clear and convincing evidence” that sarin was used.

September 20, 2013 – Syria releases an initial report on its chemical weapons program.

September 27, 2013 – The UN Security Council passes a resolution requiring Syria to eliminate its arsenal of chemical weapons. Assad says he will abide by the resolution.

September 30, 2013 – At the UN General Assembly in New York, Syrian Foreign Minister Walid al-Moualem says that Syria is not engaged in a civil war, but a war on terror.

October 6, 2013 – Syria begins dismantling its chemical weapons program, including the destruction of missile warheads and aerial bombs.

October 31, 2013 – The Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons announces that Syria has destroyed all its declared chemical weapons production facilities.

November 25, 2013 – The United Nations announces that starting January 22 in Geneva, Switzerland, the Syrian government and an unknown number of opposition groups will meet at a “Geneva II” conference meant to broker an end to the Syrian civil war.

December 2, 2013 – UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay says that a UN fact-finding team has found “massive evidence” that the highest levels of the Syrian government are responsible for war crimes.

January 20, 2014 – The Syria National Coalition announces it won’t participate in the Geneva II talks unless the United Nations rescinds its surprise invitation to Iran or Iran agrees to certain conditions. The United Nations later rescinds Iran’s invitation.

February 13, 2014 – The Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons tells CNN that Syria has shipped out 11% of its chemical weapons stockpile, falling far short of the February 5 deadline to have all such arms removed from the country.

February 15, 2014 – A second round of peace talks ends in Geneva, Switzerland, with little progress in ending Syria’s civil war.

February 23, 2014 – The UN Security Council unanimously passes a resolution boosting access to humanitarian aid in Syria.

June 3, 2014 – Assad is reelected, reportedly receiving 88.7% of the vote in the country’s first election since civil war broke out in 2011.

September 22-23, 2014 – The United States and allies launch airstrikes against ISIS targets in Syria, focusing on the city of Raqqa.

September 14-15, 2015 – A Pentagon spokesperson says the Russian military appears to be attempting to set up a forward operating base in western Syria, in the area around the port city of Latakia. Russian President Vladimir Putin says that Russia is supporting the Syrian government in its fight against ISIS.

October 30, 2015 – White House spokesman Josh Earnest says that the US will be deploying “less than 50” Special Operations forces, who will be sent to Kurdish-controlled territory in northern Syria. The American troops will help local Kurdish and Arab forces fighting ISIS with logistics and are planning to bolster their efforts.

February 26, 2016 – A temporary cessation of hostilities goes into effect. The truce calls for the Syrian regime and rebels to give relief organizations access to disputed territories so they can assist civilians.

March 15, 2016 – Russia starts withdrawing its forces from Syria. A spokeswoman for Assad tells CNN that the Russian campaign is winding down after achieving its goal of helping Syrian troops take back territory claimed by terrorists.

September 15, 2016 – At least 23 people, including nine children, are killed during airstrikes in Syria, with the United States and Russia accusing each other of violating the ceasefire in effect since September 12.

September 17, 2016 – US-led coalition airstrikes near Deir Ezzor Airport intended to target ISIS instead kill 62 Syrian soldiers.

September 20, 2016 – An aid convoy and warehouse of the Syrian Arab Red Crescent are bombed; no one claims responsibility. The strike prompts the UN to halt aid operations in Syria.

September 23-25, 2016 – About 200 airstrikes hit Aleppo during the weekend, with one activist telling CNN it is a level of bombing they have not seen before.

December 13, 2016 – As government forces take control of most of Aleppo from rebel groups, Turkey and Russia broker a ceasefire for eastern Aleppo so that civilians can be evacuated. The UN Security Council holds an emergency session amid reports of mounting civilian deaths and extrajudicial killings. The ceasefire collapses less than a day after it is implemented.

December 22, 2016 – Syria’s state-run media announces government forces have taken full control of Aleppo, ending more than four years of rebel rule there.

April 4, 2017 – Dozens of civilians are reportedly killed in a suspected chemical attack in the rebel-held town of Khan Sheikhoun. The Russian Defense Ministry claims that gas was released when Syrian forces bombed a chemical munitions depot operated by terrorists. Activists, however, say that Syrians carried out a targeted chemical attack.

April 6, 2017 – The United States launches a military strike on a Syrian government airbase in response to the chemical weapon attack on civilians. On US President Donald Trump’s orders, US warships launch 59 Tomahawk cruise missiles at the airbase which was home to the warplanes that carried out the chemical attacks.

July 7, 2017 – Trump and Putin reach an agreement on curbing violence in southwest Syria during their meeting at the G20 in Hamburg, Germany. The ceasefire will take effect in the de-escalation zone beginning at noon Damascus time on July 9.

October 17, 2017 – ISIS loses control of its self-declared capital, Raqqa. US-backed forces fighting in Raqqa say “major military operations” have ended, though there are still pockets of resistance in the city.

October 26, 2017 – A joint report from the United Nations and international chemical weapons inspectors finds that the Assad regime was responsible for the April 2017 sarin attack that killed more than 80 people. Syria has repeatedly denied it had anything to do with the attack and also denies it has any chemical weapons.

February 24, 2018 – The UN Security Council unanimously approves a 30-day ceasefire resolution in Syria, though it is unclear when the ceasefire is meant to start, or how it will be enforced.

February 27, 2018 – Within minutes of when a five-hour “humanitarian pause” ordered by Putin – from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. – is meant to start, activists on the ground report shelling and artillery fire from pro-regime positions, killing at least one person in the rebel-held enclave of Eastern Ghouta.

April 7, 2018 – Helicopters drop barrel bombs filled with toxic gas on the last rebel-held town in Eastern Ghouta, activist groups say. The World Health Organization later says that as many as 500 people may have been affected by the attack.

April 14, 2018 – The United States, France and the United Kingdom launch airstrikes on Syria in response to the chemical weapons attack in Eastern Ghouta a week earlier.

September 17, 2018 – Russia and Turkey announce they have agreed to create a demilitarized zone in Syria’s Idlib province, potentially thwarting a large-scale military operation and impending humanitarian disaster in the country’s last rebel stronghold. The zone, which will be patrolled by Turkish and Russian military units, will become operational from October 15.

December 19, 2018 – Trump tweets, “We have defeated ISIS in Syria, my only reason for being there during the Trump Presidency.” A US defense official and an administration official tell CNN that planning for the “full” and “rapid” withdrawal of US military from Syria is already underway.

March 23, 2019 – Kurdish forces announce they have captured the eastern Syrian pocket of Baghouz, the last populated area under ISIS rule.

October 9, 2019 – Turkey launches a military offensive into northeastern Syria, just days after the Trump administration announced that US troops would leave the border area. Erdogan’s “Operation Peace Spring” is an effort to drive away Kurdish forces from the border, and use the area to resettle around two million Syrian refugees.

March 5, 2020 – Turkey and Russia announce a ceasefire in Idlib, Syria’s last opposition enclave, agreeing to establish a security corridor with joint patrols.

April 8, 2020 – The Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons’ Investigation and Identification Team (IIT) releases a report concluding that Syrian government forces were responsible for a series of chemical attacks on a Syrian town in late March 2017.

May 26, 2021 – Assad is reelected.

In photos: Syria’s civil war

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April 4, 2024
Mike Pence Fast Facts | CNN Politics

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CNN
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Here’s a look at the life of Mike Pence, the 48th vice president of the United States.

Birth date: June 7, 1959

Birth place: Columbus, Indiana

Birth name: Michael Richard Pence

Father: Edward Pence, gas station owner

Mother: Nancy Pence-Fritsch

Marriage: Karen Pence (1985-present)

Children: Michael, Charlotte and Audrey

Education: Hanover College (Indiana), B.A., 1981; Indiana University School of Law, J.D., 1986

Religion: Evangelical Christian

After two early unsuccessful runs for Congress, Pence wrote an essay, “Confessions of a Negative Campaigner.” In the 1991 piece, he pledged not to use insulting language or air ads disparaging opponents.

During the 2010 Value Voter Summit, Pence took the stage and said, “I’m a Christian, a conservative and a Republican, in that order.”

Pence was a Democrat as a teen. He has said that he voted for Jimmy Carter, not Ronald Reagan, in the 1980 election.

Pence’s Irish grandfather immigrated through Ellis Island in 1923.

1991-1993 – President of the conservative think tank, Indiana Policy Review Foundation.

1992-1999 – Hosts a talk radio show, “The Mike Pence Show.” The show is syndicated on 18 stations in Indiana.

2000 – Is elected to the US House of Representatives for the 2nd District of Indiana.

2002 – Is elected to the US House of Representatives for the 6th District of Indiana. The district was renumbered in 2002. He is reelected in 2004, 2006, 2008 and 2010.

2009-2011 – Is the Republican Conference chair.

2012 – Is elected governor of Indiana. His campaign includes a grassroots trek across the state called the “Big Red Truck Tour.”

January 2015 – Announces, then scraps plans to launch a state-run news outlet called “Just IN.”

January 27, 2015 – Gains federal approval for a state plan for Medicaid expansion, “Healthy Indiana Plan 2.0.”

March 26, 2015 – Pence signs the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA), banning local governments from intervening when businesses turn away customers for religious reasons. The law sparks concern about discrimination, particularly within the LGBTQ community. After the law is passed, a wave of boycotts and petitions roil the state, with companies like Apple and organizations like the NCAA criticizing the bill and threatening to reconsider future business opportunities in Indiana.

April 2, 2015 – Pence signs a new version of the RFRA that prohibits discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation.

July 15, 2016 – GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump tweets that he has chosen Pence to be his running mate. The formal announcement takes place July 16.

November 8, 2016 – Is elected vice president of the United States.

January 20, 2017 – Sworn in as vice president of the United States.

January 27, 2017 – Pence speaks at the March for Life, an anti-abortion rally in Washington. He is the first sitting vice president to make a speech at the annual event.

February 7, 2017 – Casts a tie-breaking vote to confirm Betsy DeVos as the next education secretary. This is the first time a vice president has needed to cast the deciding vote on a cabinet nomination.

February 18, 2017 – Pence delivers a speech at the Munich Security Conference, declaring that the United States will hold Russia accountable for acts of aggression even as the Trump administration makes an effort to cultivate stronger ties with Moscow. The vice president also says that the United States “strongly supports NATO and will be unwavering in our commitment to our transatlantic alliance.” Pence adds a caveat, saying that NATO member nations should boost their defense spending.

March 2, 2017 – The Indianapolis Star reports that while governor of Indiana, Pence used a private email account to conduct some state business and that it was hacked. Indiana’s Code of Ethics does not address officials’ use of personal emails. Pence also had a state-provided email address. Pence says, “there’s no comparison” between his situation and that of Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server.

August 9, 2018 – In a speech to US military and civilian personnel, Pence calls for the establishment of a Space Force by 2020. Pence also announces immediate steps the Department of Defense would take to reform how the military approaches space.

January 16, 2019 – At the Global Chiefs of Mission conference, Pence declares that “the caliphate has crumbled, and ISIS has been defeated.” Hours before, the US-led coalition confirmed that American troops had been killed in an explosion in Manbij, an attack that ISIS claimed responsibility for.

May 30, 2019 – During talks with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau in Canada, Pence says he is “very proud to be part of a pro-life administration” and that he is troubled by what he calls “the Democratic party in our country, and leaders around the country, supporting late-term abortion, even infanticide.”

February 26, 2020 – Trump places Pence in charge of the US government response to the novel coronavirus, amid growing criticism of the White House’s handling of the outbreak.

April 28, 2020 – Pence visits the Mayo Clinic without a face mask, ignoring the facility’s current policy requiring protective masks be worn at all times. Later, Pence says he should have worn a mask during his visit.

November 7, 2020 – Days after the presidential election on November 3, CNN projects Trump and Pence have lost to former Vice President Joe Biden and his running mate Sen. Kamala Harris.

April 7, 2021 – Pence announces the launch of a new political advocacy group, “Advancing American Freedom.” The group’s stated goal is to “promote the pro-freedom policies of the last four years that created unprecedented prosperity at home and restored respect for America abroad, to defend those policies from liberal attacks and media distortions, and to prevent the radical Left from enacting its policy agenda that would threaten America’s freedoms,” according to a statement from the group. On the same day, publisher Simon & Schuster announces it will publish Pence’s autobiography.

April 14, 2021 – Pence undergoes surgery to have a pacemaker implanted to help combat a slow heart rate.

November 14, 2022 – During a interview with ABC’s David Muir, Pence says he thinks “America will have better choices in the future” than Trump as president in 2024, and admits he’s considering running himself.

November 15, 2022 – Pence’s new memoir, “So Help Me God,” is published. The book includes Pence’s recollections of his experience during the January 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol.

April 27, 2023 – Pence testifies to a federal grand jury investigating the aftermath of the 2020 election and the actions of Trump and others, sources familiar with the matter told CNN. The testimony marks the first time in modern history a vice president has been compelled to testify about the president he served beside.

June 6, 2023 – Pence announces that he’s running for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination in a launch video. On October 28, he suspends his campaign for president.

March 15, 2024 – Says he “cannot in good conscience” endorse presumptive GOP nominee Trump, a stunning repudiation of his former running mate and the president he served with.

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March 20, 2024
Mitch McConnell Fast Facts | CNN Politics

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CNN
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Here is a look at the life of Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, a Republican from Kentucky.

Birth date: February 20, 1942

Birth place: Colbert County, Alabama

Birth name: Addison Mitchell McConnell Jr.

Father: Addison Mitchell McConnell

Mother: Julia (Shockley) McConnell

Marriages: Elaine Chao (1993-present); Sherrill Redmon (1968-1980, divorced)

Children: with Sherrill Redmon: Porter; Claire; Eleanor

Education: University of Louisville, B.A., 1964; University of Kentucky, J.D., 1967

Religion: Baptist

Contracted polio at age 2 and was not allowed to walk for two years while completing physical therapy.

His wife, Elaine Chao, served as secretary of the Department of Labor under President George W. Bush and deputy secretary of the Department of Transportation under President George H.W. Bush. Chao served as the secretary of the Department of Transportation under President Donald Trump.

1968-1970 – Chief legislative assistant to Senator Marlow Cook.

1974-1975 – Deputy Assistant United States Attorney for Legislative Affairs.

1975 – Acting Assistant Attorney General.

1978-1985 – Judge-Executive of Jefferson County, Kentucky.

1984 – Elected to the US Senate to represent Kentucky.

1990 – Reelected to the US Senate.

1996 – Reelected to the US Senate.

2002 – Reelected to the US Senate.

2003-2007 – Senate Republican Whip.

November 16, 2006 – Elected Senate Republican leader. McConnell replaces Bill Frist.

January 4, 2007-January 6, 2015 – Senate Minority Leader.

2008 – Reelected to the US Senate.

October 23, 2010 – During an interview with the National Journal, McConnell says, “The single most important thing we want to achieve is for President [Barack] Obama to be a one-term president.”

November 4, 2014 – Reelected to the US Senate.

November 13, 2014 – McConnell is reelected leader of the Republican party in the Senate. When Congress reconvenes in January 2015, McConnell will take over as Senate majority leader from Harry Reid.

January 6, 2015–January 20, 2021 – Senate Majority Leader.

December 12, 2016 – Announces he supports a congressional investigation into findings that Russian hackers attempted to influence the election.

June 12, 2018 – Becomes the longest-serving Republican leader in the Senate’s history, surpassing former Sen. Robert Dole’s record.

August 4, 2019 – McConnell fractures his shoulder after falling in his Kentucky home. “This morning, Leader McConnell tripped at home on his outside patio and suffered a fractured shoulder,” David Popp, McConnell’s communications director, says in a statement. “He has been treated, released, and is working from home in Louisville.”

August 15, 2019 – McConnell undergoes surgery to repair the fracture in his shoulder. “The surgery was performed without incident, and the Leader is grateful to the surgical team for their skill,” Popp says in a statement.

November 3, 2020 – Wins reelection to the US Senate, defeating Democratic opponent Amy McGrath and her massive fundraising efforts to unseat him.

November 10, 2020 – McConnell is reelected as a Senate party leader, but the party holding the Senate majority won’t be determined until two runoff elections in Georgia take place in January.

December 15, 2020 – Six weeks after Election Day McConnell finally acknowledges Joe Biden’s victory and refers to him as president-elect.

January 2, 2021 – Police report that McConnell’s home has been vandalized. The damage takes place after the Senate stalls on increasing stimulus checks to $2,000. The home of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, the other highest-ranking member of Congress, was vandalized the previous day.

January 20, 2021-present – Senate Minority Leader.

February 13, 2021 – McConnell directly blames former President Trump for instigating last month’s riot at the Capitol but votes to acquit him anyway of inciting an insurrection.

November 16, 2022 – Wins a secret-ballot leadership election, putting him on pace to become the longest-serving Senate party leader in US history. McConnell defeats Florida Sen. Rick Scott in a 37-10-1 vote, his first challenger in his 15 years atop his conference.

March 8, 2023 – McConnell is being treated for a concussion and is staying at a hospital for observation after a fall at the Waldorf Astoria hotel in Washington, DC.

July 26, 2023 – McConnell stops speaking in the middle of remarks at his regularly scheduled weekly news conference on Capitol Hill. After a 30-second pause, his colleagues crowded around to see if he was OK and asked him how he felt. He later tells reporters that he’s “fine.”

August 30, 2023 – Appears to freeze for about 30 seconds while speaking with reporters after a speech in Covington, Kentucky.

February 28, 2024 – McConnell will step down at GOP leader in November, a source tells CNN.

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February 28, 2024
Alexey Navalny Fast Facts | CNN

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CNN
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Here is a look at Russian opposition leader, Kremlin critic and activist Alexey Navalny.

Birth date: June 4, 1976

Birth place: Butyn, Soviet Union

Birth name: Alexey Anatolyevich Navalny (sometimes spelled Alexei, Aleksei)

Father: Anatoly Navalny, former military officer and basket-weaving factory owner

Mother: Lyudmila Navalnaya, basket-weaving factory owner

Marriage: Yulia (Abrosimova) Navalnaya (2000-present)

Children: Daria and Zakhar

Education: Peoples’ Friendship University of Russia, commercial law, 1998; attended State Finance Academy, 1999-2001

Has been a prominent organizer of street protests and has exposed corruption in Russian government and business via social media, including his LiveJournal blog and RosPil website.

Says that he stands by previous anti-immigration comments considered xenophobic, including deporting Georgians from Russia. Has apologized for the use of derogatory terms.

Is barred from running for political office because of a 2013 conviction. Russian law forbids convicted criminals running for political office.

How Alexey Navalny became the face of opposition in Putin’s Russia (2021)

2000 – Joins Yabloko, the Russian United Democratic Party.

2006 – Participates in the Russian March, a nationalist event.

2007 – Is expelled from Yabloko because of his nationalistic leanings.

2007 – Launches the National Russian Liberation Movement, (known as NAROD, the Russian word for “people”).

2009 – Policy adviser to the governor of the Kirov region.

November 2010 – Blows the whistle on a $4 billion embezzlement scheme at the state-run oil pipeline operator, Transneft, by posting leaked documents on his blog.

December 2010 – Kirov-area open an investigation against him involving a state-owned lumber deal when he was an adviser to the governor.

December 5, 2011 – Takes part in protests following Vladimir Putin’s December 4 election win. Is arrested but is released after 15 days.

2011 – Founds the Anti-Corruption Foundation (FBK). The organization investigates corruption in the Russian government and posts supporting documentation.

December 24, 2011 – Speaks before tens of thousands of pro-reform demonstrators prior to the March 2012 presidential election.

March 6, 2012 – Is arrested along with other protesters after Putin wins a third term as president on March 4, with just under 65% of the vote. Critics question the results amid complaints of voter fraud.

March 20, 2013 – Is indicted, along with entrepreneur Petr Ofitserov, for misappropriating $500,000 in a state-owned lumber deal when he was an adviser to the Kirov region’s governor.

July 18, 2013 – A court in the city of Kirov finds Navalny and Ofitserov guilty of embezzlement. They are sentenced to five and four years in prison respectively. Detained overnight, they are released July 19 pending an appeal. The verdict is followed by public protests.

2013 – Runs unsuccessfully for mayor of Moscow. Comes in second with 27% of the vote.

October 16, 2013 – The five-year prison sentence received July 2013 is reduced to a suspended sentence on appeal.

October 2013 – In a statement from the Russian federal Investigative Committee, Navalny and his brother Oleg Navalny are accused of defrauding the French cosmetics company Yves Rocher’s Russian subsidiary.

February 28, 2014-January 2015 – Under house arrest.

December 30, 2014 – Is found guilty of fraud in the November 2013 case. Receives a suspended sentence of three and a half years. His brother receives a sentence of three and a half years in prison.

February 23, 2016 – The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) rules that Navalny and Ofitserov were deprived of the right to a fair trial in their 2013 conviction. They are awarded 8,000 Euros for damages, plus additional awards for costs and expenses.

April 27, 2017 – Navalny is splashed in the face with an antiseptic green dye. The attack causes vision damage in one eye.

January 22, 2018 – A Moscow court orders the closure of FBK, which funds Navalny’s activities.

July 29, 2019 – Suffers an “acute allergic reaction” while serving a 30-day sentence in police custody. His July 24 arrest follows a call for demonstrations after the disqualification of opposition candidates for Russian municipal elections. Doctors do not find any signs of poisoning after doing an analysis, Russian News Agency TASS reports.

Poisoning and time in Germany

August 20, 2020 – Feels sick during a return flight to Moscow from the Siberian city of TomskIn and falls into a coma from suspected poisoning, according to spokeswoman Kira Yarmysh. “We assume that Alexey was poisoned with something mixed into [his] tea,” Yarmysh tweets. German NGO The Cinema for Peace Foundation says it is sending a medical plane to Russia in an attempt to evacuate him.

August 21, 2020 – Russian doctors give Navalny’s team permission to move him. He is scheduled for a medical evacuation to travel to a German clinic, according to spokeswoman, Kira Yarmysh.

August 22, 2020 – Arrives at the Charité Hospital in Berlin in Germany where an “extensive medical diagnosis” is made.

September 2, 2020 – In a statement, the German government reports that Navalny was poisoned with a chemical nerve agent from the Novichok group. Novichok was used in a March 2018 attack on former Russian spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter, Yulia Skripal, in the English cathedral city of Salisbury.

September 7, 2020 – According to a statement released by Charité Hospital, Navalny is out of a medically induced coma.

September 23, 2020 – Is discharged from the hospital, according to a statement released by the Charité Hospital.

December 14, 2020 – Reporting from CNN and investigative group Bellingcat reveals that Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) formed an elite team specializing in nerve agents and trailed Navalny for years. Phone and travel records suggest the unit followed Navalny to at least 17 cities since 2017.

December 17, 2020 – At his annual press conference, Putin claims that if Russian special services had wanted to kill Navalny, “they would’ve probably finished it…but in this case, his wife asked me, and I immediately gave the order to let him out of the country to be treated in Germany… This is a trick to attack the leaders [in Russia].” The CNN-Bellingcat investigation is a form of “information warfare” facilitated by foreign special services, he says.

December 21, 2020 – CNN reports that Konstantin Kudryavtsev, an agent who belonged to an elite toxins team in Russia’s FSB, revealed during a debriefing details about how Navalny was poisoned, but didn’t realize he was speaking to Navalny himself.

December 28, 2020 – The Russia Federal Penitentiary Service (FSIN) accuses Navalny of violating the terms of his probation by failing to show up for scheduled inspections while in Germany and requests that a court replace his suspended sentence with an actual prison term.

December 29, 2020 – Russia’s main investigative body launches a criminal case against Navalny on charges of fraud related to his alleged mishandling of $5 million in donations to FBK and other organizations.

Return to Russia and trial

January 2021 – Russian prison authorities officially request to replace Navalny’s 2014 suspended sentence with a real jail term. The Russian Federal Penitentiary Service says that by staying in Germany, Navalny is violating the terms of his suspended sentence in the so-called Yves Rocher case, which Navalny believes is politically motivated.

January 13, 2021 – Announces on social media that he will return to Russia from Germany on January 17.

January 17, 2021 – Navalny is detained moments after arriving in Moscow following months of treatment in Germany after being poisoned in August 2020. The next day, he is ordered to remain in custody for 30 days during a surprise hearing.

February 2, 2021 – A Moscow court sentences Navalny to prison for more than two and a half years for violating probation terms from 2014 while he was in Germany. The sentence takes into account the 11 months Navalny spent under house arrest. His lawyer says he will appeal the verdict. The sentence prompts protests across the country.

February 20, 2021 – Navalny’s appeal is partially rejected. The judge shortens his sentence by a month and a half, noting the time he spent under house arrest, from December 2014 to February 2015. In a separate hearing at Babushkinsky District Court, he is convicted of defaming World War II veteran Ignat Artemenko, 94, in social media comments made June 2020. Navalny criticized a video broadcast by state TV channel RT, in which prominent figures expressed support for controversial changes to the Russian constitution. The penalty for defamation, a fine, was changed to include potential jail time in December 2020.

February 24, 2021 – According to Reuters, Navalny is stripped of his “prisoner of conscience” status by Amnesty International. The decision was made due to numerous complaints about Navalny’s past xenophobic comments received by the organization.

March 3, 2021 – Navalny’s lawyer Vadim Kobzev tells CNN that Navalny is being held in detention center-3 in Kolchugino in the Vladimir region east of Moscow. Navalny will be held temporarily before being moved to a penal colony.

March 31, 2021 – Navalny, who is imprisoned in penal colony No. 2 in Pokrov, says he is going on a hunger strike to protest against prison officials’ refusal to grant him access to proper medical care.

April 23, 2021 – Navalny announces that he is ending his hunger strike after receiving medical attention.

April 26, 2021 – Moscow’s chief prosecutor freezes Navalny’s political movement by suspending activities at his offices across the country.

April 29, 2021 – Navalny’s network of regional offices for his political movement will be “officially disbanded,” chief of staff Leonid Volkov announces. Volkov says the regional offices will “continue to work as independent social and political movements, but we will not finance them anymore, we will not set tasks for them, but we know that they by themselves will do a great job.”

October 20, 2021 – Navalny is awarded the Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought.

March 22, 2022 – Navalny is sentenced to nine years in a maximum-security jail, according to Tass, after being convicted on fraud charges by the Lefortovo court in Moscow over allegations that he stole from his Anti-Corruption Foundation.

June 14, 2022 – Navalny is relocated to a maximum-security prison in Melekhovo in the Vladimir Region, according to Russia’s state media outlet TASS citing Sergey Yazhan, chairman of the regional public oversight commission.

April 26, 2023 – In comments posted on Twitter, Navalny says he has been accused of committing “terrorist attacks” and the new case will be heard by a military court.

August 4, 2023 – Is sentenced to 19 years in prison on extremism charges, Russian media report. Navalny is already serving sentences totaling 11-and-a-half years in a maximum security facility on fraud and other charges that he says were trumped up.

December 11, 2023 – Lawyers for Navalny say they have lost contact with the jailed Russian opposition leader and his whereabouts are unknown.

The rough conditions inside prison camp where Navalny is being held

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December 14, 2023
2023 In Review Fast Facts | CNN

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CNN
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Here is a look back at the events of 2023.

January 3 – Republican Kevin McCarthy fails to secure enough votes to be elected Speaker of the House in three rounds of voting. On January 7, McCarthy is elected House speaker after multiple days of negotiations and 15 rounds of voting. That same day, the newly elected 118th Congress is officially sworn in.

January 7 – Tyre Nichols, a 29-year-old Black man, is pulled over for reckless driving. He is hospitalized following the arrest and dies three days later from injuries sustained during the traffic stop. Five officers from the Memphis Police Department are fired. On January 26, a grand jury indicts the five officers. They are each charged with second-degree murder, aggravated assault, aggravated kidnapping, official misconduct and official oppression. On September 12, the five officers are indicted by a federal grand jury on several charges including deprivation of rights.

January 9 – The White House counsel’s office confirms that several classified documents from President Joe Biden’s time as vice president were discovered last fall in an office at the Penn Biden Center. On January 12, the White House counsel’s office confirms a small number of additional classified documents were located in President Biden’s Wilmington, Delaware, home.

January 13 – The Trump Organization is fined $1.6 million – the maximum possible penalty – by a New York judge for running a decade-long tax fraud scheme.

January 21 – Eleven people are killed in a mass shooting at a dance studio in Monterey Park, California, as the city’s Asian American community was celebrating Lunar New Year. The 72-year-old gunman is found dead the following day from a self-inflicted gunshot wound.

January 24 – CNN reports that a lawyer for former Vice President Mike Pence discovered about a dozen documents marked as classified at Pence’s Indiana home last week, and he has turned those classified records over to the FBI.

January 25 – Facebook-parent company Meta announces it will restore former President Donald Trump’s accounts on Facebook and Instagram in the coming weeks, just over two years after suspending him in the wake of the January 6 Capitol attack.

February 1 – Tom Brady announces his retirement after 23 seasons in the NFL.

February 2 – Defense officials announce the United States is tracking a suspected Chinese high-altitude surveillance balloon over the continental United States. On February 4, a US military fighter jet shoots down the balloon over the Atlantic Ocean. On June 29, the Pentagon reveals the balloon did not collect intelligence while flying over the country.

February 3 – A Norfolk Southern freight train carrying hazardous materials derails in East Palestine, Ohio. An evacuation order is issued for the area within a mile radius of the train crash. The order is lifted on February 8. After returning to their homes, some residents report they have developed a rash and nausea.

February 7 – Lebron James breaks the NBA’s all-time scoring record, surpassing Kareem Abdul-Jabbar.

February 15 – Payton Gendron, 19, who killed 10 people in a racist mass shooting at a grocery store in a predominantly Black area of Buffalo last May, is sentenced to life in prison.

February 18 – In a statement, the Carter Center says that former President Jimmy Carter will begin receiving hospice care at his home in Georgia.

February 20 – President Biden makes a surprise trip to Kyiv for the first time since Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine almost a year ago.

February 23 – Disgraced R&B singer R. Kelly is sentenced to 20 years in prison in a Chicago federal courtroom on charges of child pornography and enticement of a minor. Kelly is already serving a 30-year prison term for his 2021 conviction on racketeering and sex trafficking charges in a New York federal court. Nineteen years of the 20-year prison sentence will be served at the same time as his other sentence. One year will be served after that sentence is complete.

February 23 – Harvey Weinstein, who is already serving a 23-year prison sentence in New York, is sentenced in Los Angeles to an additional 16 years in prison for charges of rape and sexual assault.

March 2 – SpaceX and NASA launch a fresh crew of astronauts on a mission to the International Space Station, kicking off a roughly six-month stay in space. The mission — which is carrying two NASA astronauts, a Russian cosmonaut and an astronaut from the United Arab Emirates — took off from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

March 2 – The jury in the double murder trial of Alex Murdaugh finds him guilty of murdering his wife and son. Murdaugh, the 54-year-old scion of a prominent and powerful family of local lawyers and solicitors, is also found guilty of two counts of possession of a weapon during the commission of a violent crime in the killings of Margaret “Maggie” Murdaugh and Paul Murdaugh on June 7, 2021.

March 3 – Four US citizens from South Carolina are kidnapped by gunmen in Matamoros, Mexico, in a case of mistaken identity. On March 7, two of the four Americans, Shaeed Woodard and Zindell Brown, are found dead and the other two, Latavia McGee and Eric Williams, are found alive. The cartel believed responsible for the armed kidnapping issues an apology letter and hands over five men to local authorities.

March 10 – The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation announces that Silicon Valley Bank was shut down by California regulators. This is the second largest bank failure in US history, only to Washington Mutual’s collapse in 2008. SVB Financial Group, the former parent company of SVB, files for bankruptcy on March 17.

March 27 – A 28-year-old Nashville resident shoots and kills three children and three adults at the Covenant School in Nashville. The shooter is fatally shot by responding officers.

March 29 – Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich is detained by Russian authorities and accused of spying. On April 7, he is formally charged with espionage.

March 30 – A grand jury in New York votes to indict Trump, the first time in American history that a current or former president has faced criminal charges. On April 4, Trump surrenders and is placed under arrest before pleading not guilty to 34 felony criminal charges of falsifying business records. Prosecutors allege that Trump sought to undermine the integrity of the 2016 election through a hush money scheme with payments made to women who claimed they had extramarital affairs with Trump. He has denied the affairs.

April 6 – Two Democratic members of the Tennessee House of Representatives, Rep. Justin Jones and Rep. Justin Pearson, are expelled while a third member, Rep. Gloria Johnson, is spared in an ousting by Republican lawmakers that was decried by the trio as oppressive, vindictive and racially motivated. This comes after Jones, Pearson and Johnson staged a demonstration on the House floor calling for gun reform following the shooting at the Covenant School. On April 10, Rep. Jones is sworn back in following a unanimous vote by the Nashville Metropolitan Council to reappoint him as an interim representative. On April 12, the Shelby County Board of Commissioners vote to confirm the reappointment of Rep. Pearson.

April 6-13 – ProPublica reports that Justice Clarence Thomas and his wife, conservative activist Ginni Thomas, have gone on several luxury trips involving travel subsidized by and stays at properties owned by Harlan Crow, a GOP megadonor. The hospitality was not disclosed on Thomas’ public financial filings with the Supreme Court. The following week ProPublica reports Thomas failed to disclose a 2014 real estate deal he made with Crow. On financial disclosure forms released on August 31, Thomas discloses the luxury trips and “inadvertently omitted” information including the real estate deal.

April 7 – A federal judge in Texas issues a ruling on medication abortion drug mifepristone, saying he will suspend the US Food and Drug Administration’s two-decade-old approval of it but paused his ruling for seven days so the federal government can appeal. But in a dramatic turn of events, a federal judge in Washington state says in a new ruling shortly after that the FDA must keep medication abortion drugs available in more than a dozen Democratic-led states.

April 13 – 21-year-old Jack Teixeira, a member of the Massachusetts Air National Guard is arrested by the FBI in connection with the leaking of classified documents that have been posted online.

April 18 – Fox News reaches a last-second settlement with Dominion Voting Systems, paying more than $787 million to end a two-year legal battle that publicly shredded the network’s credibility. Fox News’ $787.5 million settlement with Dominion Voting Systems is the largest publicly known defamation settlement in US history involving a media company.

April 25 – President Biden formally announces his bid for reelection.

May 2 – More than 11,000 members of the Writers Guild of America (WGA) go on strike for the first time since 2007. On September 26, the WGA announces its leaders have unanimously voted to authorize its members to return to work following the tentative agreement reached on September 24 between union negotiators and Hollywood’s studios and streaming services, effectively ending the months-long strike.

May 9 – A Manhattan federal jury finds Trump sexually abused former magazine columnist E. Jean Carroll in a luxury department store dressing room in the spring of 1996 and awards her $5 million for battery and defamation.

June 8 – Trump is indicted on a total of 37 counts in the special counsel’s classified documents probe. In a superseding indictment filed on July 27, Trump is charged with one additional count of willful retention of national defense information and two additional obstruction counts, bringing the total to 40 counts.

June 16 – Robert Bowers, the gunman who killed 11 worshippers at Pittsburgh’s Tree of Life synagogue in 2018, is convicted by a federal jury on all 63 charges against him. He is sentenced to death on August 2.

June 18 – A civilian submersible disappears with five people aboard while voyaging to the wreckage of the Titanic. On June 22, following a massive search for the submersible, US authorities announce the vessel suffered a “catastrophic implosion,” killing all five people aboard.

June 20 – ProPublica reports that Justice Samuel Alito did not disclose a luxury 2008 trip he took in which a hedge fund billionaire flew him on a private jet, even though the businessman would later repeatedly ask the Supreme Court to intervene on his behalf. In a highly unusual move, Alito preemptively disputed the nature of the report before it was published, authoring an op-ed in The Wall Street Journal in which he acknowledged knowing billionaire Paul Singer but downplaying their relationship.

June 29 – The Supreme Court says colleges and universities can no longer take race into consideration as a specific basis for granting admission, a landmark decision overturning long-standing precedent.

July 13 – The FDA approves Opill to be available over-the-counter, the first nonprescription birth control pill in the United States.

July 14 – SAG-AFTRA, a union representing about 160,000 Hollywood actors, goes on strike after talks with major studios and streaming services fail. It is the first time its members have stopped work on movie and television productions since 1980. On November 8, SAG-AFTRA and the studios reach a tentative agreement, officially ending the strike.

July 14 – Rex Heuermann, a New York architect, is charged with six counts of murder in connection with the deaths of three of the four women known as the “Gilgo Four.”

August 1 – Trump is indicted by a federal grand jury in Washington, DC, in the 2020 election probe. Trump is charged with conspiracy to defraud the United States; conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding; obstruction of and attempt to obstruct an official proceeding; and conspiracy against rights.

August 8 – Over 100 people are killed and hundreds of others unaccounted for after wildfires engulf parts of Maui. Nearly 3,000 homes and businesses are destroyed or damaged.

August 14 – Trump and 18 others are indicted by an Atlanta-based grand jury on state charges stemming from their efforts to overturn the former president’s 2020 electoral defeat. Trump now faces a total of 91 charges in four criminal cases, in four different jurisdictions — two federal and two state cases. On August 24, Trump surrenders at the Fulton County jail where he is processed and released on bond.

August 23 – Eight Republican presidential candidates face off in the first primary debate of the 2024 campaign in Milwaukee.

September 12 – House Speaker McCarthy announces he is calling on his committees to open a formal impeachment inquiry into President Biden, even as they have yet to prove allegations he directly profited off his son’s foreign business deals.

September 14 – Hunter Biden is indicted by special counsel David Weiss in connection with a gun he purchased in 2018, the first time in US history the Justice Department has charged the child of a sitting president. The three charges include making false statements on a federal firearms form and possession of a firearm as a prohibited person.

September 22 – New Jersey Democratic Senator Bob Menendez is charged with corruption-related offenses for the second time in 10 years. Menendez and his wife, Nadine Arslanian Menendez, are accused of accepting “hundreds of thousands of dollars in bribes” in exchange for the senator’s influence, according to the newly unsealed federal indictment.

September 28 – Dianne Feinstein, the longest-serving female US senator in history, dies at the age of 90. On October 1, California Governor Gavin Newsom announces he will appoint Emily’s List president Laphonza Butler to replace her. Butler will become the first out Black lesbian to join Congress. She will also be the sole Black female senator serving in Congress and only the third in US history.

September 29 – Las Vegas police confirm Duane Keith Davis, aka “Keffe D,” was arrested for the 1996 murder of rapper Tupac Shakur.

October 3 – McCarthy is removed as House speaker following a 216-210 vote, with eight Republicans voting to remove McCarthy from the post.

October 25 – After three weeks without a speaker, the House votes to elect Rep. Mike Johnson of Louisiana.

October 25 – Robert Card, a US Army reservist, kills 18 people and injures 13 others in a shooting rampage in Lewiston, Maine. On October 27, after a two-day manhunt, he is found dead from a self-inflicted gunshot.

November 13 – The Supreme Court announces a code of conduct in an attempt to bolster the public’s confidence in the court after months of news stories alleging that some of the justices have been skirting ethics regulations.

November 19 – Former first lady Rosalynn Carter passes away at the age of 96.

January 8 – Supporters of former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro storm the country’s congressional building, Supreme Court and presidential palace. The breaches come about a week after the inauguration of President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, who defeated Bolsonaro in a runoff election on October 30.

January 15 – At least 68 people are killed when an aircraft goes down near the city of Pokhara in central Nepal. This is the country’s deadliest plane crash in more than 30 years.

January 19 – New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Arden announces she will not seek reelection in October.

January 24 – President Volodymyr Zelensky fires a slew of senior Ukrainian officials amid a growing corruption scandal linked to the procurement of war-time supplies.

February 6 – More than 15,000 people are killed and tens of thousands injured after a magnitude 7.8 earthquake strikes Turkey and Syria.

February 28 – At least 57 people are killed after two trains collide in Greece.

March 1 – Bola Ahmed Tinubu is declared the winner of Nigeria’s presidential election.

March 10 – Xi Jinping is reappointed as president for another five years by China’s legislature in a ceremonial vote in Beijing, a highly choreographed exercise in political theater meant to demonstrate legitimacy and unity of the ruling elite.

March 16 – The French government forces through controversial plans to raise the country’s retirement age from 62 to 64.

April 4 – Finland becomes the 31st member of NATO.

April 15 – Following months of tensions in Sudan between a paramilitary group and the country’s army, violence erupts.

May 3 – A 13-year-old boy opens fire on his classmates at a school in Belgrade, Serbia, killing at least eight children along with a security guard. On May 4, a second mass shooting takes place when an attacker opens fire in the village of Dubona, about 37 miles southeast of Belgrade, killing eight people.

May 5 – The World Health Organization announces Covid-19 is no longer a global health emergency.

May 6 – King Charles’ coronation takes place at Westminster Abbey in London.

August 4 – Alexey Navalny is sentenced to 19 years in prison on extremism charges, Russian media reports. Navalny is already serving sentences totaling 11-and-a-half years in a maximum-security facility on fraud and other charges that he says were trumped up.

September 8 – Over 2,000 people are dead and thousands are injured after a 6.8-magnitude earthquake hits Morocco.

October 8 – Israel formally declares war on the Palestinian militant group Hamas after it carried out an unprecedented attack by air, sea and land on October 7.

November 8 – The Vatican publishes new guidelines opening the door to Catholic baptism for transgender people and babies of same-sex couples.

November 24 – The first group of hostages is released after Israel and Hamas agree to a temporary truce. Dozens more hostages are released in the following days. On December 1, the seven-day truce ends after negotiations reach an impasse and Israel accuses Hamas of violating the agreement by firing at Israel.

Awards and Winners

January 9 – The College Football Playoff National Championship game takes place at SoFi Stadium in Los Angeles. The Georgia Bulldogs defeat Texas Christian University’s Horned Frogs 65-7 for their second national title in a row.

January 10 – The 80th Annual Golden Globe Awards are presented live on NBC.

January 16-29 – The 111th Australian Open takes place. Novak Djokovic defeats Stefanos Tsitsipas in straight sets to win a 10th Australian Open title and a record-equaling 22nd grand slam. Belarusian-born Aryna Sabalenka defeats Elena Rybakina in three sets, becoming the first player competing under a neutral flag to secure a grand slam.

February 5 – The 65th Annual Grammy Awards ceremony takes place in Los Angeles at the Crypto.com Arena.

February 12 – Super Bowl LVII takes place at State Farm Stadium in Glendale, Arizona. The Kansas City Chiefs defeat the Philadelphia Eagles 38-35. This is the first Super Bowl to feature two Black starting quarterbacks.

February 19 – Ricky Stenhouse Jr. wins the 65th Annual Daytona 500 in double overtime. It is the longest Daytona 500 ever with a record of 212 laps raced.

March 12 – The 95th Annual Academy Awards takes place, with Jimmy Kimmel hosting for the third time.

March 14 – Ryan Redington wins his first Iditarod.

April 2 – The Louisiana State University Tigers defeat the University of Iowa Hawkeyes 102-85 in Dallas, to win the program’s first NCAA women’s basketball national championship.

April 3 – The University of Connecticut Huskies win its fifth men’s basketball national title with a 76-59 victory over the San Diego State University Aztecs in Houston.

April 6-9 – The 87th Masters tournament takes place. Jon Rahm wins, claiming his first green jacket and second career major at Augusta National.

April 17 – The 127th Boston Marathon takes place. The winners are Evans Chebet of Kenya in the men’s division and Hellen Obiri of Kenya in the women’s division.

May 6 – Mage, a 3-year-old chestnut colt, wins the 149th Kentucky Derby.

May 8-9 – The 147th Annual Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show takes place at the USTA Billie Jean King National Tennis Center in Queens, New York. Buddy Holly, a petit basset griffon Vendéen, wins Best in Show.

May 20 – National Treasure wins the 148th running of the Preakness Stakes.

May 21 – Brooks Koepka wins the 105th PGA Championship at Oak Hill County Club in Rochester, New York. This is his third PGA Championship and fifth major title of his career.

May 22-June 11 – The French Open takes place at Roland Garros Stadium in Paris. Novak Djokovic wins a record-breaking 23rd Grand Slam title, defeating Casper Ruud 7-6 (7-1) 6-3 7-5 in the men’s final. Iga Świątek wins her third French Open in four years with a 6-2 5-7 6-4 victory against the unseeded Karolína Muchová in the women’s final.

May 28 – Josef Newgarden wins the 107th running of the Indianapolis 500.

June 10 – Arcangelo wins the 155th running of the Belmont Stakes.

June 11 – The 76th Tony Awards takes place.

June 12 – The Denver Nuggets defeat the Miami Heat 94-89 in Game 5, to win the series 4-1 and claim their first NBA title in franchise history.

June 13 – The Vegas Golden Knights defeat the Florida Panthers in Game 5 to win the franchise’s first Stanley Cup.

June 18 – American golfer Wyndham Clark wins the 123rd US Open at The Los Angeles Country Club.

July 1-23 – The 110th Tour de France takes place. Danish cyclist Jonas Vingegaard wins his second consecutive Tour de France title.

July 3-16 – Wimbledon takes place in London. Carlos Alcaraz defeats Novak Djokovic 1-6 7-6 (8-6) 6-1 3-6 6-4 in the men’s final, to win his first Wimbledon title. Markéta Vondroušová defeats Ons Jabeur 6-4 6-4 in the women’s final, to win her first Wimbledon title and become the first unseeded woman in the Open Era to win the tournament.

July 16-23 – Brian Harman wins the 151st Open Championship at Royal Liverpool in Hoylake, Wirral, England, for his first major title.

July 20-August 20 – The Women’s World Cup takes place in Australia and New Zealand. Spain defeats England 1-0 to win its first Women’s World Cup.

August 28-September 10 – The US Open Tennis Tournament takes place. Coco Gauff defeats Aryna Sabalenka, and Novak Djokovic defeats Daniil Medvedev.

October 2-9 – The Nobel Prizes are announced. The Nobel Peace Prize is awarded to jailed Iranian activist Narges Mohammadi for “her fight against the oppression of women in Iran and her fight to promote human rights and freedom for all,” according to the Norwegian Nobel Committee.

November 1 – The Texas Rangers win the World Series for the first time in franchise history, defeating the Arizona Diamondbacks 5-0 in Game 5.

November 5 – The New York City Marathon takes place. Ethiopia’s Tamirat Tola sets a course record and wins the men’s race. Kenya’s Hellen Obiri wins the women’s race.

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December 7, 2023
China is using the world’s largest known online disinformation operation to harass Americans, a CNN review finds | CNN

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CNN
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The Chinese government has built up the world’s largest known online disinformation operation and is using it to harass US residents, politicians, and businesses—at times threatening its targets with violence, a CNN review of court documents and public disclosures by social media companies has found.

The onslaught of attacks – often of a vile and deeply personal nature – is part of a well-organized, increasingly brazen Chinese government intimidation campaign targeting people in the United States, documents show.

The US State Department says the tactics are part of a broader multi-billion-dollar effort to shape the world’s information environment and silence critics of Beijing that has expanded under President Xi Jinping. On Wednesday, President Biden is due to meet Xi at a summit in San Francisco.

Victims face a barrage of tens of thousands of social media posts that call them traitors, dogs, and racist and homophobic slurs. They say it’s all part of an effort to drive them into a state of constant fear and paranoia.

Often, these victims don’t know where to turn. Some have spoken to law enforcement, including the FBI – but little has been done. While tech and social media companies have shut down thousands of accounts targeting these victims, they’re outpaced by a slew of new accounts emerging virtually every day.

Known as “Spamouflage” or “Dragonbridge,” the network’s hundreds of thousands of accounts spread across every major social media platform have not only harassed Americans who have criticized the Chinese Communist Party, but have also sought to discredit US politicians, disparage American companies at odds with China’s interests and hijack online conversations around the globe that could portray the CCP in a negative light.

Private researchers have tracked the network since its discovery more than four years ago, but only in recent months have federal prosecutors and Facebook’s parent company Meta publicly concluded that the operation has ties to Chinese police.

Meta announced in August it had taken down a cluster of nearly 8,000 accounts attributed to this group in the second quarter of 2023 alone. Google, which owns YouTube, told CNN it had shut down more than 100,000 associated accounts in recent years, while X, formerly known as Twitter, has blocked hundreds of thousands of China “state-backed” or “state-linked” accounts, according to company blogs.

Still, given the relatively low cost of such operations, experts who monitor disinformation warn the Chinese government will continue to use these tactics to try to bend online discussions closer to the CCP’s preferred narrative, which frequently entails trying to undermine the US and democratic values.

“We might think that this is confined to certain chatrooms, or this platform or that platform, but it’s expanding across the board,” Rep. Mike Gallagher, chairman of the House Select Committee on the CCP, told CNN. “And it’s only a matter of time before it happens to that average American citizen who doesn’t think it’s their problem right now.”

When trolls disrupted an anti-communism Zoom event organized by New York-based activist Chen Pokong in January 2021, he had little doubt who was responsible. The trolls mocked participants and threatened that one victim would “die miserably.” Their conduct reminded Chen of repression by the government of China, where he spent nearly five years in prison for pro-democracy work.

But his suspicions about who was behind the interruption were solidified when the US Department of Justice charged more than 30 Chinese officials earlier this year with running a sprawling disinformation operation that had targeted dissidents in the US, including those in the Zoom meeting Chen says he hosted in 2021.

It was just one of multiple indictments the Justice Department unsealed in April exposing alleged Chinese government plots to target its perceived critics and enemies, while impugning the sovereignty of the United States. Two alleged Chinese operatives were charged with running an “undeclared police station” in New York City. Last year, another indictment outlined how Chinese agents allegedly tried to derail the congressional campaign of a Chinese dissident.

“They want to deprive my freedom of speech, so I feel like it’s not only an attack on me,” said Chen, who was ejected from his own meeting during the disruption. “They also attack America.”

The DOJ complaint named 34 individual officers with China’s Ministry of Public Security and published photographs of them at computers, allegedly working on the disinformation campaign known as the “912 Special Project Working Group.” The operation, primarily based in Beijing, appears to involve “hundreds” of MPS officers across the country, according to an FBI agent’s affidavit.

The complaint does not refer to the cluster of fake accounts as “Spamouflage,” but private researchers and a spokesperson for Meta told CNN that the social media activity described by the DOJ is part of that network. As part of a mission “to manipulate public perceptions of [China], the Group uses its misattributed social media accounts to threaten, harass and intimidate specific victims,” the complaint states.

When asked about Spamouflage’s reported links to Chinese law enforcement, a spokesperson for China’s embassy in Washington, Liu Pengyu, denied the allegations.

“China always respects the sovereignty of other countries. The US accusation has no factual evidence or legal basis. It is entirely politically motivated. China firmly opposes it,” Liu said in a statement to CNN. He claimed that the US “invented the weaponizing of the global information space.”

A report released by Meta in August illustrates how the posts from the network often align with the workday hours in China. The report described “bursts of activity in the mid-morning and early afternoon, Beijing time, with breaks for lunch and supper, and then a final burst of activity in the evening.”

And while Meta detected posts from various regions in China, the company and other researchers have found centralized coordination that relentlessly pushed identical messages across multiple social media platforms, sometimes repeatedly insulting the same individuals who have questioned the Chinese government.

One of those individuals is Jiayang Fan, a journalist for The New Yorker who told CNN she began facing harassment by the network when she covered pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong in 2019.

Attacks directed at Fan – which ranged from cartoons of her painting her face white as though rejecting her identity to accusations that she killed her mother for profit – carry telltale signs of the Spamouflage network, said Darren Linvill of the Media Forensics Hub at Clemson University. Linvill’s group found more than 12,000 tweets attacking Fan using the same hashtag, #TraitorJiayangFan.

Although she hasn’t lived in China since she was a child, Fan believes such messages have been levelled against her to spark fear and silence others.

“This is part of a very old Chinese Communist Party playbook to intimidate offenders and aspiring offenders,” said Fan, who questioned what her distant relatives in China may think when they see such content. “It is uncomfortable for me to know that they are seeing these portrayals of me and have no idea what to believe.”

Experts who track online influence campaigns say there are signs of a shift in China’s strategy in recent years. In the past, the Spamouflage network mostly focused on issues domestically relevant to China. However, more recently, accounts tied to the group have been stoking controversy around global issues, including developments in the United States.

Spamouflage accounts – some of which posed as Texas residents – called for protests of plans to build a rare-earths processing facility in Texas and spread negative messages about a separate US manufacturing company, according to a report by cybersecurity firm Mandiant last year. The report also described how the campaign promoted negative content about the Biden administration’s efforts to hasten mineral production that would curb US reliance on China.

Other posts by the network have referenced how “racism is an indelible shame on American democracy” and how the US committed “cultural genocide against the Indians,” according to a Meta report in August. Another post claimed that former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is “riddled with scandals.”

Spamouflage is “evolving in tactics. It’s evolving in themes.”

Ben Nimmo, global lead for threat intelligence at Meta

Chinese government-linked accounts have also posted messages that included a call to “kill” President Biden, a cartoon featuring the so-called QAnon Shaman who rioted at the US Capitol as a symbol of “western style democracy,” and a post that suggested US defense contractors profit off the deaths of innocent people, according to a Department of Homeland Security report in April obtained through a records request.

The DOJ complaint filed against Chinese officials alleged that last year they sought to take advantage of the second anniversary of George Floyd’s death and post on social media about his murder to “reveal the law enforcement brutality” in the US. They also received a task to “work on 2022 US midterm elections and criticize American democracy.”

Spamouflage is “evolving in tactics. It’s evolving in themes,” said Ben Nimmo, the global lead for threat intelligence at Meta. “Our job is to keep on raising our defenses and keep on telling people about it, especially as we get closer to the election year.”

Yet as social media companies race to stop disinformation and the US government files complaints against those allegedly responsible, accountability can be elusive.

“This is the rub with a lot of cybercrimes, that it becomes very, very difficult to actually put the perpetrators in jail,” said Lindsay Gorman, the head of technology and geopolitics at the German Marshall Fund’s Alliance for Securing Democracy.

But, Gorman added, that doesn’t mean there are no consequences for China.

“Even if individuals have a degree of impunity because they are never planning on coming to the United States anyway, that doesn’t mean that the party operation has impunity here – certainly not in terms of public opinion, certainly not in terms of US-China relations,” she said.

Meta, Google, and other companies that have published reports outing Spamouflage stress that most of the social media accounts within the network receive little or no engagement, meaning they rarely go viral.

But Linvill of Clemson University argues that the network uses a unique strategy of “flooding” conversations with so many comments that posts from genuine users receive less attention. This includes posting on platforms typically not associated with disinformation, such as Pinterest.

“They are operating thousands of accounts at a time on a given platform, often to drown out conversations, just with sheer volume of messaging,” Linvill said. “When we think of disinformation, we often think of pushing ideas on users and making ideas more salient, whereas what China is doing is the opposite. They are trying to remove conversations from social media.”

When Beijing hosted the 2022 Winter Olympics, for example, human rights groups began promoting the hashtag #GenocideGames to bring attention to accusations that China has detained more than a million Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in internment camps.

But then something surprising happened. Accounts that Linvill and his colleagues believed were part of Spamouflage started tweeting the hashtag too.

It might be counterintuitive for a pro-Chinese government group to start spreading a hashtag that brought attention to the Chinese government’s human rights’ abuses, Linvill explained. But by using the hashtag repeatedly in tweets that had nothing to do with the issue itself, Spamouflage was able to reduce views on the legitimate messages.

Jiajun Qiu, whose academic work focused on elections and who fled China in 2016, showed CNN what happens when he types his name into X, formerly known as Twitter. There are sometimes dozens of accounts pretending to be him by using his name and photo.

They are designed by the operators of Spamouflage, Linvill explained, to confuse people and prevent them from finding Qiu’s real account by muddying the waters.

Now living in Virginia, Qiu runs a pro-democracy YouTube channel and has faced an onslaught of homophobic, racist and bizarre insults from social media accounts that Linvill’s team and others have tied to Spamouflage.

Some accounts have posted cartoons that convey Qiu as an insect working on behalf of the US government. Another image depicts him being stomped by a cartoon Jesus. Yet another paints him as a dog on the leash of an American rat.

“I tell people the truth, so they want to do anything possible to insult me,” Qiu said.

Linvill and his team have tracked hundreds of these cartoons across the internet, and said they are a “tell” of Spamouflage. Cartoons, Linvill explained, can be more effective than text because they are “eye-catching” and “you have to stop and look at it.” In addition, these original cartoons can easily be translated into hundreds of languages at a very low cost.

Beyond the online smears, Qiu says he has also faced threats via other online messages and escalatory calls from unidentified sources who he believes have ties to the Chinese government. One anonymous message told him he would be arrested and brought to justice for breaking Chinese law. An email referenced the church he attends in Manassas, Virginia and said, “for his own safety and that of the worshippers, he would do well to find another place to stay.”

Qiu told CNN that the FBI has interviewed him four times regarding these threats, and that he has been instructed to contact local police if he is ever followed.

“Every day I live in a sense of fear,” Qiu said.

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November 13, 2023
Arizona fake electors led vocal campaign to overturn the 2020 election — they’re now part of a ‘robust’ state investigation | CNN Politics

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CNN
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They called it “The Signing.” Eleven fake electors for President Donald Trump convened at the state Republican Party headquarters in Phoenix, Arizona, on December 14, 2020. They broadcast themselves preparing to sign the documents, allegedly provided by a Trump campaign attorney, claiming that they were the legitimate representatives of the state’s electoral votes.

By that time, Trump’s loss in the state – by less than 11,000 votes – had already been certified by the state’s Republican governor affirming that Joe Biden won Arizona in the 2020 presidential election.

But in the weeks that followed, five of Arizona’s 11 “Republican electors,” as they called themselves, pushed an unusually vocal campaign, compared to other fake electors from states across the country, for Vice President Mike Pence to reject the legitimate Democratic slate of electors.

Instead, they called on Pence to accept them or no electors at all, according to a CNN KFile review of their interviews, actions and comments on social media.

Much attention has been drawn to the fake elector schemes in Georgia and Michigan where local and state authorities charged some participants for election crimes this past summer. But in no other state were there fake electors more active in publicly promoting the scheme than in Arizona.

Now those fake electors find themselves under new legal scrutiny as the Arizona attorney general announced a broad investigation into their actions and their public campaign that could open the electors up to increased legal liability, according to experts who spoke with CNN.

“They were more brazen,” Anthony Michael Kreis, an expert on constitutional law at Georgia State University told CNN. “There is no difficulty trying to piece together their unlawful, corrupt intent because they publicly documented their stream of consciousness bread trail for prosecutors to follow.”

Attorney General Kris Mayes, in an interview with CNN, said she has been in contact with investigators in Michigan and Georgia and the Department of Justice.

“It’s robust. It’s a serious matter,” Mayes, a Democrat, said of her ongoing investigation. “We’re going to make sure that we do it on our timetable, applying the resources that it requires to make sure that justice is done, for not only Arizonans, but for the entire country.”

All 11 electors took part in multiple failed legal challenges, first asking a judge to invalidate the state’s results in a conspiracy theory-laden court case and then taking part in a last-ditch, desperate plea seeking to force Pence to help throw the election to Trump. The cases were dismissed.

Of the 11 fake electors in Arizona, five were the most publicly vocal members advocating the scheme in the state: Kelli Ward, the chairperson of the state party and her spouse, Michael Ward; state Rep. Anthony Kern, then a sitting lawmaker; Jake Hoffman, a newly elected member of the Arizona House; and Tyler Bowyer, a top state official with the Republican National Committee.

Each of these five publicly pushed for the legitimate electors to be discarded by Pence on January 6, 2021. One of the fake electors, Kern, took part in “Stop the Steal” rallies and was photographed in a restricted area on the Capitol steps during the riot at the Capitol.

“The Arizona false electors left a trail here that will surely interest prosecutors,” Ryan Goodman, a law professor at New York University who previously served as the special counsel to the general counsel at the Department of Defense, told CNN.

Electors, a part of the Electoral College system, represent the popular vote in each state. When a candidate wins a state, the party’s designated slate of electors gets to participate in the Electoral College process. The electors meet in a ceremonial process and sign certificates, officially casting their vote for president.

CNN reached out to all of the electors, but only received comment from two of them.

The most publicly vocal of the fake electors, Kelli Ward called the group the “true electors,” and provided play-by-play updates on the Arizona Republican Party’s YouTube. Falsely saying the state’s electoral votes were “contested,” even though legal challenges to the count had been dismissed, she urged supporters to call on Arizona’s state legislature to decertify the state’s results.

“We believe our votes are the ones that will count on January 6th,” she said in one interview on conservative talk radio, two days after signing the fake documents.

Ward’s comments were echoed in tweets by her husband, Michael, also an elector and a gadfly in Arizona politics known for spreading conspiracy theories. In a post sharing a White House memo that urged Pence to reject the results from states that submitted fake electors, Michael Ward hinted at retribution for Republicans who failed to act.

“My Holiday prayer is that every backstabbing ‘Republican’ gets paid back for their failure to act come Jan 20th!” he wrote in a tweet on December 22.

Another prominent elector was the RNC Committeeman Bowyer, who on his Twitter account pushed false election claims and conspiracies.

“It will be up to the President of the Senate and congress to decide,” Bowyer tweeted after signing the fake electors documents.

In repeated comments Bowyer declared the decision would come down to Pence.

“It’s pretty simple: The President of the United States Senate (VP) has the awesome power of acknowledging a specific envelope of electoral votes when there are two competing slates— or none at all,” wrote Bowyer in a December 28 tweet.

“We don’t live in a Democracy. The presidential election isn’t democratic,” he added when receiving pushback.

A spokesperson for Bowyer said that he was simply responding to a question from a user on what next steps looked like and maintained that there was precedent for a competing slate of electors.

Bowyer urged action in the lead up to the joint session of Congress on January 6.

“Be a modern Son of Liberty today,” he said late in the morning of January 6 – a post he deleted following the riot at the Capitol.

The spokesperson for Bowyer said he had not directly been contacted by Mayes’s office or the DOJ.

Newly elected state representative Hoffman sent a two-page letter to Pence on January 5, 2021, asking the vice president to order that Arizona’s electors not be decided by the popular vote of the citizens, but instead by the members of the state legislature.

“It is in this late hour, with urgency, that I respectfully ask that you delay the certification of election results for Arizona during the joint session of Congress on January 6, 2021, and seek clarification from the Arizona state legislature as to which slate of electors are proper and accurate,” wrote Hoffman.

In interviews, Hoffman repeatedly argued no electors be sent at all because “we don’t have certainty in the outcome of our election,” and to contest Democrat electors if they were sent.

Then-state Rep. Kern, who lost his seat in the 2020 election, spent his final weeks in office sharing “stop the steal” content and participating in their rallies. He said he was “honored” to be a Trump elector.

“On January 6th, vice President Mike Pence gets a choice on which electors he’s going to choose,” Kern told the Epoch Times in an interview in December.

“There is no president elect until January 6th,” he added.

Kern hadn’t changed his tune in an interview with CNN.

“Why, why would you think alternate electors are a lie?,” Kern said.

Kern repeatedly promoted the January 6, 2021, rally preceding the Capitol riot. Kern was in DC that day and shared a photo from the Capitol grounds as rioters gathered on the steps of the Capitol.

“In DC supporting @realDonaldTrump and @CNN @FoxNews @MSNBC are spewing lies again. #truth,” he wrote in a tweet.

Later Kern was seen in a restricted area of the Capitol steps during the riot. There is no indication he was violent, and he has not been charged with any crime.

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November 10, 2023
Controversial Police Encounters Fast Facts | CNN

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CNN
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Here’s a look at controversial police encounters that have prompted protests over the past three decades. This select list includes cases in which police officers were charged or a grand jury was convened.

March 3, 1991 – LAPD officers beat motorist Rodney King after he leads police on a high-speed chase through Los Angeles County. George Holliday videotapes the beating from his apartment balcony. The video shows police hitting King more than 50 times with their batons. Over 20 officers are present at the scene, mostly from the LAPD. King suffers 11 fractures and other injuries.

March 15, 1991 – A Los Angeles grand jury indicts Sergeant Stacey Koon and Officers Laurence Michael Powell, Timothy Wind and Theodore Briseno in connection with the beating.

May 10, 1991 – A grand jury refuses to indict 17 officers who stood by at the King beating and did nothing.

April 29, 1992 – The four LAPD officers are acquitted. Riots break out at the intersection of Florence and Normandie in South Central Los Angeles. Governor Pete Wilson declares a state of emergency and calls in the National Guard. Riots in the next few days leave more than 50 people dead and cause nearly $1 billion in property damage.

May 1, 1992 – King makes an emotional plea for calm, “People, I just want to say, can we all get along? Can we get along? Can we stop making it horrible for the older people and the kids?”

August 4, 1992 – A federal grand jury returns indictments against Koon, Powell, Wind, and Briseno on the charge of violating King’s civil rights.

April 17, 1993 – Koon and Powell are convicted for violating King’s civil rights. Wind and Briseno are found not guilty. No disturbances follow the verdict. On August 4, both Koon and Powell are sentenced to 30 months in prison. Powell is found guilty of violating King’s constitutional right to be free from an arrest made with “unreasonable force.” Koon, the ranking officer, is convicted of permitting the civil rights violation to occur.

April 19, 1994 – King is awarded $3.8 million in compensatory damages in a civil lawsuit against the City of Los Angeles. King had demanded $56 million, or $1 million for every blow struck by the officers.

June 1, 1994 – In a civil trial against the police officers, a jury awards King $0 in punitive damages. He had asked for $15 million.

June 17, 2012 – King is found dead in his swimming pool.

November 5, 1992 – Two white police officers approach Malice Wayne Green, a 35-year-old black motorist, after he parks outside a suspected drug den. Witnesses say the police strike the unarmed man in the head repeatedly with heavy flashlights. The officers claim they feared Green was trying to reach for one of their weapons. Green dies of his injuries later that night.

November 16, 1992 – Two officers, Larry Nevers and Walter Budzyn, are charged with second-degree murder. Sgt. Freddie Douglas, a supervisor who arrived on the scene after a call for backup, is charged with involuntary manslaughter and willful neglect of duty. These charges are later dismissed. Another officer, Robert Lessnau, is charged with assault with intent to do great bodily harm.

November 18, 1992 – The Detroit Free Press reports that toxicology tests revealed alcohol and a small amount of cocaine in Green’s system. A medical examiner later states that Green’s head injuries, combined with the cocaine and alcohol in his system, led to his death.

December 1992 – The Detroit police chief fires the four officers.

August 23, 1993 – Nevers and Budzyn are convicted of murder after a 45-day trial. Lessnau is acquitted. Nevers sentence is 12-25 years, while Budzyn’s sentence is 8-18 years.

1997-1998 – The Michigan Supreme Court orders a retrial for Budzyn due to possible jury bias. During the second trial, a jury convicts Budzyn of a less serious charge, involuntary manslaughter, and he is released with time served.

2000-2001 – A jury finds Nevers guilty of involuntary manslaughter after a second trial. He is released from prison in 2001.

August 9, 1997 – Abner Louima, a 33-year-old Haitian immigrant, is arrested for interfering with officers trying to break up a fight in front of the Club Rendez-vous nightclub in Brooklyn. Louima alleges, while handcuffed, police officers lead him to the precinct bathroom and sodomized him with a plunger or broomstick.

August 15, 1997 – Police officers Justin Volpe and Charles Schwarz are charged with aggravated sexual abuse and first-degree assault.

August 16, 1997 – Thousands of angry protesters gather outside Brooklyn’s 70th Precinct to demonstrate against what they say is a long-standing problem of police brutality against minorities.

August 18, 1997 – Two more officers, Thomas Wiese and Thomas Bruder, are charged with assault and criminal possession of a weapon.

February 26, 1998 – Volpe, Bruder, Schwarz and Wiese are indicted on federal civil rights charges. A fifth officer, Michael Bellomo, is accused of helping the others cover up the alleged beating, as well as an alleged assault on another Haitian immigrant, Patrick Antoine, the same night.

May 1999 – Volpe pleads guilty to beating and sodomizing Louima. He is later sentenced to 30 years in prison.

June 8, 1999 – Schwarz is convicted of beating Louima, then holding him down while he was being tortured. Wiese, Bruder, and Bellomo are acquitted. Schwarz is later sentenced to 15 and a half years in prison for perjury.

March 6, 2000 – In a second trial, Schwarz, Wiese, and Bruder are convicted of conspiring to obstruct justice by covering up the attack. On February 28, 2002, the Second Circuit Court of Appeals overturns their convictions.

July 12, 2001 – Louima receives $8.75 million in a settlement agreement with the City of New York and the Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association.

September 2002 – Schwarz pleads guilty to perjury and is sentenced to five years in prison. He had been scheduled to face a new trial for civil rights violations but agreed to a deal.

February 4, 1999 – Amadou Diallo, 22, a street vendor from West Africa, is confronted outside his home in the Bronx by four NYPD officers who are searching the neighborhood for a rapist. When Diallo reaches for his wallet, the officers open fire, reportedly fearing he was pulling out a gun. They fire 41 times and hit him 19 times, killing him.

March 24, 1999 – More than 200 protestors are arrested outside NYPD headquarters. For weeks, activists have gathered to protest the use of force by NYPD officers.

March 25, 1999 – A Bronx grand jury votes to indict the four officers – Sean Carroll, Edward McMellon, Kenneth Boss and Richard Murphy – for second-degree murder. On February 25, 2000, they are acquitted.

January 2001 – The US Justice Department announces it will not pursue federal civil rights charges against the officers.

January 2004 – Diallo’s family receives $3 million in a wrongful death lawsuit.

September 4, 2005 – Six days after Hurricane Katrina devastates the area, New Orleans police officers receive a radio call that two officers are down under the Danziger vertical-lift bridge. According to the officers, people are shooting at them and they have returned fire.

– Brothers Ronald and Lance Madison, along with four members of the Bartholomew family, are shot by police officers. Ronald Madison, 40, who is intellectually disabled, and James Brisette, 17 (some sources say 19), are fatally wounded.

December 28, 2006 – Police Sgts. Kenneth Bowen and Robert Gisevius and officers Robert Faulcon and Anthony Villavaso are charged with first-degree murder. Officers Robert Barrios, Michael Hunter and Ignatius Hills are charged with attempted murder.

August 2008 – State charges against the officers are thrown out.

July 12, 2010 – Four officers are indicted on federal charges of murdering Brissette: Bowen, Gisevius, Faulcon and Villavaso. Faulcon is also charged with Madison’s murder. Bowen, Gisevius, Faulcon and Villavaso, along with Arthur Kaufman and Gerard Dugue are charged with covering up the shooting.

April 8, 2010 – Hunter pleads guilty in federal court of covering up the police shooting. In December, he is sentenced to eight years in prison.

August 5, 2011 – The jury finds five officers guilty of civil rights and obstruction charges: Bowen, Gisevius, Faulcon, Villavaso and Kaufman.

October 5, 2011 – Hills receives a six and a half year sentence for his role in the shooting.

April 4, 2012 – A federal judge sentences five officers to prison terms ranging from six to 65 years for the shootings of unarmed civilians. Faulcon receives 65 years. Bowen and Gisevius both receive 40 years. Villavaso receives 38 years. Kaufman, who was involved in the cover up, receives six years.

March 2013 – After a January 2012 mistrial, Dugue’s trial is delayed indefinitely.

September 17, 2013 – Bowen, Gisevius, Faulcon, Villavaso and Kaufman are awarded a new trial.

April 20, 2016 – Bowen, Gisevius, Faulcon, Villavaso and Kaufman plead guilty in exchange for reduced sentences.

November 25, 2006 – Sean Bell, 23, is fatally shot by NYPD officers outside a Queens bar the night before his wedding. Two of his companions, Joseph Guzman and Trent Benefield, are wounded. Officers reportedly fired 50 times at the men.

March 2007 – Three of the five officers involved in the shooting are indicted: Detectives Gescard F. Isnora and Michael Oliver are charged with manslaughter, and Michael Oliver is charged with reckless endangerment. On April 25, 2008, the three officers are acquitted of all charges.

July 27, 2010 – New York City settles a lawsuit for more than $7 million filed by Bell’s family and two of his friends.

2009 – Oakland, California – Oscar Grant

January 1, 2009 – San Francisco Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) officer Johannes Mehserle shoots Oscar Grant, an unarmed 22-year-old, in the back while he is lying face down on a platform at the Fruitvale BART station in Oakland.

January 7, 2009 – Footage from station KTVU shows demonstrators vandalizing businesses and assaulting police in Oakland during a protest. About 105 people are arrested. Some protesters lie on their stomachs, saying they are showing solidarity with Grant, who was shot in the back.

January 27, 2010 – The mother of Grant’s young daughter receives a $1.5 million settlement from her lawsuit against BART.

July 8, 2010 – A jury finds Mehserle guilty of involuntary manslaughter. At the trial, Mehserle says that he intended to draw and fire his Taser rather than his gun. On November 5, 2010, Mehserle is sentenced to two years in prison. Outrage over the light sentence leads to a night of violent protests.

June 2011 – Mehserle is released from prison.

July 12, 2013 – The movie, “Fruitvale Station” opens in limited release. It dramatizes the final hours of Grant’s life.

July 5, 2011 – Fullerton police officers respond to a call about a homeless man looking into car windows and pulling on car handles. Surveillance camera footage shows Kelly Thomas being beaten and stunned with a Taser by police. Thomas, who was mentally ill, dies five days later in the hospital. When the surveillance video of Thomas’s beating is released in May 2012, it sparks a nationwide outcry.

May 9, 2012 – Officer Manuel Ramos is charged with second-degree murder and involuntary manslaughter, and Cpl. Jay Patrick Cicinelli is charged with involuntary manslaughter and felony use of excessive force. On January 13, 2014, a jury acquits Ramos and Cicinelli.

May 16, 2012 – The City of Fullerton awards $1 million to Thomas’ mother, Cathy Thomas.

September 28, 2012 – A third police officer, Joseph Wolfe, is charged with involuntary manslaughter and excessive force in connection with Thomas’ death. The charges are later dropped.

July 17, 2014 – Eric Garner, 43, dies after Officer Daniel Pantaleo uses a department-banned chokehold on him during an arrest for allegedly selling cigarettes illegally. Garner dies later that day.

August 1, 2014 – The New York City Medical Examiner rules Garner’s death a homicide.

December 3, 2014 – A grand jury decides not to indict Pantaleo. Protests are held in New York, Washington, Philadelphia and Oakland, California. Demonstrators chant Garner’s last words, “I can’t breathe!”

July 14, 2015 – New York settles with Garner’s estate for $5.9 million.

August 19, 2019 – The NYPD announces Pantaleo has been fired and will not receive his pension.

August 21, 2019 – Pantaleo’s supervisor, Sgt. Kizzy Adonis, pleads no contest to a disciplinary charge of failure to supervise, and must forfeit the monetary value of 20 vacation days.

August 9, 2014 – During a struggle, a police officer fatally shoots Michael Brown, an unarmed 18-year-old.

August 9-10, 2014 – Approximately 1,000 demonstrators protest Brown’s death. The Ferguson-area protest turns violent and police begin using tear gas and rubber bullets to disperse the crowd. Black Lives Matter, a protest movement that grew out of the Trayvon Martin shooting in 2012, grows in visibility during the Ferguson demonstrations.

August 15, 2014 – Police identify the officer as 28-year-old Darren Wilson. Wilson is put on paid administrative leave after the incident.

August 18, 2014 – Governor Jay Nixon calls in the Missouri National Guard to protect the police command center.

November 24, 2014 – A grand jury does not indict Wilson for Brown’s shooting. Documents show that Wilson fired his gun 12 times. Protests erupt nationwide after the hearing.

November 29, 2014 – Wilson resigns from the Ferguson police force.

March 11, 2015 – Ferguson Police Chief Thomas Jackson resigns a week after a scathing Justice Department report slams his department.

August 9-10, 2015 – The anniversary observations of Brown’s death are largely peaceful during the day. After dark, shots are fired, businesses are vandalized and there are tense standoffs between officers and protestors, according to police. The next day, a state of emergency is declared and fifty-six people are arrested during a demonstration at a St. Louis courthouse.

June 20, 2017 – A settlement is reached in the Brown family wrongful death lawsuit against the city of Ferguson. While the details of the settlement are not disclosed to the public, US Federal Judge Richard Webber calls the settlement, “fair and reasonable compensation.”

October 20, 2014 – Chicago police officer Jason Van Dyke shoots and kills Laquan McDonald, 17. Van Dyke says he fired in self-defense after McDonald lunged at him with a knife, but dashcam video shows McDonald walking away from police. Later, an autopsy shows McDonald was shot 16 times.

April 15, 2015 – The city agrees to pay $5 million to McDonald’s family.

November 19, 2015 – A judge in Chicago orders the city to release the police dashcam video that shows the shooting. For months, the city had fought attempts to have the video released to the public, saying it could jeopardize any ongoing investigation. The decision is the result of a Freedom of Information Act request by freelance journalist, Brandon Smith.

November 24, 2015 – Van Dyke is charged with first-degree murder.

December 1, 2015 – Mayor Rahm Emanuel announces he has asked for the resignation of Chicago Police Superintendent Garry McCarthy.

August 30, 2016 – Chicago Police Superintendent Eddie Johnson files administrative charges against six officers involved in the shooting. Five officers will have their cases heard by the Chicago Police Board, which will rule if the officers will be terminated. The sixth officer charged has resigned.

March 2017 – Van Dyke is indicted on 16 additional counts of aggravated battery with a firearm.

June 27, 2017 – Three officers are indicted on felony conspiracy, official misconduct and obstruction of justice charges for allegedly lying to investigators.

October 5, 2018 – Van Dyke is found guilty of second-degree murder and of 16 counts of aggravated battery with a firearm, but not guilty of official misconduct. Though he was originally charged with first-degree murder, jurors were instructed on October 4 that they could consider second-degree murder. He is sentenced to six years and nine months in prison. On February 3, 2022, Van Dyke is released early from prison.

January 17, 2019 – Cook County Associate Judge Domenica Stephenson finds three Chicago police officers not guilty of covering up details in the 2014 killing of McDonald. Stephenson’s ruling came more than a month after the officers’ five-day bench trial ended.

July 18, 2019 – The Chicago Police Board announces that four Chicago police officers, Sgt. Stephen Franko, Officer Janet Mondragon, Officer Daphne Sebastian and Officer Ricardo Viramontes, have been fired for covering up the fatal shooting of McDonald.

October 9, 2019 – Inspector General Joseph Ferguson releases a report detailing a cover-up involving 16 officers and supervisors.

April 4, 2015 – North Charleston police officer Michael Slager fatally shoots Walter Scott, 50, an unarmed motorist stopped for a broken brake light. Slager says he feared for his life after Scott grabbed his Taser.

April 7, 2015 – Cellphone video of the incident is released. It shows Scott running away and Slager shooting him in the back. Slager is charged with first-degree murder.

October 8, 2015 – The North Charleston City Council approves a $6.5 million settlement with the family of Walter Scott.

May 11, 2016 – A federal grand jury indicts Slager for misleading investigators and violating the civil rights of Walter Scott.

December 5, 2016 – After three days of deliberations, the jury is unable to reach a verdict and the judge declares a mistrial in the case. The prosecutor says that the state will try Slager again.

May 2, 2017 – Slager pleads guilty to a federal charge of using excessive force. State murder charges against Slager – as well as two other federal charges – will be dismissed as part of a plea deal. On December 7, 2017, Slager is sentenced to 20 years in federal prison.

April 12, 2015 – Police arrest 25-year-old Freddie Gray on a weapons charge after he is found with a knife in his pocket. Witness video contains audio of Gray screaming as officers carry him to the prisoner transport van. After arriving at the police station, Gray is transferred to a trauma clinic with a severe spinal injury. He falls into a coma and dies one week later.

April 21, 2015 – The names of six officers involved in the arrest are released. Lt. Brian Rice, 41, Officer Caesar Goodson, 45, Sgt. Alicia White, 30, Officer William Porter, 25, Officer Garrett Miller, 26, and Officer Edward Nero, 29, are all suspended.

April 24, 2015 – Baltimore police acknowledge Gray did not get timely medical care after his arrest and was not buckled into a seat belt while being transported in the police van.

April 27, 2015 – Protests turn into riots on the day of Gray’s funeral. At least 20 officers are injured as police and protesters clash on the streets. Gov. Larry Hogan’s office declares a state of emergency and activates the National Guard to address the unrest.

May 21, 2015 – A Baltimore grand jury indicts the six officers involved in the arrest of Freddie Gray. The officers face a range of charges from involuntary manslaughter to reckless endangerment. Goodson, the driver of the transport van, will face the most severe charge: second-degree depraved-heart murder.

September 10, 2015 – Judge Barry Williams denies the defendants’ motion to move their trials out of Baltimore, a day after officials approve a $6.4 million deal to settle all civil claims tied to Gray’s death.

December 16, 2015 – The judge declares a mistrial in Porter’s case after jurors say they are deadlocked.

May 23, 2016 – Nero is found not guilty.

June 23, 2016 – Goodson is acquitted of all charges.

July 18, 2016 – Rice, the highest-ranking officer to stand trial, is found not guilty on all charges.

July 27, 2016 – Prosecutors drop charges against the three remaining officers awaiting trial in connection with Gray’s death.

August 10, 2016 – A Justice Department investigation finds that the Baltimore Police Department engages in unconstitutional practices that lead to disproportionate rates of stops, searches and arrests of African-Americans. The report also finds excessive use of force against juveniles and people with mental health disabilities.

January 12, 2017 – The city of Baltimore agrees to a consent decree with sweeping reforms proposed by the Justice Department.

2016 – Falcon Heights, Minnesota – Philando Castile

July 6, 2016 – Police officer Jeronimo Yanez shoots and kills Philando Castile during a traffic stop in Falcon Heights. Castile’s girlfriend, Diamond Reynolds, live-streams the aftermath of the confrontation, and says Castile was reaching for his identification when he was shot.

November 16, 2016 – Yanez is charged with second-degree manslaughter and two felony counts of dangerous discharge of a firearm.

December 15, 2016 – The Justice Department announces it will conduct a review of the St. Anthony Police Department, which services Falcon heights and two other towns.

February 27, 2017 – Yanez pleads not guilty.

June 16, 2017 – A jury finds Yanez not guilty on all counts. The city says it will offer Yanez a voluntary separation agreement from the police department.

June 26, 2017 – It is announced that the family of Castile has reached a $3 million settlement with the city of St. Anthony, Minnesota.

November 29, 2017 – The city of St. Anthony announces that Reynolds has settled with two cities for $800,000. St. Anthony will pay $675,000 of the settlement, while an insurance trust will pay $125,000 on behalf of Roseville.

September 16, 2016 – Tulsa Police Officer Betty Shelby fatally shoots Terence Crutcher, a 40-year-old unarmed black man, after his car is found abandoned in the middle of the road.

September 19, 2016 – The Tulsa Police Department releases video of the incident captured by a police helicopter, showing Shelby and other officers at the scene. At a news conference, the police chief tells reporters Crutcher was unarmed. Both the US Department of Justice and state authorities launch investigations into the officer-involved shooting.

September 22, 2016 – Officer Shelby is charged with felony first-degree manslaughter.

April 2, 2017 – During an interview on “60 Minutes,” Shelby says race was not a factor in her decision to open fire, and Crutcher “caused” his death when he ignored her commands, reaching into his vehicle to retrieve what she believed was a gun. “I saw a threat and I used the force I felt necessary to stop a threat.”

May 17, 2017 – Shelby is acquitted.

July 14, 2017 – Shelby announces she will resign from the Tulsa Police Department in August. On August 10, she joins the Rogers County, Oklahoma, Sheriff’s Office as a reserve deputy.

October 25, 2017 – A Tulsa County District Court judge grants Shelby’s petition to have her record expunged.

June 19, 2018 – Antwon Rose II, an unarmed 17-year-old, is shot and killed by police officer Michael Rosfeld in East Pittsburgh. Rose had been a passenger in a car that was stopped by police because it matched the description of a car that was involved in an earlier shooting. Rose and another passenger ran from the vehicle, and Rosfeld opened fire, striking Rose three times, Allegheny County police says.

June 27, 2018 – The Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, district attorney charges Rosfeld with criminal homicide.

March 22, 2019 – A jury finds Rosfeld not guilty on all counts.

October 28, 2019 – A $2 million settlement is finalized in a wrongful death lawsuit filed against Rosfeld and East Pittsburgh.

September 1, 2018 – During a traffic stop, O’Shae Terry is gunned down by an Arlington police officer. Terry, 24, was pulled over for having an expired temporary tag on his car. During the stop, officers reportedly smelled marijuana in the vehicle. Police video from the scene shows officer Bau Tran firing into the car as Terry tries to drive away. Investigators later locate a concealed firearm, marijuana and ecstasy pills in the vehicle.

October 19, 2018 – The Arlington Police Department releases information about a criminal investigation into the incident. According to the release, Tran declined to provide detectives with a statement and the matter is pending with the Tarrant County Criminal District Attorney’s Office. Tran is still employed by the police department but is working on restricted duty status, according to the news release.

May 1, 2019 – A grand jury issues an indictment charging Tran with criminally negligent homicide. On May 17, 2019, the Arlington Police Department announces Tran has been fired.

March 13, 2020 – Louisville Metro Police officers fatally shoot Taylor, a 26-year-old EMT, after they forcibly enter her apartment while executing a late-night, no-knock warrant in a narcotics investigation. Taylor’s boyfriend, Kenneth Walker III, is also in the apartment and fires one shot at who he believes are intruders. Taylor is shot at least eight times and Walker is charged with attempted murder of a police officer and first-degree assault. The charges are later dismissed.

April 27, 2020 – Taylor’s family files a wrongful death lawsuit. In the lawsuit, Taylor’s mother says the officers should have called off their search because the suspect they sought had already been arrested.

May 21, 2020 – The FBI opens an investigation into Taylor’s death.

June 11, 2020 – The Louisville, Kentucky, metro council unanimously votes to pass an ordinance called “Breonna’s Law,” banning no-knock search warrants.

August 27, 2020 – Jamarcus Glover, Taylor’s ex-boyfriend and the focus of the Louisville police narcotics investigation that led officers to execute the warrant on Taylor’s home, is arrested on drug charges. The day before his arrest, Glover told a local Kentucky newspaper Taylor was not involved in any alleged drug trade.

September 1, 2020 – Walker files a $10.5 million lawsuit against the Louisville Metro Police Department. Walker claims he was maliciously prosecuted for firing a single bullet with his licensed firearm at “assailants” who “violently broke down the door.” In December 2022, Walker reaches a $2 million settlement with the city of Louisville.

September 15, 2020 – The city of Louisville agrees to pay $12 million to Taylor’s family and institute sweeping police reforms in a settlement of the family’s wrongful death lawsuit.

September 23, 2020 – Det. Brett Hankison is indicted by a grand jury on three counts of wanton endangerment in the first degree. The other two officers involved in the shooting are not indicted. On March 3, 2022, Hankison is acquitted.

April 26, 2021 – Attorney General Merrick Garland announces a Justice Department investigation into the practices of the Louisville Police Department.

August 4, 2022 – Garland announces four current and former Louisville police officers involved in the raid on Taylor’s home were arrested and charged with civil rights violations, unlawful conspiracies, unconstitutional use of force and obstruction. On August 23, one of the officers, Kelly Goodlett, pleads guilty.

May 25, 2020 – George Floyd, 46, dies after pleading for help as Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin kneels on Floyd’s neck to pin him – unarmed and handcuffed – to the ground. Floyd had been arrested for allegedly using a counterfeit bill at a convenience store.

May 26, 2020 – It is announced that four Minneapolis police officers have been fired for their involvement in the death of Floyd.

May 27, 2020 – Gov. Tim Walz signs an executive order activating the Minnesota National Guard after protests and demonstrations erupt throughout Minneapolis and St. Paul.

May 27, 2020 – Surveillance video from outside a Minneapolis restaurant is released and appears to contradict police claims that Floyd resisted arrest before an officer knelt on his neck.

May 28-29, 2020 – Several buildings are damaged and the Minneapolis police department’s Third Precinct is set ablaze during protests.

May 29, 2020 – Chauvin is arrested and charged with third-degree murder and manslaughter, according to Hennepin County Attorney Mike Freeman.

June 3, 2020 – Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison announces charges of aiding and abetting second-degree murder for the three previously uncharged officers at the scene of the incident. According to court documents, Thomas Lane and J. Alexander Kueng helped restrain Floyd, while officer Tou Thao stood near the others. Chauvin’s charge is upgraded from third- to second-degree murder.

October 21, 2020 – Hennepin County Judge Peter Cahill drops the third-degree murder charge against Chauvin, but he still faces the higher charge of second-degree unintentional murder and second-degree manslaughter. On March 11, 2021, Judge Cahill reinstates the third-degree murder charge due to an appeals court ruling.

March 12, 2021 – The Minneapolis city council unanimously votes to approve a $27 million settlement with Floyd’s family.

April 20, 2021 – The jury finds Chauvin guilty on all three counts. He is sentenced to 22 and a half years.

May 7, 2021 – A federal grand jury indicts the four former Minneapolis police officers in connection with Floyd’s death, alleging the officers violated Floyd’s constitutional rights.

December 15, 2021 – Chauvin pleads guilty in federal court to two civil rights violations, one related to Floyd’s death, plus another case. Prosecutors request that he be sentenced to 25 years in prison to be served concurrently with his current sentence.

February 24, 2022 – Lane, Kueng and Thao are found guilty of depriving Floyd of his civil rights by showing deliberate indifference to his medical needs. The jurors also find Thao and Kueng guilty of an additional charge for failing to intervene to stop Chauvin. Lane, who did not face the extra charge, had testified that he asked Chauvin twice to reposition Floyd while restraining him but was denied both times.

May 4, 2022 – A federal judge accepts Chauvin’s plea deal and will sentence him to 20 to 25 years in prison. Based on the plea filed, the sentence will be served concurrently with the 22.5-year sentence tied to his murder conviction at the state level. On July 7, Chauvin is sentenced to 21 years in prison.

May 18, 2022 – Thomas Lane pleads guilty to second-degree manslaughter as part of a plea deal dismissing his murder charge. State and defense attorneys jointly recommend to the court Lane be sentenced to 36 months.

July 27, 2022 – Kueng and Thao are sentenced to three years and three and a half years in federal prison, respectively.

September 21, 2022 – Lane is sentenced to three years in prison on a state charge of aiding and abetting second-degree manslaughter in Floyd’s death.

October 24, 2022 – On the day his state trial is set to begin on charges of aiding and abetting in George Floyd’s killing, Kueng pleads guilty.

December 3, 2022 – Kueng is sentenced to 3.5 years in prison for his role in the killing of Floyd.

May 1, 2023 – A Minnesota judge finds Thao guilty of aiding and abetting second-degree manslaughter, according to court documents. He is sentenced to four years and nine months in prison.

June 12, 2020 – Rayshard Brooks, 27, is shot and killed by Atlanta police officer Garrett Rolfe outside a Wendy’s restaurant after failing a sobriety test, fighting with two officers, taking a Taser from one and running away.

June 13, 2020 – Rolfe is terminated from the Atlanta Police Department, according to an Atlanta police spokesperson. A second officer involved is placed on administrative leave.

June 14, 2020 – According to a release from the Fulton County, Georgia, Medical Examiner’s Office, Brooks died from a gunshot wound to the back. The manner of death is listed as homicide.

June 17, 2020 – Fulton County’s district attorney announces felony murder charges against Rolfe. Another officer, Devin Brosnan, is facing an aggravated assault charge for standing or stepping on Brooks’ shoulder while he was lying on the ground. On August 23, 2022, a Georgia special prosecutor announces the charges will be dismissed, saying the officers acted reasonably in response to a deadly threat. Both officers remain on administrative leave with the Atlanta Police Department and will undergo recertification and training, the department said in a statement.

May 5, 2021 – The Atlanta Civil Service Board rules that Rolfe was wrongfully terminated.

November 21, 2022 – The family of Brooks reaches a $1 million settlement with the city of Atlanta, according to Ryan Julison, a spokesperson for Stewart Miller Simmons Trial Attorneys, the law firm representing Brooks’ family.

April 11, 2021 – Daunte Wright, 20, is shot and killed by Brooklyn Center police officer Kimberly Potter following a routine traffic stop for an expired tag.

April 12, 2021 – During a press conference, Brooklyn Center Police Chief Tim Gannon announces Potter accidentally drew a handgun instead of a Taser. According to Gannon, “this was an accidental discharge, that resulted in a tragic death of Mr. Wright.” Potter is placed on administrative leave. According to the Hennepin County Medical Examiner’s Office, Wright’s death has been ruled a homicide.

April 13, 2021 – Gannon submits his resignation. CNN is told Potter has also submitted a letter of resignation.

April 14, 2021 – Potter is arrested and charged with second degree manslaughter. Washington County Attorney Pete Orput issues a news release which includes a summary of the criminal complaint filed against Potter. According to the release, Potter shot Wright with a Glock handgun holstered on her right side, after saying she would tase Wright. Later, the state amends the complaint against Potter, adding an additional charge of manslaughter in the first degree.

December 23, 2021 – Potter is found guilty of first and second-degree manslaughter. On February 18, 2022, she is sentenced to two years in prison. In April 2023, Potter is released from prison after serving 16 months.

June 21, 2022 – The city of Brooklyn Center, Minnesota, agrees to pay $3.25 million to the family of Wright. The sum is part of a settlement deal the family struck with the city, which also agreed to make changes in its policing policies and training, the Wright family legal team said in a news release.

2022 – Grand Rapids, Michigan – Patrick Lyoya

April 4, 2022 – Patrick Lyoya, 26-year-old Black man, is shot and killed by a police officer following a traffic stop.

April 13, 2022 – Grand Rapids police release video from police body camera, the police unit’s dashcam, a cell phone and a home surveillance system, which show the police officer’s encounter with Lyoya, including two clips showing the fatal shot. Lyoya was pulled over for an allegedly unregistered license plate when he got out of the car and ran. He resisted the officer’s attempt to arrest him and was shot while struggling with the officer on the ground.

April 19, 2022 – An autopsy commissioned by Lyoya’s family shows the 26-year-old was shot in the back of the head following the April 4 encounter with a Grand Rapids police officer, attorneys representing the family announce. The officer has not been publicly identified.

April 21, 2022 – Michigan state officials ask the US Department of Justice to launch a “pattern-or-practice” investigation into the Grand Rapids Police Department after the death of Lyoya.

April 25, 2022 – The chief of Grand Rapids police identifies Christopher Schurr as the officer who fatally shot Lyoya.

June 9 ,2022 – Schurr is charged with one count of second-degree murder in the death of Lyoya. Benjamin Crump. the Lyoya family attorney says in a statement, “we are encouraged by attorney Christopher Becker’s decision to charge Schurr for the brutal killing of Patrick Lyoya, which we all witnessed when the video footage was released to the public.” On June 10, 2022, Schurr pleads not guilty.

January 7, 2023 – Tyre Nichols, a 29-year-old Black man, is hospitalized following a traffic stop that lead to a violent arrest. Nichols dies three days later from injuries sustained, according to police.

January 15, 2023 – The Memphis Police Department announces they immediately launched an investigation into the action of officers involved in the arrest of Nichols.

January 18, 2023 – The Department of Justice says a civil rights investigation has been opened into the death of Nichols.

January 20, 2023 – The five officers are named and fired: Tadarrius Bean, Demetrius Haley, Emmitt Martin III, Desmond Mills Jr. and Justin Smith.

January 23, 2023 – Nichols’ family and their attorneys view police video of the arrest.

January 26, 2023 – A grand jury indicts the five police officers. They are each charged with second-degree murder, aggravated assault, two charges of aggravated kidnapping, two charges of official misconduct and one charge of official oppression, according to both Shelby County criminal court and Shelby County jail records.

January 27, 2023 – The city of Memphis releases body camera and surveillance video of the the traffic stop and beating that led to the Nichols’ death.

January 30, 2023 – Memphis police say two additional officers have been placed on leave. Only one officer is identified, Preston Hemphill. Additionally, the Memphis Fire Department announces three employees have been fired over their response to the incident: emergency medical technicians Robert Long and JaMichael Sandridge and Lt. Michelle Whitaker.

May 4, 2023 – The Shelby County medical examiner’s report shows that Nichols died from blunt force trauma to the head. His death has been ruled a homicide.

September 12, 2023 – The five police officers involved are indicted by a federal grand jury on several charges including deprivation of rights.

November 2, 2023 – Desmond Mills Jr., one of the five former Memphis police officers accused in the death of Nichols, pleads guilty to federal charges and agrees to plead guilty to related state charges as part of a plea deal with prosecutors.

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November 8, 2023
This city never slept. But with China tightening its grip, is the party over? | CNN Business

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Hong Kong
CNN
—

As the scattered patrons hop from one deserted bar to the next, it’s hard to believe the near-empty streets they are zigzagging down were once among the most vibrant in Asia.

It is Thursday evening, a normally busy night, but there are no crowds for them to weave through, no revelers spilling onto the pavements and no need for them to wait to be seated. At some of the stops on this muted bar crawl, they are the only ones in the room.

It wasn’t always this way. It might seem unlikely from this recent snapshot, but Hong Kong was once a leading light in Asia’s nightlife scene, a famously freewheeling neon-lit city that never slept, where East met West and crowds would spill from the bars throughout the night and long into the morning – even on a weekday.

Such images were beamed around the world in 1997, when Britain handed over sovereignty of its prized former colony to China, and locals and visitors alike welcomed in the new era with a 12-hour rave featuring Boy George, Grace Jones, Pete Tong and Paul Oakenfold.

China’s message at the time was that even if change was coming to Hong Kong, its spirit of “anything goes” would be staying put. The city was promised a high degree of autonomy for the next 50 years and assured that its Western ways could continue. Or, as China’s then leader Deng Xiaoping put it: “Horses will still run, stocks will still sizzle and dancers will still dance.”

And for long after the British departed, the dancing did indeed continue. Hong Kong retained not only the spirit of capitalism, but many other freedoms unknown in the rest of China – not just the gambling on horse races that Deng alluded to, but political freedoms of the press, speech and the right to protest. Even calls for greater democracy were tolerated – at least, for a time.

But little more than halfway into those 50 years, Deng’s promise now rings hollow to many. Spasms of mass protests – against “patriotic education” legislation in 2012, the Occupy Central movement in 2014 and pro-democracy demonstrations in 2019 – led China to restrict civil liberties with a sweeping National Security Law. Hundreds of pro-democracy figures have since been jailed and tens of thousands of residents have headed for the exits.

That crackdown and Hong Kong’s fading freedoms have been well-documented, but it is only more recently that a less-reported knock-on effect of China’s crackdown has started to emerge: In the streets and the bars, the trendy clubs and Michelin-starred restaurants, the city that never slept has begun to doze.

Nightlife in the city has become a pale shadow of its heyday as a regional rest and relaxation magnet, when its reputation rested on it being easier to navigate than Japan, less boring than Singapore and freer than mainland China.

Now, apparently in tandem with the diminishing political freedoms, business in the city’s once-thriving bars is drying up. And while some argue over whether politics or Covid is at fault, few dispute that something needs to be done.

Bars earned about $88.9 million in the first half of 2023, 18% less than the $108.5 million brought in during the same period in 2019, according to official data.

In an effort to arrest the decline, the Hong Kong government has launched a “Night Vibes” campaign featuring bazaars at three waterfront areas, splurged millions on a recent fireworks show to celebrate China’s National Day and reintroduced a dragon dance, lit by incense sticks, in its neighborhood of Tai Hang.

Those efforts have attracted a mixture of criticism and mockery – with many pointing out the irony of the campaign’s opening ceremony featuring two white lions, a color associated in Chinese culture with funerals. Meanwhile, the bazaars have been interrupted by a mix of typhoons and security concerns over the use of fireworks.

Still, Hong Kong’s Chief Executive John Lee insists the events are a success, saying at least 100,000 people have checked out the bazaars and that 460,000 tourists from mainland China visited for National Day. And the white lions? Officials say they were “fluorescent.”

A Hong Kong government spokesman told CNN this week that the activities were “well-received by local residents and tourists”. A recent Hong Kong Wine & Dine Festival brought in 140,000 patrons and shopping malls supporting the Night Vibes campaign said they had seen “growth in visitor flow and turnover,” he added.

There are some who point the finger solely at Covid.

“It’s obvious that it’s worse than before. This is the side effect of Covid, which has changed the way of life,” said Gary Ng, an economist with French investment bank Natixis.

And few would dispute that Covid took its toll. During the pandemic, Hong Kong made a virtue of cleaving closely to a mainland Chinese-style zero-tolerance approach that, though not quite as draconian, was still extreme enough to send large numbers of expatriates heading for the exit, with many of them decamping to rival Asian cities like Singapore, Thailand and Japan.

Hong Kong, where incoming travelers faced weeks in quarantine and restaurant tables were limited to two customers, was suddenly the boring one and Singapore – in a telling comparison – the more lively.

Under Hong Kong’s pandemic restrictions, live music was all but banned in small venues for more than 650 days.

But others say Hong Kong is in denial and that its nightlife problems go much deeper than the pandemic. Other places have recovered, they say, why not Hong Kong?

These observers note the city’s response to Covid should itself be seen through the lens of the city’s ever disappearing freedoms.

Months before the virus emerged, China had been tightening its grip on Hong Kong in response to pro-democracy protests that had spread throughout the city.

It introduced restrictions on freedoms – such as of expression and of the press – which were supposedly guaranteed at the time of the handover.

Songs and slogans perceived as linked to the protests were outlawed, memories of past protests scrubbed from the internet, sensitive films censored and newspaper editors charged with sedition and colluding with foreign forces.

The government has maintained that legal enforcement is necessary for Hong Kong to restore stability and prosperity and stop what China says is “foreign forces” from meddling in the city.

“We strongly disapproved of and firmly rejected those groundless attacks, slanders and smears against the HKSAR on the protection of such fundamental rights and freedoms in Hong Kong,” a spokesman said, referring to Hong Kong’s official name, in a reply to CNN.

But, the critics hit back, none of that lends itself to an atmosphere where people will want to sit back, relax and shoot the breeze.

“People may feel like they have to self-censor when having a chat at restaurants or bars because, who knows who may be listening. They may as well stay home for the same chat where they feel safe,” said Benson Wong, one of the hundreds of thousands who have left Hong Kong.

Wong, a former associate professor who specialized in local politics, said he used to enjoy eating out at dai pai dongs – open-air stalls selling Cantonese classics and (usually) plenty of beer – where patrons once talked freely about everything from celebrity gossip to politics.

Now though, he said, “one won’t feel happy if they have to watch everything they say.”

Whether it was Covid or the crackdown, or some combination of the two, an exodus of middle-class Hong Kongers and affluent expats has taken place in recent years.

Last year, the city saw a net outflow of 60,000 residents, its third drop in as many years, taking the number of usual residents down to 7.19 million as of the end of 2022 — a drop of almost 144,000 from the end of 2020.

Tens of thousands of them are Hong Kongers who have taken up special visas and pathways to citizenship offered by Western countries such as Britain, Canada and Australia in the wake of China’s crackdown.

But there has also been a steady drip of departures from the expat population that, like a post-colonial hangover, had remained in the city long after Britain’s departure. They were largely professionals in finance and law with a reputation for working hard and partying even harder, regardless of the politics.

Local media is now awash with reports of banking and law firms relocating their offices, in part or full, to rival financial hubs such as the no-longer-boring Singapore.

Unfortunately for bar and restaurant owners, the two demographics leaving are among their biggest customers.

“The expats have relocated, as well as [Hong Kongers] with a higher income. Their departure of course will have an impact,” said Ng, from Natixis.

Increasingly, these two groups are being replaced by people from mainland China, who now account for more than 70% of the 103,000 work or graduate visas granted since 2022, according to the Immigration Department. The newly dominant migrants, economists point out, tend to have very different spending habits.

Yan Wai-hin, an economics lecturer at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, said the city’s previously robust nightlife was propped up largely by a base of expats and middle-class locals steeped in the time-honored drinking culture of enjoying a nice cold one after a long day.

“The makeup of the population is different now,” Yan said. “Now we have more immigrants from the mainland, and they tend to love to go back to mainland China to spend instead.”

At Hong Kong’s most famous nightlife district, Lan Kwai Fong, the music may be fading, but it hasn’t stopped completely.

The area was long synonymous with jam-packed streets of revelers who would spill out from the bars as the air filled with the sounds of boisterous chatter, clinking glasses and dance music blasting away late into the night.

But during a recent visit by CNN, there was little to distinguish the area from any other street.

“It has been very challenging so far and it has not got back to normal by a long shot,” said Richard Feldman, who runs the gay bar Petticoat Lane at the California Tower in Lan Kwai Fong.

The chairman of the Soho Association, who has been running businesses in the city for more than three decades, Feldman said business was slightly better between Friday and Saturday than weekdays and shops with a good reputation have been less affected.

But across the board, he too said the number of Western faces were dwindling in what was once a favored expat haunt.

“It was a mix of expats and local professionals who would go out for drinks and a late night dance. But that demographic has eased quite a bit in the past year,” said another bar owner Becky Lam. “We are getting more mainland customers.”

Lam, joint founder of a number of Hong Kong bars and restaurants, including wine bar Shady Acres in Central, said while mainland Chinese were willing to spend, they tended to gravitate towards restaurants rather than bars and were less likely to stay out late.

On a weekday, she said, the bars she runs have been getting only half of the customers compared to pre-pandemic days.

“They’ll settle for the Happy Hours and that’s it. We are not talking about 2 a.m. to 3 a.m.,” she said.

There are other problems gnawing away at the nightlife sector.

“People’s habits have changed since Covid, as many are so used to staying at home watching TV and Netflix,” Feldman said.

During the pandemic, Hong Kong imposed a lengthy ban on bars and dine-in services to stem social gatherings, in what many saw as a nod to mainland China’s “zero-Covid” strategy.

This affected shops and malls, which shortened their business hours due to the lack of customers. In many cases, those shortened hours have now become the new normal, with some shops now closing as early as 9 p.m. as opposed to the pre-Covid standard of 10:30 p.m.

Also conspiring against the city’s nightlife is a strong Hong Kong dollar compared to the Chinese yuan, which affects how both Hong Kongers and potential tourists spend their money.

“People from the mainland are less likely to come here to shop, while people in Hong Kong are going to Shenzhen to spend their money,” said Marco Chan, head of research at real estate and investment firm CBRE.

While mainland tourists now think twice about coming to Hong Kong, many Hongkongers have been spending their weekends in mainland China, where many services come at a fraction of the price, Chan said.

Known as the “Godfather of Lan Kwai Fong,” Allan Zeman – the entrepreneur who turned the small square in Hong Kong’s Central district into a renowned nightlife hub – cuts a more optimistic figure than most and insists business is not as bad as it appears.

He estimates mainland Chinese customers now account for 35% of the patrons in Lan Kwai Fong and says they are big spenders.

“They’ll go up to a club, like the California Tower on the roof, and they’ll spend like 400,000 to 550,000 Hong Kong dollars ($51,000 to $70,000) just for drinks,” he said.

His take is that it is Hong Kong’s strong currency and a relative lack of incoming flights compared to the pre-Covid era that are stalling the city’s comeback. “I think it’s temporary,” he said.

But bar owner Lam said Hong Kong needs to reexamine its regulatory approach, if it is to thrive at night once more.

Lam pointed to a drive in recent years by the authorities to remove the city’s famous neon lights in the name of safety as an example of the current misguided approach, saying Hong Kong’s most defining nighttime icons were being dismantled one sign at a time.

She also said her bar, Shady Acres, had been told to serve customers only indoors and shut all doors and windows after 9 p.m. as part of its licensing requirement.

“These kinds of hurdles are really big in Hong Kong,” Lam said. “But I look at our neighboring cities like Bangkok, Shanghai and Taipei. These cities have an exciting nightlife as they really make it late night fun with music, street art and late night dining.”

Feldman, of Petticoat Lane, had another suggestion. “Hong Kong used to be a far more international destination. Now it is a domestic destination,” he said.

The city, said Feldman, should “do everything it can to attract people not only from China but from all over the world.”

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November 3, 2023
Why teachers in South Korea are scared of their pupils — and their parents | CNN

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Editor’s Note: Editor’s note: If you or someone you know is struggling with suicidal thoughts or mental health matters, please call the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline by dialing 988 to connect with a trained counselor, or visit the 988 Lifeline website.

Seoul, South Korea
CNN
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When fighting broke out in Kang Hyeon-joo’s elementary school classroom, her heart would beat so fast she could not breathe and her vision would blur.

“They were throwing punches and kicking faces, throwing chairs and tables around,” she recalled, adding she had been hurt trying to intervene.

For two years, Kang struggled to discipline her students – or cope with the parental backlash when she did. She claims her principal did nothing to help and would tell her simply to “just take a week off”.

The strain took a dangerous toll. Kang says she started feeling the urge to jump in front of a bus. “If I just jumped at least, I would feel some relief. If I just jumped off a tall building, that would at least give me some peace.”

Kang is currently on sick leave but is far from alone in her experiences.

Tens of thousands of teachers have been protesting in recent months, calling for more protection from students and parents. At one protest in Seoul last month, 200,000 gathered, according to organizers, forcing the government to take notice and action.

The unified stand by the country’s teaching staff comes after the suicide of a first-grade teacher, in her early 20s, in July. She was found dead in her classroom in Seoul. Police have mentioned a problematic student and parental pressure while discussing her case, but have not given a definitive reason for her suicide.

Several more teachers have taken their own lives since July and some of these cases have reportedly been linked to school stress, according to colleagues of the deceased and bereaved families.

Government data shows 100 public school teachers killed themselves from January 2018 to June 2023, 11 of them in the first six months of this year, but does not specify what factors contributed to their deaths.

Sung Youl-kwan, a professor of education at Kyung Hee University, says the speed and size of the protests took many by surprise. “I think there has been like a shared feeling that this can happen to me too,” he said.

Teachers point to a 2014 child abuse law, intended to protect children, as one of the main reasons they feel unable to discipline students. They say they are fearful of being sued by a small percentage of parents for causing emotional distress to their child and being dragged through the courts.

“School is the last barrier to let students know what is okay in society and what is not. But we couldn’t do anything, if we teach them, we could be accused,” said Ahn Ji-hye, an elementary school teacher who helped organize previous protests.

Ahn says parents have called her mobile phone some days from 6 a.m. until 11 p.m., wanting to talk about their child or complain.

South Korea’s education minister Lee Ju-ho initially warned teachers that a mass strike would be an illegal act. That position was swiftly reversed, and a set of legal revisions passed the National Assembly on September 21, a fast piece of legislation.

One of the key changes is providing teachers some protection from being sued for child abuse if their discipline is considered a legitimate educational activity. Also, the responsibility for handling school complaints and lawsuits brought by parents now rests with the principal.

“So far we have a culture where the school principal tended to pass those responsibilities to teachers,” said Professor Sung.

The new law will also protect teachers’ personal information, such as their mobile phone numbers, and require parents to contact the school with concerns or complaints rather than the teacher directly.

In the past, Ahn said, “If I could not give my personal phone number to them, sometimes some parents would come to the parking lot and watch and see and take a note of my phone number from my car, then they would text message me.” It is customary for Koreans to display their phone number in the bottom corner of their windscreen.

Ahn welcomes the legal changes as “meaningful,” but insists higher-level laws like the Child Welfare Act and Child Abuse Punishment Act also need to be revised. “It is still possible to report teachers based on suspicion alone according to these laws,” she said.

She says that, for now at least, the protests will continue.

One is planned for outside the National Assembly on October 28. Ahn says she would like to see penalties for parents who make unfounded accusations against teachers or practical measures put in place so that mandated changes can be adopted in classrooms, such as removing a disruptive student elsewhere to allow teaching to continue.

Professor Sung believes the revisions will help in the short term, but cautions that the law should be seen as a safety net not a solution.

Critics say South Korean society places a disproportionate level of importance on academic success so it should not be surprising that parents put teachers – and the wider education system – under so much pressure.

It is the norm for students to attend a cram school, called hagwon, after their regular school hours, not as an extra but as a basic and expensive requirement to succeed.

On the day of the national college entrance exam, known as Suneung in Korean, airplanes are grounded, and commuting hours are adjusted to ensure that students taking the exams are not disturbed.

“We have a culture in which parents have usually one child and they are ready to pour every financial resource and opportunity into this child,” Sung said.

“This pressure or obsession with education, sometimes with a high score, high achievement (mindset), is not a good environment for teachers (because) they are taking the pressure from the parents.”

Sung says the days of a teacher being automatically respected are long gone, not just in South Korea but elsewhere in the world, and the teacher-parent dynamic is unrecognizable from just a decade or two ago.

“In educational policies, parents are regarded as like a consumer, with consumer sovereignty, and school and teachers are regarded as service providers”, he said, adding parents believe they “have the right to demand many things from schools.”

In a country where education is considered central to success, teacher satisfaction is low. A survey by the Federation of Teachers’ Labor Union in April found 26.5% of teachers polled said they had received counseling or treatment for psychological issues due to their job. Some 87% said they have considered moving job or quitting in the past year.

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October 27, 2023
Lawsuit to block Trump from Colorado 2024 ballot survives more legal challenges | CNN Politics

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CNN
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A judge has rejected three more attempts by former President Donald Trump and the Colorado GOP to shut down a lawsuit seeking to block him from the 2024 presidential ballot in the state based on the 14th Amendment’s “insurrectionist ban.”

The flurry of rulings late Friday from Colorado District Judge Sarah Wallace are a blow to Trump, who faces candidacy challenges in multiple states stemming from his role in the January 6, 2021, insurrection. He still has a pending motion to throw out the Colorado lawsuit, but the case now appears on track for an unprecedented trial this month.

A post-Civil War provision of the 14th Amendment says US officials who take an oath to uphold the Constitution are disqualified from future office if they “engaged in insurrection” or have “given aid or comfort” to insurrectionists. But the Constitution does not spell out how to enforce the ban, and it has been applied only twice since the 1800s.

A liberal watchdog group called Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington filed the Colorado case on behalf of six Republican and unaffiliated voters. The judge is scheduled to preside over a trial beginning October 30 to decide a series of novel legal questions about how the 14th Amendment could apply to Trump.

In a 24-page ruling, Wallace rejected many of Trump’s arguments that the case was procedurally flawed and should be shut down. She said the key question of whether Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold has the power to block Trump from the ballot based on the 14th Amendment “is a pivotal issue and one best reserved for trial.”

Wallace also swatted away arguments from the Colorado GOP that state law gives the party, not election officials, ultimate say on which candidates appear on the ballot.

“If the Party, without any oversight, can choose its preferred candidate, then it could theoretically nominate anyone regardless of their age, citizenship, residency,” she wrote. “Such an interpretation is absurd; the Constitution and its requirements for eligibility are not suggestions, left to the political parties to determine at their sole discretion.”

Wallace also cited a 2012 opinion from Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch, when he was a Denver-based appeals judge, which said states have the power to “exclude from the ballot candidates who are constitutionally prohibited from assuming office.” She cited this while rejecting Trump’s claim that Colorado’s ballot access laws don’t give state officials any authority to disqualify him based on federal constitutional considerations.

Trump already lost an earlier bid to throw out the case on free-speech grounds.

The current GOP front-runner, Trump denies wrongdoing regarding January 6 and has pleaded not guilty to state and federal charges stemming from his attempts to overturn the 2020 election. His campaign has said these lawsuits are pushing an “absurd conspiracy theory” and the challengers are “stretching the law beyond recognition.”

In a statement on Saturday, the Trump campaign criticized Wallace and her rulings, saying she “got it wrong.”

“She is going against the clear weight of legal authority. We are confident the rule of law will prevail, and this decision will be reversed – whether at the Colorado Supreme Court, or at the U.S. Supreme Court,” a Trump campaign spokesperson said. “To keep the leading candidate for President of the United States off the ballot is simply wrong and un-American.”

The 14th Amendment challenges in Colorado and other key states face an uphill climb, with many legal hurdles to clear before Trump would be disqualified from running for the presidency. Trump is sure to appeal any decision to strip him from the ballot, which means the Supreme Court and its conservative supermajority might get the final say.

In recent months, a growing and politically diverse array of legal scholars have thrown their support behind the idea that Trump is disqualified under the “insurrectionist ban.” The bipartisan House committee that investigated the January 6 attack recommended last year that Trump be barred from holding future office under the 14th Amendment.

The Colorado challengers recently revealed in a court filing that they want to depose Trump before trial. Trump opposes this request, and the judge hasn’t issued a ruling.

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October 21, 2023
Gaza conditions worsen amid warnings that shortages could ‘kill many, many people’ | CNN

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CNN
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Shortages of food, fuel and electricity in Gaza “are going to kill many, many people,” a senior aid official warned Friday, as Israel’s siege and bombardment of the enclave approached the two-week mark, while life-saving aid was again stuck in Egypt for another day.

A spokesperson for the Palestinian Ministry of Health in Gaza said Friday that seven hospitals and 21 primary care health centers had been rendered “out of service,” and 64 medical staff have been killed, as Israel continues its airstrikes on Gaza.

“It is absolutely life or death at this point,” Avril Benoit, executive director for Doctors Without Borders, also known as Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), told CNN.

Among those trapped in Gaza are the hostages captured by Hamas during its brutal terror attack on October 7. In an update Friday the Israel Defense Forces said the majority of the hostages are alive. It said the number of missing is between 100-200, and more than 20 of the hostages are under the age of 18.

Meanwhile, Israeli leaders have rallied troops ahead of a potential ground incursion. The IDF has mobilized more than 300,000 reservists as it seeks to “destroy” Hamas and prevent it from launching further attacks on Israeli soil.

In a speech from the Oval Office Thursday, US President Joe Biden reiterated his government’s support for Israel’s war against Hamas, casting it as vital to America’s national security. But he cautioned the Israeli government not to be “blinded by rage” and drew a clear distinction between Hamas and the Palestinian people, calling for civilians in Gaza to be protected.

Any Israeli ground incursion will come amid a growing chorus of outrage across the Arab world, where mass anti-Israel protests have broken out earlier in the week and on Friday in support of 2.2 million Palestinians who remain trapped in Gaza.

United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres warned the Middle East had entered “a moment of profound crisis… unlike any the region has seen in decades.”

Israeli leaders on Friday ordered the evacuation of some 23,000 residents living near the border with Lebanon, amid sustained crossfire with the Iran-backed militant group Hezbollah. IDF spokesperson Lt. Col. Peter Lerner told CNN that the IDF had bolstered its forces along the northern border and was prepared for a “broader conflict.”

Around 200 trucks carrying vital aid destined for Gaza remain stuck in Egypt, despite a frantic diplomatic effort to open the Rafah crossing. Negotiations continued through Thursday as workers filled dangerous road craters from Israeli bombing to allow up to 20 trucks to pass in an initial delivery.

Video released Friday by the Sinai Foundation for Human Rights showed “repair work and paving the road between the Egyptian and Palestinian sides” at the Rafah crossing. Egyptian authorities worked to remove cement blocks at the entrance to the crossing in preparation for its opening, several drivers at the crossing told CNN.

But the possible initial passage of 20 trucks would be far lower than usual. “We need to build up to the 100 trucks a day that used to be the case of the aid program going into Gaza,” UN relief chief Martin Griffiths said in an interview with CNN’s Christiane Amanpour.

“We need to be able to have the assurance that we can go in at scale everyday – deliberately, repetitively and reliably,” Griffiths said.

Guterres traveled to the Rafah crossing on Friday as part of the UN’s efforts to help aid reach Gaza.

“Behind these walls, we have two million people that are suffering enormously. So, these trucks are not just trucks, they are a lifeline. They are the difference between life and death,” Guterres said at a press conference held on the Egyptian side of the border.

A CNN team on the ground attended the press conference and witnessed a protest by several hundred demonstrators break out after Guterres finished his speech. Guterres was then forced to leave the Rafah gate earlier than planned as the protest began to get out of control.

As well as the trucks, a plane carrying World Health Organization supplies for Gaza landed in Egypt’s Al Arish airport Friday morning, the WHO regional office wrote on X. It said the package included “surgical supplies and instruments for 1000 medical operations, water tanks and tents.”

But how much difference the initial deliveries will be able to make for the more than 2 million people living in Gaza is unclear. A group of UN independent experts accused Israel of committing “crimes against humanity” in its current campaign.

“The complete siege of Gaza coupled with unfeasible evacuation orders and forcible population transfers, is a violation of international humanitarian and criminal law. It is also unspeakably cruel,” the UN Human Rights Office said Thursday in a press release.

Doctors Without Borders said Thursday Gaza’s main medical facility, the Al-Shifa Hospital, only had enough fuel to last 24 hours.

“Without electricity many patients will die,” said Guillemette Thomas, the group’s medical coordinator for Palestine, based in Jerusalem. Thousands of Palestinians are using Al-Shifa hospital as a safe haven from constant bombing, he added.

Many supermarkets have no more food to sell, and everyday tasks have become grueling for residents who queue for hours for food and water under the roar of airstrikes.

“There is no life now… It’s just trying to survive. That’s it,” a Palestinian man living in Gaza, who wished to remain anonymous, told CNN.

The population of southern Gaza has swelled in recent days after the Israeli military told around 1 million residents to leave northern Gaza ahead of the expected Israeli ground incursion.

Israel’s sustained assault on Gaza follows Hamas’ murderous rampage on October 7 that killed an estimated 1,400 people in Israel, mostly civilians, in what has been described as the worst massacre of Jews since the Holocaust.

In the days since, Israeli airstrikes have killed more than 4,100 people in Gaza, including hundreds of women and children, according to the Health Ministry in Gaza, which is controlled by Hamas.

The violence has spread beyond Gaza: The ministry said at least 81 people had been killed in the occupied West Bank since October 7. Israel also arrested more than 60 suspected Hamas operatives in the West Bank early Thursday.

Among those detained during raids was Hamas spokesperson Hassan Yousef, Israeli authorities confirmed Friday. Yousef is a leading Palestinian political figure serving as the official Hamas spokesperson in the West Bank and holding a seat on the Palestinian Legislative Council.

Meanwhile, Israel appears set to launch its ground offensive into Gaza. Israeli defense minister Yoav Gallant told troops gathered not far from the Gaza Strip on Thursday that they will “soon see” the enclave “from the inside.”

Early Friday morning, CNN’s Nic Robertson witnessed increased military activity along Israel’s border with Gaza. Several illumination flares were seen floating down in the distance while red tracer rounds were accompanied by the sound of heavy machine gun fire. CNN could not verify what the night-time military activity was.

Any Israeli incursion will further inflame the outrage that has spread across much of the Arab world. Huge protests broke out in several Middle Eastern countries this week after an explosion at the Al-Ahli hospital in southern Gaza, which Hamas officials said was caused by an Israeli airstrike that had killed 500 people.

Thousands of protesters shouting anti-Israel slogans gathered in Lebanon, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Egypt and Tunisia. Several Arab countries, including Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Egypt, the United Arab Emirates and Iraq issued statements condemning Israel and accusing its military of bombing the hospital.

But Israel has since presented evidence that it said shows the blast was caused by a misfire by militant group Islamic Jihad. US President Joe Biden backed Israel’s explanation, citing US intelligence.

“Israel Probably Did Not Bomb Gaza Strip Hospital: We judge that Israel was not responsible for an explosion that killed hundreds of civilians yesterday [17 October] at the Al Ahli Hospital in the Gaza Strip,” read an unclassified intelligence assessment obtained by CNN. The assessment also estimated the number of deaths was at the “low end of the 100-to-300 spectrum.”

But the subsequent revelations have done little to quell the rage across the Middle East.

“Everybody here believes that Israel is responsible for it,” Jordanian Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi told CNN Wednesday. “The Israeli army is saying it’s not but… try and find anybody who’s going to believe it in this part of the world.”

Fresh protests began Friday, with thousands taking to the streets in Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Iraq, Yemen and the West Bank after Islamic Friday prayers.

The protests began in the wake of a separate explosion at Gaza’s oldest church. St. Porphyrius Greek Orthodox Church in central Gaza City said its compound was hit by an Israeli airstrike Thursday night.

Video from the ground in Gaza City showed the damage at the site of the church and its surrounding area. The main impact of the strike heavily damaged a building next to the church compound. One church building was partially collapsed by the airstrike, according to CNN’s analysis of the video.

The footage from the ground also shows people working to search through rubble for any bodies. At one point, a group can be seen dragging a body wrapped in a blanket out of the rubble and through a small crowd, as many pull out their cameras and phones to record the moment. Other people can be seen grieving and crying.

Earlier Friday, the Palestinian Ministry of Health said that 17 people were killed in the Israeli strike on the church on Thursday night. CNN cannot independently confirm the number of casualties. A Hamas statement about the incident mentioned “a number of casualties” but did say how many.

The IDF has said it will have more information on the strike, but it did not respond to CNN questions on when that information would be available. The IDF on Friday acknowledged that “a wall of a church in the area was damaged” as a result of an IDF strike.

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October 20, 2023
Deadly force against a protester at Atlanta’s future public safety training center was ‘reasonable,’ special prosecutor says | CNN

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CNN
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The use of force against a protester killed at the future site of the Atlanta public safety center was reasonable, and no charges will be filed against the officers involved, a special prosecutor assigned to investigate the case said Friday.

Manual Paez Teran, who was camping in the woods in protest at the site dubbed “Cop City,” was shot and killed by state troopers conducting a clearing operation on January 18. The environmental activist was part of a group who believed the planned public safety facility would cause irreversible damage to forest land.

The case was investigated by special prosecutor George R. Christian, the district attorney pro tempore of the Mountain Circuit District Attorney’s Office.

Teran “refused to comply with the lawful commands of the Troopers” before the shooting took place, the special prosecutor said in a written statement Friday. Troopers “used a ‘less lethal’ device known as a pepperball launcher” to try to get Teran to leave a tent, Christian wrote.

Teran responded by shooting four times using a “9 mm pistol through the tent striking and seriously injuring a Georgia State Trooper,” Christian said. “Six Troopers returned fire resulting in the death of Teran.”

“The use of lethal (deadly) force by the Georgia State Patrol was objectively reasonable under the circumstances of the case,” the special prosecutor said. “No criminal charges will be brought against the Georgia State Patrol Troopers involved in the shooting of Manual Paez Teran.”

Teran family attorney Jeff Flipovits told CNN “the DA is not the final arbiter.”

“It’s disturbing that they won’t release the underlying material for the investigation. It’s an abuse of the open records act as far as I’m concerned,” the attorney said.

Flipovits said the family would be releasing a longer statement later Friday.

CNN has reached out to the Atlanta Police Department for comment.

The Georgia State Patrol declined to comment, referring questions to the district attorney’s office.

The planned 85-acre, $90 million training center has been the subject of debate for years.

Though the site is just outside Atlanta city limits, the plot of land is owned by the city, meaning residents around the site don’t have voting power for the leaders who approved it.

The Atlanta Police Foundation, which is helping to fund the project, has said it’s needed to help boost recruitment and morale among police and firefighters who have been using substandard or borrowed facilities.

Protesters have decried its potential environmental impact and possible role in the further militarization of police. Some demonstrators camped out at the site for months, clashing with police.

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October 6, 2023
How the Senate GOP’s campaign chief is navigating Trump and messy primaries | CNN Politics

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CNN
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Top Senate Republicans look at the prospects of a Donald Trump primary victory with trepidation, fearful his polarizing style and heavy baggage may sink GOP candidates down the ticket as their party battles for control of the chamber.

But Sen. Steve Daines doesn’t agree.

The Montana Republican, who chairs the National Republican Senatorial Committee, has spent the past year working to ensure Trump and Senate Republican leaders don’t clash about their preferred candidates in key primaries, after the 2022 debacle that saw a bevy of Trump-backed choices collapse in the heat of the general election and cost their party the Senate majority. So far, the two are on the same page.

Daines argues that Trump is “strengthening” among independent voters and that could be a boon for his Senate candidates – even in purple states like Michigan, Wisconsin, Nevada and Pennsylvania. The senator says that his down-ticket candidates should embrace the former president, even as he’s facing four criminal trials with polls showing that he remains a deeply unpopular figure with wide swaths of voters.

“What’s key is we want to make sure we have high-quality candidates running with President Trump,” Daines said. “Candidates that can again appeal beyond the Republican base – that’s my goal.”

In an interview with CNN at NRSC headquarters, Daines detailed his latest thinking about the GOP strategy to take back the Senate, saying his candidates need to have a stronger position on abortion, signaling he’s eager to avoid a primary in the Montana race and arguing that neither Sens. Kyrsten Sinema nor Joe Manchin could hold onto their seats if they ran for reelection in their states as independents.

And as Kari Lake is poised to announce a Senate bid in Arizona as soon as next week, Daines has some advice for the former TV broadcaster, who falsely blamed mass voting fraud for her loss in last year’s gubernatorial race in her state.

“I think one thing we’ve learned from 2022 is voters do not want to hear about grievances from the past,” Daines said. “They want to hear about what you’re going to do for the future. And if our candidates stay on that message of looking down the highway versus the rearview mirror, I think they’ll be a lot more successful particularly in their appeal to independent voters, which usually decide elections.”

Daines, who called Lake “very gifted” and said he’s had “positive” conversations with her, added: “I think it’s just going to be important for her to look to the future and not so much the past.”

Asked if Trump’s repeated false claims of a “stolen” election could be problematic down-ticket, Daines instead pointed out that Trump was the last GOP president since Ronald Reagan to win Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Michigan in 2016, though he lost those states in 2020.

“As we continue to watch the president strengthen, we’ll see what happens here in ’24, but I’ll tell you he provides a lot of strength for us down ballot in many key states,” said Daines, who was the first member of Senate GOP leadership to endorse Trump.

Daines’ assessment comes as he is benefitting from a highly favorable map, with 23 Democrats up for reelection, compared to just 11 for the GOP. Democratic incumbents in three states that Trump won – Ohio, Montana and West Virginia – are the most endangered, while the two best Democratic pickup opportunities – Texas and Florida – remain an uphill battle.

“We’ll have to keep an eye on Texas – the Ted Cruz race,” Daines said. “Just because he’s Ted Cruz he’ll draw a lot of money from the other side to try to defeat Ted Cruz.”

Beating incumbents is usually a complicated endeavor, plus Republicans are facing messy primaries that could make it harder to win a general election, including in Daines’ home-state of Montana. There, Daines has gotten behind Tim Sheehy, a former Navy SEAL who owns an aerial firefighting company. But there’s a possibility that Sheehy could face Rep. Matt Rosendale in the primary, something that Republicans fear could undercut their effort to take down 17-year incumbent Sen. Jon Tester.

Rosendale, a member of the hard-right House Freedom Caucus, narrowly lost to Tester in 2018 and is considering another run in 2024.

“I’ve known Matt a long time. He’s a friend of mine. I like Matt Rosendale,” Daines said. “I think it’s best if he were to stay in the US House and gain seniority.”

Unlike in the last cycle when the NRSC stayed neutral under previous leadership, the campaign committee now is taking a much heavier hand in primaries, picking and choosing which candidates to endorse. While Daines declined to say how his committee would handle the Arizona primary, he indicated they would stay out of the crowded Ohio primary, arguing the three GOP candidates battling it out there are on solid footing in the race for Sen. Sherrod Brown’s seat.

While West Virginia remains perhaps the best pickup opportunity for the GOP, the NRSC will have a much harder time if Manchin decides to run for reelection. In an interview, Manchin signaled that if he runs again, it may be as an independent – not a Democrat.

“I think everyone thinks of me as an independent back home,” Manchin told CNN. “I don’t think they look at me as a big D or a big R or an anti-R or anti-D or anything. They say it’s Joe, if it makes sense, he’ll do it.”

Daines said that wouldn’t make much of a difference.

“It’d be very difficult for Joe to get reelected in West Virginia based on looking at the numbers,” Daines said, pointing to Manchin’s support for the Inflation Reduction Act.

Similarly, Daines said that if Sinema runs in Arizona, he doesn’t believe she can win as a third-party candidate, as she faces a GOP candidate and the likely Democratic nominee, Rep. Ruben Gallego.

“I think Sinema will have a difficult path if she gets in the race,” he said.

In addition to facing weaker candidates last cycle, many Republicans continue to sidestep questions on their positions over abortion – a potent issue in the aftermath of the Supreme Court’s ruling overturning Roe v. Wade.

But Daines says he doesn’t think abortion will be “as potent this cycle,” indicating he is pressing candidates to do a “better job” messaging on the issue to suburban women. He said that Republicans need to impress upon voters that they support limits on late-term abortions, with exceptions for rape, incest or life of the mother, arguing that’s a “more reasonable position” in line with most Americans – all the while rejecting calls for a national ban on all abortions.

“I think we actually had candidates who just kind of ran away from the issue and kind of hoped it went away,” Daines said. “And when you do that, if you don’t take a position, the Democratic opponents there will define the issue for them. And that’s a losing strategy.”

Daines is also in the middle of another internal party war – between Trump and Senate GOP Leader Mitch McConnell, as the two men have been at sharp odds since the January 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol.

Asked if he believed the two could work with each other if Trump is president again and McConnell returns as Republican leader, Daines said: “It’d be a privilege to have a Republican president and a Republican majority leader working – that’d be a nice problem to have.”

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October 1, 2023
Protests erupt in Iran, one year after Mahsa Amini’s death | CNN

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CNN
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Protests erupted throughout Iran on Saturday to commemorate the one-year anniversary of the death of Mahsa Amini, the 22-year-old women who died in the custody of Iran’s morality police after being arrested for allegedly not wearing her headscarf properly.

Video obtained by CNN showed demonstrations throughout multiple cities in Iran, including capital city Tehran, Mashad, Ahvaz, Lahijan, Arak, and the Kurdish city of Senandaj.

Many of the protesters chanted, “Women, Life, Freedom” – a popular rallying cry used after nationwide protests erupted following Amini’s death last year.

Some protesters also chanted death slogans against Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei.

Authorities deployed armed guards in many cities as a show of force and police officers were seen chasing protesters in the northern city of Lahijan.

Rallies commemorating Amini’s death were held in other cities around the world like Paris, Brussels and Berlin.

Many said they felt the need to raise their voices when so many in Iran could not.

Hundreds gathered in London on Saturday to mark the one-year anniversary. “We just wanted to let everyone know that this is not going to finish,” a female protester told CNN.

“Our battle has started and we are not going to stop until freedom for Iran, until a revolution, until we kick the mullahs out of the power.”

Protest organizer Ellie Borhan was also seen in videos cutting her hair on stage in front of the crowd.

‘Detention and persecution’ of family members

The news comes after Iranian journalists and rights groups said Amini’s father Amjad had been detained by authorities on Saturday.

Iranian journalist Maziar Bahari, also the founder of the IranWire activist outlet, told CNN that Amjad Amini had been regularly summoned by security officers in the months following his daughter’s death.

He was detained “for a few hours” on Saturday, Bahari said.

The family had visited her grave in the western Kurdish city of Saqqez on Friday, the eve of the one-year anniversary, IranWire reported on Saturday.

Helicopters were seen hovering over the Aichi cemetery with numerous military personnel and police officers also stationed throughout the area, IranWire added.

Amjad was detained by authorities the following day for three to four hours, along with his son – who was warned that he would be banished to a remote village if he encouraged people to attend ceremonies marking the anniversary of Amini’s death, Bahari told CNN.

Amini’s uncle Safa Aeli, who lives in the city of Saqqez, was also arrested by authorities earlier this week, according to a family member and reports by the Human Rights Activists News Agency.

Responding to claims by Iranian journalists and rights groups, authorities strongly denied reports of Amjad Amini’s detention, claiming instead they had prevented “an assassination attempt” – reported the IRNA state media news outlet.

The Political, Security, and Social Vice Governor of Kurdistan arrested several members of “a terrorist group” who wanted to assassinate Amini, IRNA said in a post on Telegram, describing the claims by Iranian journalists and rights groups as “false”.

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September 16, 2023
CNN Poll: Biden faces negative job ratings and concerns about his age as he gears up for 2024 | CNN Politics

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CNN
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President Joe Biden faces continued headwinds from broadly negative job ratings overall, widespread concerns about his age and decreased confidence among Democratic-aligned voters, according to a new CNN Poll conducted by SSRS.

There is no clear leader in a potential rematch between Biden and former President Donald Trump, who is widely ahead in the GOP primary. And nearly half of registered voters (46%) say that any Republican presidential nominee would be a better choice than Biden in 2024.

Meanwhile, hypothetical matchups also suggest there would be no clear leader should Biden face one of the other major GOP contenders, with one notable exception: Biden runs behind former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley.

Since Biden announced his reelection bid earlier this year – where he framed the 2024 contest as a fight against Republican extremism – his approval ratings have remained mired below the mid-40s, similar to Trump’s standing in 2019, and several points below Ronald Reagan, Barack Obama and Bill Clinton at this point ahead of their reelection campaigns.

Still, Biden’s prospective opponents face challenges of their own: 44% of voters feel any Democratic candidate would be a better choice than Trump. Among the full public, both Biden’s and Trump’s favorability ratings stand at just 35%.

Views of Biden’s performance in office and on where the country stands are deeply negative in the new poll. His job approval rating stands at just 39%, and 58% say that his policies have made economic conditions in the US worse, up 8 points since last fall. Seventy percent say things in the country are going badly, a persistent negativity that has held for much of Biden’s time in office, and 51% say government should be doing more to solve the nation’s problems.

Perceptions of Biden personally are also broadly negative, with 58% saying they have an unfavorable impression of him. Fewer than half of Americans, 45%, say that Biden cares about people like them, with only 33% describing him as someone they’re proud to have as president. A smaller share of the public than ever now says that Biden inspires confidence (28%, down 7 percentage points from March) or that he has the stamina and sharpness to serve effectively as president (26%, down 6 points from March), with those declines driven largely by Democrats and independents.

Roughly three-quarters of Americans say they’re seriously concerned that Biden’s age might negatively affect his current level of physical and mental competence (73%), and his ability to serve out another full term if reelected (76%), with a smaller 68% majority seriously concerned about his ability to understand the next generation’s concerns (that stands at 72% among those younger than 65, but just 57% of those 65 or older feel the same).

A broad 67% majority of Democratic and Democratic-leaning voters now say it’s very or extremely likely that Biden will again be the party’s presidential nominee, up from 55% who felt that way in May. But 67% also say the party should nominate someone other than Biden – up from 54% in March, though still below the high of 75% who said they were seeking an alternative last summer.

That remains largely a show of discontent with Biden rather than support for any particular rival, with an 82% majority of those who’d prefer to see someone different saying that they don’t have any specific alternative in mind. Just 1%, respectively, name either of his two most prominent declared challengers, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. or Marianne Williamson.

Much of the hesitation revolves around Biden’s vitality rather than his handling of the job. While strong majorities of Democratic and Democratic-leaning voters continue to say that Biden cares about people like them (81%) and to approve of his overall job performance (75%), declining shares see him as inspiring confidence (51%, down 19 percentage points since March) or having the stamina and sharpness to serve effectively as president (49%, down 14 points from March).

Asked to name their biggest concern about a Biden candidacy in 2024, 49% directly mention his age, with his mental acuity (7%) and health (7%) also top concerns, along with his ability to handle the job (7%) and his popularity and electability (6%). Just 5% say that they have no concerns.

“I think he’s a trustworthy, honest person. But he’s so old and not totally with it,” wrote one 28-year-old Democratic voter who was surveyed. “Still love him though. But I also wish he was more progressive. It’s complicated.”

Others see both positives and negatives to his age. “His age is a bit worrisome, but I would like to see a good strong Democrat as a consideration,” wrote a 66-year-old Democratic-leaning independent voter. “Otherwise I and husband will stick with Biden. He has wisdom many younger do not have nor understand.”

Asked directly about the potential effects of his age, majorities of Democratic-aligned voters say they are seriously concerned that Biden’s age might negatively affect his current level of physical and mental competence (56%), his ability to win the 2024 general election if nominated (60%), and his ability to serve another full term as president if reelected (61%). Fewer, 43%, say they’re seriously concerned that his age would negatively affect his ability to understand the concerns of the next generation of Americans, although that rises to 59% among Democratic-aligned voters younger than 45. If reelected, Biden would take office in January 2025 at age 82.

Most Democratic-aligned voters younger than 45 say they approve of Biden’s job performance overall. But in a break from older partisans, substantial majorities also say that Biden does not inspire confidence (63%), does not have the stamina and sharpness to serve effectively (64%), and that his policies have failed to improve the economy (64%).

In an early gauge of a hypothetical Biden-Trump rematch, CNN’s poll finds, registered voters are currently split between Trump (47%) and Biden (46%), with the demographic contours that defined the 2020 race still prominent. Biden sees majority support among voters of color (58%), college graduates (56%), voters younger than 35 (55%) and women (53%), while Trump has majority support among Whites (53%), men (53%) and voters without a college degree (53%). Independent voters break in Biden’s favor, 47% to 38%, as do suburban women (51% Biden to 44% Trump). Trump holds wide, though not unanimous, support among voters who currently disapprove of Biden’s job performance, with 13% in this group saying they’d back Biden over Trump regardless.

Presidential elections are decided by the state-by-state votes that determine the makeup of the electoral college rather than by national preferences, and given the distribution of electoral college votes among the states, a near-even race in the nationwide ballot is more likely to tilt to the Republican candidate in the electoral college count than the Democratic one.

Nearly 6 in 10 registered voters say that their vote in a matchup between Trump and Biden would be largely motivated by their attitudes toward the former Republican president – 30% say they’d vote for Biden mostly to express their opposition to Trump, and 29% that they’d vote for Trump mostly in an affirmative show of support. Only about one-third, by contrast, said they’d see their votes mostly as a way to cast judgment on Biden.

The criminal cases against Trump loom large over his candidacy, with both those motivated by support and those driven by opposition to him offering strongly held views on the charges. Those who say their support for Biden is more of an anti-Trump vote are near universal in saying the charges related to his role in the January 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol (96%) and to efforts to overturn the 2020 election (93%) are disqualifying if true, while about seven in 10 of those who say their backing for Trump is to show support for him say the former president faces so many charges largely due to political abuse of the justice system (69%).

Despite voters’ strong opinions toward Trump, Biden fares no better against any other Republican hopefuls tested in the poll. He is about even with Ron DeSantis (47% each), Mike Pence (46% Pence, 44% Biden), Tim Scott (46% Scott, 44% Biden), Vivek Ramaswamy (46% Biden, 45% Ramaswamy), and Chris Christie (44% Christie, 42% Biden). Haley stands as the only GOP candidate to hold a lead over Biden, with 49% to Biden’s 43% in a hypothetical match between the two. That difference is driven at least in part by broader support for Haley than for other Republicans among White voters with college degrees (she holds 51% of that group, compared with 48% or less for other Republicans tested in the poll).

As of now, Republican and Republican-leaning voters are more deeply driven to vote in 2024 (71% extremely motivated) than Democratic-aligned voters (61% extremely motivated).

The CNN Poll was conducted by SSRS from August 25-31 among a random national sample of 1,503 adults drawn from a probability-based panel, including 1,259 registered voters and 391 Democratic and Democratic-leaning independent voters. The survey included an oversample to reach a total of 898 Republicans and Republican-leaning independents; this group has been weighted to its proper size within the population. Surveys were either conducted online or by telephone with a live interviewer. Results among the full sample have a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 3.5 points; among registered voters, the margin of sampling error is 3.6 points, and it is 6.0 for Democratic and Democratic-leaning voters.

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September 7, 2023
Iran rounds up activists and relatives of killed protesters ahead of Mahsa Amini anniversary | CNN

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Editor’s Note: A version of this story appears in CNN’s Meanwhile in the Middle East newsletter, a three-times-a-week look inside the region’s biggest stories. Sign up here.

CNN
—

Iran is moving to head off a possible repeat of unrest ahead of the first anniversary of the death of Mahsa Amini, arresting women’s rights activists and family members of people killed during last year’s nationwide protests, local and international human rights groups said Wednesday.

Amini, a 22-year-old Kurdish-Iranian woman, died last September after being detained by the regime’s infamous morality police and taken to a “re-education center,” allegedly for not abiding by the country’s conservative dress code.

Protests sparked by Amini’s death, the largest Iran has witnessed in years, were met with a brutal crackdown by Iran’s security forces.

More than 300 people were killed in the protests, including more than 40 children, the UN said in November last year. US-based Human Rights Activists News Agency (HRANA) in January placed the number at more than 500, including 70 children.

Thousands were arrested during months of protests across the country, the UN said in a report in June, citing research released last year by their Human Rights Committee.

Iran executed seven protesters for their involvement in the unrest, according to the UN’s Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights.

A group of volunteer lawyers who defend rights activists alleged in a post on X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter, that Iran arrested the father of one of the executed protesters and the family’s legal counsel on Tuesday.

CNN has reached out to the Iranian Foreign Ministry for comment.

In a separate case, Shermin Habibi, the wife of Fereydoon Mahmoodi, a protester killed by security forces during the demonstrations, was arrested and transported to an undisclosed location on Tuesday, according to a report from HRANA.

Across 10 provinces, families of 33 people killed during the protests have been subjected to “human rights violations” in recent months, and the families of two people executed in connection with the protests were harassed and intimidated, Amnesty International said in a report this week.

Meanwhile, Bidarzani, an independent women’s rights group, alleges in social media posts that 11 women’s rights activists and one man were arrested in Gilan province over the last week.

State-affiliated media said 12 people were arrested for “preparing unrest and insecurity” in the province, which is northwest of Tehran on the Caspian Sea. Prosecutors in Gilan refused to provide details on which security entity was behind the arrests, according to Bidarzani.

“Iranian authorities are using their go-to playbook of putting maximum pressure on peaceful dissidents ahead of the anniversary of Mahsa Amini’s death,” a senior Iran researcher at Human Rights Watch, Tara Sepehri Far said in a press release.

“The arbitrary arrests of a dozen activists are aimed at suppressing popular discontent with ongoing impunity and rights violations.”

It is unclear if more protests are planned to coincide with the anniversary of the death of Mahsa Amini, who had been arrested by Iran’s morality police for not wearing her hijab correctly.

Ten months after her death, Iran’s morality police resumed headscarf patrols and now Iranian authorities are considering a draconian new bill on hijab-wearing that experts say would enshrine unprecedentedly harsh punitive measures into law.

The 70-article draft law sets out a range of proposals, including much longer prison terms for women who refuse to wear the veil, stiff new penalties for celebrities and businesses who flout the rules, and the use of artificial intelligence to identify women in breach of the dress code.

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August 23, 2023
Exclusive: Georgia prosecutors have messages showing Trump’s team is behind voting system breach | CNN Politics

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CNN
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Atlanta-area prosecutors investigating efforts to overturn the 2020 election results in Georgia are in possession of text messages and emails directly connecting members of Donald Trump’s legal team to the early January 2021 voting system breach in Coffee County, sources tell CNN.

Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis is expected to seek charges against more than a dozen individuals when her team presents its case before a grand jury next week. Several individuals involved in the voting systems breach in Coffee County are among those who may face charges in the sprawling criminal probe.

Investigators in the Georgia criminal probe have long suspected the breach was not an organic effort sprung from sympathetic Trump supporters in rural and heavily Republican Coffee County – a county Trump won by nearly 70% of the vote. They have gathered evidence indicating it was a top-down push by Trump’s team to access sensitive voting software, according to people familiar with the situation.

Trump allies attempted to access voting systems after the 2020 election as part of the broader push to produce evidence that could back up the former president’s baseless claims of widespread fraud.

While Trump’s January 2021 call to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger and effort to put forward fake slates of electors have long been considered key pillars of Willis’ criminal probe, the voting system breach in Coffee County quietly emerged as an area of focus for investigators roughly one year ago. Since then, new evidence has slowly been uncovered about the role of Trump’s attorneys, the operatives they hired and how the breach, as well as others like it in other key states, factored into broader plans for overturning the election.

Together, the text messages and other court documents show how Trump lawyers and a group of hired operatives sought to access Coffee County’s voting systems in the days before January 6, 2021, as the former president’s allies continued a desperate hunt for any evidence of widespread fraud they could use to delay certification of Joe Biden’s electoral victory.

 Last year, a former Trump official testified under oath to the House January 6 select committee that plans to access voting systems in Georgia were discussed in meetings at the White House, including during an Oval Office meeting on December 18, 2020,  that included Trump. 

Six days before pro-Trump operatives gained unauthorized access to voting systems, the local elections official who allegedly helped facilitate the breach sent a “written invitation” to attorneys working for Trump, according to text messages obtained by CNN.

Investigators have scrutinized the actions of various individuals who were involved, including Misty Hampton, a former Coffee County elections official who authored the letter of invitation referenced in text messages and other documents that have been turned over to prosecutors, multiple sources told CNN.

They have also examined the involvement of Trump’s then attorney Rudy Giuliani – who was informed last year he was a target in the Fulton County investigation – and fellow Trump lawyer Sidney Powell as part of their probe, according to people familiar with the matter.

A spokesperson for Willis’ office declined to comment.

The letter of invitation was shared with attorneys and an investigator working with Giuliani at the time, the text messages obtained by CNN show.

On January 1, 2021 – days ahead of the January 7 voting systems breach – Katherine Friess – an attorney working with Giuliani, Sidney Powell and other Trump allies shared a “written invitation” to examine voting systems in Coffee County with a group of Trump allies.

That group included members of Sullivan Strickler, a firm hired by Trump’s attorneys to examine voting systems in the small, heavily Republican Georgia county, according to text messages obtained by CNN.

That same day, Friess sent a “Letter of invitation to Coffee County, Georgia” to former NYPD Police Commissioner Bernie Kerik, who was working with Giuliani to find evidence that would back up their baseless claims of potential widespread voter fraud, according to court documents filed as part of an ongoing civil case.

Friess then notified operatives who carried out the Coffee County breach and others working directly with Giuliani that Trump’s team had secured written permission, the texts show.

CNN has not reviewed the substance of the invitation letter itself, only communications that confirm it was provided to Friess, Kerik and Sullivan Strickler employees.

Friess could not be reached for comment.

The messages and documents appear to link Giuliani to the Coffee County breach, while shedding light on another channel of communication between pro-Trump attorneys and the battleground state operatives who worked together to provide unauthorized individuals access to sensitive voting equipment.

“Rudy Giuliani had nothing to do with this,” said Robert Costello, Giuliani’s attorney. “You can’t attach Rudy Giuliani to Sidney Powell’s crackpot idea.”

“Just landed back in DC with the Mayor huge things starting to come together!” an employee from the firm Sullivan Strickler, which was hired by Sidney Powell to examine voting systems in Coffee County, wrote in a group chat with other colleagues on January 1.

Former New York Mayor Giuliani was consistently referred to as “the Mayor,” in other texts sent by the same individual and others at the time.

“Most immediately, we were just granted access – by written invitation! – to Coffee County’s systems. Yay!” the text reads.

Shortly after Election Day, Hampton – still serving as the top election official for Coffee County – warned during a state election board meeting that Dominion voting machines could “very easily” be manipulated to flip votes from one candidate to another. It’s a claim that has been repeatedly debunked.

But the Trump campaign officials took notice and reached out to Hampton that same day. “I would like to obtain as much information as possible,” a Trump campaign staffer emailed Hampton at the time, according to documents released as part of a public records request and first reported by the Washington Post.

In early December, Hampton then delayed certification of Joe Biden’s win in Georgia by refusing to validate the recount results by a key deadline. Coffee County was the only county in Georgia that failed to certify its election results due to issues raised by Hampton at the time.

Hampton also posted a video online claiming to expose problems with the county’s Dominion voting system. That video was used by Trump’s lawyers, including Giuliani, as part of their push to convince legislators from multiple states that there was evidence the 2020 election results were tainted by voting system issues.

Text messages and other documents obtained by CNN show Trump allies were seeking access to Coffee County’s voting system by mid-December amid increasing demands for proof of widespread election fraud.

Coffee County was specifically cited in draft executive orders for seizing voting machines that were presented to Trump on December 18, 2020, during a chaotic Oval Office meeting, CNN has reported. During that same meeting, Giuliani alluded to a plan to gain “voluntary access” to machines in Georgia, according to testimony from him and others before the House January 6 committee.

Days later, Hampton shared the written invitation to access the county’s election office with a Trump lawyer, text messages obtained by CNN show. She and another location elections official, Cathy Latham, allegedly helped Trump operatives gain access to the county’s voting systems, according to documents, testimony and surveillance video produced as part of a long-running civil lawsuit focused on election security in Georgia.

Latham, who also served as a fake elector from Georgia after the 2020 election, has come under scrutiny for her role in the Coffee County breach after surveillance video showed she allowed unauthorized outsiders to spend hours examining voting systems there.

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August 13, 2023
NYT: Architect of Trump fake electors plot thought SCOTUS would ‘likely’ reject plan, but pushed ahead anyway | CNN Politics

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Washington
CNN
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An internal Trump campaign memo from December 2020, made public Tuesday by The New York Times, reveals new details about how the campaign initiated its plan to subvert the Electoral College process and install fake GOP electors in multiple states after losing the 2020 presidential election.

In the December 6, 2020, memo, pro-Trump lawyer Kenneth Chesebro laid out the plan to put forth slates of Republican electors in seven key swing states that then-President Donald Trump lost. The memo then outlines how then-Vice President Mike Pence, while presiding over the Electoral College certification on January 6, 2021, should declare “that it is his constitutional power and duty, alone, as President of the Senate, to both open and count the votes” from the GOP electors.

Chesebro conceded in the memo that this idea was a “controversial” long shot that would “likely” be rejected by the Supreme Court – but nonetheless promoted the strategy. He wrote that despite the legal dubiousness, “letting matters play out this way would guarantee that public attention would be riveted on the evidence of electoral abuses by the Democrats and would also buy the Trump campaign more time to win litigation that would deprive Biden of electoral votes and/or add to Trump’s column.”

The fake electors scheme has become an integral part of the recent federal indictment against Trump, which alleges the plot took shape after it became clear that efforts to convince state officials to not certify Joe Biden’s victories would be unsuccessful.

CNN previously reported that the scheme was overseen by Trump campaign officials and led by Rudy Giuliani. Chesebro, who authored the newly released memo, is an unindicted co-conspirator in the Trump indictment and was described by prosecutors as “an attorney who assisted in devising and attempting to implement a plan to submit fraudulent slates of presidential electors to obstruct the certification proceeding.” He has not been charged with any crimes.

According to Trump’s January 6-related indictment and previous CNN reporting, there were multiple planning calls between Trump campaign officials and GOP state operatives, and Giuliani participated in at least one call. The Trump campaign lined up supporters to fill elector slots, secured meeting rooms for the fake electors to meet on December 14, 2020, and circulated drafts of fake certificates that they later signed.

At the time, their actions were largely dismissed as an elaborate political cosplay. But it eventually became clear that this was part of an orchestrated plan.

“Under the plan, the submission of these fraudulent slates would create a fake controversy at the certification proceeding and position the Vice President-presiding on January 6 as President of the Senate to supplant legitimate electors with the Defendant’s fake electors and certify the Defendant as president,” the indictment states.

Prosecutors say Chesebro told Guiliani – both identified in the indictment only as co-conspirator 5 and co-conspirator 1, respectively – that he had been told by state-level operatives that “it could appear treasonous for the AZ electors to vote on Monday if there is no pending court proceeding.”

“I recognize that what I suggest is a bold, controversial strategy, and that there are many reasons why it might not end up being executed on Jan. 6,” Chesebro wrote in the December 6 memo, despite pushing the idea and outlining a plan in the days to come. “But as long as it is one possible option, to preserve it as a possibility it is important that the Trump-Pence electors cast their electoral votes on Dec. 14.”

That is ultimately what ended up happening on December 14, 2020.

Many of the fake GOP electors who signed the phony certificates that day have since come under legal scrutiny: The fake electors from Michigan are facing state-level felony charges for forgery and publishing a counterfeit record, and many of the fake electors from Georgia are targets of the 2020-related criminal probe in Fulton County.

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August 9, 2023