NEW YORK — A criminal trial involving tax fraud charges against Donald Trump’s company won’t resume until late next week at the earliest as a key witness continues to recover from COVID-19.
Court spokesperson Lucian Chalfen said the trial, in state court in Manhattan, is slated to resume on Thursday — not Monday, as the judge had previously hoped.
The Trump Organization trial was abruptly halted Tuesday when longtime company senior vice president and controller Jeffrey McConney tested positive for the virus.
McConney was on the witness stand for the first two days of testimony, Monday and Tuesday. He coughed off and on as he walked prosecutors through the company’s bookkeeping and payroll practices.
By Tuesday’s lunch break, McConney’s symptoms had worsened, prompting him to take a COVID test. Chalfen said he was not aware of anyone else involved in the case testing positive.
If the trial resumes Thursday, it will be the only day the case is in court next week.
Court is closed Tuesday for Election Day and Friday for Veterans Day. The judge, Juan Manuel Merchan, previously said he would not hold the trial on Wednesdays.
Merchan has said he expected the trial to take at least four weeks. The prolonged delay could push it into mid-December or beyond.
The Trump Organization is accused of helping some of its top executives avoid income taxes on lavish company-paid perks, including a Manhattan apartment and luxury cars.
McConney was granted immunity to testify last year before a grand jury and again to testify at the criminal trial.
Before Tuesday’s adjournment, McConney told jurors he altered company pay records to reduce one executive’s income tax bill and recounted how the company changed its pay practices and financial arrangements once Trump was elected president in 2016.
Tom Barrack, a businessman ally of former President Donald Trump, has been acquitted of illicit lobbying on behalf of the United Arab Emirates.
Barrack, an old friend of Trump’s who chaired the former president’s inaugural committee, had been accused of acting as an unregistered agent of a foreign government, obstruction of justice, and making false statements.
The charges stemmed from allegations the 75-year-old Barrack used his personal access to Trump to secretly promote the UAE’s interests.
The not-guilty verdict announced on Friday followed three days of jury deliberation that capped the six-week trial. “I’m humbled,” Barrack told reporters outside the federal courthouse in Brooklyn. “I have no hostility, I’m just proud to be an American.”
In closing arguments, assistant US attorney Ryan Harris told jurors that Barrack schemed to become the “eyes, ears and the voice” of the UAE as part of a criminal conspiracy to manipulate Trump’s foreign policy.
At the same time, he charged, Barrack leveraged his back-channel connections to get the UAE to funnel tens of millions of dollars into an office building he was developing and into one of his investment funds.
Prosecutors argued that text messages and other forms of communication showed that Barrack was acting under the direction of Rashid al-Malik, a businessman who served as a conduit to the UAE rulers.
Harris said Barrack marketed himself as the UAE’s “man on the inside”, while Malik asked Barrack “to do things for the UAE again and again”.
Barrack’s defence maintained he had not attempted to hide his relationship with Malik, and that he was involved in Trump’s campaign “because he’s loyal to his friends – maybe to a fault”, lawyer Randall Jackson said.
In testimony last week, Barrack, who is of Lebanese descent and speaks Arabic, said he had tried to arrange a meeting between Trump and UAE national security adviser Sheikh Tahnoun bin Zayed Al Nahyan, among other officials, in an effort to persuade Trump to tone down his anti-Muslim rhetoric.
“I was trying to get common ground to try to get him to step back from what he didn’t believe,” he said.
Before being indicted, Barrack drew attention by raising $107m for the former president’s inaugural celebration following the 2016 election.
The event was scrutinised both for its lavish spending and for attracting foreign officials and businesspeople looking to lobby the new administration.
During his testimony, Barrack also said that he never sought a pardon from Trump. However, he added that “dozens” of people had asked him for help in getting pardons from the former president.
In a statement on Friday, Trump called the verdict a “Great Victory for our Nation”.
“Great news for our Country, Freedom, and Democracy in that businessman Tom Barrack, who should have never been charged or tried, was just acquitted,” Trump wrote. “My great respect goes out to the jurors for their courage and understanding in coming to an absolutely correct decision.”
Several Trump associates and allies have been convicted in recent criminal trials, while others pleaded guilty. Trump pardoned some of them before leaving office.
Steve Bannon, a Trump campaign and White House strategist, escaped a federal trial on fraud charges thanks to a Trump pardon in the final hours of his presidency.
Bannon now faces state charges for money laundering and conspiracy connected with the same scheme – he is accused of deceiving donors who were giving money to help build Trump’s promised wall along the US-Mexico border.
In July, Bannon was convicted of contempt of Congress for defying a subpoena from a congressional committee probing the 2021 attack by Trump supporters on the US capitol, and he was sentenced last month to four months in prison.
Longtime Trump adviser Roger Stone, convicted in 2019 of lying under oath to US legislators investigating Russian interference in the 2016 election, received a pardon.
Paul Manafort, Trump’s 2016 campaign chairman, was also pardoned after being found guilty in 2018 of financial wrongdoing and being sentenced to seven and a half years in prison.
DELPHI, Ind. — A northern Indiana judge has recused himself from the case of two slain teenage girls, an Indiana Supreme Court spokeswoman said Thursday.
The Indiana Supreme Court is in the process of appointing Allen County Superior Court Judge Fran Gull as special judge in the case after Carroll Circuit Court Judge Benjamin Diener’s recusal, spokeswoman Kathryn Dolan said.
“A judge does not have to explain a reason for recusal,” Dolan said in an email to the news media.
Diener’s recusal came on the same day he approved a request from Carroll County Sheriff Tobe Leazenby to transfer Richard Allen, the suspect in the 2017 killings, to the Indiana Department of Corrections for safety reasons.
In the order to transfer Allen, Diener wrote, “This FINDING is not predicated on any acts or alleged acts of the Defendant, since arrest, rather a toxic and harmful insistence on ‘public information’ about Defendant and this case.”
Diener said the court found Allen to be in “imminent danger of serious bodily injury or death, or represents a substantial threat to the safety of others.”
He also addressed what he termed the “public bloodlust for information” in the case, calling it dangerous and saying all public servants working on the case do not feel safe or protected.
The order went on to state the public’s desire to learn about the case and access court records was “inherently disruptive” to court operations
Allen is being held on $20 million bond, online court records show.
Allen, 50, was arrested Friday on two murder counts in the killings of Liberty German, 14, and Abigail Williams, 13, in a case that has haunted Delphi.
The deaths were ruled a double homicide, but police have never disclosed how they died or described what evidence they gathered. A relative had dropped them off at a hiking trail near the Monon High Bridge just outside their hometown of Delphi, about 60 miles (97 kilometers) northwest of Indianapolis. Their bodies were found the next day, Feb. 14, 2017, in a rugged, heavily wooded area near the trail.
Diener entered a not-guilty plea for Allen at his initial hearing on Friday.
LIVERPOOL, England — On the long picket line outside the gates of Liverpool’s Peel Port, rain-soaked dock workers warm themselves with cups of tea as they listen to 1980s pop.
Dozens of buses, cars and trucks honk in solidarity as they pass.
Dockers’ strikes are not new to Liverpool, nor is depravation. But this latest walk-out at Britain’s fourth-largest port is part of something much bigger, a great wave of public and private sector strikes taking place across the U.K. Railways, postal services, law courts and garbage collections are among the many public services grinding to a halt.
The immediate cause of the discontent, as elsewhere, is the rising cost of living. Inflation in the United Kingdom breached the 10 percent mark this year, with wages failing to keep pace.
But the U.K.’s economic woes long predate the current crisis. For more than a decade, Britain has been beset by weak economic growth, anaemic productivity, and stagnant private and public sector investment. Since 2016, its political leadership has been in a state of Brexit-induced flux.
Half a century after U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger looked at the U.K.’s 1970s economic malaise and declared that “Britain is a tragedy,” the United Kingdom is heading to be the sick man of Europe once again.
The immediate cause of Liverpool dockers’ discontent that brought them to strike is the rising cost of living. | Christopher Furlong/Getty Images
Here in Liverpool, the “scars run very deep,” said Paul Turking, a dock worker in his late 30s. British voters, he added, have “been misled” by politicians’ promises to “level up” the country by investing heavily in regional economies. Conservatives “will promise you the world and then pull the carpet out from under your feet,” he complained.
“There’s no middle class no more,” said John Delij, a Peel Port veteran of 15 years. He sees the cost-of-living crisis and economic stagnation whittling away the middle rung of the economic ladder.
“How many billionaires do we have?” Delij asked, wondering how Britain could be the sixth-largest economy in the world with a record number of billionaires when food bank use is 35 percent above its pre-pandemic level. “The workers put money back into the economy,” he said.
What would they do if they were in charge? “Invest in affordable housing,” said Turking. “Housing and jobs.”
Falling behind
The British economy has been struck by particular turbulence over recent weeks. The cost of government borrowing soared in the wake of former PM Liz Truss’ disastrous mini-budget on September 23, with the U.K.’s central bank forced to step in and steady the bond markets.
But while the swift installation of Rishi Sunak, the former chancellor, as prime minister seems to have restored a modicum of calm, the economic backdrop remains bleak. Spending and welfare cuts are coming. Taxes are certain to rise. And the underlying problems cut deep.
U.K. productivity growth since the financial crisis has trailed that of comparator nations such as the U.S., France and Germany. As such, people’s median incomes also lag behind neighboring countries over the same period. Only Russia is forecast to have worse economic growth among the G20 nations in 2023.
In 1976, the U.K. — facing stagflation, a global energy crisis, a current account deficit and labor unrest — had to be bailed out by the International Monetary Fund. It feels far-fetched, but today some are warning it could happen again.
The U.K. is spluttering its way through an illness brought about in part through a series of self-inflicted wounds that have undermined the basic pillars of any economy: confidence and stability.
The political and economic malaise is such that it has prompted unwanted comparisons with countries whose misfortunes Britain once watched amusedly from afar.
“The existential risk to the U.K. … is not that we’re suddenly going to go off an economic cliff, or that the country’s going to descend into civil war or whatever,” said Jonathan Portes, professor of economics at King’s College London. “It’s that we will become like Italy.”
Portes, of course, does not mean a country blessed with good weather and fine food — but an economy hobbled by persistently low growth, caught in a dysfunctional political loop that lurches between “corrupt and incompetent right-wing populists” and “well-intentioned technocrats who can’t actually seem to turn the ship around.”
“That’s not the future that we want in the U.K,” he said.
Reviving the U.K.’s flatlining economy will not happen overnight. As Italy’s experience demonstrates, it’s one thing to diagnose an illness — another to cure it.
Experts speak of an unbalanced model heavily reliant upon Britain’s services sector and beset with low productivity, a result of years of underinvestment and a flexible labor market which delivers low unemployment but often insecure and low-paid work.
“We’re not investing in skills; businesses aren’t investing,” said Xiaowei Xu, senior research economist at the Institute for Fiscal Studies. “It’s not that surprising that we’re not getting productivity growth.”
But any attempt to address the country’s ailments will require its economic stewards to understand their underlying causes — and those stretch back at least to the first truly global crisis of the 21st century.
Crash and burn
The 2008 financial crisis hammered economies around the world, and the U.K. was no exception. Its economy shrunk by more than 6 percent between the first quarter of 2008 and the second quarter of 2009. Five years passed before it returned to its pre-recession size.
For Britain, the crisis in fact began in September 2007, a year before the collapse of Lehman Brothers, when wobbles in the U.S. subprime mortgage market sparked a run on the British bank Northern Rock.
The U.K. discovered it was particularly vulnerable to such a shock. Over the second half of the 20th century, its manufacturing base had largely eroded as its services sector expanded, with financial and professional services and real estate among the key drivers. As the Bank of England put it: “The interconnectedness of global finance meant that the U.K. financial system had become dangerously exposed to the fall-out from the U.S. sub-prime mortgage market.”
The crisis was a “big shock to the U.K.’s broad economic model,” said John Springford, from the Centre for European Reform. Productivity took an immediate hit as exports of financial services plunged. It never fully recovered.
“Productivity before the crash was basically, ‘Can we create lots and lots of debt and generate lots and lots of income on the back of this? Can we invent collateralized debt obligations and trade them in vast volumes?’” said James Meadway, director of the Progressive Economy Forum and a former adviser to Labour’s left-wing former shadow chancellor, John McDonnell.
A post-crash clampdown on City practises had an obvious impact.
“This is a major part of the British economy, so if it’s suddenly not performing the way it used to — for good reasons — things overall are going to look a bit shaky,” Meadway added.
The shock did not contain itself to the economy. In a pattern that would be repeated, and accentuated, in the coming years, it sent shuddering waves through the country’s political system, too.
The 2010 election was fought on how to best repair Britain’s broken economy. In 2009, the U.K. had the second-highest budget deficit in the G7, trailing only the U.S., according to the U.K. government’s own fiscal watchdog, the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR).
The Conservative manifesto declared “our economy is overwhelmed by debt,” and promised to close the U.K.’s mounting budget deficit in five years with sharp public sector cuts. The incumbent Labour government responded by pledging to halve the deficit by 2014 with “deeper and tougher” cuts in public spending than the significant reductions overseen by former Conservative Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher in the 1980s.
The election returned a hung parliament, with the Conservatives entering into a coalition with the Liberal Democrats. The age of austerity was ushered in.
Austerity nation
Defenders of then-Chancellor George Osborne’s austerity program insist it saved Britain from the sort of market-led calamity witnessed this fall, and put the U.K. economy in a condition to weather subsequent global crises such as the COVID-19 pandemic and the fallout from the war in Ukraine.
“That hard work made policies like furlough and the energy price cap possible,” said Rupert Harrison, one of Osborne’s closest Treasury advisers.
Pointing to the brutal market response to Truss’ freewheeling economic plans, Harrison praised the “wisdom” of the coalition in prioritizing tackling the U.K.’s debt-GDP ratio. “You never know when you will be vulnerable to a loss of credibility,” he noted.
But Osborne’s detractors argue austerity — which saw deep cuts to community services such as libraries and adult social care; courts and prisons services; road maintenance; the police and so much more — also stripped away much of the U.K.’s social fabric, causing lasting and profound economic damage. A recent study claimed austerity was responsible for hundreds of thousands of excess deaths.
Under Osborne’s plan, three-quarters of the fiscal consolidation was to be delivered by spending cuts. With the exception of the National Health Service, schools and aid spending, all government budgets were slashed; public sector pay was frozen; taxes (mainly VAT) rose.
But while the government came close to delivering its fiscal tightening target for 2014-15, “the persistent underperformance of productivity and real GDP over that period meant the deficit remained higher than initially expected,” the OBR said. By his own measure, Osborne had failed, and was forced to push back his deficit-elimination target further. Austerity would have to continue into the second half of the 2010s.
Many economists contend that the fiscal belt-tightening sucked demand out of the economy and worsened Britain’s productivity crisis by stifling investment. “That certainly did hit U.K. growth and did some permanent damage,” said King’s College London’s Portes.
“If that investment isn’t there, other people start to find it less attractive to open businesses,” former Labour aide Meadway added. “If your railways aren’t actually very good … it does add up to a problem for businesses.”
A 2015 study found U.K. productivity, as measured by GDP per hour worked, was now lower than in the rest of the G7 by a whopping 18 percentage points.
“Frankly, nobody knows the whole answer,” Osborne said of Britain’s productivity conundrum in May 2015. “But what I do know is that I’d much rather have the productivity challenge than the challenge of mass unemployment.”
‘Jobs miracle’
Rising employment was indeed a signature achievement of the coalition years. Unemployment dropped below 6 percent across the U.K. by the end of the parliament in 2015, with just Germany and Austria achieving a lower rate of joblessness among the then-28 EU states. Real-term wages, however, took nearly a decade to recover to pre-crisis levels.
Economists like Meadway contend that the rise in employment came with a price, courtesy of Britain’s famously flexible labor market. He points to a Sports Direct warehouse in the East Midlands, where a 2015 Guardian investigation revealed the predominantly immigrant workforce was paid illegally low wages, while the working conditions were such that the facility was nicknamed “the gulag.”
The warehouse, it emerged, was built on a former coal mine, and for Meadway the symbolism neatly charts the U.K.’s move away from traditional heavy industry toward more precarious service sector employment. “It’s not a secure job anymore,” he said. “Once you have a very flexible labor market, the pressure on employers to pay more and the capacity for workers to bargain for more is very much reduced.”
Throughout the period, the Bank of England — the U.K.’s central bank — kept interest rates low and pursued a policy of quantitative easing. “That tends to distort what happens in the economy,” argued Meadway. QE, he said, is a “good [way of] getting money into the hands of people who already have quite a lot” and “doesn’t do much for people who depend on wage income.”
Meanwhile — whether necessary or not — the U.K.’s austerity policies undoubtedly worsened a decades-long trend of underinvestment in skills and research and development (Britain lags only Italy in the G7 on R&D spending). At British schools, there was a 9 percent real terms fall in per-pupil spending between 2009 and 2019, according to the Institute for Fiscal Studies’ Xu. “As countries get richer, usually you start spending more on education,” Xu noted.
Two senior ministers in the coalition government — David Gauke, who served in the Treasury throughout Osborne’s tenure, and ex-Lib Dem Business Secretary Vince Cable — have both accepted that the government might have focused more on higher taxation and less on cuts to public spending. But both also insisted the U.K had ultimately been correct to prioritize putting its public finances on a sounder footing.
It was February 2018 before Britain finally achieved Osborne’s goal of eliminating the deficit on its day-to-day budget.
Austerity was coming to an end, at last. But Osborne had already left the Treasury, 18 months earlier — swept away along with Cameron in the wake of a seismic national uprising.
***
David Cameron had won the 2015 election outright, despite — or perhaps because of — the stringent spending cuts his coalition government had overseen, more of which had been pledged in his 2015 manifesto. Also promised, of course, was a public vote on Britain’s EU membership.
The reasons for the leave vote that followed were many and complex — but few doubt that years of underinvestment in poorer parts of the U.K. were among them.
Regardless, the 2016 EU referendum triggered a period of political acrimony and turbulence not seen in Westminster for generations. With no pre-agreed model of what Brexit should actually entail, the U.K.’s future relationship with the EU became the subject of heated and protracted debate. After years of wrangling, Britain finally left the bloc at the end of January 2020, severing ties in a more profound way than many had envisaged.
While the twin crises of COVID and Ukraine have muddled the picture, most economists agree Brexit has already had a significant impact on the U.K. economy. The size of Britain’s trade flows relative to GDP has fallen further than other G7 countries, business investment growth trails the likes of Japan, South Korea and Italy, and the OBR has stuck by its March 2020 prediction that Brexit would reduce productivity and U.K. GDP by 4 percent.
Perhaps more significantly, Brexit has ushered in a period of political instability. As prime ministers come and go (the U.K. is now on its fifth since 2016), economic programs get neglected, or overturned. Overseas investors look on with trepidation.
“The evidence that the referendum outcome, and the kind of uncertainty and change in policy that it created, have led to low investment and low growth in the U.K. is fairly compelling,” said professor Stephen Millard, deputy director at the National Institute of Economic and Social Research.
Beyond the instability, the broader impact of the vote to leave remains contentious.
Portes argued — as many Remain supporters also do — that much harm was done by the decision to leave the EU’s single market. “It’s the facts, not the uncertainty that in my view is responsible for most of the damage,” he said.
Brexit supporters dismiss such claims.
“It’s difficult statistically to find much significant effect of Brexit on anything,” said professor Patrick Minford, founder member of Economists for Brexit. “There’s so much else going on, so much volatility.”
Minford, an economist favored by ex-PM Truss, acknowledged that “Brexit is disruptive in the short run, so it’s perfectly possible that you would get some short-run disruption.” But he added: “It was a long-term policy decision.”
Where next?
Plenty of economists can rattle off possible solutions, although actually delivering them has thus far evaded Britain’s political class. “It’s increasing investment, having more of a focus on the long-term, it’s having economic strategies that you set out and actually commit to over time,” says the IFS’ Xu. “As far as possible, it’s creating more certainty over economic policy.”
But in seeking to bring stability after the brief but chaotic Truss era, new U.K. Chancellor Jeremy Hunt has signaled a fresh period of austerity is on the way to plug the latest hole in the nation’s finances. Leveling Up Secretary Michael Gove told Times Radio that while, ideally, you wouldn’t want to reduce long-term capital investments, he was sure some spending on big projects “will be cut.”
This could be bad news for many of the U.K.’s long-awaited infrastructure schemes such as the HS2 high-speed rail line, which has been in the works for almost 15 years and already faces a familiar mix of local resistance, vested interests, and a sclerotic planning system.
“We have a real problem in the sense that the only way to really durably raise productivity growth for this country is for investments to pick up,” said Springford, from the Centre for European Reform. “And the headwinds to that are quite significant.”
For dock workers at Liverpool’s Peel Port, the prospect of a fresh round of austerity amid a cost-of-living crisis is too much to bear. “Workers all over this country need to stand up for themselves and join a union,” insisted Delij.
For him, it’s all about priorities — and the arguments still echo back to the great crash of 15 years ago. “They bailed the bankers out in 2007,” he said, “and can’t bail hungry people out now.”
RIO DE JANEIRO — In the run-up to Brazil’s presidential election, many feared a narrow result would spell the death knell for Latin America’s largest democracy.
So far, however, the worst has been averted, despite a nail-biting victory for former leftist President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva over far-right incumbent Jair Bolsonaro, and ongoing protests by Bolsonaro’s supporters across the country.
The conservative leader’s allies quickly recognized da Silva’s victory, the military stayed in the barracks and vigilant world leaders swooped in to offer support for da Silva and nip in the bud even the thought of anything resembling the Jan. 6 insurrection that overtook the U.S. Capitol.
“All of Bolsonaro’s escape valves were shut off,” said Brian Winter, a longtime Brazil expert and vice president of the New York-based Council of the Americas. “He was prevailed upon from all sides not to contest the results and burn down the house on his way out.”
Although Bolsonaro has refused to congratulate da Silva or disavow die-hard protesters who remained on the streets Wednesday, Brazil’s institutions generally seem to have held up.
That leaves a more vexing challenge: how the 77-year-old da Silva, universally known as Lula, unites a deeply divided country, rights a wobbly economy and delivers on the outsize expectations spurred by his return to power.
One thing is clear, if anyone can do it, it’s the charismatic da Silva — whose political skills are admired even by his detractors.
“That’s what we need, someone not only who can address inequality but also inspire our emotions and ideas,” said Marcelo Neri, director of the Getulio Vargas Foundation’s social policy center, who led the Ministry of Strategic Affairs in the Cabinet of da Silva’s handpicked successor, Dilma Rousseff.
In many ways, the conservative movement Bolsonaro helped ignite — if not the politician himself — has emerged stronger from the vote, Winter said. His allies were elected as governors in several key states and his Liberal Party has become the largest in Congress, curtailing da Silva’s ability to advance his own agenda after a decadelong malaise that has left millions of Brazilians hungrier than when da Silva last held office in 2010.
What’s more, Brazil’s demographics seem to favor Bolsonaro’s aggressive brand of identity politics — including an anti-LGBTQ agenda and hostility to environmentalists — that have earned him the moniker “Trump of the Tropics.”
The country’s own statistics institute forecasts that the number of Brazilians identifying as evangelical Christians — who preelection polls show overwhelmingly favored Bolsonaro and skew right — will overtake Roman Catholics within a decade.
Thousands of Bolsonaro’s supporters thronged a regional army headquarters in Rio on Wednesday, demanding that the military step in and keep him in power. Outside a military building in the state of Santa Catarina, hundreds of protesters gave the Nazi salute while chanting the national anthem. Meanwhile, truckers maintained about 150 roadblocks across the country to protest Bolsonaro’s loss, despite the Supreme Court’s orders to law enforcement to dismantle them.
Since the return of democracy in the 1980s, all Brazilian leaders have been guided to varying degrees by a common belief in strong state-led enterprises, high taxes and aggressive wealth redistribution policies.
Bolsonaro initially attempted to run a more austere, business-friendly government, that is, until the social devastation wreaked by COVID-19 and his own sinking electoral prospects ultimately led him to loosen spending controls and emulate the policies he once attacked.
How da Silva will govern is less clear. He squeaked out a narrow victory of barely 2 million votes after forming a broad coalition of players. And with promises to maintain a generous welfare program in place through 2023, he will have limited fiscal space to spend on other priorities.
His running mate from another party, former Sao Paulo Governor Geraldo Alckim, was a nod to centrist, fiscally conservative policies that made da Silva the darling of Wall Street during his early years in power. This week, da Silva tapped Alckim to lead his transition team.
Also standing alongside him on the victory stage Sunday night, however, were several stalwarts of the left who have been implicated in numerous corruption scandals that have plagued his Workers’ Party and paved the way for Bolsonaro’s rise.
Although da Silva’s supporters have downplayed the concerns about corruption — the Supreme Court annulled the convictions that kept him behind bars for nearly two years — for many Brazilians he is a symbol of the culture of graft that has long permeated politics. As a result, he’s likely to be held to a higher ethical standard in a country where political support is often obtained in exchange for Cabinet appointments and budgets.
“This wasn’t just a fever dream by his opponents,” Winter said of the corruption allegations that have long dogged da Silva’s party.
Da Silva’s victory coincides with a string of recent victories by the left in South America, including in Chile and Colombia, whose leaders revere the former union boss. During his first stint in power, da Silva led a so-called pink wave that promoted regional integration, rivaled U.S. dominance and put the rights of overlooked minorities and Indigenous groups at the center of the political agenda.
Under Bolsonaro, Brazil largely retreated from that leadership role, even if the sheer size of its economy alone means a return to leadership is never far off.
Scott Hamilton, a former U.S. diplomat, said that da Silva will have to make a tough choice on whether to use Brazil’s considerable leverage to pursue an ambitious foreign policy to tackle entrenched problems or simply use his star power on the world stage to shore up support at home.
“Basking in not being Bolsonaro will get him lots of positive attention in itself,” said Hamilton, whose last post, until April, was as consul general in Rio. “The more ambitious path would involve trying to help resolve some of the toughest political issues where democratic governments in the region are in trouble or extinguished.”
JACKSON, Miss — A federal judge has appointed a receiver to temporarily manage a jail near Mississippi’s capital city to improve conditions.
U.S. District Judge Carlton Reeves on Monday selected Wendell M. France Sr., a public safety consultant, former correctional administrator and 27-year member of the Baltimore Police Department to remedy “ongoing unconstitutional conditions” at the Hinds County Raymond Detention Center.
On July 29, Reeves placed the jail into receivership after citing poor conditions for prisoners. Reeves said that deficiencies in supervision and staffing lead to “a stunning array of assaults, as well as deaths.” Seven people died last year while detained at the jail, he said in his July ruling.
Reeves also wrote that cell doors did not lock and that a lack of lighting in cells made life “miserable for the detainees who live there and prevents guards from adequately surveilling detainees.” He also said guards sometimes slept instead of monitoring the cameras in the control room.
Hinds County board President Credell Calhoun told the Mississippi Free Press that local officials will weigh their legal options for how to respond.
Federal and state judges have ordered receiverships or a similar transfer of control for prisons and jails only about eight times, according to Hernandez Stroud, an attorney at the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU School of Law.
France began transitioning into his role Tuesday, but he will not have full operational control over the jail until Jan. 1. According to the terms of the receivership laid out by Reeves in court documents, France will have 120 days from the date of his appointment to develop a draft plan reforming the jail’s conditions.
France was chosen from a field of four candidates. After conducting interviews, Reeves chose France based on his “diverse experience in corrections and criminal justice system leadership,” court records show. He will be compensated $16,000 per month.
In addition to his experience as a police officer, France served as deputy secretary of the Maryland Department of Public Safety and Correctional Services, where he managed a $22 million budget and 400 employees, Reeves said. He has also worked as a consultant for the U.S. Department of Justice.
An online job profile for France also shows that he is the president of a consulting firm that provides “expert witness service to federal, state, municipal government agencies and private attorneys.”
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Michael Goldberg is a corps member for the Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues. Follow him on Twitter at twitter.com/mikergoldberg.
Today is Tuesday, Nov. 1, the 305th day of 2022. There are 60 days left in the year.
Today’s Highlight in History:
On Nov. 1, 1991, Clarence Thomas took his place as the newest justice on the Supreme Court.
On this date:
In 1478, the Spanish Inquisition was established.
In 1512, Michelangelo’s just-completed paintings on the ceiling of the Vatican’s Sistine Chapel were publicly unveiled by the artist’s patron, Pope Julius II.
In 1604, William Shakespeare’s tragedy “Othello” was first presented at Whitehall Palace in London.
In 1765, the Stamp Act, passed by the British Parliament, went into effect, prompting stiff resistance from American colonists.
In 1861, during the Civil War, President Abraham Lincoln named Maj. Gen. George B. McClellan General-in-Chief of the Union armies, succeeding Lt. Gen. Winfield Scott.
In 1870, the United States Weather Bureau made its first meteorological observations.
In 1936, in a speech in Milan, Italy, Benito Mussolini described the alliance between his country and Nazi Germany as an “axis” running between Rome and Berlin.
In 1950, two Puerto Rican nationalists tried to force their way into Blair House in Washington, D.C., in a failed attempt to assassinate President Harry S. Truman. (One of the pair was killed, along with a White House police officer.)
In 1952, the United States exploded the first hydrogen bomb, code-named “Ivy Mike,” at Enewetak (en-ih-WEE’-tahk) Atoll in the Marshall Islands.
In 1989, East Germany reopened its border with Czechoslovakia, prompting tens of thousands of refugees to flee to the West.
In 1995, Bosnia peace talks opened in Dayton, Ohio, with the leaders of Bosnia, Serbia and Croatia present.
In 2007, less than a week after workers ratified a new contract, Chrysler announced 12,000 job cuts, or about 15 percent of its work force.
Ten years ago: Israel, lifting a nearly 25-year veil of secrecy, acknowledged it had killed Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat’s deputy in a 1988 raid in Tunisia. (Khalil al-Wazir, who was better known by his nom de guerre Abu Jihad, founded Fatah, the dominant faction in the Palestine Liberation Organization.)
Five years ago: Federal prosecutors brought terrorism charges against the man accused in the Manhattan truck rampage a day earlier that left eight people dead; prosecutors said Sayfullo Saipov had asked to display the Islamic State group’s flag in the hospital room where he was recovering from police gunfire. President Donald Trump tweeted that the suspect in the truck attack should get the death penalty. Prompting celebrations in a city still recovering from Hurricane Harvey, the Houston Astros won their first World Series championship, beating the Dodgers 5-1 in Game 7 in Los Angeles.
One year ago: The global death toll from COVID-19 topped 5 million, as tallied by Johns Hopkins University. About 9,000 New York City municipal workers were put on unpaid leave for refusing to comply with a new COVID-19 vaccine mandate, and thousands of city firefighters called out sick in an apparent protest over the requirement. Real estate scion Robert Durst was indicted on a murder charge in the disappearance of his first wife nearly four decades earlier; he was already serving a life sentence for killing a confidante who helped cover up that slaying. (Durst died in January 2022.) At a U.N. summit in Scotland, President Joe Biden apologized for former President Donald Trump’s decision to leave the Paris climate change agreement, and for the role that the U.S. and other wealthy countries played in contributing to climate change.
Today’s Birthdays: World Golf Hall of Famer Gary Player is 87. Country singer Bill Anderson is 85. Actor Barbara Bosson is 83. Actor Robert Foxworth is 81. Country singer-humorist Kinky Friedman is 78. Actor Jeannie Berlin is 73. Music producer David Foster is 73. Actor Belita Moreno is 73. Country singer-songwriter-producer Keith Stegall is 68. Country singer Lyle Lovett is 65. Actor Rachel Ticotin is 64. Apple CEO Tim Cook is 62. Actor Helene Udy is 61. Pop singer-musician Mags Furuholmen (a-ha) 60. Rock singer Anthony Kiedis (Red Hot Chili Peppers) is 60. Rock musician Rick Allen (Def Leppard) is 59. Country singer “Big Kenny” Alphin (Big and Rich) is 59. Singer Sophie B. Hawkins is 58. Rapper Willie D (Geto Boys) is 56. Country musician Dale Wallace (Emerson Drive) is 53. Actor Toni Collette is 50. Actor-talk show host Jenny McCarthy is 50. Actor David Berman is 49. Actor Aishwarya Rai (ash-WAHR’-ee-ah reye) is 49. Rock singer Bo Bice is 47. Actor Matt Jones is 41. Actor Natalia Tena is 38. Actor Penn Badgley is 36. Actor Max Burkholder is 25. Actor-musician Alex Wolff is 25.
NEW YORK — A federal judge has blocked Penguin Random House’s proposed purchase of Simon & Schuster, agreeing with the Justice Department that the joining of two of the world’s biggest publishers could “lessen competition” for “top-selling books.” The ruling was a victory for the Biden administration’s tougher approach to proposed mergers, a break from decades of precedent under Democratic and Republican leadership.
U.S. District Court Judge Florence Y. Pan announced the decision in a brief statement Monday, adding that much of her ruling remained under seal at the moment because of “confidential information” and “highly confidential information.” She asked the two sides to meet with her Friday and suggest redactions.
Penguin Random House quickly condemned the ruling, which it called “an unfortunate setback for readers and authors.” In its statement Monday, the publisher said it would seek an expedited appeal.
Assistant Attorney General Jonathan Kanter of the Justice Department’s Antitrust Division praised the decision, saying in a statement that the decision “protects vital competition for books and is a victory for authors, readers, and the free exchange of ideas.”
He added: “The proposed merger would have reduced competition, decreased author compensation, diminished the breadth, depth, and diversity of our stories and ideas, and ultimately impoverished our democracy.”
Pan’s finding was not surprising — through much of the trial in August she had indicated agreement with the Justice Department’s contention that Penguin Random House’s plan to buy Simon & Schuster, for $2.2 billion, might damage a vital cultural industry.
But it was still a dramatic departure from recent history in the book world and beyond. The publishing industry has been consolidating for years with little interference from the government, even when Random House and Penguin merged in 2013 and formed what was then the biggest publishing house in memory. The joining of Penguin Random House and Simon & Schuster would have created a company far exceeding any rival and those opposing the merger included one of Simon & Schuster’s signature writers, Stephen King, who testified last summer on behalf of the government.
The Biden Justice Department has been pushing forward with aggressive enforcement of federal antitrust laws that officials say aim to ensure a fair and competitive market.
Monday’s news follows recent losses for the department in two significant antitrust cases in separate federal courts. The DOJ lost its bid to block a major U.S. sugar manufacturer, U.S. sugar, from acquiring its rival Imperial Sugar Co., one of the largest sugar refiners in the nation. The prosecutors signaled that they intended to appeal the decision. They also were stymied in their effort to block the roughly $8 billion acquisition by UnitedHealth Group, which runs the largest U.S. health insurer, of Change Healthcare, a healthcare technology company.
The DOJ also has been battling American Airlines and JetBlue in an antitrust trial in federal court in Boston, challenging their regional partnership in the Northeast, which the government calls a de facto merger.
The Justice Department’s case against Penguin Random House did not focus on market share overall or on potential price hikes for customer. The DOJ instead argued that the new company would so dominate the market for commercial books, those with author advances of $250,000 and higher, that the size of advances would go down and the number of releases would decrease.
Penguin Random House’s global CEO, Markus Dohle, had promised that imprints of Penguin Random House and Simon & Schuster would still be permitted to bid against each other for books. But he acknowledged under oath during the trial that his guarantee was not legally binding. Pan otherwise persistently challenged Penguin Random House’s assurances that the merger would not reduce competition.
Simon & Schuster will likely end up under new ownership, no matter the outcome of any legal appeals. The publisher had been up for sale well before the Penguin Random House deal was announced late in 2020 and the publisher’s corporate parent, Paramount Group Inc., has said it did not see Simon & Schuster as part of its future. Under bidders against Penguin Random House included Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp, which owns HarperCollins Publishers.
Simon & Schuster is one of the country’s oldest and most successful publishers, with authors ranging from King and and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to Colleen Hoover and Doris Kearns Goodwin. Authors at Penguin Random House include Clinton’s husband, former President Bill Clinton, “Where the Crawdads Sing” novelist Delia Owens and historian Robert A. Caro.
In a company memo Monday shared with The Associated Press, Simon & Schuster CEO Jonathan Karp sought to reassure employees that “despite this news, our company continues to thrive. We are more successful and valuable today than we have ever been, thanks to the efforts of all of you on behalf of our many magnificent authors.”
Pan, meanwhile, has since been appointed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, replacing Ketanji Brown Jackson after she was nominated by Biden and approved by the Senate for the Supreme Court.
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Associated Press writer Marcy Gordon in Washington contributed to this report.
NEW YORK — A federal judge has blocked Penguin Random House’s proposed purchase of Simon & Schuster, agreeing with the Justice Department that the joining of two of the world’s biggest publishers could “lessen competition” for “top-selling books.” The ruling reinforced the Biden administration’s tougher approach to proposed mergers, a break from decades of precedent under Democratic and Republican presidents.
U.S. District Court Judge Florence Y. Pan announced the decision in a brief statement Monday, adding that much of her ruling remained under seal at the moment because of “confidential information” and “highly confidential information.” She asked the two sides to meet with her Friday and suggest redactions.
Penguin Random House quickly condemned the ruling, which it called “an unfortunate setback for readers and authors.” In its statement Monday, the publisher said it would immediately seek an expedited appeal.
Assistant Attorney General Jonathan Kanter of the Justice Department’s Antitrust Division praised the decision, saying in a statement that the decision “protects vital competition for books and is a victory for authors, readers, and the free exchange of ideas.”
He added: “The proposed merger would have reduced competition, decreased author compensation, diminished the breadth, depth, and diversity of our stories and ideas, and ultimately impoverished our democracy.”
Pan’s ruling was not surprising — through much of the trial last August she had indicated agreement with the Justice Department’s contention that Penguin Random House’s plan to buy Simon & Schuster might damage a vital cultural industry.
But it was still a dramatic break from recent history in the book world and beyond. The publishing industry has been consolidating for years with little interference from the government, even when Random House and Penguin merged in 2013 and formed what was then the biggest publishing house in memory. The joining of Penguin Random House and Simon & Schuster would have created a company far exceeding any rival.
The Justice Department’s legal action did not focus on market share overall or on potential price hikes for customer. The DOJ instead argued that the new company would so dominate the market for commercial books, those with author advances of $250,000 and higher, that the size of advances would go down and the number of releases would decrease.
Penguin Random House’s global CEO, Markus Dohle, had promised that imprints of Penguin Random House and Simon & Schuster would still be permitted to bid against each other for books. But he acknowledged under oath during the trial that his guarantee was not legally binding. Pan otherwise persistently challenged Penguin Random House’s assurances that the merger would not reduce competition.
HOUSTON — The leaders of a Texas-based group that promotes election conspiracy theories were jailed Monday for not complying with a court order to provide information in a defamation lawsuit over some of their claims.
Catherine Engelbrecht and Gregg Phillips, who run True the Vote, were ordered detained by U.S. Marshals, according to an order signed by U.S. District Judge Kenneth Hoyt in Houston. They will be held for at least one day or “until they fully comply with the Court’s Order,” Hoyt wrote.
Houston-based True the Vote provided research for a debunked documentary that alleged widespread voter fraud in the 2020 election. Engelbrecht, Phillips and their nonprofit organization are being sued by Michigan-based election software provider Konnech Inc. over True the Vote’s claims of a Chinese-related conspiracy involving U.S. poll workers’ information.
Alfredo Perez, a spokesman for the U.S. Marshals Service in Houston, said Monday that Engelbrecht and Phillips were in the law enforcement agency’s custody.
True the Vote said in a statement read during a video livestream Monday that its attorneys would appeal Hoyt’s ruling.
Konnech provides election software used to recruit and train poll workers. It has accused Engelbrecht, Phillips and their group of falsely claiming that Konnech stored the personal information of U.S. election workers in an unsecured server in China.
The lawsuit also alleges True the Vote’s leaders illegally downloaded from Konnech’s server the personal data of 1.8 million U.S. poll workers.
Konnech says all of its U.S. customer data is secured and stored on “protected computers within the United States.”
Hoyt issued a temporary restraining order earlier in October telling Engelbrecht and Phillips to return all data belonging to Konnech and reveal the names of anyone who helped access it.
In a court hearing last week, Phillips declined to reveal the name of an analyst who reviewed the data.
True the Vote quoted Engelbrecht in its statement as saying that the group does not believe the person was covered by Hoyt’s disclosure order.
Konnech’s lawsuit accuses Engelbrecht and Phillips of “racism and xenophobia” by making “baseless claims” that “the Chinese Communist Party is somehow controlling U.S. elections through Konnech because its founder and some of its employees are of Chinese descent.”
Konnech’s CEO and founder, Eugene Yu, 65, is a naturalized U.S. citizen who was born in China, according to his attorneys. He has lived with his family in Michigan for more than 20 years.
Engelbrecht and Phillips have pointed out that Los Angeles County prosecutors recently charged Yu with grand theft by embezzlement and conspiracy to commit a crime.
Prosecutors allege that Konnech violated its contract with Los Angeles County by sending election workers’ information to a China-based subcontractor who helped fix Konnech software.
Gary S. Lincenberg, one of Yu’s attorneys, has denied the allegations.
“This is a deeply misguided prosecution that attempts to criminalize what is, at best, a civil breach of contract claim involving poll worker management software,” Lincenberg said last week in a court filing.
True the Vote’s claims of election fraud have been widely discredited.
Cellphone data analysis done by True the Vote was used by conservative filmmaker Dinesh D’Souza in his film “2000 Mules” to try to show that Democratic operatives were paid to illegally collect and drop off ballots in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.
Independent fact-checkers, including at The Associated Press, found that True the Vote did not prove its claims. Election security experts say it is based on faulty assumptions, anonymous accounts and improper analysis of cellphone location data. Georgia election officials also have said the claims are false.
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Follow Juan A. Lozano on Twitter: https://twitter.com/juanlozano70
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Associated Press writer Terry Wallace in Dallas contributed to this report.
Today is Monday, Oct. 31, the 304th day of 2022. There are 61 days left in the year. This is Halloween.
Today’s Highlight in History:
On Oct. 31, 1984, Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi was assassinated by two Sikh (sihk) security guards.
On this date:
In 1864, Nevada became the 36th state as President Abraham Lincoln signed a proclamation.
In 1941, work was completed on the Mount Rushmore National Memorial in South Dakota, begun in 1927.
In 1961, the body of Josef Stalin was removed from Lenin’s Tomb as part of the Soviet Union’s “de-Stalinization” drive.
In 1964, Theodore C. Freeman, 34, became the first member of NASA’s astronaut corps to die when his T-38 jet crashed while approaching Ellington Air Force Base in Houston.
In 1967, Nguyen Van Thieu (nwen van too) took the oath of office as the first president of South Vietnam’s second republic.
In 1968, President Lyndon B. Johnson ordered a halt to all U.S. bombing of North Vietnam, saying he hoped for fruitful peace negotiations.
In 1992, Pope John Paul II formally proclaimed that the Roman Catholic Church had erred in condemning the astronomer Galileo for holding that the Earth was not the center of the universe.
In 1999, EgyptAir Flight 990, bound from New York to Cairo, crashed off the Massachusetts coast, killing all 217 people aboard.
In 2005, President George W. Bush nominated Judge Samuel Alito (ah-LEE’-toh) to the Supreme Court. Civil rights icon Rosa Parks was honored during a memorial service in Washington, D.C.
In 2015, a Russian passenger airliner crashed in a remote part of Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula 23 minutes after taking off from a popular Red Sea resort, killing all 224 people on board.
In 2019, President Donald Trump announced that he would be making Palm Beach, Florida, his permanent residence after leaving the White House rather than returning to Trump Tower in New York.
In 2020, actor Sean Connery, who rose to international stardom as the suave secret agent James Bond and then carved out an Oscar-winning career in other rugged roles, died at his home in the Bahamas at the age of 90.
Ten years ago: President Barack Obama joined New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie for a tour of damage along the Jersey coast from Superstorm Sandy; Wall Street was back in business after a two-day shutdown caused by the storm. (Stocks finished mixed).
Five years ago: Eight people were killed when a man drove a truck along a bike path in New York City in an attack that authorities immediately labeled terrorism; the driver, identified by authorities as Uzbek immigrant Sayfullo Saipov, was shot and wounded by police. Netflix said it was suspending production on “House of Cards” following sexual harassment allegations against its star, Kevin Spacey. (Spacey would later be fired from the show, and production resumed without him.)
One year ago: Southwest Airlines said it was investigating after a pilot greeted passengers over the plane’s public address system using a phrase that had become a stand-in for insulting President Joe Biden. White House press secretary Jen Psaki said she had contracted COVID-19 and was experiencing mild symptoms. American Airlines canceled hundreds of flights for a third straight day as it struggled with staffing shortages.
Today’s Birthdays: Actor Lee Grant is 97. Former CBS anchorman Dan Rather is 91. Folk singer Tom Paxton is 85. Actor Ron Rifkin is 84. Actor Sally Kirkland is 81. Actor Brian Doyle-Murray is 77. Actor Stephen Rea is 76. Olympic gold medal long-distance runner Frank Shorter is 75. Actor Deidre Hall is 75. TV show host Jane Pauley is 72. Actor Brian Stokes Mitchell is 65. Movie director Peter Jackson is 61. Rock musician Larry Mullen is 61. Actor Dermot Mulroney is 59. Rock musician Mikkey Dee is 59. Rock singer-musician Johnny Marr is 59. Actor Rob Schneider is 59. Country singer Darryl Worley is 58. Actor-comedian Mike O’Malley is 57. Rap musician Adrock is 56. Rap performer Vanilla Ice (aka Rob Van Winkle) is 55. Rock musician Rogers Stevens (Blind Melon) is 53. Rock singer Linn Berggren (Ace of Base) is 52. Reality TV host Troy Hartman is 51. Gospel singer Smokie Norful is 49. Actor Piper Perabo (PEER’-uh-boh) is 46. Actor Brian Hallisay is 44. Actor Samaire (SAH’-mee-rah) Armstrong is 42. Actor Eddie Kaye Thomas is 42. Rock musician Frank Iero (My Chemical Romance) is 41. Actor Justin Chatwin is 40. Actor Scott Clifton is 38. Actor Vanessa Marano is 30. Actor Holly Taylor is 25. Actor Danielle Rose Russell is 23. Actor-singer Willow Smith is 22.
SAO PAULO — Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva has done it again: Twenty years after first winning the Brazilian presidency, the leftist defeated incumbent Jair Bolsonaro Sunday in an extremely tight election that marks an about-face for the country after four years of far-right politics.
With more than 99% of the votes tallied in the runoff vote, da Silva had 50.9% and Bolsonaro 49.1%, and the election authority said da Silva’s victory was a mathematical certainty.
It is a stunning reversal for da Silva, 77, whose 2018 imprisonment over a corruption scandal sidelined him from the 2018 election that brought Bolsonaro, a defender of conservative social values, to power.
Da Silva is promising to govern beyond his leftist Workers’s Party. He wants to bring in centrists and even some leaning to the right who voted for him for the first time, and to restore the country’s more prosperous past. Yet he faces headwinds in a politically polarized society where economic growth is slowing and inflation is soaring.
His victory marks the first time since Brazil’s 1985 return to democracy that the sitting president has failed to win reelection. The highly polarized election in Latin America’s biggest economy extended a wave of recent leftist victories in the region, including Chile, Colombia and Argentina.
Da Silva’s inauguration is scheduled to take place on Jan. 1. He last served as president from 2003-2010.
It was the country’s closest election in over three decades. Just over 2 million votes separated the two candidates with 99.5% of the vote counted. The previous closest race, in 2014, was decided by a margin of 3.46 million votes.
Thomas Traumann, an independent political analyst, compared the results to U.S. President Joe Biden’s 2020 victory, saying da Silva is inheriting an extremely divided nation.
“The huge challenge that Lula has will be to pacify the country,” he said. “People are not only polarized on political matters, but also have different values, identity and opinions. What’s more, they don’t care what the other side’s values, identities and opinions are.”
Bolsonaro had been leading throughout the first half of the count and, as soon as da Silva overtook him, cars in the streets of downtown Sao Paulo began honking their horns. People in the streets of Rio de Janeiro’s Ipanema neighborhood could be heard shouting, “It turned!”
Da Silva’s headquarters in downtown Sao Paulo hotel only erupted once the final result was announced, underscoring the tension that was a hallmark of this race.
“Four years waiting for this,” said Gabriela Souto, one of the few supporters allowed in due to heavy security.
Outside Bolsonaro’s home in Rio de Janeiro, ground-zero for his support base, a woman atop a truck delivered a prayer over a speaker, then sang excitedly, trying to generate some energy. But supporters decked out in the green and yellow of the flag barely responded. Many perked up when the national anthem played, singing along loudly with hands over their hearts.
Most opinion polls before the election gave a lead to da Silva, universally known as Lula, though political analysts agreed the race grew increasingly tight in recent weeks.
For months, it appeared that da Silva was headed for easy victory as he kindled nostalgia for his presidency, when Brazil’s economy was booming and welfare helped tens of millions join the middle class.
But while da Silva topped the Oct. 2 first-round elections with 48% of the vote, Bolsonaro was a strong second at 43%, showing opinion polls significantly underestimated his popularity. Many Brazilians support Bolsonaro’s defense of conservative social values and he shored up support in an election year with vast government spending.
Bolsonaro’s administration has been marked by incendiary speech, his testing of democratic institutions, his widely criticized handling of the COVID-19 pandemic and the worst deforestation in the Amazon rainforest in 15 years. But he has built a devoted base by defending conservative values and presenting himself as protection from leftist policies that he says infringe on personal liberties and produce economic turmoil.
Da Silva is credited with building an extensive social welfare program during his 2003-2010 tenure that helped lift tens of millions into the middle class as well as presiding over an economic boom. The man universally known as Lula left office with an approval rating above 80%; then U.S. President Barack Obama called him “the most popular politician on Earth.”
But he is also remembered for his administration’s involvement in vast corruption revealed by sprawling investigations. Da Silva’s arrest in 2018 kept him out of that year’s race against Bolsonaro, a fringe lawmaker at the time who was an outspoken fan of former U.S. President Donald Trump.
Da Silva was jailed for for 580 days for corruption and money laundering. His convictions were later annulled by Brazil’s top court, which ruled the presiding judge had been biased and colluded with prosecutors. That enabled da Silva to run for the nation’s highest office for the sixth time.
For months, it appeared that he was headed for easy victory as he kindled nostalgia for his presidency, when the economy was booming and welfare helped tens of millions join the middle class. But results from an Oct. 2 first-round vote — da Silva got 48% and Bolsonaro 43% — showed opinion polls had significantly underestimated Bolsonaro’s resilience and popularity. He shored up support, in part, with vast government spending.
Da Silva has pledged to boost spending on the poor, reestablish relationships with foreign governments and take bold action to eliminate illegal clear-cutting in the Amazon rainforest.
He hasn’t provided specific plans on how he will achieve those goals, and faces many challenges. The president-elect will be confronted by strong opposition from conservative lawmakers likely to take their cues from Bolsonaro.
Carlos Melo, a political science professor at Insper University in Sao Paulo, compared the likely political climate to that experienced by former President Dilma Rousseff, da Silva’s hand-picked successor after his second term.
“Lula’s victory means Brazil is trying to overcome years of turbulence since the reelection of President Dilma Rousseff in 2014. That election never ended; the opposition asked for a recount, she governed under pressure and was impeached two years later,” said Melo. “The divide became huge and then made Bolsonaro.”
Unemployment this year has fallen to its lowest level since 2015 and, although overall inflation has slowed during the campaign, food prices are increasing at a double-digit rate. Bolsonaro’s welfare payments helped many Brazilians get by, but da Silva has been presenting himself as the candidate more willing to sustain aid going forward and raise the minimum wage.
Da Silva has also pledged to put a halt to illegal deforestation in the Amazon, and once again has prominent environmentalalist Marina Silva by his side, years after a public falling out when she was his environment minister. The president-elect has already pledged to install a ministry for Brazil’s orginal peoples, which will be run by an Indigenous person.
In April, he tapped center-right Geraldo Alckmin, a former rival, to be his running mate. It was another key part of an effort to create a broad, pro-democracy front to not just unseat Bolsonaro, but to make it easier to govern. Da Silva mended also has drawn support from Sen. Simone Tebet, a moderate who finished in third place in the election’s first round.
“If Lula manages to talk to voters who didn’t vote for him, which Bolsonaro never tried, and seeks negotiated solutions to the economic, social and political crisis we have, and links with other nations that were lost, then he could reconnect Brazil to a time in which people could disagree and still get some things done,” Melo said.
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Carla Bridi contributed to this report from Brasilia.
EVERETT, Wash. — A Washington city’s dress code ordinance saying bikini baristas must cover their bodies at work has been ruled unconstitutional by a federal court.
The decision in a partial summary judgment this week comes after a lengthy legal battle between bikini baristas and the city of Everett over the rights of workers to wear what they want, the Everett Herald reported. Everett is about 30 miles (50 kilometers) north of Seattle.
U.S. District Court in Seattle found Everett’s dress code ordinance violated the Equal Protection clauses of the U.S. and Washington state constitutions. The Court found that the ordinance was, at least in part, shaped by a gender-based discriminatory purpose, according to a 19-page ruling signed by U.S. District Judge Ricardo S. Martinez.
It is difficult to imagine, the court wrote, how the ordinance would be equally applied to men and women in practice because it prohibits clothing “typically worn by women rather than men,” including midriff and scoop-back shirts, as well as bikinis.
Bikini baristas were “clearly” a target of the ordinance, the court also ruled, adding that the profession is comprised of a workforce that is almost entirely women.
In 2017, the city enacted its dress code ordinance, requiring all employees, owners and operators of “quick service facilities” to wear clothing that covers the upper and lower body. The ordinance listed coffee stands, fast food restaurants, delis, food trucks and coffee shops as examples of quick service businesses.
The owner of Everett bikini barista stand Hillbilly Hotties and some employees filed a legal complaint challenging the constitutionality of the dress code ordinance. They also challenged the city’s lewd conduct ordinance, but the court dismissed all the baristas’ claims but the dress code question.
The court directed the city of Everett to meet with the plaintiffs within 14 days to discuss next steps.
DES MOINES, Iowa — An Iowa judge should allow a law passed in 2018 that bans most abortions to take effect, three years after the measure was ruled unconstitutional, lawyers for Gov. Kim Reynolds argued Friday.
Chris Schandevel, a lawyer for the Republican governor, said Judge Celene Gogerty should set aside a 2019 permanent injunction that prevented Iowa from enforcing a law that would block abortions once cardiac activity can be detected. That is usually around six weeks of pregnancy and before many women know they’re pregnant.
Schandevel said the injunction rests entirely on an Iowa Supreme Court 2018 decision that guaranteed the right to an abortion under the Iowa Constitution and cases decided by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1992 and 1973 that established abortion rights nationally.
All three cases were overruled this year by more conservative courts and given that, Reynolds’ lawyers argued the judge should reverse the injunction and let the 2018 law take effect.
“It would be inequitable to prevent the people of Iowa to have their voices heard through a validly enacted law, enacted as recently as 2018,” he said.
Rita Bettis Austen, a lawyer with the American Civil Liberties Union of Iowa, countered that there is no precedent or legal support in Iowa for a judge to reverse a final judgment entered three years ago,
“This case is closed,” said Bettis Austen, who is representing Planned Parenthood, the state’s leading abortion provider, which challenged the law in court. “Iowa rules of civil procedure clearly govern this type of motion.”
She said the rules only allow a court to vacate a final judgement within a year and do not allow such a reversal for a change in law.
The judge said she would issue a ruling soon.
The case should at least in the short term decide whether most abortions remain legal in Iowa. Reynolds, who is running for a second term as governor, opted for the court strategy instead of attempting to pass a law banning abortions in the midst of the midterm elections.
A Des Moines Register/Mediacom Iowa Poll released earlier this month showed that 61% of Iowans believe abortion should be legal in most or all cases. The poll had a margin of error of plus or minus 3.5 percentage points.
During the hearing, Schandevel said courts have an inherent authority over their own injunctions and can reverse them regardless of how long ago they were decided.
Lawyers for both sides also argued about whether the law remains constitutional under Iowa’s current legal status.
The Iowa Supreme Court, in its June decision overturning the state constitutional right to an abortion granted four years ago, did not decide on the level of scrutiny that judges must use to weigh new abortion bans. Instead, the court left that issue to be further considered.
Since the 2018 decision granting Iowans a constitutional right to an abortion, Iowa courts have held abortion restrictions to the highest level of strict scrutiny, which requires laws to be narrowly tailored to fulfill a compelling governmental interest.
With that constitutional right struck down, Bettis Austen argued the undue burden level of scrutiny remains in Iowa until the courts change it. She noted that the Iowa Supreme Court has previously said bans on abortion early in pregnancy, including six-week bans, could not survive the undue burden test.
Schandevel said it is appropriate for the judge to reject the undue burden test and instead analyze the law using rational basis review. That is the lowest level of court scrutiny that allows most laws to survive legal challenges.
Under this test lawmakers need only to show they have a legitimate state interest in passing a law and that there is a rational connection between the law and its intended goals. Many courts have upheld abortion restrictions under the rational basis test.
The abortion law approved by lawmakers and signed by Reynolds requires providers to perform tests to detect a fetal “heartbeat” — which usually occurs at about six weeks after a woman’s last menstrual period — with exceptions for medical emergencies, rape and incest. Embryos don’t have hearts at this gestational stage, so an ultrasound actually measures electrical impulses, not a true heartbeat, providers say.
Any decision Gogerty makes is likely to be appealed.
Twelve states currently ban abortion at conception. Georgia currently enforces a six-week ban similar to what Iowa would have if allowed by the courts. Kentucky, Louisiana, North Dakota and Oklahoma have six-week bans that have been prohibited from enforcement by court orders. In Wisconsin, clinics have stopped providing abortions though there is a dispute over whether a ban is in effect.
Today is Thursday, Oct. 27, the 300th day of 2022. There are 65 days left in the year.
Today’s Highlight in History:
On Oct. 27, 2018, a gunman shot and killed 11 congregants and wounded six others at Pittsburgh’s Tree of Life synagogue in the deadliest attack on Jews in U.S. history; authorities said the suspect, Robert Bowers, raged against Jews during and after the rampage. (Bowers, whose trial is now set for April 2023, has pleaded not guilty; prosecutors are seeking a death sentence.)
On this date:
In 1787, the first of the Federalist Papers, a series of essays calling for ratification of the United States Constitution, was published.
In 1904, the first rapid transit subway, the IRT, was inaugurated in New York City.
In 1914, author-poet Dylan Thomas was born in Swansea, Wales.
In 1941, the Chicago Daily Tribune dismissed the possibility of war with Japan, editorializing, “She cannot attack us. That is a military impossibility. Even our base at Hawaii is beyond the effective striking power of her fleet.”
In 1954, U.S. Air Force Col. Benjamin O. Davis Jr. was promoted to brigadier general, the first Black officer to achieve that rank in the USAF.
In 1962, during the Cuban Missile Crisis, a U-2 reconnaissance aircraft was shot down while flying over Cuba, killing the pilot, U.S. Air Force Maj. Rudolf Anderson Jr.
In 1971, the Democratic Republic of the Congo was renamed the Republic of Zaire (but it went back to its previous name in 1997).
In 1978, Egyptian President Anwar Sadat and Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin (men-AH’-kem BAY’-gihn) were named winners of the Nobel Peace Prize for their progress toward achieving a Middle East accord.
In 1995, a sniper killed one soldier and wounded 18 others at Fort Bragg, North Carolina. (Paratrooper William J. Kreutzer was convicted in the shootings, and condemned to death; the sentence was later commuted to life in prison.)
In 1998, Hurricane Mitch cut through the western Caribbean, pummeling coastal Honduras and Belize; the storm caused several thousand deaths in Central America in the days that followed.
In 2004, the Boston Red Sox won their first World Series since 1918, sweeping the St. Louis Cardinals in Game 4, 3-0.
In 2020, Amy Coney Barrett was formally sworn as the Supreme Court’s ninth justice, her oath administered in private by Chief Justice John Roberts.
Ten years ago: The eastern United States braced for high winds, torrential rains, power outages and even snow from Hurricane Sandy, which was headed north from the Caribbean toward a merger with two wintry weather systems.
Five years ago: Spain fired Catalonia’s regional government and dissolved its parliament, after a Catalan declaration of independence that flouted the country’s constitution. Golfer Tiger Woods pleaded guilty to reckless driving, resolving charges from an arrest in which he was found passed out in his car with prescription drugs and marijuana in his system. The White House said federal officials had played no role in selecting a tiny Montana company from Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke’s hometown for a $300 million contract to help restore Puerto Rico’s power grid.
One year ago: The Department of Homeland Security said U.S. immigration authorities would no longer make routine immigration arrests at schools, hospitals or a range of other “protected” areas. Investigators in New Mexico said there was “some complacency” in how weapons were handled on a movie set where Alec Baldwin accidentally shot and killed a cinematographer and wounded another person. The State Department said the United States had issued its first passport with an ‘X’ gender designation for a person who does not identify as male or female. Starbucks said it would raise its U.S. employees’ pay and making other changes to improve working conditions in its stores; the company said all of its U.S. workers would earn at least $15 —— and up to $23 —— per hour by the following summer.
Today’s Birthdays: Actor-comedian John Cleese is 83. Author Maxine Hong Kingston is 82. Country singer Lee Greenwood is 80. Rock musician Garry Tallent (Bruce Springsteen & the E Street Band) is 73. Author Fran Lebowitz is 72. Rock musician K.K. Downing is 71. TV personality Jayne Kennedy is 71. Actor-director Roberto Benigni is 70. Actor Peter Firth is 69. Actor Robert Picardo is 69. World Golf Hall of Famer Patty Sheehan is 66. Singer Simon Le Bon is 64. Country musician Jerry Dale McFadden (The Mavericks) is 58. Internet news editor Matt Drudge is 56. Rock musician Jason Finn (Presidents of the United States of America) is 55. Actor Sean Holland is 54. Actor Channon Roe is 53. Author Anthony Doerr is 49. Actor Sheeri Rappaport is 45. Actor David Walton is 44. Violinist Vanessa-Mae is 44. Actor-singer Kelly Osbourne is 38. Actor Christine Evangelista is 36. Actor Bryan Craig is 31. Actor Troy Gentile is 29.
MEXICO CITY — Lawmakers in the border state of Tamaulipas voted Wednesday night to legalize same-sex marriages, becoming the last of Mexico’s 32 states to authorize such unions.
The measure to amend the state’s Civil Code passed with 23 votes in favor, 12 against and two abstentions, setting off cheers of “Yes, we can!” from supporters of the change.
The session took place as groups both for and against the measure chanted and shouted from the balcony, and legislators eventually moved to another room to finish their debate and vote.
The president of the Supreme Court of Justice of the Nation, Arturo Zaldívar, welcomed the vote. “The whole country shines with a huge rainbow. Live the dignity and rights of all people. Love is love,” he said on Twitter.
A day earlier, lawmakers in the southern state of Guerrero approved similar legislation allowing same-sex marriages.
In 2015, the Supreme Court declared state laws preventing same-sex marriage unconstitutional, but some states took several years to adopt laws conforming with the ruling.
BOULDER, Colo. — Dean Schiller had just left a Colorado supermarket after shopping last year when he heard gunshots and saw three people lying face down. The independent, part-time journalist, began livestreaming on his YouTube channel, before officers arrived, and later refused dozens of police orders to move away.
He would later learn that a friend who worked at the store was one of the 10 people killed inside the King Soopers store in the college town of Boulder. The suspect, Ahmad Al Aliwi Alissa, 23, is accused of killing customers, workers and a police officer who rushed into the store to try to stop the March 22, 2021, attack.
On Wednesday, jurors acquitted Schiller of obstructing police, a misdemeanor, after Schiller’s lawyers argued that being a temporary distraction does not equate to keeping police from doing their job.
In closing arguments, defense attorney Tiffany Drahota told jurors the case was not about being polite to the police, or about the courage shown by police that day or honoring the lives of those lost in the shooting.
“You can mourn the victims of the King Soopers shooting and still find Dean Schiller not guilty,” she said.
Prosecutors argued Schiller ignored 60 commands to move farther away from the store over 1 1/2 hours, becoming a distraction from police efforts to save lives and secure the crime scene. Deputy District Attorney Myra Gottl said his priority was to keep streaming to gain more viewers on his channel.
“It was a calculated decision to get attention and he liked it,” she said in closing arguments at the trial that had opened Tuesday.
Clips of the video shown in during Schiller’s trial showed several officers telling him to move back for his safety and for officers’ safety. At one point he does get behind the police tape eventually strung around the store but refuses to cross to the other side of the street. He also curses at some officers and flips them off when he tries to gain access from a different direction.
While Drahota pointed out that Schiller was not arrested, Deputy District Attorney Ryan Day said that a commander had testified that police did not have time to do that and keep him secure while responding to the shooting.
After the verdict, Schiller, who has often recorded police activity in Boulder, said he felt like a weight had been lifted from his chest. He said his prosecution made it hard to fully mourn the loss of his friend, Denny Stong, who worked at the store and who lagged behind him in leaving because he knew so many people there. He said he was responding to a need from the public in livestreaming the shooting response.
“It wasn’t that I was creating something. It was real news and I needed to show people as long as they wanted to watch,” said Schiller. He added that his heart has not been into filming as much since losing Stong and being prosecuted.
In a statement, District Attorney Michael Dougherty said that police responded to “an incredibly challenging and difficult crime scene” and said his office prosecutes those who obstruct and interfere with law enforcement’s responses to crises.
Schiller’s case is part of a larger judicial reckoning taking place around the United States about how far people can go film police while officers work.
In July, a Denver-based U.S. appeals court that oversees four Western and two Midwestern states became the seventh appeals court to rule that people have a right protected by the First Amendment to film police while they work. In September, a federal judge blocked enforcement of a new Arizona law restricting how the public and journalists can film police.
The prosecution of the man charged in the supermarket shooting has been on hold since December after a judge ruled that he was mentally incompetent to stand trial. Alissa is being treated at a state mental hospital. During a hearing last week, Judge Ingrid Bakke said there was still a substantial probability he could be treated to be made competent in the “foreseeable future,” an outlook she first shared in March.
Three men accused of supporting a plot to kidnap Michigan’s governor were convicted of all charges Wednesday, a triumph for state prosecutors after months of mixed results in the main case in federal court.
Joe Morrison, his father-in-law Pete Musico, and Paul Bellar were found guilty of providing “material support” for a terrorist act as members of a paramilitary group, the Wolverine Watchmen.
They held gun drills in rural Jackson County with a leader of the scheme, Adam Fox, who was disgusted with Gov. Gretchen Whitmer and other officials in 2020 and said he wanted to kidnap her.
Jurors read and heard violent, anti-government screeds as well as support for the “boogaloo,” a civil war that might be triggered by a shocking abduction. Prosecutors said COVID-19 restrictions ordered by Whitmer turned out to be fruit to recruit more people to the Watchmen.
“The facts drip out slowly,” state Assistant Attorney General Bill Rollstin told jurors in Jackson, Michigan, “and you begin to see — wow — there were things that happened that people knew about. … When you see how close Adam Fox got to the governor, you can see how a very bad event was thwarted.”
Morrison, 28, Musico, 44, and Bellar, 24, were also convicted of a gun crime and membership in a gang. Prosecutors said the Wolverine Watchmen was a criminal enterprise.
The verdicts “are further proof that violence and threats have no place in our politics,” said Whitmer, who has not participated as a trial witness or spectator in the state or federal cases. “Those who seek to sow discord by pursuing violent plots will be held accountable under the law.”
Morrison, who recently tested positive for COVID-19, and Musico watched the verdicts by video away from the courtroom. Judge Thomas Wilson ordered all three to jail while they await sentencing on Dec. 15.
Defense attorneys argued that the three men had broken ties with Fox by late summer 2020 when the Whitmer plot came into focus. Unlike Fox and others, they didn’t travel to northern Michigan to scout the governor’s vacation home or participate in a key weekend training session inside a “shoot house.”
“In this country you are allowed to talk the talk, but you only get convicted if you walk the walk,” Musico’s attorney, Kareem Johnson, said in his closing remarks.
Defense lawyers couldn’t argue entrapment. But they attacked the tactics of Dan Chappel, an Army veteran and undercover informant. He took instructions from FBI agents, secretly recorded conversations and produced a deep cache of messages exchanged with the men.
Whitmer, a Democrat running for reelection on Nov. 8, was never physically harmed. Undercover agents and informants were inside Fox’s group for months. The scheme was broken up with 14 arrests in October 2020.
Fox and Barry Croft Jr. were convicted of a kidnapping conspiracy in federal court in August. Daniel Harris and Brandon Caserta were acquitted last spring. Ty Garbin and Kaleb Franks pleaded guilty.
Five of the 14 men are facing charges in state court in Antrim County, the site of Whitmer’s second home. A judge there still must determine whether there’s probable cause to send them to trial.
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — New Mexico, Texas and Colorado have negotiated a proposed settlement that they say will end a yearslong battle over management of one of the longest rivers in North America, but the federal government and two irrigation districts that depend on the Rio Grande are objecting.
New Mexico Attorney General Hector Balderas on Tuesday announced that the states had brokered a deal following months of negotiations. While the terms remain confidential, his office called it “a comprehensive resolution of all the claims in the case.”
“Extreme drought and erratic climate events necessitate that states must work together to protect the Rio Grande, which is the lifeblood of our New Mexico farmers and communities,” Balderas said in a statement. “And I’m very disappointed that the U.S. is exerting federal overreach and standing in the way of the states’ historic water agreement.”
Attorneys with the U.S. Department of Justice and irrigation districts that serve farmers downstream of Elephant Butte reservoir argued that the proposal would not be a workable solution. The river is managed through a system of federal dams and canals under provisions of a water-sharing agreement that also involves Mexico.
The case has been pending before the U.S. Supreme Court for nearly a decade. Texas has argued that groundwater pumping in southern New Mexico has reduced river flows, limiting how much water makes it across the border. New Mexico argues that it has been shorted on its share of the river.
New Mexico and the other states plan in the coming weeks to submit their motion to move the proposed settlement forward, opening the door for federal officials and the irrigation districts to respond.
Another hearing has been scheduled for January.
The battle over the Rio Grande has become a multimillion-dollar case in a region where water supplies are dwindling due to increased demand along with drought and warmer temperatures brought on by climate change.
So far, New Mexico has spent roughly $21 million on lawyers and scientists over the last nine years.
Last fall, the special master overseeing the case presided over the first phase of trial, which included testimony from farmers, hydrologists, irrigation managers and others. More technical testimony was expected to be part of the next phase, which has now been put off.
Earlier this year, some of the river’s stretches in New Mexico marked record low flows, resulting in some farmers voluntarily fallowing fields to help the state meet downstream water-sharing obligations.
In the Elephant Butte Irrigation District, officials recently warned farmers that they can likely expect another late start to the irrigation season in 2023 and that allotments will be low again since the system depends less on summer rains and more on spring runoff from snowmelt in southern Colorado and northern New Mexico.
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — New Mexico, Texas and Colorado have negotiated a proposed settlement that they say will end a yearslong battle over management of one of the longest rivers in North America, but the federal government and two irrigation districts that depend on the Rio Grande are objecting.
New Mexico Attorney General Hector Balderas on Tuesday announced that the states had brokered a deal following months of negotiations. While the terms remain confidential, his office called it “a comprehensive resolution of all the claims in the case.”
“Extreme drought and erratic climate events necessitate that states must work together to protect the Rio Grande, which is the lifeblood of our New Mexico farmers and communities,” Balderas said in a statement. “And I’m very disappointed that the U.S. is exerting federal overreach and standing in the way of the states’ historic water agreement.”
Attorneys with the U.S. Department of Justice and irrigation districts that serve farmers downstream of Elephant Butte reservoir argued that the proposal would not be a workable solution. The river is managed through a system of federal dams and canals under provisions of a water-sharing agreement that also involves Mexico.
The case has been pending before the U.S. Supreme Court for nearly a decade. Texas has argued that groundwater pumping in southern New Mexico has reduced river flows, limiting how much water makes it across the border. New Mexico argues that it has been shorted on its share of the river.
New Mexico and the other states plan in the coming weeks to submit their motion to move the proposed settlement forward, opening the door for federal officials and the irrigation districts to respond.
Another hearing has been scheduled for January.
The battle over the Rio Grande has become a multimillion-dollar case in a region where water supplies are dwindling due to increased demand along with drought and warmer temperatures brought on by climate change.
So far, New Mexico has spent roughly $21 million on lawyers and scientists over the last nine years.
Last fall, the special master overseeing the case presided over the first phase of trial, which included testimony from farmers, hydrologists, irrigation managers and others. More technical testimony was expected to be part of the next phase, which has now been put off.
Earlier this year, some of the river’s stretches in New Mexico marked record low flows, resulting in some farmers voluntarily fallowing fields to help the state meet downstream water-sharing obligations.
In the Elephant Butte Irrigation District, officials recently warned farmers that they can likely expect another late start to the irrigation season in 2023 and that allotments will be low again since the system depends less on summer rains and more on spring runoff from snowmelt in southern Colorado and northern New Mexico.
