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  • Thousands of Americans are leaving homes in flood-risk areas. But where are they moving to? | CNN

    Thousands of Americans are leaving homes in flood-risk areas. But where are they moving to? | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    For more than four decades, the US government has been paying cities and states to move homeowners away from areas that are at high risk of severe flooding.

    When a hurricane or major flooding event devastates an area, a neighborhood can send a request for the local or state government to buy the impacted land and give residents money to start over someplace else.

    The Federal Emergency Management Agency’s buyout program is a form of so-called “managed retreat” – a long process that relocates people, businesses, homes and infrastructure to an area that’s safer from the impacts of climate change-fueled weather events. But until recently, little was known about where people ultimately moved and whether their new location actually reduced their flood risk.

    A new study published in the journal Environmental Research Letters — which coincides with a managed retreat conference unfolding in New York City this week — provides a clearer picture of these home buyouts.

    Data from thousands of home buyouts shows people aren’t moving that far from their original homes — and often they are moving within the same floodplain. But overall, their risk of flooding decreased after the move, a nod to the program’s success. Researchers also found that race has played a role in who is moving and where they’re relocating to.

    “As climate change and rising insurance costs increase the pressures to retreat from the coast and flooded areas, we need to pay more attention to where people are going,” James Elliott, a professor of sociology at Rice University and a co-author on the study, told CNN.

    The findings “point to how the program plays out differently in different types of communities and neighborhoods across the country,” he said.

    Using flood risk estimates, housing values, race and income data from the US Census Bureau, and FEMA relocation data between 1990 and 2017, researchers from Rice University built a nationwide database to map out where nearly 10,000 Americans sold their flood-prone homes and where they moved.

    They found people who have taken advantage of the FEMA buyouts typically did not move that far to reduce their risk, and usually stayed within the same floodplain.

    On average, buyout participants reduced their future flood risk by up to 65%, Elliott said. The average driving distance between their former homes and their new ones was around seven miles, with almost 74% of homeowners remaining within 20 miles of their old, flood-damaged homes.

    The findings were also racially segmented, Elliot said. About 96% of homeowners who relocated from a predominantly White neighborhood ended up moving to another majority White community.

    In contrast, residents of predominantly Black and Hispanic communities were far more likely to relocate to a new neighborhood with a different demographic: Only 48 percent of Black homeowners who go through the buyout moved to predominantly Black neighborhoods.

    The study also found that buyout areas with predominantly White homeowners had a nearly 90% chance of flooding by 2050, while majority-Black buyout areas had a roughly 50% chance, suggesting that White residents tend to only participate in buyouts when flood risk is much more intense.

    Though the data suggests that homeowners in White neighborhoods have a higher tolerance for flood risk, 80% of the people who took advantage of the FEMA program previously lived in majority-White neighborhoods. This could be because White communities “are more successful at winning the opportunity and money to participate” in the FEMA program, Elliott said.

    The home buyout program, which is the largest managed-retreat initiative in the country so far, is “disproportionately targeted toward Whiter residential areas,” Elliott said.

    “Communities of color and lower income areas just have fewer options to move nearby, so they are less likely to participate in the managed buyout,” Elliott said. In Houston, he found in a previous study that most of the people participating in buyouts in racially diverse communities tend to be White homeowners.

    “It’s sort of the last wave of White flight in those neighborhoods,” he added. And when “flood risks come, the final White residents begin to pull up stakes through the buyout program and move further out.”

    Alexander de Sherbinin, a senior research scientist at the Columbia Climate School and deputy manager of NASA’s Socioeconomic Data and Applications Center, said it’s not clear from the study that White homeowners are reluctant to move to racially diverse neighborhoods, and noted that there is evidence to the contrary.

    De Sherbinin pointed out that there is a process of “climate gentrification” playing out in areas that have experienced climate disasters, “whereby more affluent households are moving into ethnically diverse neighborhoods that are less at risk of flooding, and are even displacing local residents.”

    He pointed to Miami’s Little Haiti neighborhood as an example of this phenomenon, where higher ground helps protect the neighborhood from sea level rise and higher storm surges.

    “The research findings make sense in one regard, which is that whiter, more affluent neighborhoods are more likely to have the insurance coverage and resources to stay in place, despite rising risks,” de Sherbinin told CNN. “In other words, they’re able to rebuild, and possibly accommodate risks by raising their houses above flood lines.”

    As the climate crisis advances, more homeowners and businesses will be forced to relocate, adding stress and vulnerability to new regions. Previous research has shown that climate migration will become more likely as the planet warms and people seek places they consider safer and more stable.

    “We really need to think about how people relocate locally, what the options are, and how the ongoing racial segregation, especially in urban environments, is affecting those local retreats and people’s decisions and abilities not to retreat, because all we see are the people who actually say yes to the program,” Elliott said.

    “That’s the classic thing with climate change — it’s not about ‘if’ people have to move from these places, but ‘when and how’.”

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  • Fact check: Trump’s self-serving comparison to Hillary Clinton’s classified email scandal | CNN Politics

    Fact check: Trump’s self-serving comparison to Hillary Clinton’s classified email scandal | CNN Politics

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    Washington
    CNN
     — 

    Former President Donald Trump has repeatedly and inaccurately compared his federal indictment to the Hillary Clinton email investigation that ended without charges, claiming unfair treatment.

    Trump most recently invoked Clinton on Tuesday night during a lie-filled fundraiser at his golf club in Bedminster, New Jersey, hours after his arraignment in federal court. This misleading line of attack is a common refrain at his public events – and also for some of his opponents in the 2024 Republican presidential primary.

    Facts First: This is an inaccurate and self-serving comparison. To be sure, investigators found problems with how both Trump and Clinton handled classified material, and they both misled the public about their conduct. But there are several major differences that break in Clinton’s favor. Trump mishandled far more classified material. And prosecutors have presented evidence that he knowingly broke the law and obstructed the investigation, while the FBI concluded that Clinton didn’t act with criminal intent.

    On Tuesday night, Trump baselessly claimed that “Hillary Clinton broke the law, and she didn’t get indicted” because “the FBI and Justice Department protected her.” But an exhaustive 2018 report from the Justice Department inspector general concluded that investigators made the right call by not charging Clinton, and that their decision-making wasn’t motivated by political bias.

    Trump also claimed Clinton had a “deliberate intention” of violating records retention laws when she used a private email server to conduct government business as secretary of state. He also said “there has never been obstruction as grave” as what Clinton did to impede the FBI probe into her emails. Both of Trump’s assertions here are belied by the FBI’s conclusions in the case.

    Former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, who supervised the Clinton email probe in 2015-2016 and is now a CNN contributor, told CNN’s Dana Bash on Monday that the Clinton probe was “very, very different” from the Trump case.

    “Should it have happened? No,” McCabe said of Clinton’s private email server. “But what we didn’t have was evidence that Hillary Clinton had intentionally exchanged or withheld classified information.”

    Here’s a breakdown of some of the key differences between the Clinton and Trump situations.

    The FBI examined tens of thousands of emails from Clinton’s private server. Investigators found 52 email chains that contained references to information “that was later deemed to be classified,” McCabe said. Only eight of those chains contained “top secret” material, the highest level of classification.

    Almost none the email chains had markings or “stampings” on them that would’ve indicated at the time that the material was classified, McCabe said.

    Compare that with Trump, who took more than 325 classified records to Mar-a-Lago after leaving the White House, including at least 60 “top secret” files, according to prosecutors. The indictment says these documents contained foreign intelligence from the CIA, military plans from the Pentagon, intercepts from the National Security Agency, nuclear secrets from the Department of Energy, and more.

    These were full documents with “headers and footers” and cover sheets explicitly “indicating they were some of the most classified materials we have,” McCabe said. A picture that federal prosecutors included in a court filing shows some of the papers found at Mar-a-Lago with clear classification markings in large bold letters, saying “TOP SECRET” or “SECRET.”

    Then-FBI Director James Comey announced in July 2016 that Clinton wouldn’t be charged. He said, “no reasonable prosecutor would bring such a case,” because there wasn’t enough evidence that Clinton “intended to violate laws,” even though she had been “extremely careless” with classified information.

    In the Trump probe, special counsel Jack Smith had enough evidence for a federal grand jury to indict Trump on 37 criminal charges, including 31 counts of willfully retaining national defense information. The former president has pleaded not guilty.

    There are also significant differences on obstruction that undercut Trump’s narrative.

    Prosecutors say Trump conspired to defy a grand jury subpoena demanding the return of all classified documents, and that he misled his attorneys who were trying to comply with the subpoena.

    In the indictment, prosecutors also cited a recorded conversation from 2021 where Trump admitted that he possessed a document containing “secret information” about US military plans that he “could have declassified” as president – but didn’t.

    For this and other conduct, six of his 37 overall charges are related to potential obstruction.

    Despite Trump’s repeated claims to the contrary, prosecutors never accused Clinton of obstructing the investigation into her emails. The FBI ultimately concluded that there was not “clear evidence” that Clinton “intended to violate laws,” and that charges weren’t warranted in this situation without any evidence of obstruction.

    Furthermore, Clinton gave a voluntary interview to the FBI and she could have been prosecuted if she made any false statements. After closing the probe, Comey later told lawmakers that “we have no basis to conclude she lied to the FBI” or was “untruthful with us.”

    Two of the 37 charges against Trump use that same false-statements statute.

    From the moment Trump’s documents scandal became public last year, he has responded with a constant stream of lies, recycled falsehoods, and anti-government conspiracy theories.

    Clinton’s public dishonesty about her emails was nowhere near as frequent and egregious as Trump’s dishonesty about the classified documents probe. Nonetheless, some of Clinton’s own public defenses, which she offered to voters amid the 2016 campaign season, ended up proving untrue.

    For example, while she was under FBI investigation, Clinton publicly said she “never sent or received any classified material,” and also said she “did not email any classified material to anyone.” In another instance, she offered an unequivocal denial, saying “there is no classified materials” on her private server.

    Fact-checkers deemed these claims to be false or misleading after Comey revealed after the probe that some classified material was found on Clinton’s server – albeit in less than 1% of the 30,000-plus emails reviewed by the FBI.

    Some of Clinton’s public denials included a caveat that she never transmitted anything with visible classification “markings.” Comey later testified to Congress that only three emails reviewed by the FBI contained a classification marking.

    Regarding Trump’s claim that biased FBI and Justice Department officials “protected” Clinton in 2016 — in her view, they actually cost her the presidency. She has publicly blamed her election loss on Comey’s bombshell announcement in late October 2016 that he was reopening the email probe, only to clear her again on the eve of Election Day.

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  • Why power in Congress is now so precarious | CNN Politics

    Why power in Congress is now so precarious | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    Control of Congress has become so precariously balanced between the two parties that it may now be subject to the butterfly effect.

    The butterfly effect is a mathematical concept, often applied to weather forecasting, that posits even seemingly tiny changes – like a butterfly flapping its wings – can trigger a chain of events that produces huge impacts.

    Because it has become so difficult for either party to amass anything other than very narrow majorities in the House and Senate, the exercise of power in both chambers now appears equally vulnerable to seemingly miniscule shifts in the political landscape.

    Just in the past few weeks, a revolt by a small band of House conservatives effectively denied the Republican majority control of the floor for days. At the same time, a Supreme Court voting rights decision that might affect only a handful of House seats has raised Democratic hopes of recapturing the chamber in 2024. In the Senate, the extended absence of a single senator to illness – California Democrat Dianne Feinstein – prompted an eruption of concern among party activists over the upper chamber’s ability to confirm President Joe Biden’s judicial nominations.

    In different ways, these developments are all manifestations of the same underlying dynamic: the inability of either side to establish large or lasting congressional majorities.

    Viewed over the long-term, majorities in the House and Senate for the past 30 years have consistently been smaller than they were when Democrats dominated both institutions in the long shadow of the New Deal from the 1930s into the 1980s. And those majorities have grown especially tight since former President Donald Trump emerged as the polarizing focal point – pro and con –of American politics.

    Since the Civil War, only rarely has either chamber been as closely divided between the parties as it is this year, with Republicans holding just a five-seat advantage in the House and Democrats clinging to a one-seat Senate majority. It’s been even more rare for both chambers to be so closely divided at the same time – and rarer still for them to be split almost evenly between the parties in consecutive Congresses, as they have been since 2021.

    It remains possible that either side could break out to a more comfortable advantage in either chamber. The 2024 map offers Republicans an opportunity, especially if they run well in the presidential race, to establish what could prove a somewhat durable Senate majority. But many analysts consider it more likely that the House and Senate alike will remain on a razor’s edge, with narrow majorities that frequently flip between the two sides.

    The key development shaping this “butterfly effect” era are the indications that narrow majorities are now becoming the rule in both legislative chambers.

    Slim majorities and frequent shifts in control have been a central characteristic of the Senate for longer. In the 12 Congressional sessions since 2001, one party or the other has reached 55 Senate seats only three times: Republicans after George W. Bush’s reelection in 2004, and Democrats after Barack Obama’s wins in 2008 and 2012. In six of the past 12 sessions, the majority party has held 52 Senate seats or less, including two when voters returned a Senate divided exactly 50-50.

    By contrast, one party or the other amassed 55 seats or more seven times in the 10 sessions from 1981 through 2000. Lopsided majorities were even more common in the two decades of unbroken Democratic Senate control from 1961 to 1980: the party held at least 55 seats nine times over that interval.

    Largely because the Senate majorities have been so small for the past several decades, control of the body has shifted between the parties more frequently than in most of American history. Neither party, in fact, has controlled the Senate for more than eight consecutive years since 1980. Never before in US history has the Senate gone so long without one party controlling it for more than eight years.

    Generally, over the past few decades, the parties have managed somewhat more breathing room in the House. Neither side lately has consistently reached the heights that Democrats did while they held unbroken control of the lower chamber from 1955 through 1994 when the party routinely won 250 seats or more. But Republicans reached 247 seats after the second mid-term of Obama’s presidency in 2014. Democrats, for their part, soared to more than 250 seats after Obama’s victory in 2008, and 235 following the backlash against Trump in the 2018 election.

    But the Democratic majority fell to just 222 seats after the 2020 election. And Republicans likewise eked out only 222 seats last fall, far below the party’s expectations of sweeping gains. Those slim majorities may reflect a precarious new equilibrium. “I don’t think a major swing in either direction is possible in this new normal,” said Ken Spain, former communications director for the National Republican Congressional Committee. “We are in this perpetual state of power shifting hands, where the House is often times on a razor’s edge.”

    Former Rep. Steve Israel, who served as chair of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, sees the same pattern continuing. “We’re looking at very narrow House majorities for the foreseeable future,” he told me in an email.

    Like the Senate, smaller majorities in the House are translating into more frequent shifts in control. While Democrats held the House for 40 consecutive years until 1994, the longest either party has controlled it since was the GOP majority from 1995 through 2006. In the post-1994 era, Democrats have twice captured the House only to lose it just four years later. If Republicans lose the White House next year, there is a strong chance they could surrender their current House majority after just two years.

    As recent events show, this era of narrow majorities is changing how Congress operates in ways that are often overlooked in the day-to-day scrimmaging.

    One is creating a virtually endless cycle of trench warfare over House redistricting. As I’ve written, the district lines for an unusually large number of seats are still in flux beyond the first election following the reapportionment and redistricting of seats after the decennial Census.

    Because the margins in the House are now so small, the parties have enormous incentive to use every possible legal and political tool to influence any seat that could conceivably tip the balance. “We are in the perpetual redistricting era,” said Marina Jenkins, executive director of the National Democratic Redistricting Committee. “We’ve been creeping into that era for the past 10 years, and I think it’s just going to continue to be that way.”

    The two sides are scrimmaging across a broad battlefield. Republican gains on the state Supreme Courts in Ohio and North Carolina could pave the way for the GOP to draw new lines that might net the party a combined half a dozen House seats. Democratic gains on the state Supreme Courts in Wisconsin and New York could allow Democrats to offset that with new maps that produce gains of two seats in the former and four or five in the latter.

    The Supreme Court’s surprising decision this month to strike down Alabama’s congressional map as a violation of the Voting Rights Act, could lead by 2024 to the creation of new Black-majority seats that would favor Democrats not only in Alabama, but also Louisiana and maybe Georgia, experts say. The Court’s decision could also invigorate a voting rights case that could force Texas Republicans to create more Latino-majority seats there; while that case is unlikely to be completed in time for the 2024 election, it could ultimately produce a dramatic impact, with three or more redrawn seats that could favor Democrats. Racial discrimination cases brought on other grounds could eventually threaten GOP congressional maps in South Carolina, Arkansas and Florida.

    And even all this maneuvering doesn’t mark the end of the potential combat. If Democrats win multiple voting rights judgements against Republican-drawn maps, some observers think other GOP-controlled states may try to offset those gains by simply redrawing their own maps to squeeze out greater partisan advantage. Most states do not bar that sort of mid-decade redistricting, which was used most dramatically in Texas after the GOP won control of the state legislature there in 2002. “That threat is real,” said Jenkins.

    The unusual recent rebellion by House conservatives that denied the GOP a majority to control the floor marks another key characteristic of the butterfly effect era in Congress: the ability of small groups to exert disproportionate influence. When Democrats held their slim majority in the last Congress, they were stalemated for months by a standoff between centrists and progressives over whether to decouple the bipartisan infrastructure bill from Biden’s sweeping Build Back Better agenda.

    Ultimately, though, progressives reluctantly agreed to separate the two issues, allowing the infrastructure bill to pass. And then progressives, reluctantly again, agreed to pass the much scaled-back version of the Biden agenda that became the Inflation Reduction Act. Democrats, in fact, over the previous Congress displayed a record-level of party unity in passing not only those two bills but almost every other major party priority through the House, from multiple voting rights bills, to legislation restoring abortion rights nationwide, an assault weapon ban, police reform, and a bill barring LGBTQ discrimination.

    Republican leaders are finding it tougher to corral their narrow majority. The recent backlash against the debt ceiling deal by far-right conservatives prevented Republicans from passing the “rules” needed to control floor debate on legislation in the House. Less than a dozen House Republicans joined the rebellion, but it was enough to trigger a stunning stumble into chaos for the majority party.

    “Culturally the two parties are somewhat different when it comes to governing,” said Spain, now a Washington-based communications consultant. “On the Democratic side there tend to be family squabbles but ultimately everybody falls in line… On the Republican side, the tail tends to wag the dog. I think [Speaker Kevin] McCarthy did a pretty effective job threading the needle in getting the debt ceiling negotiated. Now we’re seeing the fall out.”

    Former Republican Rep. Charlie Dent, who now directs the Aspen Institute Congressional program, also believes it is more difficult for Republicans than Democrats to govern with a narrow House majority, largely because governing is not a priority for the right flank in the GOP conference.

    “It’s important to remember that the House Democratic conference certainly believes in governance,” Dent said. “That’s true of virtually all of them, whether they are more moderate or centrist vs. those who are on the far left. They want the government to function.” But, he added, “When you have a narrow Republican majority like we do, there is a rump group in the House Republican caucus who simply thrives on throwing sand into the gears of government and don’t want it to function well, if at all. They are more inclined to shut the government down. Some of them would be willing to default. And that’s the difference” between the parties.

    Narrow majorities are also roiling the Senate, as demonstrated both by the uproar over Feinstein’s absence and the liberal discontent in the last Congress over the enormous influence of West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin and Arizona Sen. Kyrsten Sinema. If Senate majorities stay as small as they have been recently, pressure is almost certain to grow for either party to end the filibuster the next time it wins unified control of the White House and Congress.

    In this century, neither side has controlled the 60 Senate seats required to break a filibuster except for a few months when Democrats did in 2009 and early 2010 (until losing that super-majority when Republicans won a special election to replace Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, who had died of brain cancer.) And even as it has grown more difficult for either party to approach 60 Senate votes, both have also found it harder to attract more than token crossover support from senators in the other party. In a world where 60 Senate votes is virtually out of reach, it’s difficult to imagine a party holding “trifecta” control of the White House and both congressional chambers granting the minority party a perpetual veto of the majority’s agenda through the filibuster.

    Political analysts caution that it remains possible that either party might break through this trench warfare to reestablish larger majorities. But to do so, it would need to overcome the interplay between two powerful political trends.

    The first is the hardening separation of the country into reliably red and blue blocks. Far fewer states than in the past are genuinely up for grabs in the presidential race: perhaps as few as five to seven, or even less, may be truly within reach for both sides next year. And even within the states, the divisions are hardening between Democratic dominance in larger metropolitan areas and Republican strength outside of them.

    The impact of this sorting both between and within the states is magnified by the second big trend: the decline of split-ticket voting. Fewer voters are hopscotching between the two sides with their votes; more appear to be viewing elections less as a choice between two individuals than as a referendum on which party they want in control of government.

    In 2022, only 23 House Members were elected in districts that supported the other side’s presidential candidate. (Eighteen House Republicans hold districts that voted Biden; just five House Democrats hold seats that voted for Trump.) Democrats now hold 48 of the 50 Senate seats in the 25 states that backed Biden in 2020 while Republicans hold 47 of the 50 in the 25 states that voted for Trump. And all three of those remaining Trump-state Democratic senators – Ohio’s Sherrod Brown, Montana’s Jon Tester and West Virginia’s Manchin – face difficult reelection races in 2024.

    With more states reliably leaning toward either party in the presidential race, and fewer legislators winning in places that usually vote the other way for president, both parties are grappling over a shrinking list of genuine congressional targets. Kyle Kondik, managing editor of Sabato’s Crystal Ball, a political newsletter from the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics, points out that wave elections that produce big congressional majorities typically have come when one party faces a bad environment and must also defend a large number of seats that it had previously won in places that usually vote for the other side. (That was the compound dynamic that wiped out rural House Democrats in 2010 and suburban House Republicans in 2018.) Now, he notes, the potential impact of a bad environment is limited because each side holds so few seats on the other’s usual terrain. “Neither side is that dramatically overextended,” said Kondik. “Everything is sorted out.”

    The paradoxical impact of more sorting and stability in the electorate, though, has been more instability in Congress, as the two sides trade narrow and fragile majorities. For the foreseeable future, control of Congress may pivot on the few quirky House and Senate races in each election that defy the usual partisan patterns. Such races are often decided by idiosyncratic local developments – a scandal, a candidate with an unusually compelling (or repelling) personal style, a major gaffe – that are as hard to predict or foresee as the sequence of events that begins when a butterfly flaps its wings.

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  • One of the first Black Marines is seeking recognition decades after being wounded in World War II | CNN

    One of the first Black Marines is seeking recognition decades after being wounded in World War II | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    Decades after Lee Vernon Newby Jr. was one of the first Black recruits to break the color barrier in the Marine Corps, he and his family are still fighting for recognition.

    The 100-year-old and his four children want him to be honored with a Purple Heart for his service but so far, he’s been denied one despite his extensive injuries.

    “I was over there serving the government, serving this country. They put me in harm’s way, but still they didn’t give me the acknowledgment,” Newby told CNN.

    Newby, who now lives at a senior living facility outside of Detroit, was just a teenager when he fought in World War II. He says he felt fortunate to serve his country despite being one of the few Black people in the Marine Corps.

    After being drafted, Newby was assigned to Montford Point, a segregated training facility in North Carolina.

    Newby headed to the Solomon Islands for the Battle of Guadalcanal, as fighting took place between 1942 and 1943. During that time, Newby’s family says he suffered fourth-degree burns after gasoline exploded in a hole. The burns covered more than 60% of his body, his family said.

    “All of a sudden, something hit me right in my chest. Just all of a sudden, it just burnt the clothes off of me,” he said. “When I hit the deck and got up, all the skin was just laying out.”

    Ellena Dione Newby-Bennette, one of Newby’s daughters, said her father received medical treatment for several months and later was sent back into action. “He wasn’t 100% healed,” she said.

    Newby received an honorable discharge in 1946 and returned home, where he struggled with racism and Jim Crow laws, his family said. He found work as a janitor and chauffeur, and eventually started a family.

    “America is one of the greatest countries in the world, but I didn’t get a fair deal,” he said. Newby is still hoping it will change.

    Siblings Christopher Lee Newby, left, and Ellena Dione Newby-Bennette, right, speak about their father Lee Vernon Newby Jr, one of the first Black Marines.

    Newby received a letter from President Joe Biden on his 100th birthday earlier this year, and he has been recognized by state and local officials. But last month, he received a letter from the Navy, telling him he is not eligible for a Purple Heart.

    The rejection, Newby says, reinforced feelings that Black people have been “getting a short deal.”

    The Purple Heart has specific criteria for when is awarded to US service members, and is limited to those who are wounded or killed in combat. It is described as one of the most respected military awards.

    In the letter, shared with CNN, Navy officials said Newby is considered ineligible because he was not wounded “at the hands of the enemy.”

    The letter states at the time, Newby was working with another service member who was attempting to kill rats by pouring gasoline from a cup down a hole next to a stump.

    The unnamed service member threw the cup when it ignited and set Newby’s clothing on fire, the letter said.

    Newby and his family said they are planning to appeal the decision. Newby’s daughters said their father doesn’t recall that rats were involved and “doesn’t understand where that story came from.”

    The Pentagon further clarified the rules, noting there are two key conditions which both must be met for the Purple Heart to be awarded.

    “First, the wound must have resulted from enemy action. Second, the wound must have been of such severity that it necessitated treatment, not merely examination, by a medical officer. If the wound does not meet both standards, the Purple Heart may not be awarded,” spokesperson Yvonne Carlock told CNN.

    Newby’s children said he experienced PTSD symptoms and they grew up listening to stories of enemy planes flying overhead bombs being dropped, and friends dying due to their injuries.

    “How much more of his heart did he have to give? More than half of his body was burned,” said Newby-Bennette.

    Newby’s children hope their father and other Black Marines who did not live long enough to receive notoriety are honored for their service.

    “He deserves to have his due,” Newby’s daughter Jannise Newby said.

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  • Patriots’ Jack Jones arrested after two loaded guns found in carry-on luggage, police say | CNN

    Patriots’ Jack Jones arrested after two loaded guns found in carry-on luggage, police say | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    New England Patriots cornerback Jack Jones was arrested Friday at Boston Logan International Airport after two firearms were discovered in his carry-on luggage, according to Massachusetts State Police.

    The Transportation Security Administration issued a press release saying TSA officers had found two loaded firearms and ammunition in a Los Angeles-bound male passenger’s luggage.

    The TSA, which did not identify the passenger, said it notified police after detecting the weapons “during the routine X-ray screening of carry-on luggage at the airport’s security checkpoint.”

    Police said Jones was charged with two counts each of the following offenses: possession of a concealed weapon in a secure area of an airport, possession of ammunition without a firearm identification card, unlawful possession of a firearm, carrying a loaded firearm, and possession of a large-capacity feeding device.

    Under Massachusetts law, any magazine that holds more than 10 rounds of ammunition is considered “large capacity.”

    Jones’ bail was set at $50,000. It was lowered to $30,000, which Jones posted, police say.

    He was released from custody and is scheduled to be arraigned in East Boston District Court next week.

    CNN has reached out to Jones’ representatives for comment.

    The Patriots confirmed the arrest in a statement, saying, “We have been notified that Jack Jones was arrested at Logan Airport earlier yesterday. We are in the process of gathering more information and will not be commenting further at this time.”

    New England selected the cornerback out of Arizona State University in the fourth round (121st overall) of the 2022 NFL Draft.

    In his rookie season, Jones had 30 combined tackles and two interceptions in 13 games.

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  • FBI arrests 19-year-old suspected of making antisemitic threats and planning violence against Michigan Jewish community | CNN

    FBI arrests 19-year-old suspected of making antisemitic threats and planning violence against Michigan Jewish community | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    A 19-year-old from Pickford, Michigan, was arrested by the FBI on Friday for allegedly making antisemitic threats on Instagram.

    Seann Pietila was charged in a criminal complaint with “transmitting a communication containing a threat to injure another,” US Attorney Mark Totten announced Friday in a news release.

    “Antisemitic threats and violence against our Jewish communities – or any other group for that matter – will not be tolerated in the Western District of Michigan,” Totten said.

    According to a probable cause affidavit, Pietila had conversations with another Instagram user about committing a mass casualty or mass killing. Pietila told investigators that he didn’t plan on following through with the mass killings he discussed, the affidavit says.

    Investigators found the name of an East Lansing synagogue, a date and a list of weapons – including bombs, Molotov cocktails and guns – in the notes app of Pietila’s phone, according to the affidavit.

    His home was searched on Friday and among the items found were ammunition, magazines, a shotgun, rifle, various knives and a Nazi flag, Totten said.

    Beth Lacosse, Pietila’s public defender, declined to comment, saying she had just been appointed to the case.

    Pietila made his first court appearance on Friday and his detention hearing is set for June 22, according to court documents.

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  • ‘Systemic problems’ at Minneapolis Police Dept. led to George Floyd’s murder, Justice Department says | CNN Politics

    ‘Systemic problems’ at Minneapolis Police Dept. led to George Floyd’s murder, Justice Department says | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    Three years after George Floyd was murdered by then-Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin, the Justice Department issued a blistering report Friday of the city’s police department, detailing racial discrimination, excessive and unlawful use of force, First Amendment violations and a lack of accountability for officers.

    “Our investigation found that the systemic problems in MPD made what happened to George Floyd possible,” the report states.

    The Minneapolis Police Department has, for years, used dangerous “techniques and weapons” against people who had committed a petty offense or no offense at all, “including unjustified deadly force,” it adds.

    “MPD used force to punish people who made officers angry or criticized the police,” the report says, and “patrolled neighborhoods differently based on their racial composition and discriminated based on race when searching, handcuffing, or using force against people during stops.”

    In its investigation, the Justice Department reviewed hundreds of police body-worn camera videos, incident and police reports, hundreds of complaints filed against officers and dozens of interviews with city leaders, community leaders and police officials.

    “As I told George Floyd’s family this morning, his death has had an irrevocable impact on the Minneapolis community, on our country and on the world,” Attorney General Merrick Garland said at a news conference Friday.

    “George Floyd should be alive today,” Garland added.

    Chauvin was convicted in Floyd’s death and pleaded guilty for violating Floyd’s civil rights.

    In a review of the 19 police shootings that took place between 2016 and the summer of 2022, the investigation found that “a significant portion of them were unconstitutional uses of deadly force” including officers shooting at individuals without determining any immediate threat and MPD officers using deadly force against “people who are a threat only to themselves,” the report says.

    In one example cited by the report, a woman had been shot by an officer after she reportedly “spooked” him as she came to his police car.

    On May 25, 2020, Chauvin kneeled on Floyd’s neck and back for over nine minutes while Floyd was handcuffed and gasping for air. According to the DOJ’s report, at the time, neck restraints were used by Minneapolis police officers 197 times between 2016 and 2020. Nearly a fourth of those were used in cases where no arrest was made.

    Three years on: reflections on the legacy of George Floyd

    Officers would “frequently used neck restraints without warning” and used the restraints against individuals – including teenagers – accused of low-level offenses, passively resisted arrest, posed no threat or “had merely angered the officer.”

    MPD officers, the investigation found, also used takedowns, strikes, tasers, chemical spray and other methods of force in ways that violated individuals’ rights.

    The department now prohibits neck restraints, “no-knock” raids and requires approval for officers to use certain crowd control weapons without approval from the chief of police.

    The investigation also found that MPD officers disproportionately stop and use force against Black and Native American people.

    “During stops involving Black and Native American people, MPD conducts searches and uses force more often than it does during stops involving white people engaged in similar behavior,” the report, which reviewed data of roughly 187,000 pedestrian and traffic stops says.

    “We estimate that MPD stops Black people at 6.5 times the rate at which it stops White people, given their shares of the population. Similarly, we estimate MPD stops Native American people at 7.9 times the rate at which it stops white people, given population shares.”

    During these stops, the DOJ found that MPD officers unlawfully discriminated against Black and Native American people in both searches and use of force.

    After Floyd’s murder in 2020, many police officers in the department stopped listing the race or gender of individuals in their reports in violation of the department’s policy, according to the investigation.

    The report also found evidence of some officers, including those in leadership positions, have made racist or discriminatory comments to other officers.

    During one of the protests following Floyd’s murder, an MPD lieutenant said a group of protesters were likely mostly White because “there’s not looting and fires.”

    Other MPD employees told the Justice Department about similar discriminatory comments made by their colleagues, including comments about how “you don’t have to worry about Black people during the day ‘cuz they haven’t woken up—crime starts at night.”

    The investigation found that officers were often only held accountable for biased conduct after public calls of outrage.

    minneapolis police surveillance

    How the fatal arrest of George Floyd unfolded

    Garland outlined several incidents where MPD officers were not held accountable for racist conduct until public outrage surfaced.

    “For example,” Garland said Friday, “after MPD officers stopped a car carrying four Somalian-American teens, one officer told the teens, ‘Do you remember what happened in Black Hawk Down. When we killed a bunch of your folk? I’m proud of that. We didn’t finish the job over there. If we had, you guys wouldn’t be over here right now.’”

    According to the Justice Department’s report, MPD officers also violated people’s First Amendment rights, including journalists, and found that officers “regularly retaliate against people for their speech or presence at protests – particularly when they criticize police.”

    “MPD officers frequently use indiscriminate force, failing to distinguish between peaceful protesters and those committing crimes,” the report says. “For example, MPD officers regularly use 40 mm launchers – firearms that shoot impact projectiles, like rubber bullets – against protesters who are committing no crime or who are dispersing.”

    The investigation found that in the protests following Floyd’s murder, officers had pepper sprayed a journalist in the face after pushing the reporter’s head to the pavement.

    Other incidents cited in the report include police officers retaliating against individuals who were recording the officers by illegally grabbing phones, destroying recording equipment or using force – including pepper spray – against them.

    This story has been updated with additional developments.

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  • Help rushes in to Perryton, Texas, after tornado rips through community | CNN

    Help rushes in to Perryton, Texas, after tornado rips through community | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    The state of Texas as well as cities and counties surrounding the Panhandle town of Perryton are sending aid after a tornado ripped through the area Thursday afternoon.

    The National Weather Service in Amarillo confirmed that a tornado struck the town. Images of extensive damage have been circulating on social media.

    Texas Gov. Greg Abbott’s office and the state’s Division of Emergency Management are mobilizing resources, State Rep. Four Price of District 87 said in a Facebook post.

    “TDEM is moving everything that way. Search and Rescue, medical, etc.,” Price said. Multiple structures are damaged and “the state is engaging additional medical help to triage,” according to Price.

    “This is a serious situation. Again, please lift that community up in prayer,” he added.

    Beaver County, Oklahoma, Emergency Manager Keith Shadden told CNN the county has sent fire, law enforcement and EMS units across the state border to help. He said that they intend to send a second wave to assist but are waiting for the weather to clear in the county.

    The city of Stinnett, Texas, about 56 miles from Perryton, is sending officers and EMS crews, and the Hutchinson County Sheriff’s Office posted on Facebook that they are also assisting with rescue and emergency operations following the “devastating tornado.”

    The Borger Police Department, Booker Fire Department and officials with the City of Fritch are all responding to Perryton to assist with tornado damage.

    CNN has reached out to local officials for more information.

    Meteorologists had warned that severe weather capable of producing wind gusts up to 90 mph, hail up to 5 inches in diameter and tornadoes was expected Thursday – the sixth day in a row for portions of the South and Plains.

    The tornado hit Perryton Thursday afternoon.

    The latest round of storms comes on the heels of more than 300 storm reports Wednesday, continuing a long streak of active weather.

    The area under threat Thursday covers a large swath from Colorado to South Carolina, with the greatest potential across portions of Oklahoma, Kansas and Texas.

    The Storm Prediction Center has placed a Level 4 of 5 moderate risk of severe weather for the area, which includes Oklahoma City and Norman, Oklahoma.

    Two tornado watches have been issued by the Storm Prediction Center for western and central Oklahoma and portions of northwestern, northern and central Texas. The watches include the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex and Oklahoma City and both are in effect until 10 p.m. CT.

    “Intense supercell development is expected this afternoon from the eastern Texas Panhandle into western Oklahoma and northwest Texas, and storms will spread eastward through late evening,” the SPC said. “The initial, more discrete supercells will be capable of producing giant hail (4-5 inches in diameter) and a few tornadoes. Upscale growth into a cluster or two is possible this evening, with an increasing threat for intense outflow winds of 80-90 mph.”

    Extremely large hail is another threat.

    “Be prepared for hail up to the size of baseballs and winds up to 80 mph with the stronger storms, as well as a medium risk for tornadoes,” warned the National Weather Service office in Norman. “The severe window will start in western Oklahoma between 3pm and 5pm and continue until storms exit the southeastern parts of the forecast area by 3am.”

    Know the difference between a tornado watch vs tornado warning

    Areas around the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex are under a Level 3 of 5 enhanced risk of severe weather.

    “The areas most susceptible to another round of large hail and possibly some damaging winds will be eastern North TX down into far eastern Central TX east of I-45 could get into the mix as well,” the weather service office in Dallas said.

    A much broader area of severe weather extends from western Kansas, south to central Texas and east to the Florida Panhandle. The Level 2 of 5 slight risk of severe weather covers more than 10 million people and includes places like Tulsa, Oklahoma; Shreveport, Louisiana; and Tallahassee, Florida.

    Lastly, a widespread area of a Level 1 of 5 marginal risk of severe weather covers from eastern Colorado to South Carolina.

    While it is not in the main threat area, people should not let their guard down because of the potential for damaging winds and very large hail. An isolated tornado could spin up as well.

    A tornado is seen on the ground June 14, 2023, in Blakely, Georgia.

    In addition to the severe weather threat, the same areas should also monitor the potential for flooding. With days of rain over the same areas, the ground is becoming quite saturated.

    “A continued threat of heavy rain through the day with potential for several inches to fall within bands of training convection,” is being warned by the weather service office in Mobile, Alabama.

    The multiday severe threat will continue Friday and through the weekend, as storms continue to develop each day along a stalled frontal boundary draped across the South.

    Wind and storm damage in Cass County, Texas.

    Wednesday’s severe threat brought more than 300 storm reports across the South and Plains.

    There were at least 100 hail reports and more than 200 wind reports, which knocked out power to more than 100,000 homes.

    Baseball to tennis ball-sized hail was reported in Alabama and hail greater than 5 inches was reported in Mississippi.

    Of the 10 tornado reports, five were reported in Georgia, two in Texas and three in Alabama.

    weather extreme heat

    Not only will millions face severe weather, but more than 30 million people are also under heat alerts, including large portions of Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi and South Florida.

    Most will see temperatures running at least 10-15 degrees above normal, with the potential for nearly 100 high temperature records to break during the next week.

    Texas is expected to get hit exceptionally hard, with heat indices reaching as high as 120 degrees.

    Heat indices are the “feels like” temperature, when you factor in the humidity.

    The Texas power grid could reach a record high for usage next week, as temperatures stay in the triple digits for at least the next week.

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  • As Beijing’s intelligence capabilities grow, spying becomes an increasing flashpoint in US-China ties | CNN

    As Beijing’s intelligence capabilities grow, spying becomes an increasing flashpoint in US-China ties | CNN

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    Hong Kong
    CNN
     — 

    For the second time this year, concerns of Chinese spying on the United States have cast a shadow over a planned visit to China by the US’ top diplomat as the two superpowers try to improve fractured ties while keeping a watchful eye on each other.

    US Secretary of State Antony Blinken is expected to land in Beijing over the weekend following the postponement of his earlier trip planned for February after a Chinese surveillance balloon meandered across the continental US, hovering over sensitive military sites before being shot down by an American fighter plane.

    But with Blinken poised to make a trip seen as a key step to mend fractured US-China communications, another espionage controversy has flared in recent days following media reports that China had reached a deal to build a spy perch on the island of Cuba.

    Beijing has said it wasn’t “aware” of the situation, while the White House said the reports were not accurate – with Blinken earlier this week saying China upgraded its spying facilities there in 2019.

    The situation is just the latest in a string of allegations of spying between the two in recent months. They underscore how intelligence gathering – an activity meant to go on without detection, out of the public eye – is becoming an increasingly prominent flashpoint in the US-China relationship.

    CIA Director Bill Burns secretly traveled to China in May to meet counterparts and emphasize the importance of maintaining open lines of communication in intelligence channels, CNN reported earlier this month.

    “Crisis communications are arguably in their worst state since 1979. This puts a premium on both countries’ ability to gather intelligence to understand each other’s capabilities, actions, and strategic intent around the globe,” said Lyle Morris, a senior fellow at the Asia Society Policy Institute’s Center for China Analysis.

    That pushes intelligence gathering itself to become “another factor that is complicating US-China relations,” he said.

    That’s especially the case, experts say, as China continues to expand its own intelligence gathering capabilities – catching up in an area where the US has traditionally had an edge.

    “It’s fair to say that we’ve been spying on each other at various scales for a long time,” said former Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) China analyst Christopher Johnson.

    “No doubt there’s been an uptick from both sides, but probably more so on the Chinese side, simply because they’ve gotten larger, more influential, richer, and therefore have more resources to devote than they did in the past,” said Johnson, who is now president of the China Strategies Group consultancy.

    Chinese leader Xi Jinping has also pursued a far more assertive foreign policy than his predecessors during his past decade in power.

    That’s been accompanied by “a consistent emphasis on enhancing intelligence capabilities, modernizing technology, and improving coordination among different security agencies,” according to Xuezhi Guo, a professor of political science at Guilford College in the US.

    China’s main intelligence activities fall under departments within the People’s Liberation Army and its vast civilian agency known as the Ministry of State Security (MSS). Other arms of the Communist Party apparatus also play a role in activities beyond conventional intelligence gathering, experts say.

    The MSS, established in 1983, oversees intelligence and counterintelligence both within China and overseas. Its remit has encouraged analogies to a combined CIA and Federal Bureau of Intelligence. But the sprawling Beijing-headquartered MSS is even more secretive – without even a public website describing its activities.

    The agency is “expected to play an even more significant role in China’s domestic and international security and stability” in the coming years, amid mounting challenges at home and abroad, Guo said.

    In the context of both China’s growing clout and geopolitical frictions, experts say it’s no surprise Beijing is allegedly seeking to establish or expand surveillance facilities in Cuba – or other places around the world – with the US as a key target, but not the only one.

    Meanwhile, intelligence gathering in China has become harder.

    Xi has consolidated his power and become increasingly focused on security – including building out the state’s ability to monitor its citizens, both online and through China’s extensive surveillance infrastructure.

    “The task of collecting intelligence in China is arguably harder than ever and yet more necessary than ever,” said Johnson, the former analyst, pointing to challenges of gaining insight into the government under the centralized leadership of Xi, who maintains a “very small circle of knowledge or trust.”

    China’s building of a domestic “surveillance panopticon” has also enabled its counter-intelligence, according to Johnson.

    US intelligence has difficulties having operational meetings or “going black” (dodging surveillance) within China, he said, especially during the Covid-19 pandemic when movement was tightly controlled and even more digitally monitored than usual.

    CIA operations also suffered a staggering setback starting in 2010, according to The New York Times, when the Chinese government killed or imprisoned more than a dozen sources over two years.

    In 2021, CNN reported that the agency was overhauling how it trains and manages its network of spies as part of a broad transition to focus more closely on adversaries like China and Russia.

    A tower of security cameras near Shanghai's Lujiazui financial district in May.

    This contrasts with what some US lawmakers and commentators believe has been a too relaxed approach to national security with regards to China, where even private businesses are beholden to the ruling Communist Party, which also seeks to keep tabs on its citizens overseas.

    Experts have also warned about the overlap between espionage efforts and operations like those of China’s United Front – a sprawling network of groups that manage the party’s relationship with non-party industries, organizations and individuals around the world.

    Heightened concern and awareness about Chinese intelligence gathering – or the potential for it – has exploded in the US in recent years.

    That’s played out in debates about the use of Chinese telecoms equipment and social media platforms – think Huawei and TikTok – as well as in government efforts to prosecute economic espionage cases and prevent any influence campaigns from impacting American democracy.

    Beijing has said repeatedly that it does not interfere in the “internal affairs” of other countries. Both Huawei and Tiktok have repeatedly denied that their products present a national security risk or would be accessed by the Chinese government.

    In the US, there’s also been concern about over-hyping the threat and sparking anti-Chinese sentiment.

    The US Justice Department last year ended its 3-year-old China Initiative, a national security program largely focused on thwarting technology theft, including in academia, after a string of cases were dismissed amid concerns of fueling suspicion and bias against Chinese Americans.

    US intellectual property had long been a traditional target of Chinese espionage.

    A survey of 224 reported instances of Chinese espionage directed at the United States since 2000, conducted using open source data by the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) think tank in Washington, found nearly half involved cyber-espionage, while over half were seeking to acquire commercial technologies.

    Beijing appears to be increasingly pushing back on what it sees as a double standard – as the US’ international surveillance efforts have also been well-documented.

    The 2013 leak produced by former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden, for example, revealed Washington’s vast global digital surveillance capabilities, against both rivals and allies alike. Meanwhile, the US intelligence community is widely understood to have its own overseas facilities for collecting signals intelligence.

    Last month, Beijing released a report from a national cybersecurity agency titled “‘Empire of Hacking’: The US Central Intelligence Agency.” It accused the US of promoting the internet in the 1980s in order to further its intelligence agencies’ efforts to launch “Color Revolutions” and overthrow governments abroad.

    “The organizations, enterprises and individuals that use the Internet equipment and software products of the USA have been used as the puppet ‘agents’ by CIA, helping it to be a ‘shining star’ in global cyber espionage wars,” the report also claimed.

    China’s own internet is heavily censored with access limited by a “Great Firewall” – part of its extensive efforts to control the flow of information alongside its extensive digital surveillance of its own population.

    China’s Foreign Ministry last month again pointed its finger at the US after Washington released a warning alleging that a Chinese state-sponsored hacker had infiltrated networks across US critical infrastructure sectors.

    Earlier this month, the ministry also slammed the US for sending what it said were more than 800 flights of large reconnaissance aircraft “to spy on China” last year – though no assertion was made of crossing into Chinese airspace.

    The comment came after each country’s military accused the other of misbehavior after a Chinese fighter jet intercepted a US spy plane in international airspace over the South China Sea.

    TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew testifies at a House Energy and Commerce Committee hearing on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC on Thursday, March 23, 2023.

    Experts say this rhetorical back-and-forth over each other’s clandestine activities is likely only to continue as US-China competition drives both to ramp up their intelligence gathering – and China continues to expand its own prowess, including through technological advancements such as satellite networks, surveillance balloons and data processing.

    “China increasingly has capabilities (that the US has been known for) … this is moving from a one way street historically to a two-way street,” said John Delury, author of “Agents of Subversion: The Fate of John T. Downey and the CIA’s Covert War in China.”

    He pointed to how China had long been subject to US offshore surveillance and – prior to the restoration of diplomatic relations in the 1970s – direct aerial surveillance.

    “There’s a psychological dimension to this as well,” Delury added, noting that the spy balloon incident earlier this year brought this to the fore – giving Americans the unnerving sense that China “can do this to us now, they have technical capabilities and can look at us.”

    Meanwhile, there’s much at stake in how well the two governments can repair official communication – seen as a key element of Blinken’s expected visit on Sunday and Monday.

    “When there’s less communication, the two intelligence communities inside the two governments have to do more and more guesswork,” said Delury. “Then there’s a lot more room for faulty assumptions.”

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  • Trump hits campaign trail as indictment roils 2024 race | CNN Politics

    Trump hits campaign trail as indictment roils 2024 race | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    Former President Donald Trump is set to return to the campaign trail Saturday, traveling to Georgia and North Carolina for speeches at a pair of state Republican conventions as news of his federal indictment roils the party’s 2024 presidential race.

    The pre-planned stops come the day after the Justice Department unsealed its indictment laying out the government’s case that Trump and aide Walt Nauta mishandled classified national security documents.

    Trump’s speeches will mark his first public outings since he was indicted for a second time in less than three months, with probes into election interference efforts in Georgia and his actions surrounding January 6, 2021, in Washington threatening to pose further legal troubles.

    The visits will give Trump a chance to respond to the charges in a campaign-style as he mounts battles on both the political and legal fronts. The former president is scheduled to appear Tuesday in a federal courtroom in Miami, where he will be read the charges against him.

    So far, Trump has cast his prosecution as a politically motivated effort to stop his bid for the presidency. He has described special prosecutor Jack Smith as “deranged” and the case against him as a “hoax,” while accusing President Joe Biden of similarly mishandling classified documents.

    “I had nothing to hide, nor do I now. Nobody said I wasn’t allowed to look at the personal records that I brought with me from the White House. There’s nothing wrong with that,” he said Friday on his social media platform Truth Social.

    Trump released a four-minute video Thursday evening repeating many of his past claims, including that the Justice Department is being weaponized and that the investigations into him represent “election interference.”

    “I am an innocent man. I did nothing wrong,” Trump said in the video.

    News of the former president’s indictment Thursday was met at his Bedminster golf club in New Jersey with a belief that he would benefit politically as conservatives rallied around him.

    Trump spent Friday morning in Bedminster playing golf with Florida Rep. Carlos Gimenez as his allies made rounds of phone calls to shore up support for the former president.

    After the indictment was unsealed Friday, concern began to settle in, a source familiar with the mood at Bedminster told CNN, as Trump aides began to acknowledge the legal implications. His team still thinks Trump will likely benefit politically – at least in the short term – the source said, but aides have grown more wary of how the indictment will play out legally.

    Trump has long avoided legal culpability in his personal, professional and political lives. He has settled a number of private civil lawsuits through the years and paid his way out of disputes concerning the Trump Organization. As president, he was twice impeached by the Democratic-led House but avoided conviction by the Senate.

    But after leaving office, the Justice Department’s criminal investigations into the alleged retention of classified information at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort and his efforts to overturn the 2020 election cast dark clouds over the former president. Smith’s investigation into January 6, 2021, and efforts to overturn the election is still ongoing.

    In March, the Manhattan district attorney in New York indicted Trump on charges related to hush-money payments to a former adult star. In Georgia, Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis is expected to announce in August whether there are any charges in her investigation into attempts by Trump and his allies to overturn the 2020 election in the state.

    On the campaign trail, many of Trump’s Republican 2024 presidential rivals responded to the news of his indictment by attacking the Justice Department – another indication that they see advantage among conservative primary voters in defending a former president who remains popular with the party’s base.

    Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis on Thursday accused the DOJ of “weaponization of federal law enforcement” while vowing, if elected president, to “bring accountability to the DOJ, excise political bias and end weaponization once and for all.”

    Former Vice President Mike Pence had called on the Justice Department to release the indictment against his former boss. After it did so, he did not comment on its contents while campaigning in New Hampshire.

    Nikki Haley, the former South Carolina governor and Trump’s United Nations ambassador, characterized the indictment as “prosecutorial overreach” in a statement Friday, adding that it was time to move “beyond the endless drama and distractions.”

    North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum, who entered the GOP race earlier this week, said Saturday that Trump’s alleged mishandling of classified documents is not something voters want to spend their time on.

    “When we’re on the road in Iowa the last two days and here in New Hampshire talking about the economy, energy policy, national security – those are the things that are hitting every American every single day,” Burgum told Fox News.

    Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, another onetime ally and close adviser to Trump who has emerged as his chief critic in the 2024 race, described the details of the indictment as “damning.”

    “This is irresponsible conduct,” he told CNN’s Jake Tapper on Friday, adding that “the conduct that Donald Trump engaged in was completely self-inflicted.”

    “The bigger issue for our country is, is this the type of conduct that we want from someone who wants to be president of the United States?” Christie said.

    Another Trump critic, former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson, said the former president should drop out of the race “for the good of the country.”

    “This is unprecedented that we have a former president criminally charged for mishandling classified information, for obstruction of justice. This obviously will be an issue during the campaign,” Hutchinson told Tapper on Friday in a separate interview.

    “For the sake of the country, he doesn’t need this distraction. The country doesn’t need this distraction, as well.”

    This story has been updated with additional information.

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  • Why do businesses keep raising their prices? | CNN Business

    Why do businesses keep raising their prices? | CNN Business

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    Los Angeles
    CNN
     — 

    After two years of surging prices, economists still can’t agree on what has caused the world’s worst inflation crisis in decades.

    While the usual culprits cited by economists include pandemic-era supply chain bottlenecks, the war in Ukraine and various US economic policies, others say it’s due to “greedflation,” the idea that companies use higher inflation rates as an excuse to jack up prices and grow their margins.

    However, according to preliminary findings in a New York Federal Reserve survey, there might be something else at play.

    The survey of 700 businesses across New York, Atlanta and Cleveland found that strength of customer demand outranked all other factors that companies weigh when setting prices, including steady profit margins and overall inflation.

    That means a business can essentially set prices as high as it wants, as long as they aren’t so high that they drive away the customer base. In other words, it’s Econ 101: Good, old-fashioned supply and demand.

    More than 82% of businesses surveyed said demand factored into their pricing decisions, while only 52% of businesses said they take the overall rate of inflation into account when setting prices.

    Customers have become trained to tolerate price hikes, said John Zheng, a professor of marketing at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania.

    “As a consumer during inflation, you know the costs for companies are increasing, so, therefore, you become more receptive to a higher price,” he said.

    Approval of price increases could fuel even higher pricing in the future — a cycle that can be hard to break, said Zheng.

    Mr. Mac’s mac and cheese restaurant in Manchester, New Hampshire tried boosting prices a little at a time to keep up with inflation in 2021, but it wasn’t enough to cover the cost increases to the business, vice president of operations Mark Murphy told CNN. Fearing customer backlash, the restaurant accepted smaller margins instead of pricing out their diners.

    When the business finally hiked prices, Murphy said the decision was “painful.”

    “We were looking at our sales and our orders daily, and we were checking every review to see what people were saying,” Murphy said. “It was very scary.”

    Despite those fears, Mr. Mac’s elevated prices did not cut into business.

    “What we ended up finding was customers may not have been happy about it, but they were not surprised. I think they kind of understood that prices are increasing. They see it everywhere they go,” he said.

    Murphy said the restaurant has since raised prices more than once to keep up with inflation.

    Multinational companies Colgate, Procter & Gamble and PepsiCo have raised prices by double-digit percentages over the past year, according to their first-quarter earnings reports, outpacing the US inflation rate.

    However, as the Federal Reserve hikes interest rates and the economy slows down, customers may soon be less keen to pay through the nose for goods and services, Zheng said.

    Businesses may already be in tune with the change: Those surveyed by the New York Fed said they expect lower cost and price pressures in the coming year.

    Emily Netti, a wedding photographer in Syracuse, New York, said she has raised prices by a few hundred dollars multiple times over the past two years to pay competitive rates to the additional photographers and editors she hires. However, she said she is mindful that her local customer base may soon want to cut back on expenses.

    “I’ve started to slow down in my own market within Syracuse,” she said.

    “I do see myself raising by $100 rather than $300 for now, so I can match the market.”

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  • Right-wing media wages war on U.S. justice system after Trump’s historic federal indictment | CNN Business

    Right-wing media wages war on U.S. justice system after Trump’s historic federal indictment | CNN Business

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    Editor’s Note: A version of this article first appeared in the “Reliable Sources” newsletter. Sign up for the daily digest chronicling the evolving media landscape here.


    New York
    CNN
     — 

    The attacks on the rule of law have begun.

    Moments after news broke on Thursday that disgraced former President Donald Trump had been indicted on federal charges, Fox News and the rest of the MAGA Media universe revved up into attack mode, denigrating the U.S. justice system and characterizing it as prejudiced against conservatives.

    The assault on the American justice system was swift and savage.

    On Fox, the historic legal action was portrayed as President Joe Biden weaponizing the Justice Department to target his political opponent.

    “BIDEN ADMIN INDICTS A PRESIDENTIAL RIVAL,” one on-screen banner read.

    “Yes, it is a dark day in America,” Sean Hannity declared. “We have said it often. There is no equal justice, there is no equal application of our laws. There is one set of rules for Democrats and another set of rules for Donald Trump and conservatives and anybody especially in his orbit.”

    Despite the indictment not being made public, Hannity went on to tell his audience that the “system of justice” in the U.S. has “been weaponized beyond belief” and that the country is “in serious trouble.”

    Throughout the night, Fox welcomed guests who echoed the Trump talking points and disparaged the justice system.

    In effect, Fox News is once again platforming those who are leading vicious and irresponsible attacks on the country’s criminal justice system.

    The defense of Trump, of course, was not just limited to Fox News.

    Across the right-wing media ecosystem, the narrative that a sinister deep-state was unfairly targeting Trump to knock him out of the 2024 presidential contest was pervasive.

    “PEAK WITCH HUNT,” the homepage banner on the right-wing Breitbart blared, adding “POLITICAL PERSECUTION INTENSIFIES.”

    Elsewhere, on the far-right Gateway Pundit blog, more than a half-dozen stories were published Thursday night defending Trump.

    The coverage harkened back to the years after the 2016 election, when Trump aimed to discredit and destroy institutions such as the FBI for investigating him.

    News organizations covered the story by delivering fact-based reporting and analysis, while propaganda outfits such as Fox News disseminated hyperbolic commentary to their audiences.

    Thursday night’s coverage did serve as a good reminder that outlets like Fox News can quickly fall under Trump’s hypnosis and snap into MAGA mouthpiece mode.

    While Rupert Murdoch might personally hold great contempt for Trump, documents revealed as part of the Dominion Voting Systems defamation lawsuit showed that he is terrified that airing critical coverage of Trump will result in his supporters abandoning the channel.

    And at the end of the day, that is what motivates such outlets. Their business models are not designed to provide fact-based news to audiences.

    And that means giving voice to dangerous, dishonest commentary — despite knowing, after the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, the real-world violence that it has the potential to incite.

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  • FAA lifts ground stop at NYC airport but delays flights due to smoke | CNN Business

    FAA lifts ground stop at NYC airport but delays flights due to smoke | CNN Business

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    CNN
     — 

    The Federal Aviation Administration lifted a ground stop for flights bound for New York’s LaGuardia airport due to smoke but has delayed some flights on the ground.

    Flights into Philadelphia are also being impacted because of the wildfire smoke, the FAA says. It reported the average delay is about a half-hour. A similar delay to the one at LaGuardia is in place in Newark.

    “The FAA has slowed traffic to and from the New York City area airports due to reduced visibility from wildfire smoke,” the FAA told CNN in a statement. “The agency will adjust the volume of traffic to account for the rapidly changing conditions.”

    As of 2:45 p.m. ET, airlines in the US have canceled 120 flights and delayed another 1,928, according to data from tracking site FlightAware.

    The Federal Aviation Administration says the extreme wildfire smoke haze lingering over the Northeast US due to Canadian wildfires could delay flights through Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Washington, D.C.

    US Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg tweeted Wednesday that, “Smoke from Canada’s wildfires is affecting visibility in our airspace and leading to delays. The FAA is fully prepared to modify operations as needed.”

    This story has been updated from the original.

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  • Takeaways from CNN’s town hall with Mike Pence | CNN Politics

    Takeaways from CNN’s town hall with Mike Pence | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    Former Vice President Mike Pence staked out a series of clear differences with boss-turned-2024 rival Donald Trump, and needled other Republican contenders, including Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, in a CNN town hall in Iowa on Wednesday night.

    Hours after he launched his bid for the Republican presidential nomination, Pence broke with the former president on immigration policy, entitlement spending, US support for Ukraine in its war against Russia and more.

    He said he would not reinstate the policy of separating migrant families at the border – a widely criticized practice that Trump didn’t rule out reviving in his own CNN town hall last month.

    Pence also said that other Republican rivals were wrong to put changes to Social Security off the table, telling the crowd at Grand View University in Des Moines that seriously reducing federal spending will require changes to entitlement programs.

    He sharply rebuked Trump for describing Russian President Vladimir Putin as a “genius” for his invasion of Ukraine, while casting DeSantis as naive on the issue. And he continued to criticize the former president’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election.

    Pence said he and Trump don’t just disagree about the past; the two have “a different vision for our party.”

    “I’m somebody who believes in American leadership in the world. Our party needs to lead on fiscal responsibility and stand without apology for life. We’ll have those debates,” he said.

    Still, Pence said, he will “support the Republican nominee in 2024,” a pledge he said he felt comfortable making because he doubted Trump would win the primary.

    “Different times call for different leadership,” Pence said. “The American people don’t look backwards; they look forward. … I don’t think my old running mate is going to be the Republican nominee for president.”

    Here are six takeaways from Pence’s CNN town hall:

    Pence urged the Justice Department not to indict his onetime boss, saying such an indictment would fuel division inside the country and “send a terrible message to the wider world.”

    While Pence said that “no one is above the law,” he said the DOJ could resolve its investigation into Trump’s potential mishandling of classified documents without resorting to an indictment, just as the department informed Pence’s attorney last week that there would be no charges brought in the case of the classified documents discovered in his home.

    But in Pence’s case, the former vice president immediately contacted the National Archives and the FBI to return his documents, while Trump resisted handing over his classified material and failed to return all classified documents after receiving a subpoena last May.

    Pence’s response underscores the tightrope the former vice president is walking when it comes to the numerous probes into his former boss. CNN reported Wednesday that the Justice Department had informed Trump he’s a target of special counsel Jack Smith’s investigation into the mishandling of classified documents and possible obstruction, a sign that prosecutors may be moving closer to indicting the former president.

    While Pence criticized Trump for his actions on January 6 at his campaign kickoff Wednesday and at the town hall, he sought to distinguish those actions from the documents probe, protesting that there were “dozens” of better ways that the FBI could have handled Trump’s case before resorting to an unprecedented search the former president’s residence.

    So far, Pence’s sharpest criticism of Trump came when he was asked about the United States’ role in helping Ukraine in its efforts to repel Russia’s invasion.

    After arguing that the US should accelerate its support for the Ukrainian military, Pence pointed to Trump’s description of Putin in a February 2022 radio interview as a “genius” for his invasion of Ukraine.

    “I know the difference between a genius and a war criminal, and I know who needs to win the war in Ukraine,” Pence said. “And it’s the people fighting for their freedom and fighting to restore their national sovereignty in Ukraine. And America – it’s not our war, but freedom is our fight. And we need to give the people of Ukraine the ability to fight and defend their freedom.”

    Pence’s comments align him with Nikki Haley, Trump’s United Nations ambassador and a 2024 rival, and against their former boss and DeSantis, who entered the GOP race last month. The former vice president echoed Haley’s veiled shot at DeSantis – who described the war as a “territorial dispute” – casting such characterizations as naive.

    “Anybody that thinks Vladimir Putin will stop if he overruns Ukraine has what we say back in Indiana, another thing coming,” Pence said. “He has no intention of stopping. He’s made it clear that he wants to recreate that old Soviet sphere of influence in Eastern Europe.”

    Pence participates in a CNN Republican Presidential Town Hall on Wednesday.

    Pence repeatedly highlighted his support for “parents’ rights,” especially when it comes to schools. But he said the judgment of those same parents should not apply to situations when a minor is seeking gender transition care.

    “I strongly support state legislation, including, as we did in Indiana, that bans all gender transition, chemical or surgical procedures, under the age of 18,” he said – even when parents support their child’s decision to go forward.

    Republican presidential candidates have all railed against what Pence on Wednesday described as “radical gender ideology,” language that by definition falsely suggests there is a movement of people seeking to convince young people to change their gender identities.

    “However adults want to live, they can live,” Pence said. “But for children, we’re going to protect kids from the radical gender ideology and say no chemical or surgical transition before you’re 18.”

    Pressed on the age question, Pence compared gender transition to body art, saying, “There’s a reason why you don’t let kids get a tattoo before they’re 18.”

    When Bash asked what he would say to children and families who feel targeted by his position and those of his ideological allies, Pence offered an olive branch of sorts.

    “I’d put my arm around them and tell them I love ‘em,” he said, “but (tell them) ‘Just wait.’”

    Pence speaks during a CNN Republican Presidential Town Hall moderated by CNN's Dana Bash at Grand View University in Des Moines, Iowa, on June 7.

    Pence has been a fierce anti-abortion advocate his entire adult life. On Wednesday night, he made clear he would not deviate from that position.

    “I couldn’t be more proud to be vice president in an administration that appointed three of the justices that sent Roe v. Wade to the ash heap of history,” Pence said, “and gave America a new beginning for life.”

    On the question of a federal ban on the procedure, Pence said he supported exceptions for rape, incest and life of the mother. But he did not tap dance around the fundamental question, even as voters around the country – in the midterms and in referendums – have registered their anger over the Supreme Court’s decision and the subsequent passage of state laws to sharply restrict abortion rights.

    “We will not rest or relent until we restore the sanctity of life to the center of American law in every state in the country,” Pence said.

    Still, the former vice president acknowledged that his side had a “long way to go to win the hearts and minds of the American people” and encouraged his allies to show both “principle and compassion.”

    To that end, he offered qualified support for social spending programs to help support newborns and new parents.

    “We have to care as much about newborns and mothers as we do about the unborn,” Pence said. But he stopped short of specifically endorsing paid family leave for all Americans or subsidized child care.

    Pence said he would “take a step back” from the approach of the Trump-era landmark sentencing reform law, known as the First Step Act.

    “We need to get serious and tough on violent crime, and we need to give our cities and our states the resources to restore law and order to our streets. And I promise you, we’ll do that, if I’m your president,” Pence told Bash.

    Under the First Step Act, thousands of federal inmates, most of them serving sentences for drug offense and weapons charges, were released from prison early, either for good behavior or through participation in rehabilitation programs. The law also eased mandatory minimum sentencing for certain drug offenders.

    Asked about DeSantis’ promise to repeal the First Step Act if elected president, Pence again conceded that he would take a different approach than the First Step Act.

    “We ought to be thinking about how we make penalties tougher on people that are victimizing families in this country,” he said.

    Pence repeated the criticism he has leveled at his former boss for more than a year, insisting that Trump was wrong to ask his second-in-command to overturn some states’ 2020 Electoral College votes in his ceremonial role presiding over Congress as it counted those votes on January 6, 2021.

    Pence said he “frankly hoped the president would come around” since early 2021. Though he said he agreed that some states inappropriately changed their election procedures during the coronavirus pandemic.

    “But at the end of the day, I think the Republican Party has to be the party of the Constitution,” he said.

    Pence also broke with Trump over the legal fates of those who rioted at the US Capitol on January 6 – and have since faced criminal charges and convictions. Trump said he would consider pardoning many of those rioters, who he said were being treated “very unfairly.”

    Pence, though, said the United States “cannot ever allow what happened on January 6 to happen again in the heart of our democracy.”

    “I have no interest or no intention of pardoning those that assaulted police officers or vandalized our Capitol. They need to answer to the law,” he said.

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  • FBI agents arrive in Peru for transfer of Joran van der Sloot, suspect in Natalee Holloway case | CNN

    FBI agents arrive in Peru for transfer of Joran van der Sloot, suspect in Natalee Holloway case | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    FBI special agents arrived in Peru on Wednesday for the temporary transfer proceedings of Joran van der Sloot, a law enforcement source familiar with the operation told CNN.

    US federal agents departed Birmingham, Alabama, for Lima on Wednesday morning on an executive jet used for foreign transfer of custody missions, the source said, and the team is expected to return to Alabama with van der Sloot on Thursday after he is turned over to US authorities.

    Van der Sloot, the prime suspect in the 2005 disappearance of Alabama teenager Natalee Holloway, is to be temporarily transferred Thursday from Peru to the US to face extortion and fraud charges, Peruvian officials have said.

    The US extortion and wire fraud charges relate to allegations that he extorted money in 2010 from Holloway’s mother by offering bogus information about her daughter’s disappearance.

    Van der Sloot is currently serving a 28-year prison sentence in Peru for the 2012 murder of Stephany Flores, 21, in his Lima hotel room. He is currently being held at the Ancón 1 prison in Peru.

    Peru initially agreed to extradite van der Sloot to the US to face the extortion and wire fraud charges only after he serves his murder sentence. But last month, the country changed course and agreed to temporarily transfer him to the US to face the extortion and wire fraud charges, after which he would be returned to Peru, the country’s judiciary said.

    Peru agreed to van der Sloot’s “temporary relocation to the United States, because he is condemned here and he must serve his sentence here,” Justice Minister Daniel Maurate said. “But since the US needs him in order to face trial, and the authorities told us that if he didn’t get there sooner, the case against him could be dropped because the witnesses are elderly.”

    An attorney for van der Sloot argued Monday his transfer to the US should be stopped, but the Lima superior court ordered him to be handed over to FBI agents on Thursday.

    Holloway was last seen alive with van der Sloot and two other men 18 years ago leaving a nightclub in Aruba.

    Police in Aruba arrested and released the three men – van der Sloot and brothers Deepak and Satish Kalpoe – multiple times in 2005 and 2007 in connection with Holloway’s disappearance. Attorneys for the men maintained their innocence throughout the investigation.

    In December 2007, the Aruban Public Prosecutor’s Office said none of the three would be charged and dropped the cases against them, citing insufficient evidence.

    Holloway’s body has not been found. An Alabama judge signed an order in 2012 declaring her legally dead. No one is currently charged in her death.

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  • Watchdog report finds former Pentagon official created a toxic work environment | CNN Politics

    Watchdog report finds former Pentagon official created a toxic work environment | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    A newly released Defense Department inspector general investigation found that a former senior Pentagon leader berated and belittled subordinates, cursed at them, made some employees cry, and generally created a toxic work environment.

    Michael Cutrone served as the principal deputy and acting assistant secretary of defense for international security affairs from May 2020 to January 2021 when he resigned. The Defense Department inspector general said in the new report released Wednesday that Cutrone repeatedly harassed subordinates and created an “intimidating, hostile, and offensive work environment.”

    “Subordinates with decades of experience in the DoD described Mr. Cutrone as the most toxic boss they ever worked for and someone who poisoned self-confidence, created divisions, and was loathed and despised by his workforce,” the IG report said.

    Cutrone was installed at the Pentagon by then-President Donald Trump in an effort to put more officials into the department who the Washington Post described as having an “undisputed allegiance” to the president, citing officials.

    The IG said in its report that while Cutrone often “did not deny his conduct,” he told investigators he could not recall the specific instances mentioned by witnesses. He acknowledged to investigators that he fell short in some regards despite his intentions to be a positive leader.

    The report also found that Cutrone consumed alcohol in the Pentagon without written authorization, which he said was done occasionally after office hours and was a misunderstanding of policy.

    CNN has not been able to reach Cutrone for comment about the report.

    Cutrone was provided tentative conclusions of the report by the IG in January this year and told investigators that he did not agree that he had failed to treat subordinates with dignity and respect, and that he had created a hostile work environment.

    “Mr. Cutrone attributed his disagreements to his belief that the DoD IG failed ‘to understand and consider the appropriate context of the [ASD(ISA)] working environment,’ and the time that it took to complete the investigation,” the report said.

    Complaints about Cutrone began rolling in on December 15, 2020, according to the IG report, when the DoD Hotline received an anonymous complaint that he “made two employees cry” and “berated and yelled at his employees.” Two days later, two other anonymous complaints that said Cutrone “verbally abused” his employees were referred to the IG to investigate.

    Cutrone resigned from his position in January 2021, before the IG began its investigation in February 2021.

    The IG ultimately interviewed 31 witnesses who worked with Cutrone; of those 31, four people used “positive terms” to describe his leadership like “hard working,” “ambitious,” “charismatic,” and “energetic.”

    All 31 witnesses, however, including the four that used positive terms, described his leadership style negatively, using terms like “combative,” “bully,” “overly abrasive,” and “unprofessional.”

    Witnesses said that Cutrone ignored Covid-19 mitigation policies in the Pentagon, regularly disregarding a policy that required masks in the building and telling subordinates they didn’t need to social distance. One witness said that Cutrone would “remove his mask to show them how mad he was,” the IG report said.

    Witnesses also told the IG that Cutrone “started a culture of gossip,” asking staff about other employees and was “publicly denigrating” of those who worked for him in front of their coworkers. People told investigators they felt “miserable and depressed all the time,” were facing “abuse every day” that “exhausted” them and found that they were bending themselves “in knots trying to determine the formulation of language that will not in some way raise the ire of [M]r. Cutrone.”

    Presented with comments from employees about the impact of his leadership, Cutrone told investigators he “tried to build a strong team” and “tried to do good by people.”

    “I always tried to just be a strong collegial team member … and I’m sorry that I ever made people feel on edge and uncertain about what kind of engagement they were going to get,” he said.

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  • US fighter jets responded to an aircraft with an unresponsive pilot near DC. The aircraft ultimately crashed in Virginia | CNN

    US fighter jets responded to an aircraft with an unresponsive pilot near DC. The aircraft ultimately crashed in Virginia | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    US F-16 fighter jets caused a sonic boom across the Washington, DC, region Sunday as they scrambled to reach an unresponsive aircraft that ultimately crashed in Virginia, officials said.

    A US official said the F-16s did not shoot down the aircraft and that it is typical for the Federal Aviation Administration to call in jets if someone is flying unsafely.

    The pilot of the civilian aircraft was unresponsive as the F-16 fighter jets attempted to make contact, according to a news release from the Continental US North American Aerospace Defense Command Region.

    The F-16 jets were “authorized to travel at supersonic speeds,” which resulted in the sonic boom heard in the Washington, DC, area.

    The F-16s used flares “in an attempt to draw attention from the pilot,” the release added.

    The civilian aircraft, a Cessna 560 Citation V, was intercepted by the NORAD jets around 3:20 p.m. and ultimately crashed near the George Washington National Forest in Virginia.

    “The pilot was unresponsive and the Cessna subsequently crashed near the George Washington National Forest, Virginia,” the release said. “NORAD attempted to establish contact with the pilot until the aircraft crashed.”

    Four people were on board the aircraft, which overshot its planned destination by 315 miles before crashing, sources familiar with the investigation said.

    Search efforts were still underway by state and local authorities Sunday evening, Virginia State Police told CNN.

    State police were notified around 3:50 p.m. of a possible aircraft crash in the Staunton/Blue Ridge Parkway region, the agency said.

    Nothing has been located at this time, it added.

    The National Transportation Safety Board said on Twitter it was investigating the crash.

    The military aircraft caused a sonic boom heard across the Washington, DC, metropolitan region.

    “We are aware of reports from communities throughout the National Capital Region of a loud ‘boom’ this afternoon,” DC Homeland Security & Emergency Management said on Twitter.

    There is no threat at this time, the agency added.

    Earlier, the FAA said in a statement that a Cessna Citation crashed in southwest Virginia Sunday.

    The aircraft took off from Elizabethton Municipal Airport in Elizabethton, Tennessee, and was bound for Long Island MacArthur Airport in New York.

    The aircraft crashed into a mountainous terrain in a “sparsely populated area”, according to FAA.

    The US Capitol Complex was placed on “an elevated alert” when the small aircraft flew near the area on Sunday afternoon, according to a statement from US Capitol Police.

    “This afternoon, our officials were working closely with our federal partners to monitor an unresponsive pilot who was flying an airplane near the National Capital Region. The U.S. Capitol Complex was briefly placed on an elevated alert until the airplane left the area,” the statement said.

    The US Secret Service said they did not alter their posture for keeping President Joe Biden secure after the incident. Biden was golfing at the Andrews Air Force Base golf course near Joint Base Andrews in Maryland.

    The incident “had no impact on Secret Service,” spokesperson Anthony Guglielmi said in a Sunday statement.

    The President has been briefed on the incident, according to a White House official.

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  • Freedom Caucus member says hard-line group ‘failed’ with passage of ‘Democratic’ debt limit bill | CNN Politics

    Freedom Caucus member says hard-line group ‘failed’ with passage of ‘Democratic’ debt limit bill | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    House Freedom Caucus member Rep. Ken Buck criticized the bipartisan debt ceiling deal reached between House Republicans and the White House as a “Democratic bill,” and said his hard-line, conservative group had “failed” in its efforts to influence legislation more to its liking.

    The caucus “still retains a lot of influence in the House,” the Colorado Republican told CNN’s Dana Bash on “State of the Union” on Sunday. “The key is that we use that influence in a way that brings conservative results. And I think that that’s what we tried to do with this case, and we failed, honestly.”

    “This bill is a Democrat bill. It is a bill that not only avoided a default but also locked in the progressive gains that the president made in the last two years,” he added.

    President Joe Biden signed into law Saturday the legislation to suspend the nation’s debt limit through January 1, 2025, helping avert a first-ever US default. The deal has faced backlash from conservatives and progressives but ultimately won support from a wide array of lawmakers on both sides of the aisle, many of them moderates.

    House Speaker Kevin McCarthy said Sunday he felt good about Biden signing the agreement “because we’re finally spending less than we spent the year before.”

    “We actually got more than you thought in the process you could get at this point,” McCarthy, a California Republican, told Fox News.

    Meanwhile, in a separate interview on “State of the Union,” White House budget chief Shalanda Young, a top debt ceiling negotiator, declined to call the new law an outright win for the Democrats despite suggestions from some in the party that they downplayed their initial approval of the bill to garner more Republican support.

    Biden budget chief: McCarthy was ‘very professional’ in talks

    “At the end of the day, the long view, the short and the medium view is default was not an option. So, not who can win,” Young told Bash when asked about a Democratic congressman saying his party had “rolled” Republicans.

    “I have done this a long time, and we had to talk about the budget at some point this year. And this is about what you would expect to see out of a budget agreement with divided Congress,” Young said.

    Buck said Sunday that while he believes McCarthy has credibility issues following passage of the debt ceiling deal, he’s not sure a vote to oust the California Republican from his speakership – also known as a “motion to vacate” – would happen “right away.”

    “We continue to see the swamp, the folks in Washington, DC, who want to spend more money, winning, and we continue to see the folks who want to spend less money and really act responsibly losing. And so I think that Kevin McCarthy has an issue in a broader sense,” Buck said.

    Among the concessions agreed to by McCarthy to secure his speakership earlier this year was that any member can call for a motion to vacate the speaker’s chair, making it easier to trigger what is effectively a no-confidence vote in the speaker.

    When asked by Bash what would lead him and his colleagues to employ such a move, Buck said that was something that should be done with “consensus” in the House Republican Conference.

    “I don’t think it can be used by just a few people,” he said. “I applaud Kevin McCarthy for saying he wants to bring people back together again. Let’s see if he does that in a way that involves spending responsibly in the future.”

    CNN has previously reported that while some of McCarthy’s fiercest critics have had private discussions about the motion to vacate, there is less appetite among the Freedom Caucus as a whole to go that route with the group’s chairman calling it “premature” in a caucus call earlier this week.

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  • US Postal Service releases national dog bite rankings | CNN

    US Postal Service releases national dog bite rankings | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    California and Texas ranked highest on the United States Postal Service’s annual list of states with the most dog bites against its employees, the USPS announced.

    The report calls attention to the aggressive dog behavior mail carriers often face as the USPS kicks off National Dog Bite Awareness Week.

    In 2022, California had the highest number of dog bites with 675. Texas and New York were not far behind with 404 and 321 bites, respectively, the Postal Service reported.

    “When our mail carriers are bitten, it is usually a ‘good dog’ that had not previously behaved in a menacing way,” USPS Occupational Safety and Health Senior Director Linda DeCarlo said in a news release.

    Houston, Los Angeles and Dallas ranked highest among US cities with the most dog attacks against USPS workers last year, according to the USPS.

    More than 5,300 USPS employees were attacked by dogs during mail deliveries last year, according to the Postal Service.

    The annual public service awareness campaign, accompanied by the hashtag #dogbiteawareness, runs through next week.

    “When letter carriers deliver mail in our communities, dogs that are not secured or leashed can become a nemesis and unpredictable and attack,” Leeann Theriault, USPS employee safety and health awareness manager, said in the release.

    The USPS trains its mail carriers not to startle dogs, to avoid petting or feeding them and to place something between themselves and the animal – like their mail satchel – if a dog does attack, the postal said in a news release.

    Since most people know the general time their mail arrives each day, the USPS advised keeping dogs secure before Postal Service employees stop by.

    Other advice for dog owners, according to the USPS: Place pets on a leash, keep them in the house or behind a fence and make sure they’re away from the door.

    The Postal Service also advises parents to not allow children to take mail directly from mail carriers, as the dog may view it as a threat to the child’s safety.

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  • Employers are preparing for a recession, but that doesn’t always mean layoffs | CNN Business

    Employers are preparing for a recession, but that doesn’t always mean layoffs | CNN Business

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    Minneapolis
    CNN
     — 

    Areas of the US economy have started to crack under the weight of persistently high inflation and a string of 10 consecutive rate hikes from the Federal Reserve.

    But despite all that, the labor market has kept humming right along. And that’s largely expected to be the case, again, in Friday’s monthly jobs report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

    Economists are forecasting a net gain of 190,000 jobs for May, according to Refinitiv. While that would mark a significant retreat from April’s surprisingly strong 253,000 jobs added, it would land slightly above the average monthly gains seen during the strong labor market in the years leading up to the pandemic.

    Economists are also expecting the unemployment rate to tick back up to 3.5%. The US jobless rate has hovered at decade-lows for more than a year, with the current 3.4% rate matching a 53-year low hit in January.

    Private sector employment increased by 278,000 jobs in May, according to ADP’s monthly National Employment Report, frequently seen as a proxy for the government’s official number. That’s significantly higher than estimates of 170,000 jobs added but slightly below the previous month’s revised total of 291,000.

    Additional labor market data released Thursday showed that initial weekly jobless claims for the week ended May 27 totaled 232,000, almost no change from the previous week’s revised total of 230,000 applications.

    “In the last few months, the job market has continued to defy gravity, adding a steady clip of jobs and holding unemployment at historically low levels despite a backdrop of rising interest rates, banking turmoil, tech layoffs and debt ceiling negotiations,” Daniel Zhao, lead economist at employment review and search site Glassdoor, wrote in a note this week. “After a healthy April jobs report, May is likely to repeat with an equally strong performance.”

    Consumer spending and the labor market — two ares of strength in the economy — have, in a way, continued to feed on themselves.

    Last week, a Commerce Department report showed that not only did the Fed’s preferred inflation gauge heat up in April but so did consumer spending. Economists largely attributed consumers’ resilience to the healthy labor market as well as ample dry powder stockpiled from home refinances and from the temporary pause in student loan payments.

    In turn, that’s kept businesses busy.

    “With demand for goods and services holding up, employers who have been cautious and have been very nervous about over-hiring are — when push comes to shove — having to keep hiring just to keep pace with business activity,” Julia Pollak, chief economist for online employment marketplace ZipRecruiter, told CNN. “They’re very worried about a recession later this year, but they need to keep hiring today to provide the pizzas that people are demanding and to prevent flights being canceled.”

    She added: “Companies have also learned the hard way how costly staffing shortages can be.”

    But labor shortages are becoming far less acute: This past Memorial Day weekend, 1% of flights were canceled, Pollak said, noting that cancellations were fivefold higher a year before.

    “And while that’s a good news story — the end of shortages and disruptions during the pandemic is good for most consumers and good for businesses — it does come at some cost, which is a measurable decline in worker and job seeker leverage,” she said.

    Labor turnover data released Wednesday showed that the US employment market remained tight in April.

    Job openings bounced up to 10.1 million positions, bucking economists’ predictions for a fourth-consecutive monthly decline, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey report. The jump brought the ratio of vacancies to unemployed to almost 1.8, which is well above a range of 1.0 to 1.2 that is considered consistent with a balanced labor market, according to Michael Feroli, JPMorgan chief US economist.

    Although the April JOLTS data showed that fewer people were voluntarily quitting their jobs, the amount of layoffs and discharges dropped during the month, suggesting that employers are continuing to hoard workers, noted economist Matthew Martin of Oxford Economics.

    While monthly job gains haven’t tailed off as much as anticipated to this point, there is a notable slowdown that’s occurred from the blockbuster job gains of the past three years.

    But whether the softening is a sign of a return to pre-pandemic form or perhaps of a downswing into a downturn, remains to be seen.

    Some of the traditional recession indicators have been flashing red. Layoff announcements have quadrupled so far this year to 417,500, which — excluding 2020 — is the highest January to May total since 2009, according to a report from Challenger, Gray & Christmas released Thursday. Falling consumer confidence, monthly declines in the Conference Board’s Leading Economic Index, and drops in temporary help employment are also signaling that a downturn is just ahead. However, that long-predicted recession isn’t here just yet.

    “We were in such an unusual place during the pandemic with some of those indicators at completely extraordinary heights that they have experienced extraordinary declines,” Pollak said. “But those declines were just a return to normal, not a contraction, and it’s not a recession.”

    The government’s May jobs report is scheduled for Friday at 8:30 a.m. ET.

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