ReportWire

Tag: iab-war and conflicts

  • Two Russians claiming to be former Wagner commanders admit killing children and civilians in Ukraine | CNN

    Two Russians claiming to be former Wagner commanders admit killing children and civilians in Ukraine | CNN

    [ad_1]



    CNN
     — 

    Two Russian men who claim to be former Wagner Group commanders have told a human rights activist that they killed children and civilians during their time in Ukraine.

    The claims were made in video interviews with Gulagu.net, a human rights organization targeting corruption and torture in Russia.

    In the video interviews posted online, former Russian convicts Azamat Uldarov and Alexey Savichev – who were both pardoned by Russian presidential decrees last year, according to Gulagu.net – described their actions in Ukraine, during Russia’s invasion.

    CNN cannot independently verify their claims or identities in the videos but has obtained Russian penal documents showing they were released on presidential pardon in September and August of 2022.

    Uldarov, who appears to have been drinking, details how he shot and killed a five- or six-year-old girl.

    “(It was) a management decision. I wasn’t allowed to let anyone out alive, because my command was to kill anything in my way,” he said.

    According to Gulagu.net, the testimonies were given to founder and Russian dissident Vladimir Osechkin over the span of a week. It said Uldarov and Savichev were in Russia when they spoke.

    “I want Russia and other nations to know the truth. I don’t want war and bloodshed. You see I’m holding a cigarette in this hand. I followed orders with this hand and killed children,” Uldarov said, describing his motivation for the interview.

    The Wagner Group is a Russian private mercenary organization fighting in Ukraine, headed by Russian oligarch Yevgeny Prigozhin.

    It has recruited tens of thousands of fighters from Russian jails, offering freedom and cash after a six-month tour. It’s estimated by Western intelligence officials and prison advocacy groups that between 40,000 and 50,000 men were recruited.

    Uldarov said in the eastern Ukrainian cities of Soledar and Bakhmut – which have seen some of the fiercest fighting – Wagner mercenaries “were given the command to annihilate everyone.”

    “There is a superior over all the commanders – it’s Prigozhin, who told us not to let anyone get out of there and annihilate everyone,” he added. CNN has previously reported on former Wagner fighters making similar claims.

    Uldarov has since appeared to recant his account in a video call with Prigozhin-linked Russian news agency RIA-FAN.

    At one point in the interview, Savichev described how they “got the order to execute any men who were 15 years or older.”

    He also talked about getting orders to ‘sweep’ a house. “It doesn’t matter whether there is a civilian there or not. The house needs to be swept. I didn’t give a f**k who was inside,” he said.

    “Whether a hut or a house, the point was to make sure that there wasn’t a single living person left inside,” he said. “You can condemn me for this. I will not object. It’s your right. But I wanted to live, too.”

    Savichev said Wagner fighters who did not follow orders were killed.

    Wagner Group chief Prigozhin confirmed on his Telegram channel that he had watched parts of the video, and threatened retribution against the two former Wagner fighters. “As for what (Osechkin) filmed, I looked at the pieces of video I managed to see,” he said. “I can say the following: if at least one of these accusations against me is confirmed, I am ready to be held accountable according to any laws.”

    But Prigozhin said that “if none is confirmed, I will send a list of 30-40 people who are spitting at me like Osechkin (there is a whole list of them, including the scum that fled Russia) that the Prosecutor General’s Office of Ukraine is obligated to hand over to me for a ‘fair trial,’ so to speak.”

    “They will not be “civilians” for us, and especially not children, whom we have never touched and do not touch. This is a flagrant lie. These people (spreading the lies) are our enemies, and we will deal with them in a special way.”

    Earlier, Prigozhin said on Telegram: “Regarding the execution of children, of course, no one ever shoots civilians or children, absolutely no one needs this. We came there to save them from the regime they were under.”

    Andriy Yermak, head of the Ukrainian president’s office, said in a tweet Monday that the group must be held accountable.

    “Russian terrorists confessed to numerous murders of Ukrainian children in Bakhmut and Soledar. Confession is not enough. There must be a punishment. Tough and fair. And it will definitely be. How many more crimes like these have been committed?” he said.

    In February, CNN spoke to two former Wagner fighters who described how recruited Wagner convicts are pushed to the front lines in a human wave, reminiscent of World War I charges. Deserters, or those who refuse orders are killed and there was no evacuation of the wounded, they said.

    In January, US Treasury Department designated Wagner Group as a significant transnational criminal organization, and imposed a slew of fresh sanctions on a transnational network that supports it.

    The US Department of State concurrently announced a number of sanctions meant to “target a range of Wagner’s key infrastructure – including an aviation firm used by Wagner, a Wagner propaganda organization, and Wagner front companies,” according to US Secretary of State Antony Blinken.

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • Fact check: Trump falsely claims Putin didn’t boast of Russia’s nuclear might during the Trump presidency | CNN Politics

    Fact check: Trump falsely claims Putin didn’t boast of Russia’s nuclear might during the Trump presidency | CNN Politics

    [ad_1]


    Washington
    CNN
     — 

    Former President Donald Trump has tried to mount an argument that he was a formidable deterrent to Russian President Vladimir Putin, the foreign leader Trump has for years been criticized for praising and defending. But Trump has been making a demonstrably false claim to support his case.

    On Friday, in a speech to a National Rifle Association conference in Indianapolis, Trump said that leaders should never use the word “nuclear,” which he described as one of two forbidden “N-words,” but that, under President Joe Biden, Putin has started boasting of Russia’s nuclear capabilities.

    “Now it’s talked about every single day, including by Putin. He goes, ‘You know, we’re a great nuclear power.’ He says that publicly now – he never said that when I was here,” Trump said. “Because you don’t talk about it. It’s too destructive. You don’t talk about it. Now they’re talking about it all the time.”

    Trump made a broader claim in a video statement in late January, declaring that the word “nuclear” wasn’t even mentioned while he was in the White House.

    “If you take a look right now, the ‘nuclear’ word is being mentioned all the time. This is a word that you’re not allowed to use. It was never used during the Trump administration. But now other countries are using that word against us because they have no respect for our leadership,” Trump said then.

    Facts First: Trump’s claims are false. During his time in the White House, Putin repeatedly referred to Russia as a “major nuclear power” – in fact, Putin called both Russia and the US “major nuclear powers” as he stood beside Trump at a joint press conference in 2018 – while warning of the catastrophic consequences of a nuclear war and boasting about what he claimed were Russia’s nuclear capabilities.

    During a speech in 2018, Putin touted Russia’s nuclear weapons in detail (including a nuclear-capable hypersonic missile he claimed was “invincible”), told the world to “listen now” after supposedly ignoring Russia’s “nuclear potential” in the past, and played a video depiction of nuclear warheads raining down on what appeared to be the state of Florida, home of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence and resort. Trump sharply criticized Putin over the video in a phone call later in the month, the news outlet Axios reported in 2018.

    Putin issued a particularly dramatic warning about nuclear war at a forum later in 2018. Repeating his usual line about how he would only use nuclear weapons upon learning of an attack on Russia, he continued, according to a Moscow Times translation, “An aggressor should know that vengeance is inevitable, that he will be annihilated, and we would be the victims of the aggression. We will go to heaven as martyrs, and they will just drop dead. They will not even have time to repent for this.”

    Simon Saradzhyan, founding director of the Russia Matters project at the Harvard Kennedy School, said in an email on Monday: “Putin has repeatedly referred to Russia as a ‘nuclear power’ as well as ‘nuclear superpower’ since being elected to the post [of] president of Russia in 2000. Such references did not stop when Trump came to power and they continued after Trump left the White House.”

    Saradzhyan said his impression is that “Putin began to refer to Russia’s status of a nuclear power more frequently after Feb. 24, 2022,” when Russia invaded Ukraine, “and he used stronger language in an effort to (a) intimidate Ukraine into suing for peace; and (b) deter the US and its allies from greater/direct involvement in the war.” He said Putin toned down his language at least somewhat last fall after Chinese President Xi Jinping called for an end to nuclear threats related to Ukraine.

    Regardless, it’s clearly not true that Putin “never” boasted of Russia’s nuclear might, or spoke of nuclear war, under Trump.

    “Trump is incorrect here,” Pavel Podvig, senior researcher at the UN Institute for Disarmament Research and director of the Russian Nuclear Forces Project research initiative, said in an interview on Monday. “You cannot say that during the Trump presidency, Putin never mentioned nuclear war or anything like that.” Podvig described the 2018 speech in which Putin touted Russia’s missile capabilities as “one big boast.”

    Podvig said the context around Putin’s comments on nuclear weapons is obviously different now, given the war in Ukraine, but that “fundamentally there was no change” in Putin’s message between the Trump era and the Biden era: Russia would have the means to respond and would respond to a US attack.

    Putin’s boasts under Trump about Russia’s supposed nuclear capabilities were explicit and numerous, though his assertions about Russia’s weaponry were often greeted with skepticism by US officials and outside experts.

    For example, in January 2020, Putin said, according to the official Kremlin translation, “For the first time ever – I want to emphasize this – for the first time in the history of nuclear missile weapons, including the Soviet period and modern times, we are not catching up with anyone, but, on the contrary, other leading states have yet to create the weapons that Russia already possesses.” (Kremlin translations sometimes differ in grammar and vocabulary from independent translations of Putin’s remarks.)

    In December 2018, Putin criticized the US withdrawal from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty under President George W. Bush and said, according to the official translation: “After that, we were forced to respond by developing new weapons systems that could breach these ABM systems. Now, we hear that Russia has gained an advantage. Yes, this is true.” He also issued his standard warning against nuclear war, saying it “might destroy the whole of civilization or perhaps the entire planet.”

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • ‘We left behind children in incubators:’ Witnesses describe hospital shelled in Sudan’s clashes | CNN

    ‘We left behind children in incubators:’ Witnesses describe hospital shelled in Sudan’s clashes | CNN

    [ad_1]



    CNN
     — 

    As fighting between warring factions has engulfed Sudan in recent days, hospitals treating people wounded in clashes have themselves become the targets for attacks, dealing the nation’s healthcare sector a devastating blow.

    In one episode, five eyewitnesses told CNN that the paramilitary group battling Sudan’s military for control of the country besieged and shelled a hospital in the capital Khartoum on Sunday, leaving at least one child dead and sending panicked medical staff fleeing for their lives.

    The leaders of the opposing sides, Sudan’s military leader Abdel Fattah al-Burhan and his former deputy and paramilitary chief Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, have traded blame for instigating the fighting that has spread across the country since Saturday. Burhan has accused Dagalo of staging an “attempted coup”; Dagolo has in turn called Burhan a “criminal.”

    But at al-Moallem hospital in central Khartoum, where intense shelling forced staffers to evacuate, leaving some patients behind, witnesses said they have little doubt about what happened.

    “I have no doubt that they deliberately targeted the hospital,” said one medic who evacuated the hospital on Sunday after Dagalo’s paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) laid siege to it. CNN is not using any of the real names of the hospital medics in this article for safety reasons.

    The hospital is meters away from Sudan’s army headquarters, which the RSF has made repeated attempts to take over. Medics said it was treating scores of wounded army soldiers and their families. The hospital’s maternity ward was struck in the shelling, causing a wall there to collapse, according to hospital employees.

    A 6-year-old child died in the building, one medic said. Two other children were seriously wounded. As the shelling intensified, medics and patients huddled together in the corridor and prayed.

    At first we were praying for salvation,” the medic said. “Then when the shelling got worse, we started to discuss what would be the most painless part of the body to be shot in and began to pray instead to die painlessly.”

    It’s unclear whether the RSF has taken control of the hospital as it attempts to take over the nearby army headquarters, a flashpoint in Khartoum’s violence.

    “The evacuation was chaos,” the medic said. “I thought I was going to vomit. I was stumbling and falling on the ground.”

    “Can you believe that we left the hospital and left behind children in incubators and patients in intensive care without any medical personnel,” another medic said. “The smell of death was everywhere.”

    “There was no electricity, no water there inside the hospital,” said a third medic. “None of our equipment was working, a woman sheltering with us had a two-day-old baby. I don’t even know what happened to her.”

    At least half a dozen hospitals have been struck by both warring sides, according to Sudan’s Doctors Trade Union.

    “Sudan’s hospitals under fire,” the Central Committee of Sudan doctors said in a statement on its Facebook page, warning of the potential collapse of the health sector if clashes continue.

    “Most of the large and specialized hospitals are out of service as a result of being forcibly evacuated by the conflicting military forces or being targeted by bombing and others. Some other hospitals have been cut off from human and medical supplies, water and electricity,” the committee said.

    Doctors Without Borders said its teams were “trapped by the ongoing heavy fighting and are unable to access warehouses to deliver vital medical supplies to hospitals,” and that its premises in Nyala, South Sarfur, had been looted.

    Smoke billows above residential buildings in Khartoum on April 16, 2023, as fighting in Sudan raged for a second day.

    Food, water and power shortages are rampant as Sudan has endured a third day of fighting, that has spread from Khartoum across the nation.

    “Food in the fridge and freezers have gone bad,” Eman Abu Garjah, a Sudanese-British doctor based in Khartoum, told CNN. “We don’t have any supplies at the moment, that’s why we’re trying to go somewhere where the shops are open.”

    “The planes were flying overhead earlier in the day. They didn’t just wake us up, they prevented us from going back to sleep,” she said.

    “It’s Ramadan, we’re up for early morning prayers and after that usually you have a little bit of a siesta and wake up again for the afternoon prayers. But sleep was just not possible. The house was rattling and the windows were shaking.”

    Until recently, Dagalo and Burhan were allies. The pair worked together to topple ousted Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir in 2019 and played a pivotal role in the military coup in 2021.

    However, tensions arose during recent negotiations to integrate the RSF into the country’s military as part of plans to restore civilian rule.

    In an interview with CNN on Monday, Burhan accused Dagalo of attempting to “capture and kill” him during an attempt by the paramilitary leader to seize the presidential palace.

    In response to the allegation, an RSF spokesperson called Burhan, “a wanted fugitive.”

    “We are seeking to capture him and bringing him to justice. We are fighting for all Sudanese people,” the RSF spokesperson said.

    Burhan also accused the RSF of breaking a proposed ceasefire on Sunday and Monday.

    This satellite image provided by Maxar Technologies shows two burning planes at Khartoum International Airport, Sudan, Sunday April 16, 2023.

    “Yesterday and today a humanitarian ceasefire proposal was put forward and agreed upon,” said Burhan from army headquarters, as gunshots rang out in the background.

    “Sadly, he did not abide by (the ceasefire),” he added. “You can hear right now the attempts to storm the Army headquarters, and indiscriminate mortar attacks. He’s using the humanitarian pause to continue the fight.”

    The RSF denies that it broke ceasefire.

    It is unclear how much control the RSF has wrested from the country’s military. Dagalo claims he now controls the country’s main military sites, a claim repeatedly disputed by Burhan.

    “We’re under attack from all directions,” Dagalo told CNN’s Larry Madowo in a telephone interview on Sunday. “We stopped fighting and the other side did not, which put us in a predicament and we had to keep fighting to defend ourselves,” he claimed.

    The RSF is the preeminent paramilitary group in Sudan, whose leader, Dagalo, has enjoyed a rapid rise to power.

    During Sudan’s Darfur conflict, starting in the early 2000s, he was the leader of Sudan’s notorious Janjaweed forces, implicated in human rights violations and atrocities.

    An international outcry saw ex-President Bashir formalize the group into paramilitary forces known as the Border Intelligence Units.

    Smoke is seen rising from a neighborhood in Khartoum, Sudan, Saturday, April 15, 2023.

    In 2007, its troops became part of the country’s intelligence services and, in 2013, Bashir created the RSF, a paramilitary group overseen by him and led by Dagalo. Dagalo turned against Bashir in 2019.

    Months before the coup that unseated Bashir in April 2019, Dagalo’s forces opened fire on an anti-Bashir, pro-democracy sit-in in Khartoum, killing at least 118 people.

    He was later appointed deputy of the transitional Sovereign Council that ruled Sudan in partnership with civilian leadership.

    International powers have expressed alarm at the current violence in Sudan. Apart from concerns over civilians there are likely other motivations at play, the country is resource-rich and strategically located. CNN has previously reported on how Russia has colluded with its military leaders to smuggle gold out of Sudan.

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • FBI arrests two alleged Chinese agents and charges dozens with working inside US to silence dissidents | CNN Politics

    FBI arrests two alleged Chinese agents and charges dozens with working inside US to silence dissidents | CNN Politics

    [ad_1]



    CNN
     — 

    The FBI has arrested two alleged Chinese agents and federal prosecutors have charged dozens of others with working to silence and harass dissidents within the United States – with some even operating an “undeclared police station” in New York City.

    Lu Jianwang and Chen Jinping allegedly operated the police station in New York City’s Chinatown. Both men are US citizens and have been charged with conspiring to act as agents of the Chinese government and obstructing justice. The police station has been shut down since a search warrant was executed at the location last fall, according to John Marzulli, a spokesman for the US Attorney in the Eastern District of New York.

    The two men appeared in court Monday, with Lu being released on a $250,000 bond and Chen on a $400,000 bond. They are not permitted to travel within half a mile of the Chinese consulate nor mission or communicate with co-conspirators. Neither has entered a plea.

    Lu retained counsel but was represented in the proceeding by a public defender, and a public defender was appointed to represent Chen. Both of the public defenders at the hearing declined to comment.

    The Justice Department also announced charges against 34 officers of the national police of the People’s Republic of China with harassing Chinese nationals in the US critical of the Chinese government.

    All 34 are believed to live in China and remain at large, according to Justice Department. The officers were part of an effort by the Chinese government called the “912 Special Project Working Group” to influence global perceptions of the People’s Republic of China, or PRC.

    The agents allegedly used social media to post favorably about the PRC and to attack their “perceived adversaries,” including the United States and Chinese pro-democracy activists around the world, the Justice Department said. The illegal police operation is the “first known overseas police station in the United States” set up on behalf of the Chinese Ministry of Public Security, or MPS, the Justice Department said.

    The agents were allegedly directed by the MPS to create and maintain accounts that looked like they were run by American citizens. Topics of their propaganda machine include US foreign policy, human rights issues in Hong Kong, the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Covid-19 and racial justice protests following the murder of George Floyd, according to prosecutors.

    Agents also posted videos and articles targeting Chinese pro-democracy advocates in the US, the Justice Department alleged, some of which included explicit death threats. In addition, the agents allegedly used threats to intimidate people into skipping pro-democracy protests within the United States.

    “The PRC, through its repressive security apparatus, established a secret physical presence in New York City to monitor and intimidate dissidents and those critical of its government,” Assistant Attorney General Matthew Olsen said in a statement. “The PRC’s actions go far beyond the bounds of acceptable nation-state conduct. We will resolutely defend the freedoms of all those living in our country from the threat of authoritarian repression.”

    In another case, federal prosecutors allege that an executive at a videoconferencing company conspired with others to disrupt a meeting on the platform commemorating the Tiananmen Square Massacre at the direction of the Chinese government.

    Though the videoconferencing company was not named in court documents, CNN has previously reported the company is Zoom.

    The executive, Xinjiang “Julien” Jin, was previously charged by the Justice Department for the alleged plot. The new complaint adds charges against nine additional individuals, including six Ministry of Public Security officers and two officials with the Cyberspace Administration of China.

    According to the Justice Department, the executive, who is based in China, and his codefendants repeatedly sought in 2018 to interfere with video calls organized by a Chinese dissident living in New York City after a request from the Chinese government to do so. Jin also tried to identify any other account associated with that dissident and place them in a server with lagging response times, prosecutors say.

    In 2019, Jin and his codefendants allegedly worked with the Chinese government to block accounts seeking to commemorate the Tiananmen Square Massacre.

    According to court documents, the secret police station was set up in early 2022 to identify, track and intimidate Chinese dissidents within the United States.

    Prosecutors say one such victim was an unnamed person living in California who was a “PRC dissident and PRC pro-democracy advocate” who “reported to the FBI that he/she served as an adviser to a 2022 congressional candidate from New York State” who also was the target of a PRC pressure campaign.

    That victim told the FBI that they have received threatening phone calls and social media messages from people they believe are associated with the Chinese government, and that person’s car was broken into immediately after that person gave a pro-democracy speech.

    During an interview with the FBI, Lu said that he had established the office, which he called an “oversees service center,” to help Chinese nationals living in the United States “renew Chinese government documents.” Lu told investigators during the interview that Chen acted as the primary point of contact with officials back in China.

    During a separate interview, Chen initially denied having any direct contact with the Chinese government, according to court documents, though he later recanted.

    Investigators say that during that interview, Chen took a seven-minute bathroom break, during which an agent repeatedly warned him through the bathroom door not to delete anything on his phone. When agents later searched the phone, they found that chat logs with MPS officials had been cleared.

    Both Lu and Chen later acknowledged deleting messages between themselves and their liaison in the MPS, according to court documents.

    This story has been updated with additional details.

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • Hospitals under attack as fighting grips Sudanese capital for third day | CNN

    Hospitals under attack as fighting grips Sudanese capital for third day | CNN

    [ad_1]



    CNN
     — 

    Intense fighting has gripped Sudan for a third day and hospitals are under attack from missiles as they battle to save lives, amid a bloody tussle for power that has left close to 100 people dead and injured hundreds more.

    Clashes first erupted Saturday between the country’s military and the paramilitary group Rapid Support Forces (RSF), led by Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, also known as Hemedti, who told CNN on Sunday the army had broken a UN-brokered temporary humanitarian ceasefire.

    On Monday, residents in the capital Khartoum endured sounds of artillery and bombardment by warplanes with eyewitnesses telling CNN they heard mortars in the early hours. The fighting intensifying after dawn prayers in the direction of Khartoum International Airport and Sudanese Army garrison sites.

    Hospitals in the country – which are short of blood supplies and life-saving equipment – are being targeted with military strikes by both the Army and the RSF, according to eyewitness accounts to CNN and two doctors’ organizations, leaving medical personnel unable to reach the wounded and to bury the dead.

    One doctor at a Khartoum hospital – whom CNN is not naming for security reasons – said his facility has been targeted since Saturday. “A direct strike hit the maternity ward. We could hear heavy weaponry and lay on the floor, along with our patients. The hospital itself was under attack.”

    CNN has reached out to the Sudanese military and the RSF for comment.

    Another doctor at the same al-Moallem Hospital told CNN that hospital staff stayed on site under bombardment from the RSF for two days, before being evacuated by the Sudanese military. “We were living in a real battle,” the doctor said. “Can you believe that we left the hospital and left behind children in incubators and patients in intensive care without any medical personnel? I can’t believe that I survived dying at the hospital, where the smell of death is everywhere.”

    Hemedti said Monday his group will pursue the leader of Sudan’s Armed Forces Abdel Fattah al-Burhan “and bring him to justice,” while Sudan’s army called on paramilitary fighters to defect and join the armed forces.

    Verified video footage shows military jets and helicopters hitting the airport; other clips show the charred remains of the army’s General Command building nearby after it was engulfed in fire on Sunday.

    Residents in neighborhoods east of the airport told CNN they saw warplanes bombing sites east of the command. “We saw explosions and smoke rising from Obaid Khatim Street, and immediately after that, anti-aircraft artillery fired massively towards the planes,” one eyewitness said.

    Amid the chaos, both parties to the fighting are working to portray a sense of control in the capital. The armed forces said Monday the Rapid Support Forces are circulating “lies to mislead the public,” reiterating the army have “full control of all of their headquarters” in the capital Khartoum.

    Sudan’s national state television channel came back on air on Monday, a day after going dark, and is broadcasting messages in support of the army.

    A banner on the channel said “the armed forces were able to regain control of the national broadcaster after repeated attempts by the militias to destroy its infrastructure.” Although the armed forces appear to have control of the television signal, CNN cannot independently verify that the army is in physical control of the Sudan TV premises.

    A satellite image provided by Maxar Technologies shows two burning planes at Khartoum International Airport on Sunday.

    A banner on the channel said “the armed forces were able to regain control of the national broadcaster after repeated attempts by the militias to destroy its infrastructure.”

    In the Kafouri area, north of Khartoum, clashes and street fights broke out at dawn Monday, prompting residents to begin evacuating women and children from the area, Sudanese journalist Fathi Al-Ardi wrote on Facebook. In the Kalakla area, south of the capital, residents reported the walls of their houses shaking from explosions.

    Reports also emerged of battles hundreds of miles away in the eastern city of Port Sudan and the western Darfur region over the weekend.

    As of Monday, at least 97 people have been killed, according to the Preliminary Committee of Sudanese Doctors trade union. Earlier on Sunday, the World Health Organization estimated more than 1,126 were injured.

    The WHO has warned that doctors and nurses are struggling to reach people in need of urgent care, and are lacking essential supplies.

    “Supplies distributed by WHO to health facilities prior to this recent escalation of conflict are now exhausted, and many of the nine hospitals in Khartoum receiving injured civilians are reporting shortages of blood, transfusion equipment, intravenous fluids, medical supplies, and other life-saving commodities,” the organization said on Sunday.

    Water and power cuts are affecting the functionality of health facilities, and shortages of fuel for hospital generators are also being reported,” the WHO added.

    In the CNN interview, Dagalo blamed the military for starting the conflict and claimed RSF “had to keep fighting to defend ourselves.”

    He speculated that the army chief and his rival, al-Burhan, had lost control of the military. When asked if his endgame was to rule Sudan, Dagalo said he had “no such intentions,” and that there should be a civilian government.

    Amid the fighting, civilians have been warned to stay indoors. One local resident tweeted that they were “trapped inside our own homes with little to no protection at all.”

    “All we can hear is continuous blast after blast. What exactly is happening and where we don’t know, but it feels like it’s directly over our heads,” they wrote.

    Access to information is also limited, with the government-owned national TV channel now off the air. Television employees told CNN that it is in the hands of the RSF.

    The conflict has put other countries and organizations on high alert, with the United Nations’ World Food Program temporarily halting all operations in Sudan after three employees were killed in clashes on Saturday.

    UN and other humanitarian facilities in Darfur have been looted, while a WFP-managed aircraft was seriously damaged by gunfire in Khartoum, impeding the WFP’s ability to transport aid and workers within the country, the international aid agency said.

    Qatar Airways announced Sunday it was temporarily suspending flights to and from Khartoum due to the closure of its airport and airspace.

    On Sunday, Dagalo told CNN the RSF was in control of the airport, as well as several other government buildings in the capital.

    Meanwhile, Mexico is working to evacuate its citizens from Sudan, with the country’s foreign minister saying Sunday it is looking to “expedite” their exit.

    The United States embassy in Sudan said Sunday there were no plans for a government-coordinated evacuation yet for Americans in the country, citing the closure of the Khartoum airport. It advised US citizens to stay indoors and shelter in place, adding that it would make an announcement “if evacuation of private US citizens becomes necessary.”

    The fresh clashes have prompted widespread calls for peace and negotiations. The head of the African Union Commission, Moussa Faki, is scheduled to arrive in Khartoum on Monday, in an attempt to stop the fighting.

    US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and UK Foreign Secretary James Cleverly also for an immediate ceasefire.

    “People in Sudan want the military back in the barracks, they want democracy, they want a civilian-led government. Sudan needs to return to that path,” Blinken said, speaking on the sidelines of the G7 foreign minister talks in Japan on Monday.

    The UN’s political mission in Sudan has said the country’s two warring factions have agreed to a “proposal” although it is not yet clear what that entails.

    At the heart of the clashes is a power struggle between the two military leaders, Dagalo and Burhan.

    The pair had worked together to topple ousted Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir in 2019, and played a pivotal role in the military coup in 2021, which ended a power-sharing agreement between the military and civilian groups.

    The military has been in charge of Sudan since then, with Burhan and Dagalo at the helm.

    But recent talks led to cracks in the alliance between the two men. The negotiations have sought to integrate the RSF into the country’s military, as part of the effort to transition to civilian rule.

    Sources in Sudan’s civilian movement and Sudanese military sources told CNN the main points of contention included the timeline for the merger of the forces, the status given to RSF officers in the future hierarchy, and whether RSF forces should be under the command of the army chief, rather than Sudan’s commander-in-chief, who is currently Burhan.

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • Opinion: Why isn’t the House Judiciary Committee looking into red flags about Clarence Thomas? | CNN

    Opinion: Why isn’t the House Judiciary Committee looking into red flags about Clarence Thomas? | CNN

    [ad_1]

    Editor’s Note: Dean Obeidallah, a former attorney, is the host of SiriusXM radio’s daily program “The Dean Obeidallah Show.” Follow him @DeanObeidallah@masto.ai. The opinions expressed in this commentary are his own. View more opinion on CNN.



    CNN
     — 

    On Monday, the GOP-controlled House Judiciary Committee — chaired by Donald Trump ally Rep. Jim Jordan — is set to hold a field hearing in New York City called “Victims of Violent Crime in Manhattan.” A statement bills the hearing as an examination of how, the Judiciary Committee says, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s policies have “led to an increase in violent crime and a dangerous community for New York City residents.”

    In response, Bragg’s office slammed Jordan’s hearing as “a political stunt” while noting that data released by the New York Police Department shows crime is down in Manhattan with respect to murders, burglaries, robberies and more through April 2, compared with the same period last year.

    In reality, this Jordan-led hearing isn’t about stopping crime but about defending Trump — who was recently charged by a Manhattan grand jury with 34 felonies. Trump pleaded not guilty to the criminal charges stemming from an investigation into a hush-money payment to an adult film actress. The former president also is facing criminal probes in other jurisdictions over efforts to overturn the 2020 election and his handling of classified documents at Mar-a-Lago.

    Bragg sued Jordan and his committee last week in federal court, accusing the Judiciary Committee chairman of a “transparent campaign to intimidate and attack” his office for its investigation and prosecution of Trump by making demands for confidential documents and testimony.

    While Jordan and his committee appear focused on discrediting the investigation into Trump, why aren’t they looking into two recent bombshell reports by ProPublica that raised red flags about Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas’ financial relationship with GOP megadonor Harlan Crow? After all, the House Judiciary Committee’s website explains that it has jurisdiction over “matters relating to the administration of justice in federal courts” – for which the revelations concerning Thomas fit perfectly.

    First, we learned in early April that Crow had provided Thomas and his wife, Ginni, for decades with luxurious vacations including on the donor’s yacht and private jet to faraway places such as Indonesia and New Zealand. That information was never revealed to the public. (In a rare public statement, Thomas responded he was advised at the time that he did not have to report the trips. The justice said the guidelines for reporting personal hospitality have changed recently. “And, it is, of course, my intent to follow this guidance in the future,” he said.)

    Then on Thursday, ProPublica reported that Thomas failed to disclose a 2014 real estate deal involving the sale of three properties he and his family owned in Savannah, Georgia, to that same GOP megadonor, Crow. One of Crow’s companies made the purchases for $133,363, according to ProPublica. A federal disclosure law passed after Watergate requires Supreme Court justices and other officials to make public the details of most real estate sales over $1,000.

    As ProPublica detailed, the federal disclosure form Thomas filed for that year included a space to report the identity of the buyer in any private transaction, but Thomas left that space blank. Four ethics law experts told ProPublica that Thomas’ failure to report it appears to be a violation of the law. (Thomas did not respond to questions from ProPublica on its report; CNN reached out to the Supreme Court and Thomas for comment.)

    The House Judiciary Committee has long addressed issues such as those surrounding Thomas. In fact, the committee is where investigations and the impeachment of federal judges often commence.

    One recent example came in 2010 with Judge G. Thomas Porteous Jr., whom the committee investigated and recommended for impeachment.

    The committee’s Task Force on Judicial Impeachment said evidence showed Porteous “intentionally made material false statements and representations under penalty of perjury, engaged in a corrupt kickback scheme, solicited and accepted unlawful gifts, and intentionally misled the Senate during his confirmation proceedings.” The Senate later found Porteous guilty of four articles of impeachment and removed him from the bench.

    Yet the Judiciary Committee has neither released statements nor tweets raising alarm bells about Thomas. Instead, its Twitter feed is filled with repeated tweets whining that C-SPAN won’t cover Monday’s New York field hearing. Worse, the committee retweeted GOP Rep. Mary Miller’s tweet defending Thomas as being attacked “because he is a man of deep faith, who loves our country and believes in our Constitution.”

    Jordan’s use of his committee to assist Trump should surprise no one. The House January 6 committee’s report called the Ohio Republican “a significant player in President Trump’s efforts” to overturn the election. The report detailed the lawmaker’s efforts to assist Trump including on “January 2, 2021, Representative Jordan led a conference call in which he, President Trump, and other Members of Congress discussed strategies for delaying the January 6th joint session.” As a result, the January 6 committee subpoenaed Jordan to testify — but he refused to cooperate.

    In contrast with the House panel, the Senate Judiciary Committee — headed by Democrats — announced in the wake of the reporting on Thomas that it plans to hold a hearing “on the need to restore confidence in the Supreme Court’s ethical standards.” Beyond that, Democratic Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island and Rep. Hank Johnson of Georgia sent a letter Friday calling for a referral of Thomas to the US attorney general over “potential violations of the Ethics in Government Act 1978.”

    The House Judiciary Committee’s website notes, “The Committee on the Judiciary has been called the lawyer for the House of Representatives.” Under Jordan that description needs to be updated to state that the Committee on the Judiciary is now “the lawyer for Donald J. Trump.” And the worst part is that the taxpayers are the ones paying for Jordan’s work on Trump’s behalf.

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • A weapons stockpile and asymmetric warfare: how Taiwan could thwart an invasion by China — with America’s help | CNN

    A weapons stockpile and asymmetric warfare: how Taiwan could thwart an invasion by China — with America’s help | CNN

    [ad_1]


    Taipei, Taiwan
    CNN
     — 

    When Taiwan’s President Tsai Ing-wen defied warnings from China to meet with US House Speaker Kevin McCarthy in California earlier this month, Beijing’s aggressive military response reverberated around the world.

    In actions that only fueled fears that communist-ruled China may be preparing to invade its democratically ruled neighbor, the People’s Liberation Army simulated a blockade of the island, sending an aircraft carrier and 12 naval ships to encircle it, and flying over a hundred warplanes into its air defense identification zone during a three-day military drill.

    China’s ruling Communist Party, which claims Taiwan as part of its territory despite never having controlled it, described the drills as “joint precision strikes” that should serve as a “serious warning against the Taiwan separatist forces.”

    The message, in Taipei’s mind, seemed clear. China appeared “to be trying to get ready to launch a war against Taiwan,” the island’s Foreign Minister Joseph Wu told CNN’s Jim Sciutto.

    That blunt assessment will likely have raised doubts in some quarters over whether the island’s military preparations for such a scenario are sufficient.

    Taipei recently – and very publicly – announced an extension to mandatory military service periods from four months to a year and accelerated the development of its indigenous weapons program to boost its combat readiness.

    But analysts say a recent announcement – one that has perhaps gone less remarked upon in the global media – could prove a game-changer: talks between Taipei and the United States to establish a “contingency stockpile” of munitions on Taiwan’s soil.

    In remarks that were not widely picked up at the time, Defense Minister Chiu Kuo-cheng told Taiwan’s parliament in March that Taipei was in discussions with the US over a potential plan to set up a war reserve stock on the island – a measure made possible by a provision in the 2023 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), signed into law by US President Joe Biden last December.

    And while Taiwan has long been a purchaser of weapons from the US, military experts say the creation of such a stockpile could be vital to the island’s defense because – as China’s recently simulated blockade showed – it could be incredibly difficult to supply the island with additional weapons if war does break out.

    Unlike Ukraine, Taiwan has no land borders so any supplies would have to go in by air or sea – delivery methods that would be highly vulnerable to interceptions by the Chinese military.

    It is therefore vital for Taiwan to stock up ammunition on the island before any conflict begins, said Admiral Lee Hsi-min, who served as Chief of the General Staff for the Taiwanese military between 2017 and 2019.

    “Having a war reserve stockpile is crucial and meaningful for Taiwan,” he said. “Even if the United States does not want to intervene directly with military force, those kinds of stockpiles can still be very effective for our defense.”

    Taiwan has also repeatedly raised concerns about delays in US weapon deliveries amid the war in Ukraine. Following his meeting with Tsai, Speaker McCarthy tweeted: “Based on today’s conversations, it’s clear several actions are necessary: We must continue arms sales to Taiwan and make sure such sales reach Taiwan on time.”

    Patriot surface-to-air missile systems at Warsaw Babice Airport in the Bemowo district of Warsaw, Poland, on 06 February, 2023.

    The talks over the possible stockpile beg the question: What exactly does Taiwan need for its defense?

    For decades, the Taiwanese military has been purchasing fighter jets and missiles from the United States, which continues to be the single biggest guarantor of the island’s safety despite not having an “official” diplomatic relationship.

    Last month, the Biden administration made headlines with its approval of potential arms sales to Taiwan worth an estimated $619 million, including hundreds of missiles for its fleet of F-16 fighter jets.

    But Admiral Lee said Taiwan urgently needed to stock up on smaller and more mobile weapons that would have a higher chance of surviving the first wave of a Chinese attack in an all-out conflict – which would likely include long-range joint missile strikes on Taiwanese infrastructure and military targets.

    In a high-profile book published last year, titled “Overall Defense Concept,” Lee argued that Taiwan should shift away from investing heavily in fighter jets and destroyers, as its military assets were already vastly outnumbered by China’s and could easily be paralyzed by long-range missiles.

    Last year, China’s defense budget was $230 billion, more than 13 times the size of Taiwan’s spending of $16.89 billion.

    Admiral Lee Hsi-min, during an interview with CNN in Taipei, Taiwan.

    So instead of matching ship for ship or plane for plane, Lee argued, Taiwan should embrace an asymmetric warfare model focused on the procurement of smaller weapons – such as portable missiles and mines – that are hard to detect but effective in halting enemy advances.

    “In Ukraine, their military has used Neptune anti-ship missiles to sink Moscow’s battleships,” he said. “Asymmetric weapon systems will allow us to maintain our combat capabilities. That is because if our enemies want to destroy them, they will need to get closer to us, which makes them vulnerable to our attack.”

    “If we can establish good enough asymmetrical capability, I believe China won’t be able to take over Taiwan by force, even without United States’ intervention,” he added.

    Though the US maintains close unofficial ties with Taiwan, and is bound by law to sell arms to the island for its self-defense, it remains deliberately vague on whether it would intervene in the event of a Chinese invasion, a policy known as “strategic ambiguity.”

    Under this year’s National Defense Authorization Act, passed by the US Congress and signed by US President Joe Biden, Taiwan will be eligible to receive up to $1 billion in weapons and munitions from the United States to counter China’s growing military threat.

    The act also allows for the creation of a regional contingency stockpile, which would enable the Pentagon to store weapons in Taiwan for use if a military conflict with China arises.

    In a response to CNN for this article, a spokesman at Taiwan’s Ministry of National Defense confirmed it is in discussions with the United States on the definition of a “contingency”, the types of munition that can be operated immediately by its armed forces, and the timeline for shipping the items.

    The ministry added that the move is aimed only at meeting Taiwan’s defensive needs, as opposed to “pre-stocking” munitions on the island.

    The US Indo-Pacific Command declined to provide details about the progress of talks on creating the stockpile but said it would continue to enable Taiwan to maintain a sufficient self-defense capability.

    Meanwhile, China’s Foreign Ministry told CNN that it “resolutely opposes” any military exchanges between the United States and Taiwan, adding that Beijing will take “all necessary measures” to defend its sovereignty and security interests.

    A Javelin anti-tank weapon is fired during a joint military exercise between US and Philippine troops in Fort Magsaysay on April 13, 2023.

    Lin Ying-yu, an assistant professor from Tamkang University who specializes in military affairs, said that if a contingency stockpile were to be created, it should focus on amassing munitions already in use by Taiwan’s military to ensure operational effectiveness.

    “I think some of the weapons that the US might be willing to provide include the Stinger and the Patriot missiles,” he said. The Stinger is a surface-to-air missile that can be fired by a single soldier, while the Patriot missile defense system is capable of intercepting enemy missiles and aircraft.

    Admiral Lee said another weapon that could be stockpiled was the Javelin, a US-made portable anti-tank weapon system that has been widely used by the Ukrainian military to target Russian tanks.

    The National Advanced Surface-to-Air Missile System, or NASAMS, could also be useful for targeting Chinese warplanes, he said, as it was capable of firing the medium-range AIM-120 missile from ground level.

    Other weapons that should be considered included the loitering munition drone – a so-called “suicide drone” that can be carried by a single soldier and is capable of destroying high-value targets – as well as other anti-armor and anti-ship weaponry, he added.

    “If you have a high enough number of these kinds of asymmetrical weapon systems that survive the initial attack, you can keep most of your fighting capabilities intact and stop the enemy from conducting a landing operation,” Lee said.

    Another question that arises is how many weapons or missiles Taiwan would need to defend itself against China.

    Experts said providing a concrete number was difficult because the possible combat scenarios were so varied.

    In his book, Admiral Lee wrote that the Chinese military could resort to different options in attempting to bring Taiwan under its control.

    In an all-out war, China could fire long-range missiles to destroy Taiwanese infrastructure and military targets before attempting to send its ground troops across the Taiwan Strait.

    Other scenarios with limited military action could include an aerial and naval blockade around Taiwan, or the seizure of Taiwan’s small outlying islands that are close to the Chinese coast.

    However, Lin suggested the number of missiles that Taiwan likely needs would be in the “tens of thousands.”

    Taiwan's President Tsai Ing-wen with US House Speaker Kevin McCarthy at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in California on April 5, 2023.

    He said one relatively simple way of calculating the number of missiles required involves estimating the total number of offensive military assets owned by the enemy, and the effectiveness of Taiwan’s defensive weapons. “For example, if our enemy has 1,000 missiles and we have a success rate of 25%, then we will need about 4,000 anti-ballistic missiles.”

    In addition to weapons, Taiwan’s military could benefit from mobile radar systems that would enable it to receive military signals from the US, Lin added. These would be useful in conducting electronic warfare, as the US military would be able to help identify potential enemy targets even if ground radar systems had been destroyed.

    “Even though the United States does not have troops on the ground in Ukraine, it has been able to tell the Ukrainian military where to fire their weapons by sending signals from its electronic warfare aircraft,” Lin said. “We need to make sure we have the necessary equipment to link with US military systems at times of war.”

    There were other reasons the discussions with the US over the possible stockpile were important, Admiral Lee said, and they went beyond issues of storing up ammunition and spare parts.

    “(Having a contingency stockpile) is very crucial, because it sends a signal to China that the United States is determined to assist in our defense,” he said.

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • Sudanese paramilitary group claim control of Presidential Palace | CNN

    Sudanese paramilitary group claim control of Presidential Palace | CNN

    [ad_1]



    CNN
     — 

    The Sudanese paramilitary group the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) say they have taken control of the Presidential Palace, as tensions between the force and the army erupted into violence.

    Heavy fighting has been reported around the Presidential Palace and Army Headquarters in the capital Khartoum, witnesses told CNN.

    A Reuters journalist saw cannon and armored vehicles deployed in streets, and heard the sound of heavy weapons fire near the headquarters of both the army and RSF.

    In a statement, the RSF also claimed control of airports in Khartoum, Marwa and al-Abiad. Flights have been suspended inbound and outbound from the airport in Khartoum.

    The RSF said they were responding to a surprise attack from the army on one of their bases.

    The military has been in charge of Sudan since a coup in 2021, which ended a power sharing arrangement formed following the ousting of long-term former President Omar al-Bashir.

    Talks have been under way on integrating the RSF into the army as part of the move towards the return of civilian rule, Reuters reports.

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • 11 more US troops diagnosed with traumatic brain injury after attacks in Syria last month | CNN Politics

    11 more US troops diagnosed with traumatic brain injury after attacks in Syria last month | CNN Politics

    [ad_1]



    CNN
     — 

    The military identified 11 additional cases of traumatic brain injury following a series of rocket and drone attacks on US troops in Syria in late March, according to a spokesman for US Central Command.

    The new cases bring the number of US personnel wounded in the attacks to a total of 25, including one US contractor who was killed at a facility in northeast Syria on March 23.

    “Our medical teams continue to assess and evaluate our troops for indications of [traumatic brain injury],” said Col. Joe Buccino, spokesman for CENTCOM.

    The series of attacks on US troops in Syria began March 23, when a suicide drone hit a facility near Hasakah in northeast Syria. The drone attack killed one US contractor and injured five US service members and another contractor, the military said at the time. The attack was attributed to militias affiliated with Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC).

    In response, the US carried out a retaliatory airstrike against facilities used by IRGC-affiliated militias. In addition to destroying infrastructure, the attack killed eight militants, according to the Pentagon.

    One day later, the volatile situation escalated further when militant groups believed to be affiliated with Iran launched more attacks on US troops in Syria.

    A series of rockets were fired on US troops at Mission Support Site Conoco, injuring one service member. A short time later, three suicide drones targeted Green Village, another position with US troops. Two of the three drones were downed by air defense systems, while the third damaged a building but caused no injuries.

    One week after the attacks, the Pentagon said six service members had been diagnosed with traumatic brain injuries, but cautioned the number may grow since symptoms develop over time.

    At the time, Pentagon press secretary Brig. Gen. Pat Ryder stressed that the US “will take all necessary measures to defend our troops and our interests overseas.”

    “We do not seek conflict with Iran,” he said, “but we will always protect our people.”

    Mild traumatic brain injury, or concussion, is one of the most common forms of traumatic brain injury among service members. But traumatic brain injuries can also be debilitating; veterans described symptoms of dizziness, confusion, headaches, and irritability after sustaining traumatic brain injuries, as well as changes in personality and balance issues.

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • Biden’s trip to Ireland is part homecoming, part diplomacy and part politics | CNN Politics

    Biden’s trip to Ireland is part homecoming, part diplomacy and part politics | CNN Politics

    [ad_1]


    Belfast, Northern Ireland
    CNN
     — 

    When President Joe Biden was isolating with Covid in the White House last summer, atop the stack of books on his desk was a 320-page paperback: “JFK in Ireland.”

    The last Irish Catholic president visited his ancestral homeland in 1963, five months before his assassination. He told his aides afterwards it was the “best four days of my life.”

    Sixty years later, the current Irish Catholic president (Secret Service codename: Celtic) departs Tuesday for his own visit bound to make a similar impression – first to Northern Ireland, which is part of the United Kingdom, and then onto Ireland from Wednesday through Saturday.

    Part homecoming, part statecraft and part politics, this week’s trip amounts to a timely intersection of Biden’s deeply felt personal history with his ingrained view of American foreign policy as a force for enduring good.

    Departing Washington on Tuesday, Biden described his goal as “making sure the Irish accords and the Windsor Agreement stay in place – keep the peace.”

    “Keep your fingers crossed,” he told reporters before boarding Air Force One.

    The visit is timed to commemorate the 1998 signing of the Good Friday Agreement, which ended decades of sectarian bloodshed in Northern Ireland known as The Troubles. The agreement came about with significant American investment, particularly from Democrats like Bill Clinton and Sen. George Mitchell, a legacy Biden is eager to highlight when he stops in Belfast starting Tuesday.

    But it will be his personal engagements in the Republic of Ireland later in the week, including stops in County Louth and County Mayo to explore his family roots, that will best capture what Biden himself has described as perhaps his single most defining trait.

    “As many of you know, I, like all of you, take pride in my Irish ancestry,” he said during a St. Patrick’s Day luncheon last month. “And as long as I can remember, it’s been sort of part of my soul.”

    Described by Ireland’s prime minister last month as “unmistakably a son of Ireland,” Biden has at various moments ascribed his temper, his nostalgic streak, his politics and his humor all to his Irish roots. He quotes poets like William Butler Yeats and Seamus Heaney freely; the most famous passage from Yeats’ “Easter 1916” has appeared no fewer than 12 times in Biden’s public remarks since he took office.

    “They think I do it because I’m Irish,” Biden said recently. “I do it because they’re the best poets.”

    Ahead of the trip, the White House distributed an extensive family genealogy stretching as far back as 1803, to the shoemakers and civil engineers and union overseers who would eventually leave Ireland on ships bound for America. Most left during the Irish famine of the 1840s and 1850s on what Biden has called the “coffin ships” because so many of their passengers didn’t survive the passage.

    His ancestors’ experiences have left indelible impressions on Biden, whose persona is defined by eternal optimism despite his own experience of profound loss.

    “One of my colleagues in the Senate, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, once made this simple but profound observation about us Irish: ‘To fail to understand that life is going to knock you down is to fail to understand the Irishness of life,’” he wrote in his 2017 memoir.

    Returning to Ireland as president has long been in the cards for Biden, who is also planning to meet with Irish leaders, address Parliament and deliver a nighttime speech in front of St. Muredach’s Cathedral, in the northwest of Ireland, before returning to Washington on Saturday. The White House said Biden’s great-great-great grandfather Edward Blewitt sold 28,000 bricks to the cathedral in 1828 to construct its pillars.

    He’ll be joined members of his family for the journey, including his son Hunter and sister Valerie. When he visited as vice president in 2016, he spent six days crisscrossing the island with several grandchildren and his sister, a newly generated family-tree in hand.

    By coincidence, Biden was on that visit to Ireland the same day a majority of British voters elected to leave the European Union, a decision he opposed and which posed thorny questions for Northern Ireland, which is part of the UK.

    As aides set to work planning his visit as president, Brexit’s legacy continued to loom. A dispute over trade rules between the UK and the European Union, to which the Republic of Ireland belongs, tested the Good Friday agreement and its fragile peace.

    It was a matter Biden took outsized interest in upon taking office. He warned successive British prime ministers to resolve the dispute before the anniversary – tacitly hinging his entire trip on it. After months of negotiations, the current PM Rishi Sunak struck a deal resolving the dispute in February, though Northern Ireland’s main unionist political party has yet to sign on. Still, the arrangement paved the way for Biden’s visit this month.

    Sunak is expected to meet Biden when he arrives, and the two will meet for talks in Belfast on Wednesday.

    Biden hopes to use his trip as a reminder of what sustained diplomacy can yield at a moment America’s role abroad is being debated. An isolationist strain among Republicans has led to questions about the durability of Washington’s global leadership. The Good Friday Agreement, brokered by the United States, stands as one of the most lasting examples of US diplomacy from the end of the 20th century.

    “President Biden has been talking about liberal internationalism as something that can return, he talks about democracy versus autocracy, all of this kind of stuff. So within that, I think that he wants to see good examples of the rule of law in US foreign policy. And this is a great example of that. This was an achievement,” said Liam Kennedy, director of the Clinton Institute for American Studies at the University College Dublin.

    “The Good Friday Agreement is certainly one of those things where you can get real bipartisan buy-in in Washington,” Kennedy said. “Believe me, that’s a pretty unusual thing.”

    President Joe Biden holds a bilateral meeting with H.E. Leo Varadkar, Taoiseach of Ireland, in the Oval Office of the White House, in Washington on Friday, March 17, 2023.

    The bloody tensions between Protestant Unionists, who support remaining part of the United Kingdom, and Catholic Irish Nationalists, who support reunification with the Republic, have mostly been left in another era. The Troubles led to more than 3,500 deaths, most of them civilians, and even more casualties.

    As a senator, Biden was outspoken in favor of American peacemaking efforts in Northern Ireland. He also opposed extraditing IRA suspects from the US to Britain, arguing the justice system that existed in Northern Ireland at the time wasn’t fair.

    In 1988, he told the Irish America magazine in a cover story (headline: “Fiery Joe Biden: White House bound?”) that as president he’d be active in trying to reach a peace.

    “If we have a moral obligation in other parts of the world, why in God’s name don’t we have a moral obligation to Ireland? It’s part of our blood. It’s the blood of my blood, bone of my bone,” he said.

    A decade later, three-way talks between the US, Ireland and Britain yielded the Good Friday Agreement, which sought to end the bloodshed through a power sharing government between the unionists and nationalists.

    Yet that government has functioned only sporadically in the quarter-century since the accord was signed and has been frozen for more than a year after the Democratic Unionists withdrew because of the Brexit trade dispute.

    John Finucane, a member of the British Parliament from Irish nationalist Sinn Fein party, said Biden’s visit to Northern Ireland this week would be a “huge help” toward resolving some of the lingering differences.

    A lawyer whose own father was murdered by Loyalist paramilitaries in collusion with UK state forces in 1989, Finucane said Biden’s visit was a reminder of the American role in brokering peace.

    “It’s no secret that I don’t think we would have had a peace process or certainly a Good Friday Agreement without the involvement of the American administration, and successive American administrations in implementing our peace,” he said. “Joe Biden himself has a very strong track record in supporting our peace process. So I think it is very fitting that he will be coming here next week.”

    Still, the threat of violence has never entirely disappeared, a reality made evident when British intelligence services raised the terrorism threat level in Northern Ireland from “substantial” to “severe” in late March.

    An operation called “Operation Rondoletto” taking place over Easter weekend ahead of Biden’s visit was set to cost around $8.7 million (£7 million), the police service said, and include motorcycle escort officers, firearms specialists and search specialists.

    Asked last month whether the heightened terror level would dissuade him from visiting, however, Biden hardly sounded concerned.

    “No, they can’t keep me out,” he said.

    This story has been updated with additional developments.

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • Senate Republicans confront 2024 primary challenges and Trump’s influence | CNN Politics

    Senate Republicans confront 2024 primary challenges and Trump’s influence | CNN Politics

    [ad_1]



    CNN
     — 

    Kari Lake – the unapologetic supporter of former President Donald Trump and vanquished candidate for Arizona governor – privately made a trip to National Republican Senatorial Committee headquarters in February where she discussed the prospects of shaking up the map and running for Senate.

    But Lake, who has faced blowback over pushing baseless accusations of election fraud, was given this suggestion from NRSC officials: Shift to more effective messaging and away from claims about a stolen election, according to sources familiar with the matter.

    The meeting, which was described as a positive one, focused on how Senate bids often turn on issues that are different than governor’s races, multiple sources said. Top Republicans quietly acknowledge Lake could become a frontrunner if she runs in the primary, hoping to steer her towards a viable campaign if she mounts one, even as Arizona’s Pinal County sheriff is expected to soon jump into the race while independent Sen. Kyrsten Sinema actively prepares a reelection bid herself.

    And that’s just one state.

    The Arizona race is one of several landmines that Republican leaders are navigating as they work behind the scenes to avoid a repeat of the 2022 debacle that saw weaker candidates emerge from contested primaries – only to peter out and collapse in the general election and hand Democrats a 51-49 Senate majority. Several of those candidates were backed by Trump as the NRSC – run at the time by Florida Sen. Rick Scott – opted to stay away from Republican primaries.

    Now, the NRSC – run by Sen. Steve Daines of Montana – has taken a much more hands-on approach to primaries, actively working on candidate recruitment and vetting. And the committee is weighing whether to spend big bucks in primaries to help root out weaker candidates, a move that risks setting up a clash with hard-right candidates aligning themselves with Trump.

    “You need to learn from your past mistakes,” South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham, a close Trump ally, told CNN. “If you don’t make adjustments, doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different outcome, it’s insanity.”

    Privately, Daines has spoken multiple times with Trump and has been in touch with his eldest son, Donald Trump Jr., while national Republicans point to the NRSC’s early endorsement and fundraising for Rep. Jim Banks in the Indiana Senate race as an example of how the party’s warring wings can try to avoid messy primaries.

    The goal, GOP sources say, is to keep Trump aligned with Republican leadership – even as the former president has furiously attacked Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell in the aftermath of the Capitol attack on January 6, 2021, and as the Senate GOP leader has stayed silent amid the former president’s indictment on 34 felony charges in New York. Daines, however, has been vocal in his defense of Trump.

    “I have a very good relationship with the president. We talk, and it’s no secret we’ve been friends for a long time,” Daines told CNN when asked about the Senate races. “And he provides great insights. And I also provide my thoughts as well. And we have open lines of communication.”

    Daines added: “Wherever we can find common ground is a good thing.”

    That relationship could be put to the test in key battleground states. In West Virginia, Republican leaders are preparing to close ranks behind Gov. Jim Justice, who is seriously weighing a run for the seat occupied by Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin. A Justice bid would put him against Rep. Alex Mooney, who had won Trump’s backing in a competitive House race in the last cycle but now has the support of the conservative Club for Growth’s political arm.

    In Pennsylvania, Doug Mastriano – the controversial candidate who lost a bid for governor last fall but had the support of Trump in the primary – says he’s “still praying” on whether to mount a bid for the Senate, something Republicans in Washington fear. The NRSC plans to put its muscle behind the potential candidacy of David McCormick, the hedge fund executive who narrowly lost the Pennsylvania Senate GOP primary in 2022, according to Republican sources who view him as their best bet at picking up the seat next year.

    “I haven’t decided yet on 2024. I’m thinking about it,” McCormick told CNN. “You run for office … because you think you have something to contribute. You think it’s a moment where you might be able to serve, and if you lose, that motivation doesn’t necessarily go away.”

    And in Montana, Rep. Matt Rosendale, a member of the hard-right House Freedom Caucus, is weighing a run in a race that could put him up against two other potential candidates viewed by senior Republicans as more electable – Montana attorney general Austin Knudsen and businessman Tim Sheehy – against Democratic Sen. Jon Tester. Rosendale attended an event last Tuesday in Mar-a-Lago following Trump’s arraignment in New York, a sign one Trump adviser saw as an effort to secure an endorsement ahead of a potential bid.

    Rosendale told CNN he’s in no rush to make a decision.

    “We’re just taking a nice slow time to let the people in Montana decide who they want to replace him with,” Rosendale said of Tester. “I feel very sure he will be replaced.” He added that Daines “is my senator” and that “I see him regularly.”

    Tester contended that the Republican nominee makes little difference to him.

    “I think the person who runs against me is the person McConnell chooses,” Tester said. “Whoever that is, I don’t think it matters much: Same election.”

    Top Republicans say they will have to make key strategic decisions on how to engage in some of these races – or whether to stay out altogether, as they might in Ohio as party leaders view the emerging field as full of electable candidates against Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown.

    If they come in too aggressively, it could prompt blowback and rally the right behind a potentially weaker candidate. But if they disengage, they could see their favored candidate struggle to gain traction.

    In Wisconsin, Republican officials are urging Rep. Mike Gallagher to run, though he could face a potential primary there as well, as former Senate candidate Eric Hovde and others weigh a run. Gallagher, who is chairing a House panel focused on China, said of a potential run against Democratic Sen. Tammy Baldwin: “I’m not thinking about it at present,” citing his legislative work and family commitments. But he left the door open.

    “I’d never conceived of this as a long-term thing; I don’t think Congress should be a career,” Gallagher said, adding: “I’m going to weigh all those factors and see where I can make the best impact.”

    In interviews with roughly a dozen top senators, nearly all of them agreed they need to be hyper-focused this cycle on helping candidates who can win not only a primary election, but a general election — repeatedly referencing “candidate quality” as their 2024 motto.

    Texas Sen. John Cornyn, a member of Senate GOP leadership and former NRSC chairman, has long had to contend with primary fights between the party establishment and activist base – battles that had effectively cost them the chance at the Senate majority in the 2010 and 2012 election cycles, in addition to 2022.

    “It never goes away,” Cornyn said of the primary complications. “Republicans need to make up their mind. Do we want to win, or do we want to lose? And I think that it’s that simple, and I think people are tired of losing.”

    Yet some on the right are warning against party leaders picking and choosing their candidates – including Scott, who defends his hands-off approach in the last cycle.

    “I believe the citizens of the state ought to pick,” Scott said, adding: “A lot of these weaker candidates often are the ones who actually win. I was not the establishment candidate.”

    Scott’s fellow Florida Republican, Marco Rubio, was not backed by the NRSC in the 2010 election cycle. But he galvanized the GOP base and defeated Charlie Crist, who later became a Democrat.

    “I’m not a big believer that you can determine who the weaker candidate is. A lot of people up here then would not have been their choice,” Rubio told CNN. “Obviously there might be some exceptions here or there, but generally the NRSC should be engaged in helping whoever the Republican nominee is to win the general election.”

    Unlike the last cycle — when the McConnell-aligned Senate Leadership Fund and the Rick Scott-run NRSC clashed publicly over the approach to expanding the Senate map — this time, the two committees are largely aligned. Republicans are betting that their preferred chances will vastly improve with the help of big donors and nationwide fundraising – and potentially an aggressive ad campaign in the primary to derail weaker opponents.

    “As we look across the country and look at different traces, it’s pretty straightforward,” Daines said. “We want to see candidates who can win a primary election and also win a general.”

    The map heavily favors the GOP – with 23 Democratic and independent seats in cycle compared to just 11 Republicans facing re-election. But Republicans, burnt by their past failures, are well aware that defeating an incumbent is a difficult task and could grow more challenging in a presidential election year, especially in swing states if Trump is the nominee. Behind the scenes, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer is trying to limit Democratic retirements.

    And Michigan Sen. Gary Peters, chairman of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, was skeptical that a more aggressive GOP intervention from Washington would solve Republican woes.

    “I’m not sure who the Republicans will put forward as their nominees, but normally the folks who get to determine who the nominee is are the voters in those individual states in the primaries,” Peters said in an interview. “If we look at what happened last cycle, those primary voters tended to pick highly flawed candidates, and I expect that will happen again.”

    The fight for the seat occupied by Sinema has quickly emerged as the messiest affair – for both parties.

    Sinema’s recent change in party identification — switching from a Democrat to an independent — poses a fresh challenge that party leaders will have to navigate, as it could set up an unpredictable three-way race. Sinema has not yet said if she will run again, but she has been raising enormous sums in preparation for a potential bid and has been meeting with strategists and advisers to map out plans for a possible campaign.

    And Democratic leaders are worried that backing a fellow Democrat in the primary could end up alienating Sinema and potentially lead her to caucus with the GOP, forcing them to stay neutral for now.

    “She’s a very effective legislator,” Schumer, who so far is neutral in the race, said when asked about Sinema recently.

    On the GOP side, several candidates who tried — and failed — to win statewide races last cycle are also complicating that strategy, making it a key source of anxiety among many top Republicans and the Senate committees, according to Republican sources.

    Those candidates include Lake and the 2020 Senate GOP nominee, Blake Masters, two of the most Trumpian candidates who lost last year. Both Lake and Masters garnered enormous support among the GOP base for leaning into 2020 election denials and the populist ideals that Trump touted throughout his presidency. Masters has discussed a potential 2024 Senate bid with several Republicans, though it’s unclear whether he will run, GOP sources say.

    Lake met with the NRSC for roughly an hour in February and is expected to meet with them again in the coming weeks, sources familiar with the meeting told CNN. The issue of focusing on claims of a stolen election was one point discussed at the meeting, the sources said.

    “The point that has been brought up, which Kari knows, is that the issue sets are different from a governor’s race. She knows you can’t run on that because it’s not something, as a senator, that you can fix,” a source close to Lake said, referencing her rhetoric around stolen elections. “The conversation was more about how the issues are different between a governor’s race and a Senate race.”

    Senior Republicans acknowledge that her ultimate decision on whether to enter the race could freeze out other candidates, particularly those wanting to run in the same lane, with the source close to Lake saying establishment-minded Republicans have been reaching out to her about a potential run. The source said Lake has a 200,000-plus donor list she could pull support from and believes she would have “widespread support” if she decides to run.

    But many in the top ranks are skeptical about her chances.

    “If you take a look at the race, where Sen. Sinema is probably going to take some of the right, left and center, it’s going to make for a difficult path for a Republican in that state in any scenario,” North Carolina Sen. Thom Tillis told CNN. “The party there is, I think, set on Lake if she decides to run with it, but, I mean, we just have to see how well she performs.”

    Tillis added that, given the “three-way race dynamic,” Lake “is not going to be able to make a lot of headway there.”

    Cornyn said of Lake: “Her recent track record doesn’t indicate that she would be successful. We need candidates who can broaden their appeal beyond the base and win a general.”

    Masters, meanwhile, has quietly reached out to some advisers about what another Senate run would look like and has spoken with some senior GOP officials about a 2024 run.

    Other potential GOP candidates include Pinal County Sheriff Mark Lamb, who is expected to announce a Senate run as soon as this week and is viewed favorably by some top Republicans, according to GOP sources. Abe Hamadeh, formerly the Republican nominee for Arizona attorney general, is also weighing a run. And both Lamb and Hamadeh met recently with NRSC officials, but they have not met directly with Daines, according to a source familiar with the meetings.

    Two other Republicans, Jim Lamon and Karrin Taylor Robson, are also considering jumping into the race, sources familiar with the matter say. Lamon and Robson, who ran in 2022 for Senate and governor respectively, did not receive Trump’s support.

    Robson recently met with the NRSC, and many within the GOP committee “like her and see her as a quality candidate,” a source familiar with the meeting said. Lamon has not yet met with the NRSC, but is expected to set up a meeting in the coming months.

    Arizona’s Senate primary is not until August 6, 2024, and the filing deadline to enter is April 8, 2024 — giving them a long runway to decide whether or not to run — further complicating GOP leadership’s calculus on how to navigate the race dynamics.

    “I just think we’re, we’re more likely to get people elected if they’re focused on the future, as opposed to focusing on what happened in 2020,” Sen. Mitt Romney, a Republican of Utah, said when asked about a potential Lake candidacy. “I think the American people have made their judgment about the election and want to move on. So, let’s talk about the future and where we’re headed, and if we’ve got a candidate that is consumed with his or her past, it’s most likely a losing candidate.”

    Caroline Wren, a senior adviser to Lake, told CNN, “There’s no doubt Kari Lake is a formidable force in the Republican party right now, but she’s still focused on her lawsuit in Arizona,” referring to her efforts to dispute her loss in the governor’s race.

    Rubio said that Lake could be a strong Senate candidate, despite her shortfall last year.

    “She was a very competitive candidate. I think I trust the Republican voters in Arizona to pick the nominee,” Rubio said. “I don’t think Washington should be stepping in to do it.”

    But Democrats believe that a Lake candidacy will only bolster their chances, even if Sinema decides to run.

    Rep. Ruben Gallego, the Arizona Democrat running for his party’s nomination in the Senate race, suggested to CNN he was praying for a Lake candidacy.

    “I’m a practicing Catholic – so I have these votive candles for different things,” Gallego said. “I have a special candle for Kari Lake to jump in.”

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • China appears to simulate first aircraft carrier strike on Taiwan | CNN

    China appears to simulate first aircraft carrier strike on Taiwan | CNN

    [ad_1]



    CNN
     — 

    For the first time, the Chinese navy appears to have simulated strikes by aircraft carrier-based warplanes on Taiwan, as drills around the island wrapped up on their third day.

    Beijing launched the drills on Saturday, a day after Taiwan’s President Tsai Ing-wen returned from a 10-day visit to Central America and the United States where she met US House Speaker Kevin McCarthy.

    Taiwan’s Ministry of Defense reported on Monday that during the past 24 hours four J-15 fighter jets had crossed into the southeastern portion of the island’s air defense identification zone – a self-declared buffer that extends beyond the island’s airspace.

    The J-15 is the version of J-11 twin-jet fighter that was developed for use on Beijing’s growing fleet of aircraft carriers.

    A CNN review of Taiwan Defense Ministry records shows it to be the first time the J-15s have crossed into Taiwan’s air defense identification zone.

    Meanwhile, the Japan Joint Chiefs of Staff confirmed in a press release that Japanese forces had observed 80 fixed-wing aircraft take-offs and landings during the Chinese exercises from the Chinese aircraft carrier Shandong, which was in the Pacific Ocean east of Taiwan and about 230 kilometers (143 miles) south of the Japanese island of Miyako in Okinawa prefecture.

    Japan scrambled Air Self-Defense Force fighter jets in response, the Joint Chiefs said.

    The J-15 flights were among 35 People’s Liberation Army (PLA) aircraft that had either crossed the median line of the Taiwan Strait or entered the islands air defense identification zon in the 24 hours ending at 6 a.m. Taiwan time on Monday, according to the island’s Defense Ministry.

    It also said 11 PLA Navy vessels were in the waters around Taiwan, without specifying their distances from the island.

    Chinese state broadcaster CCTV reported on Monday that the Eastern Theater Command of the PLA was continuing military drills around Taiwan as part of its Operation Joint Sword that began two days earlier.

    Monday’s drills focused on practicing “maritime blockades” and “targeted ambush assaults on enemy mooring vessels” in the Taiwan Strait, as well as northwest, southwest and waters east of Taiwan, CCTV reported.

    Over the weekend, multiple PLA services had carried out “simulated joint precision strikes on key targets on Taiwan Island” and in the surrounding waters, CCTV reported.

    It said in a statement later it had completed the military exercises and “comprehensively tested joint combat capabilities of its integrated military forces under actual combat situation.”

    “Forces in the command is ready for combat at all times, and will resolutely destroy any type of ‘Taiwan independence’ separatist or foreign interference attempts,” the statement added.

    China’s ruling Communist Party claims the self-governing democracy of Taiwan as its territory despite never having ruled it, and has spent decades trying to isolate it diplomatically. It has not ruled out using force to take control of the island.

    Analyst Carl Schuster, a former director of operations at the US Pacific Command’s Joint Intelligence Center, said the PLA was “practicing and probably refining the aerial coordination and joint operations required to initiate a blockade of Taiwan’s ports and air lanes.”

    A Chinese blockade of Taiwan could choke off supplies coming into the island, including any military aid or other shipments from the United States or its partners.

    The US, through the Taiwan Relations Act, is legally obligated to provide Taiwan with defensive weaponry, but it remains deliberately vague on whether it would defend Taiwan in the event of an attempted Chinese attack.

    Beijing had repeatedly warned against Tsai’s meeting with McCarthy and threatened to take “strong and resolute measures” if it went ahead.

    After the drills commenced, Beijing described them as “a serious warning against the Taiwan separatist forces’ collusion with external forces, and a necessary move to defend national sovereignty and territorial integrity.”

    Taiwan Defense Ministry spokesperson Sun Li-fang said the PLA’s exercises had “destabilized” the region.

    exp taiwan will ripley live FST 040812ASEG1 cnni world_00002804.png

    Taiwan’s president meets with U.S. lawmakers

    “President Tsai’s visit became their excuse to conduct exercises and their actions have severely jeopardized the security of the surrounding region,” he said, adding that the island’s air defense units were on “high alert.”

    Beijing conducted similar large-scale military exercises around Taiwan last August, after then US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi visited the island.

    Those exercises included Chinese missile launches over the island, something that has not been seen so far in the current drills.

    But Schuster said this weekend’s exercises “are simply extensions and expansions from the August exercise.”

    “The tactical complexity is greater than last year’s, but operationally this exercise seems simpler,” he said.

    And the Communist Party’s message remains constant, Schuster said.

    “As is always the case with PLA exercises in the Taiwan Strait and South China Sea areas, Beijing is telling the US, regional countries, Taiwan and its own people, that the PLA has the capability to conduct blockade and joint air and missile strikes on targets in and around Taiwan,” he said.

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • At least 44 killed in Burkina Faso attacks | CNN

    At least 44 killed in Burkina Faso attacks | CNN

    [ad_1]



    CNN
     — 

    At least 44 civilians were killed in two separate attacks on villages in northern Burkina Faso, authorities there said.

    A local governor, Rodolphe Sorgho, blamed terrorists for the “despicable and barbaic” attacks, without naming a specific group.

    In a statement Sorgho gave his “sincere condolences to the grieving families and wishes a rapid recovery to the wounded.”

    Few other details were available about the incidents, but a resident of one of the villages told AFP “a large number of terrorists” attacked late on Thursday, with gunfire sounding throughout the night.

    Burkina Faso is one of the world’s poorest counties and has become the epicenter of violence carried out by Islamist militants linked to al Qaeda and the Islamic State.

    The violence began in neighboring Mali in 2012 but has since spread across the arid expanse of the Sahel region south of the Sahara Desert.

    Large areas of the north and east of Burkina Faso have become ungovernable since 2018. Millions have fled their homes, fearing further raids by gunmen who frequently descend on rural communities on motorbikes. Thousands have been killed.

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • America funded nationwide child care during WWII. Here’s how Biden is trying to revive that effort | CNN Politics

    America funded nationwide child care during WWII. Here’s how Biden is trying to revive that effort | CNN Politics

    [ad_1]


    Washington
    CNN
     — 

    During World War II, the federal government spent more than $1 billion in today’s dollars to help provide affordable child care for mothers who entered the workforce in droves to support the war effort.

    Child care centers in more than 635 communities across the country received funds. Many stayed open late and on weekends to match workers’ factory schedules.

    The World War II-era child care program was the first and only federally administered child care for all families, regardless of their income – a qualifying factor for many of today’s federal child care subsidies.

    But the federal funding abruptly expired when the war ended, and now, roughly 80 years later, many American families struggle to find affordable, high-quality child care that meets their needs. The private market simply does not provide adequate child care options.

    President Joe Biden, who could not get his universal pre-K proposal through Congress, is now taking a different, more limited approach. He’s requiring companies applying for certain federal grants meant to boost domestic manufacturing of semiconductor chips to also have a plan to provide access to affordable child care for their workers.

    The policy is designed to make sure workers as well as companies benefit from this federal investment, said Betsey Stevenson, a professor of public policy and economics at the University of Michigan who previously served as an adviser to former President Barack Obama.

    “Another way to think about it is that we really need government involved in child care,” she said.

    As men went overseas to fight in World War II and the federal government’s “Rosie the Riveter” campaign encouraged women to join the workforce, it became clear that child care was sorely needed.

    The money came from the National Defense Housing Act of 1940, more widely known as the Lanham Act, which was meant to fund infrastructure projects deemed critical to the war effort. The Federal Works Agency decided in 1942 that child care services fell in that category.

    The FWA allowed the funds to be used for the construction and maintenance of child care facilities, to train and pay teachers, and to provide meals for communities that were directly involved in the war effort. The child care money was disbursed to centers in nearly every state.

    Parents typically had to chip in, paying less than $1 a day for the child care services.

    “It’s quite remarkable. The country essentially stood up an entire child care program in a matter of months,” said Chris Herbst, an associate professor at Arizona State University who published a study in 2013 on the Lanham Act child care program.

    Herbst found that mothers’ paid work increased substantially following the child care subsidies. He also found that those mothers were more likely to be working 20 years later.

    The program had a long-term impact on the children, too, whom Herbst found to be more likely to achieve higher levels of education and to be employed in the future, and less likely to receive other kinds of government aid throughout their lives.

    Currently, the federal government subsidizes child care for low-income families through programs like the Child Care and Development Fund and Head Start programs.

    But many families still struggle to afford child care, and those that can afford it have trouble finding it. After the Covid-19 pandemic dealt a huge blow to the child care sector, the federal government provided funds to help keep child care centers operating. But long-lasting, sweeping reform has repeatedly failed to pass Congress.

    Last year, lawmakers passed the CHIPS and Science Act, which invests more than $200 billion over five years to help the US bring back semiconductor chip manufacturing from places like China. The law is not specifically about child care, but now the Commerce Department is requiring some companies to also provide access to child care in order to be eligible for the money.

    The CHIPS law creates incentives for companies to build, expand and modernize US facilities and equipment and is already spurring private investment. Wolfspeed, a North Carolina semiconductor manufacturer that Biden visited late last month, announced a $5 billion investment to build a facility, expecting to create 1,800 jobs there.

    In February, the Biden administration added the child care provision. Companies seeking certain grants over $150 million must also submit a plan to provide their facility and construction workers with access to affordable, high-quality child care, according to the government’s guidance.

    “The first thing I thought was that this was ‘Lanham Part Two,’” said Kathryn Edwards, an adjunct economist at the RAND Corporation.

    “We want to make sure we have workers for this critical industry, so we are going to have child care,” she said.

    Like the Lanham Act, the child care program is supported by a law primarily focused on industrial policy. But the CHIPS law is putting the onus on the employer to provide the service, rather than deliver funding directly to local child care centers.

    “Here’s the truth: CHIPS won’t be successful unless we expand the labor force. We can’t do that without affordable child care,” Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo tweeted in February.

    Herbst believes it could be a few years before workers see how the child care requirement plays out and how each employer decides to structure the benefit. They may choose to provide child care on-site or offer employees child care vouchers.

    “The administration has, I think, a commitment to child care. I think the question is whether this is the best way to manifest that commitment,” Herbst said.

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • Opinion: Expulsion of the ‘Tennessee Three’ is a chilling echo of Jim Crow | CNN

    Opinion: Expulsion of the ‘Tennessee Three’ is a chilling echo of Jim Crow | CNN

    [ad_1]

    Editor’s Note: Jemar Tisby, a professor of history at Simmons College of Kentucky, is the author of the books “The Color of Compromise” and “How to Fight Racism.” He writes frequently at JemarTisby.Substack.com. The views expressed here are his own. Read more opinion on CNN.



    CNN
     — 

    I teach African American history at Simmons College of Kentucky, a historically Black college (HBCU) in Louisville. This week, we’ve been studying the end of Reconstruction and the beginning of the Jim Crow period of US history.

    In the late 19th century, White, Southern Democrats (then the party of White supremacy and segregation) dubbed themselves the “Redeemers,” a group whose goal was to “save” the South from Northern carpetbaggers and newly freed Black people.

    The so-called Redeemers took over state legislatures with the primary goals of disenfranchising Black voters, barring Black people from holding political office, and establishing a politics that would render the White power structure impervious to disruption.

    When Republicans in the Tennessee House of Representatives voted this week to expel two Black members — Justin Jones and Justin Pearson — they revealed their resemblance to the anti-democratic, authoritarian Redeemers of more than a century ago.

    In 1868, White legislators in Georgia voted to expel the 33 Black men elected to state government.

    Henry McNeal Turner, a well-known leader in the African Methodist Episcopal (AME) denomination, was one of the men expelled from his position by the Georgia politicians.

    In remarks during the proceedings, he stated, “[White legislators] question my right to a seat in this body, to represent the people whose legal votes elected me. This objection, sir, is an unheard of monopoly of power. No analogy can be found for it, except it be the case of a man who should go into my house, take possession of my wife and children and then tell me to walk out.”

    Even though the Black lawmakers were soon reinstated, the actions of the White lawmakers in Georgia were just a foretaste of the political machinations to come.

    In 1890, the state of Mississippi called for a new convention to rewrite the state’s constitution. It had already adopted a new and relatively progressive constitution after the Civil War, but with the onset of Redemption, White lawmakers took control of the state government and began dismantling the rights Black people had only recently gained.

    In the newer version of the constitution that was later ratified, White Mississippi lawmakers installed measures to prevent Black people from voting. But because of the Reconstruction amendments to the US Constitution that guaranteed equal protection under the law and the right of Black men to vote, White Redeemers had to find new ways to repress Black people without making laws explicitly about race.

    So they used policies such as the poll tax, which most Black people could not afford to pay. They instituted the “understanding clause” — a selectively applied measure where potential voters had to interpret a passage from the state constitution to the satisfaction of a White registrar.

    The “grandfather clause” stipulated that a person’s grandfather had to be eligible to vote in order for their descendants to exercise the franchise. Of course, this excluded most Black people whose grandparents had been enslaved and thus, ineligible to vote.

    By the early 1900s, nearly all the former Confederate states had followed Mississippi’s example.

    In class, my students listened with stunned incredulity as they learned about the cruel and ruthless politics of the Redeemers. Unfortunately, the historical parallels to present-day events are too obvious to ignore.

    The actions of Republicans in the Tennessee legislature resemble the attempts of White Southern Redeemers to take back the South at the end of the 19th century.

    These new Redeemers are using their power as a tool of intimidation. What other conclusion can be drawn from the inappropriate and disproportionate response to a decorum infraction?

    Expulsion is the most severe consequence the legislature can enact against another member of that body. Since the Civil War, only three other members of the Tennessee state legislature have been expelled — and for much more serious offenses.

    The new Redeemers are not confined to one state, either.

    Attempts to strip local officials in the city of Jackson — where more than 80% of the population is Black — of their authority to monitor the city’s water system, police force and courts are underway in Mississippi.

    In Florida, Gov. Ron DeSantis signed the “Stop WOKE Act” into law, which was intended to prevent teachings or mandatory workplace activities that suggest a person is privileged or oppressed based necessarily on their race, color, sex or national origin. “In Florida, we will not let the far-left woke agenda take over our schools and workplaces. There is no place for indoctrination or discrimination in Florida,” DeSantis said.

    And, of course, the attempted insurrection on January 6, 2021 by supporters of former President Donald Trump was the most egregious example of how far right-wing factions are willing to go to subvert the political process.

    The era of Redemption cemented decades of Jim Crow segregation. More than 4,000 “racial terror” lynchings occurred throughout that period, the Equal Justice Initiative has documented.

    Substantial change only came with the onset of the Civil Rights movement. Years of nonviolent direct action protest, constant lobbying in state and political governments and the martyrdom of many activists including Martin Luther King, Jr., finally interrupted traditions of segregation and White supremacy.

    It could be that a similar movement is necessary to disempower the Redeemers of today.

    When all the standard means of change — namely the democratic process itself — have been co-opted and subverted by authoritarians, then the people are only left with protest.

    If the goal of the Tennessee GOP was to intimidate people into acquiescence with their expulsion of Pearson and Jones, their tactic backfired in a spectacular way.

    Far from instilling fear, their expulsions and their stirring words in response have raised them to national prominence.

    Instead of dissuading Tennesseans from their calls for gun control, Republican legislators seem to have energized the people and motivated them to resist even more vigorously.

    With the rise of social media and other digital forms of information sharing, movements can be mobilized in moments.

    Although there were constant attempts throughout the years, it took decades for people to mount the resistance necessary to topple Jim Crow. In today’s environment, action might occur more swiftly.

    Those words, redemption and redeemer, are significant.

    This is Holy Week in the Christian religion. Events such as Maundy Thursday, Good Friday and Holy Saturday culminate in the observance of the resurrection of Jesus Christ on Easter Sunday. These liturgies commemorate the redemption — Jesus paying the price for humanity’s sin.

    In many Christian traditions, redemption is a sacred theological principle that undergirds the hope of salvation. It is likely that many of the Tennessee Republican lawmakers will attend church this Sunday to celebrate the redemption that Easter heralds.

    Easter provides the perfect opportunity for these lawmakers to ponder the true meaning of redemption and which redeemer they are following.

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • China military rehearses ‘encircling’ Taiwan after US Speaker visit | CNN

    China military rehearses ‘encircling’ Taiwan after US Speaker visit | CNN

    [ad_1]


    Taipei
    CNN
     — 

    China has started three days of military exercises around Taiwan after the island’s president met the US House Speaker in defiance of repeated threats by Beijing.

    The exercises, dubbed “United Sharp Sword,” have been denounced by Taiwan. China sees Taiwan as its own territory and has not ruled out using force to bring it under its control.

    The Chinese military’s Eastern Theater Command announced the drills Saturday, describing them as “a serious warning against the Taiwan separatist forces’ collusion with external forces, and a necessary move to defend national sovereignty and territorial integrity.”

    “The task force simultaneously organized patrols around the island to create an all-round encirclement and deterrent situation,” the Eastern Theater Command said.

    Soon after the announcement by China, Taiwan’s defense ministry said it had detected a total of 42 Chinese warplanes over the Taiwan Strait, which separates the island from the Chinese mainland. It said 29 Chinese warplanes had crossed the median line in the strait into its air defense identification zone. It added that eight PLA vessels had been spotted in the strait.

    The drills come a day after Taiwan’s President Tsai Ing-wen returned from a 10-day visit to Central America and the United States where she met US House Speaker Kevin McCarthy.

    Beijing had repeatedly warned against the trip and had previously threatened to take “strong and resolute measures” if it went ahead.

    China claims the self-governing democracy of Taiwan despite never having ruled it, and has spent decades trying to isolate it diplomatically.

    Incursions by Chinese warplanes into Taiwan’s air defense identification zone, a self-declared buffer zone beyond its territorial airspace, occur on an almost daily basis.

    Taiwan’s defense ministry said on Saturday it was closely monitoring the situation and would make every effort to defend national security and sovereignty.

    “The People’s Liberation Army (PLA) is deliberately creating tensions on the Taiwan Strait. Besides damaging peace and stability, it also creates negative impact on regional safety and development,” the ministry said.

    The ministry had said earlier on Saturday it would respond to the drills in a calm, rational and serious way, and not seek to escalate conflict.

    China reacted in a similar fashion when then US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi visited Taiwan in August, launching a series of military drills that surrounded the island and firing missiles over it.

    Those drills were the first time China had fired missiles over the island, and many experts saw them as representing a major escalation of China’s military intimidation against Taiwan.

    Some of those missiles also fell into Japan’s Exclusive Economic Zone near Japanese islands to the north of Taiwan, a move which heightened tensions between Beijing and Tokyo.

    Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen and US House Speaker Kevin McCarthy at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley, California, Wednesday, April 5, 2023.

    The August exercises also involved dozens of Chinese warplanes crossing into Taiwan’s air defense identification zone as well as PLA Navy warships in maneuvers in waters around Taiwan.

    Beijing said at the time it was simulating an air and sea “blockade” of the island, but offered little solid evidence to back up the claim.

    Officials in Taiwan had reportedly been expecting a less severe reaction to Tsai’s meeting with McCarthy because it took place on US soil.

    To avoid provoking Beijing and triggering another military crisis, American and Taiwan officials had tried to portray Tsai’s visit as nothing out of the ordinary, citing an abundance of precedents for a Taiwan leader to transit through the US.

    But the political significance of Tsai’s meeting with McCarthy is undeniable. It was the highest-level audience a sitting Taiwan president had received on American soil, with an official second in line to the presidency after the vice president.

    Their meeting at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library highlighted the strengthening ties between Taipei and Washington, even though they remain unofficial in nature. The US withdrew its diplomatic recognition of Taiwan back in 1979, meaning it does not officially recognize it as a country. However, it supports Taiwan’s ability to defend itself by selling arms to Taipei.

    Following the meeting between Tsai and McCarthy Wednesday, the US House Speaker said his country should continue to boost its support for Taiwan.

    “We must continue arms sales to Taiwan and make sure such sales reach Taiwan on time. We must also strengthen our economic cooperation, particularly with trade and technology,” he tweeted.

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • WrestleMania apologizes for using footage of Auschwitz in promotional spot | CNN Business

    WrestleMania apologizes for using footage of Auschwitz in promotional spot | CNN Business

    [ad_1]


    New York
    CNN
     — 

    World Wrestling Entertainment apologized Friday after using footage of Auschwitz, the infamous Nazi concentration and extermination camp, in a promotional spot for a hyped father-son match.

    On Twitter, the Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial and Museum said it was hard to call it an “editing mistake.”

    “Exploiting the site that became a symbol of enormous human tragedy is shameless and insults the memory of all victims of Auschwitz,” the organization

    tweeted    .

    The promotional video for WrestleMania 39 featured WWE wrestler Dominik Mysterio, who has an ongoing rivalry with his father, Rey Mysterio, and was “arrested” in December for pushing him.

    “You think this is a game to me. I served hard time. And I survived,” the younger Mysterio said. The ad then cuts to photos of prisons, one of which was Auschwitz, where Nazis murdered over 1 million people.

    “We had no knowledge of what was depicted,” the WWE said in a statement to CNN. “As soon as we learned, it was removed immediately. We apologize for this error.”

    The gaffe quickly caught the attention of social media users.

    In later airings and reruns of the first night of WrestleMania, the footage showed an image of barbed wire.

    WWE is known for its outlandish storylines. In this father-son rivalry, Dominik eventually turned on Rey, culminating in an altercation on Christmas Eve. The gag was that though Rey only spent a few hours in prison, he took on a hardened criminal persona.

    Rey beat Dominik on Night 1 of WrestleMania 39 at SoFi Stadium in Los Angeles to “teach him a lesson about respect.”

    WWE said WrestleMania 39 was the most successful and highest-grossing event in company history, with over 500 million views and 11 million hours of video consumed over the two days.

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • State Department review of US withdrawal from Afghanistan includes far more findings than White House document | CNN Politics

    State Department review of US withdrawal from Afghanistan includes far more findings than White House document | CNN Politics

    [ad_1]


    Washington
    CNN
     — 

    The State Department’s review of the US withdrawal from Afghanistan has far more findings in it than the document about the withdrawal that the White House released Thursday afternoon, according to a source familiar with the report.

    While the White House’s document focused on President Joe Biden having been “severely constrained” by the conditions created by former President Donald Trump, the State Department report has more than two dozen recommendations – some specifically related to how the department could have better prepared, including during the Biden administration, the source said.

    “The Biden administration inherited a deadline without a clear plan of how to get there, but they then undertook their own review. And in April, Biden decided to go ahead with it and delayed the withdrawal timeline. So they did not exactly take the blueprint they were given in that regard. So some of that is a bit disingenuous to say that their hands were completely tied,” the source said, explaining their view on the need for the Biden administration to take some ownership for the conduct of the withdrawal.

    The White House document does note that upon reflecting on the withdrawal, the State Department and the Pentagon “now prioritize earlier evacuations” when faced with a degrading security situation. But the document also defends the time for when the evacuation from Afghanistan occurred, citing interagency meetings and decision-making at the time.

    The White House document also says that the US government now errs “on the side of aggressive communication about risks” when there is a destabilizing security environment.

    But it is unclear why the White House document assessing the challenges and decisions surrounding the withdrawal did not cite the wide number of recommendations from the State Department report, which was the result of an intensive 90-day review. A spokesperson for the National Security Council, or NSC, said the document was a “separate product” that was “informed” by the various departments’ reviews.

    The State Department’s much more detailed after-action report was sent to Capitol Hill on Thursday, but otherwise the department has not widely released any of the findings more than a year after the report’s completion. The report itself was launched by Secretary of State Antony Blinken in December 2021. Employees who worked on the chaotic evacuation have clamored for details as to what the department learned from the after-action report.

    An NSC spokesperson said the department’s reviews “were not undertaken for public release but to improve internal processes.”

    On Thursday, the department scrambled to put together a town hall for employees to discuss the report with Blinken and Undersecretary for Management John Bass, who was a key official in the Afghanistan withdrawal, according to three employees who attended the event.

    Blinken described the report to employees without sharing it. He said that it detailed the processes, systems and mindsets that could have been improved, including the need for more urgent preparations for worst-case scenarios, employees said.

    Blinken said contingency preparations were inhibited by concerns that they would be too visible and would prompt concerns by Afghan officials, employees told CNN. The top US diplomat also pointed to competing and conflicting views in Washington about how to prioritize categories of evacuees, and he acknowledged that the department’s database technology and communications infrastructure were inadequate.

    The employees said that, according to Blinken, the report makes 34 recommendations. They include strengthening the department’s crisis-response capabilities, appointing a single senior official for future complex crises, enhancing crisis communications such as call centers, building a so-called red team to challenge assumptions and running more tabletop exercises, employees said.

    But for many employees, the town hall only led to more frustrations about a lack of full transparency. The source familiar with the full report explained that the findings were purposefully not classified so they could be widely shared if the department chose to do so, but so far that has not happened.

    At least one employee was emotional during the town hall, criticizing how hastily it was arranged and the decision not to share the full report. Blinken cited concerns about politicizing the report and looking backward instead of forward, employees said.

    The State Department did not respond to a request for comment regarding the town hall or any plans to share parts of the department’s report more widely.

    This story has been updated with additional information.

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • A momentous political showdown in Tennessee lays bare a new chapter in US politics | CNN Politics

    A momentous political showdown in Tennessee lays bare a new chapter in US politics | CNN Politics

    [ad_1]



    CNN
     — 

    Tennessee Republicans’ ruthless use of their state House supermajority to expel two young Black lawmakers for breaching decorum exposed a torrent of political forces that are transforming American politics at the grassroots.

    The GOP action, after the lawmakers had led a gun control protest from the House floor in response to last week’s Nashville school shooting, created a snapshot of how two halves of a diversifying and increasingly self-estranged nation are being pulled apart.

    A day of soaring tensions inside and outside the state House chamber thrust the Volunteer State into the national spotlight in an extraordinary political coda to the mass shooting in which six people, including three 9-year-olds, were gunned down.

    The drama laid bare intense frustration among some voters at the failure to pass firearms reform – and the growing clash between Democrats from liberal cities and a Republican Party that is willing to use its rural conservative power base to curtail democracy. Given the national attention, the showdown could backfire on the GOP with voters who balk at its extremist turn. And it turned two lawmakers – whom most Americans had never heard of – into overnight heroes of the progressive movement.

    The Democrats – Justin Pearson and Justin Jones – were thrown out of their seats in a move that effectively canceled out the votes of their tens of thousands of constituents, simply for infringing the rules of the chamber – an almost unheard of sanction across the country.

    But a third Democrat – Gloria Johnson, a White woman who also joined the gun control protest – escaped expulsion after Republicans failed to muster the required two-thirds majority. The discrepancy raised suggestions of racial discrimination and made an acrimonious day even uglier.

    Republicans said that the Democrats had interrupted the people’s business with their protest, arguing that democracy couldn’t work if lawmakers refused to abide by the rules. But the Democrats have long warned their voices are being silenced by the hardline GOP supermajority and accused Republicans of infringing their rights to free expression and dissent.

    “We called for you all to ban assault weapons, and you respond with an assault on democracy,” Jones told Republican legislators on Thursday as he spoke before the House in his own defense.

    At its most basic level, the clash underscored the utter polarization between Republicans and Democrats about how to respond to mass shootings, which pass with little or no significant action to prevent the endless sequence of such tragedies.

    Although it did pass a measure intended to enhance school security, the Tennessee state House essentially decided to use its near unchecked power to protect its behavioral rules rather than take any action to make it harder for mass killers to get deadly weapons. In a deep-red state like Tennessee, this is not a surprise. But the fury and even desperation of lawmakers like Pearson and Jones and the hundreds of protesters at the state capitol on Thursday reflect increasing anger among the majority of Americans who want tougher gun restrictions but find their hopes dashed by Republican legislatures.

    In Tennessee, that frustration over the endless deaths of innocents erupted into activism.

    One protester, teacher Kevin Foster, said the aftermath of the Nashville school shooting had been “deeply, deeply painful.”

    And he tearfully called on Tennessee legislators to do something to stop more school shootings. “Just listen to us, there is absolutely no reason you should have assault rifles available to citizens in the public. It serves absolutely no purpose and it brings death and destruction on children,” Foster told CNN’s Ryan Young.

    The severe penalties meted out by the legislature for a rules infraction, which did not involve violence or incitement, also underscored another increasing trend – the radicalization of the Donald Trump-era Republican Party. Critics see the way the GOP is using its legislative majorities as an abuse of power that threatens the democratic rights of millions of Americans.

    The Tennessee House has only rarely expelled members – and when it has, it’s for offenses like bribery or sexual infractions – so the treatment of Pearson and Jones, who had already had their committee assignments taken away, was regarded by Democrats as disproportionately harsh.

    The expulsions looked like a party dispensing with opponents and positions it didn’t agree with – a perspective Pearson voiced when he accused the GOP of acting to suppress ideas it would prefer not to listen to and questions it wouldn’t answer.

    “You just expelled a member for exercising their First Amendment rights!” he said.

    Tennessee Republican Caucus Chair Jeremy Faison told CNN his members were always firm in wanting the Democratic lawmakers expelled and rejected an alternative route through the House ethics committee. “The overwhelming majority, the heartbeat of this caucus, says ‘not on this House floor, not this way,’” he said. Faison added: “It is not possible for us to move forward with the way they were behaving in committee and on the House floor. There’s got to be some peace.”

    Democrats did break the rules last week – they admitted to doing so and their actions, if adopted by every legislator, would make it impossible to maintain order and free debate. Jones, for instance, used a bullhorn to lead chants of protesters in the public gallery. But the question at issue is the appropriateness of the punishments and whether the GOP majority overreached.

    One Republican, state Rep. Gino Bulso, said that Jones – with his dramatic self-defense in the well of the chamber on Thursday – had made the case for his ejection because he accused the House of acting dishonorably.

    “He and two other representatives effectively conducted a mutiny on March the 30th of 2023 in this very chamber,” Bulso said. State House Speaker Cameron Sexton had previously compared the gun control protest to the mob attack by Trump’s supporters on the US Capitol on January 6, 2021.

    But this appeared an absurd analogy. While the protest in the Tennessee chamber did disrupt regular order, it wasn’t anti-democratic, nor was it designed to interrupt the transfer of power from one president to the next, like the Capitol riot briefly did. And the behavior of the three Democratic lawmakers, while irregular, was not that unusual in a riotous political age. US Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia and other Republicans, for instance, heckled President Joe Biden during his State of the Union address this year. And Trump this week attacked a New York judge as biased and singled out his family after becoming the first ex-president to be charged with a crime.

    The racial backdrop of Thursday’s vote could not be ignored after Johnson was reprieved by a single vote. She told CNN’s Alisyn Camerota that she believed race helped explain the differing outcomes.

    “I think it is pretty clear. I am a 60-year-old White woman, and they are two young Black men,” Johnson said, adding that she thought the Republicans questioned Jones and Pearson in a demeaning way.

    US Rep. Steve Cohen, a Tennessee Democrat, didn’t rule out the possibility that discrimination was behind the expulsion of Jones and Pearson but not Johnson.

    “I am not saying race wasn’t (the reason) – but I haven’t looked at the numbers to see if gender might not have had a play in it, and also maybe some seniority, and also some folks that were on a committee with her,” Cohen told CNN’s Bianna Golodryga.

    The question is especially acute since Pearson and Jones were arguing that their voices – and those of hundreds of thousands of Black Americans in the state’s diverse cities – were being silenced by a largely White Republican majority.

    “I represent 78,000 people, and when I came to the well that day, I was not standing for myself,” Jones said. “I was standing for those young people … many of whom can’t even vote yet, many of whom are disenfranchised. But all of whom are terrified by the continued trend of mass shooting plaguing our state and plaguing this nation.”

    Jones, from Nashville, and Pearson, from Memphis, are representative of a new generation of politically active Americans. Their background in activism and compelling rhetorical styles speak to a kind of politics that is more confrontational than the outwardly genteel but hardball power plays preferred by some of their older Republican colleagues in the legislature.

    At times, the speeches by both lawmakers invoked the atmospherics of the civil rights movement and may augur a new brand of urgent activism by younger citizens – like the multi-racial crowd of protesters who greeted Pearson and Jones as heroes after they left the chamber.

    The topic of the showdown – over infringements of the decorum of the state House – also had uncomfortable racial echoes as they implied, deliberately or not, that the two young Black Americans did not understand the proper way to behave in public life.

    “It’s very scary for the nation to see what’s happening here. If I didn’t know that it was happening to me, I would think this was 1963 instead of 2023,” Jones told CNN’s Anderson Cooper.

    More broadly, Pearson and Jones also represent a cementing reality of the American political map in which growing liberal and racially diverse cities and suburbs are increasingly clashing with legislatures dominated by Republicans from more rural areas.

    This dynamic is playing out on multiple issues – including abortion, crime and voting rights – in states like Georgia and Texas. In Florida, meanwhile, Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis is using his big reelection win and GOP control of both chambers of the state legislature to drive home a radical America First-style conservative agenda that he’s using as a platform for a possible presidential campaign. Some Republicans see similar trends in Democratic-majority California.

    In Tennessee, as Democratic state House Rep. Joe Towns put it, the GOP used a nuclear option by deploying their supermajority to suppress the ability of minority Democrats to speak.

    “You never use a sledgehammer to kill a gnat,” Towns said. “We should not go to the extreme of expelling our members for fighting for what many of the citizens want to happen, whether you agree with it or not.”

    Pearson was specific in viewing his expulsion as being about far more than a thwarted gun control protest.

    “We are losing our democracy to White supremacy, we are losing our democracy to patriarchy, we are losing our democracy to people who want to keep a status quo that is damning to the rest of us and damning to our children and unborn people,” he said.

    The political crisis in Tennessee quickly got national attention.

    Biden described the expulsions as “shocking, undemocratic and without precedent” and lambasted Republicans for not doing more to prevent school shootings.

    “Americans want lawmakers to act on commonsense gun safety reforms that we know will save lives. But instead, we’ve continued to see Republican officials across America double down on dangerous bills that make our schools, places of worship, and communities less safe,” he said in a statement.

    Republicans in Tennessee had their own political reasons for acting against the trio of Democratic lawmakers. But by making national figures of Pearson and Jones and by handing the White House a new example of GOP extremism, their efforts may have badly backfired.

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • Japanese military helicopter crashes in sea with 10 on board | CNN

    Japanese military helicopter crashes in sea with 10 on board | CNN

    [ad_1]


    Tokyo
    CNN
     — 

    Rescuers are scanning waters off southern Japan for 10 people on board a Japanese military helicopter that apparently crashed into the sea on Thursday, Defense Minister Yasukazu Hamada said.

    “I will continue to do my best to collect information on the damage and search for human lives,” said Hamada, who looked visibly overcome with emotion when he spoke to reporters Friday.

    Gen. Yasunori Morishita, chief of staff of Japan’s Ground Self-Defense Force (GSDF), said searchers had found what appeared to be parts of the the UH-60JA helicopter in the sea and are continuing to scan the ocean for survivors.

    If no survivors are found, the crash would be Japan’s deadliest military aviation accident since 1995, according to a database maintained by the Aviation Safety Network.

    The missing troops include two pilots, two mechanics and six passengers, among them Lt. Gen. Yuichi Sakamoto, a senior GSDF commander, Morishita said.

    Sakamoto, commander of the 8th Division, had been newly appointed to his role on March 30, Japan’s public broadcaster NHK reported Friday.

    The helicopter – which was surveying the local area – went missing Thursday at 3:56 p.m. local time after disappearing from radar screens off the coast of Miyako Island in the southern Japanese prefecture of Okinawa, according to the Defense Ministry.

    Miyako Island – adjacent to the East China Sea – is about 400 kilometers (250 miles) east of Taiwan and is home to a JGSDF missile unit.

    A spokesperson from the Japan Coast Guard told CNN that around 6:50 p.m. local time on Thursday, a patrol boat retrieved a lifeboat with the words “Ground Self-Defense Force” written on it from the sea.

    The spokesperson added that early Friday morning, a window frame, a door with “Ground Self-Defense Force” written on it and a rotor blade were recovered in waters north of Irabu Island, which is connected to Miyako Island by a bridge. 

    According to manufacturer Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, the UH-60JA is a multipurpose helicopter based on the US military’s Black Hawk helicopters.

    The last time at least 10 people were lost in a Japanese military aviation accident was on February 21, 1995, when a Maritime Self-Defense Force flying boat crashed on Okinawa, according to the Aviation Safety Network database.

    On April 26, 1983, 11 people were killed when a flying boat crashed during practice for an air show in Iwakuni, and 14 died a week earlier when two Air Self-Defense Force transports flying in formation crashed into an island in Ise Bay, according to the database.

    [ad_2]

    Source link