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Ryan Chatelain
South Carolina
UPDATED 6:27 AM ET Feb. 24, 2024
PUBLISHED 3:15 PM EST Feb. 23, 2024
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Ryan Chatelain
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More owners are listing their homes for sale as the spring buying season approaches.
New listings were up 10% for the four weeks ending Feb. 18 compared with a year earlier, marking the largest increase since December. Sellers are trying to leverage home values that have increased 6% over the past year, according to the real estate brokerage, Redfin.
Median sales prices are continuing to increase in many cities. San Diego topped Redfin’s list of cities where homes have appreciated the most (15%), followed by Newark, N.J. (14.3%); Anaheim, Calif. (13.5%), Philadelphia (12.6%) and West Palm Beach, Fla. (12.4%).
The three metropolitan areas that saw the largest year-over-year decreases were in Texas, led by San Antonio (-4.1%), Austin (-0.4%) and Fort Worth (-0.3%).
Despite the increase in listings, mortgage applications fell 10% last week compared with the week prior following an uptick in mortgage rates. The average rate is now more than 7% for the first time since December.
Pending home sales were down 7% as of Feb. 18 compared with a year earlier.
According to Redfin, potential home buyers are more interested in properties that are move-in ready than fixer-uppers requiring more investment. With fewer prospective buyers, sellers often need to offer concessions.
“I tell every one of my sellers to have an open mind and put on their buyer’s hat,” Redfin agent Shauna Pendleton said in a statement. “Nine times out of 10, buyers are asking for a concession in their initial offer right now, and usually the seller needs to accept the deal.”
The most common concessions are mortgage-rate buydowns, where sellers pay a lump sum to the lender for a temporary interest-rate reduction, and for sellers to cover the sale’s closing costs.
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Susan Carpenter
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The United States and the European Union are piling new sanctions on Russia on the eve of the second anniversary of its invasion of Ukraine and in retaliation for the death of noted Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny last week in an Arctic penal colony.
The U.S. Treasury, State Department and Commerce Department plan Friday to impose roughly 600 new sanctions on Russia and its war machine in the largest single tranche of penalties since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on Feb. 24, 2022. They come on the heels of a series of new arrests and indictments announced by the Justice Department on Thursday that target Russian businessmen, including the head of Russia’s second-largest bank, and their middlemen in five separate federal cases.
The European Union announced Friday that it is imposing sanctions on several foreign companies over allegations that they have exported dual-use goods to Russia that could be used in its war against Ukraine. The 27-nation bloc also said that it was targeting scores of Russian officials, including “members of the judiciary, local politicians and people responsible for the illegal deportation and military re-education of Ukrainian children.”
“The American people and people around the world understand that the stakes of this fight extend far beyond Ukraine,” President Joe Biden said in a statement announcing the sanctions. “If Putin does not pay the price for his death and destruction, he will keep going. And the costs to the United States — along with our NATO Allies and partners in Europe and around the world — will rise.”
While previous sanctions have increased costs for Russia’s ability to fight in Ukraine, they appear to have done little so far to deter Putin’s aggression or ambitions. The Biden administration is levying additional sanctions as House Republicans are blocking billions of dollars in additional aid to Ukraine.
The war is becoming entangled in U.S. election-year politics, with former President Donald Trump voicing skepticism about the benefits of the NATO alliance and saying that he would “encourage” Russia to “do whatever the hell they want” to countries that, in his view, are not pulling their weight in the alliance.
Many of the new U.S. sanctions announced Friday target Russian firms that contribute to the Kremlin’s war effort — including drone and industrial chemical manufacturers and machine tool importers — as well as financial institutions, such as the state-owned operator of Russia’s Mir National Payment System.
In response to Navalny’s death, the State Department is designating three Russian officials the U.S. says are connected to his death. It also will impose visa restrictions on Russian authorities it says are involved in the kidnapping and confinement of Ukrainian children.
In addition, 26 third-country people and firms from across China, Serbia, the United Arab Emirates, and Liechtenstein are listed for sanctions, for assisting Russia in evading existing financial penalties.
The Russian foreign ministry said the EU sanctions are “illegal” and undermine “the international legal prerogatives of the UN Security Council.” In response, the ministry is banning some EU citizens from entering the country because they have provided military assistance to Ukraine. It did not immediately address the U.S. sanctions.
The U.S. specifically was to target individuals associated with Navalny’s imprisonment a day after Biden met with the opposition leader’s widow and daughter in California. It was also hitting “Russia’s financial sector, defense industrial base, procurement networks and sanctions evaders across multiple continents,” Biden said. “They will ensure Putin pays an even steeper price for his aggression abroad and repression at home.”
The EU asset freezes and travel bans constitute the 13th package of measures imposed by the bloc against people and organizations it suspects of undermining the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Ukraine.
“Today, we are further tightening the restrictive measures against Russia’s military and defense sector,” EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell said. “We remain united in our determination to dent Russia’s war machine and help Ukraine win its legitimate fight for self-defense.”
In all, 106 more officials and 88 “entities” — often companies, banks, government agencies or other organizations — have been added to the bloc’s sanctions list, bringing the tally of those targeted to more than 2,000 people and entities, including Russian President Vladimir Putin and his associates.
Companies making electronic components, which the EU believes could have military as well as civilian uses, were among 27 entities accused of “directly supporting Russia’s military and industrial complex in its war of aggression against Ukraine,” a statement said.
Those companies — some of them based in India, Sri Lanka, China, Serbia, Kazakhstan, Thailand and Turkey — face tougher export restrictions.
The bloc said the companies “have been involved in the circumvention of trade restrictions,” and it accuses others of “the development, production and supply of electronic components” destined to help Russia’s armed forces.
Some of the measures are aimed at depriving Russia of parts for pilotless drones, which are seen by military experts as key to the war.
Since the start of the war, U.S. Treasury and State departments have designated over 4,000 officials, oligarchs, firms, banks and others under Russia-related sanctions authorities. A $60 per barrel price cap has also been imposed on Russian oil by Group of Seven allies, intended to reduce Russia’s revenues from fossil fuels.
Critics of the sanctions, price cap and other measures meant to stop Russia’s invasion say they are not working fast enough.
Maria Snegovaya, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said that primarily sanctioning Russia’s defense industry and failing to cut meaningfully into Russia’s energy revenues will not be enough to halt the war.
“One way or another, they will have to eventually address Russia’s oil revenues and have to consider an oil embargo,” Snegovaya said. “The oil price cap has effectively stopped working.”
Treasury Deputy Secretary Wally Adeyemo, in previewing the new sanctions, told reporters that the U.S. and its allies will not lower the price cap; “rather what we’ll be doing is taking actions that will increase the cost” of Russia’s production of oil.
He added that “sanctions alone are not enough to carry Ukraine to victory.”
“We owe the Ukrainian people who have held on for so long the support and resources they desperately need to defend their homeland and prove Putin wrong once and for all time.”
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U.S. microchip manufacturing is getting a boost from the Department of Energy.
On Thursday, the agency announced it will loan $544 million to SK Siltron to make silicon carbide semiconductors for electric vehicles.
The Energy Department expects the loan to create about 200 construction jobs for the company to expand its facility in Bay City, Mich., and to create up to another 200 skilled positions through a Michigan New Jobs Training Program with Delta College.
When complete, SK Siltron is projected to rank among the world’s top-five makers of silicon carbide semiconductors, joining Wolfspeed in Durham, N.C.; Coherent Corp. in Saxonburg, Penn.; and Xiamen Powerway Advanced Material Co. in China.
More than 80% of the world’s semiconductor production facilities are based in South Korea, Taiwan, China and Japan, according to the semiconductor industry association, SEMI.
Silicon carbide semiconductors are used to help EVs charge more quickly and travel longer distances than traditional silicon semiconductors.
Increasing SK Siltron’s capacity will help electric vehicle makers secure the chips they need, the Energy Department said. EVs use about twice the number of semiconductors as gas-powered vehicles.
“This project reinforces President Biden’s Investing in America agenda to onshore and re-shore domestic manufacturing technologies that are critical to meeting the Biden-Harris Administration’s ambitious goal that half of all new vehicles sold in 2030 are zero-emissions vehicles,” the Energy Department said in a statement on its website.
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Susan Carpenter
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U.S. microchip manufacturing is getting a boost from the Department of Energy.
On Thursday, the agency announced it will loan $544 million to SK Siltron to make silicon carbide semiconductors for electric vehicles.
The Energy Department expects the loan to create about 200 construction jobs for the company to expand its facility in Bay City, Mich., and to create up to another 200 skilled positions through a Michigan New Jobs Training Program with Delta College.
When complete, SK Siltron is projected to rank among the world’s top-five makers of silicon carbide semiconductors, joining Wolfspeed in Durham, N.C.; Coherent Corp. in Saxonburg, Penn.; and Xiamen Powerway Advanced Material Co. in China.
More than 80% of the world’s semiconductor production facilities are based in South Korea, Taiwan, China and Japan, according to the semiconductor industry association, SEMI.
Silicon carbide semiconductors are used to help EVs charge more quickly and travel longer distances than traditional silicon semiconductors.
Increasing SK Siltron’s capacity will help electric vehicle makers secure the chips they need, the Energy Department said. EVs use about twice the number of semiconductors as gas-powered vehicles.
“This project reinforces President Biden’s Investing in America agenda to onshore and re-shore domestic manufacturing technologies that are critical to meeting the Biden-Harris Administration’s ambitious goal that half of all new vehicles sold in 2030 are zero-emissions vehicles,” the Energy Department said in a statement on its website.
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Susan Carpenter
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Lyudmila Navalnaya, the mother of Russia’s top opposition leader Alexei Navalny, said Thursday that she has seen her son’s body and that she is resisting strong pressure by authorities to agree to a secret burial outside the public eye.
Speaking in a video statement from the Arctic city of Salekhard, Navalnaya said investigators allowed her to see her son’s body in the city morgue. She said she reaffirmed the demand to give Navalny’s body to her and protested what she described as authorities trying to force her to agree to a secret burial.
“They are blackmailing me, they are setting conditions where, when and how my son should be buried,” she said. “They want it to do it secretly without a mourning ceremony.”
Navalny, Russia’s most well-known opposition politician, suddenly died in an Arctic prison last week, prompting hundreds of Russians across the country to stream to impromptu memorials with flowers and candles. The Russian authorities have detained scores of them as they seek to suppress any major outpouring of sympathy for Vladimir Putin’s fiercest foe ahead of the presidential election he is almost certain to win.
Navalny’s mother has filed a lawsuit at a court in Salekhard contesting officials’ refusal to release her son’s body. A closed-door hearing has been scheduled for March 4. On Tuesday, she appealed to Putin to release her son’s remains so that she could bury him with dignity.
In the video released Thursday, Navalnaya said she had spent nearly 24 hours in the Salekhard office of the Investigative Committee, where officials told her that they have determined the politician’s cause of death and have the paperwork ready, but she has to agree to a secret funeral. She didn’t specify what the cause of death was.
“They want to take me to the outskirts of the cemetery to a fresh grave and say: ‘Here lies your son.’ I don’t agree to this. I want you too — to whom Alexey is dear, for whom his death was a personal tragedy — to have the opportunity to say goodbye to him,” she said.
Navalnaya accused the authorities of threatening her: “Looking into my eyes, they say that if I do not agree to a secret funeral, they will do something with my son’s body. Investigator Voropayev openly told me: ‘Time is not on your side, the corpse is decomposing’,” she said, reiterating her demand to release her son’s body “immediately.”
Navalny’s death has deprived the Russian opposition of its best-known and inspiring politician less than a month before an election that is all but certain to give Putin another six years in power. Many Russians had seen Navalny as a rare hope for political change amid Putin’s unrelenting crackdown on the opposition.
Since Navalny’s death, about 400 people have been detained across in Russia as they tried to pay tribute to him with flowers and candles, according to OVD-Info, a group that monitors political arrests. Authorities cordoned off some of the memorials to victims of Soviet repression across the country that were being used as sites to leave makeshift tributes to Navalny. Police removed the flowers at night, but more keep appearing.
Earlier Thursday, imprisoned opposition figure Vladimir Kara-Murza urged Russians not to give up after Navalny ‘s death, and he alleged that a state-backed hit squad was taking out the Kremlin’s political opponents, according to a video posted to social media.
A British-Russian citizen, Kara-Murza is serving a 25-year sentence for treason at Penal Colony No. 7 in the Siberian city of Omsk. He comments came as he appeared via a video link in a court hearing over a complaint against Russia’s Investigative Committee for what he believes were two poisoning attempts against him. He alleges the committee didn’t properly investigate the attempts.
Kara-Murza is one of several opposition figures who have either been imprisoned, forced to flee the country or killed. He was convicted of criticizing Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and was handed a stiff sentence as part of a crackdown against critics of the war and freedom of speech.
“We owe it … to our fallen comrades to continue to work with even greater strength and achieve what they lived and died for,” Kara-Murza said in the video, which was shared by the Russian Sota telegram channel.
Kara-Murza says the attempts to poison him took place in 2015 and 2017. In the first, he nearly died of kidney failure, although no cause was determined. He was hospitalized with a similar illness in 2017 and put into a medically induced coma. His wife said doctors confirmed he was poisoned.
Kara-Murza’s latest hearing came after months of postponements. In January, he was moved from another prison in Siberia and placed in solitary confinement over an alleged minor infraction.
According to the video shared by Sota, Kara-Murza alleged there is a “death squad within the Federal Security Service, a group of professional killers in the service of the state, whose task is to physically eliminate political opponents of the Putin regime.”
He said investigative journalists had shown the group of FSB officers participated in his poisoning, as well as Navalny’s poisoning with a nerve agent in 2020 and the surveillance of opposition politician Boris Nemtsov before he was shot and killed in 2015 on a bridge near the Kremlin.
On Monday, Ilya Yashin, an opposition figure serving 8 1/2 years in prison for criticizing Russia’s war in Ukraine, alleged in a social media post shared on his behalf that Putin had killed Navalny.
“I have no doubt that it was Putin. He’s a war criminal,” Yashin said. “Navalny was his key opponent in Russia and was hated by the Kremlin. Putin had both motive and opportunity. I am convinced that he ordered the killing.”
The Kremlin has denied any involvement in the illnesses and deaths of the opposition figures, including Navalny.
Navalny’s widow, Yulia Navalnaya, said Thursday on her Instagram account that she had flown to visit her 20-year-old daughter, Dasha, a student at Stanford University.
“My dear girl, I came to hug you and support you, and you sit and support me” she wrote under a photo of herself and her daughter lying on a carpet.
Describing her daughter as “strong, brave and resilient,” Navalnaya said the family would “definitely cope with everything.” She also has a 15-year-old son, Zakhar.
Russian authorities have said the cause of Navalny’s death is still unknown and have refused to release his body for two weeks as the preliminary inquest continues, his team said. It accused the government of stalling to try to hide evidence.
In a video on Monday, Yulia Navalnaya also accusing Putin of killing her husband and alleged the refusal to release his body was part of a cover-up.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov rejected the allegations, calling them “absolutely unfounded, insolent accusations about the head of the Russian state.”
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Associated Press
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AT&T said that it has restored three-quarters of its network after an outage on Thursday morning that disrupted phone service nationwide.
“Our network teams took immediate action and so far three-quarters of our network has been restored,”AT&T said in a statement to Spectrum News. “We are working as quickly as possible to restore service to remaining customers.”
Users of several major cellular carriers, including AT&T, Verizon and T-Mobile, reported outages on Thursday morning, according to Downdetector, which tracks internet, communication and other service outages.
Per Downdetector, users began to report issues after 3:30 a.m. ET. Reports peaked at at around 4:30-5:30 a.m. ET, depending on the carrier in question. The cause of the outage is not yet clear.
Areas reporting issues included New York, Los Angeles, Dallas and Houston, Chicago and Atlanta. Some municipalities across the country also reported issues with contacting emergency services, including 911.
The emergency services outage prompted at least one law enforcement organization to urge people not to test if 911 was working.
“Many 911 centers in the state are getting flooded w/ calls from people trying to see if 911 works from their cell phone. Please do not do this,” Massachusetts State Police wrote on X, formerly Twitter. “If you can successfully place a non-emergency call to another number via your cell service then your 911 service will also work.”
AT&T had more than 64,000 outages on Thursday morning. The carrier has more than 240 million subscribers, more than any other company in the U.S.
Cricket Wireless had more than 13,000, the outage tracking website said Thursday. Verizon had more than 4,000 outages and T-Mobile had more than 1,900 outages reported. Boost Mobile had about 700 outages.
In a statement to Spectrum News, Verizon said its network is “operating normally.”
“Some customers experienced issues this morning when calling or texting with customers served by another carrier,” the carrier said. “We are continuing to monitor the situation.”
Likewise, T-Mobile said that it did not experience an outage.
“Our network is operating normally,” the company said in a statement to Spectrum News. “Down Detector is likely reflecting challenges our customers were having attempting to connect to users on other networks.”
NOTE: Spectrum News is owned by parent company Charter Communications, which owns and operates Spectrum Mobile.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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Associated Press
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AT&T said that it has restored three-quarters of its network after an outage on Thursday morning that disrupted phone service nationwide.
“Our network teams took immediate action and so far three-quarters of our network has been restored,”AT&T said in a statement to Spectrum News. “We are working as quickly as possible to restore service to remaining customers.”
Users of several major cellular carriers, including AT&T, Verizon and T-Mobile, reported outages on Thursday morning, according to Downdetector, which tracks internet, communication and other service outages.
Per Downdetector, users began to report issues after 3:30 a.m. ET. Reports peaked at at around 4:30-5:30 a.m. ET, depending on the carrier in question. The cause of the outage is not yet clear.
Areas reporting issues included New York, Los Angeles, Dallas and Houston, Chicago and Atlanta. Some municipalities across the country also reported issues with contacting emergency services, including 911.
The emergency services outage prompted at least one law enforcement organization to urge people not to test if 911 was working.
“Many 911 centers in the state are getting flooded w/ calls from people trying to see if 911 works from their cell phone. Please do not do this,” Massachusetts State Police wrote on X, formerly Twitter. “If you can successfully place a non-emergency call to another number via your cell service then your 911 service will also work.”
AT&T had more than 64,000 outages on Thursday morning. The carrier has more than 240 million subscribers, more than any other company in the U.S.
Cricket Wireless had more than 13,000, the outage tracking website said Thursday. Verizon had more than 4,000 outages and T-Mobile had more than 1,900 outages reported. Boost Mobile had about 700 outages.
In a statement to Spectrum News, Verizon said its network is “operating normally.”
“Some customers experienced issues this morning when calling or texting with customers served by another carrier,” the carrier said. “We are continuing to monitor the situation.”
Likewise, T-Mobile said that it did not experience an outage.
“Our network is operating normally,” the company said in a statement to Spectrum News. “Down Detector is likely reflecting challenges our customers were having attempting to connect to users on other networks.”
NOTE: Spectrum News is owned by parent company Charter Communications, which owns and operates Spectrum Mobile.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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Associated Press
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Users of several major cellular carriers, including AT&T, Verizon and T-Mobile, reported outages on Thursday morning, according to Downdetector, which tracks internet, communication and other service outages.
Per Downdetector, users began to report issues after 3:30 a.m. ET. Reports peaked at at around 4:30-5:30 a.m. ET, depending on the carrier in question. The cause of the outage is not yet clear.
Areas reporting issues included New York, Los Angeles, Dallas and Houston. Some municipalities across the country also reported issues with contacting emergency services, including 911.
A source familiar told Spectrum News that the issue is not related to Verizon, but likely to another mobile carrier. The company’s customers could see issues they try to make or receive calls or texts from the impacted provider, the source said.
Spectrum News has reached out to T-Mobile and AT&T for comment.
This is a developing story. Check back later for updates.
NOTE: Spectrum News is owned by parent company Charter Communications, which owns and operates Spectrum Mobile.
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Spectrum News Staff
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Former President Donald Trump confirmed at least six names he said are on his shortlist to be his vice presidential pick in this year’s election.
In a Fox News town hall on Tuesday night, Trump said his list includes Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, Florida Rep. Byron Donalds, former Hawaii Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem, biotech entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy and South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott.
The front-runner for the GOP nomination, Trump did not produce the names on his own but was rather presented them by town hall host Laura Ingraham, who said audience members suggested them. Ingraham then asked Trump, “Are they all on your shortlist?” Trump answered, “They are.”
It’s possible other names could also be on Trump’s list. There has been speculation, too, surrounding New York Rep. Elise Stefanik, Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene and Ohio Sen. J.D. Vance, among others.
Trump, 77, said the most important quality he’s looking for in a running mate is someone who could be a great president in the event that something happens to him.
He also said “you would like to get somebody that could help you from the voter standpoint” and added that he’s looking for a running mate who agrees with him on a wide range of issues, including border security, interest rates, electric vehicles, foreign affairs, the need for a strong military and school choice.
“I always say I want people with common sense because there’s so many things happening in this country that don’t make sense,” Trump said.
Trump told NBC News in September that he liked the concept of choosing a woman as his running mate, but added, “We’re going to pick the best person.” He did not say anything Tuesday night about his running mate potentially be a woman.
In another Fox town hall in Iowa in January, Trump said he already knew who his pick would be but did not elaborate. DeSantis and Ramaswamy were still opposing him for the Republican nomination at the time.
Scott also ran against Trump in the primary but exited the race before the first votes were cast. DeSantis, Ramaswamy and Scott have all endorsed Trump, with Ramaswamy and Scott actively campaigning for the former president.
Trump praised Scott, who attended the town hall, calling him “a great advocate.”
“He has been much better for me than he was for himself,” Trump said. “I watched his campaign, and he doesn’t like talking about himself, but, boy, does he talk about Trump.”
In 2016, Trump chose then-Indiana Gov. Mike Pence to be his running mate, but the men had a falling out after Pence rebuffed Trump’s demand to block certification of Joe Biden’s win in the 2020 election.
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Ryan Chatelain
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The Alabama Supreme Court has ruled that frozen embryos can be considered children under state law, a decision critics said could have sweeping implications for fertility treatment in the state.
The decision was issued in a pair of wrongful death cases brought by three couples who had frozen embryos destroyed in an accident at a fertility clinic. Justices, citing anti-abortion language in the Alabama Constitution, ruled that an 1872 state law allowing parents to sue over the death of a minor child “applies to all unborn children, regardless of their location.”
“Unborn children are ‘children’ … without exception based on developmental stage, physical location, or any other ancillary characteristics,” Justice Jay Mitchell wrote in Friday’s majority ruling by the all-Republican court.
Mitchell said the court had previously ruled that fetuses killed while a woman is pregnant are covered under Alabama’s Wrongful Death of a Minor Act and nothing excludes “extrauterine children from the Act’s coverage.”
The ruling brought a rush of warnings about the potential impact on fertility treatments and the freezing of embryos, which had previously been considered property by the courts.
“This ruling is stating that a fertilized egg, which is a clump of cells, is now a person. It really puts into question, the practice of IVF,” Barbara Collura, CEO of RESOLVE: The National Infertility Association, told The Associated Press Tuesday. The group called the decision a “terrifying development for the 1-in-6 people impacted by infertility” who need in-vitro fertilization.
She said it raises questions for providers and patients, including if they can freeze future embryos created during fertility treatment or if patients could ever donate or destroy unused embryos.
Sean Tipton, a spokesman with the American Society for Reproductive Medicine, said at least one Alabama fertility clinic has been instructed by their affiliated hospital to pause IVF treatment in the immediate wake of the decision.
Dr. Paula Amato, president of the American Society for Reproductive Medicine, said a decision to treat frozen fertilized egg as the legal equivalent of a child or gestating fetus could limit the availability of modern health care.
“By insisting that these very different biological entities are legally equivalent, the best state-of-the-art fertility care will be made unavailable to the people of Alabama. No health care provider will be willing to provide treatments if those treatments may lead to civil or criminal charges,” Amato said.
Gabby Goidel, 26, who is pursuing IVF treatment in Alabama after three miscarriages, said the court ruling came down on the same day she began daily injections ahead of egg retrieval.
“It just kind of took me by by storm. It was like all I could think about and it was just a very stressful thing to hear. I immediately messaged my clinic and asked if this could potentially halt us. They said we have to take it one day at a time,” Goidel said.
She said her clinic is continuing to provide treatment for now, but said it will let her know if they have to change course.
Goidel said she turned to IVF and preimplantation genetic testing after the multiple miscarriages related to genetic issues.
“Without IVF, I would have to probably go through several more miscarriages before I even had an option of having a baby that is my own,” she said.
The plaintiffs in the Alabama case had undergone IVF treatments that led to the creation of several embryos, some of which were implanted and resulted in healthy births. The couples paid to keep others frozen in a storage facility at the Mobile Infirmary Medical Center. A patient in 2020 wandered into the area and removed several embryos, dropping them on the floor and “killing them,” the ruling said.
The justices ruled that wrongful death lawsuits by the couples could proceed. The clinic and hospital that are defendants in the case could ask the court to reconsider its decision.
Michael Upchurch, a lawyer for the fertility clinic in the lawsuit, Center for Reproductive Medicine, said they are “evaluating the consequences of the decision and have no further comment at this time.”
An anti-abortion group cheered the decision. “Each person, from the tiniest embryo to an elder nearing the end of his life, has incalculable value that deserves and is guaranteed legal protection,” Lila Rose, president and founder of Live Action said in a statement.
Chief Justice Tom Parker issued a concurring opinion in which he quoted the Bible in discussing the meaning of the phrase “the sanctity of unborn life” in the Alabama Constitution.
“Even before birth, all human beings bear the image of God, and their lives cannot be destroyed without effacing his glory,” Parker said.
Justice Greg Cook, who filed the only full dissent to the majority opinion, said the 1872 law did not define “minor child” and was being stretched from the original intent to cover frozen embryos.
“No court — anywhere in the country — has reached the conclusion the main opinion reaches,” he wrote, adding the ruling “almost certainly ends the creation of frozen embryos through in vitro fertilization (IVF) in Alabama.”
The Alabama Supreme Court decision partly hinged on anti-abortion language added to the Alabama Constitution in 2018, stating it is the “policy of this state to ensure the protection of the rights of the unborn child.”
Supporters at the time said it would have no impact unless states gained more control over abortion access. States gained control of abortion access in 2022.
White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said the Alabama decision reflected the consequences of the Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade and blamed Republican elected officials from blocking access to reproductive and emergency care to women.
“This president and this vice president will continue to fight to protect access to reproductive health care and call on Congress to restore the protections of Roe v. Wade in federal law for all women in every state,” Jean-Pierre told reporters aboard Air Force One.
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Associated Press
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The Alabama Supreme Court has ruled that frozen embryos can be considered children under state law, a decision critics said could have sweeping implications for fertility treatment in the state.
The decision was issued in a pair of wrongful death cases brought by three couples who had frozen embryos destroyed in an accident at a fertility clinic. Justices, citing anti-abortion language in the Alabama Constitution, ruled that an 1872 state law allowing parents to sue over the death of a minor child “applies to all unborn children, regardless of their location.”
“Unborn children are ‘children’ … without exception based on developmental stage, physical location, or any other ancillary characteristics,” Justice Jay Mitchell wrote in Friday’s majority ruling by the all-Republican court.
Mitchell said the court had previously ruled that fetuses killed while a woman is pregnant are covered under Alabama’s Wrongful Death of a Minor Act and nothing excludes “extrauterine children from the Act’s coverage.”
The ruling brought a rush of warnings about the potential impact on fertility treatments and the freezing of embryos, which had previously been considered property by the courts.
“This ruling is stating that a fertilized egg, which is a clump of cells, is now a person. It really puts into question, the practice of IVF,” Barbara Collura, CEO of RESOLVE: The National Infertility Association, told The Associated Press Tuesday. The group called the decision a “terrifying development for the 1-in-6 people impacted by infertility” who need in-vitro fertilization.
She said it raises questions for providers and patients, including if they can freeze future embryos created during fertility treatment or if patients could ever donate or destroy unused embryos.
Sean Tipton, a spokesman with the American Society for Reproductive Medicine, said at least one Alabama fertility clinic has been instructed by their affiliated hospital to pause IVF treatment in the immediate wake of the decision.
Dr. Paula Amato, president of the American Society for Reproductive Medicine, said a decision to treat frozen fertilized egg as the legal equivalent of a child or gestating fetus could limit the availability of modern health care.
“By insisting that these very different biological entities are legally equivalent, the best state-of-the-art fertility care will be made unavailable to the people of Alabama. No health care provider will be willing to provide treatments if those treatments may lead to civil or criminal charges,” Amato said.
Gabby Goidel, 26, who is pursuing IVF treatment in Alabama after three miscarriages, said the court ruling came down on the same day she began daily injections ahead of egg retrieval.
“It just kind of took me by by storm. It was like all I could think about and it was just a very stressful thing to hear. I immediately messaged my clinic and asked if this could potentially halt us. They said we have to take it one day at a time,” Goidel said.
She said her clinic is continuing to provide treatment for now, but said it will let her know if they have to change course.
Goidel said she turned to IVF and preimplantation genetic testing after the multiple miscarriages related to genetic issues.
“Without IVF, I would have to probably go through several more miscarriages before I even had an option of having a baby that is my own,” she said.
The plaintiffs in the Alabama case had undergone IVF treatments that led to the creation of several embryos, some of which were implanted and resulted in healthy births. The couples paid to keep others frozen in a storage facility at the Mobile Infirmary Medical Center. A patient in 2020 wandered into the area and removed several embryos, dropping them on the floor and “killing them,” the ruling said.
The justices ruled that wrongful death lawsuits by the couples could proceed. The clinic and hospital that are defendants in the case could ask the court to reconsider its decision.
Michael Upchurch, a lawyer for the fertility clinic in the lawsuit, Center for Reproductive Medicine, said they are “evaluating the consequences of the decision and have no further comment at this time.”
An anti-abortion group cheered the decision. “Each person, from the tiniest embryo to an elder nearing the end of his life, has incalculable value that deserves and is guaranteed legal protection,” Lila Rose, president and founder of Live Action said in a statement.
Chief Justice Tom Parker issued a concurring opinion in which he quoted the Bible in discussing the meaning of the phrase “the sanctity of unborn life” in the Alabama Constitution.
“Even before birth, all human beings bear the image of God, and their lives cannot be destroyed without effacing his glory,” Parker said.
Justice Greg Cook, who filed the only full dissent to the majority opinion, said the 1872 law did not define “minor child” and was being stretched from the original intent to cover frozen embryos.
“No court — anywhere in the country — has reached the conclusion the main opinion reaches,” he wrote, adding the ruling “almost certainly ends the creation of frozen embryos through in vitro fertilization (IVF) in Alabama.”
The Alabama Supreme Court decision partly hinged on anti-abortion language added to the Alabama Constitution in 2018, stating it is the “policy of this state to ensure the protection of the rights of the unborn child.”
Supporters at the time said it would have no impact unless states gained more control over abortion access. States gained control of abortion access in 2022.
White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said the Alabama decision reflected the consequences of the Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade and blamed Republican elected officials from blocking access to reproductive and emergency care to women.
“This president and this vice president will continue to fight to protect access to reproductive health care and call on Congress to restore the protections of Roe v. Wade in federal law for all women in every state,” Jean-Pierre told reporters aboard Air Force One.
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President Joe Biden is heading to California for a fundraising blitz as he looks to shore up support ahead of a likely rematch with former President Donald Trump in November.
As he takes off for the Golden State, he’ll do so with the wind at his back in terms of fundraising: His campaign on Tuesday announced a more than $42 million fundraising haul in January.
The president’s reelection campaign is also boasting a $130 million war chest, which they called the highest ever amassed by a Democratic candidate at this point in the election cycle in U.S. history.
Biden’s campaign manager Julie Chavez Rodriguez said that January was the campaign’s strongest grassroots month since the campaign launched. The first month of the year saw 422,000 unique donors making 502,000 donations to the campaign.
“January’s fundraising haul – driven by a powerhouse grassroots fundraising program that continues to grow month by month – is an indisputable show of strength to start the election year,” she said in a statement. “While Team Biden-Harris continues to build on its fundraising machine, Republicans are divided – either spending money fighting Donald Trump, or spending money in support of Donald Trump’s extreme and losing agenda. Either way, judging from their weak fundraising, they’re already paying the political price.
“In an election that will determine the fate of our democracy and our freedoms, President Biden’s campaign is using its resources to build a winning operation that will meet voters where they are about the stakes of this election,” she continued.
Biden’s third visit to California in a little over two months will take him to Los Angeles and the Bay Area. He’ll first take part in a fundraiser in Los Angeles before making stops later in the week San Francisco and Los Altos Hills. He is also set to hold an official policy event on Wednesday in Los Angeles.
The Democratic incumbent’s reelection campaign also hailed the fact that it added more than 1 million emails to its distribution list in the first month of the year, and its total of more than 158,000 sustaining monthly donors.
They also noted that they raised $1 million per day in the three days following Iowa’s Republican presidential caucuses, which Trump won decisively over the rest of the GOP presidential field.
“We are particularly proud that January shattered our grassroots fundraising record for a third straight month. This haul will go directly to reaching the voters who will decide this election,” said Senior Communications Advisor TJ Ducklo, before seemingly adding a reference to the verdict in Trump’s New York civil fraud trial. “That’s reason number 355 million that we are confident President Biden and Vice President Harris will win this November.”
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At about 2 a.m. last Tuesday, Republican Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin stood on the Senate floor and explained why he opposed sending more aid to help Ukraine fend off the invasion launched in 2022 by Russian President Vladimir Putin.
“I don’t like this reality,” Johnson said. “Vladimir Putin is an evil war criminal.” But he quickly added: “Vladimir Putin will not lose this war.”
That argument — that the Russian president cannot be stopped so there’s no point in using American taxpayer dollars against him — marks a new stage in the Republican Party’s growing acceptance of Russian expansionism in the age of Donald Trump.
The GOP has been softening its stance on Russia ever since Trump won the 2016 election following Russian hacking of his Democratic opponents. There are several reasons for the shift. Among them, Putin is holding himself out as an international champion of conservative Christian values and the GOP is growing increasingly skeptical of overseas entanglements. Then there’s Trump’s personal embrace of the Russian leader.
Now the GOP’s ambivalence on Russia has stalled additional aid to Ukraine at a pivotal time in the war.
The Senate last week passed a foreign aid package that included $61 billion for Ukraine on a 70-29 vote, but Johnson was one of a majority of the Republicans to vote against the bill after their late-night stand to block it. In the Republican-controlled House, Speaker Mike Johnson said his chamber will not be “rushed” to pass the measure, even as Ukraine’s military warns of dire shortages of ammunition and artillery.
Many Republicans are openly frustrated that their colleagues don’t see the benefits of helping Ukraine. Putin and his allies have banked on democracies wearying of aiding Kyiv, and Putin’s GOP critics warn that NATO countries in eastern Europe could become targets of an emboldened Russia that believes the U.S. won’t counter it.
“Putin is losing,” Republican Sen. Thom Tillis of North Carolina said on the floor before Johnson’s speech. “This is not a stalemate.” Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky was one of 22 Republican senators to back the package, while 26 opposed it.
The divide within the party was on stark display Friday with the prison death of Russian opposition figure and anti-corruption advocate Alexei Navalny, which President Joe Biden and other world leaders blamed on Putin. Trump notably stood aside from that chorus Monday in his first public comment on the matter that referred to Navalny by name.
Offering no sympathy or attempt to affix blame, Trump posted on Truth Social that the “sudden death of Alexei Navalny has made me more and more aware of what is happening in our Country. It is a slow, steady progression, with CROOKED, Radical Left Politicians, Prosecutors, and Judges leading us down a path to destruction.”
Nikki Haley, his Republican presidential primary rival, said Monday that Trump is “siding with a thug” in his embrace of Putin.
Tillis responded to Navalny’s death by saying in a post, “History will not be kind to those in America who make apologies for Putin and praise Russian autocracy.”
Johnson, the House speaker, issued a statement calling Putin a “vicious dictator” and pledging that he “will be met with united opposition,” but he did not offer any way forward for passing the aid to Ukraine.
Within the Republican Party, skeptics of confronting Russia seem to be gaining ground.
“Nearly every Republican Senator under the age of 55 voted NO on this America Last bill,” Missouri Sen. Eric Schmitt, elected in 2022, posted on the social media site X after the vote last week. “15 out of 17 elected since 2018 voted NO. Things are changing just not fast enough.”
Those who oppose additional Ukraine aid bristle at charges that they are doing Putin’s handiwork. They contend they are taking a hard-headed look at whether it’s worth spending money to help the country.
“If you oppose a blank check to another country, I guess that makes you a Russian,” Alabama Sen. Tommy Tuberville said on the Senate floor, after posting that conservative commentator Tucker Carlson’s recent controversial interview of Putin shows that “Russia wants peace” in contrast to “DC warmongers.”
Rep. Matt Gaetz, a leading opponent of Ukraine aid in the House, described the movement as “a generational shift in my party away from neoconservatism toward foreign policy realism.”
In interviews with voters waiting to see Trump speak Saturday night in Waterford Township, Michigan, none praised Putin. But none wanted to spend more money confronting him, trusting Trump to handle the Russian leader.
Even before Trump, Republican voters were signaling discontent with overseas conflicts, said Douglas Kriner, a political scientist at Cornell University. That’s one reason Trump’s 2016 promise to avoid “stupid wars” resonated.
“Some of it may be a bottom-up change in a key part of the Republican base,” Kriner said, “and part of it reflects Trump’s hold on that base and his ability to sway its opinions and policy preferences in dramatic ways.”
Trump has long praised Putin, calling his invasion of Ukraine “smart” and “savvy,” and recalling this month that he had told NATO members who didn’t spend enough on defense that he would “encourage” Russia to “do whatever the hell they want” to them. He reiterated that threat days later.
Despite the reluctance within the GOP to continue supporting Ukraine, Russia remains deeply unpopular in the U.S. A July 2023 Gallup poll found that just 5% had a favorable view of Putin, including 7% of Republicans.
But Putin has positioned his country as a symbol of Christian conservatism and resistance to LGBTQ rights, while portraying himself as an embodiment of masculine strength. The combination has appealed to populist conservatives across the Western world. Putin’s appeal in some sectors of the right is demonstrated by Carlson’s recent tour of Russia, after which the conservative host posted videos admiring the Moscow subway and a supermarket that he says “would radicalize you against our leaders.”
“The goal of the Soviet Union was to be the beacon of left ideas,” said Olga Kamenchuk, a professor at Northwestern University. “Russia is now the beacon of conservative ideas.”
Kamenchuk said this is most visible not in Putin’s U.S. poll numbers, but in fading Republican support for Ukraine. About half of Republicans said the U.S. is providing “too much” support to Ukraine when it comes to Russia’s invasion, according to a Pew Research poll in December. That’s up from 9% in a Pew poll taken in March 2022, just weeks after Russia invaded.
When Putin attacked Ukraine, there was bipartisan condemnation. Even a year ago, most Republicans in Congress pledged support. But around the same time, Trump was lamenting that U.S. leaders were “suckers” for sending aid.
By the fall, the party was divided. Republicans refused to include another round of Ukraine funding in the government spending bill, insisting that Democrats needed to include a border security measure to earn their support.
After Trump condemned the compromise border proposal, Republicans sank the bill, leaving Ukraine backers no option but to push the assistance as part of a foreign aid package with additional money for Israel and Taiwan.
Several experts on Russia note that the rhetoric the GOP uses against Ukraine aid can mirror Putin’s own — that Ukraine is corrupt and will waste the money, that the U.S. can’t afford to look beyond its borders and that Russia’s victory is inevitable.
“He’s trying to create the perception that he’s never going to be beaten, so don’t even try,” Henry Hale, a George Washington University political scientist, said of Putin.
Skeptics of Ukraine aid argue the war has already decimated the Russian military and that Putin won’t be able to target other European countries.
“Russia has shown in the last two years that they do not have the ability to march through Western Europe,” said Russell Vought, Trump’s former director of the Office of Management and Budget who is now president of the Center for Renewing America, which opposes additional Ukraine funding.
But several experts noted that Putin has alluded to plans to retake much of the former Soviet Union’s territory, which could include NATO countries such as Lithuania and Estonia that the U.S is obligated under its treaty to defend militarily.
Sergey Radchenko, a professor at Johns Hopkins’ School of Advanced International Studies, noted that Russia for decades has hoped the U.S would lose interest in protecting Europe: “This was Stalin’s dream, that the U.S. would just retreat to the Western hemisphere.”
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Associated Press
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At about 2 a.m. last Tuesday, Republican Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin stood on the Senate floor and explained why he opposed sending more aid to help Ukraine fend off the invasion launched in 2022 by Russian President Vladimir Putin.
“I don’t like this reality,” Johnson said. “Vladimir Putin is an evil war criminal.” But he quickly added: “Vladimir Putin will not lose this war.”
That argument — that the Russian president cannot be stopped so there’s no point in using American taxpayer dollars against him — marks a new stage in the Republican Party’s growing acceptance of Russian expansionism in the age of Donald Trump.
The GOP has been softening its stance on Russia ever since Trump won the 2016 election following Russian hacking of his Democratic opponents. There are several reasons for the shift. Among them, Putin is holding himself out as an international champion of conservative Christian values and the GOP is growing increasingly skeptical of overseas entanglements. Then there’s Trump’s personal embrace of the Russian leader.
Now the GOP’s ambivalence on Russia has stalled additional aid to Ukraine at a pivotal time in the war.
The Senate last week passed a foreign aid package that included $61 billion for Ukraine on a 70-29 vote, but Johnson was one of a majority of the Republicans to vote against the bill after their late-night stand to block it. In the Republican-controlled House, Speaker Mike Johnson said his chamber will not be “rushed” to pass the measure, even as Ukraine’s military warns of dire shortages of ammunition and artillery.
Many Republicans are openly frustrated that their colleagues don’t see the benefits of helping Ukraine. Putin and his allies have banked on democracies wearying of aiding Kyiv, and Putin’s GOP critics warn that NATO countries in eastern Europe could become targets of an emboldened Russia that believes the U.S. won’t counter it.
“Putin is losing,” Republican Sen. Thom Tillis of North Carolina said on the floor before Johnson’s speech. “This is not a stalemate.” Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky was one of 22 Republican senators to back the package, while 26 opposed it.
The divide within the party was on stark display Friday with the prison death of Russian opposition figure and anti-corruption advocate Alexei Navalny, which President Joe Biden and other world leaders blamed on Putin. Trump notably stood aside from that chorus Monday in his first public comment on the matter that referred to Navalny by name.
Offering no sympathy or attempt to affix blame, Trump posted on Truth Social that the “sudden death of Alexei Navalny has made me more and more aware of what is happening in our Country. It is a slow, steady progression, with CROOKED, Radical Left Politicians, Prosecutors, and Judges leading us down a path to destruction.”
Nikki Haley, his Republican presidential primary rival, said Monday that Trump is “siding with a thug” in his embrace of Putin.
Tillis responded to Navalny’s death by saying in a post, “History will not be kind to those in America who make apologies for Putin and praise Russian autocracy.”
Johnson, the House speaker, issued a statement calling Putin a “vicious dictator” and pledging that he “will be met with united opposition,” but he did not offer any way forward for passing the aid to Ukraine.
Within the Republican Party, skeptics of confronting Russia seem to be gaining ground.
“Nearly every Republican Senator under the age of 55 voted NO on this America Last bill,” Missouri Sen. Eric Schmitt, elected in 2022, posted on the social media site X after the vote last week. “15 out of 17 elected since 2018 voted NO. Things are changing just not fast enough.”
Those who oppose additional Ukraine aid bristle at charges that they are doing Putin’s handiwork. They contend they are taking a hard-headed look at whether it’s worth spending money to help the country.
“If you oppose a blank check to another country, I guess that makes you a Russian,” Alabama Sen. Tommy Tuberville said on the Senate floor, after posting that conservative commentator Tucker Carlson’s recent controversial interview of Putin shows that “Russia wants peace” in contrast to “DC warmongers.”
Rep. Matt Gaetz, a leading opponent of Ukraine aid in the House, described the movement as “a generational shift in my party away from neoconservatism toward foreign policy realism.”
In interviews with voters waiting to see Trump speak Saturday night in Waterford Township, Michigan, none praised Putin. But none wanted to spend more money confronting him, trusting Trump to handle the Russian leader.
Even before Trump, Republican voters were signaling discontent with overseas conflicts, said Douglas Kriner, a political scientist at Cornell University. That’s one reason Trump’s 2016 promise to avoid “stupid wars” resonated.
“Some of it may be a bottom-up change in a key part of the Republican base,” Kriner said, “and part of it reflects Trump’s hold on that base and his ability to sway its opinions and policy preferences in dramatic ways.”
Trump has long praised Putin, calling his invasion of Ukraine “smart” and “savvy,” and recalling this month that he had told NATO members who didn’t spend enough on defense that he would “encourage” Russia to “do whatever the hell they want” to them. He reiterated that threat days later.
Despite the reluctance within the GOP to continue supporting Ukraine, Russia remains deeply unpopular in the U.S. A July 2023 Gallup poll found that just 5% had a favorable view of Putin, including 7% of Republicans.
But Putin has positioned his country as a symbol of Christian conservatism and resistance to LGBTQ rights, while portraying himself as an embodiment of masculine strength. The combination has appealed to populist conservatives across the Western world. Putin’s appeal in some sectors of the right is demonstrated by Carlson’s recent tour of Russia, after which the conservative host posted videos admiring the Moscow subway and a supermarket that he says “would radicalize you against our leaders.”
“The goal of the Soviet Union was to be the beacon of left ideas,” said Olga Kamenchuk, a professor at Northwestern University. “Russia is now the beacon of conservative ideas.”
Kamenchuk said this is most visible not in Putin’s U.S. poll numbers, but in fading Republican support for Ukraine. About half of Republicans said the U.S. is providing “too much” support to Ukraine when it comes to Russia’s invasion, according to a Pew Research poll in December. That’s up from 9% in a Pew poll taken in March 2022, just weeks after Russia invaded.
When Putin attacked Ukraine, there was bipartisan condemnation. Even a year ago, most Republicans in Congress pledged support. But around the same time, Trump was lamenting that U.S. leaders were “suckers” for sending aid.
By the fall, the party was divided. Republicans refused to include another round of Ukraine funding in the government spending bill, insisting that Democrats needed to include a border security measure to earn their support.
After Trump condemned the compromise border proposal, Republicans sank the bill, leaving Ukraine backers no option but to push the assistance as part of a foreign aid package with additional money for Israel and Taiwan.
Several experts on Russia note that the rhetoric the GOP uses against Ukraine aid can mirror Putin’s own — that Ukraine is corrupt and will waste the money, that the U.S. can’t afford to look beyond its borders and that Russia’s victory is inevitable.
“He’s trying to create the perception that he’s never going to be beaten, so don’t even try,” Henry Hale, a George Washington University political scientist, said of Putin.
Skeptics of Ukraine aid argue the war has already decimated the Russian military and that Putin won’t be able to target other European countries.
“Russia has shown in the last two years that they do not have the ability to march through Western Europe,” said Russell Vought, Trump’s former director of the Office of Management and Budget who is now president of the Center for Renewing America, which opposes additional Ukraine funding.
But several experts noted that Putin has alluded to plans to retake much of the former Soviet Union’s territory, which could include NATO countries such as Lithuania and Estonia that the U.S is obligated under its treaty to defend militarily.
Sergey Radchenko, a professor at Johns Hopkins’ School of Advanced International Studies, noted that Russia for decades has hoped the U.S would lose interest in protecting Europe: “This was Stalin’s dream, that the U.S. would just retreat to the Western hemisphere.”
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Donald Trump made his first public comment Monday about the death of Alexei Navalny, although the former president said substantively little about the Russian opposition leader or the Kremlin.
In a post on his Truth Social site, Trump wrote: “The sudden death of Alexei Navalny has made me more and more aware of what is happening in our Country. It is a slow, steady progression, with CROOKED, Radical Left Politicians, Prosecutors, and Judges leading us down a path to destruction. Open Borders, Rigged Elections, and Grossly Unfair Courtroom Decisions are DESTROYING AMERICA. WE ARE A NATION IN DECLINE, A FAILING NATION!”
Trump, who is running for president again, repeats the same grievances about border security, his legal troubles and the direction of the country, as well as his baseless claims of election fraud, on a near-daily basis on his social media site, in interviews and on the campaign trail.
Trump’s remarks came three days after Navalny died in a Russian prison and follows repeated calls from Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley for Trump to comment on his death.
Prior to Monday, Trump’s only mention of Navalny since he died was when he shared a post on Truth Social on Sunday that seemed to suggest he is being persecuted in the United States much like Navalny was in Russia. The headline of the post was “Biden:Trump::Putin:Navalny.”
When asked Friday about whether Trump had a comment on Navalny’s death, his campaign directed reporters to another Trump Truth Social post, which made no mention of Navalny or Russia, instead saying, “America is no longer respected because we have an incompetent president who is weak and doesn’t understand what the World is thinking.”
According to the Russian federal prison service, Navalny died in prison near the Arctic Circle after losing consciousness following a walk.
An outspoken critic of Russian President Vladimir Putin, Navalny blamed the Kremlin for poisoning him with a nerve agent in 2020. After recovering in Germany for more than a year, he was arrested upon returning to Russia and later sentenced to 19 years in prison on charges he and his supporters said were bogus and politically motivated.
Navalny’s widow, Yulia Navalnaya, accused Putin on Monday on refusing to hand over Navalny’s body to his mother as part of a cover-up. Russian authorities have said that the cause of Navalny’s death is still unknown.
U.S. President Joe Biden on Friday quickly blamed Russia for Navalny’s death, although he stopped short of calling it an assassination.
“What has happened to Navalny is yet more proof of Putin’s brutality,” he said. “No one should be fooled — not in Russia, not at home, not anywhere in the world. Putin does not only target his [sic] citizens of other countries, as we’ve seen what’s going on in Ukraine right now, he also inflicts terrible crimes on his own people.”
Haley spent the weekend calling out Trump over his silence on Navalny.
“Putin has done to him what Putin does to all of his opponents — he kills them,” the former United Nations ambassador told reporters Saturday in Irmo, South Carolina. “And Trump needs to answer to that. Does he think Putin killed him? Does he think Putin was right to kill him? And does he think Navalny was a hero?”
Haley, Trump’s only remaining major competition for the Republican presidential nomination, has tied the former president’s evasiveness on Navalny to his comments earlier this month that he would “encourage” Russia “to do whatever the hell they want” to NATO allies that had not met their financial obligations. In an interview on ABC News’ “This Week” on Sunday, Haley said she found it “amazing” that Trump would not only encourage Putin to invade NATO countries but not acknowledge “anything with Navalny.”
“Either he sides with Putin and thinks it’s cool that Putin killed one of his political opponents or he just doesn’t think it’s that big of a deal,” Haley said. “Either one of those is concerning. Either one of those is a problem.”
According to The Washington Post, Trump appears to never have mentioned Navalny by name during his presidency.
Trump did not condemn the poisoning of Navalny in 2020. When asked about it then, he said there was no proof of Russia’s involvement at the time and then argued that people should be more concerned about China than Russia.
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Ryan Chatelain
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Former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley, one of the last remaining candidates left in the race for the Republican nomination, says that if elected president, she would pardon her chief rival and former boss, Donald Trump, if heâs convicted of a federal crime.
Haley made the comment at a Fox News town hall in South Carolina, the state where she served two terms as governor and the site of the next primary in the Republican presidential contest. But despite her extensive background in the Palmetto State, Haley trails the former president by a wide margin, according to polling.
When asked if she would pardon Trump by an audience member, Haley responded: âIf youâre talking about pardoning Trump, itâs not a matter of innocence or guilt at that point, because that means he would have already been found guilty.â
But she then went on to say that she would indeed pardon Trump âin the best interest of bringing the country together.â
âI believe, in the best interest of bringing the country together, I would pardon Donald Trump,â she explained. âBecause I think itâs important for the country to move on. Weâve got to leave the negativity and the baggage behind. I donât want this country divided any further. I donât think itâs in the best interests for America to have an 80-year-old president sitting in jail and having everybody upset about it. I think this would be the time that we would need to move forward and get this out of the way.â
While not a new sentiment for Haley â she said similar in an interview with CNN in January and at a campaign stop in New Hampshire late last year â the statement comes as the legal cases against Trump are starting to heat up.
Trump faces two federal criminal cases, one in Washington related to alleged efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election and one in Florida related to alleged mishandling of classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago estate and hampering the governmentâs efforts to retrieve them.
He also faces two other criminal proceedings â one in Fulton County, Georgia, related to efforts to overturn the stateâs election results in 2020, and one in New York related to alleged hush money payments to an adult film star during his 2016 campaign. The latter begins in a little over a month.
Trump has pleaded not guilty to all of the charges against him and denied any wrongdoing.
The former president has also been dealt several recent blows on the legal front in recent weeks: On Friday, a New York judge fined Trump more than $350 million in a civil business fraud trial; the day before, a separate New York judge rejected his attempt to dismiss the hush money case and set a date for that trial to begin in late March. A federal appeals court ruled earlier this month that Trump is not immune from prosecution in the Justice Department special counsel’s election interference case. Last month, a jury unanimoiusly ruled that Trump must pay $83.3 million to columnist E. Jean Carroll in a defamation suit.
But the former president’s legal woes have so far not impacted his standing in the race for the Republican nomination. According to polling averages from aggregator FiveThirtyEight, he leads Haley by more than 30 points in South Carolina and holds a commanding 60 points nationally.
In September 1974, then-President Gerald Ford pardoned his predecessor, Richard Nixon, who resigned a month prior in the wake of the Watergate scandal and a likely impeachment. Ford’s clemency toward Nixon, who was never charged with any crimes, was a full and unconditional pardon that covered any illegal actions he might have taken as president, including Watergate. Ford’s action was widely seen as helping the country heal and move forward from the scandal.
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Justin Tasolides
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The U.S. has condemned Saturday Rwanda’s support of the armed M23 group in eastern Congo, whose rebellion has caused the displacement of hundreds of thousands of people, and called on the rebel group to “cease hostilities.”
The U.S. State Department in a statement strongly criticized “the worsening violence … caused by the actions of the Rwanda-backed, U.S.- and UN-sanctioned M23 armed group.” It called on Rwanda “to immediately withdraw all Rwanda Defense Force personnel from the (Congo) and remove its surface-to-air missile systems,” which it said threatened civilian lives and peacekeepers. It also urged the rebels to retreat from their current positions near two urban areas in Congo’s North Kivu province.
This is likely to put pressure on Rwanda, whose government has repeatedly denied any links to the M23 group.
Congolese President Felix Tshisekedi has accused Rwanda of destabilizing Congo by backing the rebels. U.N. experts previously said they had “solid evidence” that members of Rwanda’s armed forces were conducting operations there in support of the M23 group.
Fighting near Goma, the capital of North Kivu province and the largest city in the region, has intensified in recent days as the rebels threatened to take over the metropolis. Residents of the nearby town of Sake have been fleeing fierce fighting between Congolese government troops and the group.
The armed conflict has so far displaced more than one million people in eastern Congo since November, according to the aid group Mercy Corps.
Many M23 fighters, including Congolese Tutsis, were once members of Congo’s army. The group’s leaders say they are fighting to protect local Tutsis from extremist Hutu groups such as the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda, whose members were among the perpetrators of the 1994 genocide in Rwanda.
M23 is one of more than 100 armed groups active in eastern Congo, seeking a share of the region’s gold and other resources as they carry out mass killings.
The rebel group rose to prominence just over a decade ago when its fighters seized Goma, which borders Rwanda. It derives its name from a March 23, 2009, peace deal which it accuses the Congo government of not implementing. After being largely dormant for a decade, the M23 resurfaced in late 2021.
The U.S. statement urged all sides to de-escalate and to “participate constructively in reaching a negotiated solution” to the conflict.
“It is essential that all states respect each other’s sovereignty and territorial integrity and hold accountable all actors for human rights abuses in the conflict in eastern (Congo),” it said.
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Katrina Cornish spends her days raising dandelions and desert shrubs. She harvests the stretchy rubber substances they produce and uses special machines to dip them into condoms, medical gloves and parts for trachea tubes. And she thinks those products could forever alter the landscape of agriculture in the United States.
Cornish, a professor at The Ohio State University who studies rubber alternatives, isn’t the only one pouring energy into alternative crops like that desert shrub, guayule or the rubber dandelions that bloom with yellow petals in the greenhouse where Cornish works. In Arizona, too, guayule thrives amidst drought, its blue-green leaves set apart from dry dirt at a research and development farm operated by the tire company Bridgestone. And in Nebraska and other parts of the central U.S., green grasses of sorghum spring up, waving with reddish clusters of grains.
They’re not the corn, soybeans, wheat or cotton that have dominated those areas for decades. Instead, they’re crops that many companies, philanthropic organizations and national and international entities tout as promising alternatives to fight climate change. But while some researchers and farmers are optimistic about the potential of these crops, many of which are more water-efficient and important in certain parts of the world to fight hunger, they also say drastic changes would need to happen in markets and processing before we ever see fields full of these out-of-the-box plants or many products in stores made with them, especially in the United States.
Most rubber processing happens overseas, and the U.S. isn’t prepared to process rubber domestically. But Cornish also says the threats of disease, climate change and international trade tensions also mean that it would be a smart investment to work on growing and processing domestic alternatives.
With sorghum, too, grown for people to eat as well as for farm animals or even pet food, processing would need to be scaled up, said Nate Blum, chief executive officer of Sorghum United, an international non-governmental organization focused on spreading awareness about sorghum. Though the U.S. is the world’s largest producer of sorghum, it still represents only a small fraction of acres grown compared to commodity crops like corn and soybeans. And though corn and soybeans are heavily incentivized in the U.S., Blum is hopeful that consumer demand will encourage more investment in the sorghum and millets industry.
However, farmers are more likely to plant whatever crops get subsidies, said James Gerber, a senior scientist with climate solutions nonprofit Project Drawdown. Gerber, who recently published a paper in Nature Food about which crops will continue to see yield growth and which may stagnate in the coming years, said comparing sorghum production in India and the U.S. illustrates this principle. India has invested heavily in improving sorghum yields there, but the U.S. has not, he said.
Still, Blum thinks there are real benefits to pursue with sorghum, and perhaps more urgent benefits in other parts of the world than in the U.S. On the heels of last year, when the U.N.’s Food and Agriculture Organization declared a focus on millets including sorghum, Blum thinks there’s still much more to be done.
“The end of the international year is not the end. It’s actually just the beginning,” he said.
With climate change bearing down on agriculture around the world, the need for crops that can withstand extreme weather like persistent drought is especially important in parts of sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia where smallholder farmers rely on just a few acres of land. Some of the breeding programs for those crops are based in the U.S., but they are much less frequently included in the American diet or lifestyle.
That’s why specialty markets will be critical if these crops have any hope of taking off here, Cornish said. She thinks that, just as Tesla opened up the possibility of mainstream electric cars by first marketing the product as a luxury good, premium goods like condoms, trachea tube parts and radiation-rated surgical gloves need to be made with dandelion and guayule to inspire producers to grow more meaningful amounts of either of those crops.
“You can’t do it without going to that route because you have no economies of scale, and you do not have enough to go into markets that require a large amount,” Cornish said.
Guayule is “clearly a specialty crop and probably always will be” in terms of acres grown, said Bill Niaura, Bridgestone’s executive director of sustainable innovation. He said that Bridgestone’s work on guayule has been strictly in the research and development realm for about the last ten years, and only within the past two years or so has the company been transitioning it into an exploratory business.
“You’re trying to develop a new industry for the Americas that currently doesn’t exist,” he said.
In the meantime, farmers in the U.S. rely on an agricultural economy built on scale, so they farm the crops that allow them options of where to sell, said Curt Covington, senior director of institutional business at AgAmerica Lending, a private investment manager and lender focused on agricultural land. He added that the bankers financing those farmers often don’t want to take the risk on a full switch to a crop that doesn’t have established markets. That, he said, could be a problem for the country as climate change exacerbates threats to crops like cotton and alfalfa, thirsty crops grown in the Southwest, in the future.
Farmers in Arizona have already had to fallow land, stopping their planting altogether and sometimes struggling with or giving up on family businesses as a result of Colorado River water cuts. Though guayule only uses half as much water as cotton and alfalfa, if the economics don’t support it, that doesn’t do the majority of farmers much good.
“Ultimately what you end up with is potential for, honestly, a lot of fallowed land, and that same crop being imported into this country from other countries,” Covington said. “And so to me that creates a security risk for this country.”
That’s something Cornish thinks can be prevented, she says, by reimagining the United States not as a land dominated by waves of grain, but also as a dominant producer of natural rubber.
“My job isn’t done until this is a permanent feature of the landscape,” she said.
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Associated Press
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Taylor Swift donated $100,000 Friday to the family of the woman killed during Wednesday’s Kansas City Chiefs Super Bowl championship celebration parade.
The pop superstar made two $50,000 donations to a GoFundMe page started to help the family of Lisa Lopez-Galvan.
Her donations were accompanied by a message: “Sending my deepest sympathies and condolences in the wake of your devastating loss. With love, Taylor Swift.”
Representatives for Swift confirmed to multiple media outlets that the singer was behind the donations. Swift’s publicist has not responded to an email from Spectrum News.
Swift, who is dating Chiefs star Travis Kelce, made the donation just as she was beginning a string of three shows in Melbourne, Australia.
Lopez-Galvan, 43, died after gunfire erupted at the end of the parade outside Union Station. She was the only person killed. Twenty-two others, including nine children, were also injured in the shooting.
Lopez-Galvan, a radio disc jockey and co-host of a show featuring Hispanic music, was at the celebration with her family. Her adult son was also reportedly wounded.
Lopez-Galvan is also survived by her husband of 22 years and a daughter.
“She was an amazing mother, wife, daughter, sister, aunt, cousin, and friend to so many,” a message on the GoFundMe page reads. “We ask that you continue to keep her family in your prayers as we grieve the loss of her life. This fund will help provide vital financial support to her family as they process this unthinkable tragedy. Any amount is appreciated.”
The fundraiser’s goal was $75,000. As of about noon Eastern on Friday, it had raised more than $247,000 from 2,800 donors.
Authorities said Thursday the shooting appeared to stem from a dispute between several people.
Police said they detained three juveniles but released one who they determined wasn’t involved in the shooting, leaving two in custody. No charges have been filed. Police are looking for others who may have been involved and are calling for witnesses, victims and people with cellphone video of the violence to call a dedicated hotline.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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Ryan Chatelain
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