Tag: riots

France’s anti-immigration far right gets boost from riots over police killing of teen

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PARIS (AP) — Widespread riots in France sparked by the police killing of a teenager with North African roots have revealed the depth of discontent roiling poor neighborhoods — and given a new platform to the increasingly emboldened far right.

The far right’s anti-immigration mantra is seeping through a once ironclad political divide between it and mainstream politics. More voices are now embracing a hard line against immigration and blaming immigrants not only for the car burnings and other violence that followed the June 27 killing of 17-year-old Nahel Merzouk, but for France’s social problems as well.

“We know the causes” of France’s unrest, Bruno Retailleau, head of the conservative group that dominates the French Senate, said last week on broadcaster France-Info. “Unfortunately for the second, the third generation there is a sort of regression toward their origins, their ethnic origins.”

Ticketmaster has abruptly postponed ticket sales for six of Taylor Swift’s upcoming shows in France.

Tranquil French villages and towns escaped previous cycles of urban violence. But they were whacked in the latest spasm of unrest that engulfed the country after police shot and killed a teenager of north African descent in the Paris suburbs.

Tourists to France faced a new reality during an eruption of nationwide anger following the police killing of 17-year-old Nahel Merzouk last week.

French President Emmanuel Macron called for order and calm and efforts to address the roots of several days of unrest around the country sparked by the police killing of a 17-year-old boy.

Retailleau’s remarks, which drew accusations of racism, reflect the current line of his mainstream party, The Republicans, whose priorities to keep France “from sinking durably into chaos” include “stopping mass immigration.”

“As soon as we want to be firm,” Retailleau said Tuesday on RTL radio, “they say, ‘Oh la la. Scandal! The fascists are arriving! You’re like the National Rally,’” the main far-right party. “We’re sick of being politically correct.”

His response marked the latest fracture in a crumbling concept dubbed the “Republican Front,” under which French parties, whatever their political color, used to stand together against the far right.

By linking immigration to the riots, Retailleau violated France’s near-sacred value of universality by which all citizens, whatever their origin, are recognized only as French.

The far right appeared to capitalize on a sudden shift in the national mood to make further inroads: Shock and horror at Merzouk’s death quickly morphed into shock and horror at the violent unrest, which spread from the outskirts of major urban areas to cities to small-town France. In just four days, an extreme-right crowdfunding campaign raised more than 1.5 million euros ($1.6 million) for the family of the police officer accused of killing Nahel.

Far-right figures have long blamed immigration from majority Muslim North Africa, and some immigrants’ failure to assimilate into French culture, for France’s social problems.

“We suffer an immigration that is totally anarchic,” the National Rally’s Marine Le Pen, the leading far-right figure in France, said last week on France 2 television. She claimed the riots were the work of “an ultra-majority of youth who are foreign or of foreign origin,” and said there was “a form of secession of these youths from French society.”

Le Pen’s critics note that successive French governments have failed to integrate new arrivals, and that communities with immigrant backgrounds face disproportionately higher poverty, unemployment and deep-seated discrimination.

But the far-right leader’s voice resonates ever more loudly in France. Le Pen has spent years scrubbing up the image of her National Rally, and gained a powerful perch in parliament in legislative elections a year ago with 88 lawmakers. Le Pen now sits at the heart of institutional France.

Le Pen’s party has progressively anchored itself among French voters. She won more than 41% in the runoff presidential vote last year.

“There are practically no more categories of the population immune to a (far-right) vote,” polling agency Ifop said after a recent survey showing a steady rise in voters who have cast a ballot for Le Pen’s party.

President Emmanuel Macron’s centrist government took a tough line against the recent violence, but disputes Le Pen’s characterization of those who rioted, with Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin stressing that only 10% were foreigners. At a Senate hearing last week, he noted that some children with immigrant roots enter the police force.

Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne criticized the GoFundMe campaign for the police officer’s family as unhelpful in tense times. But its success appeared to reflect a clamor for security, another prize issue of the far right.

Jean Messiha, a former official in the National Rally and the upstart hard-right Reconquest party, called the enormous response to the fund that he started a “tsunami” in support of law enforcement officers “who in a certain way fight daily so that France remains France.”

The French far right has many faces, inside and outside the political sphere, ranging from the National Rally to Eric Zemmour’s Reconquest, whose vice president is Le Pen’s niece Marion Marechal. Both Zemmour and Marechal espouse the racist “great replacement” theory that there is a plot to diminish the influence of white people and replace cultures, particularly through immigration.

On France’s fringe is an ultra-rightist movement, which includes conspiracy theorists, whose potential for violence worries authorities.

“The terrorist risk it engenders has grown in recent years within Western democracies — France, in particular,” Nicolas Lerner, head of France’s internal security agency, DGSI, said in a rare interview published in Le Monde newspaper. The ultras believe, he said, that they must do the job of the state in protecting Europe from terrorists and the “great replacement,” and one way to do that is to “precipitate a clash to have a chance to win while there is still time.”

Ten attacks have been thwarted by people from the fringe movement since 2017, he noted.

Mainstream politics is not inoculated.

The tone of political discourse, even in mainstream politics, can contribute to forging ultra rightists, Lerner warned.

“Last year’s presidential and legislative elections … marked by debates reflecting traditional concerns of the far right, notably on migratory issues, had a tendency to channel energy,” he said.

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July 12, 2023
France’s small towns are reeling from the spread of rioting. ‘Now it’s affecting the countryside’

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PARIS — After a pleasant evening of wine-tasting — joyfully billed “Grapes and Friends!” — with a hundred or so people and oysters, charcuteries and cheeses, the mayor of the picturesque French town of Quissac was on his way home.

Then his phone rang: Urban unrest that was engulfing France after the deadly police shooting of a teenager on Paris’ outskirts, hundreds of kilometers (miles) and a world away to the north, had careened into Quissac’s tranquility, too.

In a quick hit-and-run, a small group of people — seemingly no more than four, the mayor says — bombarded the local gendarmes’ barracks on Quai de la Gare road with powerful fireworks, denting its metal shutters and setting fire to a cypress tree. In the grander scheme of things, it wasn’t much compared to orgies of destruction, arson, looting and rioting unleashed on multitudes of other communities across France in six nights of mayhem. Still, for the town of 3,300 people in the Gard region of southern France, it was a first.

Quissac’s unsettling experience last Friday night — and those of other out-of-the-way towns and villages also hit by unrest to varying degrees — set France’s latest nationwide spasm of rioting apart from previous cycles of violence that have flared periodically in every decade since the 1980s.

Although typically referred to in France as “les violences urbaines” — urban violence — the unrest this time was no longer contained to blue-collar towns and cities’ disadvantaged housing projects, places where anger at social and racial inequalities has festered.

Carried in part on the winds of social networks that have narrowed gaps between France’s urban centers and its vast rural spaces, unrest also reached outward to touch places that escaped a similar nationwide wave of rioting in 2005.

IN SMALL TOWNS, A NAGGING QUESTION

Mayors of small towns where vehicles were torched, fires lit and police attacked are scratching their heads, trying to figure out: Why them? Why now? Why are France’s big-city problems, which previously seemed far away, sinking roots into their peace and quiet, too?

“Why these incidents in a little town like ours?” asks the mayor of L’Aigle in Normandy, where fires were lit, cars torched and police chased around after small groups of suspects.

“In the press and even on the TV news, it was mainly Paris and its suburbs, Lyon and Marseille that were talked about. But when you look, there were also incidents in a certain number of small communities,” the mayor, Philippe Van-Hoorne, says. “Unfortunately, the increase of uncivil behavior, of violence, is developing even in modest towns like ours … It’s very hard to solve.”

By the government’s count, more than 500 cities, towns and villages were affected this time after the police shooting of Nahel Merzouk in the Paris suburb of Nanterre on June 27. The French-born 17-year-old of north African descent was stopped by two officers on motorbikes who subsequently told investigators that he’d been driving dangerously in a bright yellow Mercedes. He died from a single shot through his left arm and chest. One officer is being held on a preliminary charge of voluntary homicide.

From Nanterre, violent protests spread with astounding speed and intensity. They quickly morphed into generalized mayhem that was relayed and celebrated on social networks. Much of the violence was concentrated in cities, large towns and their disadvantaged housing projects, leaving France once again grappling with its decades-old failure to better integrate generations of immigrants and their France-born children who complain of systemic discrimination.

But the staggering nationwide tallies of destruction — more than 6,000 vehicles and 12,400 trash bins set ablaze, more than 1,100 buildings attacked — weren’t limited to previously recognized hotspots. This time, smaller communities were impacted, too.

In Quissac, investigators are searching for 4 people who scattered on foot after the firework attack, says the mayor, Serge Cathala. That incident aside, the only minor troubles Cathala can remember from his 28 years as an elected official are a few “very rare” trash fires and occasional daubs of graffiti. Quissac was spared by the longer nationwide rioting in 2005 that also started in Paris’ outskirts.

“There’s never really been acts of violence like this,” the mayor says. “Now it’s affecting the countryside.”

Like other officials, including French President Emmanuel Macron, he suspects that videos of unrest on social networks encouraged copycat violence.

“It’s one-upmanship,” Cathala says. “A way of showing off.”

AN AP TALLY SHOWS TOWNS IMPACTED NATIONWIDE

The Associated Press compiled a list of cities, towns and villages where officials reported unrest. It ended up with 297 names. Every letter of the alphabet was represented with the exceptions of U, X and Z.

They ranged from the commuter town of Achères — on a bend of the River Seine west of Paris that reported fires and destruction that forced the closure its town hall — to Yutz, near France’s eastern borders with Germany and Luxembourg. There, a McDonald’s was torched. Videos of the blaze were shared on social networks, hash-tagged Yutz and riots.

In Rugles, a Normandy village of 2,200, rockets were fired outside the Intermarché supermarket and fires lit. In Port-Saint-Louis-du-Rhône in the south, where the River Rhône empties into the Mediterranean, a school minibus and about 30 trash bins were set ablaze, the town hall was graffitied and a gas bottle was used to batter the window of a clothing store on Avenue du Port, the mayor’s office says.

Metz, in the east, lost a library to flames. Part of a sports complex earmarked for use as a training venue for the 2024 Paris Olympic Games was set ablaze in Macon, in Burgundy. A social center under construction in Sens, also in Burgundy, was burnt down.

Not all larger towns were hit hard. Colmar in the wine-making Alsace region, known for its pretty timber-framed houses and canals, saw car fires and a bank was “a little bit touched,” says Mayor Eric Straumann. Still, even that limited unrest was “quite paradoxical,” given Colmar’s low unemployment rate of about 5%, he says.

In L’Aigle, three cars were torched, 18 fires lit and five store windows attacked, says its mayor, Van-Hoorne. He says police made seven arrests — five of them minors — and that some filmed their exploits on their mobile phones. Just another French town touched by seismic events of a national scale, and another indication that in the world of the 21st century, geography isn’t always the insulating force it once was.

“When you analyze it all on a nationwide scale,” Van-Hoorne says, “it’s true that it raises questions.”

__

AP journalist Sylvie Corbet contributed to this report.

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July 7, 2023
Pence tries wooing Iowans, one Pizza Ranch slice at a time | CNN Politics

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Sioux City, Iowa
CNN
—

In a crowded Pizza Ranch on Wednesday night, former Vice President Mike Pence found himself confronted about his role on January 6, 2021, by an Iowan who blamed him for President Joe Biden being elected president.

“If it wasn’t for your vote, we would not have Joe Biden in the White House. … Do you ever second guess yourself?” Luann Bertrand asked.

Pence, who was on the last stop of his day on a nearly weeklong Iowa swing, listened patiently to Bertrand’s question. “Let me be very respectful of the question,” the former vice president began, as he turned to explaining his role under the Constitution in certifying the 2020 US election results.

The episode encapsulated Pence’s challenge as he runs for the 2024 GOP nomination against former President Donald Trump, who’d wanted him to overturn Biden’s victory and has convinced many of his followers, falsely, that Pence had the power to do so. But the exchange at this intimate campaign stop also revealed what the former vice president hopes will be his winning strategy in the first-in-the-nation caucus state – namely allowing Iowans to question him and see him up close and personal.

For nearly five minutes, he directly answered Bertrand’s question, using the word “respect” and “deep affection” as he weaved in constitutional law and an admonishment of Trump, who’s the front-runner for the nomination.

“I’m sorry, ma’am. But that’s actually what the Constitution says. No vice president in American history ever asserted the authority that you have been convinced that I had. But I want to tell you, with all due respect, I said before, I said when I announced, President Trump was wrong about my authority that day and he’s still wrong,” he said.

When Pence finished his answer, the room of several dozen broke into applause.

For the Pence campaign, visiting all of Iowa’s 99 counties isn’t just a campaign promise – it is central to carving a path for taking on the historic challenge of running against a president he once served.

It may also be the best, and only, chance for a Pence campaign to take off.

“If you want to win the Iowa caucus, it’s a 50-person Pizza Ranch meeting,” Chip Saltsman, national campaign chairman for the Pence campaign and veteran Republican consultant, told CNN.

“Everybody that came here tonight, I guarantee the one thing they have in common – they’re all going to caucus. You’re looking for people that are willing to come out on a cold night, spend an hour and a half listening to everybody else talk, and then vote for your person.”

“The way you build those relationships are in meetings of 50, not rallies of 5,000,” he said, referring to Trump, who has drawn large crowds in his 2024 bid for the White House.

In the 2008 presidential campaign, Saltsman was the campaign manager for former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, when he concocted what he calls the “Pizza Ranch strategy” – hitting the chain’s 71 locations throughout Iowa, which have private rooms and dining areas conducive to a small town’s biggest events.

“We were at 1% [in the polls] when we announced,” said Saltsman, reflecting on the Huckabee campaign. “We worked really hard for about three months and then we went from 1% to asterisk. So we had to start back over. That’s when the Pizza Ranch strategy started.”

With the Huckabee campaign lacking money and name recognition, Saltsman realized that “for the price of a pizza, you got the meeting room” of the town’s Pizza Ranch – and that Huckabee had an automatic crowd if he showed up around lunch or dinner. “It was more out of necessity than some deep strategy,” he said.

The Huckabee team upscaled this plan to all 99 counties, focusing on finding the Iowa Republicans they needed to convince to caucus for their candidate. Huckabee came from behind to win the 2008 Iowa caucuses, although he ultimately fell well short of the nomination.

Pence is deploying a similar strategy, focusing on intimate settings where he will spend two hours face-to-face with Iowans, even if the crowd is fewer than 100 people. The Pence team is betting on the multiplying effect of these one-on-one encounters – that the voter will feel a kinship with Pence and bring others to caucus for him.

At an ice cream shop in Le Mars, Mavis Luther had just listened to Pence speak and answer questions for 90 minutes. The event was small enough that Luther could take a picture with Pence and chat with him. “It’s wonderful!” she exclaimed after she met him. “It’s the only way to have a chance to really know how they feel and answer questions at your level – of the community, country and our state.”

Pence, a former Indiana governor and congressman, shares the Midwest sensibilities of Iowa, as well as the campaigning style the caucus state is accustomed to. At the July Fourth parade in Urbandale, Pence often broke into a run to greet people along the parade route.

“I came to the conclusion over the last few years that I’m well known, but we’re not known well,” said Pence. “We’re going to be able to take our story, take our case, and take our whole record, and the story of our family, to the people of Iowa to great success.”

Matt Thacker, who was watching the parade in his lawn chair, had this to say about Pence’s handshake-to-handshake campaigning – “it matters.”

“The personal touch is very important,” Thacker said. “I think it makes a lot of difference. And recognizing the country isn’t the coasts. It’s the heartland.”

Bertrand, the woman in the Sioux City Pizza Ranch, walked away from the event open to Pence, but unconvinced by the facts he laid out about January 6.

“I believe he’s a good man,” Bertrand told CNN. “I love the fact that he is strengthened by his faith. But I really do feel like he altered history.”

Bertrand said she would consider supporting Pence in the caucuses. “But,” she said, “he has that one hiccup.”

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July 7, 2023
‘Liberty, equality, fraternity’ for all? New riots make France confront an old problem

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PARIS (AP) — “Liberty, Equality, Fraternity”: The lofty ideals to which France has long aspired are embossed on coins and carved above school doors across the land. Yet they are the polar opposite of what some French people who are Black or brown saw in a shocking video of a police officer shooting and killing a 17-year-old delivery driver of north African descent during a traffic stop.

That kid, some said to themselves, could have been me — or my children, or my friends. Within hours, the first fires of anger and revenge were lighting up the night skies of Nanterre, the Paris suburb where the teenager, Nahel, was declared dead at 9:15 a.m. last Tuesday. His left arm and chest had been pierced from left to right by a single shot fired before the yellow Mercedes he was driving then slammed into barriers on Nelson Mandela Square.

From the town on the fringe of the French capital’s high-rise business district, with its disadvantaged housing projects, glaring wealth gaps, and melting-pot mix of races and cultural influences imported from France’s former colonies, the flames of fury quickly spread.

Maritime nations have been finalizing a plan Thursday to slash emissions from the shipping industry to net zero by close to 2050 but experts warn the deal falls well short of what’s needed to prevent climate catastrophe.

An ombudsman office in Haiti has denounced what it called the “unacceptable slowness” of the investigation into the assassination of President Jovenel Moïse nearly two years after he was killed.

Pope Francis will travel to the periphery of Roman Catholicism this summer becoming the first pontiff to visit Mongolia.

Scientists say global heat that inched into worrisome new territory this week is a clear example of how pollutants released by humans are warming their environment.

More than 200 cities and towns reported arson attacks on public buildings, vehicle fires, clashes with police, looting and other mayhem in six nights of unrest. The violence was nationwide — from blue-collar ports on France’s northern coast to southern towns overlooking the Pyrenees, from de-industrialized former mining basins to Nantes and La Rochelle on the western Atlantic coast, once hearts of the French slave trade.

After more than 3,400 arrests and signs that the violence is now abating, France is once again facing a reckoning — as it did after previous riots in mixed-race, disadvantaged neighborhoods in the 1980s, 1990s, 2000s and 2010s.

And the uncomfortable central question remains the same: What is France doing wrong that prevents chunks of its population, particularly among non-whites, from being able to buy into its promise of equality and fraternity for all?

THE PROBLEMS ARE BOTH OLD AND NEW

Among the factors being blamed and hotly disputed are problems both old and new: racism in police ranks and French society more broadly, poverty made more desperate by rising costs related to the war in Ukraine, decades of urban neglect, breakdowns in marriages and parental authority, and the ripples of the COVID-19 pandemic. Young teenagers whose schooling was interrupted by virus curfews and teaching shutdowns were among those smashing, burning, stealing and fighting with police — and reveling in the mayhem on social media.

For Yazid Kherfi, who spends his time driving from one housing project to the next, speaking to young people about how to avoid the route that he took into crime and prison, the violence was a cry of distress from a generation he says feels unloved and left by the wayside.

The minivan Kherfi uses has a quote from Martin Luther King painted on the back: “We must learn to live together as brothers or we will all perish together as fools.” But on his rounds, Kherfi says he frequently hears young people complain that police single them out because of their color.

“The police aren’t well trained to work in difficult neighborhoods. Some police are racist. There are violent police. They exist. I’m not saying all the police but it’s still a certain number,” he says. “Blacks and Arabs are stopped far more frequently than whites.”

“We are a long way from liberty, equality, fraternity,” he adds. “The reality is that people find all these situations very, very hard. It’s been like this for more than 40 years. So of course, every time there are riots in France, it’s linked to a young person’s death related to a policing operation. And the police rarely blames itself.”

From French President Emmanuel Macron down, government officials were quick to condemn the actions of the officer now incarcerated on a preliminary charge of voluntary homicide. Macron called the shooting “inexplicable and inexcusable.” The officer’s lawyer says his client feared, when the vehicle they’d stopped started moving again, that he and his colleague would be dragged along with it and crushed.

HOW TO TACKLE RACISM WHEN IT CAN’T BE MEASURED?

Measuring the scale of racism and racial inequality in France is complicated by its official policy of color blindness, with strict limits on data that can be collected. For critics, that guiding philosophy has made the state oblivious to discrimination. France’s census has no questions about race or ethnicity.

Still, inequalities are too glaring to be ignored. The government’s statistics agency found in 2020 that death rates among immigrants from sub-Saharan Africa doubled in France and tripled in the Paris region at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic — an acknowledgement of the virus’s punishing and disproportionate impact on Black immigrants and members of other systemically overlooked minority groups. Other research has also exposed racism in workplaces and hiring.

“For 40, 45 years there have been warning signs about discrimination,” says Abel Boyi, head of a group called “All Unique, All United” that aims to reconcile young people with France and its republican values.

Boyi, who is Black, decries the state’s colorblindness as “a French hypocrisy.” He says he regularly encounters young people of color and also white people from disadvantaged neighborhoods who apply for dozens of jobs but aren’t hired “because the family name sounds foreign, because the address isn’t a good one.”

“Unfortunately, when there’s an injustice, there’s always a radical fringe that tips into violence. We saw these young people, aged 12 to 19 … at 1, 2, 3 o’clock in the morning burning cars, stoning police officers, stoning buses. It’s terrible,” Boyi says. “The anger is righteous but the method is wrong.”

THE VISUALS ADDED FUEL TO THE FLAMES

The video of Nahel’s death also helps explains the rapid spread and sudden intensity of the violence. As was also the case with the footage of George Floyd’s killing in the United States, the images left some people wondering whether police abuses sometimes go unpunished because they aren’t captured on camera. Spray-painted graffiti in Nanterre read: “Without video, Nahel would be a statistic.”

Police officer Walid Hrar says, however, that the relationship between France’s forces of law and order and disadvantaged neighborhoods he works in isn’t as broken as the rioting made it seem.

He runs a volunteer group of officers, The Guardians of Fraternity, who meet with neighborhood kids to try to build understanding and help them see that behind their uniforms, they are people, too. “Sometimes, the talks are very hard, very stormy,” he acknowledges.

But Hrar, who is of Moroccan descent and Muslim, says the police force has “changed enormously” and become more diverse since he joined up.

That was in 2004. France was swept by rioting the following year. He has spent his career in Paris’ northern suburbs where that violence first erupted, when 15-year-old Bouna Traoré and 17-year-old Zyed Benna were electrocuted while hiding from police in a power substation in Clichy-sous-Bois.

One difference between then and now, Hrar says, is that the new generation of rioters seems to know no limits, trashing schools, town halls, police stations and other symbols of authority.

“With some, the breakdown is total, that is true,” Hrar says. “There is real groundwork that needs to be done.”

Another key difference: social networks. This generation weaned on TikTok and Snapchat not only celebrated mayhem in short videos but, the government says, sometimes organized on their networks, too. Memes and hashtags about looting quickly swamped references about justice for Nahel. Macron said some rioters seemed to be acting out “the video games that have intoxicated them.”

It all adds up to something toxic and dangerous, with deep cracks in the foundations of a country still unreconciled with its often violent colonial past and with engrained discrimination and inequalities that defy quick fixes.

“How do we bring together the multitude of histories into one common history that concerns us all, regardless of skin color and origin?” said Boyi. “That is France’s great challenge for the 21st century.”

—-

Paris chief correspondent John Leicester has reported from France for The Associated Press since 2002.

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July 4, 2023
Far-right figure ends divisive crowdfunding for police officer who shot boy, triggering riots

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PARIS — A French far-right figure behind a divisive, and hugely successful, crowdfunding campaign for the family of a police officer jailed in the killing of a 17-year-old that triggered riots around France announced on Tuesday that he’s closing the account which topped more than 1.5 million euros ($1.63 million).

Criticism, and plans for lawsuits, have mounted around Jean Messiha’s Gofundme effort with claims that his real motive was to spread a message of hate and pit the far-right against residents of poor suburbs with a high rate of people of immigrant origin.

Even Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne has said the collection for the jailed officer’s family did not contribute to calming the situation, just like Justice Minister Eric Dupond-Moretti who warned on France-Inter radio against a possible “instrumentalization.”

The unrest was touched off by the shooting last Tuesday of the young man identified as Nahel, who was stopped while driving a Mercedes in suburban Paris. Violence was driven by a mainly teenage backlash in the suburbs and urban housing projects against a French state that many young people with immigrant roots say routinely discriminates against them. Violence appeared to continue to ebb for a third night Tuesday.

However, reports emerged of the death early Sunday of a 27-year-old man in Marseille. The local prosecutor’s office opened an investigation Tuesday for “mortal blows with use or threat of a weapon,” the newspaper La Marseillaise reported.

The probable cause of death was a “violent shock to the thorax caused by a projectile of the ‘flashball’ type,” commonly used by French police for riot control.

It was not immediately clear whether the victim, who was not identified, was in the area of riots and pillaging the night of his death, the paper quoted the prosecutor’s office as saying.

Messiha, meanwhile, hailed in a tweet what he called an “historic symbol of national generosity” while announcing the closing of the crowdfunding campaign at midnight Tuesday for the family of the jailed officer, identified only as Florian M.

He said that more than 100,000 donors contributed to the effort he initiated on Friday that reached more than 1.5 million euros. He equated the response to a “tsunami” in support of law enforcement officers “who in a certain way fight daily so that France remains France.”

The crowdfunding had an ugly edge with Messiha bragging at one point that his effort was bringing in more funds than a crowdfunding account set up for the family of Nahel. The family filed a complaint, alleging the crowdfunding was based on deception to “criminalize” the victim and win support for the police officer who fired at him, according to France-Info, which saw the complaint. It wasn’t immediately clear whether an investigation would be opened.

Socialist lawmaker Arthur Delaporte from Calvados had filed a complaint earlier Tuesday against the crowdfunding contesting its legal grounds – shortly before Messiha closed it.

Egyptian-born Messiha is a former official of the National Rally party of far-right leader Marine Le Pen which he left for a fledgling far-right party then dropped out of that to return to his think tank. He remains a virulent critic of migration from Africa.

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July 4, 2023
Macron scraps trip amid rioting across France, as loved ones bury teen slain by police

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NANTERRE, France — President Emmanuel Macron on Saturday scrapped an official trip to Germany after a fourth straight night of rioting and looting across France in defiance of a massive police deployment. Hundreds turned out for the burial of the 17-year-old whose killing by police triggered the unrest.

France’s Interior Ministry announced that in the latest night of violence, 1,311 people had been arrested around the country, where 45,000 police officers fanned out in a so-far unsuccessful bid to restore order. In the violence sparked by the teen’s death on Tuesday, some 2,400 persons have been arrested overall.

The protesters and rioters turned out on the streets of cities and towns, clashing with police, despite Macron’s appeal to parents to keep their children at home. About 2,500 fires were set and stores were ransacked, according to authorities.

The violence in France was taking a toll on Macron’s diplomatic profile. German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier’s office said that Macron phoned on Saturday to request a postponement of what would have been the first state visit by a French president to Germany in 23 years. Macron had been scheduled to fly to Germany on Sunday evening for the visit to Berlin and two other German cities.

Macron’s office said he spoke with Steinmeier and, “given the internal security situation, the president (Macron) said he wishes to stay in France over the coming days.”

Given the importance of the French-German relationship on the European political scene, the scrapping of the official trip was a clear sign of the gravity of France’s unrest. Earlier this year, King Charles III canceled his first foreign visit as U.K. monarch, initially planned for France, because of intense protests over Macron’s pension reform plans.

The teen, identified only as Nahel, was shot during a traffic stop Tuesday in the Paris suburb of Nanterre. Video showed two officers at the window of the car, one with his gun pointed at the driver. As the teenager pulled forward, the officer fired once through the windshield.

Rituals to bid farewell to Nahel began on Saturday with a viewing of the open coffin by family and friends and culminated with his burial in a hilltop cemetery in that town.

At the cemetery’s entrance, with central Paris visible in the distance, hundreds of people stood along the road to pay tribute to Nahel. The crowd carried his white casket above their heads and into the cemetery for the burial, which was barred to the media. Some of the men carried folded prayer rugs. Before the burial, prayers were held at a mosque.

Applause resounded as Nahel’s mother Mounia M., dressed in white, walked through the gate and toward the grave. Earlier in the week she told France 5 television that she was angry at the officer who shot her son, but not at the police in general.

“He saw a little Arab-looking kid, he wanted to take his life,” she said. “A police officer cannot take his gun and fire at our children, take our children’s lives,” she said. Race was a taboo topic for decades in France, which is officially committed to a doctrine of colorblind universalism. The family has roots in Algeria.

The police officer accused of killing Nahel was given a preliminary charge of voluntary homicide, meaning that investigating magistrates strongly suspect wrongdoing, but need to investigate more before sending a case to trial. Nanterre prosecutor Pascal Prache said that his initial investigation led him to conclude that the officer’s use of his weapon wasn’t legally justified.

Anger over Nahel’s death erupted in violence in Nanterre and in many major cities, including Paris, Marseille and Lyon, and even in the French territories overseas, where a 54-year-old died after being hit by a stray bullet in French Guiana.

Hundreds of police and firefighters have been injured, including 79 overnight. Authorities haven’t released injury tallies for protesters.

The reaction to the killing was a potent reminder of the persistent poverty, discrimination, unemployment and other lack of opportunity in neighborhoods around France where many residents trace their roots to former French colonies — like where Nahel grew up.

“Nahel’s story is the lighter that ignited the gas. Hopeless young people were waiting for it. We lack housing and jobs, and when we have (jobs), our wages are too low,” said Samba Seck, a 39-year-old transportation worker in the Paris suburb of Clichy-sous-Bois.

Clichy was the birthplace of weeks of riots in 2005 that shook France, prompted by the deaths of two teenagers electrocuted in a power substation while fleeing from police. One of the boys lived in the same housing project as Seck.

Like many Clichy residents, he lamented the violence targeting his town, where the remains of a burned car stood beneath his apartment building, and the town hall entrance was set alight in rioting this week.

“Young people break everything, but we are already poor, we have nothing,” he said, adding that “young people are afraid to die at the hands of police.”

France’s national soccer team — including international star Kylian Mbappe, an idol to many young people in the disadvantaged neighborhoods where the anger is rooted — pleaded for an end to the violence.

“Many of us are from working-class neighborhoods, we too share this feeling of pain and sadness” over the killing of Nahel, the players said in a statement.

Early on Saturday, firefighters in Nanterre extinguished blazes set by protesters that left scorched remains of cars strewn across the streets. In the neighboring suburb Colombes, protesters overturned garbage bins and used them for makeshift barricades.

Looters during the evening broke into a gun shop and made off with weapons in the Mediterranean port city of Marseille, police said.

Buildings and businesses were also vandalized in the eastern city of Lyon, police said.

Despite the escalating crisis, Macron held off on declaring a state of emergency, an option used in 2005. But government ratcheted up its law enforcement response, with the mass deployment of police officers, including some who were called back from vacation.

The rioting puts new pressure on Macron, who blamed social media for fueling violence.

Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin has ordered a nationwide nighttime shutdown of all public buses and trams, which have been among rioters’ targets. He also said he warned social networks not to allow themselves to be used as channels for calls to violence.

“They were very cooperative,” Darmanin said, adding that French authorities were providing the platforms with information in hopes of cooperation identifying people inciting violence.

The violence comes just over a year before Paris and other French cities are due to host Olympic athletes and millions of visitors for the summer Olympic Games, whose organizers were closely monitoring the situation as preparations for the competition continue.

Thirteen people who didn’t comply with traffic stops were fatally shot by French police last year. This year, another three people, including Nahel, died under similar circumstances. The deaths have prompted demands for more accountability in France, which also saw racial justice protests after George Floyd’s killing by police in Minnesota.

___

Charlton reported from Paris. Associated Press writers Jade le Deley in Clichy-sous-Bois, France; Claire Rush in Portland, Oregon; and Geir Moulson in Berlin, contributed to this report.

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July 1, 2023
French government says 1,311 people arrested in a fourth night of riots after teen killed by police

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French government says 1,311 people arrested in a fourth night of riots after teen killed by police

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July 1, 2023
‘I blame one person,’ mother of teen killed by police says as hundreds arrested in fresh violence across France | CNN

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Nanterre, France
CNN
—

The mother of a 17-year-old killed by French police said she blames only the officer who shot her son for his death, a tragedy that has sparked three consecutive nights of destructive unrest and revived a heated debate about discrimination and policing in low-income, multi-ethnic communities.

The boy, Nahel, was shot dead during a traffic stop Tuesday morning in the Paris suburb of Nanterre. Footage of the incident filmed by a bystander showed two officers standing on the driver’s side of the car, one of whom fired his gun at the driver despite not appearing to be in any immediate danger.

The officer said he fired his gun out of fear that the boy would run someone over with the car, according to Nanterre prosecutor Pascal Prache.

“I don’t blame the police, I blame one person, the one who took my son’s life,” Nahel’s mother, Mounia, told television station France 5 in an on-camera interview.

Prache said that it is believed the officer acted illegally in using his weapon. He is currently facing a formal investigation for voluntary homicide and has been placed in preliminary detention.

Despite calls from top officials for patience to allow time for the justice system to run its course, a sizable number of people across France remain shocked and angry, especially young men and women of color who have been victims of discrimination by police.

That anger has, for three nights in a row, given way to violent protests across the nation.

Ahead of another expected night of unrest, French Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin said 45,000 policemen would deploy across France on Friday, and that he is also mobilizing more special units, armored vehicles and helicopters.

Some 917 people were detained following overnight violence on Thursday, including 13 children, Darmanin told French TV channel TF1.

The death of the young man “cannot justify the disorder and the delinquency,” the minister added.

Confrontations flared between protesters and police in Nanterre on Thursday, where a bank was set on fire and graffiti saying “vengeance pour Nael” (using an alternative spelling of his name) was spray painted on a wall nearby.

Overseas French territories have also witnessed protests. A man was killed by a “stray bullet” in Cayenne, capital of French Guiana, during riots on Thursday.

Scars from three days of protests were clear in the suburb on Friday, as was the acrid smell left behind by burning detritus, which was being removed. Streets remained charred where burning cars used to be, with patches of graffiti calling on justice for Nahel and insulting the police. Near the site of a pitched battle with police, a smattering of dug-up bricks, tear gas canisters, rubber bullets and metal barriers remain splayed about.

Across the country, 200 government buildings were vandalized on Thursday night, according to the French Interior Ministry.

All “large-scale events” in France have been banned as of Friday afternoon, and bus and tram services across faced a nationwide shutdown ordered for 9 p.m. on Friday evening.

In Britain, authorities issued a travel warning due to “violent” riots targeting “shops, public buildings and parked cars.” They also cautioned disruptions to road travel, local transportation and the implementation of curfews.

The German government expressed “concern” over the nationwide protests in France, adding there was no indication that Macron would cancel an upcoming state visit to Berlin.

The violence has prompted President Emmanuel Macron to hold a crisis meeting the second day in a row, BFMTV reported, as his government tries to avoid a repeat of 2005. The deaths of two teenage boys hiding from police that year sparked three weeks of rioting and prompted the government to call a state of emergency.

He had returned from a European Council summit on Thursday in Brussels to convene the crisis meeting.

The French president called for calm and asked parents to take responsibility for their children amid the unrest. He said the situation is “unacceptable” and “unjustifiable, especially when the violence is targeting public building.”

A third of the almost 900 people detained overnight are young, Macron told reporters at the Interior Ministry. Authorities will be investigating the role of social media in inciting the riots, and there will be further “measures” announced in the coming hours, he added.

Continued unrest would be a major blow to the government’s agenda. Macron and his ministers have spent much of the year dealing with the fallout of pushing through extremely unpopular pension reforms that were divisive enough that the government felt it necessary to launch a 100-day plan to heal and unite the country.

That deadline is up on July 14, France’s national day.

Macron attended an Elton John concert in Paris on Wednesday, even as the demonstrations boiled over.

Elton John’s husband, David Furnish posted a picture on Instagram on Thursday of himself and Elton John smiling backstage with the French president and his wife, Brigitte Macron after the show at the Accor Arena.

If Macron’s government is to address allegations of institutional racism in response to Nahel’s death, it will be a tough balancing act.

The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights called on France to address “deep issues of racism and discrimination in law enforcement’ on Friday, a statement the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs described as “totally unfounded.”

The ministry described law enforcement in France as subject to various levels of “judicial control that few countries have.

“France, and its police forces, fight with determination against racism and all forms of discrimination. There can be no doubt about this commitment,” the ministry added. “The use of force by the national police and gendarmerie is governed by the principles of absolute necessity and proportionality, strictly framed and controlled.”

Race and discrimination are always tricky political issues, but in France they are particularly challenging due to the country’s unique brand of secularism, which seeks to ensure equality for all by removing markers of difference, rendering all citizens French first.

In practice, however, that vigorous adherence to French Republicanism often prevents the government from doing anything that would appear to differentiate French citizens on the basis of race, including collecting statistics.

Mounia, like other activists, believes her son’s race was a factor in his killing. French media have reported that Nahel was of Algerian descent, and the country’s Foreign Ministry on Thursday issued a statement extending its condolences to Nahel’s family.

“He saw an Arab face, a little kid, and wanted to take his life,” she said, referring to the police officer who fired their weapon.

“Killing youngsters like this, how long is this going to last?” she added. “How many mothers are going to be like me? What are they waiting for?”

While the government’s approach has so far been cautious, left-wing politicians and some activists have called for police reform, including abolishing a 2017 law that allowed police greater leeway in when they can use firearms.

Laurent-Franck Lienard, the lawyer of the officer accused of shooting Nahel, told French radio station RTL that his client acted in “compliance of the law.” He claimed his client’s prosecution was “political” and being used as a way to calm the violent tensions.

He added that his client was “devastated” by Nahel’s death and he did not want to kill him.

“He committed an act in a second, in a fraction of a second. Perhaps he made a mistake, justice will tell,” Lienard said.

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June 30, 2023
Facebook urged to suspend strongman leader over video threatening violence | CNN Business

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The oversight board for Facebook’s parent company Meta Platforms on Thursday said Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen should be suspended from the social media site for six months for posting a video violating rules against violent threats.

The board, which is funded by Meta but operates independently, said the company had been wrong not to remove the video after it was published in January.

Meta, in a written statement, agreed to take down the video but said it would respond to the board’s recommendation to suspend Hun Sen after a review.

Any suspension would silence the prime minister’s Facebook page less than a month before an election in Cambodia. Opposition and rights groups have said the poll will be a sham – accusations dismissed by the government.

Hun Sen’s Facebook account appeared to go offline late on Thursday. The prime minister – one of the world’s longest-serving leaders after nearly four decades in power – had said on Wednesday that he was switching from Facebook to the messaging app Telegram to reach more people, without mentioning the video.

A Meta spokesperson said the company had not suspended or removed his account.

There was no immediate government comment on the case on Thursday.

The decision is the latest in a series of rebukes by the oversight board over how the world’s biggest social media company handles contentious statements by political leaders and posts calling for violence around elections.

The company’s election integrity efforts are in focus as the United States prepares for presidential elections next year.

The board endorsed Meta’s 2021 banishment of former US President Donald Trump – the current frontrunner for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination – after the deadly January 6 Capitol Hill riot, but criticized the indefinite nature of his suspension and urged more careful preparation for volatile political situations overall.

Meta reinstated the former US president’s account earlier this year.

The Cambodia case came after several users reported a January video where Hun Sen said those who accused his Cambodian People’s Party (CPP) of buying votes in a 2022 local election should file a legal case, or face a beating from CPP’s supporters.

Meta determined at the time that the video fell afoul of its rules, but opted to leave it up under a “newsworthiness” exemption, reasoning that the public had an interest in hearing warnings of violence by their government, the ruling said.

The board held that the video’s harms outweighed its news value.

Cambodia’s government has denied targeting the opposition and says those subject to legal action are law breakers.

Phil Robertson, deputy Asia director for Human Rights Watch, said Hun Sen had finally been called out for inciting violence.

“This kind of face-off between Big Tech and a dictator over human rights issues is long overdue,” he said in a statement.

Last week, the board said Meta’s handling of calls for violence after the 2022 Brazilian election continued to raise concerns about the effectiveness of its election efforts.

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June 29, 2023
41 women die in grisly riot in Honduran prison that president blames on ‘mara’ gangs

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TEGUCIGALPA, Honduras — A grisly riot at a women’s prison in Honduras Tuesday left at least 41 women dead, most burned to death, in violence the country’s president blamed on the “mara” street gangs that often wield broad power inside penitentiaries.

Most victims were burned but there also were reports of inmates shot or stabbed at the prison in Tamara, about 30 miles (50 kilometers) northwest of the Honduran capital of Tegucigalpa, said Yuri Mora, the spokesman for Honduras’ national police investigation agency.

At least seven female inmates were being treated at a Tegucigalpa hospital for gunshot and knife wounds, employees there said.

“The forensic teams that are removing bodies confirm they have counted 41,” said Mora.

Local media interviewed one injured inmate outside the hospital who said prisoners belonging to the feared Barrio 18 gang burst into a cell block and shot other inmates or set them afire.

Honduran President Xiomara Castro said the riot was “planned by maras with the knowledge and acquiescence of security authorities.”

“I am going to take drastic measures!” Castro wrote in her social media accounts.

Julissa Villanueva, head of the country’s prison system, suggested the riot started because of recent attempts by authorities to crack down on illicit activity inside prisons and called Tuesday’s violence a reaction to moves “we are taking against organized crime.”

“We will not back down,” Villanueva said in a televised address after the riot.

Gangs wield broad control inside the country’s prisons, where inmates often set their own rules and sell prohibited goods.

The riot appears to be the worst tragedy at a female detention center in Central America since 2017, when girls at a shelter for troubled youths in Guatemala set fire to mattresses to protest rapes and other mistreatment at the badly overcrowded institution. The ensuing smoke and fire killed 41 girls.

The worst prison disaster in a century also occurred in Honduras, in 2012 at the Comayagua penitentiary, where 361 inmates died in a fire possibly caused by a match, cigarette or some other open flame.

Tuesday’s riot may increase the pressure on Honduras to emulate the drastic zero-tolerance, no-privileges prisons set in up in neighboring El Salvador by President Nayib Bukele. While El Salvador’s crackdown on gangs has given rise to rights violations, it has also proved immensely popular in a country long terrorized by street gangs.

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June 20, 2023
Trump hits campaign trail as indictment roils 2024 race | CNN Politics

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CNN
—

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

This story has been updated with additional information.

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June 10, 2023
Right-wing media wages war on U.S. justice system after Trump’s historic federal indictment | CNN Business

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

New York
CNN
—

The attacks on the rule of law have begun.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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June 8, 2023
Takeaways from CNN’s town hall with Mike Pence | CNN Politics

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CNN
—

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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June 7, 2023
Government tries to claw back money so Jan. 6 rioters don’t profit from online appeals

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Less than two months after he pleaded guilty to storming the U.S. Capitol, Texas resident Daniel Goodwyn appeared on Tucker Carlson’s then-Fox News show and promoted a website where supporters could donate money to Goodwyn and other rioters whom the site called “political prisoners.”

The Justice Department now wants Goodwyn to give up more than $25,000 he raised — a clawback that is part of a growing effort by the government to prevent rioters from being able to personally profit from participating in the attack that shook the foundations of American democracy.

An Associated Press review of court records shows that prosecutors in the more than 1,000 of the Jan. 6, 2021, criminal cases are increasingly asking judges to impose fines on top of prison sentences to offset donations from supporters of the Capitol rioters.

Dozens of defendants have set up online fundraising appeals for help with legal fees, and prosecutors acknowledge there’s nothing wrong with asking for help for attorney expenses. But the Justice Department has, in some cases, questioned where the money is really going because many of those charged have had government-funded legal representation.

Most of the fundraising efforts appear on GiveSendGo, which bills itself as “The #1 Free Christian Fundraising Site” and has become a haven for Jan. 6 defendants barred from using mainstream crowdfunding sites, including GoFundMe, to raise money. The rioters often proclaim their innocence and portray themselves as victims of government oppression, even as they cut deals to plead guilty and cooperate with prosecutors.

Their fundraising success suggests that many people in the United States still view Jan. 6 rioters as patriots and cling to the baseless belief that Democrats stole the 2020 presidential election from Donald Trump. The former president himself has fueled that idea, pledging to pardon rioters if he is elected.

Markus Maly, a Virginia man scheduled to be sentenced next month for assaulting police at the Capitol, raised more than $16,000 from an online campaign that described him as a “January 6 P.O.W.” and asked for money for his family. Prosecutors have requested a $16,000-plus fine, noting that Maly had a public defender and did not owe any legal fees.

“He should not be able to use his own notoriety gained in the commission of his crimes to ‘capitalize’ on his participation in the Capitol breach in this way,” a prosecutor wrote in court papers.

So far this year, prosecutors have sought more than $390,000 in fines against at least 21 riot defendants, in amounts ranging from $450 to more than $71,000, according to the AP’s tally.

Judges have imposed at least $124,127 in fines against 33 riot defendants this year. In the previous two years, judges ordered more than 100 riot defendants to collectively pay more than $240,000 in fines.

Separately, judges have ordered hundreds of convicted rioters to pay more than $524,000 in restitution to the government to cover more than $2.8 million in damage to the Capitol and other Jan. 6-related expenses.

More rioters facing the most serious charges and longest prison terms are now being sentenced. They tend to also be the prolific fundraisers, which could help explain the recent surge in fines requests.

Earlier this month, the judge who sentenced Nathaniel DeGrave to more than three years in prison also ordered him to pay a $25,000 fine. Prosecutors noted that the Nevada resident “incredibly” raised over $120,000 in GiveSendGo fundraising campaigns that referred to him as “Beijing Biden’s political prisoner” in “America’s Gitmo” — a reference to the Guantanamo Bay detention center.

“He did this despite seeking to cooperate with the government and admitting he and his co-conspirators were guilty since at least November 2021,” a prosecutor wrote.

Lawyer William Shipley, who has represented DeGrave and more than two dozen other Jan. 6 defendants, said he advises clients to avoid raising money under the auspices of being a political prisoner if they intend to plead guilty.

“Until they admit they committed a crime, they’re perfectly entitled to shout from the rooftops that the only reason they’re being held is because of politics,” Shipley said. “It’s just First Amendment political speech.”

Shipley said he provided the judge with documentation showing that DeGrave raised approximately $25,000 more than what he paid his lawyers.

“I’ve never had to do it until these cases because I’ve never had clients that had third-party fundraising like this,” Shipley said. “There’s a segment of the population that is sympathetic toward the plight of these defendants.”

GiveSendGo co-founder Heather Wilson said her site’s decision to allow legal defense funds for Capitol riot defendants “is rooted in our society’s commitment to the presumption of innocence and the freedom for all individuals to hire private attorneys.”

The government’s push for more fines comes as it reaches a milestone in the largest federal investigation in American history: Just over 500 defendants have been sentenced for Jan. 6 crimes.

Judges aren’t rubber-stamping prosecutors’ fine requests.

Prosecutors sought a more than $70,000 fine for Peter Schwartz, a Kentucky man who attacked police officers outside the Capitol with pepper spray and a chair. U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta sentenced Schwartz this month to more than 14 years in prison — the longest so far in a Capitol riot case — but didn’t impose a fine.

Prosecutors suspect Schwartz tried to profit from his fundraising campaign, “Patriot Pete Political Prisoner in DC.” But his lawyer, Dennis Boyle, said there is no evidence of that.

The judge “basically said that if the money was being used for attorneys’ fees or other costs like that, there was no basis for a fine,” Boyle said.

A jury convicted romance novel cover model John Strand of storming the Capitol with Dr. Simone Gold, a California physician who is a leading figure in the anti-vaccine movement. Now prosecutors are seeking a $50,000 fine on top of a prison term for Strand when a judge sentences him on Thursday.

Strand has raised more than $17,300 for his legal defense without disclosing that he has a taxpayer-funded lawyer, according to prosecutors. They say Strand appears to have “substantial financial means,” living in a home that was purchased for more than $3 million last year.

“Strand has raised, and continues to raise, money on his website based upon his false statements and misrepresentations on the events of January 6,” prosecutors wrote.

Goodwyn, who appeared on Carlson’s show in March, is scheduled to be sentenced next month. Defense lawyer Carolyn Stewart described prosecutors are “demanding blood from a stone” in asking for the $25,000 fine.

“He received that amount in charity to help him in his debt for legal fees for former attorneys and this for unknown reasons is bothersome to the government,” Stewart wrote.

___

Associated Press writer Alanna Durkin Richer in Boston contributed to this report.

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May 28, 2023
Idaho man who dangled from Senate balcony during Capitol riot receives 15-month prison sentence

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An Idaho man who traveled to Washington in a car loaded with weapons and was photographed dangling from the Senate balcony during the Capitol riot was sentenced Wednesday to 15 months in prison.

Josiah Colt, one of the first rioters to reach the Senate floor on Jan. 6, 2021, later pleaded guilty that year to obstructing Congress’ certification of Joe Biden’s White House victory.

Also Wednesday, a man who accompanied Colt to the District of Columbia in a rental car with two pistols, knives, a stun gun, body armor and other gear was sentenced to about three years in prison, according to court records. Las Vegas resident Nathaniel DeGrave, who also entered the Senate gallery, pleaded guilty to conspiracy and assault charges last year.

Both men had agreed to cooperate with investigators as part of their plea deals.

Prosecutors say Colt, DeGrave and a third man, Ronald Sandlin, came to Washington prepared for violence and were intent on stopping lawmakers from certifying the results of the 2020 election as they joined the angry mob of then-President Donald Trump supporters in storming the Capitol.

On Dec. 31, 2020, the men had discussed in a Facebook chat a plan for “shipping guns” to Sandlin’s home in Tennessee. Days later, Sandlin posted on social media a photo of Colt, who was lying in bed with his eyes closed and holding a handgun, with the caption: “My fellow patriot Josiah Colt sleeping ready for the boogaloo Jan 6th.” Boogaloo is a term some extremists use to refer to a second civil war. Colt replied to the post, “Ready for any battle,” followed by a laughing emoji.

Colt, a 34-year-old from Meridian, Idaho, brought his pistol to a rally the day before the riot, but decided to leave it at a hotel on the morning of Jan. 6, authorities said. The three men watched on TV as Trump told his supporters in a speech before the riot to “fight like hell” or they were “not going to have a country anymore.”

After the riot erupted, the men entered the Capitol through the Upper West Terrace doors. They went to a hallway outside the Senate gallery, where Sandlin led a charge against police officers as Colt entered, according to prosecutors.

Colt shouted, “This is our House! This is our country! This is for the people!” before he jumped to the Senate floor. Sitting in a chair reserved for then-Vice President Mike Pence, as president of the Senate, Colt raised his fist as rioters cheered him on, prosecutors said. Colt opened a door and allowed dozens of other rioters to join him.

DeGrave, who carried a can of bear spray in his pocket, called on others on the Senate floor to “take laptops, paperwork, take everything,” according to court papers

Sandlin, of Millington, Tennessee, was sentenced in December to five years and three months in prison after he pleaded guilty to conspiracy and assault charges.

Colt’s lawyers said in a court filing that Colt “is a good person who made a series of very bad choices based on misinformation and the emotional oratory of a demagogue.”

Prosecutors accused DeGrave of trying to capitalize on his participation in the attack by selling video footage of the riot to media outlets.

“He has even profited off of his unlawful conduct on January 6 since being incarcerated — to the tune of over $120,000 — by seeking donations on crowd-funding websites claiming that he is a ‘political prisoner’ of a ‘corrupt Biden regime,’” prosecutors wrote.

DeGrave’s lawyer said in court papers that DeGrave regrets “allowing himself to be drawn into the world of those claiming ‘political persecution’ as a result of their actions on January 6.”

“Nathaniel recognizes the intellectual dishonesty of admitting the criminality of his own conduct on January 6 on the one hand, and complaining about unfair treatment by the criminal justice system on the other,” defense lawyer William Shipley added.

More than 1,000 people have been charged with Capitol riot-related federal crimes. Nearly 500 of them have been sentenced, with more than half receiving terms of imprisonment ranging from seven days to 14 years and two months.

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May 10, 2023
Florida man gets prison term for role in attack on Capitol

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A Florida man has been sentenced to four years and two months in federal prison for attacking police officers during the insurrection at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021

WASHINGTON — A Florida man has been sentenced to four years and two months in federal prison for attacking police officers during the insurrection and storming of the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

Christian Matthew Manley, 27, of Fort Walton Beach, Florida, was sentenced Tuesday in federal court in the District of Columbia, according to court records. He pleaded guilty in November to assaulting, resisting and impeding law enforcement while using a dangerous weapon.

According to court documents, Manley joined with others in objecting to Democrat Joe Biden’s 2020 election victory over then-President Donald Trump. A mob stormed the Capitol in an attempt to stop Congress from certifying election results for Biden over Trump, a Republican, authorities have said. Five people died in the violence.

According to the criminal complaint, Manley was captured on video outside the Capitol wearing a flak jacket and armed with bear spray, a collapsible police baton and handcuffs. Video shows Manley spraying bear spray at U.S. Capitol Police and Metropolitan Police Department officers as they defended an entrance from rioters.

Manley threw the empty bear spray container at officers, then sprayed a second cannister at officers before throwing it at them, prosecutors said. A short time later, Manley accepted a metal rod from another rioter and threw it at the officers, investigators said. They added that Manley also wedged his body against a wall in a tunnel and used force to push the security door against officers defending the Capitol.

Since Jan. 6, 2021, more than 1,000 people have been arrested in nearly all 50 states for alleged crimes related to the Capitol breach, officials said. More than 320 people have been charged with assaulting or impeding law enforcement.

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April 26, 2023
Tucker Carlson out at Fox News | CNN Business

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CNN
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Fox News and Tucker Carlson, the right-wing extremist who hosted the network’s highly rated 8pm hour, have severed ties, the network said in a stunning announcement Monday.

The announcement came one week after Fox News settled a monster defamation lawsuit with Dominion Voting Systems for $787.5 million over the network’s dissemination of election lies. Fox News said that Carlson’s last show was Friday, April 21.

Carlson was a top promoter of conspiracy theories and radical rhetoric at the network. Not only did he repeatedly sow doubt about the legitimacy of the 2020 election, but he also promoted conspiracy theories about the Covid-19 vaccines and elevated white nationalist talking points.

Jonathan Greenblatt, the head of the Anti-Defamation League, praised Fox News’ decision, saying it is “about time” and that “for far too long, Tucker Carlson has used his primetime show to spew antisemitic, racist, xenophobic and anti-LGBTQ hate to millions.”

Tucker Carlson was a key figure in Dominion Voting Systems’ mammoth defamation lawsuit against Fox News, which the parties settled last week on the brink of trial for a historic $787 million.

In some ways, Carlson played an outsized role in the litigation: Only one of the 20 allegedly defamatory Fox broadcasts mentioned in the lawsuit came from Carlson’s top-rated show. But, as CNN exclusively reported, he was set to be one of Dominion’s first witnesses to testify at trial. And his private text messages, which became public as part of the suit, reverberated nationwide.

Dominion got its hands on Carlson’s group chat with fellow Fox primetime stars Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham, and a trove of other messages from around the 2020 presidential election.

These communications revealed that Carlson told confidants that he “passionately” hated former President Donald Trump and that Trump’s tenure in the White House was a “disaster.” He also used misogynistic terms to criticize pro-Trump lawyer Sidney Powell and reject her conspiracies about the 2020 election – even as those wild theories got airtime on Fox News.

The lawsuit exposed how Carlson privately held a wholly different view than his on-air persona. A Dominion spokesperson did not comment on Carlson’s departure from Fox.

Carlson was also one of the biggest promoters of conspiracy theories in right-wing media, sowing doubt about the 2020 presidential election, the January 6 insurrection, and Covid-19 vaccines.

In the two years since the attack on the US Capitol, the Fox primetime host used his huge platform to amplify paper-thin theories that the attack was a false-flag operation orchestrated by the FBI and government agents because they loathed Trump, and that the criminal rioters were themselves the victims.

The baseless theory originated from a right-wing website, and Carlson catapulted it into the mainstream by repeatedly featuring it on his show. He routinely suggested that Capitol rioter and Trump supporter Ray Epps was actually an FBI provocateur who sparked the deadly riot.

In a “60 Minutes” interview that aired Sunday night, Epps had this to say about Carlson’s lies: “He’s obsessed with me. He’s going to any means possible to destroy my life and our lives.”

Carlson’s disinformation campaign about January 6 reached its apex just a few months ago, with an assist from the newly installed House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, a California Republican.

The top-rated Fox host obtained and aired never-before-seen footage from Capitol security cameras, but the clips were cherry-picked and selectively edited. He said on his program that he ran the tapes by the US Capitol Police before airing the material, but they disputed his claim.

Abby Grossberg, the ex-Fox News producer who has since disavowed the network, claimed in recent lawsuits that there was rampant sexism and misogyny among Tucker Carlson’s show team.

Grossberg, who joined Carlson’s team after the 2020 election, said in her lawsuit that after her first day on the job that “it became apparent how pervasive the misogyny and drive to embarrass and objectify women was among the male staff at TCT,” referring to “Tucker Carlson Tonight.”

Fox News is aggressively fighting two lawsuits from Grossberg. A Fox spokesperson previously said the lawsuits were “riddled with false allegations against the network and our employees.”

In a lawsuit filed last month, Grossberg said Carlson “was very capable of using such disgusting language about women in the workplace.” She cited some of Carlson’s private texts, where he used the phrase “c-nt” to refer to Trump lawyer Sidney Powell, a top 2020 election denier.

Her lawsuits also describe seeing sexually suggestive posters that were visible in the workplace, facing “uncomfortable sexual questions” about her former Fox News boss Maria Bartiromo, and witnessing internal debates on which women politicians were “more f–kable.”

In a TV interview, she said the sexual harassment was so bad that she considered suicide.

Carlson’s departure at Fox News comes after the network also severed ties with right-wing bomb thrower Dan Bongino, who had been a regular fixture on the network’s programming, in addition to hosting a weekend show.

“Folks, regretfully, last week was my last show on Fox News on the Fox News Channel,” Bongino said on Rumble, chalking up the exit to a contract dispute.

“So the show ending last week was tough. And I want you to know it’s not some big conspiracy. I promise you. There’s not, there’s no acrimony. This wasn’t some, like, WWE brawl that happened. We just couldn’t come to terms on an extension. And that’s really it.”

Fox News responded in a statement, “We thank Dan for his contributions and wish him success in his future endeavors.”

Shares of Fox Corp.

(FOXA) fell 5% on the news. The stock had been up slightly before the announcement. Carlson did not immediately respond to a CNN request for comment.

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April 24, 2023
Top US Navy admiral defends non-binary sailor amid some Republican criticism | CNN Politics

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CNN
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The top US Navy admiral ardently defended a non-binary sailor on Tuesday amid some criticism from Republican lawmakers, saying he is “particularly proud of this sailor.”

The sailor, LTJG Audrey Knutson, had their story shared on the Navy’s Instagram page last week. In a short video, Knutson said they are proud to serve as non-binary, especially because their grandfather served in the Navy as a gay man in World War II. During a deployment last fall aboard the aircraft carrier USS Gerald R. Ford, Knutson said their highlight was reading a poem to the whole ship at an LGBTQ spoken word night. The Instagram video garnered nearly 17,000 likes.

Subsequently, Sen. Marco Rubio, a Republican from Florida, tweeted a portion of the clip with the caption, “While China prepares for war, this is what they have our US Navy focused on.” On Tuesday, Sen. Tommy Tuberville, a Republican from Alabama, continued attacking the video, telling the Senate Armed Services Committee he had “a lot of problems with the video.”

But Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Michael Gilday defended the sailor, emphasizing that it’s the job of a commanding officer to build a warfighting team.

“I’ll tell you why I’m particularly proud of this sailor,” Gilday told the hearing. “So, her grandfather served during World War II, and he was gay and he was ostracized in the very institution that she not only joined and is proud to be a part of, but she volunteered to deploy on Ford and she’ll likely deploy again next month when Ford goes back to sea.”

Gilday used female pronouns to refer to Knutson but the Navy told CNN Knutson’s pronouns of choice are non-binary.

“We ask people from all over the country, from all walks of life, from all different backgrounds to join us,” Gilday said, “and then it’s the job of a commanding officer to build a cohesive warfighting team that’s going to follow the law, and the law requires that we be able to conduct prompt, sustained operations at sea. That level of trust that a commanding officer develops across that unit has to be able to be grounded on dignity and respect, and so … if that officer can lawfully join the United States Navy, is willing to serve and willing to take the same oath that you and I took to put their life on the line, then I’m proud to serve beside them.”

Some Republican lawmakers on Capitol Hill have attacked the military for being too “woke,” claiming it has been one of the causes of the military’s poor recruiting numbers, despite a recent Army survey showing only 5% of potential recruits were concerned about “wokeness.”

Last month, Republican Rep. Cory Mills and several others went after the Defense Department on its diversity, equity and inclusion training at a House Armed Services Subcommittee hearing on military personnel. Mills said, “We absolutely 150% can out-pronoun every single one of our adversaries, and China and Russia I’m sure are quaking in their boots over this.”

In response, Under Secretary of Defense for Personnel and Readiness Gil Cisneros said diversity and equal opportunity training have been a part of the military for decades.

At another hearing in early-March with the military’s top enlisted leaders, Sgt. Maj. Of the Army Michael Grinston stressed that the military’s focus remains on combat lethality, even with additional training on diversity and inclusion.

“There is one hour of equal opportunity training in basic training, and 92 hours of rifle marksmanship training,” Grinston said at the time. “And if you go to [One Station Unit Training], there is 165 hours of rifle marksmanship training and still only one hour of equal opportunity training.”

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April 18, 2023
Opinion: Why isn’t the House Judiciary Committee looking into red flags about Clarence Thomas? | CNN

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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.

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April 17, 2023
Senate Republicans confront 2024 primary challenges and Trump’s influence | CNN Politics

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CNN
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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.”

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April 10, 2023