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  • Peter Navarro contempt of Congress trial will be delayed for months, judge says | CNN Politics

    Peter Navarro contempt of Congress trial will be delayed for months, judge says | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    A federal judge on Friday delayed the contempt of Congress trial for former Donald Trump adviser Peter Navarro, likely for months, to allow for additional pre-trial debate over the role executive privilege could play when the case goes to a jury.

    Over the course of a nearly two-hour hearing Friday, US District Judge Amit Mehta grilled Justice Department prosecutors on the position the department has taken, in previous internal Office of Legal Counsel opinions, that close aides to a president can be immune from congressional subpoenas.

    The trial had been scheduled to begin on Monday.

    Mehta had opened the door to the possibility that Navarro could present evidence at trial – potentially taking the stand – that he had been told by Trump that the former president was invoking executive privilege over his testimony to the House January 6 Committee.

    So far, Navarro has presented no evidence that Trump made a such an invocation when he was subpoenaed for documents and testimony by the now defunct House January 6 select committee.

    Federal prosecutors bristled at the idea that Navarro should still be allowed to present such evidence, arguing that it doesn’t exist in the first place and that if it did, it would not be up to the jury to decide whether such invocation would have shielded Navarro from the subpoenas.

    Mehta ultimately decided that the issue raised legal questions that needed to be decided before trial, so he postponed its Monday start date.

    The judge did not schedule a new date for the trial, and instead set a briefing schedule on the privilege questions that will extend through the end of March.

    This story has been updated with additional details.

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  • Jan. 6 Committee failed to hold social media companies to account for their role in the Capitol attack, staffers and witnesses say | CNN Business

    Jan. 6 Committee failed to hold social media companies to account for their role in the Capitol attack, staffers and witnesses say | CNN Business

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    New York
    CNN
     — 

    “There might be someone getting shot tomorrow.”

    That was the warning from Twitter staff at an internal meeting on Jan. 5, 2021, the eve of the deadly attack on the US Capitol. It wasn’t the only stark warning Twitter management received ahead of the insurrection, according to two former Twitter employees who spoke to the House Jan. 6 Committee.

    But now these witnesses, along with some committee staff, are frustrated, saying the committee failed to adequately hold major social media companies to account for the role they played in the worst attack on the Capitol in 200 years.

    It was a “real missed opportunity,” Anika Collier Navaroli, a former Twitter employee turned whistleblower who gave evidence to the committee, told CNN in an interview last week. “I risked a lot to come forward and speak to the committee and to share the truth about these momentous occasions in history,” Navaroli said.

    CNN spoke to half a dozen people who interacted with and were familiar with the Jan. 6 Committee’s so-called “purple team” – a group that included staff with expertise in extremism and online misinformation. Some witnesses and staff said the committee pulled its punches when it came to Big Tech, failing to include critical parts of the team’s work in its final report. The discontent has poured into public view, with an unpublished draft of the team’s findings leaked and obtained by multiple news organizations, including CNN.

    One source familiar with the probe acknowledged that the committee obtained evidence that social media companies like Twitter largely ignored concerns that were raised internally prior to Jan. 6, but while those platforms should have done something at the time, the panel was limited in its ability to hold them accountable. A lawyer who worked on the committee said the panel did its job and focused on the unique and malign role of then-President Donald Trump in an unprecedented attack on American democracy. They also said the final report outlines structural issues across social media and society that need to be studied further.

    Disagreement about social media companies’ role in the Jan. 6 attack comes as 2023 looks to be a pivotal year for Silicon Valley firms in Washington, DC. Spurred in part by the release of Elon Musk’s so-called “Twitter Files,” House Republicans are set to investigate purported Big Tech censorship, particularly as it pertains to social media companies’ handling of a 2020 New York Post story about Hunter Biden and his laptop. Facebook parent company Meta’s high-stakes decision Wednesday to reinstate Trump on its platforms is also expected to stoke further scrutiny of tech companies’ influence in elections. At the Supreme Court, justices are set to rule this year on a case that could strip key protections afforded to tech companies moderating online speech.

    It isn’t just Navaroli who has taken issue with the committee’s findings. Three of the committee’s own staff members, part of the so-called purple team, published an article earlier this month, sharply criticizing the decisions made by social media companies in the lead up to the attack.

    The final report’s “emphasis on Trump meant important context was left on the cutting room floor,” they wrote.

    “Indeed, the lack of an official Committee report chapter or appendix dedicated exclusively to these matters does not mean our investigation exonerated social media companies for their failure to confront violent rhetoric,” they wrote.

    In wake of the decision, CNN has reviewed thousands of pages of deposition transcripts and other supporting documents the committee has publicly released that provide insight into Silicon Valley’s action and inaction in the critical period between Election Day 2020 and Jan. 6, 2021.

    Navaroli, who worked on Twitter’s safety policy team, told the committee she had repeatedly warned Twitter’s leadership in the lead-up to Jan. 6 about the dangers of not cracking down on what she said was violent rhetoric.

    Navaroli pointed to Trump’s infamous “stand back and stand by” message to the Proud Boys at the first 2020 presidential debate as one instance that incited more violent rhetoric on Twitter.

    Navaroli initially appeared before the committee as an anonymous whistleblower. Part of her testimony was played during the public committee hearings last summer, with her voice distorted to protect her identity. However, she later decided to go public, testifying before the committee for a second time, and speaking to The Washington Post.

    In an interview with CNN, Navaroli said she is speaking out now because she believes it is important for the “truth to be on the record.” She warned that without a full reckoning of social media’s role in the Capitol attack, political violence could once again ignite in the United States and elsewhere around the world, pointing to recent unrest in Brazil where supporters of former President Jair Bolsonaro stormed the country’s top government offices.

    The final report from the Jan. 6 Committee stated, “Social media played a prominent role in amplifying erroneous claims of election fraud.”

    But a far more blistering assessment was laid out in an unpublished draft document prepared by committee staff that was obtained by several news organizations, including CNN. Its key findings included:

    • “Social media platforms delayed response to the rise of far-right extremism—and President Trump’s incitement of his supporters—helped to facilitate the attack on January 6th.”
    • “Fear of reprisal and accusations of censorship from the political right compromised policy, process, and decision-making.”
    • “Twitter failed to take actions that could have prevented the spread of incitement to violence after the election.”
    • “Facebook did not fail to grapple with election delegitimization after the election so much as it did not even try.”

    Tech companies would broadly dispute these findings and have repeatedly said they are working to keep their platforms safe.

    Twitter’s previous management repeatedly outlined steps it said it was taking to crack down on hateful and violent rhetoric on its platform prior to Jan. 6, 2021, but stressed it didn’t want to unnecessarily limit free expression. Under Musk’s leadership, Twitter no longer has a responsive communications team, and the company did not respond to CNN’s request for comment.

    Andy Stone, a spokesperson for Facebook parent company Meta, pointed to an earlier statement from the company where it said it was cooperating with the committee.

    Jacob Glick, an investigative counsel, conducted multiple depositions for the Jan. 6 Committee, including Navaroli's.

    Jacob Glick, an investigative counsel who conducted multiple depositions for the Jan. 6 Committee, including Navaroli’s, told CNN he believes the committee did its job to show “the American public the dangers posed by President Trump’s multilayered attack on our democracy.”

    He said the lack of awareness he believes tech companies have shown about their role in the attack was “stark.”

    “I don’t think social media companies recognize they were dealing with a sustained threat to American democracy,” he said.

    Glick, who now works at the Georgetown Institute for Constitutional Advocacy and Protection, said the purple team’s report had not been fact-checked, contains some errors, and should not have been leaked.

    Another source familiar with the committee’s work told CNN, “It couldn’t be clearer that Trump was at the center of this plot to overturn the election. Not everything staff worked on could fit into this extensive report and hearings, including some who wanted their work to be the center of the investigation.”

    How social media platforms write and enforce their rules has become a central and ongoing debate, raising the key question of what power the companies should wield when it comes to politicians like Trump.

    While some, including Navaroli, insist Trump repeatedly broke social media platforms’ rules by inciting violent rhetoric that should have resulted in his removal before Jan. 6, others including Musk and Twitter’s previous management, argue that what politicians say should be made available to as many people as possible so they can be held to account.

    Meta and Twitter have both reversed their bans on Trump.

    “We’re moving backwards and it’s concerning to me,” Navaroli said of the return of prominent election conspiracy theorists to major tech platforms. “History has taught us what happens when political speech on social media companies is allowed to fester unchecked.”

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  • Five former Memphis police officers indicted on charges of murder and kidnapping in Tyre Nichols’ death | CNN

    Five former Memphis police officers indicted on charges of murder and kidnapping in Tyre Nichols’ death | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    Five former Memphis police officers who were fired for their actions during the arrest of Tyre Nichols earlier this month were indicted on charges including murder and kidnapping, Shelby County District Attorney Steve Mulroy announced Thursday.

    The former officers, Tadarrius Bean, Demetrius Haley, Justin Smith, Emmitt Martin and Desmond Mills Jr., have each been charged with second-degree murder, aggravated assault, two charges of aggravated kidnapping, two charges of official misconduct and one charge of official oppression, Mulroy said.

    “While each of the five individuals played a different role in the incident in question, the actions of all of them resulted in the death of Tyre Nichols, and they are all responsible,” he said.

    Live updates on the Tyre Nichols case

    Second-degree murder is defined in Tennessee as a “knowing killing of another” and is considered a Class A felony punishable by between 15 to 60 years in prison.

    The criminal charges come about three weeks after Nichols, a 29-year-old Black man, was hospitalized after a traffic stop and “confrontation” with Memphis police that family attorneys have called a savage beating. Nichols died from his injuries on January 10, three days after the arrest, authorities said.

    Four of the officers remained in custody Thursday evening, after being booked into the Shelby County Jail. Bond was set at $350,000 for Haley, 30, and Martin, 30, and $250,000 for Bean, 24, and Smith, 28, according to the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation. Mills, 32, posted $250,000 bond Thursday evening and was released, according to jail records.

    In a joint news conference Thursday afternoon, Blake Ballin, an attorney for Mills, and William Massey, Martin’s attorney, said they have not yet watched the video of the police encounter, which is expected to be released to the public Friday.

    Ballin described Mills as a “respectful father,” who was “devastated” to be accused in the killing. Mills, previously a jailer in Mississippi and Tennessee, was in the process of posting bond Thursday to secure his release and plans to enter a not guilty plea in court, his attorney said. Ballin said he had not spoken to Mills specifically about Nichols.

    Martin also intended to post bond and will also plead not guilty, his attorney said. “No one out there that night intended for Tyre Nichols to die,” Massey said.

    Other officers’ attorneys did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

    Police nationwide have been under heightened scrutiny for how they treat Black people, particularly since the Minneapolis police murder of George Floyd in May 2020 and the mass protest movement known as Black Lives Matter. Officials in Memphis have braced for potential civil unrest due to Nichols’ death and have called for peaceful protests.

    President Joe Biden said in a Thursday statement the killing is a “painful reminder that we must do more to ensure that our criminal justice system lives up to the promise of fair and impartial justice, equal treatment, and dignity for all.”

    Video of the fatal police encounter, a mix of body-camera and pole-cam video, is expected to be released publicly after 6 p.m. Friday, Mulroy said.

    Speaking to CNN’s Erin Burnett on Thursday night, Mulroy said that while he can’t definitively say what caused the encounter to escalate, the video shows that the officers were “already highly charged up” from the start of the video and “it just escalated further from there.”

    The video doesn’t capture the beginning of the altercation between the officers and Nichols but rather “cuts in as the first encounter is in progress,” Mulroy said.

    “What struck me (about the video) is how many different incidents of unwarranted force occurred sporadically by different individuals over a long period of time,” the district attorney added.

    Tennessee Bureau of Investigation Director David Rausch said the fatal encounter was not proper policing.

    “I’m sickened by what I saw and what we’ve learned from our extensive and thorough investigation,” he said. “I’ve seen the video, and as DA Mulroy stated, you will too. In a word, it’s absolutely appalling.”

    Nichols’ family and attorneys were shown the video on Monday and said it shows officers severely beating Nichols and compared it to the Los Angeles police beating of Rodney King in 1991.

    “The news today from Memphis officials that these five officers are being held criminally accountable for their deadly and brutal actions gives us hope as we continue to push for justice for Tyre,” attorneys Ben Crump and Antonio Romanucci said Thursday.

    Memphis Police Chief Cerelyn Davis took on the position in June 2021.

    The five Memphis police officers, who are also Black, were fired last week for violating policies on excessive use of force, duty to intervene and duty to render aid, the department said.

    In a YouTube video released late Wednesday, Memphis Police Chief Cerelyn Davis condemned the officers’ actions and called for peaceful protests when the arrest video is released.

    “This is not just a professional failing. This is a failing of basic humanity toward another individual,” Davis said in the video, her first on-camera comments about the arrest. “This incident was heinous, reckless and inhumane.”

    “I expect our citizens to exercise their First Amendment right to protest to demand action and results. But we need to ensure our community is safe in this process,” said Davis, the first Black woman to serve as Memphis police chief. “None of this is a calling card for inciting violence or destruction on our community or against our citizens.”

    The five terminated officers all joined the department in the last six years, according to police. Other Memphis police officers are still under investigation for department policy violations related to the incident, the chief said.

    In a statement posted Thursday, Memphis Mayor Jim Strickland said the city had initiated an “outside, independent review” of the training, policies and operations of the police department’s specialized units. At least two of the officers belonged to one of those special units, according to their attorneys.

    Two members of the city’s fire department who were part of Nichols’ “initial patient care” also were relieved of duty, a fire spokesperson said. The Tennessee Bureau of Investigation announced an investigation into Nichols’ death and the US Department of Justice and FBI have opened a civil rights investigation.

    Mulroy said the investigation is ongoing and there could be further charges going forward.

    Meanwhile, law enforcement agencies nationwide are bracing for protests and potential unrest following the release of video, multiple sources told CNN.

    The Memphis Police Department has terminated five police officers in connection with the death of Tyre Nichols. Top: Tadarrius Bean, Demetrius Haley, Emmit Martin. Bottom: Desmond Mills Jr., Justin Smith

    Nichols, the father of a 4-year-old, had worked with his stepfather at FedEx for about nine months, his family said. He was fond of skateboarding in Shelby Farms Park, Starbucks with friends and photographing sunsets, and he had his mother’s name tattooed on his arm, the family said. He also had the digestive issue known as Crohn’s disease and so was a slim 140 to 145 pounds despite his 6-foot-3-inch height, his mother said.

    On January 7, he was pulled over by Memphis officers on suspicion of reckless driving, police said in their initial statement on the incident. As officers approached the vehicle, a “confrontation” occurred and Nichols fled on foot, police said. The officers pursued him and they had another “confrontation” before he was taken into custody, police said.

    Nichols then complained of shortness of breath, was taken to a local hospital in critical condition and died three days later, police said.

    In Memphis police scanner audio, a person says there was “one male Black running” and called to “set up a perimeter.” Another message says “he’s fighting at this time.”

    On Thursday, Mulroy offered a few further details, saying the serious injuries occurred at the second confrontation. He also said Nichols was taken away in an ambulance after “some period of time of waiting around.”

    Attorneys for Nichols’ family who watched video of the arrest on Monday described it as a heinous police beating that lasted three long minutes. Crump said Nichols was tased, pepper-sprayed and restrained, and Romanucci said he was kicked.

    “He was defenseless the entire time. He was a human piñata for those police officers. It was an unadulterated, unabashed, nonstop beating of this young boy for three minutes. That is what we saw in that video,” Romanucci said. “Not only was it violent, it was savage.”

    Nichols had “extensive bleeding caused by a severe beating,” according to the attorneys, citing preliminary results of an autopsy they commissioned.

    Among the charges, the officers were indicted on two counts of aggravated kidnapping: one for possession of a weapon and one for bodily injury.

    “At a certain point in the sequence of events, it is our view that this, if it was a legal detention to begin with, it certainly became illegal at a certain point, and it was an unlawful detention,” Mulroy said.

    Less than a month after the murder of Floyd, the Memphis Police Department amended its duty to intervene policy, according to a copy of the policy sent to CNN by the MPD.

    “Any member who directly observes another member engaged in dangerous or criminal conduct or abuse of a subject shall take reasonable action to intervene,” the policy, sent out on June 9, 2020, said.

    “A member shall immediately report to the Department any violation of policies and regulations or any other improper conduct which is contrary to the policy, order, or directives of the Department.”

    The policy went on to say “this reporting requirement also applies to allegations of uses of force not yet reported.”

    Correction: A previous version of this story gave the wrong spelling for the name of one of the arrested officers. According to the indictment, it is Tadarrius Bean.

    Previous versions of this story spelled Emmitt Martin’s name incorrectly.

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  • Emhoff to visit Auschwitz to mark International Holocaust Remembrance Day | CNN Politics

    Emhoff to visit Auschwitz to mark International Holocaust Remembrance Day | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    Second gentleman Douglas Emhoff is traveling this week to mark International Holocaust Remembrance Day, visiting key sites in Poland and Germany to honor those lost in the Holocaust and renew a pledge to “Never Forget.”

    As the first Jewish spouse of a president or vice president, Emhoff has made countering the recent global scourge of antisemitism a key priority. The goals of this trip abroad will build on that, senior administration officials told reporters before his departure, focused on Holocaust education and remembrance, as well as combating antisemitism worldwide.

    “There will be many events focusing on honoring the victims of the Holocaust, and having a second gentleman educating the public on the true nature of the Holocaust. You will see the second gentleman push back against Holocaust denial, distortion and disinformation, and educating the next generation about the Holocaust,” a senior administration official said.

    Emhoff, the official added, “will be meeting with and working with our European partners, both those in and out of government to strengthen our efforts to combat the rise in antisemitism and to deepen our relationships with these European partners as we take on the challenge together.”

    The Anti-Defamation League Center on Extremism, which has tracked incidents of US antisemitic harassment, vandalism and assault since 1979, found 2,717 incidents of antisemitism in the US in 2021, up a significant 34% from the previous year. And in recent months, there have been multiple incidents of incendiary antisemitic incidents in the public sphere, including tweets from Kanye West, a link posted by Brooklyn Nets player Kyrie Irving to a video filled with antisemitic tropes, a sign over a major Los Angeles bridge and other troubling views shared by political figures.

    The second gentleman has a packed schedule of events aimed at highlighting Jewish history and the Holocaust, and combating antisemitism, though officials cast the trip as “more of a listening session” than focused on “big policy deliverables.”

    On Friday, marking International Holocaust Remembrance Day, Emhoff is set to visit the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Memorial and Museum in Poland, where he will receive a tour, then participate in a candle-lighting and wreath-laying. He will also attend the commemoration of the 78th anniversary of the liberation of the German Nazi concentration and extermination camp Auschwitz, per his office.

    On Saturday, Emhoff will visit Schindler’s Enamel Factory museum, a key site commemorating the Holocaust, and attend a roundtable on antisemitism in Krakow.

    “The goal here is to hear directly from experts, religious leaders, and academics on their work in Poland to promote tolerance, education, and inclusiveness. And throughout that, the second gentleman will be signaling to them our eagerness to work with them and that we are with them in their fight,” the official said.

    He is also set to meet with Ukrainian refugees and United Nations officials at a UN community center.

    On Sunday, he will tour Krakow’s Jewish quarter and then visit historic Jewish sites in Gorlice, Poland, before traveling to Berlin.

    In Berlin on Monday, Emhoff joins a Convening of Special Envoys and Coordinators on Combating Antisemitism, where he will be joined by US Special Envoy to Monitor and Combat Antisemitism Ambassador Deborah Lipstadt. He is later set to visit Berlin’s Topography of Terror Museum and the Museum of Jewish Life.

    On Tuesday, he will participate in a roundtable with interfaith leaders.

    “Interfaith dialogue has been an area of focus for a second gentleman. And the basic idea is here, which he will be speaking about throughout the trip, is that we know that Semitism is not only a threat to Jews, it is often accompanied or the precursor to other forms of hatred and intolerance, including against other ethnic or religious minority groups or immigrants. So we view this engagement as about building coalitions across all groups to combat hate in all its forms,” the senior official said.

    Emhoff will meet with Ukrainian refugees at the Oranienburgerstrasse Synagogue. He will also visit multiple memorials, including the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, where he will meet with “a small group” of Holocaust survivors.

    The trip takes on special significance for Emhoff, whose “great grandparents (fled) persecution from what is now Poland at the beginning of the 19th century,” the senior official said.

    “That is a pretty incredible moment for him to return as an American Jew, as the first second gentleman, as the first Jewish spouse of the president or vice president, and work on these issues,” the official said.

    Emhoff has previously warned of an “epidemic of hate facing our country” as he convened a roundtable on antisemitism at the White House last month.

    “We’re seeing a rapid rise in antisemitic rhetoric and acts,” Emhoff said at the start of the roundtable. “Let me be clear: words matter. People are no longer saying the quiet parts out loud – they are literally screaming them.”

    In addition to the roundtable, as second gentleman, Emhoff has met with students to discuss domestic antisemitism, hosted a virtual Seder, lit the menorah and affixed a mezuzah outside the entrance of the vice president’s Naval Observatory residence.

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  • Brett Kavanaugh Fast Facts | CNN

    Brett Kavanaugh Fast Facts | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    Here’s a look at the life of Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh.

    Birth date: February 12, 1965

    Birth place: Washington, DC

    Birth name: Brett Michael Kavanaugh

    Father: Everett Edward Kavanaugh Jr., president of a trade association

    Mother: Martha Kavanaugh, teacher, prosecutor and judge

    Marriage: Ashley (Estes) Kavanaugh

    Children: Liza and Margaret

    Education: Yale College, B.A., 1987, graduated cum laude; Yale Law School, J.D., 1990

    Religion: Roman Catholic

    Regularly taught courses on separation of powers and on the Supreme Court at Harvard Law School.

    Kavanaugh finished the Boston Marathon in 2010 and in 2015.

    1990-1991 – Law clerk to Judge Walter Stapleton of the US Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit.

    1991-1992 – Clerks for Judge Alex Kozinski of the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.

    1992-1993 – Attorney with the Solicitor General’s Office at the Department of Justice.

    1993-1994 – Serves as law clerk to Justice Anthony Kennedy.

    1994-1997 and 1998 – Associate counsel for Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr’s Whitewater investigation, which leads to the impeachment of President Bill Clinton.

    1997-1998 and 1999-2001 – Partner at Kirkland & Ellis in Washington, DC.

    2001-2003 – Serves as associate counsel and then senior associate counsel to President George W. Bush.

    July 25, 2003 – Bush nominates Kavanaugh to the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, but the Senate doesn’t vote on Kavanaugh’s nomination for almost three years.

    July 2003-May 2006 – Serves as assistant and staff secretary to Bush.

    May 26, 2006 – The Senate confirms Kavanaugh to the DC Circuit Court of Appeals by a vote of 57-36.

    May 30, 2006 – Sworn in by Kennedy.

    July 9, 2018 – President Donald Trump announces Kavanaugh as his nominee to fill the Supreme Court vacancy created by Kennedy’s retirement.

    September 4-7, 2018 – Confirmation hearings are held on Capitol Hill. A Senate Judiciary Committee vote is tentatively slated for the week of September 17.

    September 16, 2018 – The Washington Post publishes an article about a California psychology professor who accuses Kavanaugh of attempting to rape her when they were both teenagers at a house party during the early 1980s. Christine Blasey Ford says she initially sent a letter to Senator Dianne Feinstein about the incident when Kavanaugh’s name was included on a shortlist for the Supreme Court. Ford tells the newspaper she initially did not want to go public but she decided to talk on the record because her letter to Feinstein had been leaked to the media. Kavanaugh denies that such an incident ever took place.

    September 23, 2018 – The New Yorker magazine publishes a report about a second allegation of sexual misconduct, prompting Feinstein to call for a postponement of confirmation proceedings. The magazine article centers on a college classmate from Yale, Deborah Ramirez who says Kavanaugh exposed himself to her while a group of students were drinking at a party in a dorm during the 1983-1984 academic year. Kavanaugh denies the allegation and a White House spokeswoman dismisses the claim as uncorroborated.

    September 27, 2018 – Kavanaugh and Ford testify during an all-day hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee.

    September 28, 2018 – GOP Senator Jeff Flake, a member of the Judiciary Committee, agrees to vote yes, paving the way to a floor vote but he says the FBI should reopen its background investigation of Kavanaugh and spend a week looking into claims made by Kavanaugh’s accusers. Trump later agrees to direct the FBI to reopen its background check but the probe will be limited in scope and must be completed in a week.

    October 3, 2018 – The FBI completes its supplemental background check and sends the information to the Senate late in the day.

    October 4, 2018 – The Wall Street Journal publishes an op-ed by Kavanaugh in which argues that he is an independent, impartial judge. He expresses regret for a few of his statements during the September 27 hearing, explaining that he was frustrated and emotional. He pledges, going forward, that litigants and colleagues will be treated with respect. The same day, retired Justice John Paul Stevens says that Kavanaugh’s comments during his confirmation hearings suggest bias. Stevens says Kavanaugh should not serve on the Supreme Court.

    October 6, 2018 – The Senate confirms Kavanaugh with a 50-48 vote. He is sworn in by Chief Justice John Roberts during a private ceremony. The vote takes place amid public protests for and against Kavanaugh’s confirmation.

    September 14, 2019 – The New York Times publishes an article adapted from a forthcoming book, “The Education of Brett Kavanaugh” that contains a new allegation of college sexual misconduct. According to the report, the FBI did not investigate the new allegation and the bureau did not speak with witnesses to verify Ramirez’s original claim.

    July 2020 – An exclusive CNN report says Kavanaugh urged his colleagues in a series of private memos this spring to consider avoiding decisions in major disputes over abortion and Democratic subpoenas for Trump’s financial records, according to multiple sources familiar with the inner workings of the court.

    October 28, 2020 – Kavanaugh tweaks a line in his controversial opinion on Wisconsin mail-in voting, after he received criticism for incorrectly saying Vermont had not changed its election rules due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

    July 22, 2021 – Senator Sheldon Whitehouse releases a letter from the FBI disclosing that it received more than 4,500 tips on a phone line in 2018 as part of a background investigation Kavanaugh and provided “relevant” ones to former President Trump’s White House counsel.

    October 1, 2021 – The Supreme Court announces that Kavanaugh has tested positive for Covid-19. This is the first publicly known case of coronavirus among the high court’s justices. Kavanaugh was fully vaccinated, according to the court.

    June 8, 2022 – Nicholas John Roske is arrested near Kavanaugh’s house, after calling emergency authorities to say he was having suicidal thoughts, had a firearm in his suitcase, and had traveled from California “to kill a specific US Supreme Court Justice.” The Justice Department charges him with attempting to kidnap or murder a US judge.

    January 20, 2023 – “Justice,” a documentary examining the sexual assault allegations against Kavanaugh, premieres at the Sundance Film Festival.

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  • A new partisan era of American education | CNN Politics

    A new partisan era of American education | CNN Politics

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    A version of this story appears in CNN’s What Matters newsletter. To get it in your inbox, sign up for free here.



    CNN
     — 

    Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis says he’s protecting kids from indoctrination and political agendas, but the zeal with which he has pushed expansive efforts to remake the Florida education system also represents an effort to influence young minds.

    However you view DeSantis’ motivations, he is getting results.

    The College Board, the nonprofit organization that oversees the Advanced Placement program offered across high schools, said it would change a new AP African American studies course that DeSantis said violated a state law to restrict certain lessons about race in schools.

    His state’s Department of Education complained the college-level course mentioned Black queer theory and the idea of intersectionality. Read more about why Florida rejected the course.

    “Governor DeSantis, are you really trying to lead us into an era akin to communism that provides censorship of free thoughts?” the civil rights lawyer Ben Crump said at a press conference on Wednesday in Florida, where he announced he would sue DeSantis on behalf of three high school students if DeSantis would not negotiate with the College Board about the AP course.

    DeSantis recently demanded a list of names of staff and programs related to diversity at public colleges and universities, part of a crackdown on “trendy ideology.”

    Separately, he wants details on students who sought gender dysphoria treatment at state universities.

    DeSantis also wants to remake the New College of Florida, a small, public liberal arts school, as a sort of “Hillsdale of the South,” according to Florida Education Commissioner Manny Diaz.

    Hillsdale, as USA Today points out, is a private, conservative Christian college in Michigan.

    A new DeSantis appointee to the New College of Florida board of trustees has clashed with board officials over his request to open every meeting with a prayer.

    Republicans across the country are focused on education. They want to guard against anything perceived as pushing equity rather than merit.

    Virginia’s governor sees a conspiracy in how school districts recognize distinction in a scholarship program based on scores on the PSAT.

    The state attorney general has launched a discrimination investigation into whether the Fairfax County Public Schools system – including Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology, a nationally recognized Virginia magnet school – discriminated against students by not informing them of recognition under the National Merit Scholarship program.

    The students qualified for recognition but did not advance in the competition for a scholarship.

    Virginia Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin, according to CNN’s report, claimed these revelations were a result of the “maniacal focus on equal outcomes for all students at all costs.”

    “The failure of numerous Fairfax County schools to inform students of their national merit awards could serve as a Virginia human rights violation,” the governor’s office said in a previous statement provided to CNN.

    Fairfax County Public Schools superintendent Michelle Reid told CNN the recognitions should have come earlier, but cited a lack of a “division-wide protocol” rather than any kind of mania about equity. Read more about the controversy.

    Texas officials also have their eyes on the state’s colleges and universities, according to CNN’s Eric Bradner.

    “Our public professors are accountable to the taxpayer because you pay their salary,” said Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick in an inauguration speech. Bradner notes Patrick has pushed to end tenure at Texas public colleges and universities.

    “I don’t want teachers in our colleges saying, ‘America is evil and capitalism is bad and socialism is better,’” he said. “And if that means some of those professors that want to teach that don’t come to Texas, I’m OK with that.” Read Bradner’s full report.

    Meanwhile, in South Dakota, lawmakers are looking to develop a social studies curriculum based on “American exceptionalism,” propelled by the governor’s desire to put more patriotism in the classroom.

    The focus by Republican politicians on issues of race in colleges and the classroom is mirrored by the potential for a court-mandated turnaround in how American students are viewed for admissions.

    The Supreme Court heard arguments in October in two separate cases regarding affirmative action and seems poised to say colleges and universities cannot consider race in admissions.

    Nine states have already outlawed affirmative action for public universities. Voters in California were the first to do so, and the end result was falling enrollment, in particular among Black students at top public schools in the University of California system and at the University of Michigan. Those states both encouraged the Supreme Court not to outlaw affirmative action.

    Florida, which also ended the practice, encouraged the court to throw affirmative action out.


    Education was a major focus for Republicans in the recent election. While it clearly worked for DeSantis in Florida and a year earlier for Youngkin in Virginia, the mixed results for Republicans writ large may call the strategy into question as the 2024 election looms.

    I read on the education news website Chalkbeat about a new study that predicts more politics in the classroom as Americans increasingly sort themselves by political ideology.

    In the working paper, David Houston, an education policy professor at George Mason University, argues that previous debates over desegregation, prayer and sex education in public schools were divisive but not inherently partisan.

    He points to the moderate positions of previous presidents as proof. Then-President George W. Bush worked with then-Democratic Sen. Edward Kennedy on education reform in 2001. Former President Barack Obama was praised by Republicans in 2012 for his work on education.

    Those stories feel like they’re from a different universe when today’s Republican governors are looking to root out liberal extremism in schools.

    Houston argues in his study, which is based on survey data, that the US may be on the cusp of a new and divisive era with “heightened partisan animosity across all aspects of education politics.”

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  • Meta says it will restore Donald Trump’s Facebook and Instagram accounts | CNN Business

    Meta says it will restore Donald Trump’s Facebook and Instagram accounts | CNN Business

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    New York
    CNN
     — 

    Facebook-parent Meta said on Wednesday that it will restore former President Donald Trump’s accounts on Facebook and Instagram in the coming weeks, just over two years after suspending him in the wake of the January 6 Capitol attack.

    “Our determination is that the risk [to public safety] has sufficiently receded,” Meta President of Global Affairs Nick Clegg said in a blog post. “As such, we will be reinstating Mr. Trump’s Facebook and Instagram accounts in the coming weeks. However, we are doing so with new guardrails in place to deter repeat offenses.”

    Trump could be suspended for as much as two years at a time for violating platform policies in the future, Clegg said.

    With his Facebook and Instagram accounts reactivated, Trump will once again gain access to huge and powerful communications and fundraising platforms just as he ramps up his third bid for the White House.

    The decision, which comes on the heels of a similar move by Twitter, could also further shift the landscape for how a long list of smaller online platforms handle Trump’s accounts.

    It was not immediately clear whether Trump will seize the opportunity to return to the Meta platforms. Trump’s reps did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

    In a post on his own platform, Truth Social, Trump acknowledged Meta’s decision to reverse its suspension of his account and said “such a thing should never again happen to a sitting President, or anybody else who is not deserving of retribution.”

    Former President Trump’s team was not given advance notice of Meta’s decision, a source familiar with the matter told CNN. Many of his aides and advisers learned of the decision from media reports. Shortly before the announcement, Meta asked for a last-minute meeting with Trump’s lawyers this evening to discuss his possible reinstatement, but were not told what the final decision was. They were still in the meeting when Meta released the news, the source said.

    Twitter restored Trump’s account in November following its takeover by billionaire Elon Musk, but the former president has not yet resumed tweeting, opting instead to remain on Truth Social.

    But Trump’s campaign earlier this month sent a letter to Meta petitioning the company to unblock his Facebook account, a source familiar with the letter told CNN, making his return more likely. Although Twitter was always Trump’s preferred platform, he has a massive reach on Facebook and Instagram — 34 million followers and 23 million followers, respectively, ahead of his reinstatement. Previous Trump campaigns have lauded the effectiveness of Facebook’s targeted advertising tools and have spent millions running Facebook ads.

    Meta’s decision was quickly criticized by a number of online safety advocates and democratic lawmakers. Congressman Adam Schiff said in a tweet that restoring Trump’s “access to a social media platform to spread his lies and demagoguery is dangerous,” noting that Trump has shown “no remorse” for his actions around the January 6 attack. NAACP President Derrick Johnson called the decision “a prime example of putting profits above people’s safety.”

    But ACLU Director Anthony Romero called the decision “the right call,” joining several other groups in praising the move. He added: “The biggest social media companies are central actors when it comes to our collective ability to speak — and hear the speech of others — online. They should err on the side of allowing a wide range of political speech, even when it offends.”

    The company made the landmark decision to bar Trump from posting on Facebook and Instagram the day after the January 6 attack, in which his supporters stormed the US Capitol in a bid to overturn the 2020 election results.

    Many other platforms did the same in quick succession, but Facebook was clear that it planned to revisit the decision at a later date. After Facebook’s independent Oversight Board recommended that the company clarify what was initially an indefinite suspension, Facebook said the former president would remain restricted from the platform until at least January 7, 2023.

    Meta earlier this month was considering whether to restore Trump’s accounts with the help of a specially formed internal company working group made up of leaders from different parts of the organization, a person familiar with the deliberations told CNN. The group included representatives from the company’s public policy, communications, content policy, and safety and integrity teams, and was being led by Clegg, who previously served as UK Deputy Prime Minister.

    The company said in June 2021 that it would “look to experts to assess whether the risk to public safety has receded” in January 2023 to make a determination about the former president’s account.

    “If we determine that there is still a serious risk to public safety, we will extend the restriction for a set period of time and continue to re-evaluate until that risk has receded,” Clegg, then-vice president of global affairs at Meta, said in a statement at the time.

    Clegg said in his Wednesday post that the company believes “the public should be able to hear what their politicians are saying — the good, the bad and the ugly — so that they can make informed choices at the ballot box.” But, he said, “that does not mean there are no limits to what people can say on our platform.”

    In light of his previous violations, Trump will now face “heightened penalties for repeat offenses,” Clegg said, adding that the policy will also apply to other public figures whose accounts are reinstated following suspensions related to civil unrest.

    Clegg told Axios in an interview published Wednesday that the company does not “want — if he is to return to our services — for him to do what he did on January 6, which is to use our services to delegitimize the 2024 election, much as he sought to discredit the 2020 election.”

    “In the event that Mr. Trump posts further violating content, the content will be removed and he will be suspended for between one month and two years, depending on the severity of the violation,” Clegg said. However, the possibility of permanent removal of Trump’s accounts — which Clegg had previously indicated could be a consequence of future violations if his account were to be restored — no longer appears to be on the table.

    For content that doesn’t violate its rules but “contributes to the sort of risk that materialized on January 6th, such as content that delegitimizes an upcoming election or is related to QAnon,” Meta may limit distribution of the posts, Clegg said. The company could, for example, remove the reshare button or keep the posts visible on Trump’s page but not in users’ feeds, even for those who follow him, he said. For repeated instances, the company may restrict access to its advertising tools.

    If Trump again posts content that violates Meta’s rules but “we assess there is a public interest in knowing that Mr. Trump made the statement that outweighs any potential harm” under the company’s newsworthiness policy, Meta may similarly restrict the posts’ distribution but leave them visible on Trump’s page.

    –CNN’s Donie O’Sullivan, Kaitlan Collins and Kristen Holmes contributed to this report.

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  • Confidence in London’s police force crumbles as sex crime cases against officers pile up | CNN

    Confidence in London’s police force crumbles as sex crime cases against officers pile up | CNN

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    London
    CNN
     — 

    In a distinguished 30-year career with London’s Metropolitan Police, Dal Babu has seen his fair share of shocking behavior.

    Yet the handling of a female recruit’s sexual assault allegedly at the hands of her superior disgusted him so much he’s never forgotten the incident.

    A detective sergeant had taken a young constable to a call, pulled up into a side area and sexually assaulted her, Babu, a former chief superintendent, claimed. “She was brave to report it. I wanted him sacked but he was protected by other officers and given a warning,” he said.

    Babu said the sergeant in question was allowed to serve until his retirement, while the woman decided to leave the force.

    The alleged incident happened around a decade ago, Babu said. He resigned in 2013 after being passed over for a promotion.

    Yet, despite many public moments of apparent reckoning since, the United Kingdom’s biggest police service continues to be rocked by allegations it’s doing little to ensure citizens are safe from some of its own staff.

    In the latest case, David Carrick, an officer from the same force, pleaded guilty to 49 offenses against 12 women over an 18-year period, including 24 counts of rape.

    Carrick’s admission, on January 16, came almost two years after the death of Sarah Everard, a young woman who was snatched from a London street by Wayne Couzens, another officer, who like Carrick, served with the country’s elite parliamentary and diplomatic protection unit. This part of the police is armed, unlike many other UK forces.

    Everard, 33, was raped and murdered before her body was dumped in woodland around 60 miles from London, in the neighboring county of Kent, where Couzens lived. It later emerged that her attacker had a history of sexual misconduct, just like Carrick, who was subject to multiple complaints before and during his 20-year police career – to no avail.

    Protesters placed 1,071 imitation rotten apples outside Scotland Yard, the Met Police headquarters, on Friday to highlight the same number of officers that have been placed under fresh review in 1,633 cases of sexual assault and violence against women and girls that were made over the past decade.

    Met Commissioner Mark Rowley apologized for the failings that led to Carrick not being caught earlier, in an interview distributed to UK broadcasters.

    Announcing a thorough review of all those employees facing red flags, he said: “I’m sorry and I know we’ve let women down. I think we failed over two decades to be as ruthless as we ought to be in guarding our own integrity.”

    Metropolitan Police Commissioner Mark Rowley (center) pictured on January 5.

    On Friday evening, Rowley published a “turnaround plan” for reforming the Metropolitan Police, saying that he was “determined to win back Londoners’ trust.”

    Among his desired reforms over the next two years, he said in a statement, was the establishment of an anti-corruption and abuse command, being “relentlessly data driven” in delivery, and creating London’s “largest ever neighborhood police presence.”

    Yet Rowley has also bemoaned that he does not have the power to sack dangerous officers, thanks to the fact police can only be dismissed via lengthy special tribunals.

    Independent inquiries into the Met’s misconduct system have been scathing. A report last fall found that when a family member or a fellow officer filed a complaint, it took on average 400 days – more than an entire year – for an allegation of misconduct to be resolved.

    For Harriet Wistrich, a lawyer lobbying the government to give its existing inquiries into police misconduct statutory powers to better protect women, the issue of domestic abuse as a gateway towards other serious offenses cannot be overlooked.

    Wistrich’s Centre for Women’s Justice, a campaign group, first filed a so-called super-complaint in March 2019, highlighting how existing measures designed to protect domestic abuse victims in general were being misused by police, she said, from applications for restraining orders to the use of pre-charge bail.

    In the three years thereafter, as successive Covid lockdowns saw victims trapped at home with their abusers and prosecutions for such crimes plummeted, Wistrich says she noticed a trend of police officers’ partners contacting her.

    “We had been receiving a number of reports from women who were victims of police officers, usually victims of domestic abuse who didn’t have the confidence to report or if they did report felt that they were massively let down or victimized and sometimes subject to criminal action against them themselves for reporting,” Wistrich told CNN.

    Met Police officer David Carrick admitted to dozens of offenses against women, including 24 cases of rape.

    “Or (we saw) the police officer using his status within the family courts to undermine her access to her own children.” Wistrich said.

    “Certainly if anyone’s a victim of a police officer, they’re going to be extremely fearful of coming forward,” she added.

    Carrick’s history appears to confirm Wistrich’s point. He had repeatedly come to the police’s attention for domestic incidents, and would eventually admit behavior so depraved it involved locking a partner in a cupboard under the stairs at his house. When some of his victims tried to seek justice he abused his position to convince them that their word against that of a police officer would never be believed.

    Experts say the scale of his offending will further erode trust, particularly among women and as long as the public is unclear about how much risk lies within the ranks of Britain’s 43 police forces, tensions will simmer.

    Polling commissioned by a government watchdog, the Independent Office for Police Conduct, in the aftermath of Everard’s murder found fewer than half of UK citizens had a positive attitude towards the police. The head of that same body himself resigned last month amid an investigation into a historical allegation leveled against him. Other surveys since then have shown confidence has continued to plunge.

    Even Wistrich is downbeat on whether or not the police will carry out the reforms that are needed.

    Flowers laid for Sarah Everard.

    “Over the years we’ve had a series of blows to policing, around the policing of violence against women,” she said. “We’ve had the kind of collapse in rape prosecutions which has been an ongoing issue for a while and then we have had the emergence of this phenomenon of police perpetrated abuse.

    “But, you know, in a sense it’s amazing how much trust the police have managed to maintain from the general public despite all these stories. So I don’t know how long or how much of a major impact it will have,” she said, referring to Carrick’s recent guilty plea.

    For Patsy Stevenson, one run-in with the Met was enough to alter her life’s trajectory in an instant.

    After deciding to take part in a vigil attended by thousands to mark Everard’s death in March 2021, she was pinned to the ground and arrested by Met officers when they stormed the event on the grounds that pandemic rules in place at the time made large gatherings a health hazard and illegal.

    As a photograph of Stevenson went viral, her flame-red hair tossed about as she was forced to the ground screaming with her hands behind her back, she became both a symbol of militant feminism and the focus of toxic misogyny and death threats.

    A demonstrator holds a placard at the vigil for Sarah Everard.

    She failed the physics degree she was studying for and is now raising the hundreds of thousands of pounds she said is needed to sue the police for wrongful arrest and assault.

    In response to a question on Stevenson’s lawsuit, the Metropolitan Police told CNN: “We have received notification of a proposed civil claim and shall be making no further comment whilst the claim is ongoing.”

    But the fact that the Met Police’s vetting system allowed for men like Carrick and Couzens to remain on the force makes it clear that “the entire system from top to bottom isn’t working,” Stevenson said.

    “It feels like we’re all screaming out, can you just change before something like this happens? And now it’s happened again.”

    Both Babu, once the Met’s most senior Asian officer, and Stevenson, say the erosion of trust in British policing is not new. Indeed, trust has been declining for years, especially among minority ethnic groups, the LGBTQ+ community and other more vulnerable sections of society, whose treatment at the hands of rogue officers is often underreported in the public domain.

    In the days since Carrick last appeared in court, two retired policemen were charged with child sex offenses, and a third serving officer with access to schools was found dead the day that he was due to be charged with child pornography-related offenses.

    Four Met officers are facing a gross misconduct investigation after ordering the strip search of a 15-year-old girl in a south London school last year. A safeguarding report found the decision to search the girl was unlawful and likely motivated by racism. The head teacher of the school in question has now resigned.

    With the abduction and murder of Everard, a 33-year-old white professional woman, at the hands of an officer abusing his extra powers under Covid restrictions, and the sight of multiple young women, such as Stevenson, later manhandled by the Met under the same rules, fury at this trend of impunity burst forth among a larger swathe of the population.

    “This has been happening for years and years with minority groups,” Stevenson told CNN. “And only when someone of a certain color or a certain look was arrested in that manner, like myself, then certain people started to wake up to the idea of oh, hold on, this could happen to us.

    “I’ve had death threats since then. Who can I report that to? The police?” she asked.

    Yet Stevenson said up until her arrest she had always trusted the police.

    “I was the type of person to peek out the windows and see if there’s a domestic [incident] going on, let me call the police to sort it out,” she said. “Nowadays, if I was facing some sort of harassment or something in the street, I wouldn’t go to a police officer.”

    For Babu’s two adult daughters that’s also the case. Despite growing up with a police officer as a father, he says they have also lost faith in the force.

    “We talk about it often and, no, I don’t think they do trust the police,” he told CNN. “And let’s be clear this is also a reflection of a wider issue: the appalling failures in this country to deal with sexual violence perpetrated towards women in general.

    “I’m often worried about my daughters’ safety,” he said. “Whenever they go out, even now, I always ask them to text me to tell me they have made it home safely.”

    Everard never made it home that night in 2021 as she walked back from a friend’s house in south London, thanks to the criminal actions of a man hired to protect people like her, not prey on them.

    Until Britain’s police forces radically tackle the scale of possible injustice occurring on the inside, many women – and others – will rightfully be worried.

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  • Suspect arrested in Des Moines shooting that left 2 students dead, founder of education program in serious condition, police say | CNN

    Suspect arrested in Des Moines shooting that left 2 students dead, founder of education program in serious condition, police say | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    A man was arrested and charged with murder after a shooting at an educational program for at-risk youth in Des Moines, Iowa, left two students dead and the program’s founder seriously injured, authorities said in a press release.

    At 12:53 p.m. Monday, police and fire personnel responded to a report of a shooting at 455 SW 5th Street, which houses the non-profit, called Starts Right Here, Des Moines police said in a news release.

    They found the shooting victims, who were taken to hospitals. The names of the slain were not released.

    Preston Walls, 18, was charged with two counts of first-degree murder, attempted murder and criminal gang participation, police said in an updated statement.

    “Walls, and both deceased victims, are known gang members, belonging to opposing gangs, and evidence indicates that that these crimes were committed as a result of an ongoing gang dispute,” the updated news release said. Des Moines Police provided no further details outlining these claims.

    Police said Walls cut off a court-ordered GPS ankle monitor approximately 16 minutes prior to the shooting.

    CNN has been unable to determine if Walls has retained legal counsel at this time.

    Police didn’t identify the injured person but Des Moines Mayor Frank Cownie said it was Starts Right Here program president and R&B hip hop artist Will Holmes, also known as “Will Keeps.” Police said he was in serious condition.

    The shooting occurred after the suspect, who had a 9mm handgun with an extended ammunition magazine, “entered into a common area where all three victims were located,” the police statement said.

    Holmes “attempted to escort Walls from the area. Walls pulled away from Holmes, pulled the handgun and began to shoot both teenage victims. Holmes was standing nearby and was also shot. Walls then fled the scene on foot,” according to the news release.

    Police got a description of a vehicle related to the shooting and made a traffic stop about 20 minutes after the shooting, two miles away, Police Sgt. Paul Parizek said at a news conference.

    Two people stayed in the vehicle and one got out and ran, Parizek said. Police found the suspect with a tracking dog, he said.

    Police say they found a 9mm handgun nearby. “The ammunition magazine in the handgun has a capacity of 31 rounds, and contained three,” according to the news release.

    Two additional people remain in custody as police investigate the incident.

    Des Moines, Iowa. police converged on the scene of a shooting on Jan. 23, 2034.

    According to Starts Right Here’s website, “Starts Right Here (SRH) is busy inspiring at-risk youth in the Des Moines Public Schools and motivating youth through speaking events. Will Keeps, SRH President, performs empowering songs to inspire and speak the truth.”

    Keeps is a rapper who grew up in Chicago and moved to Des Moines.

    “I want to take a moment and address the horrific shooting this afternoon at Starts Right Here, the school program on Southwest 5th St. and it is run by a friend of the city, Will Keeps, who is recovering tonight in the hospital,” Cownie said in a video statement.

    The mayor called the shooting a “story that repeats itself—the tragic story of young lives taken far too soon by gun violence.”

    The Des Moines Public Schools website says SRH partners with the school district to help students in the district’s Options Academy credit recovery program and to support students who are no longer in a school building. SRH serves 40-50 DMPS students at any given time, the school district said.

    Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds, who is listed on the website’s advisory board, said she is “shocked and saddened” about the shooting.

    “I am shocked and saddened to hear about the shooting at Starts Right Here. I’ve seen first-hand how hard Will Keeps and his staff works to help at-risk kids through this alternative education program. My heart breaks for them, these kids and their families. Kevin and I are praying for their safe recovery,” Reynolds said in a statement.

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  • Russian intelligence agents believed to have directed White supremacists to carry out bombing campaign in Spain, US officials say | CNN Politics

    Russian intelligence agents believed to have directed White supremacists to carry out bombing campaign in Spain, US officials say | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    US officials believe that Russian intelligence officers directed a Russian White supremacist group to carry out a letter-bombing campaign that rocked Madrid late last year, targeting the prime minister, the American and Ukrainian Embassies as well as the Spanish defense ministry, according to current and former US officials.

    Spanish authorities have yet to make any arrests in connection with the attacks, which wounded one Ukrainian Embassy employee, but they were widely suspected at the time to be linked to Spain’s support for Kyiv.

    Some details of how, exactly, the campaign was directed and carried out remain fuzzy, two US officials said. It’s not clear how much knowledge – if any – the Kremlin or Russian President Vladimir Putin himself had.

    Still, US officials now believe that the attack was likely a warning shot to European governments which have rallied around Ukraine since Russia’s invasion in February of last year.

    The New York Times first reported on the alleged involvement of Russian intelligence in the attacks.

    A State Department spokesperson declined to comment “on matters involving leaked intelligence or active law enforcement investigations,” and referred to the Spanish government “for information related to their ongoing investigation.”

    “We condemn all attempts by entities to harm and intimidate government officials and foreign embassies,” the spokesperson added.

    As the war rages on – and particularly if Russia’s battlefield position deteriorates – US officials expect Russia to try to look for proxy groups it can work with to drive up fear of possible terrorist attacks carried out by Russian-backed groups in Europe and the Middle East, one US official explained.

    The State Department designated the White supremacist group, the Russian Imperial Movement, as a global terror organization in 2020. The group is believed to have connections to Russian intelligence agencies and has been used as a proxy force before, current and former officials familiar with US intelligence told CNN. But those connections are murky, these people emphasized, in part because the US lacks good visibility inside RIM.

    But the possibility that an organ of the Russian government – the military intelligence agency, the GRU – appears to have been involved in the attacks is likely to drive up pressure on the Biden administration to name Russia as a state sponsor of terrorism, according to one current and one former US official. The administration has so far been loathe to take such a step, despite pressure from key congressional officials, including former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi.

    There are drawbacks to taking that step, one US official noted, in particular that it limits the administration’s ability to engage with Russia in areas where it might want to.

    The White supremacist group, RIM, has associates across Europe and operates military-style training centers within Russia but is not formally affiliated with the Russian government. But, one former US official said, “There’s no question that RIM operates in Russia because it’s allowed to operate in Russia.”

    The GRU, meanwhile, has carried out increasingly bold operations across Europe and beyond, including assassination attempts. It is also believed to have offered bounties to Taliban-linked militants for killing US troops in Afghanistan, although in that instance, too, the intelligence reporting remained murky, and the Kremlin’s involvement was unclear.

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  • Kamala Harris mourns victims of Monterey Park shooting before speech to mark 50 years since Roe | CNN Politics

    Kamala Harris mourns victims of Monterey Park shooting before speech to mark 50 years since Roe | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    Vice President Kamala Harris declared Sunday that “this violence must stop” in her first on-camera remarks about the mass shooting in Monterey Park, California, that has left at least 10 people dead.

    “I do want to address the tragedy of what happened in my home state,” Harris, a former California senator and state attorney general, told a crowd in Tallahassee, Florida, at the beginning of her speech to mark 50 years since the Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade decision.

    “A time of a cultural celebration … and yet another community has been torn apart by senseless gun violence,” the vice president said, noting that the shooting took place on the weekend of the Lunar New Year. The attack happened at a dance studio Saturday night near a Lunar New Year festival celebration in the city approximately seven miles from downtown Los Angeles.

    “So Doug and I join the president and Dr. Biden, and I know everyone here, in mourning for those who were killed, as we pray for those who are injured, and as we grieve for those many people whose lives are forever changed. All of us in this room and in our country understand this violence must stop,” Harris said. “And President Biden and I and our administration will continue to provide full support to the local authorities as we learn more.”

    President Joe Biden said in a Sunday morning tweet that he is monitoring the aftermath of the mass shooting “closely as it develops.”

    “Jill and I are praying for those killed and injured in last night’s deadly mass shooting in Monterey Park,” he said. “I’m monitoring this situation closely as it develops, and urge the community to follow guidance from local officials and law enforcement in the hours ahead.”

    The White House announced earlier Sunday that the president had been briefed by Homeland Security adviser Liz Sherwood-Randall and had directed her to “make sure that the FBI is providing full support to local authorities,” while providing him regular updates.

    The Bidens remain at their vacation home in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware, and are expected to return to Washington, DC, on Monday.

    Harris’ high-profile speech in Tallahassee came on the 50th anniversary of Roe v. Wade, which the Supreme Court overturned in June, ending federal protections for abortion.

    The vice president sought to draw a direct throughline between abortion access and the freedoms enjoyed by Americans, arguing that limits or outright bans on reproductive health care threaten the rights of ordinary citizens.

    “There’s a collection of words that mean everything to us as Americans. The heartfelt words of our great national anthem, that America is the land of the free and the home of the brave. But let us ask, can we truly be free if a woman cannot make decisions about her own body?” Harris said as the crowd at The Moon nightclub responded with a loud “no.”

    The vice president’s office said there were 1,500 people in attendance.

    Harris’ office said earlier that the choice of Florida for the vice president’s speech Sunday spoke to the reality that the Sunshine State, which enacted a 15-week abortion ban last year, is now at the forefront of the abortion debate.

    Harris did not mention the state’s Republican governor, Ron DeSantis, by name in her remarks, but she appeared to speak directly to the potential 2024 presidential contender, as well as other Republican opponents of abortion rights.

    “Republicans in Congress are now calling for a nationwide abortion ban,” she said.”The right of every woman in every state in this country to make decisions about her own body is on the line. And I’ve said it before, and I will say it again: How dare they?”

    Harris in her speech announced a new presidential memorandum Biden will sign to protect access to medication abortion.

    “I’m pleased to announce that President Biden, I’m announcing it today, has issued a presidential memorandum on this issue. Members of our Cabinet and our administration are now directed as of the president’s order to identify barriers to access to prescription medication and to recommend actions to make sure that doctors can legally prescribe, that pharmacies can dispense and that women can secure safe and effective medication,” Harris said.

    As vice president, Harris has claimed the issue of reproductive rights as her own, becoming the administrations most visible advocate for abortion rights since news leaked last year that the Supreme Court was all but expected to overturn Roe v. Wade. Harris traveled the country to convene state legislators, activists, lawyers and educators to discuss the issue and set a national message for Democrats.

    The Biden administration has taken steps in the wake of the Supreme Court’s decision last June to ensure access to abortion care. The president signed an executive order in August that he said would help women travel out of state to receive abortions; ensure health care providers comply with federal law so women aren’t delayed in getting care; and advance research and data collection “to evaluate the impact that this reproductive health crisis is having on maternal health and other health conditions and outcomes.”

    Harris, touting the White House’s strategy, called Sunday on Congress to pass federal protections for abortion.

    But any legislation to enshrine abortion rights into federal law is unlikely to get far in the Republican controlled-House, which passed a bill earlier this month that would require health care providers to try to preserve the life of an infant in the rare case that a baby is born alive during or after an attempted abortion. The bill is not expected to be taken up in the Democratic-controlled Senate, but passage in the House serves as a messaging opportunity for the new Republican majority.

    Still, Harris encouraged abortion rights advocates to stay positive.

    “To all the friends and leaders, I say let us not be tired or discouraged because we’re on the right side of history,” she said Sunday. “Here now, on this 50th anniversary, let us resolve to make history and secure this right.”

    This story and headline have been updated.

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  • This prominent pastor says Christian nationalism is ‘a form of heresy’ | CNN

    This prominent pastor says Christian nationalism is ‘a form of heresy’ | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    Left vs. right. Woke vs. the unwoke. Red State Jesus vs. Blue State Jesus.

    There are some leaders who see faith and politics strictly as an either/or competition: You win by turning out your side and crushing the opposition.

    But the Rev. William J. Barber II, who has been called “the closest person we have to MLK” in contemporary America, has refined a third mode of activism called “fusion politics.” It creates political coalitions that often transcend the conservative vs. progressive binary.

    Barber, a MacArthur “genius grant” recipient, says a coalition of the “rejected stones” of America—the poor, immigrants, working-class whites, religious minorities, people of color and members of the LGBTQ community can transform the country because they share a common enemy.

    “The same forces demonizing immigrants are also attacking low-wage workers,” the North Carolina pastor said in an interview several years ago. “The same politicians denying living wages are also suppressing the vote; the same people who want less of us to vote are also denying the evidence of the climate crisis and refusing to act now; the same people who are willing to destroy the Earth are willing to deny tens of millions of Americans access to health care.”

    Barber’s fusion politics has helped transform the 59-year-old pastor into one of the country’s most prominent activist and speakers. As co-chair of the Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival, he has helped lead one of the nation’s most sustained and visible anti-poverty efforts.

    He electrified the crowd at the 2016 Democratic National Convention with a speech that one commentator called a “drop the mic” moment. And at a time when both political parties have been accused of ignoring the working class, Barber routinely organizes and marches with groups such as fast-food workers and union members.

    “There is a sleeping giant in America,” Barber told CNN. “Poor and low-wealth folks now make up 30% of the electorate in every state and over 40% of the electorate in every state where the margin of victory for the presidency was less than 3%. If you could just get that many poor and low-wealth people to vote, they could fundamentally shift every election in the country.”

    Starting this month, Barber will take his fusion politics to the Ivy League. Yale Divinity School has announced he’ll be the founding director of its new Center for Public Theology and Public Policy. In that role, Barber says he hopes to train a new generation of leaders who will be comfortable “creating a just society both in the academy and in the streets.”

    Though he’s stepping down as pastor of the North Carolina church where he has served for 30 years, Barber says he is not retiring from activism. He remains president of Repairers of the Breach, a nonprofit that promotes moral fusion politics.

    Barber recently spoke to CNN about his faith and activism and why he opposes White Christian nationalism, a movement that insists the US was founded as a Christian nation and seeks to erase the separation of church and state.

    Barber’s answers were edited for brevity and clarity.

    You’ve talked about poverty as a moral issue and said the US cannot tolerate record levels of inequality. But some extreme levels of poverty have always existed in this country. Why is it so urgent to face those problems now, and why should someone who isn’t poor care?

    Doctor King used to say America has a high blood pressure of creeds, but an anemia of deeds. In every generation we’ve had to have a moment to focus on the urgency of the right now. We will never be able to fix our democracy until we fully face these issues. We will constantly ebb and flow out of recessions because inequality hurts us all.

    Joseph Stiglitz (the Nobel Prize-winning economist) talks about this in his book “The Price of Inequality,” and says that it costs us more as a nation for these inequalities to exist than it would for us to fix them.

    Look at how much it costs us to not have a living (minimum) wage. There was a group of Nobel Peace Prize-winning economists two years ago that debunked the notion that paying people a living wage (the federal minimum wage in the US is $7.25 an hour) would hurt business. They said it’s not true.

    Homeless veterans are housed in 30 tents on a sidewalk along busy San Vicente Boulevard outside the Veteran's Administration campus in Los Angeles on April 22, 2021.

    Well, President Roosevelt said that in the 1930s. He said that any corporation that didn’t pay people a living wage didn’t deserve to be an American corporation.

    I don’t think that American society as a democracy can stand much more. We’re moving toward 50% of all Americans being poor and low wealth. It’s unnecessary.

    We say in our founding documents that every politician swears to promote the general welfare of all people. You’re not promoting the general welfare of all people when you can get elected and go to Congress and get free health care but then sit in Congress and block the people who elected you from having the same thing.

    We say equal protection under the law is fundamental. Well, there’s nothing equal about corporations getting all kinds of tax breaks and all kinds of ways to make more and more money, while the average worker makes 300% less than the CEOs.

    WASHINGTON, DC - JANUARY 06: Supporters of U.S. President Donald Trump pray outside the U.S. Capitol January 06, 2021 in Washington, DC. Congress will hold a joint session today to ratify President-elect Joe Biden's 306-232 Electoral College win over President Donald Trump. A group of Republican senators have said they will reject the Electoral College votes of several states unless Congress appoints a commission to audit the election results. (Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images)

    Marjorie Taylor Greene calls herself a ‘nationalist.’ This is what that means

    Some people cite the scripture where Jesus says, “The poor you always have with you” to argue that poverty is inevitable, and that trying to end it is a hopeless cause.

    Every time they say that, they are misquoting Jesus. Because that’s not what Jesus meant or said. He was saying, yeah, the poor are going to be with you always, because he was quoting from Deuteronomy [15:11]. The rest of that scripture says the poor will always be with you because of your greed — I’m paraphrasing it, but that’s the meaning of it. The poor will always be with you is a critique of our unwillingness to address poverty.

    To have this level of inequality existing is a violation of our deepest moral, constitutional and religious values. It’s morally inconsistent, morally indefensible, and economically insane. Why would you not want to lift 55 to 60 million people out of poverty if you could by paying them a basic living wage? Why would you not want that amount of resources coming to people and then coming back into the economy?

    Thousands of people march through through downtown Raleigh, North Carolina, in what organizers describe as a

    I want to ask you about Christian nationalism. What’s wrong with saying God loves America and that the country should be built on Christian values?

    God doesn’t say it. That’s what’s wrong with it. The scriptures says God loves all people and that if a nation is going to embrace Christian values, then we got to know what those values are. And those values certainly aren’t anti-gay, against people who may have had an abortion, pro-tax cut, pro one party and pro-gun. There’s nowhere in the scriptures where you see Jesus lifting that up.

    Jesus said the Gospel is about good news to the poor, healing to the brokenhearted, welcoming all people, caring for the least of these: the immigrant, the hungry, the sick, the imprisoned. Christian nationalism attempts to sanctify oppression and not liberation. It attempts to sanctify lies and not truth. At best, it’s a form of theological malpractice. At worst, it’s a form of heresy.

    When you have some people calling themselves Christian nationalists, you never hear them say, “Jesus said this.” They say, “I’m a Christian, and I say it.” But that’s not good enough. If it doesn’t line up with the founder, then it’s flawed.

    Are you an evangelical?

    I’m very much an evangelical. I tell folks that I’m a conservative, liberal, evangelical Christian. And what that means is I believe in Jesus, not to the exclusion of other faith traditions because my founder said that “I have others who are not of this fold.” I believe that love, truth, mercy, grace and justice are fundamental to a life of faith. And for me to be evangelical means to start where Jesus started.

    The word “evangel” is good news. When Jesus used that phase it was in his first sermon, which was a public policy sermon. He said it in the face of Caesar, where Caesar had hurt and exploited the poor. He said it right in the ghetto of Nazareth, where people said, “nothing good could come out of Nazareth.” He said, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me to preach good news” — evangel —”to the poor.” That’s what evangelicalism is to Jesus. That’s the kind of evangelicalism that I embrace.

    You’ve had health challenges over the years. How do you keep going year after year and keep yourself from being burned out?

    I read the Bible one time, specifically looking to see if I could find any person in scripture that God used in a major way that did not have some physical challenge. And I couldn’t find it. That helped me get over any pity party.

    You know, Moses couldn’t talk. Ezekiel had strange post-traumatic syndrome types of emotional issues. Jeremiah was crying all the time from his struggles with depression. Paul had a physical thorn in the flesh. Jesus was acquainted with sorrow.

    Police keep watch as The Rev. William Barber and other activists demonstrate during a rally in support of voting rights legislation in front of the US Supreme Court in Washington on June 23, 2021.

    Then then I looked down through history, and I couldn’t find anybody. Harriet Tubman had epileptic-type fits. Martin Luther King was stabbed before he did the March on Washington and had a breathing disorder after that.

    During covid, I thought deeply about death and mortality. I have some immune deficiencies and challenges. I’ve battled this ankylosing spondylitis for now 40-plus years. At any time, it could shut my body down.

    During covid, as I kept meeting people, I sat down one day and I said, Lord, why am I still here? I’m not better than these people. I know I’ve been around covid. My doctor said to me if I caught covid I probably would not fare well.

    As I was musing one day, it dawned on me. That’s the wrong question. The question is never, why are you still alive? Why are you still breathing? The question is what are you going to do with the breath you have?

    Because at any given moment, the scripture says we’re a step from death. And so I’ve decided that whatever breath I have, it is too precious to waste on hate, on oppression and on being mean to people. It’s only to be used for the cause of justice.

    John Blake is the author of “More Than I Imagined: What a Black Man Discovered About the White Mother He Never Knew.”

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  • An elderly Florida couple’s murder-suicide agreement ended with a shooting and hostage situation at a Daytona Beach hospital | CNN

    An elderly Florida couple’s murder-suicide agreement ended with a shooting and hostage situation at a Daytona Beach hospital | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    A 76-year-old woman is in custody after fatally shooting her terminally ill husband in the head in what police say was an intended murder-suicide at a hospital in Daytona Beach, Florida, on Saturday.

    The terminally ill man, 77, was hospitalized at the Advent Health Hospital and made a plan with his wife three weeks ago to “end it” should his health get worse, Daytona Beach Police Chief Jakari E. Young said in a news conference. Police did not specify the man’s illness.

    The man intended to turn the gun on himself but was physically too weak to do so, police said. His wife, who indented to take her own life after, said she “couldn’t go through with it,” according to Young.

    The woman then barricaded herself in the hospital room.

    Officers responded to the hospital shortly after 11:30 a.m. and hostage negotiators made contact with the woman, whose identity hasn’t been released. She was taken into police custody at approximately 3 p.m., Young said.

    Keeping other patients on the 11th floor, where the hostage situation took place, was a “logistical nightmare” as many patients were on ventilators and could not be easily evacuated, he added.

    The woman is in custody and could be awaiting a first-degree murder charge, according to Young.

    “She’s very sad, it’s a tough situation,” Young said.

    It’s unclear how the woman entered the hospital with a gun and if the hospital had a metal detection security system. The exact gun used in the shooting also remains unclear.

    CNN reached out to AdventHealth for comment.

    There is no longer a police presence at the hospital, according to Young.

    Dr. Joshua Horenstein, a cardiologist at Advent Health Hospital, was working in the emergency department when he learned of the shooting incident.

    “Someone came in screaming in the emergency department that this was not a drill and to shelter in place,” Horenstein told CNN while hiding in a supply room with a nurse.

    Horenstein said he was finally able to leave the supply room after roughly 90 minutes.

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  • Lead Supreme Court investigator on Dobbs leak makes clear she spoke to all nine justices | CNN Politics

    Lead Supreme Court investigator on Dobbs leak makes clear she spoke to all nine justices | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    The Supreme Court marshal who investigated last year’s leak of a draft opinion overturning Roe v. Wade has revealed that she spoke to all nine justices and found nothing to implicate them or their spouses.

    Friday’s remarks by Marshal Gail Curley come after the court’s investigative report on the leak, which was released Thursday, did not specify whether justices had been interviewed, leading to questions as to whether investigators had considered their potential role.

    “During the course of the investigation, I spoke with each of the Justices, several on multiple occasions,” Curley said in a statement. “The Justices actively cooperated in this iterative process, asking questions and answering mine.”

    Curley added: “I followed up on all credible leads, none of which implicated the Justices or their spouses. On this basis, I did not believe that it was necessary to ask the Justices to sign sworn affidavits.”

    Curley said her team conducted 126 formal interviews of 97 Supreme Court employees. The employees were asked to sign affidavits, under penalty of perjury, to affirm that they did not disclose the draft opinion and had provided all “pertinent information” related to the disclosure of the draft.

    The court announced Thursday that it has yet to determine who leaked the draft opinion to the media last year, but at least 90 people had access to the document at one point.

    According to the investigative report, a few employees admitted to telling their spouses about the draft opinion or the vote count of the justices. While the report notes that such actions violated the court’s confidentiality rules, it does not say whether that led to further investigation or disciplinary action.

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  • GOP Rep. George Santos denies claims he performed as a drag queen | CNN Politics

    GOP Rep. George Santos denies claims he performed as a drag queen | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    Embattled Republican Rep. George Santos is strongly denying claims that he once performed as a drag queen.

    “The most recent obsession from the media claiming that I am a drag Queen or ‘performed’ as a drag Queen is categorically false,” the New York congressman tweeted Thursday after a Brazilian drag performer posted a photo of herself with another individual dressed in drag that she claims is Santos.

    “The media continues to make outrageous claims about my life while I am working to deliver results. I will not be distracted nor fazed by this,” the tweet continued.

    Santos, who represents New York’s 3rd District, has been under immense scrutiny over the past month for lying and misrepresenting his educational, work and family history, including falsely claiming he was Jewish and the descendant of Holocaust survivors. He also faces federal and local investigations into his campaign finances. Santos has admitted to “embellishing” his resume but has maintained he is “not a criminal.”

    The congressman – an out gay man – was identified by a longtime local performer who says Santos went by the name Kitara Ravache. On January 12, performer Eula Rochards posted a picture of herself with another person in drag who she alleged was Santos at a Rio de Janeiro-area parade.

    The photo is from a newspaper clipping from 2008 and identifies the person Rochards says is Santos as Kitara Revache.

    Rochards also provided to CNN another, clearer image of the person she claims is Santos, in addition to the clipping.

    CNN has not independently verified the images.

    In an interview with CNN, Rochards said that it’s Santos in the pictures, adding that she knew him from LGBTQ events he attended in the town of Niterói, near Rio de Janeiro, where she said he was well known in the gay community.

    Rochards said she recognized Santos from a recent news report and dug up the old pictures but was surprised to learn that Santos was a Republican.

    “I don’t know him now, I only knew him then,” she said.

    “But if [Jair] Bolsonaro can win here, why wouldn’t Santos win there?” she added, referring to the former Brazilian president.

    Rochards said she wishes Santos would own up to this part of his past.

    “It’s marvelous work [to be a drag queen]. He can’t discriminate against what he himself did, and if he does he is discriminating against me,” she said.

    Santos has not replied to CNN’s request for comment. He told NBC News in a previous interview that he has “never experienced discrimination in the Republican Party.”

    Santos has voiced support in the past for policies seen as discriminatory against LGBTQ individuals. In April 2022, he posted a video on Facebook vocalizing his support for Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis’ legislation in Florida banning certain teaching about sexual orientation and gender identity in classrooms. In the video, he accused Democrats of “wanting to groom our kids” – a homophobic term that invokes an idea that LGBTQ people corrupt children.

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  • Supreme Court embarrassed by the opinion leak is embarrassed again | CNN Politics

    Supreme Court embarrassed by the opinion leak is embarrassed again | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    The Supreme Court’s stunning report Thursday on its failure to discover who leaked a draft decision reversing abortion rights last year laid bare shortfalls at the nation’s highest court, in its technology, protocols for confidentiality and overall institutional safeguards.

    Further, the lack of success in discovering who was responsible raises the possibility of a security breach in the future. It already appears likely to add to the public’s distrust of the justices and accelerate the partisan rancor surrounding the court.

    The justices’ two-page statement and 20-page report from Supreme Court Marshal Gail Curley appear intended to demonstrate the thoroughness of the investigation, with numbers of people interviewed (126 formal interviews of 97 employees) and various forensic measures taken.

    Yet each page rings with limitations and dead ends. It also suggests certain boundaries on who was investigated, referring only to employee scrutiny. There was no mention of possible interviews with the nine individual justices or their spouses.

    On Friday, Curley put out a statement saying she had spoken to the justices but suggesting that it was in a less formal process than her interviews with employees. She said she did not ask the justices to sign sworn affidavits, as she had asked their law clerks, and that none of the leads she pursued implicated the justices or their spouses.

    Overall, it is paradoxical that an institution that cloaks itself in secrecy and casts itself above other Washington institutions would be exposed as such a sieve.

    The report expresses outright how easily confidential information could have slipped out, whether deliberately or accidentally. About 100 people had access to the draft at the outset, according to the details of the report. Many employees, the report said, “printed out more than one copy.”

    In a momentous case involving a half century of precedent protecting women’s privacy rights, routine office precautions were absent. And when the breach was discovered – a breach that the court itself deemed “a grave assault” – it was all but impossible to re-trace internal operations.

    Although the report effectively clears the law clerks who serve the justices for one-year terms, it noted that some of them admitted to telling their spouses about the opinion and vote count, in violation of the clerks’ code of conduct.

    In the days immediately after Politico published the draft, some conservative activists had accused liberal clerks of the disclosure. Liberal advocates, meanwhile, targeted the court’s conservatives who might have been trying cement the 5-4 split to overturn Roe v. Wade. The partisan acrimony only increased once the decision upending reproductive rights nationwide was issued.

    Thursday’s inconclusive report did little to ease such tensions and instead spurred questions about how seriously the court sought out those responsible for the leak.

    Outside critics had predicted that it would be difficult to determine who leaked the draft to Politico, which published the document on May 2, believing that whoever was responsible would not have left a trail.

    But now that the court has laid out its operations, it appears it might have been quite simple to avoid detection.

    Computer and printing technology was not secure. Officials could not determine conclusively whether copies of the draft decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization had been surreptitiously copied or emailed to unauthorized devices.

    “(F)or some networked printers there was very little logging capability at the time, so it is likely that many print jobs were simply not captured,” the report stated. Investigators also found that printers used by the justices’ staff were only locally connected, rather than connected to a larger network that could track printing activity.

    The report acknowledged that no written policy existed on how to safeguard or dispose of draft opinions and other sensitive documents.

    “The pandemic and resulting expansion of the ability to work from home, as well as gaps in the Court’s security policies,” Curley wrote, “created an environment where it was too easy to remove sensitive information from the building and the Court’s IT networks, increasing the risk of both deliberate and accidental disclosures of Court-sensitive information.”

    The report, nearly nine months in the making, belied the suspense generated by Chief Justice John Roberts’ launch of the investigation. In his May 3 statement, he referred to a “betrayal of the confidences of the Court … intended to undermine the integrity of our operations.”

    The report came with a seal of approval from an outside firm, the Chertoff Group, hired to review Curley’s investigation. Michael Chertoff, a former judge and secretary of Homeland Security who now runs a private firm, wrote that Curley and her investigators had undertaken a “thorough investigation within their legal authorities.”

    In his one-page statement attached to the justices’ materials for public distribution, Chertoff made specific recommendations, all of which appeared fairly basic for any operation handling legal documents, if not the country’s top judicial officers: restrict the distribution of paper copies of sensitive documents; restrict the email distribution of such documents; adopt tools to better control how such documents are edited and shared; and limit the access of sensitive information on outside mobile devices.

    Curley had noted that no evidence emerged showing that anyone emailed the draft opinion outside, “although technical limitations in the Court’s computer recordkeeping at the time made it impossible to rule out this possibility entirely.” She said she also could not eliminate the possibility that someone had downloaded the opinion to a removable device.

    CNN had reported last summer that Curley was collecting cell phones and other devices from clerks and permanent employees. “To date,” she wrote in the report, “the investigators have found no relevant information from these devices.” Interviews and signed affidavits also yielded no answers.

    Curley, who said that new security measures were being implemented, was candid about how few conclusions her team could reach, adding that the draft opinion could have been inadvertently left in a public place. Yet, she added, regarding any employee who acted intentionally, “that person was able to act with impunity because of inadequate security with respect to the movement of hard copy documents from the Court to home, the absence of mechanisms to track print jobs on Court printers and copiers, and other gaps in securities or policies.”

    That reality puts a bureaucratic stamp on what has been regarded as the court’s most serious breach ever.

    Roberts had vowed back in May that the disclosure would not affect the justices’ work. He declared then that the draft “does not represent a decision by the Court or the final position of any member on the issues in the case.”

    But it did – despite Roberts’ own efforts to try to change the outcome.

    The final opinion, issued on June 24, differed little from the draft opinion reversing Roe v. Wade, a 1973 decision that first gave woman a constitutional right to end a pregnancy. Justice Samuel Alito, who wrote the new opinion, was joined by four fellow conservatives.

    Even after the leak, CNN had learned, Roberts tried to persuade one of the five justices in the majority to break away and prevent the reversal of nearly a half century of abortion rights. The chief justice voted to uphold a disputed Mississippi law that banned abortion at 15 weeks of pregnancy, but he did not want to use the case to obliterate abortion rights at earlier stages of pregnancy.

    None of the five on the right might ever have wavered in their votes, but CNN learned through sources at the time that the leaked decision made Roberts’ negotiating efforts all the more difficult.

    Determining how the leak changed the course of history may be impossible. But Thursday’s report, revealing the loose handling of confidential documents, suggests the leak itself need not have been inevitable.

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  • Opinion: Horrific acts of London police officer are a flashing warning light | CNN

    Opinion: Horrific acts of London police officer are a flashing warning light | CNN

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    Editor’s Note: Holly Thomas is a writer and editor based in London. She is morning editor at Katie Couric Media. She tweets @HolstaT. The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of the author. View more opinion on CNN.



    CNN
     — 

    This week, an officer in London’s Metropolitan Police appeared in court and pleaded guilty to 49 offenses, including 24 counts of rape over an 18-year period. David Carrick’s crimes were as audacious as they were grotesque. Detectives say that he lured victims to his home before imprisoning them, depriving them of food and subjecting them to the most depraved acts of violence and cruelty.

    After the news of Carrick’s guilty plea broke on Monday, Detective Chief Inspector Iain Moore, who led the investigation by the Bedfordshire, Cambridgeshire and Hertfordshire Major Crime Unit, said: “It is unbelievable to think these offenses could have been committed by a serving police officer.”

    Moore’s statement struck a chord, not because it rang true, but because it stood so sharply at odds with recent history. It has been less than a year since Wayne Couzens, the former Metropolitan Police officer who used his position to kidnap, rape and murder Sarah Everard, lost his appeal to overturn his life sentence because of the exceptionally sadistic nature of his crimes.

    Like Carrick, who was sacked on Tuesday, Couzens had previously held an elite, coveted role as an officer with the Parliamentary and Diplomatic Protection Command, the unit that protects the Palace of Westminster and protects government ministers.

    Carrick and Couzens gained access to one of the most trusted positions in public service thanks to repeated, egregious failures in vetting. The same month that Couzens pleaded guilty to Everard’s murder, an allegation of rape was made against David Carrick that led to his arrest. He was placed on restricted duties. He was not even suspended from the force.

    “We should have spotted his pattern of abusive behavior and because we didn’t, we missed opportunities to remove him from the organization,” Assistant Commissioner Barbara Gray, the Met’s lead for Professionalism, said. “We are truly sorry that Carrick was able to continue to use his role as a police officer to prolong the suffering of his victims.”

    To say that it is “unbelievable” that an officer could be capable of the most heinous crimes is not just naive: it is willful blindness. That blindness is endemic, in the Met and everywhere else. It is the fog that allows sinister behavior to escalate unchecked. It is the bridge that allows predators to reach their victims.

    Again and again, law enforcement overlooked major transgressions that ought to have stopped Couzens and Carrick in their tracks. In the wake of these fiascos, around 1,000 current Metropolitan Police officers and staff who have been accused of sexual offenses or domestic abuse are now under review, and the National Police Chiefs’ Council is instructing all forces in England and Wales to check their officers and staff against national police databases.

    This isn’t enough. The responsibility for the evil that Couzens, Carrick and who knows how many others have done doesn’t just fall on them. It falls on everyone who failed to heed warning sign after warning sign that they were bad people who might be capable of doing bad things and cultivated an environment where those failures were normalized. Thanks to them, what ought to have been glaring red flags blended into the background.

    Both Carrick and Couzens had nicknames at work. David Carrick’s friends at the Met Police reportedly called him “Bastard Dave,” because he had a reputation for mean and cruel behavior. Couzens was reportedly called “The Rapist” by colleagues at the Civil Nuclear Constabulary where he worked before he joined the Metropolitan police — because he made women feel uncomfortable.

    Once he joined the Met, he and other officers infamously sent each other grossly misogynistic and racist messages in a WhatsApp group they shared, reportedly joking about rape and fantasizing about using Tasers on children and people with disabilities.

    The judge who eventually sentenced two of the officers involved to three months in jail said during her judgment that it was clear the defendants viewed the group as a “safe space.” There, she said, they “had free rein to share controversial and deeply offensive messages without fear of retribution.”

    As any parent or teacher can testify, when naughty kids sit together, they egg each other on. An adult who’s paying attention can spot a deteriorating situation and mete out discipline or split up the potential miscreants before real harm is done, but the more that kids are allowed to get away with misbehavior, the further they’re likely to push their luck. The same is true, and far more dangerous, in adulthood.

    The rot at the core of the Metropolitan police is shocking because it is the literal job of the police to prevent harm, but it mirrors a problem we see everywhere else. Bystanders vastly outnumber predators, but if they’re passive, they offer as much protection as air.

    WhatsApp groups are overrun with toxic men (and other people) who routinely talk over each other, but fall silent when someone goes too far. Friends of friends who are known to be “creepy” are still invited to the pub on occasion or aren’t turned away if they show up regardless.

    Men (and other people) are quick to declare their horror at Couzens and Carrick and cry #NotAllMen whenever the latest ghoul is unmasked, but they’re so often hesitant to act when they hear a second-hand story about someone they know personally. Most people will almost always choose a quiet life over an uncomfortable confrontation, and over time, that is how institutions are poisoned.

    Earlier this week, Sir Mark Rowley, the Met commissioner, apologized for the force’s failure in missing nine opportunities to arrest David Carrick over the 17 years during which he served as an officer.

    “We have failed. And I’m sorry,” Rowley said. “He should not have been a police officer. We haven’t applied the same sense of ruthlessness to guarding our own integrity that we routinely apply to confronting criminals.”

    That’s the problem, again and again, everywhere. We focus intensely on the perpetrators and their crimes after the fact, but not nearly enough on the people who might have stopped them but for their own laziness, thoughtlessness or cowardice. It’s so much easier to denounce a villain after it’s too late than to step in first. But if more people did, it would be so much harder for the Carricks and Couzens of the world to slip under the radar.

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  • Trump struggles with the new politics of abortion as a triumphant March for Life arrives in Washington | CNN Politics

    Trump struggles with the new politics of abortion as a triumphant March for Life arrives in Washington | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    The anti-abortion “March for Life” for decades demonstrated to Republicans that they could not reach the Oval Office without the support of the anti-abortion movement.

    On Friday, marchers will gather in Washington with a decades-long mission accomplished, after the Supreme Court’s removal of a constitutional right to an abortion by overturning the Roe v. Wade decision last year.

    That means this year’s march will be a time for celebration but also of debate about where the movement goes next with some campaigners seeking to restrict the procedure everywhere. But such a refocused goal carries big risks. Democrats after all belatedly leveraged their own energy over abortion in the midterm elections in a backlash against the right-wing Supreme Court majority that helped stave off a big Republican midterm election wave.

    The March for Life also comes at an extraordinary moment when Donald Trump, the president who did more than any other to end Roe after a pact with social conservative voters that helped win him the 2016 GOP nomination, has launched an extraordinary attack on evangelical leaders he sees as insufficiently loyal, as CNN’s Gabby Orr, Kristen Holmes and Kaitlan Collins reported this week.

    “Nobody has ever done more for Right to Life than Donald Trump. I put three Supreme Court justices, who all voted, and they got something that they’ve been fighting for 64 years, for many, many years,” Trump said in an interview on Real America’s Voice Monday, referring to the overturning of federal abortion rights.

    “There’s great disloyalty in the world of politics and that’s a sign of disloyalty,” Trump told conservative journalist David Brody.

    The comment was a window into Trump’s psychology, revealing his transactional understanding of politics and his highly developed sense of fealty he sees owed to him.

    The former president is specifically angry over the failure to immediately endorse his 2024 White House bid by some evangelical leaders who remain influential figures in the conservative movement. Trump’s third White House run has so far failed to pick up significant energy.

    But Trump has also shown signs recently of questioning whether his purported greatest domestic achievement – the building of a generational conservative Supreme Court majority and its subsequent overturning of Roe – may end up hindering his hopes of a return to the White House in 2025. He wrote on his Truth Social platform earlier this month that the “abortion issue” had been poorly handled by many Republicans, especially those who insisted on no exceptions in the case or rape, incest or life of the mother, which he said “lost large numbers of voters.”

    The former president’s comments are backed by exit polls from November’s midterms that showed more than a quarter of voters listing abortion as a top issue. About 61% said they were unhappy with the Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade, and about 7 in 10 of those voters backed a Democratic House candidate.

    In his Truth Social comments, Trump appeared to be seeking to offload blame for the Republicans’ failure to win back the Senate and the party’s smaller-than-expected House majority. Trump took on waves of criticism after the election for promoting extreme, election denying candidates who often lost in swing states in the midterm elections.

    But it is notable seeing Trump navigate the shifting politics of abortion and apparently sizing up how it could affect his political prospects in future. After all, he was once unapologetically pro-choice before his foray into Republican politics dictated a shift in position and led to the bargain with evangelicals, which included an effective commitment to appoint anti-abortion justices to the Supreme Court in return for the crucial votes of social conservatives.

    In the past, Trump has been a fixture of the March for Life rally, and in 2020, he became the first sitting president to attend in person as he geared up for his reelection race. He told marchers that “unborn children have never had a stronger defender in the White House.”

    There is no sign yet that he will call into Friday’s event, which will include a detour to the US Capitol on its usual route to the Supreme Court to underline how Congress is now a focus of the movement, as Democrats seek to codify Roe v. Wade protections into law.

    Trump’s comments on abortion and his feuding with evangelical leaders raise the question of whether the former president has made a tactical error and is harming his 2024 candidacy by targeting a critical GOP primary voting bloc at a time when there are growing questions over whether he is still the dominant force in Republican politics.

    Ralph Reed, the executive director of the Faith and Freedom Coalition, told CNN that there is “no path to the nomination without winning the evangelical vote. Nobody knows that better than President Trump because, to the surprise of almost everyone, he won their support in 2016.”

    This question is especially acute in Iowa, the first-in-the-nation caucuses – for Republicans at least – in the 2024 primary season, which will be the first test of the ex-President’s hold over conservatives and evangelicals especially.

    Trump didn’t actually win in Iowa in 2016, coming second to Texas Sen. Ted Cruz and just beating out Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, and the state has often not been a true barometer of how the GOP nominating contest will go.

    However, it will take on extra significance in 2024 and is likely to be seen as a strong indicator of Trump’s appeal to the conservative base. A loss there would create a painful narrative as he headed into subsequent contests – especially since he strongly carried the state in the general elections in 2016 and 2020.

    And it’s easy to come up with a list of potential GOP candidates that might have appeal in the state if they challenge Trump, including Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem, former Vice President Mike Pence or Cruz once again. Only Trump so far is a declared 2024 Republican presidential candidate.

    Trump would be in an odd situation in 2024, in that he is in many ways effectively an incumbent given his strong support in the GOP and the fact that he didn’t go away after losing reelection. But at the same time, he’s not a sitting president and looks likely to face a contested primary and so may be more exposed in early contests.

    Still, while some conservative base voters might want to move on, there’s still strong goodwill among many toward Trump, gratitude for the change he brought during his term and admiration for his attitude.

    “Many people forgave him for his misstatements and his missteps because they generally liked his ability to fight, even if that became a cliché for some people, Trump’s detractors,” said Timothy Hagle, an associate professor of political science at the University of Iowa who is an expert on the state’s politics.

    This gets to point often missed about Trump. For many of his supporters, he offered an emotional as much as a political connection. His willingness to say what many grassroots conservatives thought and to assail institutions they despised, like the media or Washington experts and other elites, were as important as many of his often-ill-defined individual political positions.

    And it’s also often forgotten that evangelical voters in places like Iowa do not necessarily vote as a bloc, or according to what their leaders or pastors recommend and may prioritize issues such as taxes over social questions if a candidate is deemed to be generally acceptable. That may give Trump more leeway than more conventional candidates in departing from traditional conservative orthodoxy even over abortion.

    Still, Hagle said, even small numbers of disaffected Iowa voters could make a difference to Trump’s chances in the state if they don’t show up for him, as could more mainstream GOP caucus voters who may be taking a look at other aspects of his candidacy and those of potential rivals.

    “Are they going to support Trump because he fights, or because of his economic position or his position on the border?” Hagle said. “The abortion stuff may not be as important to them, or will they go a different direction at this point?”

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  • New 988 mental health crisis line sees ‘eye-opening’ rise in calls, texts, chats in first 6 months, data shows | CNN

    New 988 mental health crisis line sees ‘eye-opening’ rise in calls, texts, chats in first 6 months, data shows | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    Since the summer launch of the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline, the new three-digit number has seen a significant rise in call volume – routing more than 2 million calls, texts and chat messages to call centers, with the majority being answered in under a minute.

    “The average speed to answer year-over-year was about three minutes in 2021. It’s now 44 seconds in December of 2022,” said Dr. John Palmieri, a senior medical advisor at the US Department of Health and Human Services’ Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, who serves as 988’s deputy director.

    The 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline, formerly known as the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline, launched last July, transitioning the former 1-800-273-TALK phone number to the three digits of 988. The new number is intended to be easy to remember, similar to how people can dial 911 for medical emergencies.

    Since that transition, in the past six months, about 2.1 million calls, texts and chats to the new 988 number have been routed to a response center and, of those, around 89% were answered by a counselor, according to a CNN analysis of data from SAMHSA, which oversees 988. Many of the calls that went unanswered were due to callers hanging up before reaching a counselor.

    “We know that there are many individuals in this country who are struggling with suicidal concerns, with mental health or substance use concerns, who aren’t able to access the care that they need. And in many respects, historically, because of funding limitations or other limitations, the system has let them down,” Palmieri said. “So, this is truly an opportunity with 988 – as a catalytic moment – to be able to transform the crisis care system to better meet those needs in a less restrictive, more person-centered, more treatment- and recovery-oriented way.”

    Since the summer launch of 988, more than 300,000 calls, texts and chats have come in each month. SAMHSA data on the new lifeline show that in December 2022 versus December 2021, calls answered increased by 48%, chats answered increased by 263% and texts answered increased by 1,445%.

    “We see the uptick in volume as an indicator that more people are aware of the service and able to access it,” Kimberly Williams, CEO and president of Vibrant Emotional Health, the nonprofit administrator and operator of the 988 lifeline, said in an email Thursday.

    She added that Vibrant was “not surprised” by the increase in volume and has been “working strategically” with the more than 200 call centers in the 988 network to respond.

    “In December of 2022 compared to December of 2021, over 172,000 more contacts were answered as part of the lifeline system,” Palmieri said.

    The average amount of time counselors spent talking, chatting or texting with contacts was about 21 minutes and 55 seconds.

    “It’s really eye-opening to see the increase in the texts, chats and calls that are coming in. But to see that more states have a more than 90% answer rate for contacts coming from their state – and that average speed of answering is down, so people are getting help more quickly,” said Hannah Wesolowski, the chief advocacy officer for the National Alliance on Mental Illness.

    She added that before the launch of 988, there were likely many people seeking mental health support but didn’t feel like there was a call service available for them.

    “With the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline, even though they did answer a range of crises, it was billed as the ‘National Suicide Prevention Lifeline.’ So a lot of people who are not feeling suicidal but were in distress didn’t feel like that was a resource for them,” Wesolowski said.

    “I think awareness of 988 continues to grow each month,” she said. “This country is in a mental health crisis at large. I believe that many more people are feeling that they’re approaching a crisis situation or are in crisis.”

    The 988 lifeline also has been testing a pilot program specifically for the LGBTQ+ community, in partnership with the Trevor Project, in which calls, texts or chats from LGBTQ+ youth have the option of being connected with counselors specially trained in LGBTQ-inclusive crisis care services.

    The pilot program began around the end of September, and “there has been a lot of demand and a lot of utilization of that service,” Palmieri said. He added that LGBTQ+ youth are at a higher risk of suicide.

    “With that pilot program, it is so important that particularly a young person who’s feeling alone, who’s feeling isolated, is able to connect to somebody that they feel can share their experience and that comes from a similar place of understanding,” Wesolowski said. “I’m very anxious to see what the data shows when the pilot ends in March, but I feel very encouraged by my conversations with the Trevor Project and others involved in this.”

    Since its launch, the 988 lifeline also has increased the number of call centers taking Spanish calls from a total of three to seven. Spanish language options will increase for text and chat messaging as well, Palmieri said.

    “We are also implementing video phone capabilities for people who are deaf and hard of hearing,” he said.”In addition to that, in Washington state, there’s a pilot currently providing specialized care access for individuals who are American Indian/Alaskan Natives to be able to be connected to an organization that’s focused more specifically on their needs.”

    HHS announced in December that through SAMHSA, more than $130 million has been awarded in grants to support the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline. The funding comes from the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act. The federal spending omnibus bill includes about $500 million for the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline, according to SAMHSA.

    In total, the Biden administration has invested nearly $1 billion in the 988 lifeline.

    “Our country is facing unprecedented mental health and substance use crises among people of all ages and backgrounds,” HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra said in the announcement last month.

    “Although rates of depression and anxiety were rising before the pandemic, the grief, trauma, and physical and social isolation that many people experienced during the pandemic exacerbated these issues. Drug overdose deaths have also reached a historic high, devastating individuals, families, and communities,” he said. “The significant additional funding provided by the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act will have a direct positive impact on strengthening the behavioral health of individuals and communities across the country.”

    The 988 lifeline is just one tool in the ongoing effort to improve our nation’s mental health, which Lori Tremmel Freeman, chief executive officer of the National Association of County and City Health Officials, calls “a key concern of public health” right now.

    “It is also one of the root causes of substance abuse and misuse, which is fueling the national epidemic that we have. We’re also concerned about, of course, rates of suicide and what we can do to alleviate and lower those rates,” Freeman said.

    “This is very much also a primary public health crisis of concern and leads to many other public health issues that need to be addressed: homelessness, food insecurity, substance misuse, and poor health outcomes,” she said. “We need to get people healthy and well, and connected to the right resources and professionals that can help them overcome their mental health crises.”

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  • Backlash follows finding that soccer manager who used ‘offensive, racist and Islamophobic’ language is ‘not a conscious racist’ | CNN

    Backlash follows finding that soccer manager who used ‘offensive, racist and Islamophobic’ language is ‘not a conscious racist’ | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    Anti-racism groups and England’s Football Association (FA) are denouncing an independent panel’s finding that a British soccer manager who used “offensive, racist and Islamophobic” language is “not a conscious racist.”

    Former Crawley Town FC manager John Yems was accused of making at least 16 offensive comments between 2019 and 2022, with each comment including “a reference to ethnic origin and/or colour and/or race and/or nationality and/or religion or belief and/or gender,” said the FA, English soccer’s governing body.

    An independent Regulatory Commission appointed by the FA investigated and suspended Yems from all football and football-related activity for 18 months up to and including June 1, 2024, for 12 breaches of FA rules, the organization said in a statement on January 6. He had been suspended from coaching duties in April pending the regulatory commission investigation and was let go from the club in May.

    Reacting to the independent panel’s findings, the FA said in a statement Wednesday that it was “considering legal options” following the ruling, adding: “We fundamentally disagree with the independent panel’s finding that this was not a case of conscious racism.”

    Yems admitted to one comment and denied 15, the FA said. During a hearing, the independent Regulatory Commission found Yems to be guilty of 11 breaches and could not prove the other four, the FA added.

    Yems, 62, testified to the panel that he was not a racist. He said that he himself came from “traveling stock” and that his wife is from an immigrant family. He did acknowledge not being careful enough about speaking in a “politically correct manner.”

    In its findings, the independent panel said they found “11 of the 15 extant Charges to have been established on the balance of probabilities.”

    The report, reviewed by CNN, outlines a number of clearly racist statements by Yems, including slurs and crude stereotypes of Black people, Muslims and people of Caribbean and South Asian origin.

    But despite the “offensive, racist and Islamophobic” comments, the panel – led by Robert Englehart KC and including Wolverhampton Wanderers FC general manager of football operations Matt Wild and Tony Agana, a former football player and specialist arbitrator on the FA Claims Panel – found Yems was not a “conscious racist” and did not merit a stronger punishment, such as a permanent suspension.

    “We have accepted that Mr Yems is not a conscious racist,” the panel wrote, detailing that they reached this conclusion after reviewing written submissions from both parties. “If he were, an extremely lengthy, even permanent, suspension would be appropriate.

    “Nevertheless, Mr Yems’s ‘banter’ undoubtedly came across to the victims and others as offensive, racist and Islamophobic. Mr Yems simply paid no regard to the distress which his misplaced jocularity was causing,” the panel added.

    Crawley Town FC and the English Football League declined to comment when contacted by CNN.

    CNN has also offered Yems a right of reply via the League Managers Association, the organization which represents English soccer coaches.

    Anti-discrimination group Kick It Out also criticized the panel’s findings, saying in a statement: “The discriminatory language outlined in The FA independent panel report is simply shocking.

    “Given the seriousness of the incidents detailed, it is very hard to understand how The FA independent panel have concluded that ‘Mr Yems is not a conscious racist.’ We do not share that viewpoint. The behaviour outlined in the report must be called out for exactly what it is, racism and Islamophobia.

    “To speak plainly, a fifteen month ban given the severity of the 11 proven charges is a slap in the face to the victims of the discriminatory abuse detailed in this report and anyone who has been subject to racism or Islamophobia,” they added.

    Meanwhile, anti-racism educational group Show Racism the Red Card (SRtRC) said it was “incredibly disappointed” by the comments highlighted by the report.

    “Racism, ‘conscious’ or not, has a deeply damaging impact on the individual,” added the group.

    “In addition to the sanctions from the FA, there needs to be robust and extensive anti-racism education training, otherwise the perpetrator will never understand the impact and trauma that the individuals have experienced as a result of their ‘unconscious’ actions,” said SRtRC.

    “It is important that at all levels of the game people see that the football family stands united to eradicate racism from the game and wider society.”

    The panel noted that Yems reported having participated in two online courses, but said he should still undergo an education program, which it did not detail.

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