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  • Biden and his team feeling vindicated by a 2022 turnaround built on the same decades-old principles | CNN Politics

    Biden and his team feeling vindicated by a 2022 turnaround built on the same decades-old principles | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    President Joe Biden spent hours during his first foreign trip behind closed doors, attempting to reassure a shaken group of US allies that America was back. It was clear, he later told advisers, just how much work remained to convince them of the durability of that commitment.

    Eighteen months after those meetings in Europe, Biden departed Washington on Tuesday for his year-end vacation, riding the momentum of historic legislative success and the defiance of political gravity that has reshaped the expectations for the critical months – and decisions – ahead. It’s a moment that Biden never seemed to doubt would come, even as his party – and some inside the White House – questioned or outright urged a change in approach to address political and economic headwinds driven primarily by soaring inflation that threatened to drag down his presidency.

    During those 2021 meetings in England and Belgium, Biden found a group of allies genuinely shaken by the January 6 insurrection and the events that led to it. But the president tried to reassure them that the visceral divides that culminated in the violence that day would heal and the bleak moment in US politics would pass.

    He was met with polite appreciation from his foreign counterparts. But the deep skepticism served only to underscore his commitment to a belief that sat at the heart of a pledge that was often pilloried during the campaign as naïve. The only real reassurance, Biden would note, was delivering on what he’d promised.

    “That’s why it’s so important that I succeed in my agenda, whether it’s dealing with the vaccine, the economy, infrastructure,” Biden told reporters in Brussels shortly before he boarded Air Force One for a flight to Switzerland and a sit down with Russian President Vladimir Putin. “It’s important that we demonstrate we can make progress and continue to make progress. And I think we’re going to be able to do that.”

    The moment provided a brief window into the president’s high-stakes theory of the case – one that appeared exceedingly aspirational given his party’s narrow congressional majorities and staunch GOP opposition. But even as this year began, Biden and his team were grasping to break free of a series of crises and the cornerstone of his agenda – a sweeping bill that included numerous administration priorities – appeared in shambles.

    Biden’s anticipated final major action before the end of 2022 serves as an almost poetic coda for his first two years. The $1.7 trillion bipartisan spending package he will sign will lock in key funding priorities and include an overhaul of the law his predecessor cited in the lead up to the January 6 riot.

    The turn from aspirational goals to palpable accomplishments – highlighted over the last several months by Biden’s travel to major corporate groundbreakings in states like Ohio, Arizona and Michigan – underpins the sharp reversal for the White House. That turnaround serves as evidence of Biden’s steely belief in his strategies and policy proposals –an approach deeply rooted over his decades in public service.

    “One thing that is foundational with him is if he says he’s going to do something, he does it,” Steve Ricchetti, one of Biden’s closest and longest-serving advisers, told CNN in an interview, underscoring an approach that has been defined by steady, and at times stubborn, persistence.

    Simple as it may seem, a campaign promise or commitment has tipped internal debates on policy decisions more than once, one White House official noted.

    Biden’s closest confidants also stress that it’s a perspective that is instructive as the White House prepares for the dramatically reshaped Washington that will confront him upon his return from his family vacation to the US Virgin Islands.

    “The whole idea of showing people government can work – we were mocked for that in some corners,” a Biden adviser said. “That’s literally what’s happening now.”

    There are still clear challenges ahead. Inflation remains high even if its grip appears to be easing. Biden’s advisers expect economic growth to slow in the quarters ahead, though they remain cautiously optimistic a recession can be avoided.

    Biden’s approval ratings, while ticking up, remain low and his age remains a real, if less publicly addressed, concern held by Democrats as they wait for an official decision about whether he will seek reelection.

    But Biden’s overarching approach has guided the early-stage planning for the legislative and political implications of a new House Republican majority and served as the basis for aides already working through the outlines of the State of the Union address that will come early next year.

    It’s also a defining element of the structure and message planning of a nascent campaign that has taken shape over the last several months and accelerated. Biden’s senior team has become increasingly confident that a reelection campaign will be green lit in the weeks ahead.

    White House officials view the political salience of his agenda as both an underappreciated element of their ability to defy the expectations of sweeping GOP gains in the midterms and as a critical piece of what comes next. The prospect of divided government – and the exceedingly narrow legislative pathway it brings – has limited effect on an agenda that is now in the implementation phase.

    “It forms the foundation for even stronger achievements as the nation heads into the New Year,” Mike Donilon, the White House senior adviser and long-standing member of Biden’s inner circle, wrote in a political memo circulated to allies this month.

    Biden, advisers said, has laid down strict directives to senior aides and Cabinet officials about the necessity of efficient implementation in the months ahead.

    “It’s not subtle,” a senior administration official said of the message from the top. “We have to get it right and in the moments we don’t, we damn well be ready to explain it – and fix it.”

    For Biden’s tight-knit and long-serving advisers, this is a moment that both vindicates and validates core elements of a campaign and presidency that at various points were dismissed, underestimated or at some points even mocked.

    “A lot of people told him that this wouldn’t resonate, or that it wasn’t the message, or that it’s outdated,” Stef Feldman, the longtime Biden aide who served as the 2020 campaign policy director before following him to the White House, told CNN.

    Biden viewed his infrastructure proposal, in particular, as a central policy plank of his campaign as Democratic primary opponents raced to outdo one another with transformational progressive proposals – none of which included a viable way to pass a bitterly divided Congress.

    Biden and his economic advisers zeroed in on an intensive manufacturing and supply chain agenda that grew more aggressive and transformational as a once-in-a-century pandemic gripped the country. They saw it as the key to reverse the accelerants at the heart of the atmosphere that created the opening for Donald Trump to reach the Oval Office.

    “This was the right moment for his theory of the case,” Feldman said. “He could apply the principles that have really guided him throughout his whole career.”

    Those principles have largely stayed with Biden through his time as a senator and vice president and were refined during the critical two years spent out of office as he weighed yet another run for the presidency.

    “Ever since I’ve talked to the president about the economy, he’s distinguished between the short-term and the long-term, between consumption and investment,” said Jared Bernstein, Biden’s chief economist as vice president who now sits on the Council of Economic Advisers. “These have always been foundational to his economic thinking.”

    The animating principles of Biden’s 2020 campaign hardly diverged from the key themes outlined by Donilon, Biden’s in-house mind-meld, in the 22-page memo he drafted in early 2015 as the then-vice president weighed jumping into the 2016 race.

    From think tanks to business schools to Davos, Biden took the role of a kind of middle class evangelist, pressing for the pursuit of policies that addressed short-term incentives that had driven jobs away and wages down. Those speeches and discussions served as a roadmap of sorts for an agenda that is now largely law. They detailed major infrastructure investments and a incentivizing research and development that had atrophied. There were broad outlines of nascent ideas to connect hollowed out manufacturing centers and communities to new opportunities. Biden proposed changes to the tax code that tracked near where his administration would eventually land as it sought to finance spending plans.

    Even the anecdotes from the period – whether the one about Chinese leader Xi Jinping and American “possibilities” or his father’s sayings about the dignity of work, or the importance of “breathing room” – are the same that populate his speeches as president.

    Ricchetti, who as counselor to the president helped lead the White House legislative effort, pointed to a clear “through-line” from Biden’s days as a senator, through his time as vice president and during the first two years of Trump’s presidency.

    Biden wrote a book detailing his decision not to run for president as he dealt with the pain of his son Beau’s fight with, and eventual death from, brain cancer. That process and the book tour that followed are viewed by Biden’s inner circle as an essential experience in the eventual decision to run in 2020.

    “Much of what we prioritized at that time we took with us and used as the foundation,” Ricchetti said of the years leading up to the campaign.

    If the effort to turn that foundation into a coherent policy agenda was accelerated and expanded in the final months of the campaign, it was turbocharged during a transition that saw Democrats take control of the Senate majority.

    Officials structured the infrastructure, manufacturing, research and development, climate and equity proposals into interlocking pieces, designed to work in tandem even if they were eventually scaled back during the legislative process.

    “At the core of this strategy was that the power of it is that these things work together,” National Economic Council Chairman Brian Deese, one of the architects of the package, said in an interview.

    What the proposals – particularly across industries and policy priorities tied to climate and manufacturing – also represented was a dramatic shift in what had become an entrenched, if not monolithic, economic orthodoxy. Biden would oversee the most consequential pursuit of an industrial policy strategy in decades. He’d do so in many cases with Republican support.

    To be clear, subscribing to the term “industrial policy” still isn’t universally embraced. Even Deese, who has driven and defined its core elements, prefers “Modern American Industrial Strategy.” In its simplest form, it’s the idea that “if you do public investment in a thoughtful way, what you’ll actually do is crowd in private investment,” Deese said.

    Deese likes to point out its roots in the American economy can be traced to Alexander Hamilton.

    But the convergence of factors that led it to once again gain broader, and bipartisan, traction was in many ways tailor-made for Biden.

    A resurgence in research and development funding. Significant public investments designed for critical areas of national and economic security. The elevation of labor unions and a focus on creating the conditions to bring manufacturing jobs back to the US.

    On their face, these issues are politically popular and hardly exclusive to Biden. They’re also exceedingly difficult to turn into policy. At least until the pandemic.

    “There’s a cost associated with industrial weakness,” Deese said. “The pandemic laid bare something that had been the case for years.”

    That was true for semiconductors – the tiny chips essential for everything from cars and washing machines to advanced weapons systems – that drove the bipartisan urgency behind the $280 billion CHIPS and Science law. Sen. Todd Young, an Indiana Republican up for reelection in 2022, drove the effort on Capitol Hill – something that underscored the salience of an issue that scrambled traditional political dynamics.

    For Young, who had pressed for legislation tied to the issue in the year before Biden entered the White House, it was less about embracing a broader shift in economic policy and more about addressing the fact China had pursued exactly that for a decade or longer. Young was one of 17 Senate Republicans who voted to advance the eventual law that has driven new private sector investment or commitments in the last several months.

    The pandemic. The rise of China as key feature of policy making in both parties. A president animated by the idea of long-term economic incentives crafted to connect workers and communities left behind for decades.

    “These policy insights might not have come to fruition were it not for a confluence of events,” Bernstein acknowledged.

    Ted Kaufman has a simple explanation for Biden’s approach and the places where it paid off after two years.

    “There’s a confidence that comes from knowing what you’re doing,” said Kaufman, the former Delaware senator, longtime Biden Senate chief of staff and one of the president’s closest friends. “This is a guy who is so incredibly well qualified to be president because of experience.”

    As to why that experience has rarely been rewarded by voters, Kaufman had another simple explanation.

    “It’s hard because you have a record,” he said.

    In a way it’s both an implicit acknowledgment of the unprecedented factors – most notably Trump, but in some ways the pandemic as well – that created an opening to the presidency for Biden. Another incumbent, or another moment, and advisers note that it wouldn’t be a question of if Biden would win. He wouldn’t have even run.

    Instead, as he weighs running for reelection at age 80, he enters the final two years of this term with much of his agenda now law. Core elements of that agenda were driven by bipartisan consensus. Even Biden’s final bipartisan achievement of the year – the $1.7 trillion spending package – includes an initial $500 million to seed the technology and innovation hubs created by the CHIPS and Science Act in parts of the country outside of traditional tech sectors.

    While Democrats narrowly lost their House majority in the midterm elections, the party expanded its Senate majority by a seat.

    Perhaps most critically for Biden, the voters sharply reject some of the most extreme voices parroting 2020 election lies in critical races for governor and secretary of state.

    In the months leading up to the midterm elections, Biden had started regularly recounting the experience with his foreign counterparts on that first foreign trip in an effort to underscore the stakes.

    In the weeks that followed, after his travel to Indonesia for the G-20 Summit, he was ready to provide an updated version as he stood against the backdrop of a new factory in Arizona to celebrate the announcement by a Taiwanese chip maker of what would mark one of the largest foreign investments in US history.

    “What was clear in those meetings is the United States is better positioned than any other nation to lead the world economy in the years ahead if we keep our focus,” Biden said.

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  • Hackers stole data from multiple electric utilities in recent ransomware attack | CNN Politics

    Hackers stole data from multiple electric utilities in recent ransomware attack | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    Hackers stole data belonging to multiple electric utilities in an October ransomware attack on a US government contractor that handles critical infrastructure projects across the country, according to a memo describing the hack obtained by CNN.

    Federal officials have closely monitored the incident for any potential broader impact on the US power sector while private investigators have combed the dark web for the stolen data, according to the memo sent this month to power company executives by the North American grid regulator’s cyberthreat sharing center.

    The previously unreported incident is a window into how ransomware attacks on critical US companies are handled behind the scenes as lawyers and federal investigators quietly spring into action to determine the extent of the damage.

    The ransomware attack hit Chicago-based Sargent & Lundy, an engineering firm that has designed more than 900 power stations and thousands of miles of power systems and that holds sensitive data on those projects.

    The firm also handles nuclear security issues, working with the departments of Defense, Energy and other agencies “to strengthen nuclear deterrence” and keep weapons of mass destruction out of terrorists’ hands, according to its website.

    Two people familiar with the investigation of the Sargent & Lundy hack told CNN that the incident was contained and remediated, and didn’t appear to have a broader impact on other power-sector firms.

    There is no sign that data stolen from Sargent & Lundy, which includes “model files” and “transmission data” the firm uses for utility projects, is on the dark web, according to the memo from the Electricity Information Sharing and Analysis Center.

    But security experts have long been concerned that schematics held by electric and nuclear power contractors could be dumped online and used for follow-on physical or cyberattacks on those facilities.

    “These are literally the configurations for your programmable logic controllers, your relays,” said longtime security consultant Patrick Miller, referring to critical electric equipment that keeps the lights on. “We’re really concerned about the data that’s in those organizations.”

    Those concerns are particularly acute following a spate of physical attacks and vandalism at electric utilities in multiple states. Tens of thousands of people lost power in Moore County, North Carolina, this month after Duke Energy substations were damaged by gunfire. On Christmas, thousands of people lost power in a Washington county after someone vandalized multiple substations there.

    “We’re fully recovered from the incident, which had minimal impact on our normal business operations,” Brenda Romero, a spokesperson for Sargent & Lundy, said in a statement to CNN. Romero said the firm “notified law enforcement” of the hack.

    Romero declined to answer further questions on the ransomware attack, including whether the hackers had tried to extort Sargent & Lundy, citing an ongoing investigation.

    The Biden administration has urged companies to share data on such hacks as US officials have tried to get a grip on the epidemic of ransomware, which has cost critical infrastructure firms many millions of dollars.

    The hackers that hit Sargent & Lundy used a strain of ransomware known as Black Basta that first surfaced early this year, according to two people familiar with the investigation. Scores of Black Basta attacks have been reported since April, according to cybersecurity firm Palo Alto Networks. The hackers steal data from their victims to give them added leverage in ransom negotiations.

    Sargent & Lundy is one of several engineering firms whose work on critical infrastructure projects cuts across different sectors of the economy. For US cybersecurity officials, this engineering work can be harder to evaluate in terms of its risk to supply chain security than a firm that only makes software.

    Federal regulations require electric utilities to maintain certain cybersecurity standards for protecting their systems from hacks. Companies that contract with those utilities, such as Sargent & Lundy, aren’t necessarily held to the same standard and are instead bound by the security requirements in the contract, experts told CNN.

    “Utilities are effectively allowed to accept as much risk as they want,” said Miller, who is CEO of Oregon-based Ampere Industrial Security, a consulting firm. “Is it perfect? No, but [the contractors] are being assessed [for their security] in some ways through the utilities.”

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  • 5 things to know for Dec. 27: Snowstorm, Ukraine, China, Extreme weather, Immigration | CNN

    5 things to know for Dec. 27: Snowstorm, Ukraine, China, Extreme weather, Immigration | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    After taking a few days off to celebrate the holidays, 5 Things is back! And speaking of the holidays, inflation forced Americans to shell out more money for retail goods and dining experiences this season.

    Here’s what else you need to know to Get Up to Speed and On with Your Day.

    (You can get “5 Things You Need to Know Today” delivered to your inbox daily. Sign up here.)

    Days into a deadly winter storm that disrupted travel nationwide, officials in Buffalo, New York, are plowing roads to get to stranded drivers and make way for emergency services. At least 27 people have died as a result of the storm in New York’s Erie County, many of them in Buffalo, which was buried under 43 inches of snow and slammed with severe blizzard conditions. Last week’s winter weather travel mess continues to linger into this week, with more than 3,900 flights within, into or out of the US canceled as of Monday night – a majority of them operated by Southwest Airlines, according to flight tracking website FlightAware. Frustrated travelers complained about long wait times to speak with representatives and problems with lost bags. One passenger told CNN her family was on the phone for 10 hours with Southwest. 

    Repeated attacks by Russia on Ukraine’s power grid have left the capital of Kyiv in the dark, a potentially deadly risk to people who use lifesaving medical devices. Russia’s persistent assault on Ukraine’s energy infrastructure has, at least temporarily, left millions of civilians without electricity, heat, water and other critical services in the freezing winter months. Russian President Vladimir Putin is now calling for negotiations in his war – even as his own foreign minister gave Ukraine an ultimatum over four occupied regions, according to Russian state media. A Ukrainian presidential adviser fired back in a tweet, saying, “Putin needs to come back to reality.” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has said Russia will try to make the last few days of the year “dark and difficult.”

    12-year-old boy needs breathing treatments to survive. Blackouts make them nearly impossible

    China will drop Covid-19 quarantine requirements for international arrivals beginning on January 8 – a major step toward reopening its borders that have shut off the country from the rest of the world for nearly three years. Inbound travelers will only be required to show a negative Covid test result obtained within 48 hours before departure, China’s National Health Commission announced late Monday. Currently, travelers are subject to five days of hotel quarantine and three days of self-isolation at home. Restrictions on airlines over the number of international flights and passenger capacity will also be removed, according to the announcement. China has sealed its borders since March 2020 to prevent the spread of the virus, keeping itself in global isolation even as the rest of the world reopened and moved on from the pandemic.

    body bags china

    Scenes in major Beijing crematorium tell a different story from official Covid death numbers

    Weather-related tragedies have not been limited to the US. In northern Japan and in other parts of the country, heavy snow has left at least 17 people dead and more than 90 others injured over the Christmas weekend, authorities said. Japan has seen increasingly adverse weather conditions in recent years, including a heat wave this summer. And in the Philippines, floods triggered by heavy rains killed at least eight people in the southern provinces and forced thousands of residents to evacuate, disrupting Christmas celebrations. Nearly 46,000 people sought shelter in evacuation centers, according to data from the Social Welfare Ministry.

    There are nearly 1.6 million asylum applications pending in US immigration courts and at US Citizenship and Immigration Services – the largest number of pending cases on record, according to a recent analysis of federal data. Immigration courts have seen a massive increase in asylum cases from fiscal year 2012, when there were 100,000 pending cases. The asylum seekers are from 219 countries and speak 418 different languages, according to the group that conducted the analysis. About three out of 10 are minors and the leading countries of origin include Guatemala, Venezuela, Cuba and Brazil. Meanwhile, some state officials remain at odds with President Joe Biden’s administration over the country’s immigration policy. In the latest sign of the dispute, several busloads of migrants were dropped off outside of the residence of Vice President Kamala Harris in Washington, DC, in freezing weather on Christmas Eve. 

    2022 left some of our favorite foods in the garbage heap of history

    From the McRib to the Choco Taco, here are six foods we lost this year. 

    Lizzo broke down in tears after flutist James Galway sent her a message

    Celebrities, they’re just like us.

    A meteorite that crashed in Somalia had two new minerals in it

    Meet scientists’ latest discoveries, elaliite and elkinstantonite. 

    Buccal fat removal is taking over social media

    Here’s what you need to know about the controversial cosmetic surgery.  

    A cryptocurrency scam is costing Americans millions of dollars

    It’s called “pig butchering,” and it has nothing to do with farm animals. 

    Kathy Whitworth, the winningest golfer in history, died at age 83 while celebrating Christmas Eve with family and friends, her longtime partner said. Whitworth is considered one of the greatest golfers of all time. She had 88 wins on the LPGA Tour, including six major championships. Her 88 wins are six more than Sam Snead and Tiger Woods, who hold the record for the men’s tour.

    $1.2 billion

    That’s the amount of money spent by personal injury lawyers to advertise their legal services on TV so far this year.

    “I’m not going to make excuses for this, but a lot of people overstate in their resumes, or twist a little bit … I’m not saying I’m not guilty of that.”

    – GOP Rep.-elect George Santos of New York, while admitting to lying about parts of his resume.

    Check your local forecast here>>>

    An ode to the fruitcake  

    Today is National Fruitcake Day. Though this dessert made of dried fruit, nuts, and spices has its critics, it’s also a fixture in a lot of holiday spreads. (Click here to view)

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  • Why 2022 was a tough year for Trump and 2023 may not be much better | CNN Politics

    Why 2022 was a tough year for Trump and 2023 may not be much better | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    This must feel like the year that won’t end for former President Donald Trump, whose actions appear to be catching up with him in public, painful and expensive ways.

    Trump is infamous for escaping accountability, but he’s been put under the microscope in the second half of 2022 in a way that has complicated things for the 2024 contender.

    The FBI searched his Florida resort, where classified documents were seized. His business was found guilty of criminal tax fraud. Documents relating to his tax returns were released by House Democrats, who are expected to release his actual returns before turning over the committee gavel next year to Republicans, who won a smaller-than-expected majority under Trump’s influence. Many candidates Trump backed failed in key Senate races, costing Republicans a majority in that chamber.

    The former president himself hasn’t been charged with any crimes. But a special counsel has been appointed at the Justice Department to oversee two Trump-related investigations – surrounding the hoarding of documents at Mar-a-Lago and the January 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol.

    Trump has railed against the House committee investigating the January 6 insurrection, and his most ardent supporters tried to stonewall it, but it’s hard to objectively dismiss its damning 800-page detailed report, which spells out his efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election and his role inspiring rioters to attack the Capitol.

    And though the committee’s criminal referrals of Trump to the Justice Department are largely symbolic, the former president still has to wait and see what comes of the DOJ’s own twin probes.

    In the meantime, there’s no sign that the former president – who launched his third nonconsecutive presidential bid last month – has done much to clear the GOP field, with other hopefuls mulling their options over the holidays.

    The ongoing end-of-year revelations chipping away at Trump’s facade of power include large developments like the January 6 committee report – and smaller details.

    Hidden in court documents is the inconvenient truth that even his loudest acolytes on Fox News knew his 2020 election fantasy was false.

    Sean Hannity, the Fox News opinion host, admitted he didn’t “for one second” believe the fraud claims he helped push.

    It might be nice for Fox viewers to hear that from Hannity, but the admission came off the air and in a deposition as part of Dominion Voting Systems’ $1.6 billion defamation lawsuit against the conservative network, according to the New York Times.

    Hannity, as we know from text messages, was in close contact with Trump’s then-chief of staff, Mark Meadows, in the days leading up to January 6.

    That the conservative elites in Trump’s circle knew the truth adds context to the fears of fraud they pushed to encourage Republican lawmakers to pass new election security laws in key states.

    The release of Trump’s tax information, without his consent, by House Democrats confirmed what anyone could have guessed – that he paid no federal income tax in a year when he was leading the country.

    Even in years like 2018, where he paid about $1 million in federal taxes, the rate he paid, a bit more than 4%, was on par with the bottom half of American taxpayers.

    The special tax rules for real estate barons, which Congress can’t seem to address, help explain why Trump’s tax bill looks so different than that of regular wage-earning Americans. But the end result is that the former president looks like a tax avoider.

    Trump broke with tradition in 2016 by refusing to release any of his personal tax returns. But his team immediately tried to weaponize the release of his information. “If this injustice can happen to President Trump, it can happen to all Americans without cause,” Trump spokesperson Steven Cheung said last week.

    Trump made sure his influence was felt during the 2022 midterms, but after Republicans failed to secure a “red wave,” some members of his party have blamed him for the GOP’s poor showing.

    He must now grapple with polls like CNN’s from earlier this month, which showed that most Republicans and Republican-leaning independents want the party to nominate someone other than Trump in 2024. Their top pick for an alternative? Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis. The GOP governor, who won a resounding reelection last month, enjoyed much stronger favorability ratings than Trump among Republicans, according to the CNN survey.

    That’s bad news for a man who jumped out in front of the 2024 Republican field and launched another presidential bid at the precise moment he began to appear politically weak.

    Even his most ardent supporters are growing tired of some of his antics. The $99 Trump-themed digital trading cards timed the NFT market all wrong and drew ridicule even from his most loyal supporters.

    “I can’t do this any more,” complained Stephen Bannon, the former adviser who was sentenced to four months in jail for contempt of Congress after ignoring a subpoena from the January 6 committee. (He’s appealed that conviction.)

    Many of the issues that dogged Trump in 2022 won’t be over with the start of the new year – and could even escalate.

    His business, convicted of tax fraud in late 2022, also faces civil charges from the New York attorney general in 2023.

    On the election-stealing front, it’s not just Special Counsel Jack Smith that Trump has to worry about. An Atlanta-area special grand jury investigating efforts by Trump and his allies to overturn the 2020 election in the Peach State has already begun writing its final report, CNN reported earlier this month. That will serve as a mechanism for the panel to recommend whether Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis should pursue indictments.

    While Trump envisions himself returning to the White House, one of the final bipartisan efforts lawmakers agreed on this month was an update to the Electoral Count Act, making clear that attempts like Trump’s after 2020 – to exploit antiquated language in federal election law and undermine the Electoral College – can never occur again.

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  • North Korea’s record year of missile testing is putting the world on edge | CNN

    North Korea’s record year of missile testing is putting the world on edge | CNN

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    Seoul, South Korea
    CNN
     — 

    In 2020, North Korea conducted four missile tests. In 2021, it doubled that number. In 2022, the isolated nation fired more missiles than any other year on record, at one point launching 23 missiles in a single day.

    North Korea has fired more than 90 cruise and ballistic missiles so far this year, showing off a range of weapons as experts warn of a potential nuclear test on the horizon.

    Though the tests themselves aren’t new, their sheer frequency marks a significant escalation that has put the Pacific region on edge.

    “The big thing about 2022 is that the word ‘test’ is no longer appropriate to talk about most North Korean missile launches – they are hardly testing missiles these days,” said Ankit Panda, a nuclear policy expert at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. “Everything we’ve seen this year suggests that Kim Jong Un is dead serious about using nuclear capabilities early in a conflict if necessary.”

    The attention-grabbing tests also threaten to set off an arms race in Asia, with nearby countries building up their militaries, and the United States promising to defend South Korea and Japan by the “full range of capabilities, including nuclear.”

    Here’s a look back at a year of weaponry and warnings – and what could come next.

    Of the more than 270 missile launches and nuclear tests by North Korea since 1984, more than a quarter came this year, according to the Center for Strategic and International Studies’ Missile Defense Project.

    Of that total, more than three quarters were recorded after Kim Jong Un came to power in 2011, reflecting the dictator’s ambitions – of which he made no secret, vowing in April to develop the country’s nuclear forces at the “highest possible” speed.

    That lofty goal was reflected in a flurry of testing, with North Korea firing missiles on 36 days this year, according to a CNN count.

    “For missiles, they set daily, monthly and yearly records,” said Bruce Klingner, senior research fellow at The Heritage Foundation’s Asian Studies Center.

    The majority of these tests were cruise and ballistic missiles. Cruise missiles stay inside the Earth’s atmosphere and are maneuverable with control surfaces, like an airplane, while ballistic missiles glide through space before reentering the atmosphere.

    Pyongyang has also fired surface-to-air missiles and hypersonic missiles.

    “North Korea is literally turning into a prominent operator of large scale missile forces,” said Panda. He pointed to recent instances where North Korea fired missiles in response to military exercises or diplomatic talks by the US and its regional allies, adding: “Anything that the US and South Korea will do, North Korea can proportionately demonstrate that it has capabilities to keep up as well.”

    Among the ballistic missiles tested was the Hwasong-12, which traveled more than 4,500 kilometers (about 2,800 miles) in October – flying over Japan, the first time North Korea had done so in five years. Another notable missile was the Hwasong-14, with an estimated range of more than 10,000 kilometers (more than 6,200 miles).

    To put those distances in context, the US island territory of Guam is just 3,380 kilometers (2,100 miles) from North Korea.

    But one particular weapon has drawn international attention: the Hwasong-17, North Korea’s most powerful intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) to date. It could theoretically reach the US mainland – but there are still a lot of unknowns about the missile’s ability to deliver a nuclear payload on target.

    North Korea claimed to have successfully launched the Hwasong-17 in March for the first time. However, South Korea and US experts believe the test may have actually been an older and less advanced missile.

    The Hwasong-17 was tested again in November, according to North Korean state media, with Kim warning afterward that the country would take “more offensive” action in response to “enemies seeking to destroy peace and stability in the Korean Peninsula and region.”

    Since early this year, the US and international observers have been warning that North Korea appears to be preparing for an underground nuclear test – which would be its first since 2017.

    Satellite imagery has shown new activity at North Korea’s nuclear test site, where the country has previously conducted six underground nuclear tests. It claimed its most recent test was a hydrogen bomb, the most powerful weapon Pyongyang has ever tested.

    That 2017 nuclear test had an estimated yield of 160 kilotons, a measure for how much energy the explosion releases.

    For comparison, the US atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, in Japan, yielded just 15 and 21 kilotons respectively. The US and Russia have performed the most explosive tests in history, yielding upwards of 10,000 kilotons.

    It’s not clear exactly how many nuclear weapons North Korea possesses. Experts at Federation of American Scientists estimate it may have assembled 20 to 30 nuclear warheads – but its ability to detonate them accurately on the battlefield is unproven.

    Though there had once been hopes of a diplomatic breakthrough in 2019 after landmark meetings between Kim and then-US President Donald Trump, those were dashed after both leaders walked away without having struck any formal denuclearization agreements.

    US-North Korea relations have nosedived since then, with Kim in 2021 announcing a sweeping five-year plan for modernizing the North’s military, including developing hypersonic weapons and a nuclear-powered submarine.

    This year is an extension of that vision, with North Korea working toward developing its own strategic nuclear deterrent as well as nuclear options in any conflict on the Korea Peninsula.

    There are a few possible reasons why this year has been so active. Some experts say Kim could have felt empowered to act while the West was preoccupied with the war in Ukraine. Panda, the nuclear expert, added that tensions tend to flare when South Korea has a conservative government – which has been the case since May.

    North Korea’s aggressive acceleration in weapons testing has sparked alarm in the region, pushing its exposed neighbors – Japan and South Korea – closer to Western partners.

    The US, South Korea and Japan have held a number of joint exercises and fired their own missiles in response to Pyongyang’s tests. The US stepped up its presence in the region, redeploying an aircraft carrier into waters near the peninsula, and sending top-of-the-line stealth fighter aircraft to South Korea for training. Meanwhile, the Quad countries – a grouping of the US, India, Japan and Australia – have deepened military cooperation, with their leaders meeting in May.

    Individual governments have also taken dramatic action, with Japan saying it will double its defense spending, the pacifist nation’s biggest military buildup since World War II.

    But experts have warned that this rapid militarization could fuel instability across the region. And there’s no clear end in sight; the US and South Korea have more joint exercises planned in the spring, which could propel North Korea to continue firing tests “just to show their displeasure,” said Klingner.

    He added that negotiations are unlikely until Kim has further developed his weapons, when “in his mind, he’d be coming back to the table in a position of strength.”

    “Each of the lanes of the road, they’ve been improving their capabilities, both nuclear and missile,” he said. “It’s all very, very worrisome.”

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  • South Korea fires warning shots after North Korean drones enter its airspace | CNN

    South Korea fires warning shots after North Korean drones enter its airspace | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    Five North Korean drones crossed into South Korean airspace on Monday, prompting the South Korean military to deploy fighter jets and attack helicopters, the country’s defense ministry said.

    The ministry said South Korea’s military fired shots at the drones, but added it couldn’t confirm whether any drones were shot down.

    Lee Seung-oh, a South Korean defense official, said four of the drones flew around Ganghwa island and one flew over capital Seoul’s northern airspace.

    “This is a clear provocation and an invasion of our airspace by North Korea,” Lee said during a briefing. In response to the airspace violation, Lee said, the South Korean military sent its manned and unmanned reconnaissance assets to the inter-Korean border region, with some of them crossing into the North Korean territory.

    The assets conducted a reconnaissance mission, including filming North Korea’s military installations, Lee added.

    The South Korean military first detected the drones in the skies near the northwestern city of Gimpo at around 10:25 a.m. local time Monday, according to the country’s defense ministry.

    The last time a North Korean drone was detected below the inter-Korean border was in 2017, according to the South Korean defense ministry. At the time, South Korea said it had recovered a crashed North Korean drone that was spying on a US-built missile system in the country.

    North Korea has aggressively stepped up its missile tests this year, often launching multiple weapons at a time. It’s fired missiles on 36 separate days – the highest annual tally since Kim Jong Un took power in 2012.

    Most recently, North Korea launched two short-range ballistic missiles on Friday, according to South Korean officials. The missiles were fired from Pyongyang’s Sunan area into the waters between the Korean Peninsula and Japan.

    The secretive country usually test-launches its missiles in this way, firing them at a lofted angle so that they land in the waters between the Korean Peninsula and Japan.

    However, in October, it fired an intermediate-range ballistic missile (IRBM) at a normal trajectory that went over Japan for the first time in five years.

    In November, it claimed to have launched a “new type” of ICBM, Hwasong-17, from Pyongyang International Airfield, a missile that could theoretically reach the mainland United States. And last week, Kim Yo Jong, Kim Jong Un’s sister and a top official in the regime, claimed in state media that North Korea was ready to test-fire an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) at a normal trajectory, a flight pattern that could prove the weapons can threaten the continental United States.

    The United States and South Korean experts have warned that Pyongyang could be preparing for a nuclear test, its first in more than five years. North Korea has been developing its nuclear missile forces in violation of United Nations Security Council resolutions, ramping up its activities since the last of three meetings in 2019 between Kim Jong Un and then-US President Donald Trump failed to yield any agreement.

    In October, Kim warned his nuclear forces are fully prepared for “actual war.”

    “Our nuclear combat forces… proved again their full preparedness for actual war to bring the enemies under their control,” Kim said in comments reported by the North’s state-run Korean Central News Agency.

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  • January 6 panelist points to Electoral College reform as next priority to safeguard democracy | CNN Politics

    January 6 panelist points to Electoral College reform as next priority to safeguard democracy | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    Rep. Jamie Raskin, a member of the House January 6 select committee, said reforming the Electoral College to ensure the presidential winner reflects the outcome of the popular vote would be the next step to safeguard democracy.

    “The Electoral College now – which has given us five popular-vote losers as president in our history, twice in this century alone – has become a danger, not just to democracy, but to the American people. It was a danger on January 6,” the Maryland Democrat said in an interview with Margaret Brennan on CBS’ “Face the Nation” that aired Sunday. “There are so many curving byways and nooks and crannies in the Electoral College, that there are opportunities for a lot of strategic mischief. We should elect the president the way we elect governors, senators, mayors, representatives, everybody else. Whoever gets the most votes wins.”

    “The truth is that we need to be continually renovating and improving our institutions,” Raskin said, later noting that he supports the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact, which represents a pledge made by certain states and the District of Columbia to award their electoral votes to whichever candidate wins the popular vote nationwide.

    Under the US Constitution, Americans don’t select their president directly. They vote for their state’s electors, who are then expected to carry out the will of the voters when they vote for president and vice president.

    Democrats Al Gore in 2000 and Hillary Clinton in 2016 both won the national popular vote in their races but lost the Electoral College vote count. Other presidential nominees who lost after winning the popular vote included Andrew Jackson (1824), Samuel Tilden (1876) and Grover Cleveland (1888).

    “The framers [of the Constitution] were great, and they were patriots, but they didn’t have the benefit of the experience that we have lived, and we know that the Electoral College doesn’t fit anymore,” Raskin said.

    Included in the sweeping spending bill that Congress passed last week was a measure aimed at making it harder to overturn a certified presidential election. Raskin described the move, which would reform the 1887 Electoral Count Act, as “necessary” and “the very least we can do and we must do.”

    “But it’s not remotely sufficient,” he said. “We spend hundreds of millions of dollars every year exporting American democracy to other countries, and the one thing they never come back to us with is the idea that, ‘Oh, that Electoral College thing you have, that’s so great, we think we’ll adopt that too.’”

    Raskin’s remarks come just days after the select committee – which has investigated the January 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol – issued its final report, a comprehensive overview of the bipartisan panel’s findings on how former President Donald Trump and his allies sought to overturn the 2020 presidential election. In a symbolic move, the committee in its last public meeting referred Trump to the Justice Department on four criminal charges.

    Raskin said the unprecedented referrals were necessary because of the “magnitude of the attack on democracy” on January 6. He also warned of a future coup attempt.

    Raskin talked about security threats members of Congress face amid rising partisan tensions.

    “There’s very dangerous rhetoric going on out there that’s a real break from everything we’ve known in our lifetimes,” he said.

    “What it means to live in a democracy with basic civic respect is that people can disagree without resorting to violence. But the internet has played a negative role, especially for the right wing, the extreme right, which now engages in very dangerous hyperbolic rhetoric that exposes people to danger.”

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  • How the January 6 panel unearthed key details from little-known insiders | CNN Politics

    How the January 6 panel unearthed key details from little-known insiders | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    The story of January 6 has largely focused on a cast of very prominent characters, including former President Donald Trump and members of his inner circle who have become household names, like his former attorney Rudy Giuliani and his White House chief of staff Mark Meadows.

    But those with notable names were merely the tip of the iceberg for the January 6 committee, which spent 18 months investigating Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election. The panel interviewed more than 1,000 witnesses behind closed doors, including scores of Trump aides who were hardly ever in the headlines.

    The January 6 committee’s report, which came out Thursday, highlights how investigators tracked down little-known insiders – from the Trump campaign to the National Guard to the Republican National Committee – who witnessed key moments and provided critical information to the panel.

    One critical example of the outsize role of little-known figures: The committee’s report mentions an unnamed White House staffer who told Trump around 1:21 p.m. on January 6, 2021, that “they’re rioting down at the Capitol.” This represents one of the first instances of Trump being told directly that the situation was descending into violence.

    With the panel’s report public and witness interview transcripts trickling out on a daily basis, we’re getting a new glimpse into how these obscure figures played big roles in the inquiry. Some of them even provided information that will be useful to the ongoing criminal probes by the Justice Department and state prosecutors in Georgia, who are investigating Trump’s election schemes.

    Here are a few lesser-known insiders and what they shared with the committee.

    The committee’s dive into the hundreds of millions of dollars that were made in campaign fundraising off Trump’s bogus election fraud claims includes the story of a young RNC staffer who was fired after he pushed back on some of the assertions being made in fundraising emails.

    Ethan Katz, who provided testimony to the committee, was an RNC copywriter who made clear to his superiors he was not comfortable with the false claims the Trump campaign and its allies were making after the election, according to the report.

    His direct boss told the committee that she wasn’t sure why Katz was terminated three weeks after the election. However, it came after Katz repeatedly questioned the direction leadership was taking in Republicans’ post-election fundraising messaging.

    The first confrontation – corroborated by multiple witnesses – came in a meeting with the entirety of the Trump digital team, in which Katz grilled a higher-up on how the campaign was saying it wanted to stop the count in several battleground states while keeping it going in another.

    In the second episode in the report, he refused a directive to write an email declaring Trump the winner in Pennsylvania – an email Katz suspected was meant to preempt the election being called for Joe Biden in that state.

    Another copy writer was assigned the task, the report said, and an email falsely declaring a Trump victory in Pennsylvania was sent on November 4.

    Katz was one of several lower-level digital staffers who spoke to the committee, shedding light on how the campaign and the RNC tried to walk the line between not putting themselves in potential legal jeopardy by blasting out false claims while exploiting Trump’s fraud narrative for fundraising.

    Among the first people the committee identifies as having concocted the fake electors strategy – in which slates of fraudulent Trump electors were put forward as alternatives to Biden electors – is Vince Haley, the deputy assistant to the president for policy, strategy and speechwriting.

    Texts and emails that Haley turned over to the committee show how he repeatedly pushed the idea of using illegitimate GOP slates of presidential electors in battleground states to some of Trump’s closest staff members.

    Supposed election fraud by Democrats is “only one rationale for slating Trump electors,” Haley told Johnny McEntee, an assistant to Trump, in text messages one week after the 2020 election that he turned over to the January 6 committee.

    “We should baldly assert” that state legislators “have the constitutional right to substitute their judgment for a certified majority of their constituents” if that prevents socialism, he said.

    The messages highlight how Trump allies and White House staffers appeared to know that their efforts to overturn the election could be problematic early on but believed they were justified if the plan was successful in keeping Trump in office.

    Haley added, “[i]ndependent of the fraud – or really along with that argument – Harrisburg [Pennsylvania], Madison [Wisconsin] and Lansing [Michigan] do not have to sit idly by and submit themselves to rule by Beijing and Paris,” proposing that conservative radio hosts “rally the grassroots to apply pressure to the weak kneed legislators in those states.”

    Haley then sent McEntee names and contact information for state legislators in six states, including Pennsylvania and Michigan. Trump later called several of those state officials, according to the report.

    Two not-well-known Trump campaign officials who were already of interest to the Justice Department provided especially helpful testimony to the January 6 committee.

    One of them, Georgia-based staffer Robert Sinners, described how he felt misled by campaign higher-ups about the legal sketchiness around the fake electors plan – evidence that might go to show a corrupt intent.

    The second, Trump campaign associate general counsel Joshua Findlay, described fielding concerns from the activists being recruited to be fake electors and recounted to the committee how the campaign’s core team tried to hand off the scheme to the more fringe Trump lawyers.

    Findlay also gave valuable testimony connecting the plot to the former president himself. He told the committee that he was tasked by another campaign official in early December with exploring the feasibility of the plan and that the official conveyed to him that the president wanted the campaign to “look into” the alternative electors proposal.

    When it was decided that Giuliani would be in charge of the gambit, Findlay was left with the impression that it was because Trump wanted Giuliani to lead it. Findlay testified that Trump campaign leadership backed off the plan a few days after he had been told to look into it, with top lawyers bailing on the idea.

    However, the campaign’s director of election day operations, Mike Roman, took on a chief operation role in the gambit.

    The role played by Roman – who declined to answer many of committee’s questions in his testimony, invoking his Fifth Amendment rights – was fleshed out by communications handed over to the committee by Sinners. They showed that Roman was organizing information tracking the effort.

    Sinners told the committee that he would not have participated with the scheme had he known the campaign’s top lawyers were not on board with the plan. He testified that he felt “angry,” according to the report, that “no one really cared if – if people were potentially putting themselves in jeopardy” by doing this, and “we were just … useful idiots or rubes at that point.”

    The Justice Department has been seeking information about Sinners and Findlay. Their committee testimony, along with that of others, showed how the Trump campaign was willing to move forward with the fake electors plot – putting its participants in legal jeopardy – even as its top lawyers sought to distance themselves from the scheme.

    To get to the heart of what was happening in the White House and Trump campaign war rooms, the committee looked to junior staffers – people who were key observers to the action but didn’t have an orchestrating role.

    One such staffer was Angela McCallum, the national executive assistant on Trump’s reelection campaign.

    After the election, McCallum was part of the Trump campaign’s operation to contact hundreds of state legislators to ask for their support for efforts to replace state electors.

    Though McCallum does not appear to have had a leadership role in the operation, nor was she directly quoted by the committee, footnotes from the report show that she turned over several text messages, campaign spreadsheets and even a script for calling state legislators.

    Her insight appears to have given the committee information on the campaign’s outreach efforts to push the fake electors plan. Her notes say that campaign staff tried contacting over 190 Republican state legislators in Arizona, Georgia and Michigan alone.

    McCallum’s text records also show how campaign supervisors viewed the ongoing outreach efforts. In one instance, McCallum provided a text message sent by an operative the committee believes may have brought the fake elector certificates to Washington, based on the message’s photo of the operative in front of the Capitol.

    “This has got to be the cover a book I write one day,” the operative, whom the committee could not find to serve a subpoena, said in the message. “I should probably buy [Mike] [R]oman a tie or something for sending me on this one. Hasn’t been done since 1876 and it was only 3 states that did it.”

    In another message, the operative, who was McCallum’s supervisor, celebrated after reporters published a recorded voicemail McCallum left on a state legislators’ phone.

    “Honest to god I’m so proud of this” because “[t]hey unwittingly just got your message out there,” the message read, according to the report.

    He continued, telling McCallum that “you used the awesome power of the presidency to scare a state rep into getting a statewide newspaper to deliver your talking points.”

    The long delay in sending National Guard troops to the US Capitol on January 6 was among the most glaring security failures that day. Previously unreported testimony revealed for the first time in the committee’s final report shows that one commander on the ground had his forces ready to respond hours before they were given approval to actually do so.

    National Guard Col. Craig Hunter is not a household name, but as the highest-ranking commander on the ground on January 6, his testimony helped the committee untangle conflicting accounts provided by more senior officials and ultimately arrive at a conclusion about what caused the delayed response.

    Hunter provided a detailed timeline of his own actions that day, including that he immediately started preparing his troops to respond at around 2 p.m. ET after hearing that shots had reportedly been fired at the US Capitol.

    “So, at that point in my mind I said, ‘Okay, then they will be requesting the DC National Guard now, so we have to move,” Hunter told the committee, according to its final report.

    Within the hour, Hunter had a plan in place. Over 100 National Guard troops were already loaded on to buses with their gear, and Hunter informed other responding law enforcement agencies that backup was coming as soon as he got approval from his superiors.

    “At 3:10 p.m., Colonel Hunter felt it was time to tell his superiors all that he had done and hopefully get fast approval,” the report says.

    But Hunter was unaware that a looming communications breakdown between senior military leaders – including the acting secretary of Defense and secretary of the Army – would delay approval of his plan for more than three hours.

    At that very moment, Army Secretary Ryan McCarthy was putting together a redundant plan for transporting those forces to the Capitol and was not aware that he had already been given authority to issue the order himself, the report says.

    The confusion, coupled with a lack of communication between senior military leaders and commanders on the ground, was a key factor in the delayed response, the report says.

    In hindsight, the failures of top military officials are even more glaring considering Hunter had already devised a plan that could have been put into motion hours earlier.

    They also did not occur in a vacuum. Trump could have personally intervened at any time, to hasten and coordinate the military response, but chose not to.

    This story has been updated with additional information.

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  • Zelensky rallies Ukrainians with defiant Christmas message after deadly Russian barrage in Kherson | CNN

    Zelensky rallies Ukrainians with defiant Christmas message after deadly Russian barrage in Kherson | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    President Volodymyr Zelensky called on Ukrainians to have “patience and faith” in a defiant Christmas address after a deadly wave of Russian strikes pounded the southern city of Kherson.

    Ten months into Russia’s war on Ukraine, Zelensky spoke of endurance and pushing through to the end, while acknowledging that “freedom comes at a high price.”

    He urged the nation to stand firm in the face of a grim winter of energy blackouts, the absence of loved ones and the ever-present threat of Russian attacks.

    Zelensky’s message came after Ukrainian officials said Russia had launched deadly rocket strikes into downtown Kherson on Christmas Eve, killing at least 10 people and injuring dozens. Zelensky described those attacks as “killing for the sake of intimidation and pleasure.”

    In his Christmas message, Zelensky acknowledged that all holidays have a bitter aftertaste for the besieged country this year.

    “We can feel the traditional Spirit of Christmas differently. Dinner at the family table cannot be so tasty and warm.

    “There may be empty chairs around it. And our houses and streets can’t be so bright. And Christmas bells can ring not so loudly and inspiringly. Through air raid sirens, or even worse – gunshots and explosions.”

    He said that Ukraine had been resisting evil forces for three hundred days and eight years, however, “in this battle, we have another powerful and effective weapon. The hammer and sword of our spirit and consciousness. The wisdom of God. Courage and bravery. Virtues that incline us to do good and overcome evil.”

    Addressing the Ukrainian people directly, he said the country would sing Christmas carols louder than the sound of a power generator and hear the voices and greetings of relatives “in our hearts” even if communication services and the internet are down.

    “And even in total darkness – we will find each other – to hug each other tightly. And if there is no heat, we will give a big hug to warm each other.”

    Zelensky concluded: “We will celebrate our holidays! As always. We will smile and be happy. As always. The difference is one. We will not wait for a miracle. After all, we create it ourselves.”

    Ukraine has traditionally celebrated Christmas on January 7 in line with Orthodox Christian customs, which acknowledge the birth of Jesus according to the Julian calendar.

    But a yearslong rift between the Ukrainian and Russian branches of the Orthodox church has widened since Moscow’s invasion in February.

    One branch of Ukraine’s Orthodox church announced last month that it would allow its churches to celebrate Christmas on December 25. And many younger Ukrainians are now choosing to observe the holiday on December 25 in a bid to move away from Russia and towards the Western world.

    Hours before Zelensky delivered his Christmas address, a series of deadly Russian strikes slammed into the city of Kherson, where apartments and medical facilities were among the buildings hit, according to Yaroslav Yanushevych, head of the region’s military administration.

    Yanushevych said Sunday that a total of 16 people had been killed in 71 Russian attacks across the wider Kherson region on Saturday, including three state emergency workers who were killed during demining operations. Another 64 people received injuries of varying severity, he said.

    Zelensky condemned the shelling of Kherson as an act of “terror.”

    Zelensky condemned the shelling as an act of

    “The terrorist country continues bringing the Russian world in the form of shelling of the civilian population. Kherson. In the morning, on Saturday, on the eve of Christmas, in the central part of the city,” he said.

    “These are not military facilities,” he wrote on Telegram Saturday. “This is not a war according to the rules defined. It is terror, it is killing for the sake of intimidation and pleasure.”

    In November, Russia’s military retreated from Kherson city, the only regional capital it had captured since the invasion began, in a major setback for Russian President Vladimir Putin. Since then, Russian forces have stationed themselves across the river from Kherson and regularly shell the city from there.

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  • Hiding in plain sight: The network of citizens sheltering Iran’s protesters | CNN

    Hiding in plain sight: The network of citizens sheltering Iran’s protesters | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    For months, Leila has barely seen sunlight.

    “I miss being in the open air…I miss being able to walk freely,” she told CNN. “I miss my family, my room.”

    Her life now is largely confined to four walls, in a house that is not her own, with people who – until a few weeks ago – she had never met.

    Leila has been in the crosshairs of Iran’s government for years due to her work as a civil rights activist and grassroots organizer. She was forced into hiding in September, when a warrant was issued for her arrest following the outbreak of nationwide protests over the death in custody of Mahsa Amini, a young woman accused of flouting the country’s compulsory hijab laws.

    Since then, while security forces stalk her house and family, Leila has taken refuge in the homes of strangers. An anonymous network of concerned citizens – “ordinary people” connected by a shared mission to protect protesters – who quietly support the movement from afar by offering their homes to activists in need.

    It’s impossible to know exactly how many protesters are being sheltered inside Iran, but CNN has spoken to several people who, like Leila, have left behind their homes and families to escape what has become an increasingly violent state crackdown.

    Leila says her own story, and the stories of those bravely hiding her, show that as well as the extraordinary displays of public anger unfolding on Iran’s streets, “the struggle against the regime continues in different forms.”

    “I came here in the middle of the night. It was dark. I don’t even know where I am and my family doesn’t know either,” she said of her current location.

    Leila – who has spent time in some of Iran’s most notorious prisons for her activism in the past – has long provided a voice for people the regime would prefer remain silent, advocating on behalf of political prisoners, and demonstrators facing execution.

    CNN has verified documents, video, witness testimony and statements from inside the country which suggest that at least 43 people could face imminent execution in Iran in relation to the current protests.

    Using only a burner phone and a VPN Leila continues her work today, communicating with protesters in jail, as well as families with loved ones on death row – sharing their stories on social media, in an effort to help keep them safe, and alive.

    “The comments and messages I receive are very encouraging. People are feeling good to see that I am active now and that I am with them [during this uprising].”

    But as time passes, Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps appear to be doubling down on their hunt for Leila.

    “Every day a car with two passengers is constantly stationed out front of my family home…They have repeatedly arrested several of my family members and friends. In their interrogations, they ask, “Where is Leila? Where is she hiding?”

    To speak with her loved ones, Leila relies on third parties to pass on notes through encrypted messaging services, using code words in case Iran’s security forces are monitoring their conversations.

    “There are listening devices in our house,” she said. “That’s why I never make phone calls to my family anymore.”

    For years, Leila’s life has been on pause – interrupted by periods of imprisonment and prolonged interrogation – all at the hands of the Islamic Republic’s notorious security apparatus.

    “I was tortured psychologically, kept in solitary confinement. They threatened and humiliated me every day.”

    Over the last five years, Iran has been gripped by waves of demonstrations concerning issues spanning from economic mismanagement and corruption to civil rights. One of the most visible displays of public anger was in 2019, when rising gas prices led to a sweeping uprising that was quickly met with lethal force.

    Before the recent protests sparked by Amini’s death – which many see as the most significant threat the regime has faced to date – Leila was trying to rebuild.

    “When I came out of prison life was very difficult for me, but I tried to create small outlets for myself.”

    She had set up a local business, enrolled in a university course, and was working with a therapist to acclimate back to normal life and deal with the trauma brought on by years of incarceration.

    All of that changed within days of Amini’s death, when Leila knew she needed to take an active role once more in the protests that were filling streets across the country with chants of “Women, Life, Freedom.”

    Alongside her family, she began joining marches – sharing the names and stories of protesters being detained on her social media.

    Almost immediately, the threats from Iran’s authorities to send Leila back to prison started again – and then came the warrant.

    “They wanted to silence me as soon as the uprising happened after Mahsa Amini was murdered…I knew if I wanted to stay and continue my activities, I would have to hide myself from their sight.”

    Countless Iranians have been forced to cross borders in order to flee Iran’s security forces. Leila, though, took a leap of faith and decided to go underground, after a “trusted friend” she’d met through a network of activists set her up with her first safe house.

    The drive lasted hours, and there was only darkness.

    “I wore a mask. I laid down in the car so that no one would notice me. I didn’t even get out to go to the toilet or eat.”

    She has continued to move around in the weeks and months since. Smuggled through the night, never knowing her final destination.

    “The first place I was in, the homeowner was very scared, so eventually I left for another location.”

    “[Another] person I stayed with was very nice and became supportive of my efforts,” she said.

    In order to live totally off the grid, Leila is no longer picking up her medication or checking in with any doctors or medical professionals.

    She’s also stopped accessing her bank account and went as far as exchanging her life savings for gold, which someone sells for her from time to time, when she urgently needs cash.

    As is the case for so many ordinary Iranians who are the driving force of the protests, Leila’s life has “practically stopped.”

    “I just breathe and work.”

    “I am not afraid of prison. Maybe many people think that we were afraid and so we hid ourselves, but this is not the case.”

    “The one thing I fear is that if I get caught and sent back to jail, I will become a faceless name…unable to help the cause and movement, like countless others who were sent to prison and never heard of again.”

    For now, Leila says the only thing that keeps her going as weeks in hiding turn into months, is the distant hope that one day she could live in a free Iran.

    “The answer of the Islamic Republic has always been repression and violence…I hope for a miracle and that this situation will end as soon as possible for the benefit of the people.”

    “Just like when I was in prison and solitary confinement, I am improving myself with the hope of freedom,” she said.

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  • Trump White House spokeswoman learned mid-lunch about the Capitol riot, new transcript shows | CNN Politics

    Trump White House spokeswoman learned mid-lunch about the Capitol riot, new transcript shows | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    A newly released transcript of Kayleigh McEnany’s interview with the January 6 committee revealed how the Trump White House press secretary learned, while eating lunch in her office, that the situation at the US Capitol had become violent.

    “I initially went back to my office to eat lunch, but I eventually turned up the volume on Fox News,” McEnany told the committee.

    The House committee investigating the January 6 attack on the US Capitol on Friday released its latest batch of transcripts from interviews conducted during the probe. The new transcripts include interviews with the former press secretary and former President Donald Trump’s daughter, Ivanka.

    According to the latest tranche of documents, McEnany returned to the White House from Trump’s rally at the Ellipse, and eventually went to her office to eat lunch – a turkey sandwich.

    Soon, a CBS News producer “stormed” into her office and asked for her “thoughts about the Capitol.” McEnany said she was “totally blindsided by what (the reporter) was referring to.”

    She then alerted White House chief of staff Mark Meadows about the reporter’s inquiry and about the reports of minor injuries at the Capitol, McEnany said.

    At some point during the riot, McEnany said she received a text from deputy press secretary Judd Deere, who relayed that he was “getting asked if we have any reaction to people storming Hill office buildings.”

    When interviewed by the House panel, Rep. Liz Cheney, the GOP vice chair of the committee, pressed McEnany on her apparent inaction upon hearing reports of violence, implying a lack of urgency.

    “[Deere] sends you a text message saying that people are storming, this says, Hill office buildings,” Cheney said. “And you were just eating a turkey sandwich and just didn’t – didn’t register?”

    McEnany then rebuffed Cheney’s depiction, according to transcripts.

    “I definitely reject the characterization that I was just eating a turkey sandwich and would ignore a text about Capitol Hill office buildings being stormed. I likely wouldn’t have seen it at the time,” McEnany replied, saying the text was likely sent to her personal phone, which would have been on her desk.

    “I in no way, shape, or form would eat a turkey sandwich if I thought Capitol Hill was being sieged,” she added.

    McEnany met virtually with the committee in January after being initially subpoenaed last year.

    The public release of transcripts comes in conjunction with the committee’s final report, a comprehensive overview of the bipartisan panel’s findings on how Trump and his allies sought to overturn the 2020 presidential election, released late Thursday evening.

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  • January 6 panel’s criminal referrals are ‘worthless,’ Trump lawyer says | CNN Politics

    January 6 panel’s criminal referrals are ‘worthless,’ Trump lawyer says | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    The January 6 committee’s criminal referrals to the Justice Department, urging the prosecution of Donald Trump, are “worthless,” one of the former president’s lawyers told CNN on Saturday.

    “The referral itself is pretty much worthless,” Trump lawyer Tim Parlatore said on “CNN Newsroom.” “The Department of Justice doesn’t have to follow it. There’s been an existing investigation that we have been dealing with for quite some time. Really what this does, If anything, it just politicizes the process.”

    Parlatore was responding to the unprecedented criminal referrals that the bipartisan select committee investigating the January 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol sent to the Justice Department earlier this week. Committee members said they believed Trump was guilty of at least four federal crimes, including conspiracy and obstructing a joint session of Congress.

    The January 6 committee reached those conclusions after unearthing evidence from witnesses indicating that Trump was warned that some of his post-election schemes to overturn the results were illegal – but he tried them anyway. This included Trump’s relentless pressure campaign against Vice President Mike Pence, whom Trump hoped would interfere with the electoral vote count during the joint session on January 6, 2021.

    “It’s political noise, but it doesn’t have any effect, as of right now, on our defense,” said Parlatore, who represents Trump in the Justice Department probes into January 6 and the potential mishandling of government documents at Mar-a-Lago.

    Trump has denied wrongdoing regarding both matters. The two high-stakes investigations are now being overseen by special counsel Jack Smith, a veteran prosecutor who has been tasked with deciding whether there is enough evidence that Trump broke the law and whether prosecution is appropriate.

    The Mar-a-Lago probe revolves around whether Trump or his aides mishandled classified records and national security documents by taking them from the White House to his resort and home in Florida.

    Federal authorities have recovered at least 325 classified documents from Mar-a-Lago, according to court filings. Trump voluntarily returned 184 of these files in January. He returned another 38 under subpoena in June. Justice Department investigators suspected there were still more at Mar-a-Lago, so they got a search warrant, and found another 103 classified documents during their August search.

    Since then, prosecutors have been haggling with Trump’s lawyers to certify that nothing remains.

    Parlatore told CNN on Saturday that he was sure there weren’t any more records with classification markings still at Mar-a-Lago, saying, “Everything that was found has been turned over.”

    “We had a professional search team go through all possible locations that reasonably could have documents,” Parlatore said. “We went through several locations that really we thought couldn’t conceivably have them. But the DOJ asked us to, so we did it anyway.”

    He added, “I’m pretty confident that this is a dead issue at this point.”

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  • House passes $1.7 trillion government spending bill as funding deadline looms | CNN Politics

    House passes $1.7 trillion government spending bill as funding deadline looms | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    The House voted Friday to pass a massive $1.7 trillion spending bill that would fund critical government operations across federal agencies and provide emergency aid for Ukraine and natural disaster relief. The bill will next go to President Joe Biden to be signed into law.

    Government funding is currently set to expire late Friday evening – and lawmakers raced the clock to clear the measure before the deadline. The Senate passed the legislation on Thursday along with a bill to extend the deadline by one week, to December 30, to provide enough time for the yearlong bill to be formally processed and sent to Biden. The House also approved the one-week extension and Biden signed it into law on Friday, ensuring there will not be a shutdown.

    The massive spending bill for fiscal year 2023, known on Capitol Hill as an omnibus, provides $772.5 billion for non-defense, domestic programs and $858 billion in defense funding. It includes roughly $45 billion in emergency assistance to Ukraine and NATO allies and roughly $40 billion to respond to natural disasters like hurricanes, wildfires and flooding.

    Other key provisions in the bill include an overhaul of the 1887 Electoral Count Act aimed at making it harder to overturn a certified presidential election – the first legislative response to the US Capitol insurrection and then-President Donald Trump’s relentless pressure campaign to stay in power despite his 2020 loss.

    Among other provisions, the spending bill also includes the Secure Act 2.0, a package aimed at making it easier to save for retirement, and a measure to ban TikTok from government devices.

    The legislative text of the package, which runs more than 4,000 pages, was released in the middle of the night – at around 1:30 a.m. ET on Tuesday – leaving little time for rank-and-file lawmakers, and the public, to review its contents before it came up for a vote in both chambers.

    House GOP leader Kevin McCarthy criticized $1.7 trillion dollar spending bill in a floor speech ahead of the House vote.

    “This is a monstrosity. It is one of the most shameful acts I have ever seen in this body,” the California Republican said. “The appropriations process has failed the American public, and there is no greater example of the nail in the coffin of the greatest failure of a one-party rule of the House, the Senate, and the presidency of this bill here.”

    House Speaker Nancy Pelosi later spoke in favor of the spending bill while noting that the moment would “probably be my last speech as speaker of the House on this floor, and I’m hoping to make it my shortest.”

    The California Democrat took issue with McCarthy’s floor comments, saying she was “sad to hear the minority leader earlier say this legislation is the most shameful thing to be seen on the House floor in this Congress.”

    “I can’t help but wonder, had he forgotten January 6?” she asked, a reference to the January 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol.

    The giant government funding bill initially stalled in the Senate in the days following its release over a GOP amendment regarding the Trump-era immigration policy, Title 42, that could have sunk the entire $1.7 trillion legislation in the Democratic-controlled House.

    GOP Sen. Mike Lee of Utah insisted on getting a vote on his amendment to keep in place the immigration policy that allows migrants to be turned back at the border, which Republicans strongly support. Because Lee’s measure was expected to be set at a simple majority threshold, there was concern it would pass and be added to the government funding bill as several centrist Democrats back extending the policy – only for it to later be rejected in the House.

    But senators had a breakthrough in negotiations Thursday morning.

    Sens. Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona and Jon Tester of Montana wrote an amendment in an attempt to give moderates an alternative way to vote in support of extending Title 42, which the administration and most Democrats want to get rid of.

    As expected, both amendments did not pass. Lee’s amendment to extend the Trump-era immigration policy failed 47-50. The Democratic alternate version from Sinema-Tester went down 10-87.

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  • They were welcomed into British homes. Celebrating their first Christmas together, Ukrainians wonder if that hospitality will last | CNN

    They were welcomed into British homes. Celebrating their first Christmas together, Ukrainians wonder if that hospitality will last | CNN

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    Henley-on-Thames, England
    CNN
     — 

    Last year, Nataliia Doroshko, a 35-year-old lawyer, celebrated St. Nicholas Day with friends and family in her home city of Cherkasy, on the snowy banks of the Dnipro River, downstream from the Ukrainian capital Kyiv.

    During the party, one of the men snuck away and returned dressed as St. Nicholas, a Santa Claus-like figure known as “Sviatyij Mykolai” in Ukraine, she recalled. He was greeted by wide-eyed children, who lined up eagerly to see what gifts he’d brought for them. It was one of the last joyful evenings Doroshko remembers sharing with loved ones before Russia invaded Ukraine and her world turned upside down.

    “We had special food, special music, presents for everybody,” she told CNN from a church hall in Henley-on-Thames, a town upstream from London, in Oxfordshire, where she was marking the holiday on December 19.

    More than 100 people – a mix of Ukrainian refugees, host families, local residents and teachers – had gathered at the small hall, decked out in strands of snowflake-shaped lights. The vicar was serving drinks, as others dolled out cookies and cakes. One Ukrainian father had donned a red and gold St. Nicholas costume, while children dressed in Christmas sweaters played musical chairs and laughed.

    “We’ve celebrated a festival we don’t usually celebrate,” said Krish Kandiah, the man behind the event, who earlier this year launched the Sanctuary Foundation, an organization that helps match Ukrainian refugees with British host families. “It’s been brilliant that the community has welcomed Ukrainians.”

    Doroshko, who was sponsored by Kandiah, came across him by chance. While on a packed train trying to flee the fighting, she was scrolling on her phone searching for refugee schemes. She saw him in a YouTube video announcing the launch of a British program called “Homes for Ukraine,” which would allow Ukrainians to travel to the UK if they could find a sponsor. She immediately reached out, asking for help. Five minutes later, Kandiah gave her a call.

    “Unfortunately, we were unable to talk, as my English level was close to zero,” said Doroshko, who is now nearly fluent. Over several weeks, with the help of Google Translate, Kandiah assisted her to secure a visa and travel to the UK. She has been living with him, his wife and their six children since May.

    As of mid-December, more than 100,000 Ukrainians have arrived in Britain under the Homes for Ukraine sponsorship scheme, while another 42,600 have come stay with relatives, according to the UK government. When the scheme started in March, families were asked to commit to a minimum of six months of hosting. But that period has now elapsed for many Ukrainians who arrived in the spring.

    CNN spoke with eight Ukrainian refugees and nine British hosts, as well as UK charities helping to support the scheme, to get a sense of what’s next as the war stretches on, with Russia’s relentless attacks on Ukraine’s power grid threatening to trigger a fresh wave of refugees this winter. An elderly Ukrainian couple that arrived in the UK on December 1, fleeing the conflict and freezing cold, sat together in the corner of the church hall, speaking quietly and letting the festivities sink in. More are expected to join them in the coming weeks.

    For Ukrainians spending their first Christmas in their new homes, it was comforting to celebrate old traditions. But, while the room was brimming with good will for the holidays, there was a palpable sense of uncertainty about the year ahead.

    Many are unsure how long they will be welcome in their new homes and whether the six-month “deadline” will cast them out on the street. While many Britons signed up to the scheme are happy to continue hosting for as long as necessary, others are hoping to find a more permanent arrangement for both parties. Some say they’ve “done their bit” and simply want their lives back, but are unclear on an exit strategy.

    “Two years is a very long time to have somebody living in your house,” one host told CNN.

    Currently, the UK government gives host families £350 ($425) a month in “thank you” payments to help cover costs, regardless of the number of people they host. But, for most people CNN spoke with, the major incentive to sign up to the scheme was getting the chance to help – not any sort of monetary gain.

    “Frankly, it’s enhanced our lives,” said Robert Aitkin, 76. He and his wife sponsored Oleksandra, who goes by Sasha, and Igor Kuzmenko along with their 2-year-old daughter, Miroslava, and host the young family at their home in Henley-on-Thames. Sasha’s sister has also moved to the Oxfordshire town with her son, who was only a couple of months old when the war broke out.

    Robert Aitkin, center, and his wife welcomed the Kuzmenko family into their home.

    The families, who came together to the St. Nicholas party, have forged a relationship they say will last a lifetime. And while they initially agreed to the living arrangement for one year, Aitkin said if the Kuzmenkos need more time, “we would definitely do that.”

    But not everyone is willing or able to keep their doors open indefinitely. The Aitkins have an apartment attached to their house, so the Kuzmenkos live separately from them. For those with less space, stretching past six months might pose a challenge. “People have made a great gesture at the beginning, but if they’re living in a small space together, it’s got to be difficult for both parties,” Aitkin acknowledged.

    With those difficulties in mind, Kandiah’s Sanctuary Foundation started a petition calling on the government to provide more housing support to Ukrainians struggling with accommodation. Kandiah and a group of Ukrainian refugees went to 10 Downing Street on November 29 to hand deliver the petition, signed by more than 4,500 people.

    Two weeks later, the government acknowledged the need to support British families who had welcomed Ukrainians into their homes, increasing the monthly stipend to £500 for those who have hosted for over a year. The government also rolled out a £650 million support package, which includes funding for local authorities to help support Ukrainian refugees move into their own homes, acquire additional housing stock and reduce the risk of homelessness.

    Krish Kandiah launched the Sanctuary Foundation earlier this year to help British hosts find Ukrainian refugees seeking homes.

    CNN asked Oxfordshire County Council, which oversees Henley-on-Thames, what help they currently offer Ukrainian refugees who find themselves without a place to stay. “We will do everything we can to continue to provide suitable accommodation for guests, but longer-term housing options may not be possible within the county for everyone who needs it,” a communications officer told CNN.

    In the absence of long-term options through local councils, British charities are looking into creative solutions to re-house refugees. One possibility being floated is “re-hosting,” something Kandiah says is akin to “sofa-surfing.” But he worries that if Britons weren’t interested in helping out when the war started, they’re unlikely to do so now.

    Part of the problem is that Ukrainian refugees have begun to put down roots in places they can’t necessarily afford, as most of their hosts live in expensive areas. On top of that, Ukrainians have been unable to find comparable work and wages to what they were making before the war, so the steep cost of rent is out of reach.

    Many Ukrainians CNN spoke with said they feel frustrated that their qualifications do not translate over. Natasha, who was a lawyer in Cherkasy now she works in a retail store. Another woman, Tania Orlova, 45, was a clinical psychologist in Kyiv and also ran a number of her own businesses; now she works for a local charity in High Wycombe, a town in Buckinghamshire.

    Tania Orlova and her son, Danylo, delivering a petition to 10 Downing Street, asking for more support for Ukrainian refugees in the UK.

    Orlova, who speaks several languages, said she could have gone elsewhere in Europe – Spain or Germany, for example – but felt that the UK offered her the best future for her son, Danylo, 8, and her mother, 67, and the chance of becoming “financially independent.” But so far that hasn’t happened, and as a 10-month timeline that she agreed with her hosts approaches, she’s becoming more anxious about where they will go.

    When Orlova calls real estate agents, she said that they all start with the same question: “What is your salary?” After a quick calculation, they tell her what she is eligible for. “I couldn’t take anything within that price that would suit three of us – or even two of us,” she said. The median monthly rent for a three-bedroom apartment in Oxfordshire is £1,295, according to the latest figures from the UK’s Office for National Statistics.

    The UK government started the Homes for Ukraine scheme in the wake of its disastrous Afghan resettlement program. In August, a year after fleeing the Taliban’s takeover of the country, thousands of Afghan asylum seekers and refugees were still living in UK hotels at a cost of more than £5 million a day, according to the government. While the program offered permanent residency, it has only been granted to a few thousand so far.

    Ukrainians have received a warmer welcome than other groups of refugees in the UK, but a cloud of impermanence hangs over their stay. The visa for Ukrainians is only valid for three years, with the expectation that they will return home afterward. And though many want to return, for those who can’t or are unable to, their future in the UK is uncertain.

    Oleksandra and Igor Kuzmenko, holding their daugher, Miroslava, and their nephew, David.

    “The people who planned to go back as quickly as possible [to Ukraine] would not have made the quite considerable journey to the UK, gone through the whole rigmarole of the visa process, found a sponsor, gone to the most distant part of Europe – and then only settle there for a short time,” said Stanislav Benes, managing director of Opora – which means “support” in Ukrainian – another charity that helps match Ukrainians with British host families.

    “There needs to be much more thought dedicated to, what are the support structures going to be between year one and year three?” he added.

    While hosts were aware of the steep costs and cultural differences they might be confronted with when they decided to host Ukrainian refugees, they were less prepared for taking on the mental stress and anguish that their guests were still grappling with.

    Orlova told CNN that support is urgently needed for Ukrainians, like herself, who are still wracked with the trauma of the conflict. She said she recently went to a local hospital for an X-ray and the noises from the machine sparked a flashback. Suddenly she was back in Ukraine hearing the wail of the sirens on the morning of the invasion. “I wanted to run from there. I had tears in my eyes,” she said.

    Her son Danylo has suffered from night terrors since the war began. At the St. Nicholas celebration, the organizers removed balloons from the church hall after someone pointed out that children might panic if one of them was to pop.

    In order to properly recover and regain their sense of self, Kandiah said that Ukrainians will need a space they can truly call their own. “You need to be able to close the front door and say, ‘We’re a family. We can choose what language we’re going to speak, what we’re going to eat.’ That’s part of trauma recovery – having agency, the ability to make decisions.”

    Kandiah and Doroshko with Nadia Ilova and her sons, left, and Valeria Mocharscka-Liulchyk and her daughter, center right.

    But until then, Kandiah said his own family is happy to help with the healing process and make Doroshko feel at home. Bortsch, perogies and holubtsi, a Ukrainian stuffed cabbage dish, are now staple meals in their household. And Kandiah has swapped cough drops for a Ukrainian practice of drinking hot beer to cure a sore throat, just one of many cultural exchanges.

    Doroshko said she is relieved to no longer have to travel around with an “emergency suitcase” and worry about being woken by sirens. “I lost my parents when I was 20 years old,” she said. “Now I feel that I have a family again. I was adopted, as it were, only in adulthood.”

    Christmas Eve is celebrated on January 6 in Ukraine. Last year, Doroshko said she celebrated with an old tradition: writing a “dream” down on a piece of paper before burning it, pouring the ashes into a glass, and drinking it. “It makes your dreams come true,” said Doroshenko.

    What is she wishing for this year? “Peace.”

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  • Trump White House drafted statement attacking Barr after he publicly refuted Trump’s voter fraud claims, transcript reveals | CNN Politics

    Trump White House drafted statement attacking Barr after he publicly refuted Trump’s voter fraud claims, transcript reveals | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    In December 2020, after then-Attorney General William Barr publicly refuted President Donald Trump’s claims that the election was rigged, White House staffers drafted a press release that would’ve called for the firing of anyone who disagreed with Trump’s claims, according to a new transcript from the House select committee investigating January 6, 2021.

    The draft statement ended with, “Anybody that thinks there wasn’t massive fraud in 2020 election should be fired,” according to the deposition.

    The draft statement – which was never sent out, and hadn’t been revealed before Friday – was brought up during the committee’s deposition of Trump White House Counsel Pat Cipollone, according to the transcript. Congressional investigators told him that they likely obtained the statement from the National Archives, which turned over documents from the Trump White House.

    The committee also said during the Cipollone interview that White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson previously testified that Mark Meadows gave her the draft statement – which was a handwritten note – after an Oval Office meeting on the same day Barr made his public comments refuting Trump. It appears that the statement didn’t explicitly name Barr.

    The committee claimed that Hutchinson testified that she was instructed by Meadows to seek Cipollone’s approval before the statement was posted on social media. The committee said Hutchinson testified that Cipollone’s response was, “God, no.” Cipollone said he had no recollection of the draft statement or the episode.

    “By the way, I wasn’t fired,” Cipollone quipped to the committee.

    The Cipollone deposition is one of nearly 50 additional transcripts released Friday night by the January 6 committee. The latest batch contained interviews with key witnesses, including Trump White House insiders and lawyers who worked for the Trump campaign.

    Elaine Chao, who served as Trump’s transportation secretary, said she had no recollection of discussing the 25th Amendment after the insurrection, according to a transcript of her deposition with the January 6 committee released Friday.

    Asked by congressional investigators if she had concerns about Trump’s mental fitness, Chao said that she didn’t go to many White House meetings by the end of Trump’s tenure. Chao was careful not to be too critical of Trump in her interview. She said she had not met with him in some time.

    “By that time, I did not have personal contact with him,” Chao said. “I did not go to the White House, there were no meetings, so I hadn’t been in close proximity to him.”

    Chao, who resigned on January 6, said she stepped down once she realized “the full ramifications of the actions that were taken by some people and the results that occurred.” Asked about Trump’s conduct that day, she said: “I wish he had acted differently.”

    Asked about the inner workings of the Trump White House, and who he trusted among his aides and advisers, Chao said, “I’m not so sure he trusted anyone.”

    Chao said she does not remember talking to other cabinet members that day – even though Labor Secretary Eugene Scalia told the committee he spoke with her.

    Ivanka Trump, who served as senior White House adviser to her father, handed over text messages to the January 6 committee, a newly released transcript of her testimony reveals.

    It wasn’t previously known that she provided text messages to the panel, though video clips from her April deposition were featured during the committee’s public hearings this summer.

    The content of the texts messages remains unclear.

    The committee’s line of questioning did not delve into the contents of her texts, but instead veered into her father’s cell phone habits, including whether he ever sent and received text messages. Ivanka Trump said she “never” exchanged texts with her father on “any device.”

    Still, this is the latest example of how the committee obtained a wealth of evidence, including materials that weren’t previously known.

    Sidney Powell, a conspiracy-peddling attorney who helped Trump’s attempts to overturn the 2020 election, said Trump and his allies believed he couldn’t have lost because of his large “rallies” and “common sense,” according to a transcript of her deposition to the January 6 committee released Friday.

    She said that was the consensus in the room at a White House meeting that she attended with Trump, just a few days after the election. She told the committee that Trump’s then-attorney Rudy Giuliani was also there along with White House aides, according to the transcript.

    “He wanted to know the truth,” Powell said, referring to Trump. “And our general consensus was that the vast majority of people had poured out in support of the President. The rallies indicated that. All the information that we had indicated that. And the numbers that we saw on election night simply didn’t jibe with common sense.”

    She also claimed “math geniuses” reached out to her to tell her that Joe Biden’s victory was statistically impossible.

    The testimony shows just how paper-thin the fraud theories emanating from Trump’s orbit actually were.

    Despite her assertions, there is no evidence that the outcome of the 2020 election was tainted by widespread fraud or vote-rigging. Many of the conspiracies Powell has promoted about the election have been thoroughly debunked.

    During the presidential transition, Trump nearly appointed Powell as a special counsel to use the powers of the federal government to investigate her baseless voter fraud theories. Senior White House officials and attorneys vehemently opposed that idea and it never ended up happening.

    Cipollone told the January 6 committee that it “would have been a disaster” if Trump made Powell a special counsel, according to a transcript of his deposition.

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  • Congress passes first legislative response to January 6 Capitol attack | CNN Politics

    Congress passes first legislative response to January 6 Capitol attack | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    Congress has passed a measure aimed at making it harder to overturn a certified presidential election, a major moment that marks the first legislative response to the January 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol and then-President Donald Trump’s relentless pressure campaign to stay in power despite his 2020 loss.

    The legislation, which would overhaul the 1887 Electoral Count Act, was included as part of a massive $1.7 trillion government funding bill that the Senate passed on Thursday and the House passed on Friday. It will now go to President Joe Biden to be signed into law.

    The measure to overhaul the Electoral Count Act would clarify that the vice president’s role in overseeing the electoral result certification in Congress is strictly ceremonial. It would raise the threshold to make it harder for lawmakers to force votes attempting to overturn a state’s certified result. Additionally, it includes provisions that would prevent efforts to pass along fake electors to Congress.

    The bill is the result of intense bipartisan negotiations that won over the support of top Republicans, including Senate GOP leader Mitch McConnell. But a number of House Republicans have pushed back on efforts to overhaul the election law. So with Republicans set to soon take control of the House, lawmakers pressed to send the bill to Biden’s desk, knowing it was likely to be doomed in the next Congress.

    Sens. Susan Collins, a Republican from Maine, and Joe Manchin, a West Virginia Democrat, announced on Tuesday that the bill had been included as part of the broader government funding package.

    “We are pleased that our legislation has been included in the omnibus appropriations bill and are grateful to have the support of so many of our colleagues. We look forward to seeing this bill signed into law,” the senators said in a joint statement.

    The Electoral Count Act is an 1887 law that Trump has sought to exploit and create confusion over how Congress counts Electoral College votes from each state in a presidential election. Constitutional experts say the vice president currently can’t disregard a state-certified electoral result, but Trump pushed then-Vice President Mike Pence to obstruct the Electoral College certification in Congress as part of his pressure campaign. Pence refused to do so and, as a result, became a target of the former president and his mob of supporters who stormed the Capitol on January 6.

    The new legislation seeks to make clear that the vice president only has a ceremonial role in overseeing the certification of the electoral results – and does not have the power to unilaterally accept, reject or settle disputes over electors.

    It would also make it more difficult for members of Congress to attempt to overturn an election by increasing the threshold for the number of House and Senate members required to raise an objection to election results when a joint session of Congress meets to certify them.

    The legislation “raises the threshold to lodge an objection to electors to at least one-fifth of the duly chosen and sworn members of both the House of Representatives and the Senate,” according to a fact sheet. Under current law, just one senator can join one House member in forcing each side to vote on whether to throw out results subject to an objection.

    The bill also includes changes intended to prevent efforts to install fake electors. For example, each state’s governor would be responsible for submission of a certificate that identifies electors – and Congress would not be able to accept a slate of electors submitted by any other official. “This reform would address the potential for multiple state officials to send Congress competing slates,” the fact sheet states.

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  • US strike kills 6 al-Shabaab militants in Somalia | CNN Politics

    US strike kills 6 al-Shabaab militants in Somalia | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    The US carried out a strike in Somalia that killed six al-Shabaab militants on Friday, US Africa Command said in a statement.

    The strike was in “self-defense,” according to the command, or AFRICOM, and it was carried out at the request of the Somali government. According to an initial assessment, no civilians were killed or injured, AFRICOM said.

    It was the third such strike in 10 days, and it occurred in the same area of Somalia near the city of Cadale, about 150 miles northeast of the capital of Mogadishu.

    The first was on December 14, and AFRICOM said seven al-Shabaab militants were killed. The second strike came three days later and killed eight al-Shabaab militants.

    “Al-Shabaab is the largest and most deadly al-Qaeda network in the world and has proven both its will and capability to attack Somali, East African, and American civilians,” AFRICOM said in the statement.

    The US has provided ongoing support to the Somali government since President Joe Biden approved in May a Pentagon request to redeploy US troops to the area in an attempt to counter the terrorist group. The approval to send fewer than 500 troops was a reversal of former President Donald Trump’s decision to withdraw all US troops from the country in 2020.

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  • ‘He knows he lost’: Cassidy Hutchinson testified that Trump acknowledged he lost 2020 election | CNN Politics

    ‘He knows he lost’: Cassidy Hutchinson testified that Trump acknowledged he lost 2020 election | CNN Politics

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    Washington
    CNN
     — 

    Shortly after the 2020 election was called for Joe Biden, then-White House chief of staff Mark Meadows told his aide, Cassidy Hutchinson, that President Donald Trump knew he lost but wanted to keep fighting to overturn the results, according to a newly released transcript from the House select committee investigating the January 6 insurrection.

    The transcript of Hutchinson’s September 14, 2022, interview with the committee, which took place after she testified publicly, was released Thursday by the panel. It details post-election conversations that Hutchinson described, where multiple people said Trump acknowledged he had lost but was unwilling to concede.

    Hutchinson testified that Meadows told her on November 18, 2020, that Trump “has pretty much acknowledged that he’s lost,” the transcript says.

    “A lot of times he’ll tell me that he lost, but he wants to keep fighting it, and he thinks that there might be enough to overturn the election,” Meadows told Hutchinson that day about Trump, according to her retelling of the conversation.

    Hutchinson also testified that in late December 2020, Meadows lamented to her that Trump would get upset any time he mentioned the transition, telling the committee that Meadows said something to the effect of: “he’s just so angry at me all the time I can’t talk to him about anything post-White House without him getting mad that we didn’t win.”

    “Later in the interview, Hutchinson told the committee she spoke with Meadows immediately after a call with Georgia officials on January 2, 2021, where Trump pushed officials to help overturn the election results there.”

    “He said something to the effect of, ‘he knows it’s over. He knows he lost. But we are going to keep trying. There’s a chance he didn’t lose. I want to pull this off for him,’” Hutchinson said, recounting what Meadows told her about Trump.

    In a September 15 deposition, Hutchinson echoed her testimony that she heard about Trump fighting with his security detail on January 6, according to another deposition transcript.

    Hutchinson, who faced an onslaught of public criticism and pushback from Trump allies after she revealed the story she was told about Trump supposedly lunging at the driver of his presidential SUV on January 6, 2021, because he was angry that they wouldn’t take him to the US Capitol. During that public hearing, she said she heard the story from Tony Ornato, who was serving as deputy White House chief of staff at the time.

    But after her public hearing and the avalanche of pushback, Hutchinson said she had “no doubts” about her previous testimony.

    “I have no doubts in the conversation that I had with Mr. Ornato on January 6th. I have no doubts in how I’ve relayed that story privately and publicly” Hutchinson said, according to the transcript, which was released Thursday.

    She also shared that Ornato made “sarcastic offhand remarks” to her about the story at least two times after he initially mentioned it – on January 19 and April 16 – according to the transcript.

    “I have no doubts about the two instances on January 19th and April 16th about the conversation,” Hutchinson added.

    In the April 16 call, Hutchinson described a phone conversation to committee investigators where Ornato made a comment like “it could be worse. The president could have tried to kill – he didn’t say kill – the president could have tried to strangle you on January 6.”

    Hutchinson acknowledged that Ornato did not specify he was referring to the incident on January 6 but she said, “I assumed from the context of our phone call and from the conversations that we had had while still at the White House that he was referencing that incident. I have no reason to believe that he was referencing any other incident.”

    In June, Hutchinson publicly testified that Ornato told her about an altercation between the former president and the head of his Secret Service detail when he was told he could not go to the Capitol on January 6.

    The committee wrote in its report summary, which was released Monday, that they were unable to get Ornato to corroborate Hutchinson’s testimony about the alleged altercation in the presidential SUV.

    The committee summary said both Hutchinson and a White House employee testified to the committee about the Ornato conversation. But “Ornato professed that he did not recall either communication, and that he had no knowledge at all about the president’s anger.”

    The committee also released six more interview transcripts Thursday night, shedding new light on their closed-door sessions with key witnesses.

    In one transcript, Sarah Matthews, a former White House deputy press secretary, told the committee that Trump tried to get then-White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany to hold briefings about supposed fraud tied to Dominion voting machines – but McEnany refused.

    “She felt uncomfortable promoting the Dominion conspiracy theory, and that the president had asked her to talk about that during interviews” Matthews told committee investigators. “He did request her to do briefings on it as well, but we did not.”

    Matthews added that Trump encouraged McEnany to also put forward these conspiracy theories on cable news hits, which she said made McEnany uncomfortable and led to her attempting to avoid Trump after the election.

    Matthews testified publicly over the summer about how Trump’s conduct on January 6 led her to resign by the end of that day.

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  • Read: The full January 6 investigation report from the House select committee | CNN Politics

    Read: The full January 6 investigation report from the House select committee | CNN Politics

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    READ: See the full 845-page report here

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  • Democracy has its flaws, but it has emerged from the pandemic in much ruder health than the alternative | CNN

    Democracy has its flaws, but it has emerged from the pandemic in much ruder health than the alternative | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    For nearly half a decade, you could be forgiven for thinking just about everything in Western democracy seemed a bit broken. The social-media yelling in 140 characters. The wild populism, and dog-whistle racism. The clumsy coronavirus lockdowns and their attendant conspiracy theories. The tolerance of absolute, constant falsehoods. The questioning and beleaguering of the electoral process.

    Some began to behave as if it were smoother on the other side of the fence, in autocracies where things are just ordered to happen, and criticism is swallowed whole.

    Yet, as we stagger past the third anniversary of Covid-19’s emergence, the fallacy that autocracies are a superior social contract is crumbling. At the end of 2022, the world is a place where consent matters, and debate might actually save your hide.

    The Trump era created a safe space for autocracies to flex on the global stage, while American tried to put itself First, and its commander-in-chief was happy to receive “lovely” letters from North Korea, or get very close to the Kremlin. But it took the pandemic to expose the utter mess one man in charge can create.

    The most glaring and unimaginably stark example is Russia. President Vladimir Putin bumbled his way through the pandemic with snap lockdowns, a poorly performing vaccine, and a general disregard for how useful accurate data can be in defeating a complex foe like Nature. But it was his personal choices that led to a disconnect which has proved fatal to tens of thousands of innocent Ukrainians, and perhaps even more Russian soldiers.

    The persistent warnings from Western intelligence in January that an invasion of Ukraine was imminent seemed far-fetched to many analysts, including me. Those analysts overlooked the enormity of the task, and the assumption the Kremlin remained a rational actor. Those calming caveats were swiftly whisked away when – in the days leading up to the war – Putin summoned his security henchmen and dressed them down, at a safe distance of well over 20 feet, and then delivered a 57-minute televised speech showing he had spent the pandemic reading all the wrong parts of the internet.

    His spoken dissertation even reminded Russians how mean Bill Clinton had been 20 years ago, shunning Putin’s stated desire to join NATO. Putin’s isolation had compounded not just his historical grievances. There were now fewer subordinates in contact with him, and fewer opinions voiced to counter the absurd assumption Russia’s invasion would be welcomed by Ukrainians and last about three days.

    A RUSI report recently noted that seized Russian orders showed units expected to be “cleaning up” within 10 days, and that no effective “red team” assessment of the plan – challenging its assumptions – had happened.

    And so, the largest land war in Europe for 75 years began, and with it a likely military defeat for Russia that may rewrite the established norms of European security and see Moscow’s place as a global superpower evaporate. Putin’s insecurities over NATO and the practical task of connecting the occupied Crimean Peninsula to the Russian mainland fueled his catastrophic decision. But the Kremlin head’s isolation – along with his echo chamber of paranoid nonsense – cemented it.

    But even now, in this late stage in the Russian military demise, when its readiest form of resupply is forced conscripts to the frontline, Moscow must be mindful of consent. The “partial mobilization” announced in September has sent 77,000 Russian men to Ukraine, Putin recently said. But it has also unleashed a wave of protests perhaps not seen in Russia since the 1990s.

    Tightening the screws on dissent is a sign opposition is growing, not ebbing. The nastier Russia gets, the more acutely aware the Kremlin is of its unpopularity. Invading Ukraine was the worst decision a Russian leader has made since the Soviets invaded Afghanistan. We know how that misadventure ended.

    Police officers detain demonstrators in St. Petersburg on September 21, 2022, following calls to protest against partial military mobilisation announced by President Vladimir Putin.

    The pandemic caused economic and emotional stress in every society, leaving citizens less tolerant of poor managers and outdated dogma. Even the United Kingdom swiftly ejected two prime ministers over issues of conduct and incompetence, not long after their ruling Conservative Party had won a landslide victory at the last election.

    The economic fallout from the pandemic is also the backdrop for another dazzling failure of autocracy, in Iran. But the focal point of recent protests has been the brutal treatment of teenagers for protesting mandatory headscarves. Killing a young woman for not wanting to dress more conservatively than her grandmother perhaps did (Iran was – as recently as the 1970s – secular) is grotesque in any society.

    Iranians protest the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini after she was detained by the morality police, in Tehran, Iran, on October 1, 2022.

    But it lit the touch paper in communities ravaged by years of sanctions, the pandemic, and persistent inflation of perhaps as much as 50%. Permit salaries and savings to diminish that much annually, and any elected government could expect to be ousted fast. In Iran’s cities, the violence around this dogma did not distract from the economic fury, but amplify it.

    Well over half of Iran’s population was born in the 1990s, when the Islamic Revolution was already a decade old. A system born in the era of the landline is telling youth born into the world of fax machines how to behave in the era of quantum computing.

    The pandemic hit Iran hard, and I witnessed in 2020 how poorly resourced Tehran’s hospitals were. When your parent is dying and you can’t get a ventilator for them, you don’t have time for a lengthy discourse blaming US sanctions imposed because of Iran’s confrontation of the American hegemony in the region. An emergency like Covid can damage what remains of the contract between ruling conservatives and citizens: If you cannot protect us from a disease at our time of need, then what is the purpose of the corruption, repression and rules on women’s dress?

    Medical workers transport a patient with Covid-19 at Rasoul Akram Hospital in Tehran on October 20, 2020.

    The recent public confusion over whether the country’s morality police would be disbanded – a statement made by the prosecutor general which was later mauled – is a sign of government reform perhaps, but also an indication of how state power is not a tidy behemoth in Iran. There is debate, too, and here it clearly, with hundreds of corpses already underfoot, considered bending to popular will.

    This stark and deadly repression does not at this time herald the demise of the Iranian regime. But it is perhaps a moment of irreversible acceptance that the people cannot just be Ctrl-Alt-Deleted when they don’t suit the state program. It is a recognition that even the best-resourced, most controlling and efficient of repressive regimes – China – has had to deal with.

    Iranians protest the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini after she was detained by the morality police, in Tehran on October 27, 2022.

    The pandemic led Beijing to resort to mass control on a whole new level. Its solution to the disease ravaging the planet was to be the harshest of all – in limiting movement. The authorities’ favored tool – used to its limits – was the one almost every other society realized would not work indefinitely.

    Until recently, Chinese citizens were still being welded into their homes in quarantine, and even burning to death in one tragic instance when they perhaps could have been rescued from a domestic fire. It’s perhaps the most damning indictment of China’s one-person rule this century.

    Workers in protective clothes walk past barriers placed to close off streets in areas locked down after the detection of cases of Covid-19 in Shanghai on March 15, 2022.

    The world has been on a steep learning curve, where social distancing, economic subsidies, vaccines, agonizing deaths and limited global travel have led most societies to now accept the Covid-esque persistent cough as part of what happens in winter. Yet China’s initial decision – stifle the disease – has barely evolved. Its vaccine program has faltered, yet its original tool of mass surveillance has not.

    What is more remarkable is not protests breaking out under such an authoritarian yoke, but that President Xi Jinping did not presume they would.

    Beijing appeared to have been taken by surprise, but also believed it could repress its way out of the unrest. The recent removal of significant parts of the quarantine and testing systems does not solve China’s Covid problems. It was simply their authorities’ only choice. And it is a badly timed one. China is not adequately vaccinated to cope with a massive rise in cases, particularly its elderly population, many experts argue. Even if 1% catch it badly, that is 14 million people in need of medical care – roughly the population of Zimbabwe.

    A demonstrator holds a blank sign and chants slogans during a protest in Beijing, China, on Monday, November 28, 2022.

    Huge challenges require decision-makers of enormous ability. Xi has unparalleled power, evidenced when he sat by as his predecessor Hu Jintao was inexplicably led out during the highly choreographed closing moments of the recent National Congress. But it is pretty clear that Xi got the big decisions around Covid wrong. And that the country where SARS-Cov-2 first emerged is enduring the longest impact of the virus because of poor decisions by its leaders.

    It is a problem for Xi. The singular selling point of autocratic power is that it is absolute: that you can get things done without the delay of debate and compromise that democratic systems endure.

    The point is to be strong, implement decisions fast, and consider dissent the cost of tough, good decisions; not to appear strong, implement fast, and then change your mind publicly after months pursuing a bad idea. For Xi, it is also dangerous for a population to learn they can only truly communicate with their government through disobedience and protest.

    It’s important to feel discomfort when extolling the virtues of modern democracy. It doesn’t really work. It is slow and encourages ego and half-measures. It keeps changing its mind and wasting endless resources while stumbling for the solution.

    But it provides space for dissent and, more importantly, other, competing ideas. And, if you are forcing taxi drivers to fight in a war of choice you are losing, or shooting teenagers for taking off headscarves, or imprisoning people in their apartments to suppress a virus the rest of the world is living calmly with, alternative ideas are important.

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