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CNN is on the ground in Moscow asking Russians what they think about the Ukraine conflict.
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Tag: unrest
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Former Trump White House counsel and his deputy testify to Jan. 6 criminal grand jury | CNN Politics
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CNN
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Former Trump White House counsel Pat Cipollone and deputy counsel Patrick Philbin testified to a federal grand jury for several hours in Washington, DC, on Friday, indicating the Justice Department had compelled the men to answer more questions in the January 6, 2021, criminal investigation despite challenges from Donald Trump’s legal team.
The January 6 grand jury activity is the latest indication the investigation – now led by special counsel Jack Smith – has pushed in recent months to unearth new details about direct conversations with the former president and advice given to him after the election.
Cipollone was first seen entering the grand jury area with his attorney, Michael Purpura, before 9 a.m., and he was there for more than five hours. Purpura has not responded to requests for comment. The grand jury proceedings themselves are confidential.
Philbin, whom Purpura also represents, headed into the grand jury area just before the lunch hour on Friday, staying until about 4 p.m.
Thomas Windom and Mary Dohrmann, prosecutors in the January 6 investigation who are now to be led by Smith, were also seen walking in with Cipollone.
The investigators are looking at efforts to obstruct the transfer of power at the end of Trump’s presidency and have obtained testimony from several administration advisers closest to the former president after the election and as the Capitol was attacked by his supporters.
CNN previously reported that Chief Judge Beryl Howell of the DC District Court, who oversees the federal grand juries in Washington, ordered Cipollone and Philbin to provide additional grand jury testimony this month, following up on their testimony in the fall. The judge has repeatedly rejected Trump’s privilege claims in the Justice Department’s criminal investigation of efforts to overturn the 2020 election, according to people briefed on the matter.
Philbin and Cipollone were both key witnesses to Trump’s actions in the last days of his presidency. Cipollone repeatedly pushed back on efforts to overturn the 2020 election, and according to a Senate Judiciary Committee report, he and Philbin opposed a proposal to replace the attorney general with someone willing to look into false claims of election fraud.
Previously, the Justice Department compelled top advisers from Vice President Mike Pence’s office to testify to the grand jury. They had sought to protect Pence in January 2021 from Trump’s pressure campaign to overturn the election.
Earlier this week, Trump White House official Stephen Miller, who worked with Trump on his speech at the Ellipse, had his own day before the grand jury.
On Thursday, another leg of Smith’s special counsel investigation – into the handling of documents at Mar-a-Lago after the presidency – was active in the courthouse. At least one Mar-a-Lago prosecutor was working in the secret grand jury proceedings, as three aides to Trump, Dan Scavino, William Russell and Beau Harrison, each appeared, according to sources familiar with them. Their attorney declined to comment.
This story has been updated with additional details.
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McCarthy demands January 6 committee preserve all records and vows to hold hearings next year | CNN Politics
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CNN
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House Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy sent a letter to the House select committee investigating January 6, 2021, on Wednesday demanding that it preserve all records and transcripts and vowing to hold hearings next year on the security failures that led to the US Capitol breach.
After winning the House majority earlier this month, Republicans made it clear they will prioritize investigating President Joe Biden and his administration on a variety of fronts. The latest warning from McCarthy, who is vying to be House speaker, signals that Republicans may also use some of their time in the next Congress attempting to rewrite the narrative of the insurrection.
“It is imperative that all information collected be preserved not just for institutional prerogatives but for transparency to the American people,” wrote McCarthy, who did not comply with a subpoena to appear before the committee. “The American people have a right to know that the allegations you have made are supported by the facts.”
Democratic Mississippi Rep. Bennie Thompson, chairman of the House select committee, told reporters Wednesday that he had not seen the California Republican’s letter to the committee, but that the panel planned to preserve everything. He added that McCarthy “had a chance to have members on the committee, he had a chance to come and testify before the committee, so, I think the horse has left the barn.”
Thompson said, “We will do our work. We will end December 31. If he wants to conduct whatever he wants as speaker, it’s his choice.”
McCarthy has signaled no interest in creating a Republican-led January 6 select committee, as some on the right have pushed to do. But McCarthy – who is scrambling to lock down speaker votes – is expected to give his members some room to re-litigate the Democrat-led select committee’s investigation. That effort is likely to be housed within existing committees.
Earlier this year, Republicans on the House Administration Committee sent a similar preservation request to the select committee and also pledged to continue looking into January 6 security failures. The House GOP is planning to release its own report on the topic when the select committee releases its final report before the end of this year.
Thompson reiterated Wednesday that not only does the panel plan to preserve everything, it’s also set to release as much as possible to the public through its final report as soon as the committee gets the report back from the printer.
“A lot depends on when we can get it back once we get it to the printer and how that impacts the Christmas holidays,” Thompson said.
Top House Republicans would much rather put January 6 in the rear view mirror, but McCarthy needs to win over hardline critics and keep former President Donald Trump happy if he wants to become speaker – and that group is eager to undermine the committee’s investigation, which has painted a damning portrait of Trump and his allies.
Meanwhile, members of the select committee are scheduled to have a key meeting on Friday to discuss its final report as well as the possibility of making criminal referrals, CNN reported earlier Wednesday.
A subcommittee of members is also expected to provide options to the full committee about a number of pressing issues including how to present evidence of possible obstruction, possible perjury and possible witness tampering as well as potential criminal referrals to the Department of Justice, according to multiple sources familiar with the committee’s work.
Also under discussion in the Friday meeting will be how to handle the five Republican lawmakers who refused to cooperate with their subpoenas, which includes McCarthy.
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Opinion: Why Kevin McCarthy may have the hardest job on Capitol Hill | CNN
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Editor’s Note: Patrick T. Brown is a fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, a conservative think tank and advocacy group based in Washington, DC. He is also a former senior policy adviser to Congress’ Joint Economic Committee. Follow him on Twitter. The views expressed in this piece are his own. View more opinion on CNN.
CNN
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Like a treasure hunter who hacks his way to the heart of the jungle only to find an empty chest, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy thought he was on his way to achieving his goal of becoming speaker before a rebellion on his right flank put that dream very much in doubt.
Currently, House Republicans are expected to hold a narrow majority in the next Congress – 222 seats to Democrats’ 213, if there are no changes to the projected winners. McCarthy, who recently was reelected as GOP leader, will need a majority, or 218, of the House representatives to vote for him on January 3 to become the next speaker.
That leaves the California Republican with just a handful of votes to spare if he wants to win. And CNN’s Chris Cillizza has already tallied five Republican congressmen who have expressed their unwillingness to vote for McCarthy.
With enough negotiations, concessions and wheeling and dealing, the most likely scenario is that McCarthy will squeak out just enough votes. But the uncertain start to his potential tenure, and the challenges he faces within his own caucus, reflect both the tumult of trying to lead a legislative body in an anti-institutional age and the fundamental uncertainty of what the Republican Party actually stands for.
McCarthy, don’t forget, started his career as a reform-oriented “Young Gun,” posing for the cover of the Weekly Standard with fellow GOP wunderkinds (and now-former Reps.) Paul Ryan of Wisconsin and Eric Cantor of Virginia. The populist thrust in the party ultimately sidelined the other two, along with the magazine they appeared on, but McCarthy survived – in part by adopting the pose of an America First culture warrior.
In spring 2021, while Democrats were passing an American Rescue Plan that put billions of dollars into states’ hands and ended up fueling inflation, McCarthy made headlines by reading “Green Eggs and Ham” to protest the Dr. Seuss estate’s decision not to continue publishing six older books due to racial stereotypes. (“Green Eggs and Ham” was not one of the six books in question.)
McCarthy’s plans for the new Congress are far from ambitious. He boldly announced that each day will start with a prayer and the pledge of allegiance, something Congress already does. He also vowed to have the Constitution read aloud in its entirety – a nice gesture, but one Republicans have done in the recent past with little impact on the work of governing.
Because the Republican Party struggles to put forward a cohesive governing agenda (McCarthy’s touted Commitment to America was better suited as an attack on President Joe Biden’s administration than a detailed list of proactive agenda items), the matters that have caused some Republicans to rebel against a potential McCarthy speakership may seem picayune.
He has pledged to seek votes on removing Reps. Eric Swalwell and Adam Schiff, both of California, and Rep. Ilhan Omar of Minnesota from certain congressional committees, nominally for various violations. But diehard partisans will certainly see it as payback for Democratic actions, such as stripping Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia of her committee assignments – the kind of DC insider red meat that leaves most voters cold.
Other possible inside-baseball concessions are even more in the weeds. Reps. Bob Good of Virginia and Matt Rosendale of Montana, for example, have spoken about their desire to bring back the legislative maneuver known as the “motion to vacate the chair,” which would allow any member of Congress to seek a vote on removing the House speaker. That procedure, coupled with a razor-thin margin, would leave a future Speaker McCarthy on the proverbial hot seat.
And many of the more Trump-supporting figures, like Rep. Andy Biggs of Arizona, who challenged McCarthy for his leadership post, prefer a more MAGA-aligned speaker. Rep. Matt Gaetz of Florida, another “no” vote against McCarthy, has endorsed Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio, partly stemming from his frustration that McCarthy had initially said the former president bore some responsibility for the riots on January 6.
But more moderate Republicans would likely shy away from Jordan as a candidate, and a centrist candidate would be anathema to the more populist wing. So McCarthy’s path to the speaker’s chair may end up being the least objectionable option.
Without a clear vision of what the Republican Party’s legislative priorities are, McCarthy’s presumptive speakership will mostly consist of oversight. And some aspect of feeding the political base is part of the game. His announced intentions to end proxy voting, which allowed lawmakers to cast their vote remotely, would be the right step, as would fully reopening the Capitol complex to visitors.
But McCarthy’s travails illustrate how trying to lead in an era when parties and institutions are held captive by an anti-establishment mentality will be a continual exercise in frustration. Base-pleasing moves like investigating the president’s son, Hunter Biden, don’t do anything to solidify Republican support where it is needed – the middle-class suburbs, which voted decidedly against stunts and for normalcy in last month’s midterm elections.
Fights over legislative committee assignments and empty culture war gestures may suck up political oxygen, but they don’t point the way forward to a more compelling argument for Republican control of Congress. Republicans who can hammer home an agenda that puts parents first, and is laser-focused on reducing crime and inflation, will be more attractive to an electorate that’s soured on MAGA candidates but also signaled displeasure with the Biden administration.
Either Kevin McCarthy will figure that out, or he’ll be replaced.
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Huge trade partner and ‘systemic rival.’ Europe has a China problem | CNN Business
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London
CNN Business
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Europe is becoming increasingly reliant on China for trade, and many of its top companies are eager to invest in the world’s second biggest economy despite the disruption caused by Covid lockdowns.
But a souring relationship with an increasingly unpredictable Beijing, regret about the price Europe has paid for getting too close to Russia, and rising geopolitical tension has some EU officials considering whether the bloc should start to reduce its exposure.
It’s a calculation EU Council President Charles Michel is weighing up Thursday as he visits Chinese leader Xi Jinping for talks aimed at shoring up diplomatic ties.
A lot has happened since the last time an EU president — appointed by the leaders of the 27 EU member states — met with Xi in person four years ago.
The Covid-19 pandemic, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and tit-for-tat sanctions between China and EU lawmakers have strained relations since. The United States, which imposed controls on exports of semiconductors to China in October, is reportedly exerting pressure on Europe to adopt a similarly hard line.
Michel’s spokesperson, Barend Leyts, said in a statement last week that Michel’s visit provides a “timely opportunity” for Europe and China to engage on matters of “common interest.” He did not specify which subjects would be discussed.
But some within Europe are growing wary of close relations with China. The bloc has been badly burned this year by its historic reliance on Russia as its main energy supplier, and diversification has shot up the political agenda.
Those concerns bubbled up last month when German Chancellor Olaf Scholz flew to Beijing with a delegation of top business leaders to meet Xi, a move intended to shore up Germany’s second biggest export market after the US.
The bloc is in a similar bind.
“Any problems you have from a political and strategic level [between the EU and China], they tend to spill over to the economic level,” Ricardo Borges de Castro, associate director at the European Policy Centre, told CNN Business.
Both sides have a lot invested in their partnership. The total value of the goods trade between China and Europe hit €696 billion ($732 billion) last year, up by nearly a quarter from 2019.
China was the third largest destination for EU goods exports, accounting for 10% of the total, according to Eurostat data. China is Europe’s biggest source of imports, accounting for 22% in 2021.
“The European market’s importance as a destination for Chinese exports is around double that of the Chinese market for Europeans,” Jörg Wuttke, president of the EU Chamber of Commerce in China (ECCC) wrote in a September report.
Overall, the relationship is simply “too big to fail,” according to Borges de Castro. Europe is not seeking to decouple from the lucrative Chinese market, he added.
“I don’t see [the EU’s strategy] as a decoupling strategy. I think the EU strategy, for the moment, is a diversification strategy… the lesson [from Russia] is that you cannot have a single provider,” he said.
Machinery, vehicles, chemicals, and other manufactured goods account for the vast bulk of goods traded between the two powers, according to Eurostat.
“European companies have done extremely well here and the overall long term outlook is very positive,” ECCC Secretary General Adam Dunnett told CNN Business, adding that he expects European company revenues to keep growing in China over the next decade.
There are areas where Europe is dependent on Beijing, namely for the supply of rare earth metals required to make hybrid and electric vehicles, and wind turbines. Europe’s solar panels are also mostly manufactured in China.
But those dependencies shouldn’t be exaggerated, Dunnett said.
“When you look at some of the broader things that China exports to the EU such as furniture and consumer goods, a lot of those things you can get elsewhere,” he said.
Even so, the United States may exert more pressure on Europe to pull away from China, Borges de Castro noted. In early October, Washington banned Chinese firms from buying its advanced chips and chip-making equipment without a license.
Benjamin Loh, the head of Dutch chipmaker ASM International, told the Financial Times on Wednesday that the US was “putting a lot of pressure” on the Dutch government to take a similarly tough stance.
The pressure may already be beginning to show. Germany last month blocked the sale of one of its chip factories to a Chinese-owned tech company because of security concerns.
Economic ties between Brussels and Beijing, though mutually beneficial, have frayed in other ways in recent years.
Last year, Chinese direct investment into the European Union dropped to its second lowest level since 2013, only behind 2020, according to analysis by the Rhodium Group, a research firm. It has fallen almost 78% since 2016.
“The level of Chinese investment in Europe is now at a decade low,” Agatha Kratz, director at Rhodium Group, told CNN Business, citing Beijing’s strict capital controls and greater scrutiny by EU regulators.
EU investment into China has also become more concentrated. Between 2018 and 2021, the top 10 European investors in China, including those from the United Kingdom, made up almost 80% of the continent’s total investment in the country, Rhodium Group data shows.
And just four German companies — automakers Volkswagen
(VLKAF), BMW, and Daimler
(DDAIF), and chemicals giant BASF
(BASFY) — made up more than one third of all European investment in those four years.An investment deal between Beijing and Brussels was shelved last year after EU lawmakers slapped sanctions on Chinese officials over alleged human rights abuses, prompting China to retaliate with its own penalties.
The deal, agreed in principle in 2020 after years of talks, was designed to level the playing field for European companies operating in China, who have long complained that Beijing’s subsidies have put them at a disadvantage.
EU diplomats said in April that a “growing number of irritants” were hurting relations, including China’s tacit acceptance of Russia’s war in Ukraine. They have described China as “a partner for cooperation and negotiation, an economic competitor and a systemic rival.”
The most pressing issue for European businesses in China, according to Dunnett, is its stringent zero-Covid policy.
“For the last year, it’s been the Covid carousel, [the] Covid rollercoaster,” he said. “Every time you think [it was] about to open up, something pulls us back,” he added.
Over the weekend, thousands of protestors took to streets across China in a rare series of demonstrations against the country’s strict Covid controls. Some restrictions have since been lifted in Shanghai and other major cities.
Beijing’s uncompromising approach is helping to further dampen foreign investment in the country, especially among smaller companies, Raffaello Pantucci, a senior associate fellow at the Royal United Services Institute, a security research group, told CNN Business.
“The general business environment in China is perceived as becoming harder to navigate, and while companies still feel they have to engage given its size and potential, increasingly small to medium sized companies are giving up,” he said.
— Laura He contributed reporting.
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Meghan and Harry faced ‘disgusting and very real’ threats, ex-counterterror chief says | CNN
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CNN
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Meghan, Duchess of Sussex and her husband Prince Harry faced “disgusting and very real” threats from right-wing extremists, a former counterterrorism police chief has said.
In an interview with Britain’s Channel 4 News on Tuesday, Neil Basu said the threats against Meghan were serious and credible enough that authorities had assigned teams to investigate them.
“If you’d seen the stuff that was written, and you were receiving it … you would feel under threat all of the time,” said Basu, who was in charge of royal protection during his time at the Metropolitan Police.
“People have been prosecuted for those threats,” said the former Met assistant commissioner.
Since news of her relationship with Prince Harry broke in 2016, Meghan has been subjected to harsh criticism in the British press. In particular, the UK tabloids have faced allegations that their negative coverage of Meghan fueled racist attacks against her.
The racist bullying on social media became so intense during her first pregnancy that the royal staff was put on high alert, beefing up its own digital presence to filter out hateful comments, including use of the n-word and emojis of guns and knives.
The couple said that the racial abuse Meghan faced was a major factor that drove them to move to the United States and step back as senior members of the royal family.
In the couple’s bombshell interview with Oprah Winfrey last year, Prince Harry said he felt the palace was not doing enough publicly to combat the continued racial abuse in the press.
Harry is currently in a legal dispute with the Home Office regarding the family’s security arrangements when they visit the UK.
The threats against the royal couple came amid a rise in right-wing extremism in Britain, according to Basu.
Basu said in his interview that during his tenure, extreme right-wing terrorism was the fastest-growing threat facing the country, going from 6% of the counterterroism department’s workload in 2015 to more than 20% at the time of his departure more than a year ago.
Basu, who is mixed-race, said he believes the Home Office needs to do more to tackle institutional racism.
“I’ve been the only non-White face as a chief officer for a very long time,” he said. “I don’t think the Home Office cares about this subject at all.”
The Home Office said in a statement to CNN that UK Home Secretary Suella Braverman expects police forces in the country to “take a zero tolerance approach to racism within their workplace.”
“We are actively pushing for a cultural change in the police, including via a targeted review of police dismissals to ensure officers who are not fit to serve can be swiftly removed,” a spokesperson for the Home Office said.
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House January 6 committee chairman says panel ‘close to putting pens down’ on final report | CNN Politics
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CNN
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The chairman of the House select committee investigating the January 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol said Tuesday that the panel is “close to putting pens down” on its final report, which is slated for release by the end of this Congress.
“The body of the report is complete and there is general agreement on that,” Democratic Rep. Bennie Thompson of Mississippi told reporters.
The final report, he said, will include eight chapters.
In addition to focusing on former President Donald Trump’s actions around January 6, the congressman said the final report will “focus on some other issues,” including material the committee has not previously presented. “We are reviewing material on a daily basis,” he said, though he told reporters the panel has largely completed its interviews.
CNN reported earlier this week that committee members have been in active discussions about what to include in the report, which will effectively serve as the committee’s closing statement. The panel has less than two months before it expires, and members continue to deliberate what the report will contain and how those findings will be presented.
It is unclear what the committee will do with the thousands of pages of documents and transcribed interviews it has compiled throughout its investigation. Sources said there could even be a digital component to accompany the final written report.
Thompson said Tuesday that the committee could release “hundreds” of transcripts by the end of its investigation, adding that “the goal is to release as many of the transcripts where we didn’t have prior agreement with the people because of the sensitivity where they are employed.”
The chairman said he doubts the panel will release its final report by December 16 – the last day Congress is scheduled to be in session before the year’s end – but there is a “good possibility” the report is released by Christmas.
Whether the panel will issue criminal referrals is “still under consideration,” Thompson said, though any such referrals would be “done separately” from the final report. The panel would not need to hold a business meeting to issue criminal referral, he said.
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Twitter is less safe due to Elon Musk’s management style, says former top official | CNN Business
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CNN Business
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Twitter owner Elon Musk’s dictatorial management style risks driving the company headlong into unforced business blunders, content moderation disasters and the degradation of core platform features that help keep vulnerable users safe, according to a former top Twitter official who led the company’s content moderation before abruptly resigning this month.
The social media company’s botched rollout of a paid verification feature “is an example of a disaster that slipped through” amid the chaos Musk brought to Twitter, and the prospect of further disasters made it impossible to stay, said Yoel Roth, the company’s former head of site integrity, during an onstage interview with the journalist Kara Swisher Tuesday in his first public appearance since quitting Twitter on Nov. 10.
Roth and other colleagues tried to warn Musk of the “obvious” problems in his plan to offer a verified check mark to any user who paid $8 a month. But Musk charged ahead anyway through sheer force of will, leading to a wave of new impostor accounts posing as major brands, athletes and other verified users that soon forced Twitter to suspend the feature.
“It went off the rails in exactly the ways that we anticipated,” Roth said.
The public reflections of a senior Twitter leader who had close contact with Musk in the raw, early days of his ownership of the company — a period marked by internal tumult and a damaging advertiser revolt — provide the latest evidence of a billionaire CEO who leads by his gut at the expense of virtually everyone else.
There was no explosive confrontation with Musk that led to Roth’s resignation, and the episode involving Twitter’s paid verification feature was only one of many factors that drove Roth’s decision to leave, he said. But the experience exemplified the kind of damage Musk’s freewheeling approach can do, Roth added, likening his final weeks at the company to standing before a leaky dam, trying desperately to plug the holes but knowing that eventually something would get past him.
In the hour-long interview, Roth warned Musk’s laissez-faire approach to content moderation, and his lack of a transparent process for making and enforcing platform policies, has made Twitter less safe, in part because there aren’t enough staff remaining who understand that malicious actors are constantly trying to game the system in ways that automated algorithms don’t know how to catch.
“People are not sitting still,” he said. “They are actively devising new ways to be horrible on the internet.”
He urged Twitter users to monitor the functioning of key safety features such as muting, blocking and protected tweets as early warning signs the platform may be breaking down.
“If protected tweets stop working, run,” he said.
For two weeks after Musk closed his purchase of Twitter, Roth presented himself as a voice of stability and calm at the center of a company undergoing dramatic change. Roth knew that by remaining at the company, Musk was using him to help keep advertisers from abandoning the platform. But Roth also suggested that he and others who did not leave Twitter may have been able to influence Musk and keep him from making damaging unilateral decisions, which he had “multiple opportunities” to do.
Even as he spent his initial days in the new regime battling a “surge in hateful conduct on Twitter” apparently meant to test Musk’s tolerance for racism and antisemitism on the platform, Roth sought to reassure the public that Twitter’s trust and safety work continued unhindered.
He shared data on the platform’s ongoing enforcement efforts, and downplayed the impact of Twitter’s mass layoffs on its content moderation team, saying the job cuts were less severe in that department compared to the wider organization.
As late as Nov. 9, Roth spoke alongside Musk during a public Twitter Spaces event intended to persuade advertisers not to flee the platform. In the hour-long session, which was attended by more than 100,000 listeners, including representatives of Adidas, Chevron and other major brands, Roth waxed optimistic about Twitter’s plans to fight hate speech.
The very next day, Roth abruptly resigned, joining a slew of other senior executives including Twitter’s chief privacy officer and chief information security officer.
In a subsequent New York Times op-ed, Roth said his reason for leaving came down to Musk’s highly personal and improvisational approach to content moderation. Roth’s essay accused Musk of perpetuating a “lack of legitimacy through his impulsive changes and tweet-length pronouncements about Twitter’s rules.”
On Tuesday, Roth said the popular narrative that describes Musk as a villain is wrong and doesn’t reflect his own experiences with him. But, he said, Musk surrounds himself with those who rarely challenge him.
Before Musk took over Twitter, Roth wrote down several commitments to himself that would trigger the decision to quit. One limit, he said — one that was never reached — was that Roth would refuse to lie for Musk. Another limit, one that was ultimately reached and drove his decision to resign, was “if Twitter starts being ruled by dictatorial edict rather than by a policy.”
Roth’s role at Twitter came under intense scrutiny in 2020 after the company appended a fact-check message to false tweets by then-US President Donald Trump.
Tweets that Roth sent in 2016 and 2017 that were critical of President Trump and his supporters were dug up and used to argue that Roth and Twitter were biased against the president.
Among Roth’s tweets was one he wrote on Election Day 2016 that read, “I’m just saying, we fly over those states that voted for a racist tangerine for a reason.”
Twitter defended Roth at the time, saying, “No one person at Twitter is responsible for our policies or enforcement actions, and it’s unfortunate to see individual employees targeted for company decisions.”
When Roth was still working at Twitter in October, Musk was asked about Roth’s old tweets.
“We’ve all made some questionable tweets, me more than most, but I want to be clear that I support Yoel. My sense is that he has high integrity, and we are all entitled to our political beliefs,” Musk tweeted.
Roth also became the personal face of Twitter, and a target of harassment, after the company decided to suppress a 2020 New York Post story about Hunter Biden, a decision then-CEO Jack Dorsey has since said was a mistake.
“It’s widely reported that I personally directed the suppression of the Hunter Biden story. That is not true. It is absolutely, unequivocally untrue,” Roth told Swisher on Tuesday.
Roth did not feel removing the content from Twitter was appropriate, he said, but at the time the story seemed to bear the hallmarks of a hack-and-leak information operation.
Roth also said Tuesday that, in retrospect, suppressing the Hunter Biden story was a mistake. But he defended Twitter’s other decisions to ban Trump for his activities around the Jan. 6 Capitol riot, as well as a personal account belonging to Georgia Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene and an account belonging to the satirical website Babylon Bee.
All three cases involved obvious violations of Twitter’s publicly accessible, written policies, Roth said, making them a much clearer case for enforcement.
Amid the layoffs that have decimated Twitter’s content moderation team, Musk has said he intends to rely much more heavily on crowdsourced fact-checking of tweets to provide context to misleading claims. But Roth said that in doing so, Twitter risks abdicating its responsibility to the public, which should still apply despite it being a private company.
Policymakers should require platforms to share data with academics and researchers, he said, preempting privately owned platforms such as Twitter from shirking a duty to transparency.
Asked to give a single piece of advice to Musk going forward, Roth paused for the briefest of moments.
“Humility goes a really long way,” he said.
Twitter did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
– CNN’s Donie O’Sullivan contributed to this report
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Kyiv says it ‘won’t let Putin steal Christmas’ as Russian attacks threaten bleak winter in Ukraine | CNN
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Kyiv, Ukraine
CNN
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The mayor of Kyiv has said the city “cannot let Putin steal our Christmas” as Ukrainians prepare to tentatively celebrate the festive season with darkened trees while Russian airstrikes knock out power and wreak havoc on critical infrastructure.
Christmas trees will be erected across the Ukrainian capital to mark Christmas and the New Year, Kyiv’s mayor Vitaly Klitschko told Ukrainian news outlet RBC-Ukraine, but energy company YASNO said they will not be illuminated.
Mass events will remain prohibited under martial law, but “no one is going to cancel the New Year and Christmas, and there should be an atmosphere of the New Year,” Klitschko told the network. “We cannot let Putin steal our Christmas.”
His call comes after weeks of sustained aerial attacks on Ukraine’s energy grid, which have left families across the country without electricity, light or water intermittently.
Officials are racing to restore resources quicker than Russia can knock them out. Ukraine’s electricity operator Ukrenergo said Tuesday that it was running at a 30% deficit, 3% higher than the day before, after it had implemented a series of “emergency shutdowns” across the country at “several power plants.”
Kyiv’s Christmas trees will provide a nod to normality in sites across the city, including the famous Sophia Square. Klitschko said they will be installed “to remind our children of the New Year mood.”
“You know, we do not want to take away St. Nicholas from children,” he said.
But YASNO has clarified that the trees would erected but without lights. In a short statement on Facebook the company said: “We do not know how about you, but we are glad that there will be [trees] and a decision on the absence of illumination on them.”
YASNO cited the load a full illumination would place on the Ukrainian grid, saying it will “reduce a significant additional load on the grid. And, consequently, reduce the number of blackouts.”
Given deteriorating weather conditions, power usage is on the rise, Ukrenergo said, saying that it hoped the power deficit would reduce as “units return to operation.” Seven waves of Russian missiles contributed to the latest round of outages, it claimed. CNN is unable to independently verify the number of missile waves.
But the race to plug gaps in the power grid is likely to be a recurrent theme as Ukrainians brace for a cold and dark winter. As recently as Sunday, Kyiv had “almost completely restored” its power, water, heat, internet and network coverage, the Kyiv city military administration said at the time.
Speaking ahead of a NATO foreign ministers’ meeting in Bucharest, the chief of the military alliance said Russian President Vladimir Putin was “trying to use winter as a weapon of war.”
NATO allies have delivered generators to help Ukraine restore its collapsed energy infrastructure, Jens Stoltenberg said, but he added he expected the message from the foreign ministers to be that allies “need to do more,” including providing Ukraine with more air defense systems and ammunition.
And Ukrainian first lady Olena Zelenska has urged the international community to remain focused on the conflict as the festive season approaches.
“We do hope that the approaching season of Christmas doesn’t make you forget about our tragedy and get used to our suffering,” she said in a BBC radio interview on Tuesday, while on a visit to London.
“I realize that nine months is a very long time, and Ukrainians are very tired of this war, but we have no choice in the matter. We are fighting for our lives. The British public do have a choice: They can get used to our tragedy and concentrate on their own important things in life,” she said.
Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky has meanwhile appealed to local authorities, including in Kyiv, to do more to build-out his government’s “invincibility points” – pop-up stations offering shelter and services, such as power charging facilities, internet connections, and hot water.
Zelensky criticized the program’s rollout, especially in the capital where he said only some sites were working properly. “Other points still need to be improved, to put it mildly,” he said. “Kyiv residents need more protection.”
And the Kyiv Regional Clinical Hospital, one of Ukraine’s largest hospitals, was last week on the verge of moving patients undergoing dialysis treatment, which requires an uninterrupted water supply, Vitaliy Vlasiuk, the deputy head of Kyiv region military administration, said in a telephone interview.
“Unfortunately when the power goes off in Kyiv, the central water supply also often fails,” Vlasiuk said. “A lack of water supply is critical.”
Meanwhile, the United Nations has said that the situation in the southern Ukrainian cities of Mykolaiv and Kherson remains “dire” and “critical.” Nearly a quarter of a million people in Mykolaiv alone face a lack of heat, water and power.
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Elon Musk claims Apple has ‘threatened to withhold’ Twitter from its app store | CNN Business
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CNN Business
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Elon Musk on Monday claimed that Apple has “threatened” to pull Twitter from its iOS app store, a move that could be devastating to the company Musk just acquired for $44 billion.
“Apple
(AAPL) has also threatened to withhold Twitter from its App Store, but won’t tell us why,” Musk said in one of several tweets Monday taking aim at Apple
(AAPL) and its CEO for alleged moves that could undermine Twitter’s business.In another tweet, Musk claimed that Apple has mostly stopped advertising on Twitter. “Do they hate free speech in America,” he said, in an apparent reference to his oft-stated desire to bolster his idea of free speech on the platform. “What’s going on here [Apple CEO Tim Cook]?” Musk added in a follow-up tweet. He also criticized Apple’s size, claimed it engages in “censorship,” and called out the 30% transaction fee Apple charges large app developers to be listed in its app store.
The tweetstorm highlights the tenuous relationship between Musk and Apple, which along with Google serves as the major gatekeepers for mobile applications. Long before taking over Twitter, the Tesla CEO said that when the car company was struggling, he considered selling the company to Apple, but that Cook refused to take a meeting with him.
Removal from Apple’s app store, or that of Google, would be detrimental to Twitter’s business, which is already struggling with a loss of advertisers following Musk’s takeover and a rocky initial attempt at expanding its subscription business.
Apple did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Musk’s tweets. The company has previously shown it’s willing to remove apps from its app store over concerns about their ability to moderate harmful content or if they attempt to circumvent the cut Apple takes from in-app purchases and subscriptions.
In January 2021, Apple removed Parler, an app popular with conservatives, including some members of the far right, from its app store following the US Capitol attack over concerns about the platform’s ability to detect and moderate hate speech and incitement. Parler was returned to Apple’s app store three months later after updating its content moderation practices.
In its official app store review guidelines, Apple lists various safety parameters that apps must adhere to in order to be included in the store, including an ability to prevent “content that is offensive, insensitive, upsetting, intended to disgust, in exceptionally poor taste, or just plain creepy” such as hate speech, pornography and terrorism. “If you’re looking to shock and offend people, the App Store isn’t the right place for your app,” the guidelines state.
Various civil society groups, researchers and other industry watchers have raised concerns about Twitter’s ability to effectively moderate harmful content and maintain the platform’s safety following widespread layoffs and mass employee exits at the company. Musk has also claimed he wants to amplify “free speech” on the platform and has begun to restore some accounts that were previously banned or suspended for repeatedly violating Twitter’s rules. Musk himself has shared a conspiracy theory and several other controversial tweets since taking over as Twitter’s owner.
Musk, long a prolific and antagonistic tweeter, has not let up at all since taking over the company. And what it may have lost in revenue, he has claimed it has made up for in engagement. Part of the strategy appears to be relentlessly taking aim at enemies, either of him personally or of “free speech.”
In an interview with CBS earlier this month, Cook was asked whether there are any ways in which Twitter could change that would cause Apple to remove it from the app store. “They say that they’re going to continue to moderate and so … I count on them to do that,” Cook responded. “Because I don’t think that anybody really wants hate speech on their platform. So I’m counting on them to continue to do that.”
In an op-ed published in the New York Times last week, Twitter’s former head of trust and safety, Yoel Roth, who left the company earlier this month, suggested that Twitter had already begun to receive calls from app store operators following Musk’s takeover. Roth said the company’s failure to adhere to Google and Apple’s app store rules could be “catastrophic.”
And last weekend, the head of Apple’s app store, Phil Schiller, deleted his Twitter account.
While the state of Apple and Twitter’s relationship is unclear, the iPhone maker was running Black Friday ads on the platform as recently as last Thursday, according to posts viewed by CNN.
Many companies have pulled back on digital ad spending in recent months as the economy declined, and Twitter has likely always only been a small portion of Apple’s ad budget. Apple’s impact on Twitter, however, could be much more significant, including if Musk succeeds in shifting its core business to being more reliant on subscription revenue, and potentially has to pay a 30% cut to Apple.
In one tweet Monday, Musk asked his nearly 120 million followers if they know “Apple puts a secret 30% tax on everything you buy through their App Store?” In another tweet, he posted a picture of a highway exit: one lane headed toward “pay 30%,” the other pointed toward “go to war.” An old car labeled “Elon” skidded toward the latter.
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At the heart of China’s protests against zero-Covid, young people cry for freedom | CNN
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A version of this story appeared in CNN’s Meanwhile in China newsletter, a three-times-a-week update exploring what you need to know about the country’s rise and how it impacts the world. Sign up here.
CNN
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For the first time in decades, thousands of people have defied Chinese authorities to protest at universities and on the streets of major cities, demanding to be freed not only from incessant Covid tests and lockdowns, but strict censorship and the Communist Party’s tightening grip over all aspects of life.
Across the country, “want freedom” has become a rallying cry for a groundswell of protests mainly led by the younger generation, some too young to have taken part in previous acts of open dissent against the government.
“Give me liberty or give me death!” crowds by the hundreds shouted in several cities, according to videos circulating online, as vigils to mark the deaths of at least 10 people in a fire in Xinjiang spiraled into political rallies.
Videos circulating online seem to suggest China’s strict zero-Covid policy initially prevented emergency workers from accessing the scene, angering residents across the country who have endured three years of varying Covid controls.
Some protesters chanted for free speech, democracy, the rule of law, human rights, and other political demands across cities from the eastern financial hub of Shanghai to the capital Beijing, the southern metropolis of Guangzhou and Chengdu in the west.
CNN has verified protests in 16 locations, with reports of others held in dozens of other cities and universities across the country.
Protesters take to Hong Kong’s streets in solidarity with mainland
While protests in several parts of China appear to have largely dispersed peacefully over the weekend, some met a stronger response from authorities – and security has been tightened across cities in a country were authorities have far-reaching surveillance and security capabilities.
In Beijing, a heavy police presence was apparent on Monday evening, a day after protests broke out there. Police vehicles, many parked with their lights flashing, lined eerily quiet streets throughout parts of the capital, including near Liangmaqiao in the city’s central Chaoyang district, where a large crowd of protesters had gathered Sunday night.
When asked Monday whether “the widespread display of anger and frustration” seen across the country could prompt China to move away from its zero-Covid approach, a Foreign Ministry spokesman dismissed suggestions of dissent.
“What you mentioned does not reflect what actually happened,” said spokesperson Zhao Lijian, who added that authorities had been “making adjustments” to their Covid policies based on “realities on the ground.”
“We believe that with the leadership of the Chinese Communist Party and the Chinese people our fight against Covid-19 will be successful,” he said.
In a symbolic protest against ever-tightening censorship, young demonstrators across China held up sheets of white paper – a metaphor for the countless critical posts, news articles and outspoken social media accounts that were wiped from the internet.
“I think in a just society, no one should be criminalized for their speech. There shouldn’t be only one voice in our society – we need a variety of voices,” a Beijing protester told CNN in the early hours of Monday as he marched down the city’s Third Ring Road with a thin pile of white A4 paper.
“I hope in the future, I will no longer be holding a white piece of paper for what I really want to express,” said the protester, who CNN is not naming due to concerns about repercussions for speaking out.
The United Nations on Monday urged Chinese authorities to guarantee people’s “right to demonstrate peacefully,” Secretary General spokesperson Stephane Dujarric said at a daily briefing.
Britain’s Foreign Secretary James Cleverly said China’s ruling Communist Party should “take notice” of the protests.
“Protests against the Chinese government are rare. And so when they do happen, I think it’s worth us taking note, but more importantly, I think it’s incumbent on the Chinese government to take notice of its own people,” Cleverly told reporters.
Throughout the weekend, censors moved swiftly to scrub videos and photos of the protests from the Chinese internet, though the startling images made headlines worldwide.
In online commentaries, Chinese state media made no mention of the protests, instead focusing on the strengths of Beijing’s anti-Covid policies, emphasizing they were both “scientific and effective.”
But to many protesters, the demonstrations are about much more than Covid – they’re bringing together many liberal-minded young people whose attempts to speak out might otherwise be thwarted by strict online censorship.
A Shanghai resident in their 20s who took part in the candlelight vigil in the early hours of Sunday said they were greeted by other young people holding white papers, flowers and shouting “want freedom” as they walked toward the makeshift memorial.
“My friends and I have all experienced Shanghai’s lockdown, and the so-called ‘iron fist’ (of the state) has fallen on all of us,” they told CNN, “That night, I felt that I could finally do something. I couldn’t sit still, I had to go.”
They broke into tears quietly in the crowd as the chants demanding freedom grew louder.
“At that moment, I felt I’m not alone,” they said. “I realized that I’m not the only one who thinks this way.”
In some cases, the protests have taken on an even more defiant tone and openly called for political change.
During the first night of the demonstrations in Shanghai, a crowd shouted “Step down, Xi Jinping! Step down, Communist Party!” in an unprecedented, direct challenge to the top leader. On Sunday night, some protesters again chanted for the removal of Xi.
In Chengdu, the protesters did not name Xi, but their message was hard to miss. “Opposition to dictatorship!” chanted hundreds of people packing the bustling river banks in a popular food and shopping district on Sunday evening, according to videos and a participant.
“We don’t want lifelong rulers. We don’t want emperors!” they shouted in a thinly veiled reference to the Chinese leader, who last month began a norm-shattering third term in office.
According to the participant, the crowd also protested against revisions to the party charter and the state constitution – which enabled Xi to further cement his hold on power and scrap presidential term limits.
Much like in Shanghai, the gathering started as a small candlelight vigil for people killed in the fire in Urumqi on Thursday.
But as more people gathered, the vigil turned into a louder arena to air political grievances.
“Everyone started shouting these slogans very naturally,” the participant said. “It is so rare that we have such a large-scale gathering and demonstration. The words of mourning didn’t feel enough, and we had to shout out some words that we want to say.”
To her, the experience of suffocating censorship inevitably fuels desire for “institutional and spiritual freedom,” and mourning the victims and demanding democracy and freedom are two “inseparable” things.
“We all know that the reason why we have to keep undergoing lockdowns and Covid tests is that this is a political movement, not a scientific and logical response of epidemic prevention,” she said. “That’s why we have more political demands other than lifting lockdowns.”
The Chengdu protester said she felt encouraged by the wave of demonstrations sweeping the country.
“It turns out there are so many people who are wide awake,” she said. “I feel like I can see a glimmer of light coming through ahead.”
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These are the end-of-year political showdowns that will help decide America’s future | CNN Politics
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America is heading for a year-end political collision that will set the stage for showdowns between the new Republican-led House and the Democrats who still wield power in the Senate and White House.
A fraught coda to the political battles of 2022 will decide who holds the government purse strings and how far the US will go in funding Ukraine’s war with Russia. It will showcase extremism in the incoming GOP-run House and the size of the Democratic Senate majority. And the 2024 presidential campaign is grinding into gear with ex-President Donald Trump stirring controversy on multiple fronts and President Joe Biden pondering a reelection bid.
In Congress, a lame-duck session will see standoffs that could risk a government shutdown and over the must-lift US government borrowing limit, with grave implications for the economy.
Meanwhile, House Republican leader Kevin McCarthy is scrambling to solidify support in his bid to become speaker in January, with a smaller-than-expected incoming majority giving his extreme pro-Trump colleagues extra power.
And the House January 6 committee is poised to soon unveil its final report on Trump’s negligence and incitement leading up to the US Capitol insurrection. The findings, amid signs of acrimony inside the panel, could further color sentiment towards the ex-president as he seeks to build momentum after an underwhelming 2024 campaign launch – and as powerful donors, as well as prominent Republicans considering their own White House ambitions, are openly castigating Trump for hosting and then failing to disavow White nationalist and Holocaust denier Nick Fuentes. The special counsel probe into his hoarding of classified documents and 2020 election chicanery is also gathering pace.
Trump is also one of the factors playing into the Georgia Senate runoff election on December 6 that could give Democrats slender breathing room in the chamber or extend the 50-50 split broken only by Vice President Kamala Harris’ tie-breaking vote that made Biden’s agenda so precarious for the last two years.
These next few weeks will show the country has failed to fully process the trauma of the Trump presidency or to arrive at the sense of normality that Biden promised during the 2020 campaign – even as the two rivals maneuver ahead of a possible rematch in 2024. They will also stress the near impossibility of governing at a time when America is deeply split between two political poles since big questions are likely to get pushed down the road.
Big issues not solved this December will be pitched into an even more volatile atmosphere by an aggressive GOP-controlled House primed to slam the White House with partisan investigations.
There’s also the renewed threat of a freight rail strike that could again clog supply lines and fresh Democratic calls for more action on gun control after a tragic new spate of mass shootings. The Democrats have a massive agenda before relinquishing the House but have little political room or time to accomplish it.
Still, Congress is expected to mark one milestone in the coming weeks. The Senate is expected to vote to codify rights to same-sex and interracial marriage after a procedural vote on the measure earlier in November demonstrated strong bipartisan support.
Here is what to look out for in the coming weeks.
Congress must pass a bill to fund the government by December 16 or risk a partial government shutdown. The administration has asked for $37.7 billion in aid for Ukraine, $10 billion for extended efforts to combat Covid-19 and an unspecified amount for disaster relief after hurricanes hit Florida and Puerto Rico.
Democrats will remain in control of the House until the new Congress in 2023, but a major spending package will also still likely require agreement from 10 Republicans to beat a Senate filibuster. GOP senators are especially skeptical about the administration’s warnings that the US will suffer a relapse in its exit from the pandemic without billions more dollars in funding. And even getting a Democratic majority in the chamber to sign on could be a challenge since West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin could make another stand against another spurt of government spending, especially since he would face a tough race if he decides to run for reelection in 2024.
There is likely sufficient support for new aid to Ukraine in the Senate, but funding President Volodymyr Zelensky’s war for democracy against Russia is set to become far less routine next year as pro-Trump House members, like Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, are vowing to halt aid needed for vital weapons and ammunition. They want the cash sent to reinforce the southern US border instead.
The most serious showdown of the new Congress could come over raising the government’s borrowing limit that is due to be reached sometime next year. Failure to do so could trash faith in America’s willingness to pay its bills and send shockwaves through the US and global economy.
McCarthy has already warned he will require spending concessions on key programs in return for allowing the government to borrow more money – a scenario that triggered several damaging fiscal showdowns during the Obama administration.
To avoid a repeat, Democrats could use the waning days of their control of both chambers to raise the debt ceiling themselves, using a budgetary process known as reconciliation that could bypass a Senate filibuster. But the process is hugely complex, in terms of congressional choreography and time.
Democratic Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said before Thanksgiving that the “best way to get it done, the way it’s been done the last two or three times is bipartisan.” But Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell didn’t express much interest in Schumer’s invitation sit down to sort out the issue, saying “I don’t think the debt limit issue is until sometime next year.”
The House Republican leader has a big problem – finding the votes in the new GOP majority to fulfill his dream of becoming speaker.
McCarthy staked out a series of hardline positions heading into the holiday in an apparent effort to appease pro-Trump lawmakers after several declared they won’t vote for him. The California lawmaker can afford to lose only a few GOP votes if he wants to be speaker.
During a trip to the border last week, he warned Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas to resign or face possible impeachment next year. And he said he’ll follow through on a threat to throw high-profile Democrats, such as Reps. Adam Schiff, Eric Swalwell and Ilhan Omar, off of top committees next year.
Speaking on CNN’s “State of the Union” on Sunday, Schiff accused McCarthy of adopting extremist positions for his own naked political gain.
“Kevin McCarthy has no ideology, has no core set of beliefs,” Schiff told CNN’s Dana Bash, saying the top House Republican will do “whatever he needs to do to get the votes of the QAnon caucus within his conference.”
McCarthy’s struggle to confirm his speakership lies partly in the smaller-than-expected GOP majority following the lack of an expected “red wave” in this month’s election. And it could be a preview of a volatile majority and the extent to which his tenure, if he does win the speakership, will be hostage to the whims of the far-right Freedom Caucus and pro-Trump lawyers who want to use their majority as a weapon against Biden. But McCarthy also has to worry that two years of relentless, partisan investigations could turn off voters and lead them to snatch away the party’s fragile edge in the House in the 2024 election.
But before the 2024 election gets into full swing, there’s unfinished business from 2022. Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock and Republican challenger Herschel Walker go head-to-head in a runoff on December 6 after neither broke the 50 percent threshold the first time around.
Former President Barack Obama, who was the most effective Democratic messenger in the midterms, is due to campaign for Warnock on Thursday. Walker’s chances could depend on whether he is able to win over a significant block of Republican voters who couldn’t bring themselves to vote for him despite backing Republican Gov. Brian Kemp. Walker’s problem is that he’s a protégé of Trump, from whom Kemp kept a good distance.
After Trump announced his 2024 campaign days after the midterms, Warnock and his supporters started framing the runoff as the first chance for Democrats to stop Trump’s bid to return to the White House. Their argument recalled complaints by many Republicans that Trump’s intervention in two 2020 Senate runoffs in Georgia cost the GOP the chance to control the Senate.
This might all be about one seat. But holding the Senate 51-49 rather than 50-50 would be huge for Democrats because it would insulate them from the incapacitation of one of their members and could diminish the power of Manchin, who has been a stubborn brake on Biden’s aspirations for two years.
The former president finds himself under unusual political pressure inside the Republican Party he has dominated since 2015. His backing of several losing, election-denying and unpolished candidates in the midterms angered many key figures in the party. His hosting of Fuentes at the same time as rapper Kanye West at his Mar-a-Lago estate worried Republicans who fear that while he may be a formidable candidate for the GOP presidential nomination, Trump’s empathy for the far-right will again doom him before a national electorate.
Another potential Republican presidential candidate, outgoing Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson, condemned the incident as “very troubling” on CNN’s “State of the Union.”
“I don’t think it’s a good idea for a leader that’s setting an example for the country or the party to meet with (an) avowed racist or anti-Semite,” Hutchinson said. “You want to diminish their strength, not empower them. Stay away from it.”
Trump acknowledged the meeting in a Truth Social post, but claimed he knew nothing about Fuentes. He also did not disavow him or his views.
This latest storm comes as the new special counsel Jack Smith, blasted by Trump as a “political hitman,” gets up to speed on the serious legal challenges facing the ex-president, who’s suffered several recent defeats in court in his bid to delay accountability. Trump’s early declaration of a campaign – apparently to quell the buzz around possible alternative Republican candidates like Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis – leaves the former president needing a way to create some traction in December and in the early months of the year when he might find it hardest to win political exposure.
The opening stages of the campaign will begin to answer the central question of Trump’s 2024 run – whether his so far rock solid appeal to the GOP base will counter concerns in the wider party about his broader viability.
Trump’s decision to jump in the race has also increased scrutiny of whether Biden, who turned 80 earlier this month, will decide to run for reelection. The president was asked by CNN’s Betsy Klein during his holiday vacation in Nantucket how his conversations about 2024 were going with his family.
“We’re not having any. We’re celebrating,” Biden replied.
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Schiff says January 6 committee will decide what goes in the final report ‘in a collaborative manner’ | CNN Politics
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CNN
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House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff, who also sits on the House committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection, said Sunday that he doesn’t believe the committee’s upcoming report would focus almost entirely on Donald Trump.
Schiff, a California Democrat, told CNN’s Dana Bash on “State of the Union,” that he doesn’t believe a recent Washington Post story about how the contents of the report could potentially leave out investigations in other areas.
“No, I mean – I certainly hope not,” Schiff said. “I would like to see our report be as broad and inclusive as possible. We are discussing as a committee among the members what belongs in the body of the report, what belongs in the appendices of the report, what is beyond the scope of our investigation, and we’ll reach those decisions in a collaborative manner.”
Schiff also defended the committee in response to a statement from Wyoming Republican Rep. Liz Cheney’s spokesperson accusing staffers of trying to slip “liberal biases” into the report.
“I don’t think the back and forth is particularly helpful to the committee and I don’t want to engage in it. We’re gonna get to consensus on the report. We’re very close to that now. We’re close to the putting down the pen,” Schiff said.
Bash asked about tension surrounding Cheney, asking Schiff about a quote in the Post story in which one former staffer said that people working for the committee became “discouraged” when they felt the investigation had become a “Cheney 2024 campaign affair.”
“I’ve never viewed it that way,” Schiff said, defending Cheney. “And I think her role on the committee has been indispensable. I have tremendous respect for her and for (Illinois Rep.) Adam Kinzinger. They’ve shown a lot of courage and backbone, something in very short supply in the GOP these days. So the committee would not have been the same without both of their participation and I have nothing but respect for both of them.”
Schiff also responded to House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy repeatedly saying he plans to strip Schiff of his committees if he becomes Speaker in the next Congress.
“Kevin McCarthy has no ideology, has no core set of beliefs. It’s very hard to not only get to 218 that way, it’s even more difficult to keep 218. That’s his problem,” Schiff said. “So he will misrepresent my record, he’ll misrepresent (California Rep.) Eric Swalwell or (Minnesota Rep.) Ilhan Omar, whatever he needs to do to get the votes of the QAnon caucus within his conference.”
This comes as McCarthy promised he would strip power from Democrats, vowing to kick Omar off the House Foreign Affairs Committee, and Swalwell and Schiff off the House Intelligence Committee.
When asked about comments from Rep. Jim Comer of Kentucky, likely the next chairman of the House Oversight Committee, blaming Schiff for why he doesn’t believe in the credibility of congressional investigations, Schiff defended himself.
“Comer doesn’t believe in the Russia investigation, he doesn’t believe in Ukraine investigation, he doesn’t believe in the investigation of January 6. And why? Because those were investigations of the serial abuse of power by Donald Trump. And Comer and (likely next House Judiciary Chairman Jim) Jordan and McCarthy will do nothing but carry Donald Trump’s water,” Schiff said.
When asked if he would comply with a GOP subpoena in the new Congress, Schiff said: “We’ll have to consider the validity of the subpoena. … But I would certainly view my obligation, the administration’s obligation, to follow the law. And the fact that they have disrespected the law is not a precedent I would hope that would be broadly followed, but we’ll have to look at the legitimacy or lack of legitimacy in what they do.”
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Al-Shabaab terror attack targets Mogadishu hotel frequented by Somali lawmakers, police say | CNN
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Mogadishu
CNN
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The al Qaeda linked terror group al-Shabaab has carried out a suicide attack and stormed a central Mogadishu hotel frequented by Somalia’s ministers and members of parliament, Somali police said Sunday.
Al-Shabaab stormed the Villa Rose hotel near Somalia’s presidential palace following a suicide bombing at the gate at 8 p.m. local time (noon ET), according to police.
Capt. Bishar Ahmed confirmed to CNN that a major attack occurred at the hotel, which lies in a heavily protected zone in downtown Mogadishu, where the state house, ministries and a high-security intelligence prison are also located.
Adam Aw Hirsi, the state minister for the environment, said he escaped the attack.
Police have not released details on the number of casualties. Al-Shabaab claimed responsibility for the attack.
Somalia’s armed forces, backed by the United States, have been carrying out a military campaign against the group since August in parts of southern and central Somalia.
In May, US President Joe Biden decided to redeploy troops to Somalia in support of the local government and to counter al-Shabaab. The move reversed a decision by former President Donald Trump to withdraw all US troops from the country.
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Prior 2021 arrest of Colorado Springs gunman puts spotlight on the politics of red flag laws | CNN
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The prior arrest of the 22-year-old suspected gunman who allegedly opened fire in a Colorado Springs LGBTQ nightclub last weekend has put the spotlight on a state law which can be utilized to temporarily remove gun access from those deemed a danger to themselves or others.
Colorado’s controversial red flag law, also known as an extreme risk protection order, allows law enforcement, family members or a roommate to petition a judge to temporarily seize a person’s firearms if they are deemed a risk. But one caveat is they must start the process.
If the public is uninformed of the potential risk, or rejects gun control measures, or law enforcement refuses to enforce the law, it could be rendered useless, some observers said.
The year before Anderson Lee Aldrich, whose attorneys say uses they/them pronouns, allegedly entered Club Q with an AR-style weapon and a handgun, killing five people and injuring at least 19 others, they were arrested in June 2021 on two counts of felony menacing and three counts of first-degree kidnapping, according to a news release from the El Paso County Sheriff’s Office at the time.
Aldrich allegedly threatened to harm their mother with a homemade bomb and other weapons. But no charges were filed, and the case has since been sealed. It is unclear why the records were sealed.
When asked last week why the red flag law was not used in Aldrich’s case, Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser said it was “too early” to say.
“I don’t have enough information to know exactly what the officers knew,” Weiser said.
The sheriff’s office did not respond to requests for comment, but it does not appear that anyone, including law enforcement, triggered the process to obtain an extreme risk protection order after Aldrich allegedly made the threat.
Law enforcement sources told CNN the suspect purchased the two weapons brought to Club Q, however, police have not provided details about when the transaction took place. Aldrich’s arrest in connection to the bomb threat would not have shown up in background checks, according to the law enforcement sources.
It is unclear whether the state’s red flag law could have been used in Aldrich’s case, or if, ultimately, it would have prevented the mass shooting last weekend.
Following the 2021 arrest, there was an indication Aldrich was someone who posed a risk of harm, Jeffrey Swanson, a professor at Duke University School of Medicine Duke University School of Medicine who led the research group that published the first evaluations of red flag laws, told CNN.
“The law could have been used. It’s a great sort of parable of how you can pass a law and if it’s not implemented or used, it’s not going to do any good,” he continued.
Red flag laws can be useful in cases where an individual shows an inclination to harm themselves or others or have had encounters with police, but charges were never pursued, according to Swanson.
“It’s designed for cases where there’s a clear indication of someone who poses an imminent risk to others or themselves, but otherwise would be qualified to buy a gun,” he said.
The law allows for a type of restraining order, which does not have any criminal penalties associated with it, unless a person violates the order, according to Allison Anderman, senior counsel and director of local policy at the Giffords Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence.
Under the law, a court can issue an order valid for up to a year, restraining a person from accessing guns if the petitioner has met the “standard of proof” to demonstrate a credible and substantial risk, said Anderman, who worked with Colorado lawmakers as they were drafting the bill.
“It’s minimally invasive, yet it restrains a person from obtaining lethal weapons if they’re in a period of crisis,” Anderman told CNN. “And when the laws are used, they work.”
Extreme risk laws have been shown to reduce firearm suicide rates in Connecticut by 14% and Indiana by 7.5%, according to the Giffords Law Center, data up to 2015.
After the 2021 arrest, Aldrich was booked into the El Paso County Jail, the same facility where they were transferred on Tuesday after the Club Q shooting. El Paso County, home to Colorado Springs, has openly rejected the state’s red flag law.
During the debate in 2019 over the Colorado bill, opponents argued the law would allow vindictive people to take guns away from others for no good reason, CNN previously reported.
The formal legal process to temporarily remove a person’s firearms if they are deemed a risk to themselves or others under the state’s law, which went into effect in 2020, has never been initiated by the El Paso County Sheriff’s Office, according to reporting by The Colorado Sun.
Sgt. Jason Garrett, a spokesman for the sheriff’s office, told the Sun Wednesday the office has never requested an extreme risk protection order but did not respond to a question asking why it has not been used, according to the Sun.
El Paso County Sheriff Bill Elder, who declined an interview request from The Sun, publicly denounced the law in 2019, telling CNN affiliate KOAA that it violates citizens’ constitutional rights.
“We’re going to be taking personal property away from people without having due process,” Elder told KOAA.
“We’re not going to pursue these on our own, meaning the sheriff’s office isn’t going to run over and try to get a court order,” Elder told KOAA in 2019. However, Elder said if a judge issues an order, “then it is up to law enforcement to execute that order.”
CNN has reached out to the El Paso County Sheriff’s Office for comment but did not receive a response.
In 2019, a year before the law came into effect, the Board of El Paso County Commissioners approved a resolution to designate the county a so-called Second Amendment Sanctuary. The county was among dozens in the state to make the declaration, pledging to “actively resist” the bill, arguing it violates Second Amendment rights.
“It’s a highly suspect action from beginning to end,” said Robert Spitzer, a professor in the political science department at SUNY Cortland, referring to the county’s decision to declare itself a Second Amendment Sanctuary. “But it raises the question of whether the police, if they had information, would be willing to take action on their own.”
Spitzer said the Second Amendment Sanctuary movement, prompted by the enactment of the red flag law in Colorado, “really has nothing to do with actual law and a lot more to do with a statement of political defiance.”
There is a “very big question mark” on whether the sanctuary declaration had a tangible effect on law enforcement in the county or not, Spitzer said. “But the implication certainly suggests that it could have,” he added.
One of the major reasons red flag laws are not enforced is because people are not aware of them or do not know what steps to take when someone shows signs of dangerous behavior.
“It’s incumbent on the stakeholders, officials in a state when a law is passed, to have careful thought and some investment and thinking about how to implement this,” said Swanson. “It involves educating the right people about it and law enforcement are key.”
In his response to a question about red flag laws last week, after the Club Q shooting, Colorado Attorney General Weiser said state officials are “working hard to educate and to bring more awareness about the Red Flag Law.”
“We’ve got to do better and we’re going to work on educating law enforcement to make sure that again, for everyone who is [a] responsible gun owner, this red flag law is not about you. This is about people who are dangerous, who we know should not have firearms,” Weiser added.
Another barrier to the law can be police discretion, according to Spritzer. The nature of policing relies on a “great deal of discretion,” which allows officers to decide whether to give a speeding ticket, for example, or not to use an existing law because they don’t support it.
“It opens the door to perhaps not enforcing laws that could have a profound effect on people’s lives and safety,” Spritzer said.
People who have an involuntary commitment history from years ago are banned from buying or possessing firearms, even if they aren’t dangerous. But those who are alienated, display anger, impulsivity or an inclination to harm others might not have a record that disqualifies them from buying a gun, Swanson said.
“What do we know about people who have impulsive anger and possess a gun? If you could think about that compared to the tiny group of people who are getting these risk protection orders, there’s a long way to go,” Swanson said.
“It’s just too small a pebble to make much of a ripple in such a big pond,” he added.
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Iran’s supreme leader praises paramilitary for crackdown on ‘rioters’ and ‘thugs’ | CNN
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CNN
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Iran’s Supreme Leader has praised the country’s Basij paramilitary force for its role in the deadly crackdown on anti-regime protesters.
Meeting with Basij personnel in Tehran Saturday, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei described the popular protest movement as “rioters” and “thugs” backed by foreign forces and praised “innocent” Basij fighters for protecting the nation.
The Basij is a wing of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard deployed to the streets as protests have swelled since September.
The protest movement was initially sparked by the death of 22-year-old woman Mahsa Amini in the custody of Iran’s morality police.
Amnesty International says the Basij have been ordered to “mercilessly confront” protesters.
“When facing the enemy on the field of battle the Basij has always shown itself to be courageous, not afraid of the enemy,” the Supreme Leader said Saturday.
“You saw in the most recent events, our innocent and oppressed Basijis became the targets of oppression so that they wouldn’t allow the nation to become the targets of rioters and thugs and those on the [enemy] payroll, whether wittingly or unwittingly. They gave of themselves to free others,” Khamenei said.
Khamenei’s words come a day after United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Chief Volker Turk warned Iran is in a “full-fledged human rights crisis” due to the clampdown on anti-regime dissidents.
Turk called for “independent, impartial and transparent investigative processes” into violations of human rights in Iran during a special session of the UN Human Rights Council on Thursday.
He told the 47-member states council in Geneva that security forces have reportedly responded to protests by using lethal force against unarmed demonstrators and bystanders who posed “no threat.”
More than 14,000 people, including children, have been arrested in connection with the protests, according to Turk. He said that at least 21 of them currently face the death penalty and six have already received death sentences.
Among those arrested are two well-known Iranian actors, Hengameh Ghaziani and Katayoun Riahi, who were taken into custody on separate occasions for publicly backing the nationwide protests, according to the semi-official Tasnim News Agency.
The Islamic Republic has been gripped by a wave of anti-government protests sparked by the death of Amini allegedly for not wearing her hijab properly.
Authorities have since unleashed a deadly crackdown on demonstrators, with reports of forced detentions and physical abuse being used to target the country’s Kurdish minority group. In a recent CNN investigation, covert testimony revealed sexual violence against protesters, including boys, in Iran’s detention centers since the start of the unrest.
The unprecedented national uprising has taken hold of more than 150 cities and 140 universities in all 31 provinces of Iran, according to Turk.
The violent response of Iran’s security forces toward protesters has shaken diplomatic ties between Tehran and Western leaders.
The White House on Wednesday imposed its latest round of sanctions on three officials in Iran’s Kurdish region, after US Secretary Antony Blinken said he was “greatly concerned that Iranian authorities are reportedly escalating violence against protesters.”
During an interview with Indian broadcaster NDTV on Thursday, Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister Ali Bagheri Kani said foreign powers were intervening in Iranian internal affairs and creating “fallacious narratives.”
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Elon Musk says he will begin restoring previously banned Twitter accounts next week | CNN Business
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CNN Business
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Elon Musk said Thursday that he will begin restoring most previously banned accounts on Twitter starting next week, in his most wide-reaching move yet to undo the social media platform’s policy of permanently suspending users who repeatedly violated its rules.
“The people have spoken,” Musk tweeted on Thursday. “Amnesty begins next week. Vox Populi, Vox Dei.”
The announcement comes after Musk on Wednesday polled his followers about whether to offer “general amnesty to suspended accounts, provided that they have not broken the law or engaged in egregious spam.”
The poll, which closed around 12:45 pm ET on Thursday, finished with 72.4% voting in favor of the proposition and 27.6% voting against. The poll garnered more than 3 million votes on Twitter.
It is not immediately clear how Musk and his team at Twitter will sort out which accounts had been banned for illegal or spam content versus other violations, nor how many total accounts will be restored.
Musk announced last week that he would restore the account of Donald Trump after another poll he posted on the platform ended slightly in favor of returning the former President, who had been banned following the January 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol, to the platform. Musk has also restored the accounts of several other controversial, previously banned or suspended users, including conservative Canadian podcaster Jordan Peterson, right-leaning satire website Babylon Bee, comedian Kathy Griffin and Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene.
Shortly after acquiring Twitter, Musk said he would create a “content moderation council” with “widely diverse viewpoints,” and that no major content decisions would be made until it was in place. There is no evidence that such a group has been formed or was involved in Musk’s replatforming decisions. Instead, after Musk restored Trump’s account, he tweeted “Vox Populi, Vox Dei,” Latin for “the voice of the people is the voice of god.”
Prior to Musk’s takeover, Twitter typically imposed “strikes” that corresponded with suspensions for escalating periods of time when users repeatedly broke its rules against Covid-19 or civic integrity misinformation, giving users up to nine chances before they were booted from the platform. The platform also had other enforcement mechanisms — such as labeling a tweet or reducing its reach — for its additional rules including those prohibiting terrorism, threats of violence against individuals or groups of people, targeted abuse or harassment, publishing another person’s private information, and content promoting abuse or self-harm.
Musk has previously said he disagreed with Twitter’s policy of permanent bans.
“New Twitter policy is freedom of speech, not freedom of reach,” Musk said in a tweet last week, echoing an approach that is something of an industry standard. “Negative/hate tweets will be max deboosted & demonetized, so no ads or other revenue to Twitter.”
The decision to restore countless previously banned accounts could further alienate Twitter’s advertisers, many of whom have fled the platform in the wake of the chaos since Musk took over and out of fear that their ads could end up running alongside objectionable content. Musk has said the departure of key Twitter advertisers in recent weeks has led to a “massive drop in revenue” for the company.
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CNN projects Rep. Mary Peltola will win race for Alaska House seat, thwarting Sarah Palin’s political comeback again | CNN Politics
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CNN
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Alaska Rep. Mary Peltola, the Democrat who won a special election that sent her to Congress this summer, will once again thwart former Gov. Sarah Palin’s bid for a political comeback. CNN projected Wednesday that Peltola will win the race for Alaska’s at-large House seat after the state’s ranked choice voting tabulation, defeating Palin and Republican Nick Begich III.
CNN also projected that Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski will win reelection. She’ll defeat Republican Kelly Tshibaka and Democrat Patricia Chesbro. CNN had previously projected that a Republican would hold the seat.
And Republican Gov. Mike Dunleavy will win reelection, CNN projected. He defeats Democrat Les Gara and independent Bill Walker. Dunleavy won more than 50% of first choice votes, so ranked choice tabulation was not required.
In Alaska, voters in 2020 approved a switch to a ranked choice voting system. It is in place in 2022 for the first time.
Under the new system, Alaska holds open primaries and voters cast ballots for one candidate of any party, and the top four finishers advance. In the general election, voters rank those four candidates, from their first choice to their fourth choice.
If no candidate tops 50% of the first choice votes, the state then tabulates ranked choice results – dropping the last-place finisher and shifting those votes to voters’ second choices. If, after one round of tabulation, there is still no winner, the third-place finisher is dropped and the same vote-shifting process takes place.
SE Cupp: Palin followed fame but Alaskans were turned off (September 2022)
Peltola first won the House seat when a similar scenario played out in the August special election to fill the remaining months of the term of the late Rep. Don Young, a Republican who died in March after representing Alaska in the House for 49 years.
Offering herself as a supporter of abortion rights and a salmon fishing advocate, Peltola emerged as the victor in the August special election after receiving just 40% of the first-place votes. This time, she has a larger share, while Palin’s and Begich’s support has shrunk.
The House race has showcased the unusual alliances in Alaska politics. Though Peltola is a Democrat, she is also close with Palin – whose tenure as governor overlapped with Peltola’s time as a state lawmaker in Juneau. The two have warmly praised each other. Palin has criticized the ranked choice voting system. But she never took aim at Peltola in personal terms.
The Republicans in the race, Palin and Begich, both urged voters to “rank the red” and list the two GOP contenders first and second.
But Peltola had quickly won over many in the state after her special election victory – in part because she has deep relationships with a number of Republicans.
Peltola told CNN in an interview that she and Palin had bonded in Juneau over being new mothers, and that Palin’s family had given Peltola’s family its backyard trampoline when Palin resigned from the governor’s office.
At an Alaska Federation of Natives candidate forum in October, Palin effusively praised Peltola.
“Doggone it, I never have anything to gripe about. I just wish she’d convert on over to the other party. But other than that, love her,” Palin said of Peltola.
Peltola’s family was also close to the family of the late Young. Peltola’s father and Young had taught school together decades ago and were hunting buddies, Peltola said in an interview.
In the race for Alaska’s Senate seat, Murkowski, a moderate Republican, was targeted by former President Donald Trump after she voted to convict him during his impeachment trial in the wake of the January 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol. Murkowski also broke with Trump on a number of key votes during his presidency.
Trump endorsed Tshibaka, and a cadre of former Trump campaign officials worked on her campaign. She was also endorsed by the Alaska Republican Party, which opted to back the more conservative candidate in a state Trump won by 10 percentage points in 2020.
But Murkowski had built a broad coalition in a state where political alliances are often more complicated than they appear. She and Peltola, had publicly said they would rank each other first in their elections.
Chesbro, the Democrat, was among the four candidates who had advanced to the general election. Republican Buzz Kelley also advanced, but dropped out and urged his supporters to vote for Tshibaka.
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Stories of Ukrainian resistance revealed after Kherson pullout | CNN
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Near Kherson city, Ukraine
CNN
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Two Russian soldiers walked down a street in Kherson on a spring evening in early March, just days after Moscow captured the city. The temperature that night was still below freezing and the power was out, leaving the city in complete darkness as the soldiers made their way back to camp after a few drinks.
As one stumbled on, the other stopped to relieve himself on the side of the pavement. Suddenly, a knife was thrust deep into the right side of his neck.
He fell to the grass. Moments later, the second Russian soldier, inebriated and unaware, met the same fate.
“I finished the first one immediately and then I caught up with the other and killed him on the spot,” says Archie, a Ukrainian resistance fighter who described the scene above to CNN.
He says he moved on pure instinct.
“I saw the orcs in uniform and I thought, why not?,” Archie adds, using a derogative term for Russians, as he walks through that same street. “There were no people or light and I seized the moment.”
The 20-year-old is a trained mixed martial arts fighter, with nimble feet and sharp reflexes, who had previously always carried a knife for self-defense, but never killed anyone. CNN is referring to him by his call sign to protect his identity.
“Adrenaline played its role. I didn’t have any fear or time to think,” he says. “For the first few days I felt very bad, but then I realized that they were my enemies. They came to my home to take it from me.”
Archie’s account was backed up by Ukrainian military and intelligence sources who handled communications with him and other partisans. He was one of many resistance fighters in Kherson, a city of 290,000 people before the invasion, which Russia tried to bend but could not break.
People in Kherson made their views clear soon after Russia took over the city on March 2 coming out onto the main square for daily protests, donning the blue and yellow Ukrainian flag.
But Kherson, the first large city and only regional capital Russian troops were able to occupy since the start of the invasion, was an important symbol for Moscow. Dissent could not be tolerated.
Protesters were met with tear gas and gunshots, organisers and the more outspoken residents were arrested and tortured. When peaceful demonstrations didn’t work, the people of Kherson turned to resistance and ordinary citizens like Archie started to take action on their own.
“I wasn’t the only one in Kherson,” Archie says. “There were a lot of clever partisans. At least 10 Russians were killed every night.”
Initially solo operations, like-minded residents began organising themselves in groups, coordinating their actions with the Ukrainian military and intelligence outside the city.
“I have a friend with whom we would drive around the city, looking for gatherings of Russian soldiers,” he says. “We checked their patrol routes and then gave all the information to guys on the frontline and they knew who to pass onto next.”
Russian soldiers weren’t the only ones targeted for assassination. Several Moscow-installed government officials were targeted during the eight months of the Russian occupation. Their faces were printed in posters placed all over the city, promising retribution for their collaboration with the Kremlin, in a psychological war that lasted throughout the occupation.
Many of those promises were kept, with some of those officials gunned down and others blown up in their cars in incidents that pro-Russian local authorities described as “terrorist attacks.”
Archie was arrested by the occupying authorities on May 9, after attending a victory day parade, celebrating the Soviet Union’s win in World War II, wearing a yellow and blue stripe on his t-shirt.
He was taken to a local pre-trial detention facility which had been taken over by the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) and used to torture Ukrainian soldiers, intelligence officers and partisans, according to Archie.
“They beat me, electrocuted me, kicked me and beat me with batons,” Archie recalls. “I can’t say they starved me, but they didn’t give much to eat.”
“Nothing good happened there,” he said.
Archie was lucky enough to be let go after nine days and after being forced to record a video saying he’d agreed to work with the Russian occupiers. His account of what transpired in the facility has been confirmed by Ukrainian military sources and other detainees.
But many others never left, according to Archie and other resistance fighters, as well as Ukrainian military and intelligence sources.
Ihor, who asked CNN not to reveal his last name for his protection, was also held at the facility.
“I was kept here for 11 days and throughout that time I heard screaming from the basement,” the 29-year-old says. “People were tortured, they were beaten with sticks in the arms and legs, cattle prods, even hooked up to batteries and electrocuted or waterboarded with water.”
Ihor was caught transporting weapons and says “luckily” he was only beaten.
“I arrived after the time when people were beaten up to death here,” he recalls. “I was stabbed in the legs with a taser, they use it as a welcome. One of them asked what I’d been brought in for and another two of them started hitting me in the ribs.”
Through his detention, Ihor was able to hide that he was a member of the Kherson resistance and that transporting weapons was not the only thing he did. Ihor says he also supplied intelligence to the Ukrainian military – an activity that would have incurred far more brutal punishment.
“If we found something, saw it, (we) took a picture or a video (and) sent it to Ukrainian forces and then they would decide whether to hit it or not,” he explains.
Among the coordinates he communicated to the Ukrainian military is a warehouse within Kherson city. “The Russian military kept between 20 to 30 vehicles here, there were armored trucks, armored personnel carriers and some Russians lived here,” Ihor says.
Departing Russian forces were quick to hollow out what was left of the prized interior, but the wrecked building bears the marks of the violent strike. Most of the roof has collapsed, its walls lay shattered and broken glass still covers most of the floor. The structure remains in place but in parts its metal has been mangled by the blast.
Ihor used the Telegram messaging app to communicate the building’s coordinates to his military handler, who he referred to as “the smoke.” Along with the information, he sent a video he secretly recorded.
“I turned on the camera, pointed it at the building and then I just walked and talked on the phone while the camera was filming,” he explains. “Afterward I deleted video, of course, because if they were to stop me somewhere and check my videos and pictures there would be questions…”
He sent the information in mid-September and, just a day later, the facility was targeted by Ukrainian artillery.
The United States and NATO have assessed that when Russia began its invasion of Ukraine, the Kremlin expected its forces to be greeted as saviors, welcomed with open arms. Reality failed to live up to expectation, not just in the territories where Moscow’s armies were pushed back, but also in the areas it was able to seize.
The strike on the warehouse which Ihor helped with, is one of many facilitated by Ukrainian partisans inside Kherson working tirelessly and under threat to disrupt Russian activities within the city.
Eight months after it was occupied by Russia, the city of Kherson is now back in Ukrainian hands and Moscow’s armies are on the back foot, forced to withdraw from the western bank of the Dnipro river.
But despite achieving victory here, Ukraine continues to faces almost daily crippling missile strikes almost everywhere else, all while Russian forces continue to press on in the East.
Looking back, Ihor, father to a three-month-old daughter, says he was lucky he wasn’t caught.
“It wasn’t hard, but it was dangerous,” he explains. “If they were to catch me filming such a thing, they would take me in and probably wouldn’t let me come out alive.”
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US military says American troops were at risk from Turkish strike on base in Syria this week | CNN Politics
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CNN
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The US military says American troops were put at risk from a Turkish drone strike Tuesday on a base in Syria.
“We have received additional information that there was a risk to US Troops and personnel,” US Central Command said in a short statement on Wednesday. No US service members were injured in the strike, CENTCOM said. They declined to provide any further information on how many troops were put at risk or where they were located in relation to the attack.
On Wednesday, Joint Chiefs Chair Gen. Mark Milley spoke to his Turkish counterpart, Gen. Yasar Guler. The readout did not offer details of the conversation, but it says the two spoke about “several items of mutual strategic interest.”
The base near Hasakah, Syria, is used by the US-led coalition to defeat ISIS and Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF). The SDF said two of their fighters were killed in the strike.
It’s significant that the US has publicly said American troops were put at risk, because Turkey is a NATO ally and a critical partner for the US in the region. At the same time, the SDF are also US partners and a play a key role in US-led coalition’s mission to defeat ISIS.
In the initial statement about the strike on Tuesday, CENTCOM spokesman Col. Joe Buccino said US troops were not at the base. In a statement on Tuesday Buccino said, “We oppose any military action that destabilizes the situation in Syria. These actions threaten our shared goals, including the continued fight against ISIS to ensure the group can never resurge and threaten the region.”
“Turkey does continue to suffer a legitimate terrorist threat, particularly to their south. They certainly have every right to defend themselves and their citizens,” said National Security Council Coordinator for Strategic Communications John Kirby on a call with reporters Tuesday. “What concerns us about cross-border operations remains the same … that it might force a reaction by some of our SDF partners that would limit or constrain their ability to fight against ISIS, and that’s what we’re doing on the ground with them.”
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